April 16, 2019 • 40 mins
Jack and Miles, hosts of The Daily Zeitgeist, ask Daniel and Jorge their most pressing questions about the universe; Why is the sky blue? Whats a quantum machine gun? How do planets form?
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hi, I'm and I'm Daniel. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart
Radio in which we take the entire universe, slice it
up into little pieces, and explain every single one to you,
(00:28):
one at a time. We answer all of your deep
and amazing questions about this incredible universe, and we try
to make sure that you come away understanding something so
you can sound smart at the next cocktail party you
go to with a bunch of physicists. Today, we have
a special episode. We're going to be once again answering
listener questions, but not your normal listeners, not your everyday listeners.
(00:48):
That's right. There's a twist today. Today we have special
listener guests. That's our Today we have the host of
the podcast, the Daily Site, guys Miles and Jack here,
and we're gonna be answering their questions about out the universe,
about planets, about quantum machine guns. That's right. Usually these
guys are talking about the daily events of what's going
on in the world we should care about, but they
(01:09):
also think deeply about the universe. So they were here
to talk to us about deep questions about the universe.
Very deeply record scratch. It's just stopped in. This is
Jack sound oh sorry, and this is Miles. This is
what this is my voice. Much so welcome Jack and Miles.
(01:29):
Thank you thanks for having us. Yeah, so tell us
a little bit about your podcast Where can people You know,
it's like it's like a woke morning show. You know
what I mean, you wake up, we'll give you the
best news we have. It's Jack and I and a
comedian and we just run down the top stories. Uh.
I have a background in politics, so i'll you know,
talk like I know what I'm talking about. Uh, And
then Jack does the funny stuff. Every other every other
(01:52):
morning show is a sleeping morning problems. That is the
only our only excuse for people expressive. Yeah. But I
started the website cracked dot com and I've been doing
this for the past year and a half with Miles. Wow,
it's a good time. Yeah, pretty cool. So do you
(02:13):
guys cover science topics as well? When you talk about
the daily we do. If there's something like I think
that's important to humanity or funny, so we'll talk about like,
you know, the biomass, like insect biomass just decreasing at
an alarming rate. But we don't typically get into super
heavy stuff because like, if it's like gravitational waves territory,
I'm like, as long as Miles can see it, he
(02:37):
believes it exists, exactly. So I don't believe in germs
or dinosaurs. So do you believe in scientology because I
can see that building. You know, I believe it. We
are you're talking to at six operating sex right now.
I believe it exists, right, yeah, And then you're gonna
have to explain the universe of scientology to me someday.
Oh yeah, do you have a moment because I just
(02:59):
feeling clear? Actually yeah, great, great, I mean I feel
like I guess Zeno does have a lot to offer us,
but I think this maybe for another show. Yeah. Yeah,
that's a different universe exactly right. But there are aliens involved, right,
aren't there aliens? Yes, don't be patronizing. There are many aliens,
but in many different volcanoes we talked about, right, Oh yeah,
we did, because I think and the that Navy footage
(03:21):
where they said they found like an unidentified yeah, that
flying object, unidentified flying tic tach, did you say that's
interest in aliens is never pagonizing it's totally a great
do you that sounded? Yeah? So yeah, my claims about
not being sarcastic are since here. Okay, but what do
(03:42):
you think what did you see that video of that
tic tac? What did you what do you think that was?
I think it's something crazy we don't understand, but it
is something. It's something that was something something. Okay, definitely
not nothing. I figure it's just something like a technology
we're not familiar with. Yeah, it could be. It doesn't
have to be like extraterrestrial or weird under not understood.
You're talking from you know, the Navy pipe like that
(04:05):
like fighter pilot footage of how they saw that thing
just like rotating and then like inexplicably accelerating in different
directions that it was different. Yeah, And the Pentagon released
it like at the end of last year or the
year before. That wasn't just special effects. No, the Pentagon
was like, all right, we'll declassify this video if you
guys want to see it. Yeah. Yeah. Pentagon is crowdsourcing
(04:25):
its intelligence Internet, Yeah, to help us this out there,
Like this is why we invented the Internet. Source are
intelligence exactly to capture the intelligence of the genius of
the crowds. Cool, well as you guys talk about the
(04:45):
daily culture and the dailies, guys of of the humanity
on a daily basis. Yeah, and I imagine sometimes you
must have questions about the universe, about space, about the
role that humans and our cultures have it it um,
and so do they. You guys have three questions. We're
gonna try to run through them in an episode today,
and they're about plant information and quantum machines, guns, machines, guns,
(05:10):
and machine guns. Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was
a quantum machine gun or a quantum machine gun, a
gun that shoots understanding quantum mechanics into your brain. Yeah,
I think I have a more simple questions. And then
Jack is the one about quantum leap or whatever, quantum back. Yeah,
(05:32):
let's after all, Yes, it's almost definitely all right. So
where should we start? Oh, let's just let's go nice
and easy. Yeah. I get most of my scientific questions
from the Jiza. And there's a song called Fourth Chamber
that asked the question why is the sky blue? Why
(05:53):
is water wet? The second question doesn't make any sense
to me, but the first one I have always been curious,
why is the sky blue? I love that question? Why
is water wet? Actually it's like a really interesting deep Yeah,
is just too much for my brain to hold. You
know that song particle many particle man. Yeah, when he's underwater,
(06:14):
does he get wet or does the water get instead?
Deep stuff? Yeah? Mine that I guess like as a child,
I'm just curious. Is the version that I understand the
sky to be blue true, which is like because the
ocean is that? It s almost it's kind of like
a wet wet and water say this ocean is blue
(06:36):
sort of because the sky is blue, isn't it? Daniel,
I'm not the scientist. Oh there are those, so short
answer is the sky is blue, but not because the
ocean is blue. Okay, but you're not You're not alone
in that thought. I walked around campus that you see
Irvine is today and I asked a bunch of people,
why is the sky blue? Is that how scientists figure
things out? Crowd around was down, so you got a
(07:01):
second professor. Three out of four people, I mean I
asked more than four people, but three fourth of them
said because the ocean, right, that's I think the misinformation
we're given, like when your parents are like, so what
was your thinking that the ocean is blue? And so
somehow that's making the skuy? I don't know. And it's
(07:22):
just like if something. I never really bothered to think
through that because half the time when I look at
those and like that ain't blue or whatever. If you're
in the desert, like a thousand miles of sands around you,
the sky is still blue exactly. See, like a jealousy
thing like this guy was like, oh I like that color, right,
I'll put on my blue. They're always fighting, so drop
(07:43):
some science, all right, So why is this guy blue?
Well to answer the question why is anything any color,
you have to think for a moment about what that
means to have color, right, And I think there's a
basic misperception like, um, you know light has lots of
colors in it, right, And if something is painted blue,
for example, that doesn't mean that it absorbs blue light.
It's not like sucking in the blueness and is blue.
It's reflecting blue light. Right. So if something like this
(08:05):
cleanex blocks in front of me is blue, it means
that the paint on it reflects blue light and it's
absorbing all the other colors. Yeah, it sucks in all
the other colors. That's why black things get really hot
and white things don't, because they're youncing all the light back.
And I know this because the interior of my prelude
was jet black, and in the bat hot l a heat,
I would burn myself on the inside of the car.
(08:26):
And that's why jet eyes and whatever I'm tattooing, we're
all white to reflect the sunlight. Yeah, all right, so
the sky must be blue because it's reflecting blue light, right,
And in fact that's true. The atmosphere when the light
comes from the sun, the sun light from the sun
is mostly is white. Is a big mix of colors.
Actually it's a tiny big green, but it's mostly white light.
We looked at the sun in space, it would be white. Um.
(08:47):
Don't look at the sun though directly. When astronauts are
out there, do they have to avert their eyes or
do they have like sunglasses the sun visor? Yeah, um,
I don't know. That's a great question. I imagine NASA
sends them up there with sunglasses. That's because a blinded
astronaut would be a bad or. The astronauts are just
smart enough to not look at the sun. And then
(09:09):
that's how they got to be an astronaut. The sun's big,
got to be hard, and this is why you didn't
get into an assag every day. Yeah, how long do
I get to look at the sun? Is that why
you have an eye patch right now? That it Yeah,
that was from the eclipse. Told them don't use those binoculars. Alright.
(09:31):
So we got white light hitting the atmosphere right, and um,
when when the light hits the atmosphere, you've got the
different colors, and the blue light is the one that
wiggles the most. It's got the highest energy. And so
you know, light is a wave and it wiggles. So
the red light wiggles really slowly and the blue light
wiggles really fast. And the blue light bounces off the
atmosphere more than the red light does. Like little particles
(09:51):
in the atmosphere when the blue light hits them, they
get bounced. It's it's kind of like it's a scattering, right,
It doesn't like bounce off back into space. It's sort
of like the atmosphere. And then it makes basically glows, right,
it makes the atmosphere glow blue. That kind of datia. Yeah,
I think of it more like it gets reflected. Like, Um,
(10:11):
so you're looking up at the sky. You're not looking
at the sun, right, Why is there light coming from
that part at all? It's because it got reflected. So
light from the sun hit that part of the atmosphere
and then comes to your eyes. What part of that
light hits your eyes the part that got reflected, which
is the blue light. Just like if you're looking at
a blue wall, it's not glowing right, So it doesn't
produce lights, only reflecting light. It's reflecting the blue light
(10:33):
only right. Atmosphere is the same way. So the atmosphere
reflects the blue light, which is why it looks blue.
So why does it only reflect the blue and not
the other colors? Yeah, because the blue light wiggles more,
and the atmosphere is made of these little tiny particles,
and and the little tiny particles are better at reflecting
things that wiggle more because the wiggles are shorter. And
(10:54):
so imagine, for example, you're like walking across the field
filled with rocks. Right, if the box are really really big,
then you're gonna get bounced around. It's gonna be a
big obstacle. The rocks are really really tiny, like you're
walking across the beach. You don't even really notice. So
the blue light sees like really big rocks because it
wiggles more it's tiny, and so it gets bounced off
with them. The red light just like skips over them,
(11:16):
like walking over the same surface. Over the atmosphere, Yeah exactly.
So red light mostly goes through straight through air. What
blue light gets bounced, which is why you see in
the blue light in your eyes when you're looking up
at this guy. So it's about the size of the
atoms up in the atmosphere. It's not like a quantum
electron level kind of thing. No, it's basically about the
(11:36):
relative sizes of the wiggles and the light and the atmosphere.
But you know, bigger stuff reflects all light light, which
is why most powders are white, right, Because the particles
of the powder are pretty big, so they reflect everything.
But the atmospheric particles are much much smaller than the
powder you might have in your nine prelude, for example,
sugar and salt, the powdered sugar in the in the
(11:57):
seat of your the back seat of your old car.
Yeah exactly. Um, And so that's why the sky right,
because it reflects blue light. It also explains why, for example,
sunsets are not blue. Right, How does that explain it?
It's the same atmosphere, right, It's I understand it. But
when we were I mean, I'm just trying to see,
(12:19):
if you know, Daniel, So, yeah, why is the sky
so um? So? If you so, if you look at
the atmosphere, you're seeing reflected light. If you look directly
of the sun, don't do that. But if you were to,
you'd be seeing light directly from the sun. We're all
the blue is removed, right, because the blue light that
comes to you directly from the sun gets bounced away,
So you're seeing the redd or or the yellower side
(12:40):
of the spectrum. Right, So the blue is removed and
somewhere else and you see the yellows, the red, the oranges.
That's why the sun looks yellow in the sky. Right.
The sun isn't yellow, it's white, but it looks yellow
in the sky through the filter of the at exactly
the atmosphere. And now it's sunset, you're looking through a
lot more atmosphere because the sun is low in the sky,
so doesn't just come through a little bit of atmosphere.
(13:01):
It skims along through a lot of atmosphere, so it
gets like yellow wer so yellow, it looks orange and
red and darker and darker. Oh so as like a
sphere like versus just hitting it straight on, because it's
like that, you're getting this curvature, this slice that gets
way more atmospheres, You get more, more and more blue
light gets filtered out, and then you get just the
red light left. But the whole sky turns pink, or
(13:24):
at least half of the sky turns pink. Yeah, that's
mostly because of smog. That's because we live in l A.
If the sky was perfectly clear, right then the sunset
would look more yellow and mostly just around the sun.
But then that light, that yellowy red light whatever, bounces
off of particles in the atmosphere or smog whatever, and
that clouds and that's what gives you the beautiful sunset.
(13:44):
But the color comes from all the blue getting filtered
out by the atmosphere. Does being closer to the equator
effect the beauty of the sunset, because I think of
like like tropical places that have amazing sunse there there
really isn't that much pollution or this I feel like
the smog is influencing a color of the sunset. So
I'm curious if that you could probably just in a
better mood if you're you're like, oh my god, that's
(14:06):
the best sunset ever, and the locals are like, what
cocktails make the sunset better? That's a physics physical effect
for it. Also be the haze, like water vapor will
do that also, gotcha, there's probably more equation at the equation. Wow,
you've embarrassed yourself. Let's talk quantum machine guns. Wow, I'm
(14:29):
just hosting a podcast. But first let's take a quick break.
All right, moving on, Jack, what is your question today?
(14:52):
My question is I would love to hear from like
your how your brain and explaining the quantum machine gun theory,
because it's hard for me to get my simple brain. Yes,
Jack tried when we were talking about this. He tried
to explain it, and I actually just walked away because
I did not understand the single thing he was trying
(15:14):
to say. I have a question about your question that
why are you so fascinated by quantum machine guns? Are
you looking at build one? Are you think about purchasing
one in eBay? And you want to know if it's
real or what's the situation. I mean, it's a very
so I was a philosophy major and it's like a
very philosophical I don't know what like it's worth. You
can't say I was a philosophy major. I became a
(15:39):
philosophy major. That's a philosophic question question in itself. And
it's like that it gets into you know, multiverse and
all those different things, which it would seem to me
would affect just the entire metaphysical reality of of the world.
So that's why it interests me, like if if it
(16:04):
is real and not just a thought experiment, it would
seem to be like a a existence of shaping thing.
I guess, all right, well, what you can explain what
it is? And then what is he talking about? What
is it? What is it? Quantum machine gun? Quantum machine
done is like a variation on the Schrodinger's catecorum experiment
(16:28):
that from Silicon Valley. Okay, Hollywood is entertaining and educating, awesome.
So the idea there is put something like a particle
that's decaying. We don't know how long it's going to
take the decay. Put it in a box and then
when the particle decays, it kills the cats, amount releases
poison or something, and then you can ask the question,
is the cat dead or is the kind of live?
(16:49):
It's inside the box. You can't see it, right, It's
just determined by what that quantum random particle does. And
so the idea is you put the particle in the
box and you don't know whether or not it is
decay aid, which you know has consequences for the cat,
and so because you don't know, then you say things
like it's both dead and alive because as a probability
to be both. Okay, So that's the shorting, right, because
(17:10):
the particle is both doing but doing both things at
the same time, and so if the cat's life depends
on the particle, then the cats must be also dead
and alive at the same time. That's right. And that's
that's actually the heart of the question, which the machine
gun example probes also is what's going on with quantum mechanics,
Like if a particle can do A or B has
(17:31):
probability to do A and B, is it both A
and B before you've looked, or has it chosen one
or has the universe split into one? Universe where the
particle has done a one universe where the particles done
b That seems like this explanation obviously, right, Let's just
create a whole new universe every time. Max Tegmark took
this to the next level and he said, let's not
(17:51):
put cats at risk. Let's put ourselves at risk. He said,
let's put um Let's build a machine gun where the
machine gun fires based on what a particle does. So
a particle can can be spin up or spin down
with equal probability. It's like a coin flip, right, And
if every time you press the trigger on the machine gun,
it asks the particle, are you spin up? Are you
spin down? It's been up, it shoots. If it's been down,
(18:13):
it doesn't. It's like the particles in charge of the
safety switch the gun. You pull it, you pull the trigger,
but the particle, if it's doing one thing, they'll let
you shoot. If it's doing the other thing, it won't
let you shoot. It's a little like Russian roulette, right,
Russian roulette. You you know, put three bullets in a
six chamber gun or whatever, you spin it, you have
a fifty chance of dying. Right. The problem with the
Russian roulette is it's determined once you put them in
(18:35):
there and you spin it, it's either going to be
a bullet or an envy chamber. It's fixed. Right. With
a quantum machine gun, it's supposed to be truly random,
like the universe is really random. So when you press
the button, Max Tegmark says, the universe splits into two
one where it shoots a bullet and one where it
doesn't shoot a bullet. And that's the crazy thing is imagining,
Like the universe is splitting into two universes. So the
(18:58):
thought experiment is like you go in real sure the
Inger's box. Would you take out the cat? You put
yourself in and you see what happens. Yeah, but it's
more than that, he says, Now build the gun pointed
at yourself and keep pressing the button. What will you hear?
And his point is you will only hear click click,
click click. You will never hear the gun go off,
(19:21):
which you would think would be a one and a
billion uh probability, right, because if you're multiplying by and
it gets more and more unlikely that you're not gonna
hear the gun go off. But why does it have
to be life or death, though you can just be
a light, and yeah, that's true. People have to do
(19:48):
with I mean, if it was just a light, it
wouldn't you wouldn't cease to exist, right, And the idea
is that in there there are nine other like if
it's a one thousand things, there are nine other branches
of reality and probability where you did die. But because
(20:08):
you're you only exist because you are your experience, then
you are only in the one branch that where it
didn't go off. Essentially, there's always one one version of
the universe and which it doesn't go off no matter
how many times you click. You click a million times,
there's some probability for it to never kill you. And
(20:29):
there's somebody who pressed it a million times and had
that experience. There's some version of the universe in which
that happened. So that guy is the only one who's
still awake. And he says, you know, you only ever
hear clicks. I think you hear a bunch of clicks
and then eventually you hear a boom. Right, But there's
there's some version of you that can do as many
clicks as you want. Right. They seem they both both
(20:52):
Schrodinger's cat and quantum machine gun theories seem like really
good ways for you to make physicists who believe in
the more diverse like realize that they don't actually believe. Okay,
you believe that here, do this thing, and if you
truly believe in it thing, you'll never die, right because
(21:12):
and I think that was what Schroedeger's cat was originally
designed to like illustrate the absurdity of quantum theory, like
how can a cat be alive? And right? Yeah, exactly
do you think is that true? Was that example that
Max Techmark come up with this example to, like, you know,
kind of puts physicist on the spot. I think he
(21:34):
probably came up with his example to sell his book,
which I think went pretty well for him and didn't
sell it at the same time. In some universe, it's
the best summer universe is a warehouse full of it.
But you're the philosopher. Tell me, do you think there's
another universe out there where you you know, it's something else?
This morning a different kind of cereal. I think it's
as good as anything I've come up with on my end,
(21:58):
or anything I've had a high ball or a low.
Not very good, yeah, very very low. Bar No. I
think it's just a really interesting way to think about things.
I don't think you necessarily want to think about it
if it's think about it that way, if it's going
to make you behave recklessly, if you're gonna be like
I'm invincible, like driving down, don't die. But well, basically, right,
(22:21):
that's that's the conclusion of the experiment, is that if
you're still healing here in the click, you must be
in the one universe, however improbable, where where it's like
running back and forth across the freeway. Right version of
you survives that for an hour, and you survives it
for a day as a version gets splat immediately, right, Yeah,
but you are don't do any of these things because
(22:44):
I mean, the reason that they design it where the
gun goes off based on a quantum coin flip, is
because that's really the only truly like random thing. So
I mean, you're still on a chain of probability where
some thing is or isn't going to happen unless you are.
Existence is being determined by a quantum coin flip, which
(23:07):
still blows my mind. I mean, I think I understand
quantum mechanics as well as I'm ever going to. But
I still don't understand how something can be truly random,
Like there has to be some mechanism in the universe
that's producing random numbers. There's like some What does it
mean to be truly random and not truly random? What's
the difference? Well, truly random means not predictable, right, not repeatable,
(23:29):
it doesn't depend anything, doesn't Well, it can depend on something,
it can be influenced by it. But you have a
distribution where the random draw is not repeatable, not determined
by the initial conditions. Right, It's not a true magical box.
Not magical. It's physics, man. Physics is indistinguishable from that.
(23:50):
I mean, that's que what you're saying, Like if we
have magic, I mean, like violating the laws of physics
is impossible, that would be like Lord of the Rinks
man magic. But if you were to call that quantum
nugget there that can give you anything at any given time,
you might you might use the word magic, wouldn't you.
I think you might use the word magic. Yeah, yea yeah.
(24:14):
I think there's a physics we understand and physics we
don't yet understand, right, You can call that magic if
you like, or you can call it, you know, science
fiction or whatever. But wait, so what's the other form
of randomness if it because you said truly random, there's
there's really only truly random and earnest pseudo random, like
your computer can generate random numbers, but do not actually random.
(24:36):
Like you ask computer, give me a series of random numbers,
it will give you the same series every time, so
it's not really random. Or it's going through an algorithm
that someone's created, and it's algorithm for choosing things, which
you know, spread the numbers out basically, but it's not
actually random. You can be the same you just ask
the same computer the same question. It will give you
the same string of random numbers. Right. Or even throwing
a die is not truly random, right because you can
(24:59):
trace the result back to some something you did way back.
That's right, Like whether you have decided to put a
rabbit foot in your pocket or not? Right, magic physics,
you skipped your scientology meeting or not. I don't skip.
(25:20):
It's going to get downgraded. No, you're right, it's not random.
It's chaotic, right, difficult to predict. So it's a good
proxy for randomness, right, but it is totally determined by
how you roll the die. You roll the die the
same way every time, you're gonna get exactly the same answer.
It's impossible to do, which is why it's a good
proxy for randomness. But yeah, quantumic Hanks is the only
true randomness in the universe that we know of, and
(25:40):
it seems random because we just can't explain it yet, right,
although there are experiments they have done that basically proved
that it's random, that it's completely and it's completely random. Yeah,
there are these crazy experiments that are really subtle. They're
called It's about Bills inequality, these correlations between particles where
they prove that it can't be determined by the initial conditions,
that has to be actually random, which is pretty mind
(26:02):
blowing something. We asked your question, Jack do we um. Yeah,
that was that was that actually was a much better explanation.
I don't know, I it's it's so interesting, like multiverse
theory just in general, so like to even think that
there are other questions delving into that is just like
another splitting my brain in nine directions. Again, Well, I
think the multiverse is bonkers. I mean, that's not a
(26:24):
scientific point of that's philosophical boys. So you can say
bonkers and crazy, but you can't see magic. No magic
is not allowed. Bonkers, they're going to bleep that work.
And I don't mean bonker is in a negative way,
Like the universe is bonkers. I mean like the crazy
stuff we talk about on our show, like you know,
how do you wrap your head around it? Huge spinning
stars and black holes and all that stuff is bonkers
even if it's real. Right, But the multiverse is like
(26:46):
extra bonkers because imagining like extra universe is being created
all this stuff. I just don't I can't. I don't
know where to put that in my head. A version
where you are on our show, Jack and Miles explaining
that's it. I really want to want to be a
very different kind of universe. Well, um, we we do
(27:07):
have a whole episode about the multiverse, and the whole
episode about quantum randomness. Magic, No bonkers, quantum bonkers. I've
never heard of a game called physics the gathering that
sounds like there's nothing on all the cards. How do
(27:30):
I know I'm winning? All right, So let's get to
your last question about But first, let's take our last
break of the episode. Alright, Miles, you have one last
(27:51):
question for Yes, and it's a it's and it's an
epic and scale, it's planetarry and scale, it's planetary. Yes,
it's gigantic. It's probably probably the best question you've ever
been asked at. Yeah, this is some real magic stuff.
I'm gonna hit you with. Yeah, I gotta do some
stretches here. Yeah, it was incredible. He just put his
(28:15):
leg behind his head hanging from the ceiling. You wish
this was the TV show? Right? Oh? I do? Um.
You know, I I love space and I like uh
the soldiers like crows. Yeah, I love space. I'm still
on my Space. Actually, I don't use Facebook anything. Space
that even on my keyboard gigantic space bar it overtakes
(28:37):
the rest of the keys. Um. But you know, just
planetary formation is just another not necessarily philosophical thing because
that's a physical, uh phenomenon. I'm just curious because once
I started reading about the Juno probe that's going around Jupiter. Uh,
there were some people I spoke with who worked at
JPL who were sort of saying, like, Jupiter has a
(28:59):
lot of seek grits, or it will give us a
better understanding of planetary formation in this Solar system. And
I'm sort of like, well, why don't we why can't
we look at like Earth or whatever. So I'm just
sort of like that got me thinking, like, wow, it's
interesting to think they say, if we look at planetary
planetary formation is like a cookbook, We're only seeing the
finished product, right of everything being cooked or baked or whatever.
(29:20):
The end thing is is like but with understanding Jupiter
will begin to understand the recipe and that they want system,
yeah or whatever. But I just but it's interesting to
even think, you know, because we live on this physical
or Earth what what you know? What went down really
was the magic And you said you were a JPL
when you you got interested in Yeah, yeah, because I
(29:40):
at the at the time, I just knew that this
was like a very novel, like just a very important experiment.
This probe was going out and it was like months
before the first sets of data we're going to be
sent back, and everyone was just so like this is man,
like we really this is the thing, Like Jupiter really
is going to help us understand so much, so many
other things like weather and all these other things. So
(30:01):
it was just so interesting to me that there was
this this planet out there that if we can study
a bit more like it's gonna it could potentially help
us understand many other things that we experienced. So that's
why I'm like, Okay, yeah, I guess planetary formation is
is a lot more in depth than merely saying, hey,
we're here on Earth. You know, some stuff started swirling
around each other, got dense, and then boom. Yeah, well
(30:24):
that basically answers the question and density swirling, boom, planet
really got to planet. There's the recipe. Yeah, I think
that's really interesting question. I think it touches on something
which is like deep in everybody, which is we want
to understand our history, what went down, how did this
(30:47):
come about? And is this unusual? Like are there other
solar systems out there that have Earth's or is it
all jupiters? Is there a solarist method that's just like
all Uranus for example, or all Saturn's or something. Um. Yeah,
So it's pretty interesting stuff. And you know, the planets.
I think one of the interesting things that about that
is that the planets are formed about the same time
as the star. Right. The whole thing is basically a
(31:09):
big mix. You start with a big cloud of like
gas and dust and and other stuff that comes from
you know, other stars that blew up, and so you
like rubble out there in space, and then gravity gradually
pulls it together and most of the gas gets sucked
towards the center. So you get this huge star in
the middle of right, and then the leftover is just
sort of swirling around it. Right, Well, why does the
(31:29):
gas come in first? Why does the gas come in first?
It all sort of happens at once, But the gas
is light, and so it gets pulled in towards the center. Yeah,
and it rushes in faster, I guess because it's it's gas.
Well I think it's equally distributed. But the gas gets
sucked in towards the center faster than like the rocks
and stuff. So you end up with like a lot
of gas at the center, which becomes a star, and
(31:50):
then you get like, you know, where the gas was
pulled away, You get rocks which trying into like rocky planets,
and then the outer part you have still have gas
and ice and stuff left over, which is why you
get like big gas ants. Oh god, OK, So Jupiter
is like mostly hydrogen and water and that kind of stuff,
whereas Earth is not as mostly rock, right, But basically
it's just gravity, right. Gravity. It takes you a long time,
(32:12):
but gravity sucks this stuff together. You get a big
star and the stuff that's orbiting around it um gradually
gathers together, right, So it bounces into each other and
and you know, gravity sticks them together and just sort
of gradually pulls everything together, as you said, like density,
boom boom. Right. I guess the question is why doesn't
why why do we have planets at all? Why is
(32:33):
and why isn't the Solar System just a star? Why
doesn't everything just get sucked into the middle? Or why
aren't planets just asteroid belts? Yeah? Okay, so there's two
different answers there. Why do we have planets at all? Right?
Why didn't everything just gets sucked into like one black
hole or one star? Right? Well, there's some things keeping
things from falling into the center, right, And that's just
enough spinning. Right, So the whole blob when it started
(32:54):
was spinning already, and that spinning can't go away right
as angular momentum. It can't have to be conserved. You
can't just you can't just stop spinning. It's it's not
rubbing against anything to slow it down. It's just it's
in space, so it just keeps on spinning. Somehow, you
made that sound inappropriate. I mean, I would have preferred
frictionless environments. It was just weird that you are waggling
your eyebrows on my shirt. Yeah, the Sun does have
(33:20):
a history of rubbing inappropriately against things. Yes, no, it's yeah,
it's out there in space and there's nothing to slow down.
There's no friction, nothing to to grab onto it, so
it's going to keep spinning forever. And so the stuff
is moving and it ends up in orbit. Right. It's
like asking why doesn't the Moon fall to the Earth
Because it's moving so fast that it doesn't fall. That
keeps going around the Earth instead of falling the same
(33:41):
way the Earth is. And the stuff that made the
Earth is not going to fall into the Sun because
it's moving fast enough and it comes from that initial rotation.
Oh I see, So even though we get the Sun,
there's still stuff out there spinning around. It doesn't want
to fall into the Sun. Yeah, exactly, it's moving too
fast fall into the center. So it's too good to
be the Sun. It doesn't want to r up against
(34:03):
the Sun. Right, But why why does it form at
the planets? Like, like Jack said, some of someone just
stays as asteroid belts like debris, but some of it
forms into planets. Eventually it'll all gathered together. Like you
fast forward the Solar System a billion years or so,
and you'll have a smaller number of bigger asteroids. Eventually
these all come together. So that's about will be a planet.
(34:24):
I don't know about one planet, but like will still
really billion billions of years, we could have a new
place of visit in the same way rings turned into moons, right,
Rings are not a stable situation for a planet really
gathered together and turned it into moons. Yeah, like the
Earth probably had rings for a while after he got
hit by some other Plorida planet and created all this
(34:45):
debris that surrounded it which formed the moon. We probably
had some awesome set of rings which then gathered together
into a moon. So Saturn's on its way to having
a moon. Yeah, we don't know how old the rings
of Saturn are, but we think they're not very old.
I mean they're millions of years sure, but on the
Solar System time scale, they're pretty young, and so that
stuff eventually is going to gather together and form larger objects.
(35:06):
Yeah wow, okay, but each but also each planet got
different stuff based on where it was in the Solar System. Right,
The closer stuff got the rocks that were left over
not much gas because they got sucked up by the sun.
Stuff on the outside is like mostly gas. Like if
you look at what's inside Jupiter, crazy right, super compressed
and like metallic hydrogen. It's not hydrogen. Yeah, it sounds
(35:30):
like a color for a new iPhone or something, right,
we just call it silver. But but the marketing genius
is over. I mean you often hear Jupiter described as
a gas giant. People think, oh, it's just a big
ball of gas. It's gas, and then it's hydrogen. But
it's not in gaseous state, right, some of it's like solid.
So you could land on Jupiter because it's like it's
(35:52):
metallic hydrogen covered by like an ocean of liquid hydrogen
and then gas on top of it. So it has
an atmosphere, but there's an ocean of liquid hydrogen. I mean,
I wouldn't recommend going there without something like pretty nice equipment, right,
But there's a pretty pretty radiation, but there's something solid
there to land on. Well I read that, um, like
(36:12):
these gas planet gas planets out there, they represent ninety
of the mass of the Solar system. So it's it's like,
it's most of the Solar system except for the Sun. Yeah, yeah,
it's the Sun. Are are in these gas giants way
out there? Yeah, exactly, most of the mass in the
Solar systems the Sun. It's like then, of that one percent,
most of it's the gas giant planets. Because remember the
(36:36):
Earth is about one tenth of the radius of Jupiter,
which is about one tenth the radius of the Sun. Right,
all right, right, right, yeah, remember that. I just remember
as a kid, they're like, there could be I don't
remember the number, but it's like so many earths could
fit in the Sun. And I was like, yeah, right,
miss Holton, I'm out of here. I don't need this.
I'm in third grade. But you always forget that volume
(36:58):
goes by like the radius cube, so you can fit
It's only ten times wider, but you could fit a
thousand earths into you could fit a thousand jupiters into
the Sun. Right, So it's a yeah, So that's the number,
millionaire A million, yeah, million, A cool mill exactly. Yeah,
so you're right, Jupiter is huge and most of the
stuff that's not in the Sun is in Jupiter gobbled
(37:20):
up all this stuff. But we should be grateful, right
active Jupiter being really big could have saved our lives
because asteroids that would destroy Earth get sucked into Jupiter. Yeah, exactly.
It's acting like a linebacker out there, like cleaning out
the Solar system and gathering all that stuff. Um. I
don't know if you guys remember, but like twenty years
ago or so, there was a huge comment to enter
(37:41):
the Solar system and then like slammed right into Jupiter.
Oh really yeah comment Shoemaker Levy was really awesome. They
got broken shoemaker, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, it's slamming
a Jupiter and each piece that hit it we got
broken in like twenty pieces made a huge fireball, like
bigger than the Earth. But that he hit up us,
it would have caused a big wave. Who would have
(38:04):
had we'd probably recording a very different podcasting. Yeah. So yeah,
shout out to Jupiter. Thank you so much for you do.
I didn't realize how much of a debt wheel to Jupiter.
I have a new appreciation for it. Cool. So that's
the answer to planet information is it is just gravity
(38:25):
and stuff just that doesn't want to fall into the
sun out there. It starts to clump together. We get
the leftovers and we get a beautiful Earth with beautiful
sunsets exactly, exactly, and some call that magic. All right, Well,
thank you guys for joining us day um and be
(38:46):
sure for this you listening to check out their podcast,
The Daily See Guys. Yeah, Monday through Friday, Monday through
to give them the twitters and the Facebook. Oh yeah,
you can find our show at Daily zeit Geist on Twitter,
at the Daily See Geist on Instagram. I'm at Miles
of Gray g r a Y on Twitter and Instagram,
and i am at Jack Underscore O'Brien on Twitter. Awesome. Well,
(39:07):
thank you guys. Anyway, you guys have any question out there,
anyone listening has any questions, send us an email at
Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Send us your
philosophy questions, send us your physics questions, send us your
dating questions. We'll give physics answers to all of this
and not not your magic questions. There are no magic
questions only magic answers. Yeah, alright, alright, see you next time.
(39:32):
Thanks for tuning in. If you still have a question
after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
(39:53):
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember, Daniel and
Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm and I'm Daniel. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel
and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart
Radio in which we take the entire universe, slice it
up into little pieces, and explain every single one to you,
(00:28):
one at a time. We answer all of your deep
and amazing questions about this incredible universe, and we try
to make sure that you come away understanding something so
you can sound smart at the next cocktail party you
go to with a bunch of physicists. Today, we have
a special episode. We're going to be once again answering
listener questions, but not your normal listeners, not your everyday listeners.
(00:48):
That's right. There's a twist today. Today we have special
listener guests. That's our Today we have the host of
the podcast, the Daily Site, guys Miles and Jack here,
and we're gonna be answering their questions about out the universe,
about planets, about quantum machine guns. That's right. Usually these
guys are talking about the daily events of what's going
on in the world we should care about, but they
(01:09):
also think deeply about the universe. So they were here
to talk to us about deep questions about the universe.
Very deeply record scratch. It's just stopped in. This is
Jack sound oh sorry, and this is Miles. This is
what this is my voice. Much so welcome Jack and Miles.
(01:29):
Thank you thanks for having us. Yeah, so tell us
a little bit about your podcast Where can people You know,
it's like it's like a woke morning show. You know
what I mean, you wake up, we'll give you the
best news we have. It's Jack and I and a
comedian and we just run down the top stories. Uh.
I have a background in politics, so i'll you know,
talk like I know what I'm talking about. Uh, And
then Jack does the funny stuff. Every other every other
(01:52):
morning show is a sleeping morning problems. That is the
only our only excuse for people expressive. Yeah. But I
started the website cracked dot com and I've been doing
this for the past year and a half with Miles. Wow,
it's a good time. Yeah, pretty cool. So do you
(02:13):
guys cover science topics as well? When you talk about
the daily we do. If there's something like I think
that's important to humanity or funny, so we'll talk about like,
you know, the biomass, like insect biomass just decreasing at
an alarming rate. But we don't typically get into super
heavy stuff because like, if it's like gravitational waves territory,
I'm like, as long as Miles can see it, he
(02:37):
believes it exists, exactly. So I don't believe in germs
or dinosaurs. So do you believe in scientology because I
can see that building. You know, I believe it. We
are you're talking to at six operating sex right now.
I believe it exists, right, yeah, And then you're gonna
have to explain the universe of scientology to me someday.
Oh yeah, do you have a moment because I just
(02:59):
feeling clear? Actually yeah, great, great, I mean I feel
like I guess Zeno does have a lot to offer us,
but I think this maybe for another show. Yeah. Yeah,
that's a different universe exactly right. But there are aliens involved, right,
aren't there aliens? Yes, don't be patronizing. There are many aliens,
but in many different volcanoes we talked about, right, Oh yeah,
we did, because I think and the that Navy footage
(03:21):
where they said they found like an unidentified yeah, that
flying object, unidentified flying tic tach, did you say that's
interest in aliens is never pagonizing it's totally a great
do you that sounded? Yeah? So yeah, my claims about
not being sarcastic are since here. Okay, but what do
(03:42):
you think what did you see that video of that
tic tac? What did you what do you think that was?
I think it's something crazy we don't understand, but it
is something. It's something that was something something. Okay, definitely
not nothing. I figure it's just something like a technology
we're not familiar with. Yeah, it could be. It doesn't
have to be like extraterrestrial or weird under not understood.
You're talking from you know, the Navy pipe like that
(04:05):
like fighter pilot footage of how they saw that thing
just like rotating and then like inexplicably accelerating in different
directions that it was different. Yeah, And the Pentagon released
it like at the end of last year or the
year before. That wasn't just special effects. No, the Pentagon
was like, all right, we'll declassify this video if you
guys want to see it. Yeah. Yeah. Pentagon is crowdsourcing
(04:25):
its intelligence Internet, Yeah, to help us this out there,
Like this is why we invented the Internet. Source are
intelligence exactly to capture the intelligence of the genius of
the crowds. Cool, well as you guys talk about the
(04:45):
daily culture and the dailies, guys of of the humanity
on a daily basis. Yeah, and I imagine sometimes you
must have questions about the universe, about space, about the
role that humans and our cultures have it it um,
and so do they. You guys have three questions. We're
gonna try to run through them in an episode today,
and they're about plant information and quantum machines, guns, machines, guns,
(05:10):
and machine guns. Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was
a quantum machine gun or a quantum machine gun, a
gun that shoots understanding quantum mechanics into your brain. Yeah,
I think I have a more simple questions. And then
Jack is the one about quantum leap or whatever, quantum back. Yeah,
(05:32):
let's after all, Yes, it's almost definitely all right. So
where should we start? Oh, let's just let's go nice
and easy. Yeah. I get most of my scientific questions
from the Jiza. And there's a song called Fourth Chamber
that asked the question why is the sky blue? Why
(05:53):
is water wet? The second question doesn't make any sense
to me, but the first one I have always been curious,
why is the sky blue? I love that question? Why
is water wet? Actually it's like a really interesting deep Yeah,
is just too much for my brain to hold. You
know that song particle many particle man. Yeah, when he's underwater,
(06:14):
does he get wet or does the water get instead?
Deep stuff? Yeah? Mine that I guess like as a child,
I'm just curious. Is the version that I understand the
sky to be blue true, which is like because the
ocean is that? It s almost it's kind of like
a wet wet and water say this ocean is blue
(06:36):
sort of because the sky is blue, isn't it? Daniel,
I'm not the scientist. Oh there are those, so short
answer is the sky is blue, but not because the
ocean is blue. Okay, but you're not You're not alone
in that thought. I walked around campus that you see
Irvine is today and I asked a bunch of people,
why is the sky blue? Is that how scientists figure
things out? Crowd around was down, so you got a
(07:01):
second professor. Three out of four people, I mean I
asked more than four people, but three fourth of them
said because the ocean, right, that's I think the misinformation
we're given, like when your parents are like, so what
was your thinking that the ocean is blue? And so
somehow that's making the skuy? I don't know. And it's
(07:22):
just like if something. I never really bothered to think
through that because half the time when I look at
those and like that ain't blue or whatever. If you're
in the desert, like a thousand miles of sands around you,
the sky is still blue exactly. See, like a jealousy
thing like this guy was like, oh I like that color, right,
I'll put on my blue. They're always fighting, so drop
(07:43):
some science, all right, So why is this guy blue?
Well to answer the question why is anything any color,
you have to think for a moment about what that
means to have color, right, And I think there's a
basic misperception like, um, you know light has lots of
colors in it, right, And if something is painted blue,
for example, that doesn't mean that it absorbs blue light.
It's not like sucking in the blueness and is blue.
It's reflecting blue light. Right. So if something like this
(08:05):
cleanex blocks in front of me is blue, it means
that the paint on it reflects blue light and it's
absorbing all the other colors. Yeah, it sucks in all
the other colors. That's why black things get really hot
and white things don't, because they're youncing all the light back.
And I know this because the interior of my prelude
was jet black, and in the bat hot l a heat,
I would burn myself on the inside of the car.
(08:26):
And that's why jet eyes and whatever I'm tattooing, we're
all white to reflect the sunlight. Yeah, all right, so
the sky must be blue because it's reflecting blue light, right,
And in fact that's true. The atmosphere when the light
comes from the sun, the sun light from the sun
is mostly is white. Is a big mix of colors.
Actually it's a tiny big green, but it's mostly white light.
We looked at the sun in space, it would be white. Um.
(08:47):
Don't look at the sun though directly. When astronauts are
out there, do they have to avert their eyes or
do they have like sunglasses the sun visor? Yeah, um,
I don't know. That's a great question. I imagine NASA
sends them up there with sunglasses. That's because a blinded
astronaut would be a bad or. The astronauts are just
smart enough to not look at the sun. And then
(09:09):
that's how they got to be an astronaut. The sun's big,
got to be hard, and this is why you didn't
get into an assag every day. Yeah, how long do
I get to look at the sun? Is that why
you have an eye patch right now? That it Yeah,
that was from the eclipse. Told them don't use those binoculars. Alright.
(09:31):
So we got white light hitting the atmosphere right, and um,
when when the light hits the atmosphere, you've got the
different colors, and the blue light is the one that
wiggles the most. It's got the highest energy. And so
you know, light is a wave and it wiggles. So
the red light wiggles really slowly and the blue light
wiggles really fast. And the blue light bounces off the
atmosphere more than the red light does. Like little particles
(09:51):
in the atmosphere when the blue light hits them, they
get bounced. It's it's kind of like it's a scattering, right,
It doesn't like bounce off back into space. It's sort
of like the atmosphere. And then it makes basically glows, right,
it makes the atmosphere glow blue. That kind of datia. Yeah,
I think of it more like it gets reflected. Like, Um,
(10:11):
so you're looking up at the sky. You're not looking
at the sun, right, Why is there light coming from
that part at all? It's because it got reflected. So
light from the sun hit that part of the atmosphere
and then comes to your eyes. What part of that
light hits your eyes the part that got reflected, which
is the blue light. Just like if you're looking at
a blue wall, it's not glowing right, So it doesn't
produce lights, only reflecting light. It's reflecting the blue light
(10:33):
only right. Atmosphere is the same way. So the atmosphere
reflects the blue light, which is why it looks blue.
So why does it only reflect the blue and not
the other colors? Yeah, because the blue light wiggles more,
and the atmosphere is made of these little tiny particles,
and and the little tiny particles are better at reflecting
things that wiggle more because the wiggles are shorter. And
(10:54):
so imagine, for example, you're like walking across the field
filled with rocks. Right, if the box are really really big,
then you're gonna get bounced around. It's gonna be a
big obstacle. The rocks are really really tiny, like you're
walking across the beach. You don't even really notice. So
the blue light sees like really big rocks because it
wiggles more it's tiny, and so it gets bounced off
with them. The red light just like skips over them,
(11:16):
like walking over the same surface. Over the atmosphere, Yeah exactly.
So red light mostly goes through straight through air. What
blue light gets bounced, which is why you see in
the blue light in your eyes when you're looking up
at this guy. So it's about the size of the
atoms up in the atmosphere. It's not like a quantum
electron level kind of thing. No, it's basically about the
(11:36):
relative sizes of the wiggles and the light and the atmosphere.
But you know, bigger stuff reflects all light light, which
is why most powders are white, right, Because the particles
of the powder are pretty big, so they reflect everything.
But the atmospheric particles are much much smaller than the
powder you might have in your nine prelude, for example,
sugar and salt, the powdered sugar in the in the
(11:57):
seat of your the back seat of your old car.
Yeah exactly. Um, And so that's why the sky right,
because it reflects blue light. It also explains why, for example,
sunsets are not blue. Right, How does that explain it?
It's the same atmosphere, right, It's I understand it. But
when we were I mean, I'm just trying to see,
(12:19):
if you know, Daniel, So, yeah, why is the sky
so um? So? If you so, if you look at
the atmosphere, you're seeing reflected light. If you look directly
of the sun, don't do that. But if you were to,
you'd be seeing light directly from the sun. We're all
the blue is removed, right, because the blue light that
comes to you directly from the sun gets bounced away,
So you're seeing the redd or or the yellower side
(12:40):
of the spectrum. Right, So the blue is removed and
somewhere else and you see the yellows, the red, the oranges.
That's why the sun looks yellow in the sky. Right.
The sun isn't yellow, it's white, but it looks yellow
in the sky through the filter of the at exactly
the atmosphere. And now it's sunset, you're looking through a
lot more atmosphere because the sun is low in the sky,
so doesn't just come through a little bit of atmosphere.
(13:01):
It skims along through a lot of atmosphere, so it
gets like yellow wer so yellow, it looks orange and
red and darker and darker. Oh so as like a
sphere like versus just hitting it straight on, because it's
like that, you're getting this curvature, this slice that gets
way more atmospheres, You get more, more and more blue
light gets filtered out, and then you get just the
red light left. But the whole sky turns pink, or
(13:24):
at least half of the sky turns pink. Yeah, that's
mostly because of smog. That's because we live in l A.
If the sky was perfectly clear, right then the sunset
would look more yellow and mostly just around the sun.
But then that light, that yellowy red light whatever, bounces
off of particles in the atmosphere or smog whatever, and
that clouds and that's what gives you the beautiful sunset.
(13:44):
But the color comes from all the blue getting filtered
out by the atmosphere. Does being closer to the equator
effect the beauty of the sunset, because I think of
like like tropical places that have amazing sunse there there
really isn't that much pollution or this I feel like
the smog is influencing a color of the sunset. So
I'm curious if that you could probably just in a
better mood if you're you're like, oh my god, that's
(14:06):
the best sunset ever, and the locals are like, what
cocktails make the sunset better? That's a physics physical effect
for it. Also be the haze, like water vapor will
do that also, gotcha, there's probably more equation at the equation. Wow,
you've embarrassed yourself. Let's talk quantum machine guns. Wow, I'm
(14:29):
just hosting a podcast. But first let's take a quick break.
All right, moving on, Jack, what is your question today?
(14:52):
My question is I would love to hear from like
your how your brain and explaining the quantum machine gun theory,
because it's hard for me to get my simple brain. Yes,
Jack tried when we were talking about this. He tried
to explain it, and I actually just walked away because
I did not understand the single thing he was trying
(15:14):
to say. I have a question about your question that
why are you so fascinated by quantum machine guns? Are
you looking at build one? Are you think about purchasing
one in eBay? And you want to know if it's
real or what's the situation. I mean, it's a very
so I was a philosophy major and it's like a
very philosophical I don't know what like it's worth. You
can't say I was a philosophy major. I became a
(15:39):
philosophy major. That's a philosophic question question in itself. And
it's like that it gets into you know, multiverse and
all those different things, which it would seem to me
would affect just the entire metaphysical reality of of the world.
So that's why it interests me, like if if it
(16:04):
is real and not just a thought experiment, it would
seem to be like a a existence of shaping thing.
I guess, all right, well, what you can explain what
it is? And then what is he talking about? What
is it? What is it? Quantum machine gun? Quantum machine
done is like a variation on the Schrodinger's catecorum experiment
(16:28):
that from Silicon Valley. Okay, Hollywood is entertaining and educating, awesome.
So the idea there is put something like a particle
that's decaying. We don't know how long it's going to
take the decay. Put it in a box and then
when the particle decays, it kills the cats, amount releases
poison or something, and then you can ask the question,
is the cat dead or is the kind of live?
(16:49):
It's inside the box. You can't see it, right, It's
just determined by what that quantum random particle does. And
so the idea is you put the particle in the
box and you don't know whether or not it is
decay aid, which you know has consequences for the cat,
and so because you don't know, then you say things
like it's both dead and alive because as a probability
to be both. Okay, So that's the shorting, right, because
(17:10):
the particle is both doing but doing both things at
the same time, and so if the cat's life depends
on the particle, then the cats must be also dead
and alive at the same time. That's right. And that's
that's actually the heart of the question, which the machine
gun example probes also is what's going on with quantum mechanics,
Like if a particle can do A or B has
(17:31):
probability to do A and B, is it both A
and B before you've looked, or has it chosen one
or has the universe split into one? Universe where the
particle has done a one universe where the particles done
b That seems like this explanation obviously, right, Let's just
create a whole new universe every time. Max Tegmark took
this to the next level and he said, let's not
(17:51):
put cats at risk. Let's put ourselves at risk. He said,
let's put um Let's build a machine gun where the
machine gun fires based on what a particle does. So
a particle can can be spin up or spin down
with equal probability. It's like a coin flip, right, And
if every time you press the trigger on the machine gun,
it asks the particle, are you spin up? Are you
spin down? It's been up, it shoots. If it's been down,
(18:13):
it doesn't. It's like the particles in charge of the
safety switch the gun. You pull it, you pull the trigger,
but the particle, if it's doing one thing, they'll let
you shoot. If it's doing the other thing, it won't
let you shoot. It's a little like Russian roulette, right,
Russian roulette. You you know, put three bullets in a
six chamber gun or whatever, you spin it, you have
a fifty chance of dying. Right. The problem with the
Russian roulette is it's determined once you put them in
(18:35):
there and you spin it, it's either going to be
a bullet or an envy chamber. It's fixed. Right. With
a quantum machine gun, it's supposed to be truly random,
like the universe is really random. So when you press
the button, Max Tegmark says, the universe splits into two
one where it shoots a bullet and one where it
doesn't shoot a bullet. And that's the crazy thing is imagining,
Like the universe is splitting into two universes. So the
(18:58):
thought experiment is like you go in real sure the
Inger's box. Would you take out the cat? You put
yourself in and you see what happens. Yeah, but it's
more than that, he says, Now build the gun pointed
at yourself and keep pressing the button. What will you hear?
And his point is you will only hear click click,
click click. You will never hear the gun go off,
(19:21):
which you would think would be a one and a
billion uh probability, right, because if you're multiplying by and
it gets more and more unlikely that you're not gonna
hear the gun go off. But why does it have
to be life or death, though you can just be
a light, and yeah, that's true. People have to do
(19:48):
with I mean, if it was just a light, it
wouldn't you wouldn't cease to exist, right, And the idea
is that in there there are nine other like if
it's a one thousand things, there are nine other branches
of reality and probability where you did die. But because
(20:08):
you're you only exist because you are your experience, then
you are only in the one branch that where it
didn't go off. Essentially, there's always one one version of
the universe and which it doesn't go off no matter
how many times you click. You click a million times,
there's some probability for it to never kill you. And
(20:29):
there's somebody who pressed it a million times and had
that experience. There's some version of the universe in which
that happened. So that guy is the only one who's
still awake. And he says, you know, you only ever
hear clicks. I think you hear a bunch of clicks
and then eventually you hear a boom. Right, But there's
there's some version of you that can do as many
clicks as you want. Right. They seem they both both
(20:52):
Schrodinger's cat and quantum machine gun theories seem like really
good ways for you to make physicists who believe in
the more diverse like realize that they don't actually believe. Okay,
you believe that here, do this thing, and if you
truly believe in it thing, you'll never die, right because
(21:12):
and I think that was what Schroedeger's cat was originally
designed to like illustrate the absurdity of quantum theory, like
how can a cat be alive? And right? Yeah, exactly
do you think is that true? Was that example that
Max Techmark come up with this example to, like, you know,
kind of puts physicist on the spot. I think he
(21:34):
probably came up with his example to sell his book,
which I think went pretty well for him and didn't
sell it at the same time. In some universe, it's
the best summer universe is a warehouse full of it.
But you're the philosopher. Tell me, do you think there's
another universe out there where you you know, it's something else?
This morning a different kind of cereal. I think it's
as good as anything I've come up with on my end,
(21:58):
or anything I've had a high ball or a low.
Not very good, yeah, very very low. Bar No. I
think it's just a really interesting way to think about things.
I don't think you necessarily want to think about it
if it's think about it that way, if it's going
to make you behave recklessly, if you're gonna be like
I'm invincible, like driving down, don't die. But well, basically, right,
(22:21):
that's that's the conclusion of the experiment, is that if
you're still healing here in the click, you must be
in the one universe, however improbable, where where it's like
running back and forth across the freeway. Right version of
you survives that for an hour, and you survives it
for a day as a version gets splat immediately, right, Yeah,
but you are don't do any of these things because
(22:44):
I mean, the reason that they design it where the
gun goes off based on a quantum coin flip, is
because that's really the only truly like random thing. So
I mean, you're still on a chain of probability where
some thing is or isn't going to happen unless you are.
Existence is being determined by a quantum coin flip, which
(23:07):
still blows my mind. I mean, I think I understand
quantum mechanics as well as I'm ever going to. But
I still don't understand how something can be truly random,
Like there has to be some mechanism in the universe
that's producing random numbers. There's like some What does it
mean to be truly random and not truly random? What's
the difference? Well, truly random means not predictable, right, not repeatable,
(23:29):
it doesn't depend anything, doesn't Well, it can depend on something,
it can be influenced by it. But you have a
distribution where the random draw is not repeatable, not determined
by the initial conditions. Right, It's not a true magical box.
Not magical. It's physics, man. Physics is indistinguishable from that.
(23:50):
I mean, that's que what you're saying, Like if we
have magic, I mean, like violating the laws of physics
is impossible, that would be like Lord of the Rinks
man magic. But if you were to call that quantum
nugget there that can give you anything at any given time,
you might you might use the word magic, wouldn't you.
I think you might use the word magic. Yeah, yea yeah.
(24:14):
I think there's a physics we understand and physics we
don't yet understand, right, You can call that magic if
you like, or you can call it, you know, science
fiction or whatever. But wait, so what's the other form
of randomness if it because you said truly random, there's
there's really only truly random and earnest pseudo random, like
your computer can generate random numbers, but do not actually random.
(24:36):
Like you ask computer, give me a series of random numbers,
it will give you the same series every time, so
it's not really random. Or it's going through an algorithm
that someone's created, and it's algorithm for choosing things, which
you know, spread the numbers out basically, but it's not
actually random. You can be the same you just ask
the same computer the same question. It will give you
the same string of random numbers. Right. Or even throwing
a die is not truly random, right because you can
(24:59):
trace the result back to some something you did way back.
That's right, Like whether you have decided to put a
rabbit foot in your pocket or not? Right, magic physics,
you skipped your scientology meeting or not. I don't skip.
(25:20):
It's going to get downgraded. No, you're right, it's not random.
It's chaotic, right, difficult to predict. So it's a good
proxy for randomness, right, but it is totally determined by
how you roll the die. You roll the die the
same way every time, you're gonna get exactly the same answer.
It's impossible to do, which is why it's a good
proxy for randomness. But yeah, quantumic Hanks is the only
true randomness in the universe that we know of, and
(25:40):
it seems random because we just can't explain it yet, right,
although there are experiments they have done that basically proved
that it's random, that it's completely and it's completely random. Yeah,
there are these crazy experiments that are really subtle. They're
called It's about Bills inequality, these correlations between particles where
they prove that it can't be determined by the initial conditions,
that has to be actually random, which is pretty mind
(26:02):
blowing something. We asked your question, Jack do we um. Yeah,
that was that was that actually was a much better explanation.
I don't know, I it's it's so interesting, like multiverse
theory just in general, so like to even think that
there are other questions delving into that is just like
another splitting my brain in nine directions. Again, Well, I
think the multiverse is bonkers. I mean, that's not a
(26:24):
scientific point of that's philosophical boys. So you can say
bonkers and crazy, but you can't see magic. No magic
is not allowed. Bonkers, they're going to bleep that work.
And I don't mean bonker is in a negative way,
Like the universe is bonkers. I mean like the crazy
stuff we talk about on our show, like you know,
how do you wrap your head around it? Huge spinning
stars and black holes and all that stuff is bonkers
even if it's real. Right, But the multiverse is like
(26:46):
extra bonkers because imagining like extra universe is being created
all this stuff. I just don't I can't. I don't
know where to put that in my head. A version
where you are on our show, Jack and Miles explaining
that's it. I really want to want to be a
very different kind of universe. Well, um, we we do
(27:07):
have a whole episode about the multiverse, and the whole
episode about quantum randomness. Magic, No bonkers, quantum bonkers. I've
never heard of a game called physics the gathering that
sounds like there's nothing on all the cards. How do
(27:30):
I know I'm winning? All right, So let's get to
your last question about But first, let's take our last
break of the episode. Alright, Miles, you have one last
(27:51):
question for Yes, and it's a it's and it's an
epic and scale, it's planetarry and scale, it's planetary. Yes,
it's gigantic. It's probably probably the best question you've ever
been asked at. Yeah, this is some real magic stuff.
I'm gonna hit you with. Yeah, I gotta do some
stretches here. Yeah, it was incredible. He just put his
(28:15):
leg behind his head hanging from the ceiling. You wish
this was the TV show? Right? Oh? I do? Um.
You know, I I love space and I like uh
the soldiers like crows. Yeah, I love space. I'm still
on my Space. Actually, I don't use Facebook anything. Space
that even on my keyboard gigantic space bar it overtakes
(28:37):
the rest of the keys. Um. But you know, just
planetary formation is just another not necessarily philosophical thing because
that's a physical, uh phenomenon. I'm just curious because once
I started reading about the Juno probe that's going around Jupiter. Uh,
there were some people I spoke with who worked at
JPL who were sort of saying, like, Jupiter has a
(28:59):
lot of seek grits, or it will give us a
better understanding of planetary formation in this Solar system. And
I'm sort of like, well, why don't we why can't
we look at like Earth or whatever. So I'm just
sort of like that got me thinking, like, wow, it's
interesting to think they say, if we look at planetary
planetary formation is like a cookbook, We're only seeing the
finished product, right of everything being cooked or baked or whatever.
(29:20):
The end thing is is like but with understanding Jupiter
will begin to understand the recipe and that they want system,
yeah or whatever. But I just but it's interesting to
even think, you know, because we live on this physical
or Earth what what you know? What went down really
was the magic And you said you were a JPL
when you you got interested in Yeah, yeah, because I
(29:40):
at the at the time, I just knew that this
was like a very novel, like just a very important experiment.
This probe was going out and it was like months
before the first sets of data we're going to be
sent back, and everyone was just so like this is man,
like we really this is the thing, Like Jupiter really
is going to help us understand so much, so many
other things like weather and all these other things. So
(30:01):
it was just so interesting to me that there was
this this planet out there that if we can study
a bit more like it's gonna it could potentially help
us understand many other things that we experienced. So that's
why I'm like, Okay, yeah, I guess planetary formation is
is a lot more in depth than merely saying, hey,
we're here on Earth. You know, some stuff started swirling
around each other, got dense, and then boom. Yeah, well
(30:24):
that basically answers the question and density swirling, boom, planet
really got to planet. There's the recipe. Yeah, I think
that's really interesting question. I think it touches on something
which is like deep in everybody, which is we want
to understand our history, what went down, how did this
(30:47):
come about? And is this unusual? Like are there other
solar systems out there that have Earth's or is it
all jupiters? Is there a solarist method that's just like
all Uranus for example, or all Saturn's or something. Um. Yeah,
So it's pretty interesting stuff. And you know, the planets.
I think one of the interesting things that about that
is that the planets are formed about the same time
as the star. Right. The whole thing is basically a
(31:09):
big mix. You start with a big cloud of like
gas and dust and and other stuff that comes from
you know, other stars that blew up, and so you
like rubble out there in space, and then gravity gradually
pulls it together and most of the gas gets sucked
towards the center. So you get this huge star in
the middle of right, and then the leftover is just
sort of swirling around it. Right, Well, why does the
(31:29):
gas come in first? Why does the gas come in first?
It all sort of happens at once, But the gas
is light, and so it gets pulled in towards the center. Yeah,
and it rushes in faster, I guess because it's it's gas.
Well I think it's equally distributed. But the gas gets
sucked in towards the center faster than like the rocks
and stuff. So you end up with like a lot
of gas at the center, which becomes a star, and
(31:50):
then you get like, you know, where the gas was
pulled away, You get rocks which trying into like rocky planets,
and then the outer part you have still have gas
and ice and stuff left over, which is why you
get like big gas ants. Oh god, OK, So Jupiter
is like mostly hydrogen and water and that kind of stuff,
whereas Earth is not as mostly rock, right, But basically
it's just gravity, right. Gravity. It takes you a long time,
(32:12):
but gravity sucks this stuff together. You get a big
star and the stuff that's orbiting around it um gradually
gathers together, right, So it bounces into each other and
and you know, gravity sticks them together and just sort
of gradually pulls everything together, as you said, like density,
boom boom. Right. I guess the question is why doesn't
why why do we have planets at all? Why is
(32:33):
and why isn't the Solar System just a star? Why
doesn't everything just get sucked into the middle? Or why
aren't planets just asteroid belts? Yeah? Okay, so there's two
different answers there. Why do we have planets at all? Right?
Why didn't everything just gets sucked into like one black
hole or one star? Right? Well, there's some things keeping
things from falling into the center, right, And that's just
enough spinning. Right, So the whole blob when it started
(32:54):
was spinning already, and that spinning can't go away right
as angular momentum. It can't have to be conserved. You
can't just you can't just stop spinning. It's it's not
rubbing against anything to slow it down. It's just it's
in space, so it just keeps on spinning. Somehow, you
made that sound inappropriate. I mean, I would have preferred
frictionless environments. It was just weird that you are waggling
your eyebrows on my shirt. Yeah, the Sun does have
(33:20):
a history of rubbing inappropriately against things. Yes, no, it's yeah,
it's out there in space and there's nothing to slow down.
There's no friction, nothing to to grab onto it, so
it's going to keep spinning forever. And so the stuff
is moving and it ends up in orbit. Right. It's
like asking why doesn't the Moon fall to the Earth
Because it's moving so fast that it doesn't fall. That
keeps going around the Earth instead of falling the same
(33:41):
way the Earth is. And the stuff that made the
Earth is not going to fall into the Sun because
it's moving fast enough and it comes from that initial rotation.
Oh I see, So even though we get the Sun,
there's still stuff out there spinning around. It doesn't want
to fall into the Sun. Yeah, exactly, it's moving too
fast fall into the center. So it's too good to
be the Sun. It doesn't want to r up against
(34:03):
the Sun. Right, But why why does it form at
the planets? Like, like Jack said, some of someone just
stays as asteroid belts like debris, but some of it
forms into planets. Eventually it'll all gathered together. Like you
fast forward the Solar System a billion years or so,
and you'll have a smaller number of bigger asteroids. Eventually
these all come together. So that's about will be a planet.
(34:24):
I don't know about one planet, but like will still
really billion billions of years, we could have a new
place of visit in the same way rings turned into moons, right,
Rings are not a stable situation for a planet really
gathered together and turned it into moons. Yeah, like the
Earth probably had rings for a while after he got
hit by some other Plorida planet and created all this
(34:45):
debris that surrounded it which formed the moon. We probably
had some awesome set of rings which then gathered together
into a moon. So Saturn's on its way to having
a moon. Yeah, we don't know how old the rings
of Saturn are, but we think they're not very old.
I mean they're millions of years sure, but on the
Solar System time scale, they're pretty young, and so that
stuff eventually is going to gather together and form larger objects.
(35:06):
Yeah wow, okay, but each but also each planet got
different stuff based on where it was in the Solar System. Right,
The closer stuff got the rocks that were left over
not much gas because they got sucked up by the sun.
Stuff on the outside is like mostly gas. Like if
you look at what's inside Jupiter, crazy right, super compressed
and like metallic hydrogen. It's not hydrogen. Yeah, it sounds
(35:30):
like a color for a new iPhone or something, right,
we just call it silver. But but the marketing genius
is over. I mean you often hear Jupiter described as
a gas giant. People think, oh, it's just a big
ball of gas. It's gas, and then it's hydrogen. But
it's not in gaseous state, right, some of it's like solid.
So you could land on Jupiter because it's like it's
(35:52):
metallic hydrogen covered by like an ocean of liquid hydrogen
and then gas on top of it. So it has
an atmosphere, but there's an ocean of liquid hydrogen. I mean,
I wouldn't recommend going there without something like pretty nice equipment, right,
But there's a pretty pretty radiation, but there's something solid
there to land on. Well I read that, um, like
(36:12):
these gas planet gas planets out there, they represent ninety
of the mass of the Solar system. So it's it's like,
it's most of the Solar system except for the Sun. Yeah, yeah,
it's the Sun. Are are in these gas giants way
out there? Yeah, exactly, most of the mass in the
Solar systems the Sun. It's like then, of that one percent,
most of it's the gas giant planets. Because remember the
(36:36):
Earth is about one tenth of the radius of Jupiter,
which is about one tenth the radius of the Sun. Right,
all right, right, right, yeah, remember that. I just remember
as a kid, they're like, there could be I don't
remember the number, but it's like so many earths could
fit in the Sun. And I was like, yeah, right,
miss Holton, I'm out of here. I don't need this.
I'm in third grade. But you always forget that volume
(36:58):
goes by like the radius cube, so you can fit
It's only ten times wider, but you could fit a
thousand earths into you could fit a thousand jupiters into
the Sun. Right, So it's a yeah, So that's the number,
millionaire A million, yeah, million, A cool mill exactly. Yeah,
so you're right, Jupiter is huge and most of the
stuff that's not in the Sun is in Jupiter gobbled
(37:20):
up all this stuff. But we should be grateful, right
active Jupiter being really big could have saved our lives
because asteroids that would destroy Earth get sucked into Jupiter. Yeah, exactly.
It's acting like a linebacker out there, like cleaning out
the Solar system and gathering all that stuff. Um. I
don't know if you guys remember, but like twenty years
ago or so, there was a huge comment to enter
(37:41):
the Solar system and then like slammed right into Jupiter.
Oh really yeah comment Shoemaker Levy was really awesome. They
got broken shoemaker, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, it's slamming
a Jupiter and each piece that hit it we got
broken in like twenty pieces made a huge fireball, like
bigger than the Earth. But that he hit up us,
it would have caused a big wave. Who would have
(38:04):
had we'd probably recording a very different podcasting. Yeah. So yeah,
shout out to Jupiter. Thank you so much for you do.
I didn't realize how much of a debt wheel to Jupiter.
I have a new appreciation for it. Cool. So that's
the answer to planet information is it is just gravity
(38:25):
and stuff just that doesn't want to fall into the
sun out there. It starts to clump together. We get
the leftovers and we get a beautiful Earth with beautiful
sunsets exactly, exactly, and some call that magic. All right, Well,
thank you guys for joining us day um and be
(38:46):
sure for this you listening to check out their podcast,
The Daily See Guys. Yeah, Monday through Friday, Monday through
to give them the twitters and the Facebook. Oh yeah,
you can find our show at Daily zeit Geist on Twitter,
at the Daily See Geist on Instagram. I'm at Miles
of Gray g r a Y on Twitter and Instagram,
and i am at Jack Underscore O'Brien on Twitter. Awesome. Well,
(39:07):
thank you guys. Anyway, you guys have any question out there,
anyone listening has any questions, send us an email at
Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Send us your
philosophy questions, send us your physics questions, send us your
dating questions. We'll give physics answers to all of this
and not not your magic questions. There are no magic
questions only magic answers. Yeah, alright, alright, see you next time.
(39:32):
Thanks for tuning in. If you still have a question
after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge That's
(39:53):
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember, Daniel and
Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the i
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Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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