Could dark matter be made of quarks?

Learn about hexaquarks with Daniel and Jorge

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, do you know what dark matter is? Meet us?
Oh man, I wish I did. Are you sure it's
not something simple like what, you know, like a bunch
of rocks painted black. Maybe yeah, okay, it's not that,
or you know, just a huge ginormous black hole that
would be awesome, but it's not that either, or maybe

(00:30):
it could be. Uh, don't go there, space banana. I
knew you were going to go there. I have to.
I mean, how do you know it's not a space banana? Daniel?

(00:58):
I am poor hammy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I don't believe
in space bananas. Would you mean you don't believe in space?
You don't believe bananas can be in space? Or you
don't believe that space can have bananas. I don't believe
that particles randomly bouncing around in space will spontaneously form bananas.

(01:20):
That's sort of like the Relateman bananas hypothesis. Not even
in an infinite universe where anything that's probable happens. Well,
you know, in an infinite universe, there actually must be
a space banana out there. So and I do think
the universe is probably infinite, So you know what, I'm
a convert now and now in space. But welcome to

(01:41):
my cult, and welcome to all of you to our podcast,
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Heart Radio, in which we talk about all the amazing
things that are out there and all the amazing things
that are in here, and how it all connects and
how it all fits together and explain it to you
in a way that you can understand and hopefully makes
you chuckle. Yeah. We talked about all of the things

(02:05):
that are out there that we know about and all
the things out there that we don't know about, and
not just space bananas. Maybe space bananas made out of
dark matter. That's right, because one of the most exciting
things about science is not just getting answers and figuring
stuff out, but asking questions. So our goal is to
take you to the forefront of those questions, to show

(02:25):
you what scientists are thinking about, what are the possibilities
for some of the answers to those biggest questions, and
explain them to you. Yeah, because I think for scientists
it's not just enough to know that something is out
there and to classify it and to kind of catalog it.
But yeah, it seems you guys really want to know
what things are made of, you know, you want to
keep drilling down until you get to what like mathematics.

(02:49):
Well that's my goal. I mean, I don't want to
just know that something is there. I want to know
is it made out of the same stuff as you
and I are. Can we explain all of the crazy, beautiful, amazing, hasty,
weird stuff in the universe in terms of the same
basic building blocks or do we need to add another
building block? So to me, it's it's really interesting just
to know, like what is it made out of? Right?

(03:11):
Like what what would a space banana be made out of?
Ben ainos or bars, bananatons, whatever they're made out of,
you will get to name them good and taste them, hopefully.
But the question is if we find space bananas, are
they made out of the same particles that normal bananas
are made out of? Or they made out of something
new and weird and different, which might mean that you

(03:32):
can't eat them. Oh, I see, they wouldn't taste the same,
not if they're made out of some new, weird kind
of particle right exotic space bananas, They might not even
be digestible by your system. They might pass right through you.
That would be weird, oh man. And but then begs
the question are they still bananas? And then we have
to go through the department of banana philosophy to answer

(03:54):
that question. But yeah, we often talk about what things
are made of. And one of the biggest questions is
not just for us and humans, but in all of
the human history, maybe is what is this twenty five
of the universe made out of that scientists have discovered.
That's right. We spent a lot of time understanding the

(04:14):
kind of matter that's around us, bananas and people and
toes and ferret and lava, and discovered that all of
it's made out of these tiny little particles, quirks and
electrons mostly. But then we found that a huge chunk
of the universe, twenty of all the energy budget of
the universe, is this other kind of matter, this dark matter.
And so, of course, as particle physicists, we want to

(04:37):
know what is it made out of? Is it made
out of particles? If so, is it one particle, is
it a familiar particle that we've seen before, or something
totally new and weird and different. And I'm used to
sort of hyperbolizing this problem. Is saying it's not just
the biggest question in physics, it's the biggest question in science.
But you just went even further. You're like, this is
the biggest question in human history regarding physics. I think

(04:59):
that's what. Oh you're qualifying it now, all right, it's
too late, man, it's too late. Were already number one question? Ever,
m uh, it doesn't. Isn't dark wood? Is dark energy bigger? Okay?
Number two question? Ever, is still pretty good? And um
so yeah, so it's it's pretty big. I mean it's
it's of the universe. And like we the regular matter

(05:22):
is only five percent, So this is not like a
small question. It's it's um it's like, what is most
of the stuff in the universe made out of? Yeah,
we're kind of the little detail, right. We thought for
a long time that we had figured out mostly what
matter was made out of, and then we tried to generalize.
You said, well, it must be that the rest of
the universe is also made out of similar kinds of stuff.
But if the rest of the universe is more then

(05:44):
we're sort of the rest of the universe, and that's
the normal stuff, and so it's really important that we
figure out what that dark matter is made out of.
Is it made out of our kind of particles or
is it made out of something else? Yeah, And so
we have I think a couple of episodes about dark matter,
and maybe if you even go back to some of
our first podcast episodes, so it's you know, about when
we were younger, before the virus, where we talked about

(06:07):
what dark matter is, what scientists think it is, what scientists,
how scientists know that it's there. And so if you're
curious and or catching up about what dark matter, please
go through our archive and check those episodes out. But
the big question about dark matter is what is it
made out of? So we it's this weird matter out
there in the universe, right Daniel, that is pulling on

(06:29):
stars and keeping galaxies together, But nobody knows what it's
made out of because it's not made out of stuff
that you can see or touch. Yeah, And for a
long time, we thought that dark matter couldn't be made
out of corks, and it couldn't be made out of
the kinds of stuff that's around us, that it had
to be some new, weird, exotic kind of particle. And
so we've had lots of ideas for what kind of

(06:52):
particle dark matter could be mad at of, and maybe
you've heard of them. There's the weakly interacting massive particle
the WIMP. Then there's theme macho massive astronomical compact halo objects,
and then there's other weird stuff like axions. But the
sort of the scientific mainstream is to think that dark
matter is probably may have something new and weird, and

(07:13):
that's fascinating. That's an amazing opportunity because if you discover
this new kind of particle that gives you like a
whole new Lego block, a whole you know, it opens
up this whole new place to play, this new area
of physics that we can explore. Yeah, it's like that
time you figure out you can combine Lincoln logs and
legos and it's like, WHOA, what can I build now?

(07:33):
Or it turns out most of the world is not
built out of Lincoln logs or legos, right, and you
learned how to use actual concrete to make buildings. This
just this just took an engineeringly turn. But so that
that was the sort of the thinking about dark matter.
But recently in the news, there's a lot of attention
being paid to a new paper that just came out.

(07:56):
Then maybe answers this question whether or not dark matter
is may it out of courts? Yeah, it's really sort
of a fun question to just ask. Hold on a second,
maybe dark matters actually just made out of something simple,
something familiar, in a new arrangement. Maybe it's found way
to hide from us, and so it's worth examining, like
why don't we think dark matter is made out of

(08:17):
quarks and and could those assumptions be wrong? Okay, so
there's a new paper, right you were telling me that
has a new idea for how you can maybe use
corks old regular quirks, uh and use them in a
new way to make dark matter. Now, is this a
theoretical paper or is this an experimental they saw something. Well,
the paper is theoretical, but it touches on experimental work.

(08:40):
Is from the University of York, and it's by a
couple of guys who came up with a new way
to five quirks together um that could explain dark matter.
And so it's a theoretical paper, but it references experimental
work like it talks about this thing called a hexa cork,
which combines six corks into a weird particle, and it
about how maybe if you put those quirks together, it

(09:03):
could look like dark matter and it could like evade
all the arguments against why quarks can't be dark matter.
And so it's sort of like theoretical, like can we
make this work? And then they rounded up I think
in a cool way by suggesting some ways to check
their idea. Well, interesting, it's a pretty cool idea. And
so today on the program, we'll be asking the question

(09:28):
could dark matter be made out of hext of cords?
And several listeners had a question about this paper, so
they sent it to us. Jeff Sagar and Geal Turner
will send us this paper and staid, could this be right?
Could dark matter just be made out of quirks? So
we thought it would be fun to talk about. I
feel like I like how people sometimes treaty like the

(09:48):
you know how you have a medical doctor relative. Sometimes
you're like, I got this itch here in the back
of my neck. Can you check it out and tell
me if this is something I should be concerned about.
I feel like you're sort of like in and it's
now physicist uncle, I'm happy to be your on call physicists.
Or because your dark matter has a rash, then please
don't take it to the e er. You just needed

(10:10):
to rest at home, that's right. Do not apply dark
energy to it or antimatter might be might have a
secondary consequences, that's right. But if you do have a
question about something you see online that you think is
probably bunked or you don't understand it, send it to us.
We'll have to dive into it, maybe give you a
short answer over email, or devote an entire episode to

(10:32):
it like this one. Yeah, and so as usual, we
were curious to see how many people had heard of
these HEXA works and how far has the news about
them spread into the public. So, as usual, Daniel went
out there and ask people this question, have you heard
of hexachords? Now? Daniel, because of the situation we're in
with the virus coronavirus, how did you did you approach

(10:53):
people this time? Or did you did you a person
from twenty feet away? How did you record these answers? Um,
I have a massive bubble that has six foot diameter
and I just walk around inside that bubble and people
you normally have that just avoid people open. Now it
comes in handy. It's usually a natural effect of my
odor and my hairstyle. I see, it's a virtual bubble,

(11:16):
I see, which is naturally stay away for it's an
effective bubble. Now, these recordings were done last week in advance,
and so this was pre pandemic, when people were still
walking around in the world and talking to strangers. And
I was letting strangers breathe on my phone, which is
maybe not a great idea. And I have since disinfected it.
But in the future we may have to go to
internet person on the street questions. So if you're interested

(11:38):
in participating in future person on the street interview questions,
send me a line and I'll send you our questions.
Because everyone always dreams about being a person on the internet,
well it's sort of inverting it, right. Instead of people
on the Internet asking me physics questions, I'm asking random
people on the internet physics questions. So it's only fair.
I see. So you would ask maybe online hey have

(11:59):
your to hex, of course, and you just get a
bunch of recordings of people saying nope. Never. We've done
this a couple of times though, with remote listeners who
wanted to participate, and I would send them the questions
in advance and tell them to record their answers with
no googling. All right, well here here's what people have
to say. So before you listen to these answers, just
think about it. Have you heard of hexachords or have

(12:20):
an inkling as to what they might be? Here's what
people had to say. No, or do you guess they
might be some kind of start? Nope? No, I have
not heard her come up, but I don't know anything
about it. No. No, al right, not a lot of
positive recognition they're out there about hex of cords almost

(12:43):
exactly zero. No. My favorite answer was hexa what hexa? Hood?
Is it like a witchcraft thing? Like? Do you hex people? Well,
what do you think? Do you think that's poorly named?
Or you think it just hasn't penetrated. I'll look out there.
I mean, if I asked you about hexacord, wouldn't you
have thought, Oh, it's a particle with six corks in it.

(13:03):
It seems very natural to me. Well, I guess, um,
it depends on what it is, and I currently I
don't I don't have a good sense of what it is.
But if I had to bet whether it's physicists name
something not in the best way possible, that's where my
money would be. So you're like, hexa corks, it's probably
a new kind of fruit. Yeah, I think hexachords. It's

(13:25):
like it sounded like a good idea, but actually it
doesn't help you. All right, Well, we'll explain what hexa
corks are and how they might possibly but probably not,
could explain what dark matter is. But first let's take
a quick break. All right. Then we're talking about hexachords

(13:56):
and it's a new idea that maybe physicist think that
it could tell us what dark matter is made out of.
So I guess maybe step us through here. First, we
know sort of what dark matter is, and the question
was before you thought that dark matter couldn't be made
out of quarks, So maybe tell us a little bit

(14:17):
about why we thought it couldn't be made out of corks. Yeah,
this is an unusual idea to explain dark matter using quarks,
because we thought that we had to rule that out.
Most of mainstream science that dark matter has to be
some new, weird kind of particle. So if we're gonna
understand this new idea for how hex of quarks could
be dark matter. It's really worth re visiting an understanding,
like why did we rule out of quarks and how

(14:39):
does this new idea maybe sort of evade those arguments.
So number one thing is that corks have electric charge,
and quarks interact with light. You know, if you shoot photons,
it's something man out of quarks, it will react. You
shoot light at protons, you shoot lights at atoms, it reacts,
It shines, it absorbs, in admits. All the stuff out

(15:01):
there in the universe does interact with photons. And so
that's why that's kind of why we thought maybe dark
matter couldn't be made out of quarks because regular quarks
you can see, but dark matter you can't see. Yeah,
it's dark, right, it doesn't give off light, it doesn't
reflect light, it doesn't interact in any way with light. Right,
it's invisible. It's invisible. Yeah, invisible matter would have been

(15:23):
such a better name. Dark matter. It can sound like
it's black, right, it's not. And and you might think,
all there's ways to evade that, you know, what about
neutral objects, And it's true that, like you know, photons
don't interact with neutral objects, and we thought maybe dark
matter was made of neutrinos or something else like that,
or maybe neutral atoms. I guess maybe initially when you

(15:45):
guys found dark matter, it's not that you knew it
was invisible, and you just knew. You said it didn't
emit light and you couldn't see it, right, So at
that point when you found it and you named it,
it could have just been dark or like painted black,
right well, but then it would have obscured. If it
was just black and and absorbed light but didn't admit it,
then it would have obscured stuff, like there's so much

(16:06):
of it out there. If you could see the dark matter,
then the night sky would be a lot darker because
we'd be shrouded in it, like our galaxy is in
the middle of a huge dark matter halo. If it
wasn't invisible, most of the universe would be invisible to us.
We would just see darkness in the sky, right well,
it could be like really small dense pellets of something,

(16:28):
right and you we wouldn't see it, but it wouldn't
be invisible. But we can see the effects of like
gas and dust in the universe, like most of the
stuff in the universe is gas and dust, and we
can definitely see that it absorbs light. It blocks our view.
The center of the galaxy, for example, is mostly obscured
because of all the gas and dust. So even tiny pellets,
if you've got zillions and zillions of them, they obscured

(16:49):
a view. It's like a fog. Okay. So, so we
didn't think it could be quarks because it's dark and
it doesn't interact with the light, and we know quarks
interact with light, and so is that the main reason
didn't think that dark matter or we don't think dark
matter could be made out of quirks. It's not because
it's not that convincing an argument. There are ways to
evade it, right, There is normal matter that's invisible to photons,

(17:10):
like neutrinos and space space bananas are invisible to Yeah,
ok right, as long as we're making up the things,
I feel like I just entered the second level of
this cult. Now I've been informed, and you read into
the invisible he made he made it to a level three.
So I'm saying things um and then you know, people

(17:33):
wondered like, could you possibly have neutral atoms that don't
interact with photons, etcetera, etcetera. So it turns out we
have a much stronger argument for why dark matter can't
be made out of quarks, and actually comes from calculations
about the Big Bang. M So we we studied the
Big Bang and we sort of see the remnants of
the debris from the Big Bang, and that actually tells

(17:54):
you that dark matter can't be made out of quarks. Yeah,
what it does. That tells you how much stuff in
the universe is made out of quarks, Because it turns
out that the density of quarks in the very early
moments of the universe controls how cork matter is formed.
Quark matter being like hydrogen and helium and light elements
me and you and all that stuff. The density of

(18:15):
the quarks determines how much heavy elements you get. So
if you have a huge density of quarks in the
early universe, you get more heavy elements like lithium and
carbon and oxygen. If you have fewer quirks, of the
quirks aren't as dense than they don't combine to form
as many heavy elements. And so we we measure how
much hydrogen is there, how much helium is there, and

(18:36):
we can tell from that sort of the density of
quarks in the early universe, and that tells us just
like how many quarks were there. But it's and I
guess it's not just about quantities, because I mean you
could imagine that maybe there there were a ton more
corks than we think there were, and some of them
just went on to make dark matter instead of hydrogen

(18:57):
and helium. Well, that's sort of this idea, that sort
of the idea from this paper. Yeah, Okay, sorry, we
actual gating credit there and the noble price if it
turns out to be true. Okay, so I see. So
before we we didn't think that the Big Band made
enough corks two make dark matter because it didn't make sense.

(19:19):
But maybe there is a way for this to make sense. Yeah,
And it's sort of a it's in a subtle argument.
It's a subtraction, right saying, here's how much matters out
there in the universe, and we know that by looking
at how galaxy swirl and we can just see the
gravitational effects of it. That's how much dark matter there is.
And we know how much cork matter there is based
on this Big Bang nucleosynthesis argument how much helium and

(19:41):
lithium was made and so, and they don't add up,
so that leaves a gap. So we can't explain all
the matter in the universe using corks. But again, that's
assuming that corks turned into the kind of familiar matter
where we're we're familiar with, you know, hydrogen and atoms
and protons and neutrons and stuff like like. It couldn't
be that it turned into hydrogen helium and then some

(20:01):
of that stuff turned into dark matter. That wouldn't That
wouldn't work. No, that doesn't work. But if you could
somehow siphon off a bunch of quarks into a new
invisible kind of matter that then wouldn't interact with those
hydrogen helium and stuff, then maybe that dark matter could
be explained by those quirks and not mess up this
early universe Big Bang nucleus and thisis stuff. But we're

(20:24):
getting ahead of ourselves. No, I think we're here. I
think we're here, right, I mean, that's that's what this
idea of a hexa cork is, is that maybe it's
something that that happened to all those corks at the
Big Bang. Yeah, and there's a few steps you need there,
You need to understand what hexa work is, and then
the hexa corks have to sort of siphon themselves off

(20:44):
into some state that wouldn't want to interact with the
hydrogen and the helium that was happening around then, because
remember it was a hot and nasty place the early universe.
It's not like you made something and it just got
to hang out for fourteen billion years. It was. It
was really dense and there are photons everywhere, and so
you need to somehow create this stuff and then also
protected from the rest of the universe. I see, take it,

(21:05):
like take it out of the craziness. Yeah, so that
it can account for dark matter. Now, yeah, well, so
step us through them. What is hectic coork? And is
it a different kind of cork or is it like
a poorly named constant physic. I'm feeling a little bit
of judgment here, but I'm just gonna keep going because

(21:26):
now I'm like, curse cork, you know, like I see, Oh,
I get it. It's like a like a um like
a witch's cork. Yeah, yeah, yes, boiled, boiled, toil and
trouble through the eye of Newton. Hexa cork that sounds good. Um,
you know, a hexa cork is not a new kind
of cork, it's a new combination of existing corks. Oh,

(21:49):
I see. And so corks are very familiar particles. They
make up protons and neutrons and other exotic particles. And
so there are up quarks and down corks inside me
and you, non exotic mean particles. Right, they make up
non exotic particles, but also you know, weird particles like
pions and other kinds of masons they make up. You

(22:11):
can rearrange these legos to make all sorts of different
kinds of things. We had a whole episode about that
how that works. Quirks are amazing little legos, right, and
usually they're in pairs or in threes, right, that's right.
And so there are a lot of rules for how
you put these legos together. You can't just say I'm
gonna put these seven quarks together, those nine quarks together,
because they feel the strong nuclear force, the most powerful

(22:34):
force in the universe, which is very particular about how
you put them together. And the strong nuclear forces a
different kind of way of arranging itself than any other
kind of force, like electromagnetism has plus and minus. So
if you want something that's neutral, you put a plus
in a minus together. Right. That that one's simple to
think about, because like two pluses can't go together because

(22:55):
they repel each other, and two negatives can't go together.
But the plus and minus they're be together, that's right,
and they form a neutral atom and or a neutral system.
In the case of the strong nuclear force. Though, there
are three kinds of charges, and so we can't call
them plus and minus because they don't sit nicely along
one axis. So we give them the names red, green,

(23:15):
and blue, because if you add them all up together,
then you get a neutral atom, what we call a
colorless atom. Right, Like if you take a red cork,
green cork, and a blue cork, they you get sort
of like a happy trio. Yeah, they're happy trio. So
they're balanced out together, and that's sort of similar to electromagnetism.
You take one of each of the kinds of charges,
a plus anamnus, you add it together, you get neutral. Right.

(23:38):
In this way, you get one of each of the
kinds of colors. You add them together, you get white
or colorless. So you can make triplets. You can also
make pairs like you take a red cork and pair
it with an anti red cork. That's what color is,
anti red, like orange or like a c cyan. If
only I knew a visual artist who was really well

(24:00):
versed inside, what are you're talking to? Uh? Comics for parties,
I only do black and white, Okay, I'll ask the
Sunday cartoonist that question. Um, I don't know what the
anti red is, but whatever it is, when you add
it to red, you get white. And so a red
and an anti red can sit happily together and be

(24:20):
something what do you call that, like a bi cork
or as called that's called a mazon, a mazon. All right, yeah,
so you can. So you can start with two corks
a cork and it's anti color cork. You can do
three corks if you have like R G B and
that's called a barryon. And examples are protons and neutrons, right,

(24:41):
very familiar, mm hmm. And then you can get more complicated.
And those are the most common particles in the universe,
mazons and baryons. That's what we're made out of, right,
We're like our protons and neutrons and your atoms are
made out of threesomes of corks. That's right, these cork triplets.
And but you can combine them in other ways, like
you can take four quarks. If you have a red

(25:03):
and a green and an anti red and an anti green, right,
that also is color neutral, Yeah, because the antis cancel
out the red and the green, and then they they
can all sit happening together. And can you already guess
what that's called? Uh, a quat cork A tetraquork a
tetra oh right, yeah, tetra tetras. Sorry, And you can

(25:25):
fit them together just like tetris pieces. So that's the
four cork version. And so that's that's stable because you know,
like a color and an anti cork, we're happy by
them as a two zone. But you're saying you can
get two couples and and they're also happy together they
form a colorless object. Not all of these things are stable, right,
Like the proton is stable. The proton will sit around.

(25:45):
Proton by itself will sit around for billions of years
and do nothing. A neutron is not stable, right, A
neutron will turn into a proton and an electron. And similarly,
the pairs the masons they're also not stable. So some
of these things are colorless, like they're neutral, but they're
not necessarily stable, all right, But that you're saying that

(26:06):
they can fit together, they just won't fit together for
very long. Yeah, And you can keep going, and you
can make a combination of five corks. So here you
would need like an R, A B, A G that's
color neutral, plus maybe like an R and an anti R,
so that gives you an overall particle that's a neutral
and that's called a pent cork, right, not a sunk cork.

(26:30):
And then finally we get to hexa corks. But wait
to tell me about these weird particles with lots of
quirks and it like do they do they act like
regular particles or you know what I mean? Like do
they just bounce around with the rest of us here
or do they suddenly change or do something different. They're
very short lived. We can make them only in special situations.

(26:53):
In particle colliders, you smashing of quarks together for a
very short amount of time. These particles can form, but
they last like ten the mine is twenty three seconds,
and then they fall apart and they turned into lighter,
more stable particles and I see. But while they're alive,
they're just like regular particles. They're just like regular particles.
But you know that's a whole other question, like, well,

(27:14):
what is a particle anyway? But they are the bound states, right,
They moved together, and if you touch them with anything
that has less energy than those bonds, then they react
all as one. And so yeah, they act as as
a particle, though it's very short lived, m all right.
So then and then, but then you can get six
quarts together. You can get six quarks together. And this

(27:36):
is just sort of like a die barrion. It's like
a red green and blue and then another red green
blue or an anti red, anti green, anti blue. But
isn't that the same as like a quark and an
anti like a like a proton and an anti proton. Yeah,
like or like a proton and a neutron. Yeah, it's similar,
but it's you know, they're compressed together. A proton and

(27:58):
a neutron has the same quirk content as a hexa cork,
but it's a different arrangement, you know, the same way
that I have the same core content as you, but
I'm a different arrangement. It's all about the arrangement. It's
all about the bonds and how you fit them together.
Like I could make a really ugly thing out of
my legos and you could make something beautiful, and I
could say, well, they're made of the same legos, but

(28:21):
that doesn't take away from the beauty of your creation, right, Yeah,
all right, So then, so you're saying these are six quarks,
not just in like you know, three pairs or two
three ors. There are actually like six of them or
they're all interacting with each other, they're all sort of
connected to each other. Yeah, And there's one in particular.
It's called the d Star and it has a certain mass.

(28:42):
It's just under two and a half times the mass
of the proton and it was found in two thousand
eleven and then confirmed in two thousand and thirteen again
in particle collisions, and it lasts for ten to the
twenty three seconds. And we think it's made out of
three up quarks and three down corks all put together.
So you've found this. This is something that you've seen
in the particle collider, like, hey, this came out. Yeah,

(29:04):
So hexic corks are real. They but we don't think
they last very long. We think you can make a
hex of cork, but then it's gone after ten of
the minors twenty three seconds. Wow, which is like, like
you know, SA many electron years, But it's much smaller
than the amount of time we think dark matter has
been around. We think dark matter lasts for billions of years. Right,

(29:26):
So you start hexa works to explain dark matter, you
have to explain how, for some reason it's lasting for
billions of years. Oh, I see, all right, so this
is the candidate for what dark matter might be made
out of. It might be made out of these interesting
and funny hexacorks. And so let's get into whether or

(29:46):
not that's actually true and what this paper says about
dark matter and what it's made up. But first let's
take a quick break. All right, we're talking about the hexachorks,

(30:08):
and you're telling me that there are just six quarks
hell together. That's it, man, just six quirks hell together,
like anybody could have done this at any time. Uh. Yeah,
you seem kind of underwhelmed a little bit. I mean,
you're expecting which is quarks and like spell quirks and
magic works. I feel like you're using the word cork
for two things. You're using it for the particle that

(30:30):
are corks of fundamental particles that are quirks, and you're
using it also for arrangements of quarks. You know what
I mean, Like you strange cork. That's confusing. Well, I
feel like it's strange quarks. It's like, Okay, that's a
different kind of cord. But this is not a different
kind of corks. This is just an arrangement of courts.
It's like seeing a bananas a banana, and a bundle

(30:51):
of bananas is a hex of banana. Actually, that sounds
like a great idea to me. What would you like today, sir,
I'll have a hex of banana. But I guess the
idea is said. It's it acts like a particle, just
like a like a bunch of bananas. Um, you can
throw a bunch of bananas together because they're held together,
but they're made out of individual bananas. Yes, they're made

(31:13):
out of individual bananas. And so in this case, we're
interested in this d star hexa cork not so much
because we're interested in like how can you put corks together?
At the whole field of quantum chromodynamics that people are
interested in um. But here we're interested in, like, maybe
could this possibly explain the dark matter m M and so,

(31:33):
because maybe when you put these six corks together and
they suddenly have special powers. Yeah, and so to get
the star hexa co works to look like dark matter,
you have to do a couple of things. First thing
is you have to make it last longer than ten
to the minus twenty three seconds, because we think dark
matter exists on sort of cosmological time scales, that it

(31:53):
was created in the early universe, and it's still around.
So like decaying into normal matter into and just evaporate,
doesn't just evaporate, It sticks around, right, It's otherwise there.
It's still around. Yeah, it's been here for fourteen billion years.
No reason to think it's going to disappear tomorrow, right,
So you you would have to find a way for
these hexachords to be stable to hang around. Yeah. And

(32:18):
the idea is that maybe these d star of corks
form some weird state of matter of Bose Einstein condensate
where they all sort of grouped together and act like
one big mega particle. Oh man, and let me get
how you call that one omega cork. Now, that's the
name of a transformer. I think you're thinking of omegatron

(32:42):
um and Bose Einstein condensate is a weird quantum mechanical
state of matter where you've got a lot of particles
together that are bosons, things like photons or or other
particles that can sit on top of each other, can
be in the same quantum state with some particles fer
meons that don't like to be in the same quantum state,
like electrons. If you put two electrons around and atom,

(33:03):
they don't want to be in the same energy level,
but bosons they're happy to sit in the same place.
You can have ten million photons all in the same
state with the same energy. But if you get enough
of these particles, enough of these bosons together, they have
like a macroscopic quantity like a droplet. Then it forms
the state called a Bose Einstein condensate, where it's macroscopically sized,
but it behaves like a quantum object like one like

(33:27):
they share the quantum uncertainty kind of in a way,
it's a quantum wave function with like visible size is
usually all the quantum effects are hidden away at the
tiny scales where you can't see them, and they're averaged
down to zero. But here's an object that actually you
can see quantum mechanical effects. And we should do a
whole podcast episode on Bose Einstein condensates. All right, So

(33:49):
we think that maybe this hex a chord lives in
a Bose Einstein contented state, and that's how it becomes
dark matter. Yeah, they did this calculation and they showed
that maybe if you could get enough and these together,
they could form of Bose Einstein condensate, in which case
maybe it would be stable. Like they wouldn't evaporate, they
would just they would like being in a Bose Einstein condensate,

(34:11):
and then they wouldn't they wouldn't disappear. And there's, you know,
a good history here for this kind of idea of
saying you have a particle which on itself is unstable,
like the neutron, but you put it in a special
situation like neutron stars, and it's stable. So like a
huge pile of neutrons altogether, they stick around. A neutron
star sticks around a single neutron will decay pretty quickly

(34:33):
into other stuff. So maybe the same thing happens with
these the star hex of corks. And they did some
calculations in the paper that showed it it was plausible.
It's not just like let's throw this banana against the
wall and see if it sticks. Mm. So what do
you think? It's a math? Right? Can you candy things
sitting in Bose einst Einstein condesant. Well, it's pretty complicated

(34:53):
stuff and it might be right. But you know, I
don't see a flaw in it in that part of
the calculation. Um. But you know, there are a lot
of ideas that could be possible but that aren't real.
You know, you have to not just say this might work.
You have to see that it actually does work. Because
we're interested in doing in this case is saying like,
is it actually the dark matter? Not just couldn't may believe?

(35:15):
Maybe be because the long list already of maybes for
dark matter. I see, so it can exist, Um, but
there's a question of does it happen in nature? And
the second question, which is is it that what dark
matter is made out of? Yeah, and there is one
question to have about this paper that makes me very
skeptical that these things could be produced and live long

(35:38):
enough to become dark matter. Physics drama. Physics drama, And
that's what you remember that in the early universe there
was a lot of radiation, Like most of the energy
the early universe were as photons and other things just
like energy radiating around. It was a crazy time. A
tiny fraction of the energy of the universe was matter
back then. And you know, and since then things have

(35:58):
cooled out a little bit and we have more matter, etcetera.
But back then it was really hard for anything to
stay together. You formed an atom five seconds after the
universe was born, immediately was blasted apart by a photon.
And so it's hard to imagine how these d star
corks all survived that crazy photonic time with all this
energy bouncing around. And in the paper, I don't see

(36:21):
them doing a calculation to show that these things, somehow
um will not interact with photons, because remember they're still
made of quarks. Right, a photon hits one of these
d star hexa corks, it should break it up, right. Well,
I guess that that brings me to my question, which is,
why do they think this might be dark matter? Like
when you put six quarts together, does it become invisible
suddenly and not react to light the way we know

(36:43):
dark matter doesn't either well, that's a good question. I mean,
these things are electrically neutral, right, and so in that
way they could be, but a high enough energy photon
will penetrate them. I think the core idea is that
maybe this dark matter is made out of these quirks
right in this configuration that allowed them to evade the
sort of creation of light matter in the early universe.

(37:05):
Remember we talked about how in the early universe most
of the corks got together to make helium and hydrogen
and all that kind of stuff. And so we know
how many corks were used to make all that stuff,
and it can't explain the dark matter. So this is
the way to like siphon off some of those corks
into another kind of matter which could still exist in
the universe. And so it's we've always assumed that dark

(37:28):
matter couldn't be made of quirks for this reason, and
the other arguments against dark matter being corks are a
little looser. They're like, as you're saying, like what happens
if you shoot a photon at it? And so if
it's possible to have more corks in the early universe
and siphon them off into this special kind of matter,
then you know that gives you the license to add
more quirks into the universe, which could then explain the

(37:50):
dark matter. And it could be that that forms this
boson set and condensate, and then we don't really know,
Like it might be that that sensage to photons, like
you small sho into it hard enough with the photon
they can break it up, but that it's still transparent,
So it could be like hanging out there in great
ribbons and sheets and fogs made out of corks, but
mostly invisible. I feel like you're sort of a little

(38:11):
bit skeptical about this idea because you're saying that in
something like that wouldn't survive the big the craziness of
the Big Bang. Yeah, And they don't explain in the
paper how it would survive the very intense photonic atmosphere
just after the Big Bang, Like why does this thing
last so long? Like they explain how you could make
it stable, meaning if you left it by itself, it

(38:32):
would last long enough, and if you bombard it with photons,
it should break up in their in the universe, right,
But what what if it's invisible to photons, then wouldn't
it sort of sit outside of that crazy Big Bang explosion.
But it's not invisible to photons. I mean, most low
energy photons would pass through it because you pass If
you bombard it with very high energy photons and there
are corks inside of it, then the bonds between the

(38:55):
corks are no longer relevant. If you shoot a photon
is something that's made out of quarks, and the energy
the photon is greater than the energy of the bonds
between the corks, and the bonds to the corks don't matter.
It doesn't matter anymore whether it's inside a proton or
neutron or some other kind of cork matter Bose Einstein
quantum wave unity doesn't matter either. It doesn't matter if

(39:15):
you have high enough energy photons. And back in the
Big Bang it was crazy high energy photons all the time.
I feel like you're almost saying, like the Big Bang
photons would poke a hole in this theory. Uh, they
would shine a light on the flaws of this. Yeah,
there you go, all right, Well that's but that's pretty interesting.
And so this is a paper that and an and

(39:38):
an idea that made a lot of the news because
they're like, hey, maybe this is what dark matter is.
Made out of but you know, it sounds like it's
a weight and see kind of thing like there is not.
It doesn't answer all the questions. It is something that
possibly exists out there, but it's a bit of a stretch. Yeah,
And as usual in science journalism, it was very it

(39:59):
was hyped this life, maybe this explains dark matter, but
really it's just like another idea. And it's great to
have a breadth of ideas. We need a lot of
ideas because we haven't found dark matter and we've been
looking for a while, and so we got to be
creative and think, oh, maybe it's this other thing we forgot,
or maybe it could still be this thing we ruled out.
That's very healthy and it's great that these guys are

(40:19):
thinking about these new ideas. But right now it's just
sort of like one more thing on the list of
what dark matter could be, and it's got some question
marks around it. Do you think it would be better
if journalists just ignored science and not treated things as
if there were more run of the mill. I think
they would be better if they didn't act like every

(40:39):
minor step forward was an incredible discovery that answered a
big open question, because then the day we actually do
answer those open questions, people will be like, whatever, you
found dark matter fifty times in the last time ten years,
what do I care? You know? So this should have
been covered as like businists have new idea for dark matter,
not like dark matter riddle have been solved? What have

(41:01):
you put in? Like really for real this time, guys
at the end of that news article, we'll save that
code for when we actually discover it. But the thing
one thing I really like and respect about this paper
is that they also came up with a new way
to look for this. They're like, Okay, if these things
are real, how would we prove it. We can't just
have this theoretical idea. They were wondering, like, how would

(41:21):
we prove it? And so they thought about, like, if
these the star Hexa corps were real, maybe there's some
of them here on Earth, and maybe occasionally they sort
of collapse and they create these big, crazy showers of
cosmic rays, but they look different because they're going sort
of up instead of down. Anyway, it's a fascinating idea,
and kudos to them for coming up for a new

(41:43):
theoretical idea that sort of breaks some of the existing
rules and for coming up with an experimental way to
look for their idea, right, because you're in experimentalism, and
so you reacted to that, you're like, hey, I like
that part. Yeah. Well, anytime you have a new theoretical idea,
you have to figure out how to test it. You.
Ideas are just ideas until they're proven to be reality.
That's what experiments are for. Mm hmm, alright, well, I

(42:07):
guess we'll see, Well they'll they'll do you think they'll
do these experiments and figure out if if it could
be dark matter or do you think this will sort
of sit on a shelf for a while until there's
more of a consensus or more of a appealing theoretical
argument here. I think that it will generate some more
work in the theoretical community to figure out how to
answer some of these other questions and to see like

(42:28):
can it really be dark matter? This is sort of
like the first bide of the apple. There's a lot
of details still left to figure out that we talked about.
But also it's not that hard to do these experiments.
It's just sort of like looking in the data of
existing experimental facilities to see if you can see evidence
for these things that we just haven't looked for before,
So that's kind of exciting. You can you don't have

(42:49):
to run any experiment, you can just look at the
data from old experiments. Yes, all right, Well my last
question is, Daniel, if you take six space bananas and
tie them together, does that make them a hexta space banana?
It makes him a heck of a tasty banana. Heck
of whether I'll give you points for naming that one?

(43:09):
All right, thank you? All right, Well, I hope that
answered the question that a lot of you sent in
as to what a hex of cork is and whether
or not it can actually explain what dorc matter is.
I think, as usual with science and physics in the universe,
the question is let's wait and see. Thanks for sending
your questions and thanks for tuning in. See you next time.

(43:38):
If you still have a question after listening to all
these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to
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(44:00):
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