October 31, 2023 • 48 mins
Daniel and Jorge wrestle with the Earth's tilt, steampunk atoms and fundamental pixels of rad.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, are you happy with quantum mechanics?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You mean, like, do I understand it well enough?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well? Has had nobody understood it? But I guess I'm
asking if you think it was a good idea, you know, like,
if you were designing the universe, would you have made
it quantum mechanical?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh that's hilarious. I mean, I'm pretty happy with our
universe and all of it's weird, glorious beauty. I hate
to give that up.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
But wouldn't be cooler if it made more sense? You know,
if like electrons were really tiny little balls of stuff
instead of fuzzy on certain random things.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
It might be easier, but it might also be less interesting.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I don't know. I wonder if people would find it
more interesting if it was easier to understand.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We might have more particle physicists in that case. Would
that be good or bad? No?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
No, No, you had have fewer, right, because it'd be easier
to understand. You could be doing something.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Else, like hosting a podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
There you go, a real job. Hi am Jorgemy, a
cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hi. I'm Daniel, and I'm a professor at u c
Irvine and a particle physicist. But it's been a long
time since I had a real job.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Or really, they've all been imaginary.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I think my last real job was working in the
kitchen at McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I see, what did you consider both jobs to be
kind of the same. You're making hamburgers, You're making physics theories.
It's all very high in calories, a lot of additives.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
One of them is brain food. The other ones got food.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
It's sort of food, right.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
There's a little more creativity involved in one of these
jobs than the other one.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
MM, which one.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'll leave that as an ex size to the listener.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, at least you did the experiment. But anyways, welcome
to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
A grand experiment to see if we can explain everything
in the universe to you. All the stuff that we
understand about how things work at the smallest scale, to
everything we don't understand about the little bits and the
big bits and everything in between about the universe. This
joyous adventure, the exploration of everything we do and do
not know, we think should be shared by everybody out there.
(02:28):
Everybody who has that curious itch to understand the nature
of the universe, to zoom forward to the forefront of
human knowledge and understand what we do and do not know.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
The tread because it is an amazing universe full of
fast foods, slow foods, medium speed foods, all kinds of foods,
food for thought, food for your belly, food for your
soul as well. Do you consider physics to be sole food? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I think it nourishes philosophy, which is definitely soul food.
You know, all the big questions and physics in the
end have philosophical implications. Phys tells you, oh, the universes
this way, and philosophy wonders, well, why and why isn't
it that other way? And what does it mean anyway?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Well, sounds like we need to have an episode about
the physics of the soul. Perhaps we'll be very soulful.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I think a lot of what we call the soul
is the spirit of humanity, and that's where our curiosity
comes from, our desire to understand our context, why we live,
to motivate the choices we make. I think a lot
of that can be informed by physics and what it
reveals about the nature of the universe we live in.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Nice, that's a great McDonald's answer. You spun that around
really fast.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Would you like fries with that?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes? Can you supersize it? It is a pretty amazing
universe out there, full of mysterious things and things that
we've learned and things that we have yet to learn
and figure out. And it all starts with having questions
about all of these things.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And you can ask questions that are big, huge, Thanksgiving
meal sized, or you can ask little questions, little snacks,
individual French fries kinds of questions. We encourage you to
ask all of them, and we're here on the pot
Pod to try to help you answer them. All of
our episodes are designed to scratch a piece of curiosity
inside your mind. But it's not possible to cover every
possible thing anybody could imagine, and so we want you
(04:11):
to write to us with more questions the things that
you wonder about the nature of the universe.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's right, because everyone can have questions about the universe.
You can be a professor of physics, you can be
a philosopher. You can even be someone who works in
the fast food industry, or maybe someone with a real
job like being a podcast host. Anyone can have questions
about the universe.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, or you can be a combination professor, philosopher, podcast
hosts and McDonald's fry cook.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
That's right, Well, accept a cartoonist. Cartoonists know all the
answers already.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And I'm terrified to ask you. Is being a cartoonist
a real job.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
No, it's not a real job. Getting big to have
fun and doodle things. I don't know. I don't know
if that counts as real. It's certainly a dream come true.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It's a scam, folks. You heard it here on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
No, No, I mean it's a dream. Oh, I see come true.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think Ponzi had some dreams.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Also, didn't he had dreams of getting other people's money.
I just have dreams of drawing for fun.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, I think a lot of people out there dream
about understanding the universe and getting their questions answered, having
that experience when things click into place and you go, oh, yeah,
now I get it. So if you have questions about
the nature of the universe, for example, how you could
get paid to be a cartoonist or a physics professor,
then please write to us to questions at Danielandjorge dot Com.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Mmmm, has this become a career advice podcast that might
actually make this more of a real job.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I think both of us have very odd and unusual
career paths.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes, I don't think anybody went to advice in terms
of to make money or not make money, I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But I do hope that people will write to us
with their questions.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, and so today on the podcast, we'll be tackling
listener questions number forty four. This is our forty fourth
episode answering listener questions, Daniel, is there a theme to
these questions?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The themes of these questions is that they come after
the forty third episode and before the forty fifth episode.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Mmmmm. Does that make it like a special like numerical
magical number.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
These questions all came in within the same week, and
I thought, ooh, these are interesting questions, and so we're
going to answer them today. That's the theme.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I see. The theme is that Daniel was too lazy
fine questions with a real theme. It's all chronological, you mean,
like all this time we've been answering questions chronologically as
they come in.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I mean it's roughly chronologically. I try to answer people's
questions within a reasonable timeframe. You know, they send me
the questions that go on the list, we record the episode,
it gets edited. It can be a few months between
asking the question and getting the answer, so I try
to shorten that. But then I also try sometimes to
group the questions by theme when possible, but it's not
always possible.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I guess it's more like a true representative sample of
how we get the questions right.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, we are core sample our listener's brains.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Today, metaphorically philosophical in a cartoony kind of way, auditorially. Well,
we have three great questions here today from our listeners.
One of them is about the weather and the tilt
of our planet. The other one is about the structure
of the atom, and the last one is about the
fundamental nature of reality itself.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And radical angles.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Oh, we have radicalized questions, right, Well, let's jump into
our first question. The first one comes from Chris Hi, Dangel.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And Jorge What would weather be like on Earth if
we rotated around a horizontal axis rather than the readly
vertical access we rotate around. Also, how would that weather
differ if our access pointed either toward the Sun or
in line with our orbital path. Thanks for the great podcast.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
All right, awesome question though I'm confused, Like, is there
a horizontal and vertical in space?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, there's horizontal and vertical relative to the Sun, right.
The Sun sort of defines the axis of the Solar system.
It spins around that has a north and a south
pole of that spin. And then most of the planets
orbit in a plane that's perpendicular to that axis, and
so the Earth tilts relative to that plane of the Sun.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
WHOA, but are they I wonder if they're exactly the same.
Like the axis of spin of the Sun is the
same as the axis of spin of the whole Solar system,
Like exactly the same or has it changed a little bit?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, these are great questions. It's not exactly the same.
Like some of the planets do not orbit in that plane, right,
or they orbit a little bit off from it. It's
the complex system with lots of things tugging on it,
so it becomes chaotic. As other stars come nearby, they
give little tugs to Jupiter andto Saturn. All these things
accumulate over millions of years and make it so that
everything is not perfectly aligned.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Okay, So then if the axis of rotation of the
Sun is the perfect vehicle, it's say, in our solar system,
the Earth is sort of aligned to that, but not
exactly right.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, the Earth's angle is tilted relative to the angle
of the Sun by what seems like kind of a
big number. It's like twenty two twenty three degrees, where
you know, ninety degrees be totally tilted over and zero
degrees would be perfectly aligned with the Sun. I was
sort of surprised to look that number up. It seems
kind of big.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, it seems like a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It seems like a lot, And it's the reason why
southern California is such a wonderful place to live, because
we don't have winters. Winters are the direct cause of
the Earth's axis being tilted.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Wait, what do you mean If we didn't have the
axis tilted, we wouldn't have winter, or we would have winter.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
If we didn't have an axial tilt. If the Earth
rotated along exactly the same axis as the Sun, then
parts of the Earth wouldn't get more or less sun
during different parts of the year.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Doesn't Our orbit sort of brings us closer and a
little farther from the sun anyways.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yes, there's also that effect that you get a little
bit closer and a little bit further. Most of the
reason we have seasons is because the axial tilt.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So if we didn't have the tilt, we wouldn't have seasons.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, we wouldn't have seasons, or we'd have much much
milder seasons. It would be due to smaller effects like
the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Although I didn't know we had seasons California. Here, do
you have seasons where you lived three hours away?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
We had a hurricane two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's not a season, that's a weather event.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Now we have a hurricane season.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, it happens once three hundred years.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Or something something like that. No, of course, things are
very mild, and as you get towards the equator, things
get milder and milder. These seasons are more dramatic at
the axis where the tilts has a bigger impact.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, no, actually it's more dramatic. If you're closer to
the poles, then the seasons are more dramatic due to
the tilt.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Right, Yeah, you're right, it's mild. Or if you're near
the equator, and more dramatic if you're near either of
the poles, which is why, for example, at the North
Pole the Sun goes down in the winter and doesn't
come up for months, and in the summer you can
see the Sun four months. Right, These effects are more dramatic,
and they're all due to the axial tilt.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Right. So now Chris's question is, like, what if that
tilt of the Earth of its spin axies was not
just twenty sixty degrees, what if it was ninety degrees?
So like, what if our spin axes was kind of
in the same plane as the disk of the Solar System.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, it'd be awesome and strange, but first of all,
it'd be very weird from a physics point of view. Like,
it's not a coincidence that all the planets are orbiting
around the same plane and that happens to line up
with the axis of the Sun. It's because of conservation
of angular momentum. The original blob of stuff that formed
the Sun and the planets had a single overall spin,
and that spin can't go anywhere. It has to stick around,
(11:25):
So everything that forms from it eventually has that spin.
So anything that's spinning in a different way is due
to something happening, like a big event. For example, Urinus
has an axial tilt of ninety seven degrees, and we
think it's probably due to some huge collisions. Something came
in balked Urinus and gave it a different kind of tilt.
That's the kind of thing that needs to happen to
(11:46):
have a big tilt.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, I was going to say, like Urinus has a
tilted spin axis kind of like Chris is asking about, right,
Like Urinus is flying through space kind of like a
football in some cases, right, like an American football.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, spinning along the direction of its motion, whereas the
Earth is spinning more like a basketball on the fingertip
of a harlem lobe trotter as walks across the basketball court.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Now it urinus spin axis is pointing towards where it's
moving sometimes of the year, right of its ear, like
it's always pointing towards like let's say, the center of
the Milky Way or something like that, even as it
goes around the Sun exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And that was the other part of Chris's question, whether
the axis would always be towards the Sun or along
the orbital path or what and conservation of angl momentum
tells us that it always points in the same direction.
You can't have like a spin that follows your orbit
perfectly like a football, because then the direction that spin
would be changing as you go around the Sun, and
that takes a tork. It takes some kind of external force.
(12:43):
There's nothing to apply that. So as the Earth goes
around the Sun, the direction of its axis doesn't change, right,
which is why the North pole sometimes further from the
Sun and sometimes closer to the Sun. And the same
is true for Uranus. It's always pointing in the same
direction as it goes around the Sun. The direction of
its spin. Its axis doesn't change, so neither is always
(13:04):
pointing towards the Sun or always pointing along its orbit.
As you say, it's always pointing in the same direction.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, and in fact, sort of I imagine the spin
of Urinus actually sort of keeps. That helps keep that
axis from moving or changing, right, because then you have
angler momentum pointing in one way, and so as it
goes around the Sun it tries to stay in the
same direction.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, exactly. It's like a big gyroscope, like a huge
planet sized gyroscope always keeping its spin pointing in the
same direction.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
All right, So then the question is what would the
weather be like if the Earth was spinning sideways, kind
of like uranus.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
It would be more severe seasons, right, It'd be warmer
summers and colder winters.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Mmm, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
The Earth rotates every twenty four hours, right, And if
the Earth axis is aligned with the Sun axis, that
means you see the Sun every twenty four hours because
the Earth turns and you get a view of it.
But if the Earth axis is tilted, then its rotation
can't show you the Sun, or there's no way for
the Earth to rotate to show you the Sun. The
only way to see the Sun is to wait for
the Earth to go around the Sun. So you are
(14:04):
now on the sun side of the Earth.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
That's only if you're like in the north pole of
this tilted Earth, right. But if, like, if you're in
the equator of the tilted Earth, some parts of the year,
you would see the Sun every day, right.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Well, I think half of the Earth would be in
darkness and half the Earth would be in sun, and
the equator would be the dividing line between.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Those, right, Like, if your spin axis was pointing directly
at the sun or directly away from the sun, then yeah,
half of the earth would always be in darkness, half
of the Earth would be in daylight no matter how
it spins. But then that's the axes is pointing directly
the sun. But on the other parts of the times
of the year, right then everyone sees a day, right.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, that's right. So you have very dark winters and
then in spring and in fall you do have daytime
and nighttime, and then it's summer it's one hundred percent sun.
So the effect is more dramatic seasons.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, so like, never mind the seasons, Like your day
to day would totally vary depending on the year, right,
Like in some parts of the year, six months a year,
everyone would have like a twenty four hour day. But
then the other parts of the year, you'd it'd be
like living in the North or South Pole, like you
never get sunlight or you would never get nighttime exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
You'd have continuous daylight for months and continuous nighttime for months,
and then periods in between where you had short days
or short nights, So it would be very dramatic'd be
like currently living at the North Pole, or the south pole.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
But then that would be sort of your daytime experience
or what I wonder Chris's question is what would the
weather be like like? Would the weather be different, would
we get like super crazy storms, would everyone fry on
one side of the Earth? Would you get no weather
at all? What would that be like?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
So it would mean more severe seasons, which probably means
more storms, right, Hotter summers, more energy in the oceans,
more storms being formed, deeper winters, more snowfalling, which means
more dramatic melt off, which means more flooding. So I
think it means more dramatic weather events.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Hmm, right. I guess like if the spin axis is
facing the sun right, and like the top half of
the spinning Earth gets sun twenty four hours a day,
then things would sort of overheat, right, I guess, like
if there wouln't be any poles, maybe things wouldn't be melt,
But then when it gets to the other side, things
will probably freeze on that part of the Earth.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Mm hmm, exactly. But in order for the Earth itself
to like freeze and form ice sheets and ice ages
requires cool summers. So when you have less severe seasons,
when you have cool summers and mild winters, Like if
the Earth had less tilt, you would actually get more
ice build up. And if you have more severe seasons,
warmer summers, even if you have colder winters, you don't
(16:40):
build up that ice because the warm summer obliterates it.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So then here you what would happen just be more extreme,
Like you would freeze half of the year and you
would roast the other half of the year.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, exactly, So you'd have to get more into extreme sports,
more surfing and snowboarding.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, I wonder if we would even be alive, Like,
what could life evolve in a planet like that?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I think that some kind of life certainly could. I mean,
even our situation is kind of weird if you approach
it with no priors, but some kind of life could evolve.
It would have different strategies and different rhythms for sure,
and that would be fascinating. And we've looked actually at
exoplanets to try to understand how common is our kind
of tilt, what kind of tilts are out there. We'd
(17:21):
love to know that about exoplanets to get some sort
of context for what's happening. But it's very difficult to
measure the spin of exoplanets.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Although just from our Solar system, it seems like having
a spin aligned with your son is the norm, right.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, the normal thing, if there are no collisions, is
to be aligned with your son. But how likely is
it to have no collisions In our solar system? Venus
is spinning like the wrong way, Urinus is tipped over,
So it seems also not unusual to have big events
and weird spins, though this is just from the one
example of our Solar system. We do know, however, that
the Earth spin is changing. It's around twenty three degrees now,
(17:58):
but it's not constant.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Wait, what what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (18:01):
So it changes because the Moon pulls on it and
other planets pull on it. Again, the Solar system is
a chaotic place. Nothing is a simple two body system
with a stable orbit. And over the last five million years,
the Earth tilts has varied between twenty two and twenty
four degrees. It goes back and forth with a period
of like forty thousand years.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Whoa like it has a wobble to it?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, it has a wobble. It has a big wobble
over forty thousand years, and then a smaller wabble every
like nineteen years. They call it a nutation, and that's
due to the orbit of the Moon not being aligned
with the orbit of the Earth. It's like tilted a
little bit relative to the plane of the Solar System,
so it tugs on the Earth a little bit differently
as it goes around, and this tweaks the Earth a
(18:45):
little bit, so there's like a big wiggle and then
a little wiggle inside it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I wonder how we've measured that, Like, how do we
know that the tilt is changing over forty thousand years?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So we've been making these measurements over about the past
thousand years, and then we can project back using our
model the Solar system. So a lot of this is speculative.
It's like understanding the gravitational effects and projecting it backwards.
We can model these things. We can also project it forwards.
We know that the Moon is drifting away from the Earth,
which means it's going to have a weaker and weaker
(19:14):
effect gravitationally on the Earth, and a lot of the
models I was reading about suggest that the Moon has
a stabilizing effect on the Earth's tilt, like it does
cause it to wiggle, but it prevents it from getting
pushed out by even larger forces like Jupiter or Saturn
or other orbital resonances. So it sort of like stabilizes
the Earth, which means as it drifts away, it's less
(19:35):
and less able to stabilize the Earth. One paper I
read suggested that if the Moon drifted away, if we
didn't have a moon, then within a few million years,
the Earth's axis would be ninety degrees. It would be
knocked totally over by orbital resonances and chaotic behavior in
the Solar system.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yikes, it's a good thing we have.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
The moon then, exactly, think you moon.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I don't know how we even got this tilt in
the first place, the twenty three degree angles, because of
the impact we had maybe when the moon was formed.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, that's a leading theory. It has to come from
outside the angular momentum of the Solar system to get
that kind of tilt. And we think the moon was
formed by a big collision with a proto planet, and
so that might have done it.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
All right, Well, I think that answers the question for Chris,
what would the weather be like? It'd be pretty extreme, Like,
first of all, your day to day would be really different.
Like sometimes of the year you would have a day cycle,
but then the other half of the year you would
have either complete darkness or complete daylight all the time,
and then that would make the weather more extreme.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Exactly. Maybe McDonald's would be open twenty four hours a day,
giving lots of young people jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Or maybe closed twenty four hours a day, letting people
eat more healthy perhaps.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yeah, or stay at home and develop their cartooning skills.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
That's right, then they get a smarter All right, let's
tackle these other questions about quantum mechanics, the structure of
the atom, and also the fundamental nature of the universe.
But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
(21:09):
answering listener questions here today, and our next question comes
from josh Hi Daniel Mjorge.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
I'm a big fan of the show. I know that
quantum mechanics is necessary to describe our universe and the
way Adams form, but it has of course been a
somewhat unsatisfying theory to many, including that guy Einstein, given
how strange and unintuitive it is. That got me wondering
would it be possible to engineer a different atomic structure?
(21:38):
Governed only by classical mechanics rather than quantum mechanics, that
would look roughly the same when zoomed out. So could
there theoretically be a different universe that looks similar to ours,
governed only by classical mechanics. Thanks so much for considering
this question.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Hmm, interesting question, Thank you, Josh. All Right. I think
he's saying that he doesn't like the universe and he
wants to change.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
He's got notes.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, he's got opinions about the structure of the universe.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, he's like, I like what you've done here. Mostly
I just have a few thoughts about what's going on
inside the atom.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I wonder if he's more asking like, could you change it?
Could the nature of the universe be different and not
and not be noticeable.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, he's wondering if behind the curtain of atomic structure,
we could like re engineer it to be classical, to
not follow the quantum rules and still reproduce the world
that we experience. It's a really cool question, because you know,
one hundred years ago, that's the direction we were headed.
We thought we understood physics, the way things move, the
way things spun, and we thought as we zoomed in
(22:39):
on matter, we would find the same rules apply, that
the atom really would be like a tiny solar system.
So that's sort of what physics expected to find up
until about one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Right, and then he said, we got quantum mechanics, and
not even Einstein seemed to like even Eistein gave it
a bad review.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, well, it certainly was not what we expected. It
was counterintuitive. We discovered that electrons are not tiny little
dots of stuff moving in smooth classical paths the way
other stuff does. It follows a different set of rules.
And we discover that because we saw things operating in
ways that classical physics just could not explain. So I
love the part of his question where he says when
zoomed out, like he gives up explaining the atomic structure,
(23:17):
when you zoom in and examine the quantum nature of
the universe directly in the eye. But he wants to
zoom out and say, could we build our classical world
without quantum mechanics as an underpinning?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Right? Well, it's interesting I think he said first of
all that he finds quantum mechanics unsatisfying and unintuitive. I
wonder if you feel the same way. Do you find
it unsatisfying when.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
You're first learning quantum mechanics. He certainly find it frustrating
because it doesn't give you the kind of answers you're
used to getting. What it teaches you, though, is you
have to ask different kinds of questions, and in the end,
getting a different kind of answer is really teaching you
more about the nature of reality. Things that are weird
and counterintuitive and surprising are always more informative, right, That's
how you're learning. You're updating your model about the way
(23:59):
the universe works. In the end, I just want to
know what the universe is. I accept it, you know,
Universes are universes.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, and he also said he finds it unintuitive. You know,
that's a kind of an interesting statement, you know, because
intuition kind of depends, right, and your intuition can change
as well.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, that's certainly true, and eventually, if you play with
quantum mechanics long enough, you can develop a quantum intuition.
But most of us have a classical intuition. We imagine
that things move smoothly, that they always have a location
and velocity. So the idea that things can have like
only probabilities, and those probabilities can interfere in weird ways
and they follow fundamentally different rules. It's definitely unintuitive.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
When you develop that intuition. Do you call it quintuition?
I will now yeah coin here on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
But there is this part where he talks about being
zoomed out like how our world is. And I want
to make sure the listeners understand that most of the
structure of our world, what we do experience, the things
that developed our intuition, these aren't built on a quantum platform.
Like most to the nature of the world we experience
comes from the underlying quantum mechanics. When you zoom out,
(25:06):
how the atom is formed, and how light gets emitted,
and whether things are transparent, and all of chemistry, all
these things are built on essentially quantum properties of the atom.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Well, I think that's this question is like, could you
have a universe that behaves that way at the macro level,
but that doesn't have quantum mechanics at its core, Like
does zerover have to have to be random at the
atomic particle level or could it be deterministic I for example,
and not be quantum.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well, not all of quantum mechanics is random. There are
branches of quantum mechanics, like boemium mechanics, which are deterministic,
so that's not actually even necessary to be fundamentally random.
But there are essential elements of the atomic structure which
are quantum mechanical which are very challenging for any sort
of classical physics to reproduce. For example, even just the
structure of the atom. Like if you try to build
(25:52):
an atom as a tiny little electron orbiting in nucleus
like a little solar system, right, and you said, it
really has an orbit, it really has a lowcatetion and velocity,
there's none of this uncertainty stuff. Everything is somewhere all
the time. You would find that that is not a
stable orbit, the same way that, like the Earth eventually
will spiral into the Sun, that electron eventually would spiral
(26:14):
into the nucleus because everything that's in orbit radiates away
some of its energy and would eventually collapse. So the
simplest idea classical atom just doesn't work. Doesn't mean that
it's impossible to develop a classical atom, but there are
big challenges there.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
What if you adjust or add something new to classical
theory like that would be like an electron would fall
into the nucleus eventually if we only had certain the
forces that we know about now. But what if there
was like another force that pushed the electron out or
prevented it from falling in.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, anything that's in orbit, anything that moves in that
pattern is accelerating, and it has to radiate any classical
object at least, that's pretty unescapable even if you add
another force. But you're on the right track. There is
actually an alternative theory of the electron that uses just
class waves. It gets around this problem with the electron
radiating away its energy by saying, maybe the electron isn't
(27:06):
a particle, it actually is just deeply a wave, and
it finds a wave solution to the atom. There's a
paper by Rishikovski in twenty sixteen. I remember reading it
when it came out, and it's a very radical reimagining
of how the atom works. And you give up both
quantum mechanics and the concept that the electron is a
particle at all. It's just like a wave solution. It
says the electron fundamentally is a wave, not a quantum wave,
(27:28):
but a classical wave.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
I guess maybe it would help to break down what
you mean by something being quantum, right, because quantum means
both it has a wave nature and also that it's
random in its fundamental nature. So are you saying, like,
if you take out one of them, you could still
have a wavy electron.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I would say what makes something quantum is that it
obeys the Schrodinger equation. Instead of like classical equations, Shirtinger
equation is a fundamentally different equation. It says that the
laws of physics do not apply to a particle or
to the wave itself, but to this other thing, the
wave function. You can then derive where things are likely
to be. It's really a very different way to start
(28:04):
your physics.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
You don't just say, like F equals M and from
that everything flows. You start with a completely different equation
and from that everything flows. And where does that equation
come from? You know, it just sort of came out
of Schrodinger's head and Heisenberg came up with another one,
and we use it because it works because it reproduces
what's out there in the universe. So I would say
that's sort of what defines something as quantum mechanical, that
(28:26):
it deals directly with the wave function rather than with
the actual motion of the object.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But then you were saying, like, it might be possible
for an electron to be a wave but not be random.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, exactly. So there are these classical wave theories, Like
the original theory of light was a classical wave theory
of electromagnetic fields that were oscillating. This was Maxwell's theory
before quantum mechanics came along, and it said that light
was a classical wave, that it operated the same way
that like waves in the ocean do that the fields
always has very specific kinetic energy and locations and all
(28:57):
this kind of stuff. So you can have a classical wave.
And there are some theories of the atom which are
built on classical waves, so they're not random, they're not
quantum mechanical, and they do have this alternative view, but
there's a lot of challenges there. It's not like they've
worked out a complete theory of physics using classical waves
for the atom. It's just really sort of a directionist start.
(29:17):
People are saying, is this possible?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
So then you're saying, like, the main thing that would
not make the classical universe work is that the electron
would eventually lose its energy and fall into the nucleus.
But why doesn't that happen in quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
So in quantum mechanics, that doesn't happen because those same
rules don't apply. The particle doesn't have an orbit. It's
not moving in a circle, it's not accelerating, so it
doesn't have to radiate. In quantum mechanics, the particle doesn't
have an orbit. It has a quantum state, which is
a solution to the Shronninger equation, and that quantum state
has a minimum value which is not add zero. Like
(29:51):
all quantum particles have a minimum energy to them. It's
impossible for a quantum particle to have zero energy. If
it had zero energy, it would be violate the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle, which tells you you can't know the position
and momentum simultaneously. Something is at zero energy. You know
where it is, and you know how much momentum it
has zero so boom, you violated the rules.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
But doesn't that mean that there's some sort of like
fundamental energy to the universe or force that's preventing all
of these particles from collapsing.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
It tells you the fundamental nature of these objects is
that they have to have a minimum energy. They just
cannot satisfy the equations we use to describe these physical
objects do not have solutions with zero energy. The universe
just does not do that. So, yes, it's a fundamental
property of the quantum nature of these objects.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
But I guess couldn't you have that in a classical theory,
Like you could have an electron orbiting the nucleus sort
of like a little planet around its sun. But then
there's some rule to the universe. It says it has
to have a minimum amount of energy, and so that
prevents it from collapsing.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
That's the direction this classical electron wave theory is going,
is saying, let's avoid being a particle that has acceleration.
Let's just find solutions to the waves. Because in quantum mechanics,
the way you get around this is finding the solutions
to the shortening equation, which is a wave equation, and
so they're trying to build a classical wave equation that
has similar structure to it that avoids those minima in
(31:12):
the same way. The reason why maybe this classical wave
theory could ever work, right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
But I mean you're sort of basically saying the same
thing as quantum mechanics, right, Like quantum mechanics, you saying, no,
you have to have a minimum, you can't collapse. Well,
why if I make a classical universe where I say
you can't collapse either.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, and you can try to go that way. It's
going to be really challenging to reproduce all of the
features of quantum mechanics. Right in physics, it's easy to
sometimes pick at one particular theory say I have another
theory which explains that better. Yeah, that's cool, bro, But
we have lots of things that you have to explain.
Not only do you have to explain why the atom
is stable, you have to explain why there are quantized
energy levels to the nucleus. You have to explain why
(31:50):
we see spectral lines. You have to explain why some
things are transparent and why some things have certain colors.
All of these things are due to the quantum nature
of the atom and the energy level. All of chemistry
comes out of this, so you have to explain much
more than just keeping the atom stable. So it's a
huge challenge.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, bro, Yeah, Bro, I can't believe bro. I feel
like you've had this argument in your head now for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
No, this is me picking up my daughter's slang. She
calls me bro Whenever I try to talk physics to her.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Did you inform her your her father, not her brother?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Whatever. I try to explain some physics to her, she says,
cool story, Bro.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Now does she stud bro o or bru h? You
know that that's totally a different connotation.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I'm gonna have to listen more carefully.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
I think maybe I wonder if you should just stick
to Josh's question, Like, I know, it'd be really hard
to make all of the universe be explained without quantum mechanics.
But let's say, like his question about the atomic structure,
could you make an atomic structure that works without quantum mechanics?
And it seems like the answer is yes.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Maybe I think the answer is yes, it is possible.
I don't know, but this classical wave theory, but you
can go much more baroque, you know, if you just
need to reproduce all of chemistry and the atomic structure
and the spectral lines and all these behaviors of the atom,
you could engineer like a little machine that has really
complex interaction that does all this kind of stuff. It
wouldn't be simple in order to reverse engineer all this behavior.
(33:15):
You have to fold it a lot of really complicated stuff.
One of the beautiful things about quantum mechanics is that
it is pretty simple. You start from a single equation
and everything else flows from that, And as sort of
a ring of truth to it, you could always replace
physics with like a huge complicated Rube Goldberg like device
that does the same thing. It just wouldn't have the
same explanatory power.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
But I guess you also shouldn't be led by oakms
razors all the time, right, Like, just because something simpler
in it doesn't mean it's true.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, exactly. The universe could have been an incredibly complicated,
steampunk engineered version of the universe, with like all sorts
of pulleys and things rolling down planes and bonking into
stuff and banging with themselves with rubber chickens in order
to release a little packet of energy which then goes
into your microscope. Like that certainly could explain the universe,
And you could engineer a steampunk version of the atom
(34:06):
that gave you the same experience when zoomed out, and in.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
That universe, your daughter wouldn't say yeah, Bro, should say yeah, Baroke,
which is which is a terrible joke.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I laugh at all your jokes, terrible or not.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, Bro? All right, well I think that ANSWER's Josh's question.
Would it be possible to engineer a different atomic structure
that doesn't follow quantum mechanics? Uh? Maybe, Yeah, it's possible,
I guess, but you're saying probably not because quantum mechanics
is so convincing, and not just in its simplicity, but
it's an ability to explain not just the atomic structure,
but other things about the universe. All right, well, let's
(34:40):
get to our last question of the day, and this
one is pretty interesting. It's about the fundamental nature of
reality and also radical angles. So let's dig into that.
But first let's take a quick break. All Right, we're
(35:05):
answering listener questions. We've answered questions about the tilt of
the earth and how different weather would be, and also
about the fundamental structure of the atom and quantum mechanics,
and now we are attacking something a little bit more radical,
And I have.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
A question that I hope you think is rad I
was wondering, when we analyze the universe using a spherical
coordinate system, would there be such thing as a plank angle,
That is, would there be such thing as an angle
below which we can't resolve the universe anymore? Finally, a
fundamental pixel of rat. Thanks, you guys are dope.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
You're dope, Bro, I canna say we're rat and dope
and bro I like answing. I feel like he's our age.
He's using the same lingo.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I think his question is super awesome. I really love
this question.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Is it tubular? Totally tubular? Or is it ned? Oh?
Speaker 2 (36:01):
I love it because it relates to the fundamental nature
of reality, but also to the systems we impose on
the way we think about it, Like does it matter
if you're thinking about the universe in xyz or in
polar coordinates and R data five? Does that have an
impact on the universe itself?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, because, as we just talked about, the universe is
quantum mechanical, which means there's a minimum amount of energy
like matter can have. And that's also made physicists think
that maybe this quantumness applies to space itself.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Right, Yeah, Quantum mechanics tells us that everything is discrete,
nothing is continuous. There are no smooth pass or no
real numbers. You can have like one electron or two electrons,
but not one point seven. That everything is like in
pixels or on a ladder. That things are chunked right,
not smooth. And that makes people wonder if space itself
is pixelated, if you assume in far enough on the
(36:51):
screen of reality, you can actually see those quantum pixels.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, it's a theory suggested by quantum mechanics and physicists,
sort of a candidate for what that a minimum distance
in the universe can be, right.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Sort of. I think this is really over sold. I mean,
we have like a back of the envelope sketch of
maybe the vicinity of the region in which that number
might fall, and we use it all the time because
it's the only estimate we have. But that doesn't make
it any good. You know, if we call this thing
the plank length, and you arrive at the plank length
by taking all the constants that we know about gravitational constant,
(37:27):
the speed of light, these kind of things, and arranging
them in a way, multiplying them by each other, square
rooting them, et cetera. Et cetera. So you get something
with units of distance, and that's saying, well, maybe that's
a fundamental number in the universe. Maybe that distance means something. Oh,
and also maybe it means that this one particular thing
we're wondering about distance the shortest possible distance. It's very,
(37:50):
very handwavy kind of an.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Argument, right, But it's called the plank length, right.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, it's called the plank length. Or you can make
a version of it in time, which is the plank time,
where you can make a version of it in energy,
which is the plank energy. So in general terms we
just call this the plank scale. It's a short distance,
high energy, short amount of time. And I want to
really emphasis that this is simultaneously like a terrible estimate
of this distance. It's like saying, you know what is
(38:15):
horror salary as a cartoonist, Well, I know that answer
is in dollars per year, and then just doing any
random calculation that gives you an answer with the right
units and saying, oh, the GDP of the US is
three trillion dollars per year, so therefore that must be
Horge salary because it has the right units.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I can't confirm or deny.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
That just having the right units doesn't mean you're the
right answer right. On the other hand, it's the best
estimate we have because we have no idea how to
do anything better. So that's why you hear it battered
around a lot, because it's the best terrible estimate we have.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, it's called the cham salary. It's the minimum of
money a human being can oh while still having fun
all the time.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yes, I want to alert IRS agents who I might
be listening to the podcast that Jorges Return will feature
three trillion dollars this year.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, that's so we don't have any attorneys or CPA is.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Listening, right exactly. And that's a ridiculous example because it's
a terrible estimate, just like the plank length is.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's sort of a tourt way to get at it,
but it's sort of like the idea is like, well,
we have all these fundamental things in the universe. If
you mix them up, maybe it gives you sort of
a sense of the length of things, below which the
universe just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, it's probably correct to within a factor of ten
to the trillion. Yeah, there you go, by which I
mean ten and then the trillion.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Zeros like, sure, you don't know either way, right.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
No, you don't know either way. You really have almost
no information. It could turn out to be totally bang on,
It could turn out to be close. It could turn
out to have nothing to do with the universe at all.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I see, I see how strong opinions about the plank length,
like you have more than a plank length of thoughts
and apparently negative feelings about the plank length.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
I want our listeners to understand what we do know
and what we do not know. And I see in
popular science a lot that people refer to the plank
length as the minimum distance scale the universe. We don't
know if the universe has a minimum distance scale and
what it is, and if the planklength is anywhere close
to it.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
There's a lot we don't know. But I think the
idea is that maybe it's like it's like a big maybe,
like maybe the universe has a minimum distance below which
things just don't exist or don't make sense, or it
things are fuzzy.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
M hmm, exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
And you said that applies to distances and to time,
And now I think ANSWER's question AS's radical, awesome, totally
tubular question is can that idea be applied to angles,
like is there maybe a minimum angle to the universe?
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, And it's really sort of asking what is the
most natural set of units for the universe? Is it x, y,
z or is it r A theta five? Where should
we apply this distance too, like what kind of unit?
An angle is particularly tricky because you know, if you
make a triangle and you make it really really long,
the angles can get really really small. Imagine a triangle
(41:01):
it's like one millimeter on one side and a light
year on the other two sides, That angle would be pretty.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Tiny and so almost zero, right.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Almost zero exactly. And so I think the short answer
to his question is that there shouldn't be the shortest
angle because we think that the Cartesian coordinate system is
a natural way to describe the universe. And that's because
those are the directions along which momentum is conserved. And
it's this conservation momentum and the uncertainty of momentum position
together that gives you the Plank constant, which gives you
(41:32):
the Plank scale, and that's naturally described in linear coordinates
an x, y, and z.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
It sounds like you're leaning towards no. But like, what
if I I don't know. Just take some of these
fundamental things in the universe, like the plank length and
maybe the distance of the universe, and I make a
triangle or one side is the plank length and the
other two sides are the width of the universe. Wouldn't
I get maybe a minimum angle to the universe?
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, exactly. I love that construction. So you're imagining a
triangle one side is the plank length in like X,
and then the other point of the triangles across the universe.
Would that effectively be a minimum angle? And the answer
there is yes. If the universe has a finite size,
that would limit the size of your triangle in one direction,
and so it would be a minimum opening angle of
that triangle. But we don't know if the universe is
(42:19):
finite in size or if it's infinite. If the universe
is infinite in size, then there's no limit to the
size of your triangle. You can have a plank length
on one side and infinite lengths on the other side,
making that angle zero.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
I wonder if you need an infinite universe to disprove
an infinitely small angle, like couldn't you have an infinite
universe but also have a minimum angle. Right, Like, you
can have an infinite universe and still have a minimum
distance or minimum time even though time might be infinite.
Couldn't that also apply to angles?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah? And I love this question because anytime I make
an argument, there's like two different possible loopholes. You can
go the other way and here there I think there
are really two different loopholes. One is you don't even
need an infinite universe. You just need like a curved universe.
Imagine a universe that's closed what it loops around on itself.
And principle, you could draw a triangle that like loops
around on itself, like on the surface of a sphere
(43:13):
that's essentially infinite, right, And in that case you could
have an arbitrarily small angle. And the other side, I
think you're asking about whether angle itself could be fundamentally limited,
not as a product of the limitation of space or time,
but angle itself could be fundamentally limited, and it's a possibility.
We know that quantum mechanics has a very strong relationship
to angles two rotations. For example, we know that angular
(43:37):
momentum how you spin is quantized whereas linear momentum like
how you move, is not quantized. I mean, you can
have any value of kinetic energy of velocity as you
fly through space, but there are certain limited values of
angular momentum that are allowed. So angles are in some
sense more naturally quantized than distances.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
But I think you're referring to quantum spin, right, are
you referring to quantum spin?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Well, quantum spin is an example of Angler momentum, and
it's also quantized. But even just angular momentum is quantized,
like the Angler momentum of the electron in its quote
unquote orbit around the nucleus is quantized for the same
reason that the electron energy levels themselves are quantized. That
it overlaps on itself. The electron state envelops the entire
atom and overlaps itself, and so it has to satisfy
(44:24):
certain boundary conditions, which is where quantization comes from. So
not just quantum spin. Even orbital angular momentum like the
Earth going around the Sun, is quantized.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
But couldn't you say the same about its distance, like
the width of its orbit, Perhaps that it's also quantized.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
In that way, you can always relate angular momentum to
linear momentum. That's true, right, Anglementum in the end is
just linear momentum around an axis, but the angler momentum
is quantized that the linear momentum is not. And that's
something we don't understand, I think, more deeply than what
I've already explained. But it points to angles being important
to quantum mechanics. I've never seen a calculation directly of
(44:59):
the plank angle. One issue is that radiance, for example,
although they're super rad they really have no units other
than radiance. They're just numbers, and so it's not hard
to put together fundamental constants to just give you a number.
But then interpreting as an angle is kind of a stretch.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
But I guess you know, just like you can't assume
that the universe has a minimum distance or pixel to
it just because electrons are quantized, you know, you also
can't assume that, just because angler momentum is quantized, that
the universe itself has a minimum angle to it.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, exactly, you can't. It's just suggestive. It just tells
you that angles are kind of quantum mechanical. It's not
a concrete proof or even really a strong piece of
evidence that angles themselves are quantized, and if I had
to guess, I would guess that they're not. I think
probably the universe is infinite, and you can draw as
long a triangle as you want with the smallest angle possible.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Are you also guessing that it doesn't have a minimum distance.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Even if it does have a minimum linear distance. If
the universe is infinite, remember, you could make as long
a triangle as you want, and so as small as
angle as you want. I think that's probably the universe
that we.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Live in, if it's infinite. If the universe is infinite.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
If the universe is infinite, which again we don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
I wonder even if it's not infinite, like if you
start to get into limits of like just practicality, like
at some point it's so far away you can never
measure this triangle, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
That's a good point. Because of relativity, the idea that
a triangle could exist across the universe is a fuzzy
notion because points separated in distance are not well defined
in time, and so like measuring a triangle across the universe,
can such a triangle even really exist?
Speaker 1 (46:32):
And I guess then in that case, and this gets
very philosophical the limitation is not like a fundamental property
of the universe. It's just like it's just not possible
to do it. But it might be there.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Yeah, exactly the same way that like some of the
velocities we talk about with galaxies. We talk about those velocities,
but you could never actually measure them. In the same way,
it might be something you couldn't actually measure, even if
it isn't the fundamental property of the universe.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
All right, Well, then it sounds like the answer for
Anson is that it possible that the universe has a
minimum rad angle to it. But Daniel the physicist says, no, bro,
I don't think that's true, which is totally a bummer dude.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
But I do like the idea that there's a minimum
amount of rad in the universe. You know. It's just
sort of like relaxing to know that, no matter what
you do, there'd be a minimum radness to the universe.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, everybody's rad everybody has a minimum amount of rad.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
If there's a minimum radness and the universe is infinite,
that technically means it's an infinite amount of radness for
us all out there to enjoy.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, I guess. You just need to look closely, I guess,
or keep asking questions.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's the recipe for a happy life.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah. Now the big question is do you want fries
with that?
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Daniel?
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Do you want fries with that?
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Bro depends? Is the cartoonist paying with this trillion dollar salary?
Speaker 1 (47:52):
No, there's a minimum amount of generosity that a cartoonists have. Okay,
McDonald's are too expensive.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Apparently, all right, I know what our friendship is worth.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
All right. Well, that answers all of our questions for today.
We'll be answering more questions in future episodes. If you
have a question, please send it in.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Write to me directly Daniel Whitson at gmail dot com,
or write to us to questions at Danielanhorge dot com,
or find us on Twitter just google us. We're not
hard to find and we really do answer all of
our emails.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
joining us, See you next time.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, Daniel, are you happy with quantum mechanics?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
You mean, like, do I understand it well enough?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Well? Has had nobody understood it? But I guess I'm
asking if you think it was a good idea, you know, like,
if you were designing the universe, would you have made
it quantum mechanical?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Oh that's hilarious. I mean, I'm pretty happy with our
universe and all of it's weird, glorious beauty. I hate
to give that up.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
But wouldn't be cooler if it made more sense? You know,
if like electrons were really tiny little balls of stuff
instead of fuzzy on certain random things.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
It might be easier, but it might also be less interesting.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I don't know. I wonder if people would find it
more interesting if it was easier to understand.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
We might have more particle physicists in that case. Would
that be good or bad? No?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
No, No, you had have fewer, right, because it'd be easier
to understand. You could be doing something.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Else, like hosting a podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
There you go, a real job. Hi am Jorgemy, a
cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hi. I'm Daniel, and I'm a professor at u c
Irvine and a particle physicist. But it's been a long
time since I had a real job.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Or really, they've all been imaginary.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I think my last real job was working in the
kitchen at McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
I see, what did you consider both jobs to be
kind of the same. You're making hamburgers, You're making physics theories.
It's all very high in calories, a lot of additives.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
One of them is brain food. The other ones got food.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
It's sort of food, right.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
There's a little more creativity involved in one of these
jobs than the other one.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
MM, which one.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'll leave that as an ex size to the listener.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Well, at least you did the experiment. But anyways, welcome
to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
A grand experiment to see if we can explain everything
in the universe to you. All the stuff that we
understand about how things work at the smallest scale, to
everything we don't understand about the little bits and the
big bits and everything in between about the universe. This
joyous adventure, the exploration of everything we do and do
not know, we think should be shared by everybody out there.
(02:28):
Everybody who has that curious itch to understand the nature
of the universe, to zoom forward to the forefront of
human knowledge and understand what we do and do not know.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
The tread because it is an amazing universe full of
fast foods, slow foods, medium speed foods, all kinds of foods,
food for thought, food for your belly, food for your
soul as well. Do you consider physics to be sole food? Perhaps?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I think it nourishes philosophy, which is definitely soul food.
You know, all the big questions and physics in the
end have philosophical implications. Phys tells you, oh, the universes
this way, and philosophy wonders, well, why and why isn't
it that other way? And what does it mean anyway?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Well, sounds like we need to have an episode about
the physics of the soul. Perhaps we'll be very soulful.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I think a lot of what we call the soul
is the spirit of humanity, and that's where our curiosity
comes from, our desire to understand our context, why we live,
to motivate the choices we make. I think a lot
of that can be informed by physics and what it
reveals about the nature of the universe we live in.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Nice, that's a great McDonald's answer. You spun that around
really fast.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Would you like fries with that?
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes? Can you supersize it? It is a pretty amazing
universe out there, full of mysterious things and things that
we've learned and things that we have yet to learn
and figure out. And it all starts with having questions
about all of these things.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
And you can ask questions that are big, huge, Thanksgiving
meal sized, or you can ask little questions, little snacks,
individual French fries kinds of questions. We encourage you to
ask all of them, and we're here on the pot
Pod to try to help you answer them. All of
our episodes are designed to scratch a piece of curiosity
inside your mind. But it's not possible to cover every
possible thing anybody could imagine, and so we want you
(04:11):
to write to us with more questions the things that
you wonder about the nature of the universe.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
That's right, because everyone can have questions about the universe.
You can be a professor of physics, you can be
a philosopher. You can even be someone who works in
the fast food industry, or maybe someone with a real
job like being a podcast host. Anyone can have questions
about the universe.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, or you can be a combination professor, philosopher, podcast
hosts and McDonald's fry cook.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
That's right, Well, accept a cartoonist. Cartoonists know all the
answers already.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And I'm terrified to ask you. Is being a cartoonist
a real job.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
No, it's not a real job. Getting big to have
fun and doodle things. I don't know. I don't know
if that counts as real. It's certainly a dream come true.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It's a scam, folks. You heard it here on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
No, No, I mean it's a dream. Oh, I see come true.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I think Ponzi had some dreams.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Also, didn't he had dreams of getting other people's money.
I just have dreams of drawing for fun.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well, I think a lot of people out there dream
about understanding the universe and getting their questions answered, having
that experience when things click into place and you go, oh, yeah,
now I get it. So if you have questions about
the nature of the universe, for example, how you could
get paid to be a cartoonist or a physics professor,
then please write to us to questions at Danielandjorge dot Com.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Mmmm, has this become a career advice podcast that might
actually make this more of a real job.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
I think both of us have very odd and unusual
career paths.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yes, I don't think anybody went to advice in terms
of to make money or not make money, I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
But I do hope that people will write to us
with their questions.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, and so today on the podcast, we'll be tackling
listener questions number forty four. This is our forty fourth
episode answering listener questions, Daniel, is there a theme to
these questions?
Speaker 2 (06:08):
The themes of these questions is that they come after
the forty third episode and before the forty fifth episode.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Mmmmm. Does that make it like a special like numerical
magical number.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
These questions all came in within the same week, and
I thought, ooh, these are interesting questions, and so we're
going to answer them today. That's the theme.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I see. The theme is that Daniel was too lazy
fine questions with a real theme. It's all chronological, you mean,
like all this time we've been answering questions chronologically as
they come in.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I mean it's roughly chronologically. I try to answer people's
questions within a reasonable timeframe. You know, they send me
the questions that go on the list, we record the episode,
it gets edited. It can be a few months between
asking the question and getting the answer, so I try
to shorten that. But then I also try sometimes to
group the questions by theme when possible, but it's not
always possible.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
I guess it's more like a true representative sample of
how we get the questions right.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, we are core sample our listener's brains.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Today, metaphorically philosophical in a cartoony kind of way, auditorially. Well,
we have three great questions here today from our listeners.
One of them is about the weather and the tilt
of our planet. The other one is about the structure
of the atom, and the last one is about the
fundamental nature of reality itself.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
And radical angles.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Oh, we have radicalized questions, right, Well, let's jump into
our first question. The first one comes from Chris Hi, Dangel.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And Jorge What would weather be like on Earth if
we rotated around a horizontal axis rather than the readly
vertical access we rotate around. Also, how would that weather
differ if our access pointed either toward the Sun or
in line with our orbital path. Thanks for the great podcast.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
All right, awesome question though I'm confused, Like, is there
a horizontal and vertical in space?
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Well, there's horizontal and vertical relative to the Sun, right.
The Sun sort of defines the axis of the Solar system.
It spins around that has a north and a south
pole of that spin. And then most of the planets
orbit in a plane that's perpendicular to that axis, and
so the Earth tilts relative to that plane of the Sun.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
WHOA, but are they I wonder if they're exactly the same.
Like the axis of spin of the Sun is the
same as the axis of spin of the whole Solar system,
Like exactly the same or has it changed a little bit?
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, these are great questions. It's not exactly the same.
Like some of the planets do not orbit in that plane, right,
or they orbit a little bit off from it. It's
the complex system with lots of things tugging on it,
so it becomes chaotic. As other stars come nearby, they
give little tugs to Jupiter andto Saturn. All these things
accumulate over millions of years and make it so that
everything is not perfectly aligned.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Okay, So then if the axis of rotation of the
Sun is the perfect vehicle, it's say, in our solar system,
the Earth is sort of aligned to that, but not
exactly right.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, the Earth's angle is tilted relative to the angle
of the Sun by what seems like kind of a
big number. It's like twenty two twenty three degrees, where
you know, ninety degrees be totally tilted over and zero
degrees would be perfectly aligned with the Sun. I was
sort of surprised to look that number up. It seems
kind of big.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, it seems like a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
It seems like a lot, And it's the reason why
southern California is such a wonderful place to live, because
we don't have winters. Winters are the direct cause of
the Earth's axis being tilted.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Wait, what do you mean If we didn't have the
axis tilted, we wouldn't have winter, or we would have winter.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
If we didn't have an axial tilt. If the Earth
rotated along exactly the same axis as the Sun, then
parts of the Earth wouldn't get more or less sun
during different parts of the year.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Doesn't Our orbit sort of brings us closer and a
little farther from the sun anyways.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Yes, there's also that effect that you get a little
bit closer and a little bit further. Most of the
reason we have seasons is because the axial tilt.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So if we didn't have the tilt, we wouldn't have seasons.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, we wouldn't have seasons, or we'd have much much
milder seasons. It would be due to smaller effects like
the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Although I didn't know we had seasons California. Here, do
you have seasons where you lived three hours away?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
We had a hurricane two weeks ago.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's not a season, that's a weather event.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Now we have a hurricane season.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah, it happens once three hundred years.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Or something something like that. No, of course, things are
very mild, and as you get towards the equator, things
get milder and milder. These seasons are more dramatic at
the axis where the tilts has a bigger impact.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Well, no, actually it's more dramatic. If you're closer to
the poles, then the seasons are more dramatic due to
the tilt.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Right, Yeah, you're right, it's mild. Or if you're near
the equator, and more dramatic if you're near either of
the poles, which is why, for example, at the North
Pole the Sun goes down in the winter and doesn't
come up for months, and in the summer you can
see the Sun four months. Right, These effects are more dramatic,
and they're all due to the axial tilt.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Right. So now Chris's question is, like, what if that
tilt of the Earth of its spin axies was not
just twenty sixty degrees, what if it was ninety degrees?
So like, what if our spin axes was kind of
in the same plane as the disk of the Solar System.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, it'd be awesome and strange, but first of all,
it'd be very weird from a physics point of view. Like,
it's not a coincidence that all the planets are orbiting
around the same plane and that happens to line up
with the axis of the Sun. It's because of conservation
of angular momentum. The original blob of stuff that formed
the Sun and the planets had a single overall spin,
and that spin can't go anywhere. It has to stick around,
(11:25):
So everything that forms from it eventually has that spin.
So anything that's spinning in a different way is due
to something happening, like a big event. For example, Urinus
has an axial tilt of ninety seven degrees, and we
think it's probably due to some huge collisions. Something came
in balked Urinus and gave it a different kind of tilt.
That's the kind of thing that needs to happen to
(11:46):
have a big tilt.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, I was going to say, like Urinus has a
tilted spin axis kind of like Chris is asking about, right,
Like Urinus is flying through space kind of like a
football in some cases, right, like an American football.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, spinning along the direction of its motion, whereas the
Earth is spinning more like a basketball on the fingertip
of a harlem lobe trotter as walks across the basketball court.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Now it urinus spin axis is pointing towards where it's
moving sometimes of the year, right of its ear, like
it's always pointing towards like let's say, the center of
the Milky Way or something like that, even as it
goes around the Sun exactly.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
And that was the other part of Chris's question, whether
the axis would always be towards the Sun or along
the orbital path or what and conservation of angl momentum
tells us that it always points in the same direction.
You can't have like a spin that follows your orbit
perfectly like a football, because then the direction that spin
would be changing as you go around the Sun, and
that takes a tork. It takes some kind of external force.
(12:43):
There's nothing to apply that. So as the Earth goes
around the Sun, the direction of its axis doesn't change, right,
which is why the North pole sometimes further from the
Sun and sometimes closer to the Sun. And the same
is true for Uranus. It's always pointing in the same
direction as it goes around the Sun. The direction of
its spin. Its axis doesn't change, so neither is always
(13:04):
pointing towards the Sun or always pointing along its orbit.
As you say, it's always pointing in the same direction.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, and in fact, sort of I imagine the spin
of Urinus actually sort of keeps. That helps keep that
axis from moving or changing, right, because then you have
angler momentum pointing in one way, and so as it
goes around the Sun it tries to stay in the
same direction.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, exactly. It's like a big gyroscope, like a huge
planet sized gyroscope always keeping its spin pointing in the
same direction.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
All right, So then the question is what would the
weather be like if the Earth was spinning sideways, kind
of like uranus.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
It would be more severe seasons, right, It'd be warmer
summers and colder winters.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Mmm, what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
The Earth rotates every twenty four hours, right, And if
the Earth axis is aligned with the Sun axis, that
means you see the Sun every twenty four hours because
the Earth turns and you get a view of it.
But if the Earth axis is tilted, then its rotation
can't show you the Sun, or there's no way for
the Earth to rotate to show you the Sun. The
only way to see the Sun is to wait for
the Earth to go around the Sun. So you are
(14:04):
now on the sun side of the Earth.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
That's only if you're like in the north pole of
this tilted Earth, right. But if, like, if you're in
the equator of the tilted Earth, some parts of the year,
you would see the Sun every day, right.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
Well, I think half of the Earth would be in
darkness and half the Earth would be in sun, and
the equator would be the dividing line between.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Those, right, Like, if your spin axis was pointing directly
at the sun or directly away from the sun, then yeah,
half of the earth would always be in darkness, half
of the Earth would be in daylight no matter how
it spins. But then that's the axes is pointing directly
the sun. But on the other parts of the times
of the year, right then everyone sees a day, right.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, that's right. So you have very dark winters and
then in spring and in fall you do have daytime
and nighttime, and then it's summer it's one hundred percent sun.
So the effect is more dramatic seasons.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, so like, never mind the seasons, Like your day
to day would totally vary depending on the year, right,
Like in some parts of the year, six months a year,
everyone would have like a twenty four hour day. But
then the other parts of the year, you'd it'd be
like living in the North or South Pole, like you
never get sunlight or you would never get nighttime exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
You'd have continuous daylight for months and continuous nighttime for months,
and then periods in between where you had short days
or short nights, So it would be very dramatic'd be
like currently living at the North Pole, or the south pole.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
But then that would be sort of your daytime experience
or what I wonder Chris's question is what would the
weather be like like? Would the weather be different, would
we get like super crazy storms, would everyone fry on
one side of the Earth? Would you get no weather
at all? What would that be like?
Speaker 2 (15:42):
So it would mean more severe seasons, which probably means
more storms, right, Hotter summers, more energy in the oceans,
more storms being formed, deeper winters, more snowfalling, which means
more dramatic melt off, which means more flooding. So I
think it means more dramatic weather events.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Hmm, right. I guess like if the spin axis is
facing the sun right, and like the top half of
the spinning Earth gets sun twenty four hours a day,
then things would sort of overheat, right, I guess, like
if there wouln't be any poles, maybe things wouldn't be melt,
But then when it gets to the other side, things
will probably freeze on that part of the Earth.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Mm hmm, exactly. But in order for the Earth itself
to like freeze and form ice sheets and ice ages
requires cool summers. So when you have less severe seasons,
when you have cool summers and mild winters, Like if
the Earth had less tilt, you would actually get more
ice build up. And if you have more severe seasons,
warmer summers, even if you have colder winters, you don't
(16:40):
build up that ice because the warm summer obliterates it.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
So then here you what would happen just be more extreme,
Like you would freeze half of the year and you
would roast the other half of the year.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, exactly, So you'd have to get more into extreme sports,
more surfing and snowboarding.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, I wonder if we would even be alive, Like,
what could life evolve in a planet like that?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I think that some kind of life certainly could. I mean,
even our situation is kind of weird if you approach
it with no priors, but some kind of life could evolve.
It would have different strategies and different rhythms for sure,
and that would be fascinating. And we've looked actually at
exoplanets to try to understand how common is our kind
of tilt, what kind of tilts are out there. We'd
(17:21):
love to know that about exoplanets to get some sort
of context for what's happening. But it's very difficult to
measure the spin of exoplanets.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Although just from our Solar system, it seems like having
a spin aligned with your son is the norm, right.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, the normal thing, if there are no collisions, is
to be aligned with your son. But how likely is
it to have no collisions In our solar system? Venus
is spinning like the wrong way, Urinus is tipped over,
So it seems also not unusual to have big events
and weird spins, though this is just from the one
example of our Solar system. We do know, however, that
the Earth spin is changing. It's around twenty three degrees now,
(17:58):
but it's not constant.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Wait, what what do you mean?
Speaker 2 (18:01):
So it changes because the Moon pulls on it and
other planets pull on it. Again, the Solar system is
a chaotic place. Nothing is a simple two body system
with a stable orbit. And over the last five million years,
the Earth tilts has varied between twenty two and twenty
four degrees. It goes back and forth with a period
of like forty thousand years.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Whoa like it has a wobble to it?
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah, it has a wobble. It has a big wobble
over forty thousand years, and then a smaller wabble every
like nineteen years. They call it a nutation, and that's
due to the orbit of the Moon not being aligned
with the orbit of the Earth. It's like tilted a
little bit relative to the plane of the Solar System,
so it tugs on the Earth a little bit differently
as it goes around, and this tweaks the Earth a
(18:45):
little bit, so there's like a big wiggle and then
a little wiggle inside it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
I wonder how we've measured that, Like, how do we
know that the tilt is changing over forty thousand years?
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So we've been making these measurements over about the past
thousand years, and then we can project back using our
model the Solar system. So a lot of this is speculative.
It's like understanding the gravitational effects and projecting it backwards.
We can model these things. We can also project it forwards.
We know that the Moon is drifting away from the Earth,
which means it's going to have a weaker and weaker
(19:14):
effect gravitationally on the Earth, and a lot of the
models I was reading about suggest that the Moon has
a stabilizing effect on the Earth's tilt, like it does
cause it to wiggle, but it prevents it from getting
pushed out by even larger forces like Jupiter or Saturn
or other orbital resonances. So it sort of like stabilizes
the Earth, which means as it drifts away, it's less
(19:35):
and less able to stabilize the Earth. One paper I
read suggested that if the Moon drifted away, if we
didn't have a moon, then within a few million years,
the Earth's axis would be ninety degrees. It would be
knocked totally over by orbital resonances and chaotic behavior in
the Solar system.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Yikes, it's a good thing we have.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
The moon then, exactly, think you moon.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
I don't know how we even got this tilt in
the first place, the twenty three degree angles, because of
the impact we had maybe when the moon was formed.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, that's a leading theory. It has to come from
outside the angular momentum of the Solar system to get
that kind of tilt. And we think the moon was
formed by a big collision with a proto planet, and
so that might have done it.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
All right, Well, I think that answers the question for Chris,
what would the weather be like? It'd be pretty extreme, Like,
first of all, your day to day would be really different.
Like sometimes of the year you would have a day cycle,
but then the other half of the year you would
have either complete darkness or complete daylight all the time,
and then that would make the weather more extreme.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Exactly. Maybe McDonald's would be open twenty four hours a day,
giving lots of young people jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Or maybe closed twenty four hours a day, letting people
eat more healthy perhaps.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yeah, or stay at home and develop their cartooning skills.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
That's right, then they get a smarter All right, let's
tackle these other questions about quantum mechanics, the structure of
the atom, and also the fundamental nature of the universe.
But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
(21:09):
answering listener questions here today, and our next question comes
from josh Hi Daniel Mjorge.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
I'm a big fan of the show. I know that
quantum mechanics is necessary to describe our universe and the
way Adams form, but it has of course been a
somewhat unsatisfying theory to many, including that guy Einstein, given
how strange and unintuitive it is. That got me wondering
would it be possible to engineer a different atomic structure?
(21:38):
Governed only by classical mechanics rather than quantum mechanics, that
would look roughly the same when zoomed out. So could
there theoretically be a different universe that looks similar to ours,
governed only by classical mechanics. Thanks so much for considering
this question.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Hmm, interesting question, Thank you, Josh. All Right. I think
he's saying that he doesn't like the universe and he
wants to change.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
He's got notes.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Yeah, he's got opinions about the structure of the universe.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, he's like, I like what you've done here. Mostly
I just have a few thoughts about what's going on
inside the atom.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
I wonder if he's more asking like, could you change it?
Could the nature of the universe be different and not
and not be noticeable.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Yeah, he's wondering if behind the curtain of atomic structure,
we could like re engineer it to be classical, to
not follow the quantum rules and still reproduce the world
that we experience. It's a really cool question, because you know,
one hundred years ago, that's the direction we were headed.
We thought we understood physics, the way things move, the
way things spun, and we thought as we zoomed in
(22:39):
on matter, we would find the same rules apply, that
the atom really would be like a tiny solar system.
So that's sort of what physics expected to find up
until about one hundred years ago.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Right, and then he said, we got quantum mechanics, and
not even Einstein seemed to like even Eistein gave it
a bad review.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, well, it certainly was not what we expected. It
was counterintuitive. We discovered that electrons are not tiny little
dots of stuff moving in smooth classical paths the way
other stuff does. It follows a different set of rules.
And we discover that because we saw things operating in
ways that classical physics just could not explain. So I
love the part of his question where he says when
zoomed out, like he gives up explaining the atomic structure,
(23:17):
when you zoom in and examine the quantum nature of
the universe directly in the eye. But he wants to
zoom out and say, could we build our classical world
without quantum mechanics as an underpinning?
Speaker 1 (23:27):
Right? Well, it's interesting I think he said first of
all that he finds quantum mechanics unsatisfying and unintuitive. I
wonder if you feel the same way. Do you find
it unsatisfying when.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
You're first learning quantum mechanics. He certainly find it frustrating
because it doesn't give you the kind of answers you're
used to getting. What it teaches you, though, is you
have to ask different kinds of questions, and in the end,
getting a different kind of answer is really teaching you
more about the nature of reality. Things that are weird
and counterintuitive and surprising are always more informative, right, That's
how you're learning. You're updating your model about the way
(23:59):
the universe works. In the end, I just want to
know what the universe is. I accept it, you know,
Universes are universes.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, and he also said he finds it unintuitive. You know,
that's a kind of an interesting statement, you know, because
intuition kind of depends, right, and your intuition can change
as well.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, that's certainly true, and eventually, if you play with
quantum mechanics long enough, you can develop a quantum intuition.
But most of us have a classical intuition. We imagine
that things move smoothly, that they always have a location
and velocity. So the idea that things can have like
only probabilities, and those probabilities can interfere in weird ways
and they follow fundamentally different rules. It's definitely unintuitive.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
When you develop that intuition. Do you call it quintuition?
I will now yeah coin here on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
But there is this part where he talks about being
zoomed out like how our world is. And I want
to make sure the listeners understand that most of the
structure of our world, what we do experience, the things
that developed our intuition, these aren't built on a quantum platform.
Like most to the nature of the world we experience
comes from the underlying quantum mechanics. When you zoom out,
(25:06):
how the atom is formed, and how light gets emitted,
and whether things are transparent, and all of chemistry, all
these things are built on essentially quantum properties of the atom.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Well, I think that's this question is like, could you
have a universe that behaves that way at the macro level,
but that doesn't have quantum mechanics at its core, Like
does zerover have to have to be random at the
atomic particle level or could it be deterministic I for example,
and not be quantum.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well, not all of quantum mechanics is random. There are
branches of quantum mechanics, like boemium mechanics, which are deterministic,
so that's not actually even necessary to be fundamentally random.
But there are essential elements of the atomic structure which
are quantum mechanical which are very challenging for any sort
of classical physics to reproduce. For example, even just the
structure of the atom. Like if you try to build
(25:52):
an atom as a tiny little electron orbiting in nucleus
like a little solar system, right, and you said, it
really has an orbit, it really has a lowcatetion and velocity,
there's none of this uncertainty stuff. Everything is somewhere all
the time. You would find that that is not a
stable orbit, the same way that, like the Earth eventually
will spiral into the Sun, that electron eventually would spiral
(26:14):
into the nucleus because everything that's in orbit radiates away
some of its energy and would eventually collapse. So the
simplest idea classical atom just doesn't work. Doesn't mean that
it's impossible to develop a classical atom, but there are
big challenges there.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
What if you adjust or add something new to classical
theory like that would be like an electron would fall
into the nucleus eventually if we only had certain the
forces that we know about now. But what if there
was like another force that pushed the electron out or
prevented it from falling in.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Well, anything that's in orbit, anything that moves in that
pattern is accelerating, and it has to radiate any classical
object at least, that's pretty unescapable even if you add
another force. But you're on the right track. There is
actually an alternative theory of the electron that uses just
class waves. It gets around this problem with the electron
radiating away its energy by saying, maybe the electron isn't
(27:06):
a particle, it actually is just deeply a wave, and
it finds a wave solution to the atom. There's a
paper by Rishikovski in twenty sixteen. I remember reading it
when it came out, and it's a very radical reimagining
of how the atom works. And you give up both
quantum mechanics and the concept that the electron is a
particle at all. It's just like a wave solution. It
says the electron fundamentally is a wave, not a quantum wave,
(27:28):
but a classical wave.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
I guess maybe it would help to break down what
you mean by something being quantum, right, because quantum means
both it has a wave nature and also that it's
random in its fundamental nature. So are you saying, like,
if you take out one of them, you could still
have a wavy electron.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I would say what makes something quantum is that it
obeys the Schrodinger equation. Instead of like classical equations, Shirtinger
equation is a fundamentally different equation. It says that the
laws of physics do not apply to a particle or
to the wave itself, but to this other thing, the
wave function. You can then derive where things are likely
to be. It's really a very different way to start
(28:04):
your physics.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
You don't just say, like F equals M and from
that everything flows. You start with a completely different equation
and from that everything flows. And where does that equation
come from? You know, it just sort of came out
of Schrodinger's head and Heisenberg came up with another one,
and we use it because it works because it reproduces
what's out there in the universe. So I would say
that's sort of what defines something as quantum mechanical, that
(28:26):
it deals directly with the wave function rather than with
the actual motion of the object.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But then you were saying, like, it might be possible
for an electron to be a wave but not be random.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Yeah, exactly. So there are these classical wave theories, Like
the original theory of light was a classical wave theory
of electromagnetic fields that were oscillating. This was Maxwell's theory
before quantum mechanics came along, and it said that light
was a classical wave, that it operated the same way
that like waves in the ocean do that the fields
always has very specific kinetic energy and locations and all
(28:57):
this kind of stuff. So you can have a classical wave.
And there are some theories of the atom which are
built on classical waves, so they're not random, they're not
quantum mechanical, and they do have this alternative view, but
there's a lot of challenges there. It's not like they've
worked out a complete theory of physics using classical waves
for the atom. It's just really sort of a directionist start.
(29:17):
People are saying, is this possible?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
So then you're saying, like, the main thing that would
not make the classical universe work is that the electron
would eventually lose its energy and fall into the nucleus.
But why doesn't that happen in quantum mechanics.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
So in quantum mechanics, that doesn't happen because those same
rules don't apply. The particle doesn't have an orbit. It's
not moving in a circle, it's not accelerating, so it
doesn't have to radiate. In quantum mechanics, the particle doesn't
have an orbit. It has a quantum state, which is
a solution to the Shronninger equation, and that quantum state
has a minimum value which is not add zero. Like
(29:51):
all quantum particles have a minimum energy to them. It's
impossible for a quantum particle to have zero energy. If
it had zero energy, it would be violate the Heisenberg
uncertainty principle, which tells you you can't know the position
and momentum simultaneously. Something is at zero energy. You know
where it is, and you know how much momentum it
has zero so boom, you violated the rules.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
But doesn't that mean that there's some sort of like
fundamental energy to the universe or force that's preventing all
of these particles from collapsing.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
It tells you the fundamental nature of these objects is
that they have to have a minimum energy. They just
cannot satisfy the equations we use to describe these physical
objects do not have solutions with zero energy. The universe
just does not do that. So, yes, it's a fundamental
property of the quantum nature of these objects.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
But I guess couldn't you have that in a classical theory,
Like you could have an electron orbiting the nucleus sort
of like a little planet around its sun. But then
there's some rule to the universe. It says it has
to have a minimum amount of energy, and so that
prevents it from collapsing.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
That's the direction this classical electron wave theory is going,
is saying, let's avoid being a particle that has acceleration.
Let's just find solutions to the waves. Because in quantum mechanics,
the way you get around this is finding the solutions
to the shortening equation, which is a wave equation, and
so they're trying to build a classical wave equation that
has similar structure to it that avoids those minima in
(31:12):
the same way. The reason why maybe this classical wave
theory could ever work, right.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
But I mean you're sort of basically saying the same
thing as quantum mechanics, right, Like quantum mechanics, you saying, no,
you have to have a minimum, you can't collapse. Well,
why if I make a classical universe where I say
you can't collapse either.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, and you can try to go that way. It's
going to be really challenging to reproduce all of the
features of quantum mechanics. Right in physics, it's easy to
sometimes pick at one particular theory say I have another
theory which explains that better. Yeah, that's cool, bro, But
we have lots of things that you have to explain.
Not only do you have to explain why the atom
is stable, you have to explain why there are quantized
energy levels to the nucleus. You have to explain why
(31:50):
we see spectral lines. You have to explain why some
things are transparent and why some things have certain colors.
All of these things are due to the quantum nature
of the atom and the energy level. All of chemistry
comes out of this, so you have to explain much
more than just keeping the atom stable. So it's a
huge challenge.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, bro, Yeah, Bro, I can't believe bro. I feel
like you've had this argument in your head now for
a long time.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
No, this is me picking up my daughter's slang. She
calls me bro Whenever I try to talk physics to her.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Did you inform her your her father, not her brother?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Whatever. I try to explain some physics to her, she says,
cool story, Bro.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Now does she stud bro o or bru h? You
know that that's totally a different connotation.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I'm gonna have to listen more carefully.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
I think maybe I wonder if you should just stick
to Josh's question, Like, I know, it'd be really hard
to make all of the universe be explained without quantum mechanics.
But let's say, like his question about the atomic structure,
could you make an atomic structure that works without quantum mechanics?
And it seems like the answer is yes.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
Maybe I think the answer is yes, it is possible.
I don't know, but this classical wave theory, but you
can go much more baroque, you know, if you just
need to reproduce all of chemistry and the atomic structure
and the spectral lines and all these behaviors of the atom,
you could engineer like a little machine that has really
complex interaction that does all this kind of stuff. It
wouldn't be simple in order to reverse engineer all this behavior.
(33:15):
You have to fold it a lot of really complicated stuff.
One of the beautiful things about quantum mechanics is that
it is pretty simple. You start from a single equation
and everything else flows from that, And as sort of
a ring of truth to it, you could always replace
physics with like a huge complicated Rube Goldberg like device
that does the same thing. It just wouldn't have the
same explanatory power.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
But I guess you also shouldn't be led by oakms
razors all the time, right, Like, just because something simpler
in it doesn't mean it's true.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, exactly. The universe could have been an incredibly complicated,
steampunk engineered version of the universe, with like all sorts
of pulleys and things rolling down planes and bonking into
stuff and banging with themselves with rubber chickens in order
to release a little packet of energy which then goes
into your microscope. Like that certainly could explain the universe,
And you could engineer a steampunk version of the atom
(34:06):
that gave you the same experience when zoomed out, and in.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
That universe, your daughter wouldn't say yeah, Bro, should say yeah, Baroke,
which is which is a terrible joke.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
I laugh at all your jokes, terrible or not.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah, Bro? All right, well I think that ANSWER's Josh's question.
Would it be possible to engineer a different atomic structure
that doesn't follow quantum mechanics? Uh? Maybe, Yeah, it's possible,
I guess, but you're saying probably not because quantum mechanics
is so convincing, and not just in its simplicity, but
it's an ability to explain not just the atomic structure,
but other things about the universe. All right, well, let's
(34:40):
get to our last question of the day, and this
one is pretty interesting. It's about the fundamental nature of
reality and also radical angles. So let's dig into that.
But first let's take a quick break. All Right, we're
(35:05):
answering listener questions. We've answered questions about the tilt of
the earth and how different weather would be, and also
about the fundamental structure of the atom and quantum mechanics,
and now we are attacking something a little bit more radical,
And I have.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
A question that I hope you think is rad I
was wondering, when we analyze the universe using a spherical
coordinate system, would there be such thing as a plank angle,
That is, would there be such thing as an angle
below which we can't resolve the universe anymore? Finally, a
fundamental pixel of rat. Thanks, you guys are dope.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
You're dope, Bro, I canna say we're rat and dope
and bro I like answing. I feel like he's our age.
He's using the same lingo.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
I think his question is super awesome. I really love
this question.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Is it tubular? Totally tubular? Or is it ned? Oh?
Speaker 2 (36:01):
I love it because it relates to the fundamental nature
of reality, but also to the systems we impose on
the way we think about it, Like does it matter
if you're thinking about the universe in xyz or in
polar coordinates and R data five? Does that have an
impact on the universe itself?
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Yeah, because, as we just talked about, the universe is
quantum mechanical, which means there's a minimum amount of energy
like matter can have. And that's also made physicists think
that maybe this quantumness applies to space itself.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Right, Yeah, Quantum mechanics tells us that everything is discrete,
nothing is continuous. There are no smooth pass or no
real numbers. You can have like one electron or two electrons,
but not one point seven. That everything is like in
pixels or on a ladder. That things are chunked right,
not smooth. And that makes people wonder if space itself
is pixelated, if you assume in far enough on the
(36:51):
screen of reality, you can actually see those quantum pixels.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, it's a theory suggested by quantum mechanics and physicists,
sort of a candidate for what that a minimum distance
in the universe can be, right.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Sort of. I think this is really over sold. I mean,
we have like a back of the envelope sketch of
maybe the vicinity of the region in which that number
might fall, and we use it all the time because
it's the only estimate we have. But that doesn't make
it any good. You know, if we call this thing
the plank length, and you arrive at the plank length
by taking all the constants that we know about gravitational constant,
(37:27):
the speed of light, these kind of things, and arranging
them in a way, multiplying them by each other, square
rooting them, et cetera. Et cetera. So you get something
with units of distance, and that's saying, well, maybe that's
a fundamental number in the universe. Maybe that distance means something. Oh,
and also maybe it means that this one particular thing
we're wondering about distance the shortest possible distance. It's very,
(37:50):
very handwavy kind of an.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Argument, right, But it's called the plank length, right.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, it's called the plank length. Or you can make
a version of it in time, which is the plank time,
where you can make a version of it in energy,
which is the plank energy. So in general terms we
just call this the plank scale. It's a short distance,
high energy, short amount of time. And I want to
really emphasis that this is simultaneously like a terrible estimate
of this distance. It's like saying, you know what is
(38:15):
horror salary as a cartoonist, Well, I know that answer
is in dollars per year, and then just doing any
random calculation that gives you an answer with the right
units and saying, oh, the GDP of the US is
three trillion dollars per year, so therefore that must be
Horge salary because it has the right units.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I can't confirm or deny.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
That just having the right units doesn't mean you're the
right answer right. On the other hand, it's the best
estimate we have because we have no idea how to
do anything better. So that's why you hear it battered
around a lot, because it's the best terrible estimate we have.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, it's called the cham salary. It's the minimum of
money a human being can oh while still having fun
all the time.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yes, I want to alert IRS agents who I might
be listening to the podcast that Jorges Return will feature
three trillion dollars this year.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yeah, that's so we don't have any attorneys or CPA is.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Listening, right exactly. And that's a ridiculous example because it's
a terrible estimate, just like the plank length is.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's sort of a tourt way to get at it,
but it's sort of like the idea is like, well,
we have all these fundamental things in the universe. If
you mix them up, maybe it gives you sort of
a sense of the length of things, below which the
universe just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, it's probably correct to within a factor of ten
to the trillion. Yeah, there you go, by which I
mean ten and then the trillion.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Zeros like, sure, you don't know either way, right.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
No, you don't know either way. You really have almost
no information. It could turn out to be totally bang on,
It could turn out to be close. It could turn
out to have nothing to do with the universe at all.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
I see, I see how strong opinions about the plank length,
like you have more than a plank length of thoughts
and apparently negative feelings about the plank length.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
I want our listeners to understand what we do know
and what we do not know. And I see in
popular science a lot that people refer to the plank
length as the minimum distance scale the universe. We don't
know if the universe has a minimum distance scale and
what it is, and if the planklength is anywhere close
to it.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
There's a lot we don't know. But I think the
idea is that maybe it's like it's like a big maybe,
like maybe the universe has a minimum distance below which
things just don't exist or don't make sense, or it
things are fuzzy.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
M hmm, exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
And you said that applies to distances and to time,
And now I think ANSWER's question AS's radical, awesome, totally
tubular question is can that idea be applied to angles,
like is there maybe a minimum angle to the universe?
Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yeah, And it's really sort of asking what is the
most natural set of units for the universe? Is it x, y,
z or is it r A theta five? Where should
we apply this distance too, like what kind of unit?
An angle is particularly tricky because you know, if you
make a triangle and you make it really really long,
the angles can get really really small. Imagine a triangle
(41:01):
it's like one millimeter on one side and a light
year on the other two sides, That angle would be pretty.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Tiny and so almost zero, right.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Almost zero exactly. And so I think the short answer
to his question is that there shouldn't be the shortest
angle because we think that the Cartesian coordinate system is
a natural way to describe the universe. And that's because
those are the directions along which momentum is conserved. And
it's this conservation momentum and the uncertainty of momentum position
together that gives you the Plank constant, which gives you
(41:32):
the Plank scale, and that's naturally described in linear coordinates
an x, y, and z.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
It sounds like you're leaning towards no. But like, what
if I I don't know. Just take some of these
fundamental things in the universe, like the plank length and
maybe the distance of the universe, and I make a
triangle or one side is the plank length and the
other two sides are the width of the universe. Wouldn't
I get maybe a minimum angle to the universe?
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, exactly. I love that construction. So you're imagining a
triangle one side is the plank length in like X,
and then the other point of the triangles across the universe.
Would that effectively be a minimum angle? And the answer
there is yes. If the universe has a finite size,
that would limit the size of your triangle in one direction,
and so it would be a minimum opening angle of
that triangle. But we don't know if the universe is
(42:19):
finite in size or if it's infinite. If the universe
is infinite in size, then there's no limit to the
size of your triangle. You can have a plank length
on one side and infinite lengths on the other side,
making that angle zero.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
I wonder if you need an infinite universe to disprove
an infinitely small angle, like couldn't you have an infinite
universe but also have a minimum angle. Right, Like, you
can have an infinite universe and still have a minimum
distance or minimum time even though time might be infinite.
Couldn't that also apply to angles?
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah? And I love this question because anytime I make
an argument, there's like two different possible loopholes. You can
go the other way and here there I think there
are really two different loopholes. One is you don't even
need an infinite universe. You just need like a curved universe.
Imagine a universe that's closed what it loops around on itself.
And principle, you could draw a triangle that like loops
around on itself, like on the surface of a sphere
(43:13):
that's essentially infinite, right, And in that case you could
have an arbitrarily small angle. And the other side, I
think you're asking about whether angle itself could be fundamentally limited,
not as a product of the limitation of space or time,
but angle itself could be fundamentally limited, and it's a possibility.
We know that quantum mechanics has a very strong relationship
to angles two rotations. For example, we know that angular
(43:37):
momentum how you spin is quantized whereas linear momentum like
how you move, is not quantized. I mean, you can
have any value of kinetic energy of velocity as you
fly through space, but there are certain limited values of
angular momentum that are allowed. So angles are in some
sense more naturally quantized than distances.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
But I think you're referring to quantum spin, right, are
you referring to quantum spin?
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Well, quantum spin is an example of Angler momentum, and
it's also quantized. But even just angular momentum is quantized,
like the Angler momentum of the electron in its quote
unquote orbit around the nucleus is quantized for the same
reason that the electron energy levels themselves are quantized. That
it overlaps on itself. The electron state envelops the entire
atom and overlaps itself, and so it has to satisfy
(44:24):
certain boundary conditions, which is where quantization comes from. So
not just quantum spin. Even orbital angular momentum like the
Earth going around the Sun, is quantized.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
But couldn't you say the same about its distance, like
the width of its orbit, Perhaps that it's also quantized.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
In that way, you can always relate angular momentum to
linear momentum. That's true, right, Anglementum in the end is
just linear momentum around an axis, but the angler momentum
is quantized that the linear momentum is not. And that's
something we don't understand, I think, more deeply than what
I've already explained. But it points to angles being important
to quantum mechanics. I've never seen a calculation directly of
(44:59):
the plank angle. One issue is that radiance, for example,
although they're super rad they really have no units other
than radiance. They're just numbers, and so it's not hard
to put together fundamental constants to just give you a number.
But then interpreting as an angle is kind of a stretch.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
But I guess you know, just like you can't assume
that the universe has a minimum distance or pixel to
it just because electrons are quantized, you know, you also
can't assume that, just because angler momentum is quantized, that
the universe itself has a minimum angle to it.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Yeah, exactly, you can't. It's just suggestive. It just tells
you that angles are kind of quantum mechanical. It's not
a concrete proof or even really a strong piece of
evidence that angles themselves are quantized, and if I had
to guess, I would guess that they're not. I think
probably the universe is infinite, and you can draw as
long a triangle as you want with the smallest angle possible.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
Are you also guessing that it doesn't have a minimum distance.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
Even if it does have a minimum linear distance. If
the universe is infinite, remember, you could make as long
a triangle as you want, and so as small as
angle as you want. I think that's probably the universe
that we.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Live in, if it's infinite. If the universe is infinite.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
If the universe is infinite, which again we don't know.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
I wonder even if it's not infinite, like if you
start to get into limits of like just practicality, like
at some point it's so far away you can never
measure this triangle, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
That's a good point. Because of relativity, the idea that
a triangle could exist across the universe is a fuzzy
notion because points separated in distance are not well defined
in time, and so like measuring a triangle across the universe,
can such a triangle even really exist?
Speaker 1 (46:32):
And I guess then in that case, and this gets
very philosophical the limitation is not like a fundamental property
of the universe. It's just like it's just not possible
to do it. But it might be there.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Yeah, exactly the same way that like some of the
velocities we talk about with galaxies. We talk about those velocities,
but you could never actually measure them. In the same way,
it might be something you couldn't actually measure, even if
it isn't the fundamental property of the universe.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
All right, Well, then it sounds like the answer for
Anson is that it possible that the universe has a
minimum rad angle to it. But Daniel the physicist says, no, bro,
I don't think that's true, which is totally a bummer dude.
Speaker 2 (47:12):
But I do like the idea that there's a minimum
amount of rad in the universe. You know. It's just
sort of like relaxing to know that, no matter what
you do, there'd be a minimum radness to the universe.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, everybody's rad everybody has a minimum amount of rad.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
If there's a minimum radness and the universe is infinite,
that technically means it's an infinite amount of radness for
us all out there to enjoy.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, I guess. You just need to look closely, I guess,
or keep asking questions.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
That's the recipe for a happy life.
Speaker 1 (47:41):
Yeah. Now the big question is do you want fries
with that?
Speaker 2 (47:43):
Daniel?
Speaker 1 (47:44):
Do you want fries with that?
Speaker 2 (47:45):
Bro depends? Is the cartoonist paying with this trillion dollar salary?
Speaker 1 (47:52):
No, there's a minimum amount of generosity that a cartoonists have. Okay,
McDonald's are too expensive.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Apparently, all right, I know what our friendship is worth.
Speaker 1 (48:04):
All right. Well, that answers all of our questions for today.
We'll be answering more questions in future episodes. If you
have a question, please send it in.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Write to me directly Daniel Whitson at gmail dot com,
or write to us to questions at Danielanhorge dot com,
or find us on Twitter just google us. We're not
hard to find and we really do answer all of
our emails.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
joining us, See you next time.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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