4 ways physics could end the world

What would happen if....

1. Gravity turned off for 3 seconds
2. The earth started rotating the other way
3. All electrons within 1 light year suddenly disappeared
4. Our sun shut off for 2 weeks

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, do you enjoy watching disaster movies? You mean,
do I like watching billions of people parish on screen?
Now you're making me feel bad about enjoying Titanic, But
I guess I mean, do you like the physics of
those disaster movies? So? Do you feel like it's always
implausible or impossible? Well? I feel like the solution in
those movies is always either nuke it or send Bruce Willis.

(00:34):
What's wrong with sending Bruce Willis? Is that physically impossible?
He's basically the human nuke. What about a cosmic space bananas?
Suddenly Korean stots Earth and crashes into our planet. Well,
I think then we have to send Bruce Willis with
a nuke to blow that thing up to make a
cosmics smoothie. Well, okay, So if you were in Hollywood
and you were pitching physics space disaster movie, what would

(00:56):
you pitch? Oh? Man, we have so many good ways
to end the world with physics. That doesn't make me
feel good. Hi am horror had made cartoonists and the

(01:21):
creator of PhD commist. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist,
and I think about how the world might end. He's
an optimist, folks, I'm a planner. Is there such a
thing as an optimist physicist or are they all pretty
pretty down at the end of the university. No, we're
all optimistic because, you know, we're relying on society to
fund our abstract thinking about the nature of reality, the

(01:43):
universe and stuff. So you gotta believe in a sort
of educated, optimistic, forward thinking society for physics to even
be a thing. Always believe in other people's money. Yes,
you're optimistic. Model. If the world ends or society crumbles,
there's not going to be a lot of openings for
physics fessors in the end days. All right, Well, welcome

(02:03):
to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
production of I Heart Radio, in which we talk about
all the amazing and crazy and silly and bonkers things
space cheetos and giants, space bananas and talk about it
in a way that we hope you understand and enjoy.
And Bruce Willis, let's not forget Bruce Willis. He's in
the category of giantspace bananas, right, He's a kind of banana. Yeah,

(02:25):
we talked about all the amazing things we know and
all the amazing things we don't know about the universe,
including some of the things we covered in our book
We Have No Idea A Guide to the Unknown Universe, Yeah,
in which we talk about all the crazy open questions
of the universe, basic stuff that we should know about
our cosmic neighborhood and our place in the universe, but

(02:46):
physics still hasn't figured out. Yeah. It's a book that, too,
I think, up until recently, has not been translated to
over twenty languages. So those of you out there listening
across the world, I'm sure there is a book version
of this book in your languae. Have you read it
in any of the other languages. I've read them on
in all the different languages. I don't understanding of it,

(03:06):
but I think I had a pretty good idea of
what we wrote. I just wonder how all of our
bad puns were translated, like to Korean. Seems to me
like an impossible tath does yeah does graphical puns? I
think that's what you mean. No, it's a fun book,
and it talks about all the things that we don't
know about the universe and the ways we might figure
them out. One thing we didn't talk about in the book, though,

(03:29):
is how humanity might end. That's what we talked a
bit about, how the universe might end. But there's a
lot that can happen before the universe ends. You're thinking
they're not the same thing. You don't think humans are
gonna make it all the way. I'm thinking that when
we end, the universe ends for us, because we're going
to cause the end of the universe, nothing else matters.

(03:50):
That's right. I wouldn't put it past physicists to sort
of converge to those two things. I knew you were
going to paint it on physicists. You know, if somebody's
going to cause the end of the universe, I'm gonna
blame politicians, not physicists, really not physicists. It's not going
to be a physicist pressing that big red button you
know that launches the death device, the doomsday device that
creates the cosmic instability that you know, ruins the structure

(04:13):
of space, time or whatever. Yeah, you're right, I'll give
you that. It's probably going to be the physicist grad
student prescent accidentally putting their coffee down on the button. Oops,
what was that? But yeah, today's podcast, we'll be getting
into a topic that a little bit dark about the
outlook for humanity. Yeah, we pay attention to our listeners

(04:34):
and we read everything you guys write to us on
email and on Twitter. So if you have a question
about the universe or how humanity might end, or something
you heard about you didn't understand, please send it to us.
But this episode is in response to a very specific
question that came in from listeners about different ways that
physics might kill you, and not just from boredom, right,
not just from just kidding. No, physics is very exciting,

(04:58):
and Jason had a very interest think question here because
he envisions four ways in which physics could possibly end
the world as we know it and possibly the universe.
Do you think or just just the Earth? I think
probably just the Earth or just humanity. I think in
all these four scenarios, the universe will truck on even
if humanity is extinguished. And what do you think Jason

(05:19):
is thinking here? Do you think he's worried about these
things happening? Do you think he is trying to cause
these things to happen? Perhaps hopefully not. Yeah, this is
a similar quanity. Um, I'm not sure if in answering
his question, we are enabling a super villain who's making
plans to sort of ring humanity, or maybe somebody who's
like planning to protect humanity against the coming of potential supervillains.

(05:42):
This classic question in philosophy. You know, by creating technology
and spreading knowledge, are you enabling war or preventing it?
Do you think Jason might be the Bruce Willis of
Twitter or he might be the lex Luthor right, one
of those two. Either way, we're gonna answer your question,
Jason and Hope for the best and so to be.

(06:03):
On the podcast, we'll be asking the question, what are
four ways which physics could end the world? And we've
got more than four ways, we only have time, right,
we're under we're only explaining four of them today. That's right.

(06:24):
This is the top four of a very very long
list of ways to kill everybody on Earth using physics.
These are the top just because these are the ones
Jason picked. Or do you do you think Jason nailed
the four most concerning ways that physics could end the world. Oh,
I think it's like a thousand way tie for first place.
But these are the four of the Jason thought about.
I guess I guess if it ends the world, it's

(06:45):
they're all equally bad, right, right, We're equally good for somebody,
not us. No, but these are four very creative ways
to potentially kill off humanity, and they probe sort of
an understanding of the nature of matter and gravity and
electron on and all that stuff. So I thought it
would be a lot of fun to go through them
and really think about the physics of what would happen
in each scenario. So this is what Jason wrote in

(07:07):
his tweet. He wrote, rate these events from most catastrophic
to least. Number one, gravity turns off for three seconds
and then back on. Number two, the Earth suddenly starts
spinning backwards. Number three, every electron within one light year
of Earth suddenly disappears. Number four the Sun shuts down

(07:30):
for two weeks, and then he later clarified that it's
still there, but it's just sort of turned off and
went dark. It winks for two weeks. That's a long week, man,
it's very specific to two weeks. It's like, you know,
not you know, three weeks, not you know, sixteen days.
He's like, it sounds like he's planning for this. Yeah,

(07:52):
he's making some specific plans. These are not just arbitrary numbers,
you know. I think he's really tuned. These catastrophic events
makes me wonder about how much planning he's done. Well.
I think it's pretty cool that one of our listeners
sort of sat around, you know, and thought of all
these all the things that could happen in the universe,
and wondered what how these things were possible and how

(08:12):
they would affect us. Yeah, and I think a lot
of these have sort of physics implications that you might
not think of when you first hear it. There's an
initial idea and then there's some subtlety to each one.
So they're awesome not just because they might cause the
death of billions of people, but they might along the
way teach those billions of people something about physics. They
all sound pretty I'm not sure how to say this,

(08:34):
were you gonna say plausible? That sounds uh, It sort
of sounds like the plot of a of a spy
movie or a disaster movie, you know. Yeah, a lot
of these movies start off with some catastrophic event or
some dramatic event that makes you wonder like, oh, how
did that happen? Or how did the aliens get control
of gravity, or you know, who's who's deleting all these

(08:55):
electrons from the universe or something. But most of these
movies end up unsatisfying, and they're like, Oh, it's the
infinitely folding proton, they can do anything or something. Oh
I see or dark matter. Always go with dark matter
or quantum realm. That's matter. Oh man, don't get me
started on the science fiction novels that lean on dark matter.

(09:16):
You go to a dark place, do I recently read
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, and it basically has nothing
to do with dark matter. You think he just meant
like matters that are dark. I don't know what he meant.
It's really more about the quantum multiverse. It's like the
many worlds theory. So dark matter. I think it was
just like random clickbait physics title. Maybe we should. This

(09:38):
is not fair though, for me to criticize him. Blake Crouch,
if you're a listener, please come on the podcast and
argue with me about the science in your novel. Invitation
extended today, we'll uh it's going to be a little
bit of a different episodes, so we're going to tackle
each of these possible scenarios that Jason came up with,
and we're going to ask people on the street what
they think of it, and we're going to try to
explain what would happen if these things actually happened. That's right.

(10:01):
So I had the hilarious and enjoyable task and walking
around campus that use the irvine and asking people what
they thought would happen in these catastrophic scenarios. And the
people look at you with a fear in their eyes,
or were they amuse they run away. They didn't look
at me the way we sort of mentally looked at

(10:21):
Jason for posing these questions. They weren't worried that I
was planning to enact any of these scenarios. Um. I
think they enjoyed thinking about them. Yeah. All right, well
let's tackle these one at a time. And so we'll
start with Jason's number one on the Liz, which is
what would happen if gravity turns off for three seconds
and then it turns back on. Here's what people had

(10:41):
to say, what do you think would happen if a
gravity just shut off for like three seconds? People, I
think would be flying up the buildings. I think like
if their foundations are strong enough, they would stay here
on the Earth. But the people would like fly up
for a little bit and then when the gravity is
back on, they'll fall down. If there's no gravities, that

(11:03):
means the Earth cannot held us everyone. Maybe we'll just
fly to the sky and three seconds and after Suicidon
gras back, we will just about what do you think
it's pretty realistic with people envision. Yeah. Mostly I think
people think about the immediate thing that they are being

(11:24):
held to the Earth, and then that would stop if
gravity was turned off, And then they're worried about, you know,
like how high up are you going to get? And
how catastrophic would it be a gravity turned back on. Well,
this is an interesting scenario, I guess. I guess we
all sort of wonder what would happen if gravity didn't exist.
But I think he's he's asking what would happen if
it's suddenly turned off, Like one second we have gravity

(11:49):
and the next millisecond we don't have gravity. Yeah, because
we wouldn't even be here without gravity, right. Gravity is
the reason why we have the Earth. It's the reason
why we have any sort of structure anything going on.
Without gravity, stuff would still be floating out their dilute
in space. So you need gravity to make the Earth
and people and the Sun and all that stuff. And
this question is about what happened if somebody like bumped

(12:10):
against the gravity light switch accidentally in the Universe control room.
That's right, God, she she accidentally, you know, leaned against
the wall, hit the switch. Yeah, you put her coffee
down on the wrong spot or something. Right. A lot
of people said that you would fly up right, and
you know, gravity is holding us down. That's certainly true.
But if gravity disappeared, you wouldn't immediately fly up. Oh interesting, Well,

(12:33):
I guess my first question before we get into the effects,
is this even possible? Could gravity just tron off for
three seconds and then back on? Not that I'm aware of.
I mean, we have no way to manipulate gravity or
understand the structure of spacetime. We don't even really know
what gravity is, you know, Is it just like the
way that space is bent by having mass and energy around?
Is it a force like the other ones? Um? But

(12:55):
of course we don't have an understanding of the quantum
nature of it, so we don't really understand what gravity
is and how it works. So we definitely don't know
how to turn it on and off. We even talked
on a podcast about like anti gravity devices. Yeah, I guess.
I mean, do you know of any situation in physics
in the universe in which gravity doesn't work? You know,

(13:15):
like we talked once about like anti gravity particles. Maybe
could we somehow some suddenly be washed over by anti
gravity particles or you know, is it even possible for
gravity to suddenly not work? I don't think you could
turn off gravity. The thing you might be able to
do is counteracted. Like if you ranked up dark energy.

(13:38):
Right here at the Earth, dark energy is basically doing
the opposite of gravity, right It's stretching space and moving
things further apart. So if you somehow we're able to
manipulate dark energy in a way to like expand space
to change its curvature locally, then you could effectively have
the opposite effective gravity, canceling it out, so you might

(13:58):
be able to balance. I mean, this is really a stretch.
We don't even know what dark energy is. But if
I had to go somewhere, I would instead of turning
off gravity, I would try to balance it with dark energy.
But that's maybe with a maybe with a maybe on
top of it. So, if I was writing the Tom
Hanks down Brown novel, I would have the evil Zelad

(14:19):
create a dark energy bomb a dark gable. Yeah, that's
somehow I'm just I'm just bit balling here. Uh and
and there's not a suggestion for anyone out there. Um,
but in the movie, you might create a bomb that suddenly,
uh you know, gives off a lot of dark energy
which cancels gravity for three seconds. Here, and what do
you think would have the most sort of first weekend

(14:39):
ticket sales? A dark energy bomb or a dark energy
laser or dark energy gun. As long as it's called
dark energy, I think the name will totally just sell it.
Then the title of Blake Crouch's next novel that has
nothing to do with dark energy. All right, Well, it
sounds like, you know there, it's not impossible. There there's

(15:00):
you know that you could envision a movie using this
plot device, and like now you call it not impossible,
which makes it sort of we sort of suggest that
maybe it's possible, but like in the same way, like
it's not impossible that we could be the number one
podcast in the world. Wait, we're not. It could happen
we need the dark podcast bomb to go off for

(15:21):
that to happen. It's right, and boost boost our ratings.
At least in my universe, we're number one, Daniel, We're
the number one podcast that I listened to. All right,
so let's get into what would happen if you actually
turned off gravity for three seconds and then turn it
back on. First, let's take a quick break, all right, Daniel,

(15:51):
walk us through this scenario. So paint us the picture
if I turned off gravity for three seconds, what would happen? Well,
the first thing would happen is that you would fly
off the Earth, but not straight up. Well, I can't
fly down. Um, I'm guessing you mean like I would
fly in the direction that i'm the Earth is rotating. Yeah,
you can think of yourself as sort of orbiting the
Earth just above the surface. Think about what would happen

(16:14):
to the moon if gravity turned off? The Moon would
not fly straight away from the Earth. It would keep
going the direction it's going. It would shoot off in
a line tangent to the circle it's moving in, right,
because what gravity is doing is it sort of bending
it in a circle. So gravity disappears, the Moon shoots
off sort of sideways. So if you're like a little
moon of the Earth, everybody is their own little tiny moon.

(16:36):
Then what happens is that you shoot off sort of
at an angle to the surface. Oh, I see, like
it's tangent to the circle to right. Yeah, precisely, it's tangent.
Just keep going. It would no longer be reined into
an orbital circle. I would just it's like you cut
the string that is tying it to the Earth. Yeah,
and remember, when gravity turns off, there's nothing like pushing

(16:57):
you away from the Earth. It's not like you're getting
forced away. I've seen a lot of science fiction movies,
you know that when gravity, when you get into space
or whatever, things sort of automatically float away from you.
They don't necessarily unless you give them a push. But
in this case, you're already moving away from the Earth,
and it's gravity that keeps you on the Earth. So
when you turn that off and you sort of keep

(17:19):
going in the direction you were going, so everybody would
float up. Yeah you wouldn't. I guess you wouldn't float
technically away from the Earth. But to us here on
Earth where I'm standing, it would seem like I'm floating
up because the Earth is rotating under you, right, Yeah,
Like the house will keep moving around the Earth, but
I am sort of now going tangent to the Earth,
but it's also moving with me. So it will seem

(17:39):
like I'm floating up. Yeah, it will. But eventually, if
it's for long enough, then the Earth will curve away
from you, and you no longer be directly above your
house or your garden or wherever you stood. Like if
you painted an X under you and then gravity turned off,
the X would seem to be under you for a
little while, but then it would no longer be right
under you because the curve of the Earth. So would

(18:00):
this happened suddenly or slowly? You know, like let's say, boom,
I turned off gravity. Am I now like falling up?
Or am I? You know, be like, wait, what what's
going on? Would it be slow or fast? It wouldn't
be too fast. You'd be floating up because the curverage
of the Earth is pretty small and so you're mostly
already going in the right direction. Oh I see. It

(18:20):
wouldn't be like I was falling up. It would be
more like detaching from the Earth. Yeah, and the Earth
would continue to curve sort of away under you, and
you keep going in the same direction, and so the
distance would increase a sort of a nonlinear rate. But
the very first few seconds you wouldn't get that high.
How high would you actually get if if gravity turned

(18:42):
off for three seconds and I started floating up, how
high do you think I would would I get? It's
a great question. I actually had to sit down and
do this calculation because I wasn't sure. And the way
to think about it is that the Earth is sort
of rotating out from under you. Remember you're still moving
in the straight line, and the Earth is rotating out
from under you. I'm now heading straight to the Moon
or something. Yeah, you're being shot out into space. It's

(19:04):
a massive slingshot, you know, or like to think about
the Earth is a big merry go round and you
suddenly let go and then getting flung out into space.
But the Earth is really big and really round, and
the curvature, as you know, is not that easy to spot.
So the only reason you're leaving the surface of the
Earth is because of that curvature. And so in three
seconds you would actually only float up about fourteen centimeters.

(19:27):
So if Garty turned off for three seconds, I would me, elephants, girafbs,
cars out there would float for about fourteen centimeters and
then come back down. Yeah, so it's like you take
a little hop, right. It's big enough for you to notice,
but not big enough to really be dangerous. But I
would feel it, right like, probably a lot of a
lot of people would throw up that feeling of free

(19:49):
fall for three seconds if you suddenly floated a foot
into the air. Yes, I'm pretty sure you would notice that.
And if it continued, you know, if like the person
who turned off gravity was sort of like fumbling for
the switch and it took longer, then he gets more
dramatic pretty quickly. After thirty seconds, you'd be like fourteen
meters above the ground. Oh that's not good. That's not
that one. You don't recover from easily. No, unless you're

(20:11):
wearing a lot of protective gear. All right, So, and
so I would fly. That doesn't sound too bad. It
sounds at least before the world ends. I want to
get to fulfill my dream of flying and floating in space. Um,
and so what else would happen besides me floating? Well,
he talked about gravity turning off, and he didn't limit
it to Earth's gravity. He was just like gravity period

(20:32):
in the universe, whole universe, universe. And most importantly, that
means that like all the Earth's gravity is gone and
the Sun's gravity is gone, and that has some consequences,
like if we would shoot off into space, Yeah, just
like we would float off of the Earth's orbit, the
Earth would fall out of its orbit and keep going

(20:53):
for three seconds out of its orbit. Oh, and then
when it turns back on, we would be in a
totally different orbit. Yeah, and we might have the wrong trajectory.
We might not any longer be in a stable orbit,
and so we might sort of get kicked out of
the Solar System. That doesn't sound good. It does not
sound good. There's lots of ways to move around the Sun,
and only a few of them are a stable orbit.
And so if you just sort of all of a

(21:14):
sudden drift out to a larger radius, but you haven't
picked up any speed, then you're not in a stable
orbit anymore. With the Earth crack or anything like that,
like with our atmosphere suddenly proof away, what are some
of the things physically that would happen to our planet. Yeah,
the atmosphere also is held to the Earth by gravity,
and so the atmosphere would float away from the Earth
the same way because it's spinning. Just dissipate. Yeah, it

(21:36):
would just dissipate out into space um. But you know
three seconds is not that long, so you wouldn't lose
a whole lot of atmosphere. Oh, I see three seconds? Okay,
got it. Got It would dissipate a little, but then
it might come back. Now, but by then we will
will be in a different orbit, will be in the
wrong orbit, and then the Earth, you know, it will
get sucked back by the Earth Sun's gravity when it
turns back on. But it might then get sucked into

(21:58):
something that's not a stable orbit. It could like whizz
around closer to the Sun and then get thrown into
interstellar space. But that's not even the worst part. Okay,
what's the worst? What's the worst that could happen? The
biggest deal, the cataclysmic end to your Michael Bay movie
is that. Remember that gravity plays a really important role
in holding the Sun together. It's the only reason it's

(22:19):
a ball of fire, right otherwise, I mean it's a
constant explosion being held by gravity. Yes, it's being pinned
down by gravity. And so if you turn gravity off,
then it like unleashes the Sun's fury for three seconds,
and the Sun would basically explode. I mean, it's a
huge meal in your bomb being held together by gravity.
In three seconds, that would be enough to to explode

(22:40):
the Sun. It would definitely explode. What would happen when
you turned it back on, I don't know, like could
he gather it back together. It would definitely change the
dynamics of the Sun, And so it might be a
very different star when you turn it back on. It
might be burning at a different temperature, or have a
different radius or a different opacity. You know. Oh, I see,
it's like the stable little um cycle. And you will

(23:03):
be totally disrupting that. Yeah, you like kick the fire,
you know, and then you gotta try to get it
going again, and it might, you know, sputter out or
flame up, or do something totally crazy. So for three seconds,
we would see the Sun suddenly get bigger for three seconds,
and then gravity turns back on, and then it something
else will happen. Something else will happen, and it's not

(23:23):
easy to figure out what you know, we don't understand
the way a lot of these stars work anyway, So
you know, nobody has done this kind of simulation. To
figure out, like in detail what would happen. You need
to run a massive simulation of of the sort of
hydrodynamics of inside the star, and nobody has done that calculation.
It's not something you can sit down and do with
a pencil and paper. And in those three seconds, is

(23:43):
it possible where the sun grows, is possible that it
will fry us? Or you know, like if it sort
of explodes for three seconds, is that, you know, a
shower of energy going to fry the planet? Probably not.
Remember that the Sun is light minutes from the Earth,
so really far away from the Sun, and so three
seconds is a tiny fraction of that. And you know
there might be like a pulse of energy which gets

(24:05):
shot out. But then remember gravity turns back on and
so any of that plasma is going to get slowed
down and dragged back into the Sun. I bet you
get like an enhanced solar wind. But we still have
a magnetic field to protect us from that solar wind.
All right, So I think that paints, uh are not
a great picture, which is that you know, we might
get kicked out of the solar system. We might ruin

(24:29):
the sun um but here on Earth will will float
for three seconds and then come back down. So a
lot of cars maybe you know, might float and then
crash back down. That wouldn't be too bad, But the
worst is that we might get kicked out or the
Sun would explode. The overall pretty bad. I rate this
on the on the badness scale as pretty bad scenario
pretty bad. Especially the range of your scale here does

(24:52):
it go from pretty bad too utterly terrible, or from
don't worry about it to keep listening because some of
the scenarios get pretty nasty. All right, Let's get into
the second one here. Jason writes what would happen if
the Earth suddenly starts spinning backwards? So I walked around
campus again and I asked people this insane question, what

(25:13):
do you think it would be like on Earth if
there if the Earth suddenly started rotating the other direction?
I think everything would go insane, Like the probably seats
would just in the way to go the opposite direction,
and tsunamis would happen, and probably storms. I've never thought
about it because I just haven't really come with I mean,

(25:33):
you just hear how it goes and like, okay, what
does what it does? But I've never thought what happens, Well,
it does opposite so much say, alright, bad stuff, bad stuff.
None of this was supposed to be sort of cozy scenarios.
It's supposed to make anybody smile and cuttle up with
a book and a cup of tea or anything. Uh
do you think he means like if you you know,

(25:54):
the Earth is spinning right now and we're all very comfortable,
but suddenly the spinning in Earth, what do you think
he means, Like it stops and then it starts spinning
the other way. Yeah, it's a critical difference because if
you could sort of snap your fingers and all of
a sudden everything is going in the other direction, that's
not actually that big a deal. I mean in that scenario, like, yeah,

(26:15):
the sun is like everything, like the oceans. You mean,
if we're you know, suddenly we're spinning moving the other way,
not much would happen. Not much would happen. Yeah, and
the sun would rise and set on the other side. Right. Um,
But but a lot of things about the Earth are
pretty symmetric. Would it change, like the magnetic poles? It

(26:35):
certainly might It might flip the magnetic field, you know,
because the magnetic field is generated by what's going on
inside the Earth, the rotation of like that that hot
magnetic liquid inside the Earth, And so if you're flipping that,
then you're flipping the magnetic field. But that just makes
north into south. Right, things still work. You still have
a magnetic field to protect you from solar flares, um

(26:56):
and cosmic radiation. Everything still sort of holds together. Doesn't
mean break everything. It just sort of puts a minus
one in front of a lot of stuff. Okay, I think,
I think I get it. I think if you define
the Earth as the brock and everything on it, including
us and the satellites, then not much what happened, and
the atmosphere yeah, and the atmosphere not much with Heaven.

(27:18):
But if you maybe define the Earth is just the
ball of rock, then things might get bad. Right. Oh man,
if just the Earth started going in the other direction
and we were still going this way, yeah, that would
be very bad because how fast How fast am I
technically going sitting here on Earth? Yeah, you're going pretty fast.
I mean, the Earth's circumference is what miles and it

(27:39):
does that in a day, and so it's a thousand
miles per hour is the Earth's surface is moving. So
if all of a sudden it's moving the other way
basically two thousand miles per hour, that would be pretty bad.
That's like going in a car at a two thousand
miles per hour and then suddenly the car stopped, were
crashing to a wall, right, Yeah, not not recommended. Not

(28:02):
We would all just get smushed or we would get
you know, if you're outside, you would just certainly be
flung at two thousand miles per hour. Yeah, and also
be crazy winds, right, because the atmosphere is also rotating
with the Earth, So just the Earth started going to
the other direction, basically all the air and Earth would
have a wind speed of two thousand miles per hour.

(28:23):
That's like much stronger than any hurricane. So it would
basically flatten every city, right, but me included would also
be going at two thousand miles per hours, So I
would m I guess I would get thrown if I
was outside. This is the best case scenario. I'm outside,
the Earth changes direction, You're wearing a lot of protective gear.
I hope I'm wearing a lot of an insulated lab coats. Yeah,

(28:46):
I get flung off into the sky two thousand miles part,
but the wind is also going with me at two
miles per hour, So I think for a few short
seconds I would be flying again until you hit something,
until I hit something right, like the Earth or your
house or something. Oh, I see, all right, But there's
another scenario. When I read this, I thought of something else.
I thought, what does it take to to flip the

(29:09):
Earth to go the other way? I thought, you know,
maybe you like stop that, you slow down the Earth
and get it going the other way, and you do
that in a very short amount of time, You like
actually apply the brakes and then give it a push
the other direction. Because you know, in physics, nothing gets
accomplished instantaneously. You can't be going a hundred miles an
hour in one direction and then instantly the other direction. Right,

(29:30):
that's an acceleration, that's a change of velocity, and that
only happens with a huge force. Can it happen with
the giant dark energy bomb? I think it'd be more
a dark energy laser, you know, you fire at the surface.
I'll make a note, But that's an even worse scenario
because if you apply an enormous acceleration to the whole earth,
that would break a lot of stuff. Well, it's kind

(29:53):
of like, um, the opposite. It's just a milder version
of the instantaneous flip of the rock. Right. The instantaneous
flip is actually easier because you don't have to go
through the transition. You don't have to feel the acceleration.
Acceleration is what's really bad. It's like if you're in
a fighter jet, going at zero miles per hour is
no big deal. Going at five thousand miles per hour

(30:14):
also not that big a deal because velocity is not
an issue. But the acceleration from zero to five thousand,
those g's you would feel them. It would like pulverize
your insides. Humans can't survive more than a few gees
liquefying our organs. So it sort of depends on a
lot of things. It depends on whether Jason meant the
ball of rock or everything on it, and also how

(30:35):
quickly this operation happens. Yeah, because if you actually do
it physically correctly and accelerate the earth the other direction
to get it spinning that way, then you have to
be really careful. If you don't include the oceans, for example,
then you're gonna get like ridiculous tsunamis like miles high
waves slashing around. You gotta do it carefully because you

(30:56):
gotta get every everything on board. If you're change a direction. Yeah, chaos.
Do you ever feel just like a pan of water
and try to walk it across your kitchen? It's almost
impossible to not have that water like slosh around and
splash on your toes. Now, imagine you have like oceans
on the Earth and you're spitting it the other way.
You are going to drown Tokyo and everything else. Oh man, alright,

(31:20):
So then how would you rate this potential physics disaster?
Is this? Is it too dependent on the specifics or
do you think we should it's clearly bad in any case, Um,
I'd say it's less catastrophic than turning off gravity. I'm
pretty worried about the Sun being unleashed for three seconds
and being kicked out into a different orbit. So if
I had to pick, I would say gravity turning off

(31:43):
is more catastrophic. That's the champion so far. Okay, So
what's below pretty bad? Pretty bad, but not as bad
A bad idea not recommended. Is there physics rating system
like you know, G good to go PG physics good

(32:07):
not recommended without the supervision of a physicist, especially with
the supervision physicists. Don't offer this option to any physicists,
you know, they can resist pushing the button Candy. Whenever
I'm in front of a big red button, my fingers
just crawl on it. I'm gonna touch it, Like, what
does I feel like depressing? What would happen? I'm gonna

(32:29):
create a button, Daniel that transfer transfers all your money
to my bank account, and I'm going to leave it
into your front door. No, that's my personal Twilight Zone episode.
It's like your nighmer as a house full of red buttons?
Is that what it is? That's your twilight Zone episode?
And one of them kills everybody on earth. Oh that

(32:50):
is a good plot idea. Oh man, we are pitching
so many good movies today. I know it's like Saw,
but for physics. There we go. All right, let's get
into the last two scenarios that Jason imagine that the
Livy came up with. But first let's take a quick break.

(33:20):
All right, Daniel, we have two more potentially catastrophic scenarios
for Earth and humanity and potentially the universe that one
of our listeners here, Jason, came up with, and so
we we need to rate them, we need to explain
them and see how bad they are. So the third
idea that Jason had was, Yeah, he asked, what would

(33:40):
happen if every electron within one light year of Earth disappeared?
Is it for three seconds you think? Or forever? It
just says gone, Yeah, we're not getting these electrons back,
you know, they have just been deleted from the universe.
Could we survive? But but only within one light year?
He's very specific. He's at one point zero. Like I

(34:00):
think he's trying to include like our entire cosmic neighborhood,
you know, the sun planets that may be word cloud,
but not the whole universe. He's not building to speck here.
He's just curious, right, I hope not alright. So the
scenario is that every electron that we know that's inside

(34:21):
of my body, the Earth, the Sun, the planet, all
the need I guess nearby solar system right now. The
nearest star is three light years away, three or four
light years away, so there are no other stars involved.
So basically just our solars and every electron suddenly disappear
in the solar system. And so let's preface this by
reminding people sort of how important and ubiquitous electrons are. Okay,

(34:45):
They're not just something in batteries, right there, not just
the thing that you juice up your iPhone with. Everything
you know, everything you see, everything you have ever eaten,
everything you are made of has electrons in it and
needs those electrons, right, And in a way, it's almost
they're almost um it's like one third of all matter,
isn't it technically kind of yeah, Like you take an

(35:08):
atom and it has protons and neutrons and electrons. Now,
the electrons are very very light where they don't have
a lot of mass, but they are responsible for balancing
the electric charge of the atom. You know, there's the
positive proton and then there's the negative electron, and so
it's pretty key. I'm thinking this is not good. But
let's see what people had to say on the street. Yeah,

(35:28):
so I walked around and I asked people what they thought.
Here's what they had to say. What do you think
would happen if all of the electrons, like within a
light year just suddenly disappeared. I don't think that'd be
good or bad. It was simply destroyed out, So kind
of considering an electrical engineer, that'd be probably pretty bad.

(35:50):
I like like this last one, that last one where
the engineer is worried about his career. That's his main procopation.
I know. I was like, dude, you're gonna have to
become a proton engineer instead of electron engineer. That's what
I was thinking. How would you what would any career
be called pro protonical engineer, per tonical engineer? Yeah, I

(36:12):
suppose so, although you know, if this happens, we're not
going to be around to be hiring anybody. Okay, So
you think it's pretty catastrophic if all electrons suddenly disappear. Yeah,
Every atom, all of a sudden gets a positive charge. Right,
you have a hydrogen atom, you delete it to electron.
You got a proton. And if you had a gas
of hydrogen atoms, which we do in lots of places

(36:32):
like the Sun, then you deleted all those electrons. All
of a sudden. You have all these positive protons, and
they're not gonna be happy just hanging out. They're gonna
push against each other. Oh, I see. If I have
a canister of hydrogen and I take away the electrons,
suddenly have I just have protons? Yeah, and those protons
feel a very powerful force against each other, are they?

(36:53):
Is it my canister going to explode or is it
just gonna feel pressure? It's gonna explode. Your canister also
used to have electrons in it. It doesn't anymore. You
used to have electrons and it doesn't anymore. That's what
I'm talking about. Like, electrons are everywhere we are. We
are made of electrons. The sun, Earth is made of electrons.

(37:13):
So you delete electrons all of a sudden, every atom
you know within a light year hates every other atom
and wants to be really far away from me. Do
you think maybe Jason would just think, like, hey, what
if we didn't have electricity for a little while. I
don't know what you're thinking, but Jason, please do not
do this. Everything would explode. The Earth would explode, the
Sun would explode. You would explode, My brain would explode,

(37:35):
Your career would explode. I sensed real fear in your
voice here, Daniel. I feel like you're we're actually touching
something that makes you afraid. At a very core level. Yeah. Also,
I take this one a bit personally. I mean, I'm
a particle physicist. I feel something for particles. You can't
just delete electrons, man, I mean it's so cruel, like
they've been doing so much for you for years orout anythings,

(37:59):
and then you're just gonna raise them literally erased them
from the universe. It's like, don't cancel, don't cancel the election.
This cancel culture has gone too far people. If you're
canceling particles now, people want to cancel the electron, And
how come nobody ever wants to cancel proton? So it's
always the electrons right right. It sounds like you're you're
pretty afraid of this scenario, like it would be bad.

(38:20):
There's no recovering from it, right. If you have no electrons,
then there's no way to balance the charges. I mean,
there are other particles in the universe that have negative charges,
like the W minus and some quirks have fractional negative charges.
So you might be able to assemble some other hadrons
to give you negative charges and make really weird chemistry.

(38:42):
You know, you can make like an a mega minus
particle to balance a proton and make a whole new
kind of atom. But who knows what kind of thing
you could build out of that, certainly not me or
you or anything you're familiar with. So it's like you're
rewriting the laws of the universe. It would be totally catastrophic.
One second would be sitting here talking. In the next second,
we're just exploding, flying through space and this massive protons

(39:05):
floating out there in the universe. Yeah, exactly. We'd be
a plasma of protons pushing away from each other really
really hard. Because remember, electromagnetism is a powerful force and
it has an infinite extent, and so everything within our
light year would become a dilute gas of protons eventually.
All right, so I think you would rate this is
not just pretty bad, but like maybe ultimately bad. This

(39:28):
is this is up there, This is up there. This
is sort of like saturate the scale, you know, this
like red lines at it as maximum e catastrophic Like
this one terrifies me. I see, this is the stuff
physicist nightmares are made up. That and red buttons, rooms
with red buttons. One of these buttons will delete electrons

(39:48):
and the other might transfer all your funds to Horne. Alright,
so I'm pressed that Jason saturated your disaster scale, Like
you don't you would any want to see this movie? No?
I mean, what's going to happen? Everything blows up in
the first moment, boom would be over, Like there's no
drama there, just building anything. All right, Well, let's get

(40:10):
into his fourth scenario here, maybe that will have a
little bit more drama. So Jason writes, what would happen
if the Sun shuts down for two weeks but the
mass is still there. He's very cautious about that. It's
just he's saying, like, what if it's stuff stops giving
off light for two weeks? Right, Yeah, the Sun basically
goes dark or winks at us in you know, technical terms,

(40:32):
m But it's still there. It's still making the planets
go around. Um, but it's just not giving off any
light or particles. Like imagine if the Sun became a
black hole. It's effectively, what would happen for two weeks?
For two weeks, but then it came then it comes
back from vacation. Yeah. So I walked around and I
asked folks, were they worried about the sun shutting down?

(40:54):
And what do they think would happen in that scenario?
What do you think would be like on Earth? If
the sun shut down for like two weeks? I don't
think there would be life, But they're like, we'd all
die in within two weeks. I think so, plus like
then there'd be like no gravity. I don't know, It's like,
I don't think there would be life at all. So
what happened and the only one person was willing to

(41:14):
talk to you at this point? Everyone else right away?
After you ask people about electrons disappearing and all sorts
of stuff. Um, yeah, they sort of like I had
somewhere else to be. Do you made them rethink their
lives and what they're doing with their precious time that
we have here? Yeah, I hope they ran off at
to tell all their loved ones how important they are
to them. He's envisioning what would happen to if the
sun suddenly turned off, and but I guess physically we

(41:38):
wouldn't feel it right. Things would just go dark. Yeah.
First of all, the sun would keep burning for eight minutes,
apparently in the sky, because remember it takes time for
light to get here from the sun. So in the
first eight minutes or so this two week hiatus, things
would seem normal and then all of a sudden, boom,
the sun would go black and it's basically like nighttime

(41:59):
for two weeks. Astronomers would be very excited. They can
actually work for two weeks to weeks straight without sleeping.
Do you think they would be excited. They're brewing a
big pot of coffee and anticipation. Astronomers basically lose half
of their observing time because of the Sun. It just
blots out everything in the sky. So we would get
great views of the stars, right, and it sort of

(42:21):
blocks telescopes also, just from like light pollution to right.
It's not just the direct sunlight. It's also just like
light in our solar system. Yeah, and the heats of
the atmosphere and makes it wiggly, and so it makes
it harder to see that starlight that's sort of limped
across the universe for billions of years and finally gotten
here has to go through a wiggly atmosphere gets all

(42:43):
smeared out, and so the Sun is sort of the
enemy of astronomy. It's not particle physicists, it's the sun.
Particle physicists always beat astronomy. So we don't even think
I think we do bring an astronomy here to have
an arm wrestling fight with you here, intellectual arm wrestling. No.
We we love astronomers, and we feel a kinship of

(43:04):
course with all of physics, but especially with astronomers and cosmologists,
because we're all wondering about the big questions of the universe.
All right, well, it doesn't sound too catastrophic. It sounds
like we just get a too night, a two week night,
which sounds great to me because I can sleep the
whole catchup of my sleep, your sleep, you mostly work
on that. I get emails from you like three in

(43:25):
the morning, so you would get so much done if
the sound disappeared for two weeks, if me and thistronomers
would die from exhaustion, assuming your kids sleep for two weeks, right, yeah,
it'd be pretty hard though. You know, I don't think
it's very fun to endure two weeks of night. But
you know they're parts of the early that don't see
the sun for weeks and months at a time, right, yeah.

(43:47):
People are like near the North Pole. The sun sets
you know in whatever October November, depending where you are,
and then it just doesn't come up again in February
until February one. Depending on when it happens, some people
might not even notice. In the wintertime, folks would be like,
what are you talking about the sun? Is the sun
turned off? There's no sun anyway? Yeah, and it would

(44:11):
be more than just two weeks of night because we
rely on sort of the reheating of daytime, and so
eventually the earth we get pretty chilly. And the thing
I wonder about is like plants. You know, could plants
go for two weeks without any sun and then just
sort of like snap back into health two weeks later? Right? Yeah,
I can't plants. Would plants just kind of go into
hibernation or something? Yeah, it might like kill off agriculture

(44:35):
for a whole cycle, so we might all be hungry
for a year. Um. But you know, that's a sort
of for biologists, like if you shut down sunlight the
plants for two weeks, would they die or they come back?
I'm I'm guessing would all die, but you get definitely
reduced yields, so you have less food for that next winter.
Oh boy, so our culture or society might collapse. Yeah,

(44:57):
you know, I like reading science fiction novels that highlight
the sensitivity of our entire civilization. You know, like we
are all three days away from total riots. Like if
the trucks stopped driving and the supermarket shells were no
longer filled with food, were like three days away from
total chaos. Better stuck up on those lentils. It's right,
lentils exactly. Everybody should have lentils in their basement. Yeah,

(45:21):
all right, But then you're saying that the earth might
get colder, Like how much colder? Would we suddenly be
thrown into like a two week winter, or would it
we see it sort of slowly get chillier. It would
be sort of like a two week winter because you
get the dips for a nighttime, and then you wouldn't
come back up again during the day, and so you
just keep cooling off and getting colder and colder and colder,

(45:43):
and eventually if the sun was out for months or
weeks or years, and then you get a new ice
age and the earth would really frost over. On the
plus iby would solve global warming. On the negative side,
society might collapse. You forgot to add more astronomy and
cartoons to the plus est, right, more creativity for nighttime artist.

(46:05):
That's another I think that. I think that justifies the rest.
To be honest, maybe we should think about actually doing this. Yeah,
maybe Jason already thought about it, and that's why he's asking.
Jason's like using the other scenarios to make this one
sound reasonable. Right, He's worked it all out. He just
wants to make sure. I was thinking he was more
of the Calvin and Hobbs strategy, you know, the like,

(46:27):
hey mom, can I have a flamethrower? No? Well can
I have a cookie? Sure? He's like, can I turn
off all the electrons? No, don't do that. Can I
just turn off the sun for two weeks? All right?
That seems reasonable? Well, he I guess he has my permission.
If his options are trying to disappear electrons or turn
off the sun for two weeks, I would say, um,
turn off the sun. Yeah. So my vote for most

(46:50):
catastrophic would be turn off the electrons, then probably turning
off gravity, then the Earth spinning backwards, and then shutting
off the sun for two weeks. That would be the
least catastrophic in my book. All right, And that's that
covers the range from not so bad too ultimately bad too.
Please please please don't even think about this. Don't start

(47:11):
doing research on it, but don't imagine what would be
like or how much fun it would be. Let's just
avoid the topic. Wow, this really you don't even want
to talk about it, Daniel, let's wrap up the podcast.
I'm not Let's just thank you. This is triggering you.
I feel in ways that are making you uncomfortable. You know,
every time somebody has a crazy sounding idea that seems impossible,

(47:32):
somebody out there starts thinking about it and maybe that
isn't impossible. I have a few ideas, and that's how
research gets started. Man oh man, all right, let's let's
end the podcast then, before we before we go too far,
it might already be too late. All right, Well, I
think thinking about these scenarios is pretty interesting because, first
of all, it makes you think about how precious we

(47:53):
life is and here on earth. And also it kind
of makes you think about how at the whim of
these physical laws were you know, if if things change,
we might not be here. Yeah, we are in a
delicate balance, and the universe is this way which allows
for our life and our and our loves and everything
we enjoy about the universe, but if it was slightly different,

(48:14):
then we wouldn't be able to survive. And one of
the deepest questions in physics is could it be slightly different?
Why is it this way? Is this the only way
that the universe could be so we are a natural consequence?
Or are there billions of ways to have universes and
we just happen to be in this one. We don't
know the answer to that really basic question about our
own existence. And I like these questions because they sort

(48:36):
of make you think about all of those issues. Yeah,
the big question, like what would happen if we didn't
have Bruce willis who would go and nket that cosmic
banana if you couldn't call Bruce? All right, thank you
so much for joining us, and we hope you enjoyed that.
And if you have a question you'd like to hear
us talk about in a silly manner, please send it
to us at Questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

(48:57):
See you next time. Before you still have a question
after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and

(49:20):
Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I
Heart Radio from More podcast from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.