Why can quarks never be alone?

Can quarks ever be free?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, or hey, did you know that not all particles
are created equal? You mean, like some of them are
heavier or more charged than others. Oh, that's definitely true.
But also not all of them have the same rights,
the same rights. I mean, is there a is there
a particle constitution that grants them certain freedoms? Only some

(00:29):
of them have freedoms. Electrons can be free, but quarks cannot. Oh, man,
poor quarks. Somebody ought to hit the streets and protest
for them. That's right, I can see the clever signs
already set the quarks free. Hi. I'm or hammate cartoonists

(00:59):
and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
a particle physicist, and I'm an activist for the freedom
of corks. And welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
which we talk about all the amazing and crazy and
wonderful and beautiful and insane things about our universe and
try to explain them in a way that makes you

(01:21):
laugh and hopefully makes you understand the way they work.
That's right. We talked about all the big things in
the universe, the origin of the universe. How big is
the universe? And we also talk about the smaller things
in the universe, the little bits that make up everything
around you. I feel like it's kind of cheating that
in physics or in particle physics, I get to work
on both the biggest, the baddest, the most original, the

(01:42):
cosmic questions, and also the tiniest. I feel like it's
at both extremes of the universe, right everything in between.
You don't care. That's chemistry, man, who cares? Chemistry, biology, philosophy, life,
your happiness, that's right, democracy, human rights, that's all beyond
the scope of your physics research. Yeah, exactly, And I

(02:05):
don't mean to say nobody cares about chemistry. Chemistry is
really important, otherwise we wouldn't have pharmaceuticals and all that
good stuff. I also said human rights study, but you
don't seem to want a caveat human rights as well.
I'm more worried about backlash from chemists than people advocated.
The chemists have acids, assets and dangerous things that can
kill you. Yeah, but maybe it's just that you know

(02:27):
that stuff is harder. It's more complicated for me. Physics
at the extremes they're really tiny and they're really big. Uh,
sort of the simplest questions, the most basic, and therefore
the most interesting and also easier to grapple with. Well,
today we're getting into some things that are kind of
the opposite of that, Right, We're getting into the nitty
gritty complex details of the legality of particles, kind of

(02:50):
what rights particles have. Yeah, because when we study the universe,
what we like to do is to take it apart.
If I look at the banana in front of me
and I say, what's this made out of? I'm mean,
what particles is it made out of? And when you
do that, you're sort of taking an intellectual leap. You're saying,
this banana could get blown up into its constituent particles.
You could break it up into these little bits, and

(03:12):
that's an important part of how we think about understanding
the universe. But it's not always possible to actually separate
those particles. Right, do you actually have a banana in
front of you, Daniel, I have a metaphysical banana here
in front of me. Here, I'll pass you my banana
using the Ray and Kyler ren teleportation system. Just digitize

(03:33):
the banana and email it to me. Oh, there you go,
there you go. Somebody should develop a device that scans
a banana, turns it into an electronic banana signature, and
then at the other side like three D prints of banana. Right,
using AI. Don't forget AI, using AI precisely because every
kitchen appliance needs AI now. But anyways, we are going

(03:54):
to be talking about the some of the rules that
governed the universe at the smallest levels, because there are
a rule and that's kind of what physics is a
little bit all about. Right. Yeah, And once recently on
a podcast, we talked about magnetic monopoles, how you could
take an atom and separate it's positive and negative charges
and move them far away to infinity and they could

(04:14):
ignore each other. But you can't do that with the
north and south of the magnetic monople And today we'll
be talking about a sort of similarly confusing, sticky topic
in particle physics. Right. It's a rule about the universe
that physicists don't really know why it's there. Right, It's
kind of another of the big mysteries in nature. Yeah,
I think that describes every rule about the universe. You know,

(04:36):
we don't know why any of them are there. Some
people write in and they ask me questions like that,
to say, why is electromagnetism this way and not that
other way? And I think, wow, you're a physicist, because
that's the question we all want to answer to. We
don't know. You're a physicist because you don't know anything.
You two can get paid for it like I am,
because you embrace your ignorance, and you want to ask why.

(04:59):
And it's a deep question in physics, why is something
this way not the other way? You know, maybe someday
in the future of physics will be looking at the
equations of the universe and will say, oh, it makes sense.
This is the only set of equations we could possibly have,
and so it has to be this way. Or we
can be looking at the equations to say, well, this
is one of ten to the one hundred possible universes,
So why is it this way not the other way?

(05:21):
We might not ever know, right right, again, you don't know.
That's the way you summarize physics. It's some we don't know.
We have no idea, which is the title of a
great book I've heard about which everyone should check out.
I don't know. I heard it has a lot of
puns in it. Oh, like the are they as good
as the as the ones we have in our show here,
they're better because they're edited the Thank you Courtney. Well,

(05:46):
today on the podcast, we'll be tackling a pretty sticky subject,
and it's the question of a special rule that governs
one of the particles of nature. So today on the podcast,
we'll be tackling the question why can quarks never be alone? Yeah,

(06:06):
So it turns out that one of the fundamental particles
in nature, the cork, has some special rules that govern
what it can and cannot do. That's right. Quarks feel
the strong nuclear force and electrons don't. And anything that
feels the strong nuclear force is subject to that forces
really weird properties. We've talked about it a few times

(06:27):
in the podcast how it has strange properties like color.
But today we've been talking about one very special property
that really likes to stick these quirks together. Yeah, and
so the question is why why whether course can be
alone by themselves? And you know, does it does it
mean alone like um like psychologically like they feel alone,
or is it like alone where they have to be

(06:48):
They can't be in a room by themselves. Yeah, you
you can't put them in solitary confinement for too long
or they go crazy. There's another kind of quirk you
never heard about, Not the strange corps or the charm cork,
but the crazy cork. That's right, the inmate cork. No,
that's not a laughing matter. Solitary confinement is pretty serious stuff.

(07:09):
But we have found in physics, and as you said earlier,
we don't know why, but we have found in physics
that when you try to separate a cork, to pull
it far away from everything else, to isolate it the
way you could take, for example, an electron and put
it in the middle of space. You just can't do
that with the cork. It's physically impossible. Wow, the universe
doesn't allow it. It would take an infinite amount of energy,

(07:31):
which would then just collapse into a bunch more quirks.
All right, we'll get into that in more detail. But first,
as usual, we were curious to know how many people
out there. First of all, I had heard of corps,
and second of all, knew whether or not courts can
ever be alone. So you see, Irvine was closed for
the holidays, and so these questions went to random strangers

(07:52):
at coffee shops who were amenable to answering questions, and
as usual at you see Irvine pot nine percent of
random students are willing to answer my questions, but the
rate of acceptance of coffee shops is much much lower,
which I think says something awesome about students that you see.
I so a physicist wearing sandals and scraggly hair is

(08:13):
normal at a college campus, but in a commercial, regular
coffee shop, you're seen with more skepticism. Yeah, or you know,
maybe it's just the slice of people that you encounter
at a coffee shop are less open to that kind
of stuff. I'm surprised you did it twice because they
didn't kick you at the first time. I had to
go to a variety of coffee shops, you know. I

(08:34):
see you're trying never to hit the same one twice.
That's how you can. They have my picture up on
the wall, and so they pressed that little red button
on the counting when they see me coming. Oh man,
I can picture you walking into one in the disguise
just to try to get your coffee. That's right, I'm
disguised as a chemist. Sometimes you were the grutch marks,

(08:54):
you know, glasses and nose and mustache. But no, way,
that's already you. No, I just put it on a
lab coat and safety goggles. Right, chemistry, and you were
nice clothes, he said, Is that what you're saying yourself?
Physicists have to dress up to become chemists. Yes, that's
definitely true. Alright, So here's what people at that coffee
shop had to say. Um, and have you guys heard

(09:15):
of the particle called the cork? Yes? Now did you
know the corks can never be found by themselves? Now,
I've heard of it, but I don't know too much
about it. You never did you know you can never
find a cork by itself? They can never be alone? No? Yes?
Did you know the quarks can never be alone? No?
I did not know that. Although there are two meanings

(09:37):
for cork, I wasn't sure if you meant the yogurt
meaning or um, the particle meaning. I think yogurt can
be alone. Yeah, but I can't tell you what it
is because you know that corks can never be alone. Animal. No,
it's a tiny little particle. Okay, yes, you know the
corks can never be by themselves. Actually, I didn't know

(09:58):
that I guess I haven't looked into it deep in. No,
I actually think I have, and I have no idea
why I wouldn't know that or what it is. Yeah.
Of course they're made up of blue once, I believe,
and they make up protons and electrons, and I think
neutrons too. Did you know the corks can never be

(10:18):
by themselves? They can never be alone, Yeah, because they
have to switch between because I don't I tried to
study this, but I don't completely understand, because I know
I can't remember as the quarks that are labeled red, blue, green,
and they have to switch from zone to zone. They
always have to be occupied and they can't exist by themselves.

(10:41):
I do not know why. No, I couldn't figure that out, actually, kid,
all right, I guess, um. Not a lot of people
I've heard of the cork. No, there's not a lot
of familiarity about the cork the particle, though. One friendly
person commented on cork the yogurt. Oh again, all right,
it must be a really popular brand yogurt. It's a

(11:01):
whole it's a whole dairy product. I think it's not
even just a brand. It's like kind of thing, you know, Well,
I like how this person said, do you mean the
particle or the yogurt? Because this person knew about both,
and he's like, let's terrify are we talking? Are we
talking food or physics? Here? She was ready to talk
about quirk the yogurt or quirk the particles. Yes, it's

(11:23):
a renaissance person right there. Yeah, precisely. And there were
some misunderstandings about quirks, people who think that they are
made up of gluons or that electrons are made up
of quarks. So definitely a topic that we should cover.
Explain to people what quarks are and how they were right,
because obviously they're not made out of gluons. Everyone knows that. No,

(11:44):
of course, not glue is made out of glue. It's
a sticky subject, of course. Yeah, so let's get into it. Um. So,
first of all, Daniel water quirks and talk to me
about this idea that that that they can never be alone. Yeah. So,
corks are one of the fundamental particles. If you take

(12:05):
matter apart, you'll find, of course that it's made out
of atoms, and those atoms have inside them electrons whizzing
around the nucleus and then inside the nucleus, We have
neutrons and protons. Even glue is made out of the
same of those same things. Everything is made out of
those things. Everything that you've eaten, at least there are
kinds of matter out there in the universe that are
not made out of atoms, dark matter specifically, but everything

(12:27):
that you've encountered, everything you've sat on, everything any human
has ever eaten or thrown at each other is made
out of atoms. And so it's pretty universal recipe. Right,
What if my kid ate some dark matter? Should I
call the doctor or um? I think you should eating
because you're getting a Nobel prod proving that dark matter
exists for feeding my child dark matter? Are you talking

(12:49):
about the dark matter that goes into your child or
out of your child though, because that's a whole different topic.
All right, let's move on before somebody calls Social services off. No,
But the amazing thing about this is that it's a
recipe for all kinds of stuff. Like everything out there
has the same number of protons, neutrons and electrons. And
just can't get over this fact. Like every kind of
material out there, every element right has one proton per

(13:11):
electron and just about one neutron per proton. So it's
one to one to one no matter what it is, right,
And so it's not just any particle or any random
or insignificant particle nature. This is like the particle, right,
I mean, I mean you and I are made out
of the out of them. Everyone is made out of them.
It's one of the big h two particles that make

(13:32):
up everything. Yeah, and so the most of the stuff
that's inside you is made out of these protons and neutrons.
But the protons and neutrons are not actually themselves fundamental.
They're made of these smaller particles. And those are the corks,
the up cork and the down cork. And you mix
those together in one way you get a proton. You
mix them together another way you get a neutron. But
of course the proton and the neutron, you know, those

(13:55):
are the physical particles that we can see, we can
interact with, we can separate them. You can have like
one proton and have one neutron over here. And for
a long time people thought that they might be fundamental.
But then in the seventies, by shooting super high energy
electrons at the proton, we found that there was structure
inside the proton. We found that there were particles inside there,

(14:17):
and so that's what the corks are, right, And so
that's what a cork is. And there's something funny about
them because, for example, electrons can't be by themselves. You
can't have it like a sink. You can hold a
single electron in your hand, for example. The corks you're
telling me have come as a kind of a special
rule that they can never be alone. Yeah. The way
that we found out about electrons, you know, is that

(14:39):
we separated them from their atom. We isolated them so
we could study them. And we talked about in the podcast. J. J.
Thompson ionized atoms and made beams of electrons before he
even knew what he was doing. And the way we
discovered the nucleus is the same way. We separated and
we broke the atom into pieces so we could study it.
But with the quarks, we've never been able to do that.
What we've been able to do is poke the inside

(15:00):
the proton and see the corks sort of bouncing around
in there. We have been able to break up the
proton into quarks, but we can't ever see the corks
by themselves. They are so much in love with being together.
You always find them in pairs or triplets. But well,
I'm a little bit confused because you you told me that,
you know, at the large Hattern collider, and you take

(15:21):
protons and you smash them together. But when you smash
them together, you're saying, they don't actually break apart. But
we do smash protons together at the large had Run collider.
You're right, I was not lying. And what happens there
is that the corks inside one proton interact with the
quarks inside the other proton. But there's a rule about
sort of the maximum distance that a cork can ever

(15:43):
be from another cork. And so what happens there is
you can have like two corks go pair off to
be their own little particle. The quarks can never leave
by themselves. Oh so you smash protons together, which are
made out of quarks inside. But when they smash to
the together, it's not like in a an explosion where
everything flies off in all kinds of directions. Uh, the quarks.

(16:04):
You know, you can't have a cork flying off from
a collision by itself, That's right, you can't do that.
They always have to be found in pairs or in triplets.
There's no way to find a cork all by itself.
But well, you've never seen it by by itself, right, Yes,
you're right. Um, In physics we should never say never.
We don't think it's possible. Nobody's ever seen a free cork.

(16:27):
Nobody's ever isolated a cork by itself. Quarks are in
that sense more mathematical than any other kind of particle,
because we've never seen them on their own. They only
exist sort of as part of our model for what's
inside all these particles that we think are made up
of quarks. You've got protons, you've got neutrons, and you
mix corks and lots of other ways. You can get

(16:47):
all sorts of other crazy particles pions and masons and
ada particles and omega particles and um, all sorts of
crazy stuffs. You're just gonna try to slip that in. Yeah, uh,
to just go with it. Um, But I guess paid
the picture from me right. So, at the large hattern collider,

(17:08):
you have protons kind of going at each other right there,
coming at huge speeds. So and and in each proton
you have three quarks kind of bound together. They're stuck
together at each one and then they the two protons
smash into each other. They do, and you create this mess.
And you're saying that you know, everything that leaves out

(17:28):
of that collision, that explosion has to be paired up
like the No matter how you smash them together, somehow
they always corks always pair up when they fly off together.
That's right. And one possibility is that you just sort
of rearrange the quarks. You say, I got three quarks
from this proton. I got three quarks from the other proton,
so I'll just pair them up. Maybe I'll get like

(17:48):
three pairs of quarks and this is gonna go fly
off and make me three pions. That's one possibility. But
sometimes if you put enough energy into these things, the
corks sort of try to go free, like you get.
You push one cork off in one direction, another one
off in another direction, and there and none of the
other original quirks from the proton are near it, and
it's like flying off into outer space by itself. But

(18:10):
physics says no, and what yeah, And what happens there
is that some of its energy gets converted into making
a new cork. It pops a new cork out of
the vacuum, so that cork doesn't have to be by itself.
Wait what so you're saying one of the corks after
the collision was going off to the left, but because
physics says no, it like it disappears and it reappears

(18:32):
somewhere else. Say, for example, you have a quirk going
off really fast to the left and another cork going
off really fast to the right, so the distance between
them is growing. Well, what happens is that takes a
huge amount of energy, and that energy gets converted into
making new corks. Like you create new corks, one for
the one going to the left and one for the
one going to the right, so that each of them

(18:53):
now has a companion, so they're not by themselves. The
universe is like you're going off by yourself here, I'll
make you a companion it. Yeah, And that's because the
strong nuclear force is super duper weird. And we'll talk
about that in more detail in a minute, I hope.
But the short version is unlike electromagnetism, where as the
distance between them grows, the force gets weaker and fades.

(19:14):
In the strong force as the distance between them grows
the force gets stronger, so it takes more and more
energy to separate them, and eventually there's enough energy to
create new matter. All right, let's get into the details
of that a little bit more. But I think it's
pretty considered of the universe not to to be looking
out for quirks like that. You know, it depends. I mean,
if you're quirking, you just want some like me time,

(19:37):
then it's not a little love is a curse you're saying.
If you ever grew up in the house that's kind
of crowded, you know that there's value to time by yourself.
You know, you want time with your book. And just
like nobody asked me to do something or ask me
a question. You know, my family is pretty quirky, and

(19:57):
you've got some strange quirks in your family and some
charming works, you know, of course. Right, all right, let's
get into more of this kind of mysterious force that
makes quarks just so that they're not alone. But first
let's take a quick break, all right. I know, so

(20:24):
it seems like the universe doesn't like for courts to
be alone, to the point where it even makes up
new corps when it needs to whenever it sees a
cork going off to be alone, it makes a new
cork to pair up with it, which is pretty amazing.
And you're telling me that this is all because of
the force between courts. Yeah, one of the three or
four fundamental forces of nature, depending how you count. We

(20:46):
have gravity, which we don't understand quantum mechanically. We have
electromagnetism and the weak force, which I think of together
as bound as part of the electroweak force. And then
we have the strong nuclear force. And this is the
thing that holds the proton together and holds the neutron together,
and also it's a thing that holds the nucleus together
because there's a little residual bits of it left over

(21:06):
after you've made the proton and the neutron. But this
force is really powerful and really different from any of
the other forces. It's called the strong force, right, Yeah,
not the Strange force, though maybe they should have called
it the strong nut. If you get a pc in
the in the strong into the strange force, does that
make you the doctor Strange? It absolutely officially does, and

(21:28):
gives you power over time. It's been to everybody, right, right,
even the Benedict commor batches of the world. Yeah, and
you know, we like to categorize things in physics. We
like to say, are these things are all similar to
each other? And what connections can we draw between them?
But we also like to contrast things. We like to say, how, look,
these forces are similar because they're all forces, but they

(21:49):
have some big differences in them, and so those things
can teach us like what kind of forces can there
be in the universe? And the strong force is different
and basically every way that it can be different from
the other forces. Really, so it's one of the four
fundamental forces, but it's very different than the other three
or the other two. Yeah, it's very different from I

(22:11):
would say the other two. For example, gravity has one
way it can push, right, It can only pull things together,
and that's because there's only one kind of mass. You
can have positive and negative mass. It's so gravity is
only attractive. Electromagnetism right works on positive and negative charges,
and so we can both push and pull. It pushes

(22:31):
if two positive charges or negative charges come near each other.
It pulls if you have opposite charges near each other.
But the strong force is weird because it has three charges,
and we call those red, green, and blue, and so
it's it just it blows your mind and thinking like
whoa there can be like a three different kinds of
charges and it requires different kinds of math like to

(22:54):
balance the mouth to neutralize them, and all sorts of stuff, right,
because I was just thinking that the one I think
most people are familiar with see electro magnet magnetic force,
right in terms of they're being charges, we're so used
to just they're being two write plus or minus. Yeah,
you're used to there being two, and they used to
being there being two kinds of magnets right north and south.
What if they were like three kinds of magnets, you know,

(23:15):
right north, south and east or something, and the east
magnet was super weird and like it would it would
be a really different force. Well, that's what the strong
force is. Has three kinds of charges like a plus
minus and x. Well, red, green, and blue. And that's
why you can have bound states of two quarks, because
you can have like a red and an anti red,

(23:36):
or three quarks if you have like a red, green
and blue because red, green and blue add up to neutral. Well,
I guess step me through this a little bit um
more because I know that. You know, if I have
a plus charge and a minus charge will attract each
other in electromagnetic forces, or if you have two pluses,

(23:57):
they'll repel each other. So how does it work if
you have three? You know, it's like two. I know
three is kind of a weird thing. Are you asking
me how to have a three sum? In part of yes,
I was trying to avoid that reference. But if you
want to go there, let's go there. I mean, it
turns out to be pretty different if two pluses in
a minus or two minuses in a plus. I see,

(24:17):
it's a whole different genre exactly. No, it's a it's
a very different kind of situation. And the weird thing
is basically, anything that has color that isn't neutral will
attract the other thing. So red will attract red, red
will atract anti red, well, red will attract green, green
willottract blue, blue will attract anti blue. It's basically always

(24:39):
a party when it comes to this trait. So anything
that has a color charge attracts other things with color charge.
Anything that has a color charge will interact with other
things that have a color charge. Whether or not they
attract or repel depends on where they are, how close
they are. Well, if you take a red cork and
an anti red cork, if they're too close together, they

(25:01):
will repel each other. If they're too far apart, they
will attract each other. Oh, I see, So they like
to be sort of a specific distance apart. Yes, they
like to be a specific distance apart. Anything else takes
more energy. So if you have a red cork and
an anti red cork and you want them closer together,
you gotta squeeze them, because they repel that they avoid that. Similarly,
if you want them further apart, you gotta put in energy,

(25:23):
And as they get further and further apart, it takes
more and more energy. And that's the thing that's really
weird about the strong force. Like with electromagnetism, you take
plusant and minus and you pull them apart, the force
between them starts to fade right as they get further
and further apart. It goes like one over are squared.
But what about like a red and a green same situation.
I mean, there's some little details there for higher order calculations,

(25:47):
but roughly it's about the same. So everyone wants to
be with everybody else, but not too close, but not
too close. So why isn't everything just being pulled together?
Why are in my red quarks just totally you know,
pulling the red quarks in my microphone or in the
sun to me, because your red quarks are all in

(26:09):
color neutral bound states, mostly protons and neutrons. Oh, they're happy.
They're happy three and a happy threesome. They're in a
happy threesome. Yeah. And you know why is the nucleus
held together Because there's a little bit of strong force
that leaks out of the proton and holds those protons together. Um,
so mostly they're in a totally happy state. But you know,
sometimes the neutron decays into a proton. Oh, I see.

(26:33):
It's like asking why why aren't all my plus charges
in my body attracting the plus charges in the sun.
And the answer is that my plus charges are all
happy stuck with a negative charge inside of me. Yeah, exactly.
Most of your plus charges are in neutral atoms, and
so the neutral atoms don't really interact unless you get
really close. And then it depends on how close you

(26:53):
are to the plus part of the minus part. But
on average you're neutral, and so you don't interact with
the electric charges in the raw or in your mazdo
or whatever. So if I had like the power to
create a red cork right in front of me, like poof,
I just made one in front of me, it would
be super attracted to or maybe not. It would look
for the closest single cork and get attracted to that.

(27:14):
That's right. But it would take an enormous amount of
energy to create that cork and have it be really
far away from any partner, because it's because that the
potential energy would be so big. Precisely, think about the opposite.
Say you had a cork and an anti red cork
and you wanted to separate them. How much energy would
it take to separate them to be like, you know,

(27:34):
one galaxy away from each other. Well, every meter you
separate them would take more and more energy. It's not
like with electromagnetism, where once you get them far apart,
they basically ignore each other. You know, a cork here
would feel a quirk and andromeda super duper powerfully. That
would be you know, an incredible amount of energy. And
that's the really weird thing about the strong force is

(27:56):
that the power of the force doesn't degrade with distance,
it get stronger. It's like a spring. It's like a
one like a mechanical spring, exactly, it goes it's linearly
with a distance, just like a mechanical spring. And so
is that how you explain whether you can't find one
alone in nature? Is that it just it would just
take too much energy. Yeah, And that energy prefers to
turn into matter. So if you did take a cork

(28:18):
and an antiquark and you pull them apart, that would
require a huge amount of energy to be pouring energy
into it to separate them. And nature prefers to not
have that much unstable energy. It prefers to decay into
lower energy states like we talked about another time. And
it creates new quarks, and so it creates a new
partner for those quirks you're trying to pull apart, so

(28:39):
that no quirk is by itself. So like like let's
say I grabbed uh one quark with my right hand,
and I grabbed the other core another cork with my
left hand, and I spent We're wearing safety goggles here.
I always wear safety they're called reading glasses, all right,
So you're pulling your parks apart I'm pulling apart, and

(29:00):
I have big muscles, and I Am just pulling them apart,
and it's like, oh, it's really hard. It's really hard.
And then at some point the universe just just snaps,
like it just you know, it'll just it'll be like
the spring broke and suddenly I'll have two quarks in
one hand and two quarks on the other hand. Precisely. Yeah,
and you can even generate more particles. In fact, what
you just described is essentially my job. That's what we

(29:22):
do with the large age on collider. You wear a
safety glasses. I do wear a safety glasses. But we
smash protons together and that pushes effectively the quarks away
from each other. And when that happens, we see particles
get created out of the vacuum. Out of that, that
energy gets turned into particles, and you don't just get one.
Sometimes you get a whole stream particles, depending how much

(29:46):
energy you've created. It's like the universe says, you know,
it's too much effort to pull these two quarks together.
It's too much effort to fight. Wre is amazing biceps
and muscles. I'll just I'll just pair up the corks
that in each each of his hands. That's right, or hey,
versus the universe. Think about it like tension and a string,
you know, it's it's stretches and stretches and stretches. Eventually

(30:08):
it snaps, and it just prefers to be in a
lower energy state. And that lower energy state means having
those particles exist. We talked about it statistically on another podcast.
You know, the universe prefers configurations where there's lots of
possible ways for it to be, and so it will
always decay to a low energy configuration where that energy
can be pointed in lots of different directions. And if

(30:29):
you create these particles and there's lots of different ways
to arrange them, whereas if you have all the energy
just stored in that field between the cork and anti
cork is one configuration. So just an entropy argument tells
you why a very tense, single configuration, high energy state
will decay to a bunch of particles. So, and what
is that distance that which the string breaks, you know,

(30:50):
like if I'm pulling them apart, what is the distance
that which it just pops and it becomes for quarts.
It depends on the energy um but you know, we're
talking femptometers. That's the preferred distance for quirks. Quirks like
to be you know, a few femptometers apart, and so
push them further away and you'll start to create new quirks.
And you put in really a lot of energy. You

(31:12):
can create heavy quirks, you know, charm corks and bottom
quarks and that kind of stuff. Oh wait, what if
so if I pull it depends on how I pull
them apart. Well, the universe we don't know how it
randomly decides, but if you have enough energy, it can
create heavier particles, and not all the quarks sort of
cost the same in energy. The up cork and the
down cork are the cheapest corks and the lightest ones.

(31:32):
But the charm and the strange and the bottom these
are heavier, so they cost more energy to make. So
if you put enough energy, then you sort of go
up the menu and you can make some of these
heavier corks too interesting. And so what what is it
that makes the courts pair up in in threesomes, in
pairs and and what you call triplets. The reason is

(31:52):
that you can neutralize the strong force using three of
these charges it's because the strong force has these three charges.
And so for example, two ups and a down and
two downs and an up can give you a neutral
object in color space in this strong nuclear charge. Right
in electromagnetism, you can't imagine putting two pluses and a

(32:13):
minus together to get zero. The the math doesn't work.
But in color space and strong nuclear charge, a red,
a green, and a blue equal zero. And so that's
why you can get a threesome of quarks because they
can balance each other out. That's that's a stable configuration.
That's a stable configuration. So you can have pairs or
you can have triplets. And recently people have been trying

(32:35):
to figure out ways to get like penta quarks, like
combinations of five quarks that are stable together. But that's
sort of a cutting edge research. So if I have
a red and a green paired up together, that that
would be looking for a blue to join it. Yes, precisely,
it would be desperate for a blue to finish out
its color party. And you know, the strong force is

(32:56):
really strong. I mean it's strange also, but it's much
more powerful than any other force we've ever seen. You
should call it the strong force. Thank you, I think
we will. Um. You know, in comparison, it's more than
a hundred times the power of electricity and magnetism at
the same distance or at the same sort of you know, magnitude. Yeah, precisely,

(33:20):
at the same distance at one fimtometer is a hundred
times the power of electromagnetism. It's a million times the
power of the weak force, and it's ten to the
thirty eight times the power of gravity. So it's really
the most powerful force we've ever seen, even more powerful
than my biceps, even more powerful, and it's really weird,

(33:41):
you know, know what had ever thought about how a
force could get stronger with distance? And it took some
really clever mathematics to explain this. And there was a
Nobel prize just for that idea, the idea that maybe
this is how the strong force works. And that's a
Frank will check m I t won the Nobel Prize
just for explaining the strong force. All you have to
do is addam minus signed to one equation um, and

(34:02):
that explained it. Well, that's what I'll do. I'll just
put minus science in all kinds of equations and hopefully
one of them will get me a Nobel prize. All right,
it seems like a great strategy, go for it. All right,
Well that kind of explains why corks can't be alone,
sort of, I think. And so let's get into what

(34:23):
it all means for the universe and for you and
me and my corks. But first let's take a quick break.
All right, So corks can't be alone, although I feel

(34:44):
like it's kind of a depends on your definition of alone.
Like what if a cork feels that one pmtometer is
alone enough, then they can be alone. Right? That feels
pretty cozy to me, you know, like when my kids
are fighting on the couch about who's getting how much space?
If they're one themometer art, then that would be that
would be trouble. That would definitely be trouble. Yeah, I

(35:05):
don't really feel like I'm alone if I'm going to
the bathroom and if somebody one pmptometer away from you, Well,
it depends how big you are. You know, how big
is a court Daniel, how big is a cork? A
cork is a point particle, so it really has no volume,
really no no meaningful size. So you're saying a phantometer
is infinitely far for them, yeah, I guess, so that's

(35:25):
a good point. Maybe they're like, you know, folks in
a marriage feel like they're always having a shout across
the house at each other. What would you say, Yeah, Okay,
so corks don't like to be alone caveat more than
a femptometer apart, right, I guess that's maybe a better
way to say it. And and so that's weird, and
you're saying it's all because that's how that's just how

(35:47):
the strong force works, Like after a femptometer, it's just
decides to create more courts instead, it's easier. They're like
stuck in a little valley and they just can't get out, right.
And so that's a weird rule for the universe. But
I guess that's just kind of the way the universe is, right, Like,
if it was any different, we wouldn't be here, We
wouldn't be here yet, or there would be something else here.

(36:08):
There would be something else, maybe a funnier podcast. Impossible.
The laws of the universe prevent their, uh, there to
be a funnier science podcast. I have calculated the maximum
humor for a physics podcast, and we hadn't reached it.
Did you put a minus sign in it, though, are
you it's missing a minus sign? Yeah, I'm gonna go

(36:30):
back to check my concussions. But this is probably the
funniest podcast about science with a cartoonist and a physicist
that I have heard of. Daniel and Jorge from southern California.
Put enough caveats in and your number one in the universe,
but enough minus science you'll get an over price prize
that actually does work. Yeah, all right, let's get into

(36:52):
then what it all means. I mean, I mean, this
seems like a weird rule, and what practically does it
mean for extent for us? Well, I think not practically,
but philosophically, it means something pretty profound. You know. It
means that forces can be really different from the forces
that we're familiar with. And this is a recurring story
in physics that we think the world works one way

(37:13):
and then we discover, hope, there's an exception. Actually the
exception is much more powerful than everything we've been thinking about,
and so it's just another reminder that we need to
open our minds and that probably there's basic assumptions we're
making about how the world works that are wrong and
we just need to counter example to prove to us
that there's something else going on. So it's just an

(37:33):
example there, and you know, we'll always be asking the
question like, why is this that way? Why is this
the other way? Why isn't it work this other way?
I would have preferred um and I hope that one
day we have those answers. But right now we're totally clueless.
We're just like, we don't know. We're just looking at
it and trying to at least describe it, not even
necessarily understand it. But it also has some practical consequences, Yes,

(37:55):
step us through what what what does that mean for
what we can and can make out of stuff? Well,
one of the tempting things about the strong charge is
that it's super powerful. You know, it powers nuclear weapons
and nuclear power, and so you might think, wouldn't it
be awesome to apply that everyday life, you know, to
have things like batteries that sours the strong force. They
could be super small and you know, some version of

(38:18):
electrical current and electrical power that's powered by color instead
of electrical charge. Right, that would be super awesome, But
you can't because it's such a powerful force. Could we
somehow harness that power? To something practical to like charging
our cell phones. Yeah, could we carry that power around?
And can we store that power and use it to

(38:38):
transmit things? And we've done it very briefly. That's you
know what nuclear bombs are your power um. But it's
tempting to think about, you know, having like a current,
like why why couldn't you have a current of that
kind of power? But you can't because that relies on
isolating the charges. Like a battery, you can separate the
electrons and have them kind of flow along your wire

(39:00):
to power your cell phone. But you couldn't do that
with quarks. Like if you try to separate the quarks,
the universe wouldn't like that. Yeah, the universe is like
and I try it, snapping fingers in a Z pattern,
like I see what you're trying to do there, and
you get a big, fat note. So it just means

(39:20):
that there are things you can't do with that force
that you can do with other forces. And and one
of them is, you know, build a version of electricity um,
which is too bad because it's such an awesome powerful force.
It'd be cool to call it quarticity or quarkticity. I'm
not sure that one's going to catch on. Don't even
know how to spell that a kt in it. It

(39:43):
has a minus sign in the middle. That's why I'm getting, well,
that is a minus awesome idea. Well, why why did
you go with plus or minus? Why can't you go
with like that's a red red hot idea? There, that's
it's a cool idea. It's kind of a blue green idea.

(40:04):
But it also has consequences for me and for particle
physics because it makes our job a lot harder, because
it makes it hard to kind of separate these things
and study them. Yeah, if I am interested in understanding
what happened inside a particle collision, I got a look
at the stuff that flies out. Because I can't see
some heavy, new, crazy particle that I hope was made

(40:25):
in the collision. It doesn't last very long. I just
see the stuff that flies out, And so I love
if that stuff that flies out was sort of simple
and clean, like it just turned into two electrons or
something I can measure. But very often in these collisions,
because we're smashing protons together, we get quirks to fly out,
and the quirks make these big streams of particles, and
so instead of having one very simple, nice and neat

(40:47):
cork that flies out, I have fifty particles that fly out,
and it's a big mess, and they're interacting and they
splash in the detector, and we call that a jet
of particles, because when you pull that cork apart, all
that energy in the straw force transit into a jet
of other particles. Yeah, all the energy gets turned into
ten other particles with other quirks, which then combined to

(41:09):
make us whole sorts of crazy particles. And so it's
a big mess. So you're saying it impedes your rights
as a particle physicist, Yeah, it obscures the universe a
little bit. You know, we'd love to pull these protons
apart and study the quirks by themselves. You notice we
don't have a cork collider, right, We have a proton collider,
and that's why we're really interested in cork cork interactions.

(41:31):
But we can't build a quirk collider. But to build
a proton collider, and then we have to we can't
see the corks interacting and the quarks flying out. We
have to see the mess that they make afterwards. You know,
it's like you want to study preschoolers and and you know,
they leave a mess. You're like, you know, why can't
these pre schoolers just tell me what they're thinking? You know?

(41:53):
Instead they just they rereak havoc wherever they go and
to try to reconstruct from their tantrums what might have
been going on in their minds. Schoolers are complicated, and
so our courts. Yes, preschoolers are complicated, and so are quirks,
and so that makes our job a little harder. Well, um,
so I guess that means then that that's just how
the universe is. The universe has rules for quirks, and

(42:14):
quirks don't really have alone rights, right, they can ever
be alone because the universe always wants them to be
paired up or in three sums, that's right, And there's
one exception works what quirks they don't they can't be alone.
But there's one time when they don't have to be
in paris ms parisms is that a word in apples?

(42:34):
Or parisms or bananisms um, And that's when they're in
a huge party. It's called the quirk gluon plasma. Wait
what huh? Yeah, if you create enough energy density, you
pour enough energy into a tiny little space. Then you
can sort of free the quirks because you make this
like big frothing mass of stuff where there's too much

(42:56):
energy to bound these things together and they're sort of
like bound into a huge mass. Instead, we do this
experimentally by smashing heavy ions together, like the nucleus of
a lead atom and the nucleus of a lead atom.
Smash like hundreds of these things together makes this big,
big frothing mass oh, in which that suddenly it doesn't

(43:17):
they're not particularly paired to another quirk or two other quarks,
but there's sort of like, um, it's like a giant,
big party. Yeah, it's like a plasma. The same way
you've got a bunch of hydrogen atoms. They're happy with
every electron being paired with a with a proton, but
you squeeze them together enough and there's still overall balance

(43:38):
of electrons and protons, but the electrons are sort of
free to hop from proton to proton. The same way
you take protons and you squeeze them together enough and
the corks sort of smooshed together, and then they can
sort of swap back and forth very quickly between states
and so it makes sort of like a big plasma
and gluons. Yeah, like, oh, I see, So you can't

(43:59):
have a cork by itself, but you can't have free corks,
but only if they're in a soup. Yes, So basically
they like to be in pairs, chiplets, or in a
big party. And we've actually made that happen. We've collided
these things together and created them in colliders. And we
think that it happened in the very early universe when
the universe was hot and nasty and dense, that there

(44:20):
was this cork gluon plasma. But these days they're mostly
found um isolated in these pairs and chiplets. I see,
and can do these soups? Do these crazy soup parties
happen in nature or only in colliders? Only in colliders? Now?
The universe is too cool for that to happen. Although
some people think that maybe at the center of some
kinds of stars might be some cork glue in plastron stars,

(44:43):
maybe neutron stars, probably not dense enough amazingly, but these
stars called strange cork stars that where there might be
a cork glue in plasma, but nobody's for sure. All right,
So it can be free, cork, but it can be
alone because it can only be free when they a
whole bunch of other quirks, right, yeah, precisely, so they

(45:04):
can never be by themselves, can never be alone, but
it can be free if it's not alone. Oh man,
that's a tough tough trade off there, would you would
you trade your freedom for some alone some me time?
I don't know. I think the quirk's going to have
his lawyer explained to it exactly what that means. That's

(45:25):
a new job description, particle lawyer, quantum lawyer. I'm a
quantum lawyer. Sounds like a scam. Definitely a scam. Do
not pay anyone for quantum lawyering advice. All right, Well,
that's another pretty interesting fact about the universeitda at least
I learned today, is all these um rules that cover

(45:48):
govern our most fundamental particles. That's right to control how
your protons and how your neutrons are stuck together, and
why they're stuck together. So you should be grateful that
all those quarks are together and doing all that work
for you. We hope you enjoyed that. See you next time,
So enjoy your quirks and enjoy your cork yogurt and
talk to you guys soon before. You still have a

(46:17):
question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us
the line. We'd love to hear from you. You can
find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and
Jorge That's one Word, or email us at Feedback at
Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember
that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio,

(46:39):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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