January 30, 2020 • 39 mins
Is there any way particles can travel faster than light or is it against the laws of physics?
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, what happens if you break a law of physics?
Is this a hypothetical question? Are you like looking for
physics legal advice? Well, I mean, I'm not saying I'm
building a faster than like black hole machine in my backyard.
I'm just, you know, just hypothetically, what would happen to
me legally if I broke a law physics? Well, speaking
(00:30):
for physics as a spokesperson for physics, physics tend to
be pretty unforgiven. You just can't break the laws. You mean,
I can't go to physics jail or get a physics Fine,
we have a black hole we throw all those people into.
I see that that is physics too. Yeah, as your
physics lawyer, I advise you not to break any laws
(00:50):
of physics. Hi am Korhamat, cartoonists and the creator of
PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel Whitson. I'm a particle of physicist,
(01:14):
and I'm always looking for ways to accomplish what we
need to without breaking the laws of physics. And together
with the authors of the book, we have No Idea.
A Guide to the Unknown Universe, now translated to over
twenty three languages. I just finished the Ukrainian version. It's awesome.
Oh yeah, we're we're the jokes as funny in Ukrainian
or may more funny. This sort of a dry sense
(01:38):
of humor there, you know, in Ukrainian it's a it's
a different culture or different language. Now, I have no
idea really how somebody translates our sort of silly sense
of humor into Korean or Ukrainian. But hey, they've done.
I'm sure there's a word for farts in all of
those languages. Yeah, well, that's a question which country has
the most words for farts? Something about culture? Right right, Twitter,
(02:02):
get on it, We challenge you. But that book tells
you not just about how to say farts in Korean
and Polish, but also about the mysteries of the universe
and how so many of them are left unsolved, so
many of them that maybe you, or your kids or
your grandkids might be the one to reveal something fascinating
and mind blowing and basic about the universe. We find
(02:23):
ourselves in Yeah, Amazon questions, some of which we tackle
here in our podcast, So welcome to Daniel and Jorge
Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
which we explore all the unknowns and the nons about
the universe, the known knowns, the unknown unknowns, the unknownns,
and the known unknowns for the complete matrix of nonliness.
(02:44):
I don't know about that, man, But um, yeah, we
talk about how it all works, and specifically, I guess
we talk about what you can and cannot do in
the universe. Yeah, it's physics sort of works in both directions.
On one hand, we're looking around the universe and trying
to figure out what are the rules? You know, this
happens and that doesn't happen. Why doesn't that ever happen?
(03:05):
How can we never see anything break this rule? I
guess it's a fundamental rule the universe. But it also
goes the other way, where we're like, well, given these rules,
how do we accomplish what we want to? You know,
how do we get to alpha centaur? You know, reasonable
amount of time? How do we get enough energy to
fuel all the demands of humanity? So it sort of
works in both directions. Yeah, where it's that warp drive.
(03:26):
I'm still winning for my flying car and the teleporter
the warp drive. Warp drives might actually come before flying cars. Really, Yeah, well,
warp drives you know, theoretically solved, and there's some practical
problems there. We talked about on our podcast, you know, like,
you know, do you eat the entire massive Jupiter in
order to accomplish in one trip? But hey, it's just
(03:47):
an engineering problem. I see, I see. Theoretically we have
warp drives, we totally practically practically, we're not there yet.
We're not there yet. But I think flying cars are
harder because it's not just an engine earing problem. It's
like a sociological problem. Like you know, you turn left,
you turn right, you turn up, you know, and I have.
Everybody has to learn how to drive those things. It's
(04:08):
going to be a nightmare. Who who wants flying cars?
You know? Who wants to be stuck in three dimensional traffic?
Maybe we should only get flying cars after we get
self driving cars, so we can get self driving flying cars.
I can't tell that's the best idea or the worst idea. Yeah,
we'll say it's a theoretically good idea and then leave
it to the engineers. Something I've always wanted to do
(04:29):
is visit their star systems and walk on the surface
of other planets. But of course these planets are all
so far away that, given the limitation of the speed
of light, it would take you forever to get there. Right, Yeah,
I mean it's a huge and amazing universe with probably
incredible and mindloing things to see, but they're all they're
all really far away. Right, The nearest star is at
(04:52):
least what three light years away? And yeah, proximates Centauri
is more than three light years away, and our galaxies
hundreds thousand light years across, and the nearest galaxy is
much much further away. So you might think that makes
the universe inaccessible, but your physics lawyer will provide a
physics loophole. Yeah, in the in the contract of the universe,
(05:14):
is that where the loophole is, or in the laws written? Yeah,
if you want to accomplish something and there's a law
that's sort of stopping you, you've got to think to yourself,
do I really need to break this law or is
there another way to get there? And so, in the
case of warp drives, it's a really elegant solution. It says,
you know, nothing can move through space faster than light,
All right, well, then don't move through space, just bend space.
(05:38):
So it's not actually so far away. It's a good
it's a really it's a beautiful sort of example of
how do you think differently, so you're not breaking the rules,
but you're getting what you wanted. If Mohammed camp come
to alpha centauri, have alpha centauri come to Mohowing. And
so there are loopholes and in physics and the ways
in which there's sort of an unbreakable law, but if
(05:58):
you think about it a little bit, there are maybe
ways that you can work around it, right, yeah, precisely,
and this one nothing can travel faster than light. This
one's pretty susceptible to loopholes. Really, it's a fraud law.
It's it's it's not well written. You have the guys
who drafted it initially, they should have thought about all
the clauses and the addendums and the very scenarios. Clearly
(06:22):
was written by physicists, not lawyers. And now it's physicists
that are helping us get around it, and especially particle physics,
because we've talked in the podcast before about particles that
move faster than the speed of light, like tachyons. But
there's another thing you can do. You can actually get
normal everyday particles like electrons, and muanes going faster than light.
(06:43):
It feels like you're saying something profane or something heretical. Um, yeah,
I sort of like that. I'm sort of like, you know,
tossing a challenge in the face of the universe, Like
you think you got this law, watch this, watch me
go faster. Sorry, I'm gonna break this rule right in
front of you. Yeah. So today on the program, we'll
be tackling the topic how particles can go faster than light.
(07:11):
Today's topic is not a question for the first time.
Usually we have a question as a title of the episode,
but today it's a statement. That's right. We are standing
up for particles and say you can't tell them what
to do particles. Yeah, and it's it's a prescriptive title
to right. I guess we're going to explain how particles
can go faster than light. Yes, we certainly are. We're
(07:32):
gonna explain how it happens and how it works. And
also we're gonna answer some other lingering questions in your mind,
like why are nuclear power plants always shown as glowing
blue in the movies because green means their ghosts. I
guess I was I was wondering what you're gonna say,
there's artistic science point of view. You have different colors
(07:53):
mean different things. Yeah, red is danger, right. I was
seeing as green as ghost from those busters. I thought
green was envy. But and I always thought blue was
sort of like cold, and you know things are like
ice blue. But you know, power plants, these nuclear power plants,
they're always glowing blue. I've actually seen it myself in
real life. We have a nuclear power plant under the
(08:15):
chemistry building here. You see irvine. Wait, they do glow blue.
You're not You're not kidding. I'm not kidding, man, this
is a sign podcast stuff up. Actually we're talking about movies.
But you were thinking real life nuclear power plants globe blue.
In real life nuclear power plants glow blue. It's not
just Doctor Manhattan, it's real. I've seen it with my
own eyeballs. Oh man, and you're still alive alive? Well,
(08:38):
this AI simulation of me that does the podcast with you,
it's still alive. I uploaded myself to the cloud. It's
encase in radiation proof skin. I am Doctor Manhattan. It
turns out that's all this time. Oh my goodness, you're good.
Just made everything all these episod. So it's a peer
(09:00):
out of nowhere. Oh wow, can Dr Manhattan have a
podcast that that would be amazing, probably be a little disorienting.
But he doesn't seem to have a great sense of humor.
You know. I figured he's all powerful. Why can't you
think of a joke because he already knows the answer?
Oh so an element of comedy. Surprised if you know
the future, Yeah, doctormhand of course, because if you haven't
(09:20):
seen it from the show Watchman and the of course
graphic novel Watchman. But so, glowing blue is a thing
related to physics and nuclear power plants. And so that's
what we'll get into today. That's right. And the technical
name for what what we're gonna explain today is called
charnkof radiation, named for I guess Bob Charnkoff or Sam
Durnkoff or Sally Churnkoff, whoever discovered it, probably your maybe
(09:45):
or likely it was like yes, um, And so I
walked around campus here at you see Irvine, and I
asked people if they had heard of trunk off radiation
and if they thought particles could move faster than the
speed of light. So think about it for a second
and ask yourself if someone asked you if you knew
what sharinkof radiation was and if particles can go faster
(10:06):
than light, what would you answer. Here's what they had
to say. Have you heard of charinkof radiation? No? I haven't.
Do you think any particles can travel faster than light?
I don't know if this is accurate, but I think
like Einstein or someone like said that it is impossible
to travel faster than light. No, I have no idea.
Maybe I think it depends like how small they are,
(10:28):
and like I don't really know too much about like
the smallest particles or anything. So I think it could
be possible. No, I don't really sure. What's the name
of it? They says that is too PARTO, that's so small,
But they can contact with each other and really partably distance,
maybe even faster than the light. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah,
(10:52):
I believe so. But I couldn't defend that answer. O. No, no,
because isn't the spit of the fastest thing? Alright, A
lot of pretty good law abiding citizens answering your question,
nobody thought you can break this law of physics. You know,
some people did. Some people said, well, it depends how
small they are. That's my favorite one, Like to get
(11:14):
small enough then the laws don't apply, or something like
I see if the light is small enough, like if
the light if you're small enough, or if the light
is smaller, if the particles are small enough. I'm thinking,
you know, there's a like some minimum size for things
that these rules apply for, Like you know, if you're
smaller than one femptometer then these rules apply. And that
(11:35):
makes some sense because you know, if you're like half
of a point particle in size, then maybe go faster. Yeah,
and other folks, you know, some in quantum mechanics, you know,
maybe it's quantum magic something something something, Oh I see
because because it doesn't even quantum physics, there are you
guys do use sports like teleportation sometimes where you know,
(11:58):
sort of like going across some barrier or right, or
information traveling faster than light. We do sort of do
things that seem impossible using quantum mechanics that we never
send information faster than the speed of light um. And
you know, we do attach quantum to things that don't
really make sense, Like we talked about quantum cheetos on
the podcast Last Time did we did we Was that
(12:19):
just a dream, flaming hot dream? Yeah, alright, let's not
talk about Daniels flaming hot dreams. Yeah, so let's talk
about how particles can go faster than lights. So are
you're saying it's kind of a loophole and the laws
of physics. Yeah, you have to be really careful about
how you read these rules so you know exactly what
it applies to the law says nothing can go faster
(12:39):
than light in a vacuum. I feel like that's where
the maybe the caveat is in a vacuum. Yes, in
a vacuum. And so the key thing to understand there
is that it's not nothing can ever move faster than
the photon moves, which is the common interpretation, right, like
light always wins a race. It's that there is a
maximum speed limit to the universe, and that aximum speed
(13:00):
limit is the speed that light travels when it's in
a vacuum, right, and a vacuum in this case, obviously
it's not a carpet vacuum. You are talking about space.
Are we talking about non space? Are we talking about emptiness? Oh? Man,
As a whole forty five minute digression, there but yeah,
(13:20):
we're sort of talking about empty space, as as empty
as space can get, right, space space nothing but space.
Space always has quantum fields in it. Or a particle
can't move through space if it didn't have quantum fields
in it, because the particle is just a ripple in
the quantum fields. But as empty as space can get.
That's how light can travel the fastest. But it's not
(13:41):
really about light. You know. We call it the speed
of light because in a vacuum, that's how fast light goes.
But it's really the speed of information in the universe,
the speed out which anything can travel, not just light
but just anything in this in space. That's right, it's
the top speed for information, which means it's the fastest
that bolts can move through quantum fields, which mean that particles,
(14:03):
which are ripples in those fields, can never move faster
than that speed. Now, lots of particles move slower than
that speed, right, or massive particles can be at rest.
But it's sort of more about the speed limit of
the universe and not about the photons themselves. And it's
it's sort of not just particles, right, Like gravity can't
travel faster than light either. That's just why that's why
(14:23):
we have gravitational waves, that's right, gravitational information. Like if
you deleted the Sun from the universe, not something I recommend,
then we would still feel its gravity for eight minutes.
Eight minutes later where we'd be, we would feel the
lack of the Sun. Yeah, precisely. And so it's because
information takes time to propagate through the universe. And that's
(14:44):
all about the fields, right. What happens if you delete
the Sun from the universe, while the gravitational field of
the Sun sort of snaps back into flatness, but that
snapping takes time to propagate through the field. There's no
instantaneous transmission of information, and so it's really about information
as transmitted through quantum fields. That's the fundamental limitation, and
(15:05):
everything else just sort of falls out of that. So
that's the law the lasses. Nothing can go faster than
light in a vacuum. So then where's the loophole. Well,
the loophole is that if you could somehow slow down light,
then you could move faster than light as long as
both of you are under the speed limit of the universe.
If you can slow down your opponent, then you can
(15:27):
beat your opponent. You only have to run faster than
your friend when the bear is chasing you kind of situation. No,
but if the goal is to move faster than light,
then yeah, all you need to do is somehow slow
down light. If your goal is to move faster than
the speed of light does in a vacuum, yeah, that's impossible. Oh,
I see, it's possible to go faster than light quote unquote,
(15:50):
but maybe it's not possible to go faster than the
fastest that light can go precisely. And so it's sort
of a legalistic answer, right, can you go past and light? Oh? Yeah, sure,
I just slow light down and then I can easily
stroll past photons. So it depends on what you wanted
to do. If you wanted to move faster than light
(16:10):
doesn't a vacuum, If you wanted to get to Alpha
Centauri in two seconds, that might not be possible if
you have to move through space. But if you want
to have the experience of having your particles beat photons
in a race, that is possible. All right to me.
That doesn't sound like it's super easy to do, but
it sounds like maybe it is pretty easy to do.
And so let's get into how we can slow the
(16:31):
light down so we can beat it and what that
means for nuclear reactors. But first, let's take a quick break,
all right, Daniel, So news flash. While we were on break,
(16:53):
you liked Churinkov's first name. So what's his first name? Yes,
so it's not Eurie trink Off or Sally turnk Off,
it's po Old drink Off. And he won the Nobel
Prize in Night for explaining this amazing phenomena how how
particles give off this crazy blue glow when they do
beat photons in a race. Did he know why it was?
(17:14):
I guess that's why he got the Nobel Prize, But
did he know sort of the implications of it. Yeah,
I mean, this is the kind of thing that he
predicted and understood and then it was observed, and so
they give the Nobel Prize when you sort of understand
something that actually happens in the universe. Let's talk about
how particles can go faster than light, which apparently they can.
So there's a loophole in the lots of physics that
say you can go faster than light, can beat light
(17:38):
under certain conditions. That's right, and those conditions are that
you make light go slower, and you're probably thinking, hold
on a second, how could light go slower? Light is
made of photons, and photons have no mass, and everything
that has no mass has to move at the speed
of light because otherwise you could like catch up to
it and be hanging out with it. But like, photons
(17:58):
have no mass, so what happens if you catch up
to them? Then they're nothing? Right. The light is also
this funny thing because a lot of relativity, right depends
on this idea that light can always travels at the
same speed no matter how fast you're going or how
you're looking at it. Yeah, this is amazing principle in
special relativity that says everybody who measures the speed of light,
(18:18):
even the same light, always gets the same answer, regardless
of how fast they're moving relative to each other. So
if I'm shining a flashlight and I measure the speed
of those photons, that of course I get the speed
of light. But if I'm standing on a train that's
going half the speed of light, and you're on the
ground and you measure the light coming out of my photons,
you don't get one point five times the speed of light.
(18:40):
You still just get the speed of light and somebody
coming the other direction measures that still gets the speed
of light, and that's where all the crazy effects come
from in relativity. But you're saying that it is possible
to slow light down, So so how does that happen? Well,
it's gonna be another sort of legalistic answer, right. So
it's true that photons always move at the speed of
light in a vacuum, but when they're in a material,
(19:03):
a material you think of, it's sort of like a
collection of atoms or molecules, like when it's moving through
something not just empty space. Yeah, and those things slow
it down. It's like walking across an empty room versus
walking across a room with a bunch of your friends
in it. Every time you take a step, you're gonna
interact with one of those molecules. One of your friends
can say, hey, horror, how's it going, And you're gonna
(19:26):
have to respond to them, and it's going to slow
you down. Right, That's why I don't have any friends.
I'd just like to get to where I'm going. I
find that it's the most efficient way to live your life,
so not interact with humanity. And then but it's it's
kind of like Ussein Bald on a track can go
really fast, but Usain Bold going through a credit room
full of Daniel's friends, it would take him as longer. Yeah, precisely.
(19:48):
So the photon, you can imagine it moving through this material,
and it interacts with those atoms, and so in some
sense it's getting like absorbed and re emitted or at
the very least getting deflected by these electron and so
it's not just moving through the material in a straight line.
Is either getting absorbed and re emitted or deflected sort
of back and forth a little bit. And then it's
effective speed is slower than the speed of light. So
(20:11):
you can think that between its interaction with atoms, it's
still moving at the speed of light in the vacuum,
but you have to factor in the time it takes
to get absorbed by the electron to get re emitted,
or you have to think about this sort of effective
path length. If you're going up and down because you're
getting um interacting with the electrons and the nuclear fields,
then you're sort of getting pushed in the wrong direction
(20:32):
a little bit, and so your effective speed is gonna
be a little slower. It takes more time to get
through like a pane of glass, than it would to
get through the same distance In vacuum. Light takes longer
to go through glass than it does through water or air.
Light takes longer to go through water, air, or glass
than it does to get through a vacuum. And every
material has you know, some number we call this the
(20:54):
index of refraction that tells you sort of how much
light is slowed down. I guess my question is, if
it's getting absorbed and re emitted, is it's still the
same light? That is a question for the philosophy department,
my friend. It mostly is the same photon. I mean
it has the same roughly the same direction and carries
a lot of the same information um. But if a
(21:14):
photon is absorbed we emitted, is it the same photon?
We talked about that on the podcast when we're talking
about like the age of the electrons in your body.
If they don't interact, then it's the same one. If
they interact, is it really still the same one? Well,
you know, every particle is interacting with quantum virtual particles,
even in the vacuum, and so from that point of view,
like particle never lives from more than ten of the
(21:35):
mine is twenty five seconds and so no particles, the
same as as it was before, but effectively, I mean,
if you shine a beam of light through glass, you're
thinking about the same beam that's coming out the other side.
So really what you're interested in is measuring like the
velocity through the pane of glass. Okay, so then if
I shoot some light into glass, it's going to slow down.
(21:56):
And so that's one way that you can beat light.
You can run outside of the glass, you could run
on the side of glass. But some particles don't interact
with the material. Like you send a muan through a
block of ice, it doesn't interact with the material as
much as a photon does. So the photon gets slowed down.
But the muan is sort of stand offish. It's like
walking through a room of your friends and ignoring all
(22:17):
of them. Particle, like the muon can go through glass
and it doesn't stop as much as a photon because
I guess the particles don't like it, or it all
depends on the interactions. Yeah, the photon is slowed down
because it interacts with those atoms. The photon is a photon,
it interacts with everything that has charge and that means
atomic nuclei and atomic electrons, but a muon is heavier,
(22:39):
and that mass prevents it from interacting as much because
the rate of interaction there is dependent on the mass,
and so it helps us sort of ignore those particles.
And you know, other particles like neutrinos, they don't even
feel electromagnetic interactions, so they fly through this stuff and
they hardly even get slowed down at all. It's like
it just bulldozes through the crowd. Yeah, feels like it's
(23:00):
not even really there. Yeah. And so your speed through
material depends on how much you interact with that material.
And if photons interact more than your particle does, then
photons will get slowed down more than your particle does,
and your particle will win. It will come down the
other side of that material faster earlier than the other.
Photons always go at the speed of light. Muans cannot
(23:21):
go to the speed of light now because no particle
that has masks can go at the speed of light.
But they can go really fast. They can go point
or or something. I think if you accelerate a muan
enough and then start getting a piece of glass with
a photon, THEO would win. Yeah, if you shoot a
muon a gun at and you have a laser next
(23:42):
to it, then the muan is going to come outside
the piece of glass faster than the laser would good
for the muan. And electrons do this also. An electron
can go faster than light to electrons can go fast
in the light as well, and that's actually what gives
you the blue glow. And when particles do go faster
than light, then they had this really crazy effect called
charnkof radiation and it was actually churnk Off. He saw
(24:05):
this blue glow and then he used this idea to
explain it. Nobody understood like why is this stuff glowing
blue in these early nuclear experiments And he's the one
who came up with this explanation that maybe they're glowing
blue because they're going faster than the speed of light.
And he worked out all the math and he and
he showed why it happens. But wait, what did he
actually see, Like what was in front of him was
the radioactive material or was it just like going through glass?
(24:29):
But what was the thing that he actually noticed? Well,
what they were doing is they had a bottle of
water and they were shooting it with radiation right there.
This is in the early days, in the thirties, before
we really understood nuclear physics as well as we do now,
and they were just shooting it with particles and they
saw this blue light come out, and you know, they
didn't understand what caused it. Now, of course, we understand
(24:52):
that it was triggering other radioactive processes in the water
and some of those shootout electrons that moved through the
water fast, stir than the light can. And then it
gives off this blue glow, which is one of my
favorite things in physics. You mean a radiation, Well, radiation
is pretty awesome, or just the color blue, No, and
it's a nice blue. But this blue glow comes from
(25:13):
a special effect and it's sort of similar to a
sonic boom. All right, let's get into this sonic boom
but with light, and let's get into what actually happens
when you go faster than light. But first let's take
a quick break. All right, So it is possible to
(25:40):
beat light and go faster than light, but only if
you go through a material that slows light down, and
it only views something that doesn't get slowed down by
the glass. So and you're saying that's where where this
sharankovation comes from. Yeah, I think about it like a
boat on a on a lake. If you just dropped
a rock into a lake, then what happens. You get ripples,
(26:00):
and the ripples move out from the rock. But if
you drop a series of rocks, then you get a
series of ripples. Now imagine you're dropping a series of rocks,
but you're moving faster than the ripples. Then you end
up with this wake like behind the boat for example.
That's why if you drive a boat quickly, you get
a wake behind the boat, because you're moving faster than
the waves that are being made by your boat, and
(26:22):
they're building up. They're building up on top of each other.
And you're saying that that happens with light. Yeah, And
the same thing happens in the air. If you move
faster than the speed of sound, you get a sonic boom.
It's like a wake in the air. All those sounds
are adding up together to make you this with this
one big wave. So all the noise of the airplane
(26:43):
from one second ago, and two seconds ago, and five
seconds ago, it is all arriving at the same time
because it's moving faster than the sound it's making like
it's moving faster than the light can get out of
your way, and so you sort of accumulate a whole
bunch of air in front of you. That's kind of
what the sonic boom is. That's a sonic boom is,
and you hear it when that wake washes over you
(27:03):
if you're on the surface. Now, the cool thing is,
if you move faster than light, then you're moving faster
than the image that you make. Okay, so this is
like an optic boom. Yeah, it's like a luminal bloom.
I don't know, you should come up with a name
for it, but it's it's about a light boom that
sounds like something you'd use while in the production of
a movie. So I guess paying me through this. So
(27:25):
I'm a mun or some other radio active particle and
I'm moving through glass and I'm moving faster than light. Yeah,
So any light that you emit, you are leaving it behind.
And then if in a second later you emit more light,
you're also leaving that behind. So now the light is
sort of spreading out behind you, just the way a
boat would when it's moving across the surface of a lake.
(27:47):
But you're moving faster than the light you're making. And
so just the same way a boat makes awake or
an airplane going fast in the speed of sound makes
a sonic boom, which is just a wake in the air,
you are making a wake of light. Wait, I guess
I'm not quite sure understanding. I'm understanding. So let's say
I wasn't going faster than light. So I'm a muan.
I'm going through glass slowly. I hid a piece of glass,
(28:10):
and I emit photon right, that's kind of what happens,
And so the photon um just flies up in front
of me or what. Yeah, if you're moving slower than light,
like most of us do most days, then the any
image you make, any light that you emit, leaves you
and you don't catch up to it. Right, right, it's
gone in front of me because its gone behind me.
(28:32):
You emit light in all directions, right, You're not like
a black hole on one side. And so muans are similar.
They can emit light in any directions, and when they
moved to a medium, they tend to radiate a little bit, okay,
and they emit light sort of in every direction. So
imagine like circular wavefront leaving this muan. Those are photons
shot out in every direction from the muan. But now
the muan overtakes the ones that were going in the
(28:54):
direction it was going, and it makes another wave front
leaving it. So this is like dropping in another rock
in the lake, and that one adds up to the
photons that made previously, and but then it gets it
catches up to those and passes those and makes another one,
and so add these ripples get larger and larger they
add up to this wavefront. And that wavefront is the
(29:15):
luminal bloom or or whatever you wanna call it. Um
this wake in light that it's making, and that is
the blue glow. And because of the way they add up,
and because the muon is going so fast, it tends
to happen more often at bluer frequencies, and so it
actually emits trink arf radiation and a whole spectrum of frequencies.
You just mostly see the blue part because it happens
(29:38):
more often in the blue range. And so that's what
drink arf radiation is. Drink or radiation is really like
the sonic boom for light, and that's what you're seeing
when you look at a nuclear reactor, you're seeing electrons
that are like kicked off from from radioactive decay or
from nuclear reactions, going faster than light can in that
water or in that material that they're sitting because they're
(29:58):
getting kicked out really fast. They're going to kick that
really fast, faster than light can go through whatever material
they're sitting in. Oh, I see, but normal electrons, like
if I just run a current roop some water not
recommended in your bathtub. But if I just cause it
short in like a body of water, I wouldn't get
this blue globe, would I? Yeah, you need the electrons
(30:21):
to be going really fast. And the same way, if
you took those same really fast electrons and you teleported
them into space, you had that reaction happening space, you
wouldn't get the blue glow because the blue glow only
comes from beating the speed of those photons in that material.
And so in a vacuum, you can't beat the speed
of those materials. Because in these nuclear reactions, they usually
have these fuel rods embedded in some material to capture
(30:44):
the energy, etcetera. To cool it. Then the electrons can
go faster than the photons do through that cooling material,
which is usually some special kind of water, because in
that way, in the nuclear reactor, it's it's the electrons
start shooting off really really fast, which is causing them
the In fact, that's what the water is for, right,
It's to slow down the electrons coming off. I think so. Yeah,
(31:06):
it gathers the energy from the neutrons and the electrons
that fly off, and also I think it keeps the
fuel rods from getting too hot and going critical. You know,
from my extensive research and watching to Drink In, watching Chernobyl,
from your extensive research watching Watchman and Dr Vanhan, you
can conclude that it is possible for God to fall
(31:27):
in love with the woman. That's right. And you know,
it really is true in real life that nuclear reactors
glow blue. And I think that's why people associate that
color with nuclear reactions, and that's probably why the artist
for Watchman made Doctor Manhattan globe blue. Interesting. And you've
you've seen this with your own eyes. You saw like
the tub of water glowing blue. Yeah. You can go
down the basement of one of the chemistry buildings here
(31:49):
at you see your behind where they have a working
nuclear reactor and you can just look at it and
it glows blue. Anyone from the street can just walk
into a nuclear reactor. Tell them Daniel whiteson SENSU the
dip their toes into the blue water. That's how it's
totally safe. No, you can't just go down. You have
to arrange a tour and it's limited to I thinks
students and this the sps here at u c I,
(32:10):
which is awesome. Arrange is a tour of the nuclear
reactor every year for the physics grad students and undergrads.
And so I tagged along one time. All right, so
that's pretty cool that we can beat light in a
foot race. I guess if you're ever inside of a material,
And so that's pretty good bragging rights. And also it's
nice to just flaunt the loss of physics. Right. Does
that feel good? It does? It does feel good to
(32:32):
say you thought you could limit us, you thought you
could crack down on us and keep us from getting
what we want. Humanity can outlawyer you, Universe. We have
better lawyers than you. It's like when your parents said,
you know, no more than two cookies and then you
eat ice cream instead, and you said, well, you didn't
say anything about ice cream. I'm sure that your parents
(32:53):
love it, just like the universe hypothetical situation. All right,
so then what so what is it besides sort of
a nice blue glow and sort of bragging rights. What
can we use this effect for? Is it useful for anything? Yeah,
there are experiments that are looking for really high energy
neutrinos coming from like other galaxies or who knows what.
And they passed through the Earth to use the entire
(33:16):
Earth as a detector, and as they're passing through the Earth,
they emit a mu on. They turned into a muon,
And what we want to do is capture that muan.
And in order to do that, you need a really
large detector. You need like a cubic mile of detector
in order to measure the speed of these things. So
what they do is they use a cubic mile of ice.
(33:37):
They go down to Antarctica where there's like miles and
miles of ice, and they embed camera. They drill these
crazy long mile long holes and they drop down a
string of cameras and then they just pour water over
it and it freezes up and they never see them again.
But they have a one mile cube. It's like a
huge ice cube and they have all these strings of
(33:58):
cameras drill down into it, and they see muans coming
up from inside the Earth and emitting tcharenk Off radiation
inside the ice. What it's like does a flash? Does
see a flash? Or they'll see the ice glow. They
see this ring, right, because trink Off radiation is like
a sonic boom. It comes off in this circle. So
you see this ring of blue come through the ice,
(34:20):
and you can use that to measure the direction to
the muan and it's speed. You're saying, these come from
neutrinos that create the muans. The neutrinos come from who
knows where, and then they pass through the Earth the
sort of like upwards, going through the Earth, and then
in the Earth they make these muans. And then we
see the muans in the ice through this Sharenkov radiation
because there these are going then faster than light. Yeah,
(34:42):
they're really high energy muans and they're going faster than
light does in the ice and they make these crazy
blue glow. And so this is a technique we use
in particle physics all the time to spot really fast
particles because they make this special radiation and the angle
of the of the light that comes off them tells
you exactly the la city of the particle because you
can tell how fast it's going by when it hits
(35:05):
different cameras, Like you actually see an image of it. Yeah,
you can see an image. You can see the circle
that it emits, and you know the particle was going
right through the center of the circle emits this cone
of blue light and the angle of that cone tells
you the velocity of the particle, and of course the
particle went through the center, so you know the direction,
and so you get these awesome three D images. And
I just love the idea of like droolling down a
(35:28):
mile into ice and dropping cameras into it. Makes it
feel better about dropping your iPhone in your toilet. Scientists
have done much much worse. Yeah, that's a pretty cool experience,
which you maybe get into Antarctic signs. It seems like
they do a lot down there, and you can actually
(35:48):
even see churnk of radiation with your own eyes. So
I have to be a mile down into the Antarctic ice,
you don't. You can just have to get lucky because
the material in your eyeballs also the same property photons
go through its slower than high energy particles. So if
a muon passes through this vitreous humor, this goop that's
(36:09):
inside your eyeball, you will see a flash of blue.
Really if a muan, If a fast moving muon goes
into my eye. If I took a mu on gun
and I shot a beam of muans into your eyeballs,
which I will not do, but you would see a
blue glow in your eyes, you would be Dr Manhattan basically,
or you you would look like Dr Benhanton. Please put
(36:33):
on some clothes, Daniel, But I'm definitely that cut. I mean, yeah,
at least those black, nice black shorts that he speedoes
that he wears. Yeah, so you can see churnk rverdiation
with your own eyes. Now, it's not very common, but
it can be done. Wow, I never thought about that.
I guess the light that's hitting the back of my
(36:53):
eye is not going as fast as it could be. No,
it's slowed down by the goop in your eyeballs. If
your eyeballs had vacuums in them, that you'd see things
are tying a bit sooner. Right, Yeah, I'm getting an
unnecessary delay in my information here. I feel like there's
a startup idea somewhere there. Bit faster, that's right. Now,
(37:16):
get your what's your Netflix shows? A little bit faster
technically by inserting this bag in your eye, phall, it's
a good thing. This is not a medical advice show, right,
and everything will look less blue. Also, yeah, that's true. Yeah,
all right. Well that's a pretty interesting phenomenon. And it's
(37:37):
pretty interesting to know that the laws of physics have loopholes,
like who knows what else can have a loop loophole?
That's right. So come by to Daniel Whiteson, physics attorney
at law, and I will figure out how to accomplish
what it is you want to get done without breaking
any laws of physics. That's right. To go down to
whites and whiteson and whites and LP. That's right. Black
(38:00):
hole immigration attorneys, Light particle physicists. Do you have an
undocumented black hole in your backyard? We can help you.
Have you been in a physics accident, even if you
were at fault, we will we will speculate about the causality.
There was a delay that now the light got to
(38:22):
his eyeball, it's not his fault. It's a pre existing
condition of the universe. All right. Well, it's pretty cool,
and who knows what other loopholes are will discover in
the future. That's right. This should inspire you because if
there's something you want to get done in the universe
and you thought it was impossible, there might be a
way to work around the laws of physics. All right,
thank you very much for joining us, guys and gals
(38:44):
out there. We hope you enjoyed that. See you next time.
And if you're interested in asking us a question you'd
like to hear us answer on the podcast, please don't
be shy. I send it to questions at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Before you still have a question after
(39:05):
listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
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, visit
(39:27):
the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,
Hey, Daniel, what happens if you break a law of physics?
Is this a hypothetical question? Are you like looking for
physics legal advice? Well, I mean, I'm not saying I'm
building a faster than like black hole machine in my backyard.
I'm just, you know, just hypothetically, what would happen to
me legally if I broke a law physics? Well, speaking
(00:30):
for physics as a spokesperson for physics, physics tend to
be pretty unforgiven. You just can't break the laws. You mean,
I can't go to physics jail or get a physics Fine,
we have a black hole we throw all those people into.
I see that that is physics too. Yeah, as your
physics lawyer, I advise you not to break any laws
(00:50):
of physics. Hi am Korhamat, cartoonists and the creator of
PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel Whitson. I'm a particle of physicist,
(01:14):
and I'm always looking for ways to accomplish what we
need to without breaking the laws of physics. And together
with the authors of the book, we have No Idea.
A Guide to the Unknown Universe, now translated to over
twenty three languages. I just finished the Ukrainian version. It's awesome.
Oh yeah, we're we're the jokes as funny in Ukrainian
or may more funny. This sort of a dry sense
(01:38):
of humor there, you know, in Ukrainian it's a it's
a different culture or different language. Now, I have no
idea really how somebody translates our sort of silly sense
of humor into Korean or Ukrainian. But hey, they've done.
I'm sure there's a word for farts in all of
those languages. Yeah, well, that's a question which country has
the most words for farts? Something about culture? Right right, Twitter,
(02:02):
get on it, We challenge you. But that book tells
you not just about how to say farts in Korean
and Polish, but also about the mysteries of the universe
and how so many of them are left unsolved, so
many of them that maybe you, or your kids or
your grandkids might be the one to reveal something fascinating
and mind blowing and basic about the universe. We find
(02:23):
ourselves in Yeah, Amazon questions, some of which we tackle
here in our podcast, So welcome to Daniel and Jorge
Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in
which we explore all the unknowns and the nons about
the universe, the known knowns, the unknown unknowns, the unknownns,
and the known unknowns for the complete matrix of nonliness.
(02:44):
I don't know about that, man, But um, yeah, we
talk about how it all works, and specifically, I guess
we talk about what you can and cannot do in
the universe. Yeah, it's physics sort of works in both directions.
On one hand, we're looking around the universe and trying
to figure out what are the rules? You know, this
happens and that doesn't happen. Why doesn't that ever happen?
(03:05):
How can we never see anything break this rule? I
guess it's a fundamental rule the universe. But it also
goes the other way, where we're like, well, given these rules,
how do we accomplish what we want to? You know,
how do we get to alpha centaur? You know, reasonable
amount of time? How do we get enough energy to
fuel all the demands of humanity? So it sort of
works in both directions. Yeah, where it's that warp drive.
(03:26):
I'm still winning for my flying car and the teleporter
the warp drive. Warp drives might actually come before flying cars. Really, Yeah, well,
warp drives you know, theoretically solved, and there's some practical
problems there. We talked about on our podcast, you know, like,
you know, do you eat the entire massive Jupiter in
order to accomplish in one trip? But hey, it's just
(03:47):
an engineering problem. I see, I see. Theoretically we have
warp drives, we totally practically practically, we're not there yet.
We're not there yet. But I think flying cars are
harder because it's not just an engine earing problem. It's
like a sociological problem. Like you know, you turn left,
you turn right, you turn up, you know, and I have.
Everybody has to learn how to drive those things. It's
(04:08):
going to be a nightmare. Who who wants flying cars?
You know? Who wants to be stuck in three dimensional traffic?
Maybe we should only get flying cars after we get
self driving cars, so we can get self driving flying cars.
I can't tell that's the best idea or the worst idea. Yeah,
we'll say it's a theoretically good idea and then leave
it to the engineers. Something I've always wanted to do
(04:29):
is visit their star systems and walk on the surface
of other planets. But of course these planets are all
so far away that, given the limitation of the speed
of light, it would take you forever to get there. Right, Yeah,
I mean it's a huge and amazing universe with probably
incredible and mindloing things to see, but they're all they're
all really far away. Right, The nearest star is at
(04:52):
least what three light years away? And yeah, proximates Centauri
is more than three light years away, and our galaxies
hundreds thousand light years across, and the nearest galaxy is
much much further away. So you might think that makes
the universe inaccessible, but your physics lawyer will provide a
physics loophole. Yeah, in the in the contract of the universe,
(05:14):
is that where the loophole is, or in the laws written? Yeah,
if you want to accomplish something and there's a law
that's sort of stopping you, you've got to think to yourself,
do I really need to break this law or is
there another way to get there? And so, in the
case of warp drives, it's a really elegant solution. It says,
you know, nothing can move through space faster than light,
All right, well, then don't move through space, just bend space.
(05:38):
So it's not actually so far away. It's a good
it's a really it's a beautiful sort of example of
how do you think differently, so you're not breaking the rules,
but you're getting what you wanted. If Mohammed camp come
to alpha centauri, have alpha centauri come to Mohowing. And
so there are loopholes and in physics and the ways
in which there's sort of an unbreakable law, but if
(05:58):
you think about it a little bit, there are maybe
ways that you can work around it, right, yeah, precisely,
and this one nothing can travel faster than light. This
one's pretty susceptible to loopholes. Really, it's a fraud law.
It's it's it's not well written. You have the guys
who drafted it initially, they should have thought about all
the clauses and the addendums and the very scenarios. Clearly
(06:22):
was written by physicists, not lawyers. And now it's physicists
that are helping us get around it, and especially particle physics,
because we've talked in the podcast before about particles that
move faster than the speed of light, like tachyons. But
there's another thing you can do. You can actually get
normal everyday particles like electrons, and muanes going faster than light.
(06:43):
It feels like you're saying something profane or something heretical. Um, yeah,
I sort of like that. I'm sort of like, you know,
tossing a challenge in the face of the universe, Like
you think you got this law, watch this, watch me
go faster. Sorry, I'm gonna break this rule right in
front of you. Yeah. So today on the program, we'll
be tackling the topic how particles can go faster than light.
(07:11):
Today's topic is not a question for the first time.
Usually we have a question as a title of the episode,
but today it's a statement. That's right. We are standing
up for particles and say you can't tell them what
to do particles. Yeah, and it's it's a prescriptive title
to right. I guess we're going to explain how particles
can go faster than light. Yes, we certainly are. We're
(07:32):
gonna explain how it happens and how it works. And
also we're gonna answer some other lingering questions in your mind,
like why are nuclear power plants always shown as glowing
blue in the movies because green means their ghosts. I
guess I was I was wondering what you're gonna say,
there's artistic science point of view. You have different colors
(07:53):
mean different things. Yeah, red is danger, right. I was
seeing as green as ghost from those busters. I thought
green was envy. But and I always thought blue was
sort of like cold, and you know things are like
ice blue. But you know, power plants, these nuclear power plants,
they're always glowing blue. I've actually seen it myself in
real life. We have a nuclear power plant under the
(08:15):
chemistry building here. You see irvine. Wait, they do glow blue.
You're not You're not kidding. I'm not kidding, man, this
is a sign podcast stuff up. Actually we're talking about movies.
But you were thinking real life nuclear power plants globe blue.
In real life nuclear power plants glow blue. It's not
just Doctor Manhattan, it's real. I've seen it with my
own eyeballs. Oh man, and you're still alive alive? Well,
(08:38):
this AI simulation of me that does the podcast with you,
it's still alive. I uploaded myself to the cloud. It's
encase in radiation proof skin. I am Doctor Manhattan. It
turns out that's all this time. Oh my goodness, you're good.
Just made everything all these episod. So it's a peer
(09:00):
out of nowhere. Oh wow, can Dr Manhattan have a
podcast that that would be amazing, probably be a little disorienting.
But he doesn't seem to have a great sense of humor.
You know. I figured he's all powerful. Why can't you
think of a joke because he already knows the answer?
Oh so an element of comedy. Surprised if you know
the future, Yeah, doctormhand of course, because if you haven't
(09:20):
seen it from the show Watchman and the of course
graphic novel Watchman. But so, glowing blue is a thing
related to physics and nuclear power plants. And so that's
what we'll get into today. That's right. And the technical
name for what what we're gonna explain today is called
charnkof radiation, named for I guess Bob Charnkoff or Sam
Durnkoff or Sally Churnkoff, whoever discovered it, probably your maybe
(09:45):
or likely it was like yes, um, And so I
walked around campus here at you see Irvine, and I
asked people if they had heard of trunk off radiation
and if they thought particles could move faster than the
speed of light. So think about it for a second
and ask yourself if someone asked you if you knew
what sharinkof radiation was and if particles can go faster
(10:06):
than light, what would you answer. Here's what they had
to say. Have you heard of charinkof radiation? No? I haven't.
Do you think any particles can travel faster than light?
I don't know if this is accurate, but I think
like Einstein or someone like said that it is impossible
to travel faster than light. No, I have no idea.
Maybe I think it depends like how small they are,
(10:28):
and like I don't really know too much about like
the smallest particles or anything. So I think it could
be possible. No, I don't really sure. What's the name
of it? They says that is too PARTO, that's so small,
But they can contact with each other and really partably distance,
maybe even faster than the light. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah,
(10:52):
I believe so. But I couldn't defend that answer. O. No, no,
because isn't the spit of the fastest thing? Alright, A
lot of pretty good law abiding citizens answering your question,
nobody thought you can break this law of physics. You know,
some people did. Some people said, well, it depends how
small they are. That's my favorite one, Like to get
(11:14):
small enough then the laws don't apply, or something like
I see if the light is small enough, like if
the light if you're small enough, or if the light
is smaller, if the particles are small enough. I'm thinking,
you know, there's a like some minimum size for things
that these rules apply for, Like you know, if you're
smaller than one femptometer then these rules apply. And that
(11:35):
makes some sense because you know, if you're like half
of a point particle in size, then maybe go faster. Yeah,
and other folks, you know, some in quantum mechanics, you know,
maybe it's quantum magic something something something, Oh I see
because because it doesn't even quantum physics, there are you
guys do use sports like teleportation sometimes where you know,
(11:58):
sort of like going across some barrier or right, or
information traveling faster than light. We do sort of do
things that seem impossible using quantum mechanics that we never
send information faster than the speed of light um. And
you know, we do attach quantum to things that don't
really make sense, Like we talked about quantum cheetos on
the podcast Last Time did we did we Was that
(12:19):
just a dream, flaming hot dream? Yeah, alright, let's not
talk about Daniels flaming hot dreams. Yeah, so let's talk
about how particles can go faster than lights. So are
you're saying it's kind of a loophole and the laws
of physics. Yeah, you have to be really careful about
how you read these rules so you know exactly what
it applies to the law says nothing can go faster
(12:39):
than light in a vacuum. I feel like that's where
the maybe the caveat is in a vacuum. Yes, in
a vacuum. And so the key thing to understand there
is that it's not nothing can ever move faster than
the photon moves, which is the common interpretation, right, like
light always wins a race. It's that there is a
maximum speed limit to the universe, and that aximum speed
(13:00):
limit is the speed that light travels when it's in
a vacuum, right, and a vacuum in this case, obviously
it's not a carpet vacuum. You are talking about space.
Are we talking about non space? Are we talking about emptiness? Oh? Man,
As a whole forty five minute digression, there but yeah,
(13:20):
we're sort of talking about empty space, as as empty
as space can get, right, space space nothing but space.
Space always has quantum fields in it. Or a particle
can't move through space if it didn't have quantum fields
in it, because the particle is just a ripple in
the quantum fields. But as empty as space can get.
That's how light can travel the fastest. But it's not
(13:41):
really about light. You know. We call it the speed
of light because in a vacuum, that's how fast light goes.
But it's really the speed of information in the universe,
the speed out which anything can travel, not just light
but just anything in this in space. That's right, it's
the top speed for information, which means it's the fastest
that bolts can move through quantum fields, which mean that particles,
(14:03):
which are ripples in those fields, can never move faster
than that speed. Now, lots of particles move slower than
that speed, right, or massive particles can be at rest.
But it's sort of more about the speed limit of
the universe and not about the photons themselves. And it's
it's sort of not just particles, right, Like gravity can't
travel faster than light either. That's just why that's why
(14:23):
we have gravitational waves, that's right, gravitational information. Like if
you deleted the Sun from the universe, not something I recommend,
then we would still feel its gravity for eight minutes.
Eight minutes later where we'd be, we would feel the
lack of the Sun. Yeah, precisely. And so it's because
information takes time to propagate through the universe. And that's
(14:44):
all about the fields, right. What happens if you delete
the Sun from the universe, while the gravitational field of
the Sun sort of snaps back into flatness, but that
snapping takes time to propagate through the field. There's no
instantaneous transmission of information, and so it's really about information
as transmitted through quantum fields. That's the fundamental limitation, and
(15:05):
everything else just sort of falls out of that. So
that's the law the lasses. Nothing can go faster than
light in a vacuum. So then where's the loophole. Well,
the loophole is that if you could somehow slow down light,
then you could move faster than light as long as
both of you are under the speed limit of the universe.
If you can slow down your opponent, then you can
(15:27):
beat your opponent. You only have to run faster than
your friend when the bear is chasing you kind of situation. No,
but if the goal is to move faster than light,
then yeah, all you need to do is somehow slow
down light. If your goal is to move faster than
the speed of light does in a vacuum, yeah, that's impossible. Oh,
I see, it's possible to go faster than light quote unquote,
(15:50):
but maybe it's not possible to go faster than the
fastest that light can go precisely. And so it's sort
of a legalistic answer, right, can you go past and light? Oh? Yeah, sure,
I just slow light down and then I can easily
stroll past photons. So it depends on what you wanted
to do. If you wanted to move faster than light
(16:10):
doesn't a vacuum, If you wanted to get to Alpha
Centauri in two seconds, that might not be possible if
you have to move through space. But if you want
to have the experience of having your particles beat photons
in a race, that is possible. All right to me.
That doesn't sound like it's super easy to do, but
it sounds like maybe it is pretty easy to do.
And so let's get into how we can slow the
(16:31):
light down so we can beat it and what that
means for nuclear reactors. But first, let's take a quick break,
all right, Daniel, So news flash. While we were on break,
(16:53):
you liked Churinkov's first name. So what's his first name? Yes,
so it's not Eurie trink Off or Sally turnk Off,
it's po Old drink Off. And he won the Nobel
Prize in Night for explaining this amazing phenomena how how
particles give off this crazy blue glow when they do
beat photons in a race. Did he know why it was?
(17:14):
I guess that's why he got the Nobel Prize, But
did he know sort of the implications of it. Yeah,
I mean, this is the kind of thing that he
predicted and understood and then it was observed, and so
they give the Nobel Prize when you sort of understand
something that actually happens in the universe. Let's talk about
how particles can go faster than light, which apparently they can.
So there's a loophole in the lots of physics that
say you can go faster than light, can beat light
(17:38):
under certain conditions. That's right, and those conditions are that
you make light go slower, and you're probably thinking, hold
on a second, how could light go slower? Light is
made of photons, and photons have no mass, and everything
that has no mass has to move at the speed
of light because otherwise you could like catch up to
it and be hanging out with it. But like, photons
(17:58):
have no mass, so what happens if you catch up
to them? Then they're nothing? Right. The light is also
this funny thing because a lot of relativity, right depends
on this idea that light can always travels at the
same speed no matter how fast you're going or how
you're looking at it. Yeah, this is amazing principle in
special relativity that says everybody who measures the speed of light,
(18:18):
even the same light, always gets the same answer, regardless
of how fast they're moving relative to each other. So
if I'm shining a flashlight and I measure the speed
of those photons, that of course I get the speed
of light. But if I'm standing on a train that's
going half the speed of light, and you're on the
ground and you measure the light coming out of my photons,
you don't get one point five times the speed of light.
(18:40):
You still just get the speed of light and somebody
coming the other direction measures that still gets the speed
of light, and that's where all the crazy effects come
from in relativity. But you're saying that it is possible
to slow light down, So so how does that happen? Well,
it's gonna be another sort of legalistic answer, right. So
it's true that photons always move at the speed of
light in a vacuum, but when they're in a material,
(19:03):
a material you think of, it's sort of like a
collection of atoms or molecules, like when it's moving through
something not just empty space. Yeah, and those things slow
it down. It's like walking across an empty room versus
walking across a room with a bunch of your friends
in it. Every time you take a step, you're gonna
interact with one of those molecules. One of your friends
can say, hey, horror, how's it going, And you're gonna
(19:26):
have to respond to them, and it's going to slow
you down. Right, That's why I don't have any friends.
I'd just like to get to where I'm going. I
find that it's the most efficient way to live your life,
so not interact with humanity. And then but it's it's
kind of like Ussein Bald on a track can go
really fast, but Usain Bold going through a credit room
full of Daniel's friends, it would take him as longer. Yeah, precisely.
(19:48):
So the photon, you can imagine it moving through this material,
and it interacts with those atoms, and so in some
sense it's getting like absorbed and re emitted or at
the very least getting deflected by these electron and so
it's not just moving through the material in a straight line.
Is either getting absorbed and re emitted or deflected sort
of back and forth a little bit. And then it's
effective speed is slower than the speed of light. So
(20:11):
you can think that between its interaction with atoms, it's
still moving at the speed of light in the vacuum,
but you have to factor in the time it takes
to get absorbed by the electron to get re emitted,
or you have to think about this sort of effective
path length. If you're going up and down because you're
getting um interacting with the electrons and the nuclear fields,
then you're sort of getting pushed in the wrong direction
(20:32):
a little bit, and so your effective speed is gonna
be a little slower. It takes more time to get
through like a pane of glass, than it would to
get through the same distance In vacuum. Light takes longer
to go through glass than it does through water or air.
Light takes longer to go through water, air, or glass
than it does to get through a vacuum. And every
material has you know, some number we call this the
(20:54):
index of refraction that tells you sort of how much
light is slowed down. I guess my question is, if
it's getting absorbed and re emitted, is it's still the
same light? That is a question for the philosophy department,
my friend. It mostly is the same photon. I mean
it has the same roughly the same direction and carries
a lot of the same information um. But if a
(21:14):
photon is absorbed we emitted, is it the same photon?
We talked about that on the podcast when we're talking
about like the age of the electrons in your body.
If they don't interact, then it's the same one. If
they interact, is it really still the same one? Well,
you know, every particle is interacting with quantum virtual particles,
even in the vacuum, and so from that point of view,
like particle never lives from more than ten of the
(21:35):
mine is twenty five seconds and so no particles, the
same as as it was before, but effectively, I mean,
if you shine a beam of light through glass, you're
thinking about the same beam that's coming out the other side.
So really what you're interested in is measuring like the
velocity through the pane of glass. Okay, so then if
I shoot some light into glass, it's going to slow down.
(21:56):
And so that's one way that you can beat light.
You can run outside of the glass, you could run
on the side of glass. But some particles don't interact
with the material. Like you send a muan through a
block of ice, it doesn't interact with the material as
much as a photon does. So the photon gets slowed down.
But the muan is sort of stand offish. It's like
walking through a room of your friends and ignoring all
(22:17):
of them. Particle, like the muon can go through glass
and it doesn't stop as much as a photon because
I guess the particles don't like it, or it all
depends on the interactions. Yeah, the photon is slowed down
because it interacts with those atoms. The photon is a photon,
it interacts with everything that has charge and that means
atomic nuclei and atomic electrons, but a muon is heavier,
(22:39):
and that mass prevents it from interacting as much because
the rate of interaction there is dependent on the mass,
and so it helps us sort of ignore those particles.
And you know, other particles like neutrinos, they don't even
feel electromagnetic interactions, so they fly through this stuff and
they hardly even get slowed down at all. It's like
it just bulldozes through the crowd. Yeah, feels like it's
(23:00):
not even really there. Yeah. And so your speed through
material depends on how much you interact with that material.
And if photons interact more than your particle does, then
photons will get slowed down more than your particle does,
and your particle will win. It will come down the
other side of that material faster earlier than the other.
Photons always go at the speed of light. Muans cannot
(23:21):
go to the speed of light now because no particle
that has masks can go at the speed of light.
But they can go really fast. They can go point
or or something. I think if you accelerate a muan
enough and then start getting a piece of glass with
a photon, THEO would win. Yeah, if you shoot a
muon a gun at and you have a laser next
(23:42):
to it, then the muan is going to come outside
the piece of glass faster than the laser would good
for the muan. And electrons do this also. An electron
can go faster than light to electrons can go fast
in the light as well, and that's actually what gives
you the blue glow. And when particles do go faster
than light, then they had this really crazy effect called
charnkof radiation and it was actually churnk Off. He saw
(24:05):
this blue glow and then he used this idea to
explain it. Nobody understood like why is this stuff glowing
blue in these early nuclear experiments And he's the one
who came up with this explanation that maybe they're glowing
blue because they're going faster than the speed of light.
And he worked out all the math and he and
he showed why it happens. But wait, what did he
actually see, Like what was in front of him was
the radioactive material or was it just like going through glass?
(24:29):
But what was the thing that he actually noticed? Well,
what they were doing is they had a bottle of
water and they were shooting it with radiation right there.
This is in the early days, in the thirties, before
we really understood nuclear physics as well as we do now,
and they were just shooting it with particles and they
saw this blue light come out, and you know, they
didn't understand what caused it. Now, of course, we understand
(24:52):
that it was triggering other radioactive processes in the water
and some of those shootout electrons that moved through the
water fast, stir than the light can. And then it
gives off this blue glow, which is one of my
favorite things in physics. You mean a radiation, Well, radiation
is pretty awesome, or just the color blue, No, and
it's a nice blue. But this blue glow comes from
(25:13):
a special effect and it's sort of similar to a
sonic boom. All right, let's get into this sonic boom
but with light, and let's get into what actually happens
when you go faster than light. But first let's take
a quick break. All right, So it is possible to
(25:40):
beat light and go faster than light, but only if
you go through a material that slows light down, and
it only views something that doesn't get slowed down by
the glass. So and you're saying that's where where this
sharankovation comes from. Yeah, I think about it like a
boat on a on a lake. If you just dropped
a rock into a lake, then what happens. You get ripples,
(26:00):
and the ripples move out from the rock. But if
you drop a series of rocks, then you get a
series of ripples. Now imagine you're dropping a series of rocks,
but you're moving faster than the ripples. Then you end
up with this wake like behind the boat for example.
That's why if you drive a boat quickly, you get
a wake behind the boat, because you're moving faster than
the waves that are being made by your boat, and
(26:22):
they're building up. They're building up on top of each other.
And you're saying that that happens with light. Yeah, And
the same thing happens in the air. If you move
faster than the speed of sound, you get a sonic boom.
It's like a wake in the air. All those sounds
are adding up together to make you this with this
one big wave. So all the noise of the airplane
(26:43):
from one second ago, and two seconds ago, and five
seconds ago, it is all arriving at the same time
because it's moving faster than the sound it's making like
it's moving faster than the light can get out of
your way, and so you sort of accumulate a whole
bunch of air in front of you. That's kind of
what the sonic boom is. That's a sonic boom is,
and you hear it when that wake washes over you
(27:03):
if you're on the surface. Now, the cool thing is,
if you move faster than light, then you're moving faster
than the image that you make. Okay, so this is
like an optic boom. Yeah, it's like a luminal bloom.
I don't know, you should come up with a name
for it, but it's it's about a light boom that
sounds like something you'd use while in the production of
a movie. So I guess paying me through this. So
(27:25):
I'm a mun or some other radio active particle and
I'm moving through glass and I'm moving faster than light. Yeah,
So any light that you emit, you are leaving it behind.
And then if in a second later you emit more light,
you're also leaving that behind. So now the light is
sort of spreading out behind you, just the way a
boat would when it's moving across the surface of a lake.
(27:47):
But you're moving faster than the light you're making. And
so just the same way a boat makes awake or
an airplane going fast in the speed of sound makes
a sonic boom, which is just a wake in the air,
you are making a wake of light. Wait, I guess
I'm not quite sure understanding. I'm understanding. So let's say
I wasn't going faster than light. So I'm a muan.
I'm going through glass slowly. I hid a piece of glass,
(28:10):
and I emit photon right, that's kind of what happens,
And so the photon um just flies up in front
of me or what. Yeah, if you're moving slower than light,
like most of us do most days, then the any
image you make, any light that you emit, leaves you
and you don't catch up to it. Right, right, it's
gone in front of me because its gone behind me.
(28:32):
You emit light in all directions, right, You're not like
a black hole on one side. And so muans are similar.
They can emit light in any directions, and when they
moved to a medium, they tend to radiate a little bit, okay,
and they emit light sort of in every direction. So
imagine like circular wavefront leaving this muan. Those are photons
shot out in every direction from the muan. But now
the muan overtakes the ones that were going in the
(28:54):
direction it was going, and it makes another wave front
leaving it. So this is like dropping in another rock
in the lake, and that one adds up to the
photons that made previously, and but then it gets it
catches up to those and passes those and makes another one,
and so add these ripples get larger and larger they
add up to this wavefront. And that wavefront is the
(29:15):
luminal bloom or or whatever you wanna call it. Um
this wake in light that it's making, and that is
the blue glow. And because of the way they add up,
and because the muon is going so fast, it tends
to happen more often at bluer frequencies, and so it
actually emits trink arf radiation and a whole spectrum of frequencies.
You just mostly see the blue part because it happens
(29:38):
more often in the blue range. And so that's what
drink arf radiation is. Drink or radiation is really like
the sonic boom for light, and that's what you're seeing
when you look at a nuclear reactor, you're seeing electrons
that are like kicked off from from radioactive decay or
from nuclear reactions, going faster than light can in that
water or in that material that they're sitting because they're
(29:58):
getting kicked out really fast. They're going to kick that
really fast, faster than light can go through whatever material
they're sitting in. Oh, I see, but normal electrons, like
if I just run a current roop some water not
recommended in your bathtub. But if I just cause it
short in like a body of water, I wouldn't get
this blue globe, would I? Yeah, you need the electrons
(30:21):
to be going really fast. And the same way, if
you took those same really fast electrons and you teleported
them into space, you had that reaction happening space, you
wouldn't get the blue glow because the blue glow only
comes from beating the speed of those photons in that material.
And so in a vacuum, you can't beat the speed
of those materials. Because in these nuclear reactions, they usually
have these fuel rods embedded in some material to capture
(30:44):
the energy, etcetera. To cool it. Then the electrons can
go faster than the photons do through that cooling material,
which is usually some special kind of water, because in
that way, in the nuclear reactor, it's it's the electrons
start shooting off really really fast, which is causing them
the In fact, that's what the water is for, right,
It's to slow down the electrons coming off. I think so. Yeah,
(31:06):
it gathers the energy from the neutrons and the electrons
that fly off, and also I think it keeps the
fuel rods from getting too hot and going critical. You know,
from my extensive research and watching to Drink In, watching Chernobyl,
from your extensive research watching Watchman and Dr Vanhan, you
can conclude that it is possible for God to fall
(31:27):
in love with the woman. That's right. And you know,
it really is true in real life that nuclear reactors
glow blue. And I think that's why people associate that
color with nuclear reactions, and that's probably why the artist
for Watchman made Doctor Manhattan globe blue. Interesting. And you've
you've seen this with your own eyes. You saw like
the tub of water glowing blue. Yeah. You can go
down the basement of one of the chemistry buildings here
(31:49):
at you see your behind where they have a working
nuclear reactor and you can just look at it and
it glows blue. Anyone from the street can just walk
into a nuclear reactor. Tell them Daniel whiteson SENSU the
dip their toes into the blue water. That's how it's
totally safe. No, you can't just go down. You have
to arrange a tour and it's limited to I thinks
students and this the sps here at u c I,
(32:10):
which is awesome. Arrange is a tour of the nuclear
reactor every year for the physics grad students and undergrads.
And so I tagged along one time. All right, so
that's pretty cool that we can beat light in a
foot race. I guess if you're ever inside of a material,
And so that's pretty good bragging rights. And also it's
nice to just flaunt the loss of physics. Right. Does
that feel good? It does? It does feel good to
(32:32):
say you thought you could limit us, you thought you
could crack down on us and keep us from getting
what we want. Humanity can outlawyer you, Universe. We have
better lawyers than you. It's like when your parents said,
you know, no more than two cookies and then you
eat ice cream instead, and you said, well, you didn't
say anything about ice cream. I'm sure that your parents
(32:53):
love it, just like the universe hypothetical situation. All right,
so then what so what is it besides sort of
a nice blue glow and sort of bragging rights. What
can we use this effect for? Is it useful for anything? Yeah,
there are experiments that are looking for really high energy
neutrinos coming from like other galaxies or who knows what.
And they passed through the Earth to use the entire
(33:16):
Earth as a detector, and as they're passing through the Earth,
they emit a mu on. They turned into a muon,
And what we want to do is capture that muan.
And in order to do that, you need a really
large detector. You need like a cubic mile of detector
in order to measure the speed of these things. So
what they do is they use a cubic mile of ice.
(33:37):
They go down to Antarctica where there's like miles and
miles of ice, and they embed camera. They drill these
crazy long mile long holes and they drop down a
string of cameras and then they just pour water over
it and it freezes up and they never see them again.
But they have a one mile cube. It's like a
huge ice cube and they have all these strings of
(33:58):
cameras drill down into it, and they see muans coming
up from inside the Earth and emitting tcharenk Off radiation
inside the ice. What it's like does a flash? Does
see a flash? Or they'll see the ice glow. They
see this ring, right, because trink Off radiation is like
a sonic boom. It comes off in this circle. So
you see this ring of blue come through the ice,
(34:20):
and you can use that to measure the direction to
the muan and it's speed. You're saying, these come from
neutrinos that create the muans. The neutrinos come from who
knows where, and then they pass through the Earth the
sort of like upwards, going through the Earth, and then
in the Earth they make these muans. And then we
see the muans in the ice through this Sharenkov radiation
because there these are going then faster than light. Yeah,
(34:42):
they're really high energy muans and they're going faster than
light does in the ice and they make these crazy
blue glow. And so this is a technique we use
in particle physics all the time to spot really fast
particles because they make this special radiation and the angle
of the of the light that comes off them tells
you exactly the la city of the particle because you
can tell how fast it's going by when it hits
(35:05):
different cameras, Like you actually see an image of it. Yeah,
you can see an image. You can see the circle
that it emits, and you know the particle was going
right through the center of the circle emits this cone
of blue light and the angle of that cone tells
you the velocity of the particle, and of course the
particle went through the center, so you know the direction,
and so you get these awesome three D images. And
I just love the idea of like droolling down a
(35:28):
mile into ice and dropping cameras into it. Makes it
feel better about dropping your iPhone in your toilet. Scientists
have done much much worse. Yeah, that's a pretty cool experience,
which you maybe get into Antarctic signs. It seems like
they do a lot down there, and you can actually
(35:48):
even see churnk of radiation with your own eyes. So
I have to be a mile down into the Antarctic ice,
you don't. You can just have to get lucky because
the material in your eyeballs also the same property photons
go through its slower than high energy particles. So if
a muon passes through this vitreous humor, this goop that's
(36:09):
inside your eyeball, you will see a flash of blue.
Really if a muan, If a fast moving muon goes
into my eye. If I took a mu on gun
and I shot a beam of muans into your eyeballs,
which I will not do, but you would see a
blue glow in your eyes, you would be Dr Manhattan basically,
or you you would look like Dr Benhanton. Please put
(36:33):
on some clothes, Daniel, But I'm definitely that cut. I mean, yeah,
at least those black, nice black shorts that he speedoes
that he wears. Yeah, so you can see churnk rverdiation
with your own eyes. Now, it's not very common, but
it can be done. Wow, I never thought about that.
I guess the light that's hitting the back of my
(36:53):
eye is not going as fast as it could be. No,
it's slowed down by the goop in your eyeballs. If
your eyeballs had vacuums in them, that you'd see things
are tying a bit sooner. Right, Yeah, I'm getting an
unnecessary delay in my information here. I feel like there's
a startup idea somewhere there. Bit faster, that's right. Now,
(37:16):
get your what's your Netflix shows? A little bit faster
technically by inserting this bag in your eye, phall, it's
a good thing. This is not a medical advice show, right,
and everything will look less blue. Also, yeah, that's true. Yeah,
all right. Well that's a pretty interesting phenomenon. And it's
(37:37):
pretty interesting to know that the laws of physics have loopholes,
like who knows what else can have a loop loophole?
That's right. So come by to Daniel Whiteson, physics attorney
at law, and I will figure out how to accomplish
what it is you want to get done without breaking
any laws of physics. That's right. To go down to
whites and whiteson and whites and LP. That's right. Black
(38:00):
hole immigration attorneys, Light particle physicists. Do you have an
undocumented black hole in your backyard? We can help you.
Have you been in a physics accident, even if you
were at fault, we will we will speculate about the causality.
There was a delay that now the light got to
(38:22):
his eyeball, it's not his fault. It's a pre existing
condition of the universe. All right. Well, it's pretty cool,
and who knows what other loopholes are will discover in
the future. That's right. This should inspire you because if
there's something you want to get done in the universe
and you thought it was impossible, there might be a
way to work around the laws of physics. All right,
thank you very much for joining us, guys and gals
(38:44):
out there. We hope you enjoyed that. See you next time.
And if you're interested in asking us a question you'd
like to hear us answer on the podcast, please don't
be shy. I send it to questions at Daniel and
Jorge dot com. Before you still have a question after
(39:05):
listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
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, visit
(39:27):
the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,
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