August 13, 2020 • 44 mins
Electrons can hang out until the end of time. Physicists think that protons should eventually fall apart. But will they?
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, I'm worried about how long I'm going to live? Man,
aren't we all these days? I know, but I mean
like down to the particle level, Like, are my who
electrons going to be around forever? Well, we actually have
good news there. We do think that electrons can live forever.
All right, that's cool. What about my protons? I got
(00:29):
some tough news there. Didn't last very long. Currently we
think protons live for only a trillion trillion trillion years.
I don't. Well, that's good. I guess even my protons
are procrastinators. They are professional protonic procrastinators. I am more
(01:00):
handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist, but I might one day decay
into something else, into a lighter Daniel or a lower
energy state. Unfortunately, I seem to be violating the laws
of physics and decaying into a heavier Daniel as to
all humans. Unfortunately that seems to be the direction. But
(01:21):
welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio in which we take
the universe and crack it in half and pour all
those little explain eons into your brain. We take you
on a tour of all the amazing, the massive, the enormous,
the crazy and all the tiny, mysterious, weird quantum stuff
of the universe and explain it all to you. That's right,
(01:42):
so it lives in your head, possibly forever. Hopefully you
won't forget us. Will always be there in your brain,
because we all know that once you've understood something in physics,
you know it forever. I have never forgotten a single
thing that matter where Really it's hard to unlearn. Huh No,
that's exactly the opposite of true. I'm the kind of
person that can learn something fairly quickly and then forget
(02:04):
it fairly quickly. I guess, um, does the information decay
in your brain or it dissipates or I think it
just gets replaced by all the stuff on Twitter that
I scroll through and shoves it back out the other
side of my brain, pushes it out the other ear.
That's right. Information understanding decay. Yeah. We like to talk
about science and the cosmos and the universe and everything
(02:24):
in between, and including all the things that are out
there and all the things that are not yet out there,
and all the things that will not be out there
in the future. That's right because everything that you wonder
about the universe are the same things that scientists wonder
about the universe. Where did it come from, how did
it get here? How long will it last? And how
long will you last? Yeah, so big question is how
(02:45):
long do particles stay around? Do they live forever? Or
at some point are they not around? That's right because
particles are these weird, fleeting quantum objects, and I don't
always obey the same rules that you and I obey
that we're from earlier with that makes sense to us,
and yet we are made out of them. Everything in
the universe is made out of particles. So it's essential
(03:07):
that we understand how they work and the rules under
which they operate, because they might very well determine our future,
even if you have to wait a trillion trillion trillion
years to find out. Yeah, because we know that. You know,
as humans, we don't live forever, at least not yet.
I don't know. I've never died so far. How about you.
I think, probabilistically speaking, you are unlikely to be around
(03:31):
for a few years. Yeah, But it's mostly because the
arrangement of our particles and our atoms at some point
doesn't work and it dissipates in our particles go back
into the soil and back into dust. And so I
think an interesting question is, like how long do your
particles last? That's right? Like the particles that you're made
out of right now, are they gonna be there at
(03:52):
the end of the universe? That's right? Even if that
arrangement that makes you isn't around anymore. With that little
bit of your fingernail and that tip of your knows
will it be around inside some starr and get fused
into a piece of gold someday and get blown out
in a supernova and have trillions and trillions more cycles,
or will it only last a few more years and
decay into something totally unrecognizable? Right? Because I guess particles
(04:15):
come from nothing, right, Like you know, at some point
there weren't any particles and then they suddenly sort of
popped down, And we know that particles pop into existence
all the time in the vacuum, and so, but the
question is, once you form a particle, does it stay
around forever as a particle or do things happen to
it to make it disappear? Yeah, particles certainly were formed
in the very early universe. We had this hot, dense state,
(04:37):
all this energy stored in the fields, and then as
the universe cooled, that energy sort of isolated into these
discrete packets that we now call particles. And we'd like
to play this mental game as particle physicists say, you
had just one particle in the universe, what would it do?
Would it sit there forever or would it eventually spontaneously
break into lighter particles? And so that's the game we
(04:58):
play with electrons, and we think a single universe filled
with just one electron would stay that way forever. But
the open question is is that also true for proton
So to be on the podcast will be asking the
question do protons live forever? And if so, how do
(05:19):
they plan for their retirements? Right? Do they have professional
protonic um retirement accountant? I hope they've been proactive in
saving Yeah, I hope that there is paraded. If you
live forever, you would have like an infinite number of grandchildren,
which I suppose could support you in your old old age.
(05:39):
There you think they still like you after an infinite
number of years, Great great great great great Grandpa die
already and give us all your stuff. Now you have
to go great trade for infinity. Nobody wants to call you.
I ran at a time there. Yeah, alright, So electrons
live forever, we know that. That's like fact number one.
They never what does that mean? They never decayed or
(06:00):
they never like spontaneously disappear. It's an important distinction. Like
an electron, you can destroy it. You throw an electron
against a positron, you can turn that energy into something else.
You can turn it into a photon. Right, that kind
of stuff happens. But so you can kill an electron, yes,
but they just don't die on the that's right. And
you know in some superhero movies that is the definition
(06:22):
of immortal, like elves or in fantasy novels are often
immortal but can be killed in battle, which always confused me.
But electrons are sort of like elves. They will sit
around forever. Like you put an electron in its own universe,
it will just sit there forever, you know, learning how
to sing valid essentially, but never turning into anything else,
(06:42):
or not even spontaneously like you know, some particles just
they're sitting around, they can split into other particles, right,
that's right. Almost every particle decays. It's only the ones
that are the lightest ones that can turn into anything
else that are sort of stuck. Those are the ones
that we call stable. So an electron is a stay
able particle. A single electron universe will stay a single
(07:03):
electron universe basically forever. Like it can't break down into
something else spontaneously, or it probably won't know if it could,
it will eventually. So this is a statement about like,
not a statement about probability, but about possibility. If an
electron is really alone in the universe, if there's not
not even any like weird quantum positrons popping out of
(07:24):
the vacuum to annihilate it, it will sit there forever,
has zero chance of decaying into anything else, because what
could it decay into. There is no particle lighter than
the electron that the electron can turn into that follows
all the rules, and we'll dig into all of that. Okay,
So electrons are like elves, probably l ron or electron.
(07:45):
What would be his elf name or her name? Elvin,
elvin name Sorrylfish elfish or Elvin. Oh man, I'm way
on my depth here. So we're made out of electrons
and also protons. Under the question is do protons live forever?
That's right, and this is one of the deepest open
questions in modern physics. Does a proton sitting in the
universe by itself eventually turn into something else? Or will
(08:09):
it last forever? So that's an awesome question, and so
as usual, Daniel went out there and ask people on
the internet if they thought protons lived forever. So, as usual,
before you hear these answers, think about it for a second.
Do you think protons live forever? Here's what people had
to say. I don't really understand what living forever means
for protons, but I do understand that they are converted
(08:32):
into different forms. Seeing a bita plas t K where
the proton gets converted into a neutron and a positroon
is released. I believe protons, if kind of like left alone,
just by themselves, they probably could live till the end
of the eternity, till the end of the universe, unless
some external effects can either destroy them or change them
(08:58):
like maybe you know fusion or fish, and protons can
change from one to another, but they are still protos.
I do not believe they live forever. I know electrons
live forever because you guys covered that in a previous podcast.
But I believe protons can be broken down obviously, you
guys do it as certain by smashing them and creating
(09:19):
new particles. Intitively, I would say that, um, we know
that like prodom is made up of two upquarks and
one dunk parks. I think so that I would think
that a prodom may not live forever in a form
of a proto. I have no idea about this. I
would say that they probably do not live forever, because
(09:40):
it doesn't make sense that they would not decay at
some point. I would have to assume that protons don't
live forever, because before the Big Bang, we think the
universe was a big, hot, dense ball of energy, and
so I would have to guess that the universe could
return to such a state. I guess that decaying all
of time, and if the next holiday destination is Geneva,
(10:03):
then they really have a short time left. I don't
think so, alright. I feel like it's a lot of
confidence here in these answers. People are like no, and
some people are like yes, and some people are like
depends on what you mean living forever exactly. Got some
legalistic answers also, but it's fair because it's a bit
of a vague question, Like it's possible obviously to destroy
(10:25):
a proton. We do it every twenty five nanoseconds the
large change on collider by smashing them together. But really
the deep physics question is if you leave a proton alone,
will it decay into something else? Can you turn it
into something else? And that has deep implications for our
understanding of the very beginning of the universe, why our
universe is made out of matter, and also for like
(10:46):
our understanding of the fundamental theory of everything, how it
all links together. It turns out proton decay is really
little lynch pin for a lot of big questions. Wow,
that's a lot of stuff to hang on one simple question.
It's amazing, And it turns out proton decays really really
frustrating for particle theorist. Right, So it seems like we
can kill protons, but the question is do they spontaneously
(11:09):
die at some point or breakdown or did you have
a proton does it sit around forever? So maybe, Daniel,
let's step through it one thing at a time. First,
of all, let's talk about particles dying in the first place,
or I guess you use the term decay. That's right.
We prefer the term decay. Or you have transformed into
something else, something lighter and more femoral. We don't like
(11:29):
to talk about them dying. We call it passing, not dying.
You're graduating to the next phase of your particle existence,
you're leveling up. But yes, in general, particles do like
to decay, and that's just a function of time moving
forward and entropy. You know, the same way that you
can't have a bunch of gas particles in the corner
of a box and have them to stay there. They
(11:50):
like to spread out because energy likes to diffuse. That
increases entropy and disorder in the universe. You can't have
that much energy isolated in a quantum field, so that
a particle is in a really heavy state. They like
to decay down to the lowest state. They like to
spread that energy out. They give off a photon or
they eject another particle. They turned into multiple particles, and
(12:12):
they just essentially stepped down the ladder as far as
they and again we're not talking about like particles disassembling
you know, like if if I build a lego in
my house, you know, with my kids, it's not gonna
last very long. It's kind of eventually get dissembled. We're
talking really about like quantum transformation, like a particle literally
like transforms into other things. Yeah, let's take an example
(12:35):
of the muan. The muan is a heavy version of
the electron, and the muan turns into an electron and
then a couple of neutrinos to satisfy some conservation laws.
But the muan doesn't last very long at all, last
for micro seconds and it just turns into the electron.
And as you said, it's not like the muan is
just the electron with a couple of neutrinos bound together,
(12:56):
and then it breaks apart and those little internal pieces
fly out. This really is like alchemy. Like the muon
is an excited state of the muan field and then
it transforms into an excited state of the electron field
and to neutrino fields. And so that's our current understanding
of how this muon decay happens. You have isolated heavy
particle turns into three lighter particles. Right, it's not a
(13:19):
rearrangement and it just it doesn't spontaneously like it's just
sitting there. A muon is just sitting there and then
suddenly pop, it just turns into an electron and two neutrinus. Yeah,
it's one of the real quantum randomness is in our universe,
Like it has a probability at any moment to decay.
When an individual muan actually decays is determined by some
(13:40):
random quantum toss of the dice. If you have like
a thousand muons in a bottle, then half of them
will decay after a certain time, then another half after
another certain time, etcetera. On average, but each individual one
is determined by a random toss of the dice. It's
just like radioactive decay of a nucleus, which is exactly
the same kind of process. I see. It's not that
(14:01):
it's delicate and like you know, you're stacking blocks and
then suddenly when passed by or you push a little
bit and it topples over it. It's literally like you know,
in its fabric of its existence, to just spontaneously turn
into something else. Yeah. The picture I have in my
head is that it's like you know, flipping a coin
or rolling a die, every microsecond, and if it gets
(14:22):
the right answer, boom, it decays, and if it doesn't,
it sticks around it a new one for a while. Um.
And so it's just like keeps rolling that die or
picking a random number until it gets the right one
and then it decides. All right, now it's time for
me to become an electron and a couple of neutrinos. Right,
but you're telling me that it needs to have like
a path for the decay, like it has to have,
(14:44):
you know, kind of a solution for its decay. Yeah,
you can't just turn into anything, right. A muan can't
just like say, hey, I'm going to become a photon. Cool,
that sounds like fun. The universe has rules, and these
rules determine what particles can decay into other particles. The
important thing to understand about these rules is that mostly
we have no idea where they come from. They're just
(15:05):
like our description. It's like you watch a bunch of particles,
you see what happens. You try to notice patterns, and
you codify those patterns into rules. That doesn't mean you
know why that rule exists. So when we say, like,
you know, charge is conserved, doesn't mean we know why
it's conserved. It just means that we've never seen this
rule broken, so we think it's a fundamental rule of
(15:27):
the universe. And so that's one of them. Right. Why
can't a muan just turn into a photon. Well, muan
has electric charge and a photon doesn't, so to do
that would break that rule of conserving electric charge. Right,
it has to be a decay that makes sense to
the universe. Okay, it's not like a total magic like
an el can just turn into a dwarf, that's right.
You have to like fill out a big application and
(15:48):
submitted to the universe's lawyers and they have to check
all the boxes and they say, all right approved. It's
more like getting a bank loan than magically transforming, all right.
And if there's nothing for you to decay to, like
in according to the laws of the universe, then you
can't decay. You're like stuck, that's right. And that's the
situation with the electron. There's nothing lighter than the electron,
(16:09):
like the muon can decay to electron because the muon
is heavier than the electron. It can go down, but
to go up. It's not spontaneous decay. The electron can't
decay up into the muan. There's nothing for it to
go down to. It's the lightest thing on its ladder. Now,
there are other lower mass particles, like a photon for example,
but again an electron can't get to be a photon
(16:30):
because that would violate the conservation of electric charge. Okay,
so then there are rules. And if there's no step
down for you to go down to, then you're stuck.
That's right. And you know, there's another particle that's very
similar to the proton. It's the neutron. And the neutron
is almost the same as a proton. It's a slightly
different arrangement of quarks. Like the proton is made out
(16:51):
of these smaller particles called quarks, and the proton is
two ups and and down. The neutron is two downs
and an up. Now, the neutron is slightly heavier than
the proton, a tiny bit more mass, so the neutron
can turn into a proton, no problem. And it also
shoots off an electron to conserve electric charge. So that happens.
(17:13):
And if you have like a neutron sitting around and
on average, after about nine hundred seconds, it will turn
into a proton. But because the proton is lighter than
the neutron, there's nowhere for the proton to go. Because
there's this weird rule we have observed that says you
have to keep constant the number of cork triplets, like
the number of particles made out of three quarks cannot change,
(17:34):
all right, And there's kind of a rule that says
that when you decayed down into something, you need like
a force to help you do it. That's right. All
these decays happen through some force, right, Like when the
muon decays into the electron, he uses the weak force.
What does that mean, Like like the weak force has
to be involved or you actually need to like inject
some weak force into it. It means that the weak
(17:56):
force is involved. What actually happens when it decays is
that the mu and turns into immuon neutrino and a
w boson, and that w boson then turns into an
electron and a second neutrino, so it like mediates the decay.
It's like every time you feel a force the wall
is pushing back on you for example, Really that's happening
(18:17):
by the exchange of energy from photons, and so all interactions.
Every time particles talk to each other, it happens through
one of the forces. Okay, so then when you decay,
you need this force to kind of like pass the
energy around between the resulting bits. Yeah, exactly. And so
you know, another example is a particle called the pion.
(18:37):
Pion is two corks, a cork and an anti cork,
and this thing can turn into two photons, and that
happens via electromagnetism. Essentially, the cork and the anti cork
and decide to annihilate each other and turn into these
two photons. And so that there's something for it to
turn into doesn't break any of the rules, and there's
a force to make it happen. All right, So we
(18:57):
know that particles can decay if there's thing, you know,
less energetic that they can decay into, and if you
follow the rules of the universe. So now the question
is do protons de case So mostly you and I
are now to protons and electrons and neutrons, and so
the question is due protons decay? So let's get into that.
But first let's take a quick break, all right, Dianiel,
(19:30):
we're talking about whether protons live Forever, and I feel
like that's like an eighties song or something. Do Protons
Live Forever? Sounds like a heavy metal you know, hair band,
sounds like a love The protons of my love will
be here to the end of the universe. That's probably
in the next bill. There you go, Yeah, you have
(19:53):
a rock band in your garage with other physicists. No,
definitely not, And if I did, I would not admit
it here on the podcast. How I see you do
it under an alias another particle name. That's right exactly.
The rock and electrons, all right, So we're all made
out of electrons, protons and neutrons, and so the question
is do protons a because we know electrons cannot decay
(20:14):
spontaneously into someone else, but do protons decay? And so
the protons are different than electrons because protons are made
out of other particles. Right, Protons are made out of quarks.
So you take a proton, you look inside it, deep
inside it, and you find three particles. You find two
up corks and a down cork, and that means that
(20:35):
like it's made out of these three particles. It's just
an arrangement of those particles, right, But we have this
rule in the universe that we don't understand. And this
rule says that there's a fixed number of these cork triplets.
We call this a barrion. It's just three quirks together,
and you can make three qurks together and loss of
different arrangements. And for some reason, every time you have
an interaction, the number of baryons doesn't change. What do
(20:57):
you mean, like interactions, but corks always have and three. No,
but if you do have a triplet of quarks involved,
then you'll have the same number of triplets when you're done. So,
for example, a neutron decays to a proton. He started
with one triplet the neutron, which is an up down down,
and you ended up with one triplet the proton up
up down. Like, you can't go from one barrion to
(21:19):
zero baryons, or from ten burrions to eight burrions. You
have to have the same number of burrions when you
start and when you finish, which is not something we
understand at all. So it's not related to threes, like
if I start with two, I have to end up
with two as well. No, there's no conservation on cork pairs.
Cork triplets have this special property. If you have a
qurk triplet, you have to end up with a cork triplet.
(21:40):
And so, for example, when we smash protons together at
the large change on collider, two protons come in. We
destroy those two protons. We always make at least two
baryons that come out. Okay, So then neutrons, which were
also made out of those don't live forever. You're saying,
like a neutron, if you just leave it alone in
the universe, it's gonna not be a neutron for law.
(22:00):
That's right. It only lasts about eight hundred and eighty
seconds on its own. Now, the neutrons in your body
are much more stable because the environment in your body
keeps them sort of stuck together. But if you had
a neutron by itself in the universe, after about eight
hundred eighty seconds, it would turn into a proton and
an electron. And you notice that keeps the number of
baryons a number of cork triplets constant, because the neutron
(22:23):
is one and the proton is one. Oh, I see,
so alright, So a neutron by itself candycy, but it
turns into a proton basically turns into a proton plus
an electron to carry off the other half of the
electric charge. To follow that one rule. And so what
happens there for the neutron, like the quarks inside just
kind of flipped and then it becomes something else. Yeah,
one of the down corks becomes an up cork, and
(22:44):
it gives off a w boson, which is where you
get the electron and actually a little neutrino, which is
how neutrinos were discovered. But these arrangements of quarks, like
one arrangement of quarks and up down, down, it gives
you a neutron, a different set of quarks up up,
down that gives you a proton. The proton is the
lowest mass arrangement of quarks, Like, there's no way to
(23:06):
make an arrangement of quarks that has a lower mass
in the protons. So it's sort of like the lightest
thing on the ladder of bury on. But for quark triplet, Yes,
for quark, you can make something out of two quarks.
You can make something out of two quarks, like a
pion has lower mass. But the cork triplet ladder, for
some reason, it's on its own. It's like a special
thing in the universe. And if you're on that ladder,
you have to stay on that ladder, and the proton
(23:29):
is the bottom rung of that ladder. There's no lighter
arrangement of three quarks than the proton. So that's why
the proton seems to be stuck unless you can somehow
jump off this ladder. I see, it's like once he
has three quarks, instead of stuck having three quarts, exactly,
you can do something, make a different arrangement of three quarks.
You can move up or down the ladder by injecting energy.
(23:50):
You're waiting for it to decay. But you have to
have something on the ladder. Once you have something on
the ladder. But couldn't I like, you know, split up
that triplet. Can't three quarts make up a proton just
like you know, when they decide to go their separate ways,
then you destroy the proton. Basically, you can do that
if you create a larger system, right, so you like
involve it in some other bonds and some other configurations,
(24:13):
then you can destroy a proton, for example. But a
proton on its own will never decay. We think it
might be stable. We've never seen a proton jump off
the ladder, and every interaction we've ever seen keeps the
same number of these barrier I see. But I mean,
like can quarks exists on their own, you can't have
quirks on their own. They have such a strong interaction
(24:34):
with other corks, and the strength of that interaction gets
stronger and stronger as quirks get further and further apart,
which creates so much energy around them that they create
particles out of the vacuum to make these pairs and triplets.
So you never see corks by themselves. They're always in
these pairs or triplets or maybe in weird exotic larger
combinations tetra corks and hexa corks. But there's a special
(24:56):
relationship that the universe has with these triplets of quirks
that we don't understand. We've never seen a proton decay,
and so we think there might be some special rule
that protects these cork triblets. On the other hand, we
have very good reason to think that protons might decay
or that they should, So it's not for certain. It's
(25:18):
definitely not for certain. No, it's something we don't understand
it's a core mystery at the heart of physics. All right,
So you've never seen a proton spontaneously decay, and what
does that mean? Like, have we actually like put a
proton on their microscope and left it there for a
couple of hours or days or years. Yeah? Actually we
put like ten to the thirty four protons under a
microscope and we waited a few years to see if
(25:40):
any of them decay. What do you mean, like you
actually put them in a little container and left them
there a really big container. Right. One way to do this,
one way to ask, like does a proton decay? Can
we measure it? Is to take a single proton and wait.
But if you think that a proton might take like
a trillion trillion trillion years to decay, then your experiment's
going to take the trillion trillion trillion years. Instead, what
(26:02):
you can do is say, well, I'm gonna take a
trillion trillion trillion protons, which is not that hard to
make because every piece of matter has a lot of
protons and see if any of them decay. Because if
none of them decay within a year or two years,
then I can make a statistical argument about how long
they live. Oh, I see, So that's what you have
in the in the large hattern collider, not in the
(26:24):
large hedge and collider. That's not where we study proton decay.
But in big underground experiments like super Commo Conda and
the upcoming do and experiment are perfect for looking for
proton decays. All right, So you don't think that they
can decay, but do you think they might? What makes
you think they might decay? Well, the universe sort of
doesn't make sense if protons can't decay. Like, if protons
(26:44):
could decay, the whole universe would make a lot more sense,
which makes us want them to decay, even though we've
never seen them. And the reason it is that, well,
you know, we have more baryons in the universe than
anti barions. Well, we talked about earlier how you have
to have the same umber of barrions in the universe.
That's the opposite for anti berrions. Like you can actually
(27:05):
create a burrion and anti berion together because it keeps
the number of burrions the same because anti berrions count
for minus one. And again, a barion is a triplet
of court that's right. Yeah, And so we think that
the universe started off with no particles, as you said,
and then particles were made, which must have made the
same number of burions and anti burions, but somehow we
(27:26):
ended up with a lot more protons than anti protons. Like,
we think there are almost no antiberians out there, so
there must be something out there which lets us either
create burions on their own or destroy anti berions preferentially.
There's something out there to explain why we have so
much more matter than anti matter. Something allows us to
(27:48):
make these buryons. Right, But isn't it just sort of
like electrons to like, you know, you can create and
destroy electrons. What makes us think that then electrons can't
decay but protons might be able to so, right, the
same argument goes for electrons that we think, you know,
why do we have more electrons in the universe than positrons? Right?
This is this whole question of antimatter. But there are
(28:09):
other reasons that we think that protons might decay, and
that comes from like looking at the patterns of the forces.
We have the electromagnetism, which is a force. We have
the weak force, we have the strong force, and we
have gravity. And people like to try to put these together,
they say, well, it's weird to have like four different
forces or five different forces. Can we fit these together
(28:30):
into a larger pattern that has just one overarching you know,
ring to rule them all, so to force. And every
time the theorists do this, every time they put those
pieces together, it always ends up predicting a new little
force that we haven't seen very much anymore, that hasn't
been around since the beginning the universe, that can decay protons,
that turns protons into a pion and a pository. What So,
(28:55):
when you try to, you know, kind of squish all
the forces together like you think they're radically Like if
I try to come up with a like a super
megaporce that includes all the other forces, you're saying, I
have to come up with a new fifth force. Yeah, well,
it's sort of like it's a part of this megaporce
that doesn't happen very much anymore. So put all these
forces together into one megaphorce. And that megaphorce because it
(29:19):
was around in the early universe, before the universe cooled
and the forces broke into these different forces that we
know today, it would have treated all the particles equally
like quarks and electrons and all those stuff. And so
this force should be able to turn quirks into leptons
for example, and back and forth. And currently our forces
can't do that, Like, none of the forces that we
have today are capable of turning quirks into leptons. They
(29:43):
aren't capable of doing that. But this leftover force, there
might be a particle which exists in the universe but
requires so much energy to create that we hardly ever
see it, which means it's very unlikely for it to
do anything. But it might vary occasionally every true brillion
trillion trillion years be responsible for the decay of a proton.
(30:04):
I see, maybe protons have this secret weakness, that this
is hidden force that hasn't been around since the beginning
of time. Yeah, and maybe that's the key, right, because
every time they put one of these theories together, it
always predicts that protons will decay. It's just like a
natural consequence of making this megaphorce. It has this symmetry
where it treats the quarks and the leftons in the
(30:25):
same way. It always predicts this new X particle. The
X particle would take like the two up corks inside
the proton and turn them into like a positron and
a down cork, and that gives you a proton turning
into a pion and a positron. And so it's just inescapable.
And every time the theorists make one of these theories,
(30:46):
they're like, darn it, my theory predicts proton decay. It's
very frustrating for them that I can't escape this prediction.
I say, all right, well, let's get into how we
might be looking experimentally for evidence that the proton case
and when we can expect an answer. But first let's
take another quick break. All right, Daniel, do protons and
(31:18):
love live forever? It's the question, But I guess we're
only tackling the proton partire today. Yeah, don't come to
a particle physicist for questions about love unless it's about
love of particles. A right. So, um, there are reasons
to think maybe the proton does decay. One is that,
you know, it might explain antimatter, and the other one
is that the theory set of point to maybe a
(31:40):
possible kind of new force which would allow protons to decay.
Second of the idea, Yeah, and remember this is all theoretical.
This is like, we look at the way the universe
is arranged, and we think it would make more sense
if we added this one other piece, but that piece
would mean that protons should decay. So then we go
when we look for it, we said, well, maybe they do,
(32:00):
we just haven't noticed. Maybe it takes a long long time,
and so we just need to be really patient. Okay,
So it is that theoretically we don't think that the
proton can decay, but if it does, it kind of
means the existence of a new force. Is that kind
of the significance of this decay. Yeah, so we have
to invent this rule. This number of barriyons is fixed rule,
(32:21):
which we don't really like because it doesn't really make
any sense and it violates our understanding of matter and
antimatter asymmetry, and it keeps us from having this new
mega force, etcetera. So we'd love to get rid of
that and replace it with this new force and allow
protons to decay. But for that to be true, we
have to actually see one decay, and we have to
prove that they can, because nobody's ever seen. So if
(32:43):
you see one decay, then it's like you have to
break the laws of physics. Kind yes, if you see
one decay, that's guaranteed Nobel Prize because you get to
rewrite the laws of physics in a way that makes
much more sense to everybody, that like fits together with
some real symmetry and beauty. And so everybody's sort of
hoping that protons will decay. I mean not your protons,
not my protons, but some proton somewhere we hope will
(33:05):
eventually decay. Did they already print that Nobel Prize? Like
Nobel Prize for the decay of the proton. It's just
sitting on the shelf waiting for people to claim it.
You know. It's one of those experiments out there that
if you make it work, if you see this thing,
it's basically a guaranteed Nobel Prize. There are a few
things like that, you know, find the Higgs boson, see
gravitational waves, find a magnetic monopole. These things that people
(33:26):
have been looking for forever. They think should exist, but
nobody's ever seen one. If you found and it would
really you know, fill in a missing box in our
understanding of the universe. So yeah, go look for one.
Exposed the proton get a prize. That's right, This is
particle is ten most wanted list, right, So then there
are a couple of experiments out there that are actually
trying to win this Nobel prize. They're trying to see
(33:48):
if protons decay and and so what's involved here, Daniel?
Are they just put a bunch in a box and
then stare at them or or do you shake it?
Do you shake the box? What do you have to do?
He's trying not to shake the box. And in fact,
you know, you can play a sort of simple calculation
with any blob of protons like you. You know, you,
for example, have like ten to the twenty eight protons,
(34:09):
something like a trillion quadrillion protons in your body, so
you know already that protons lived for more than, you know,
a hundred years, because people don't tend to die of
proton decay, you know, like people just like suddenly disintegrate,
like Thanos snapping his thumbs. But also, I mean you
said that the protons in my body are kind of
bound together with other protons and neutrons, and that helps
(34:31):
him live longer. Yeah, but unfortunately that's the only kind
of proton we can really study like, we can't take
pure individual free protons and study them on their own.
All we can do is study protons that exist in matter,
which are in bound states. And so that's a big
asterisk on all of the results that we're going to
talk about today that none of them actually involves studying
(34:51):
free protons. Okay, So then stepping through, what are these
experiments and what are they doing? Well, the most powerful
result right now, the one that tells us the most
about proton decay, comes from this experiment in Japan. It's
super Commoo Conda, and they basically have a thirteen story
stack of water and it's just a huge container filled
with water, and it's surrounded by cameras essentially, and it's
(35:14):
totally dark and it's underground. And this is an experiment
that's mostly designed to look for neutrinos coming from the
Sun or coming from deep space or from supernovas, but
it's also good for looking for proton decay because if
proton decays in this tank, they think they will see it. Oh,
I see so, but it's filled with water. I guess
water has hydrogen oxygen, and those all have protons and
(35:38):
they have something like ten to the thirty two protons
basically sitting in the tank, and so if none of
them decay in a year, then you know that the
half life of the proton is more than ten to
the thirty two years. But these are not isolated protons.
They're in these bound states within the atoms. That doesn't
that protect them, it does protect them potentially. And so
(35:59):
as we were saying early here, like this is a
big asterisk in all of these results. We would love
to have ten to the thirty two free protons in
the container that we could study and then we could
directly understand this question. But we don't all the protons
we have our inbound states, and we don't have ionized
hydrogen gas in large enough containers that we build cameras around,
(36:20):
and so we just have to sort of like make
the measurement on bound protons and assume that it also
works for free protons. But it's a big assumption, but
it's also all we can do currently. All right, So,
staring at water, what expery went you make? Particle physics
sounds so exciting. I mean, look for variations and the
(36:42):
loss of physics in violations of symmetry of matter and
antimatter otherwise known as staring at water. If it happened,
it would be kind of dramatic because you would have
this special signature because you would get a pion on
one side, which turns into two photons. You get these
two little splashes in your camera, and on the other
side you would get a positron, which makes a little splash.
(37:04):
So they've simulated exactly what this would look like in
their cameras and it's very weird and unusual and different
from anything they've ever seen before. And so they've been
running this thing for years and years and years and
they've never seen a single one, and so that means
that they can pretty confidently say that the lifetime of
the proton is more than ten to the thirty four years,
(37:25):
which is a huge number because remember the universe, the
entire universe is only thirteen billion years old, so like,
this is many orders of magnitude longer than the history
of the universal But again, these are in bound states,
or do you calibrate for that as well? These are
in bound states. No, we can't really calibrate for that.
(37:45):
We don't really know how to extrapolate from bound state
protons to unbound protons to free protons. We just sort
of like assume it's going to be something similar. Okay,
So then that's one experiment. The super Cameo super co
Neo Conda Conda all right, sounds like superhero or something.
Is an awesome experiment in Japan, and then we're building
(38:08):
one here in the United States that we talked about
on a recent episode called Dune Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
And these neutrino experiments essentially for free, you get a
proton decay experiment because the same thing they can be
used to look for neutrinos in Dune's case from a
neutrino beam or from the Sun or from supernovas, can
(38:28):
also look for decays of protons. And this is kind
of a similar idea to write, like you have a
big vat of stuff and you wait for it to change. Yeah, exactly.
And in the case of Dune is not water, it's
liquid argone. They're pioneering a new technology to take this
noble gas argone and they cool it down until it's
a liquid, but it has the same property that it's
very quiet. So mostly if you have a huge several
(38:52):
ton container of liquid argone underground and you put cameras
on it, it'll stay dark. But if you see an
interaction like a new trino or or a proton decaying,
you should be able to spot that, because it's like
taking a picture of a single tiny flash of light
in a very dark room. Since it's camera can pick
that up. Cool, and so far they haven't seen it.
(39:12):
But again, this one is also you're looking at argons,
so you're looking at protons in a bound state inside
of the nucleus of the argon at them. That's right,
But hey, that's all we can do. Dune hasn't turned
on yet. They're still building it. It's gonna be turning
on in a few years. But because it's a much
larger volume, they have many more tons. It will provide
even more stringent limits on the lifetime of the proton.
(39:34):
Or maybe they'll get lucky, maybe they'll see one decay.
But I guess, why can't you just like isolate a
proton and look at it. Is that hard? I mean,
you guys do it at the large hattern collider. Yeah,
you can isolate a proton and you can look at it,
But a single proton will not tell you much about
the lifetime of the proton unless you wait a very
very long time. So you either need a lot of
protons or a lot of time, and a lot of
(39:57):
protons are very hard to keep isolated. I mean, could
have a gas of protons. We do that the hydrunk glider,
but you know we have like tend of the twelve
protons tend to thirteen protons. You need to keep these
things isolated. You need to watch them and then you
need to instrument it, right, You need to be watching
for them to decay. And so that's much easier to
do when you have a neutral substance, something which is quiet,
(40:19):
which doesn't otherwise make lots of flashes of light. Oh,
I see, it's like you can isolate a whole bunch
of protons, but then you actually have to notice if
like one of them the kids. Yeah, because a bunch
of protons together, it's called the plasma, and a plasma
is not a quiet thing to instrument, right, That's like
where we try to do fusion and stuff like that.
So it's a pretty trick the experiment to do for
actual free protons, which is why we only ever do
(40:41):
it for protons in a bound state. But you're right
that doesn't actually tell us about free proton. All right,
So there are people looking for this decay of the proton.
Then there's people staring at water and argon waiting for
one of these protons to suddenly die. That's right, staring
at water waiting for a Nobel prize to about out
of a little tiny proton. Hey, if I told you
(41:04):
stare at this tank, a Nobel prize might appear. You know,
you might devote a couple of years to that. Yeah,
shorter than a PhD. A couple of trillion years, why not?
Or you might not see anything. Unfortunately, that's usually the
case in particle physics. You're looking for something crazy. You're
hoping you might see something spectacular, but you see nothing.
But the good news is that most of our experiments
(41:26):
are still interesting even if you don't see anything, because
you can still say something. You can say, we didn't
see the proton decay. Therefore we know it doesn't decay
on average in less than tend of the thirty four
tend of the thirty five years. So you still get
to say something interesting about physics. Alright. So it sounds
like you're pretty confident then that we can say that
(41:46):
the proton does not decay or won't die, or we'll
live for at least ten to the thirty four years,
which is pretty much forever, right, it's almost forever. I mean,
it's a lot longer than our universe has been around
so far. But it's also still a real problem for
theoretical physicists when they try to construct their grain unified theories,
(42:07):
their theories of everything, when they want to understand what
happened to the very beginning of the universe, they have
to do it in a way that keeps the proton
from decaying, and that's theoretically very tricky. It's like, you know,
they have to pass through the eye of a needle
to keep the proton from decaying in their theory. And
so everybody would be very happy to see a proton decay, oh,
(42:27):
I see, because it would make the equations easier to solve.
It would mean that all the theories which predict proton
decay might actually be correct. And those equations are beautiful
and they make a lot of sense, and they answer
a lot of other questions about like matter and antimatter
and the forces being unified. But those equations can't be
right if the proton doesn't decay. If the proton doesn't decay,
(42:48):
those equations are just wrong, even though they're beautiful and
they're simple and they're attractive. So then we need to
find some other way to solve those problems. And theoretically
that's just much harder without proton decay. So it's not
just a whole bunch of physicists looking staring at water.
You're staring at water waiting for the proton to die, hoping, hoping.
You're hoping for the proteon to die here. That's right,
(43:10):
that's the big twist. You thought we would be rooting
for the proteon to lift forever, but instead we're anti protons.
You're like, just die already. We're cheering on its demise
to retire and win my noble pride. That's right. Somebody
in a very future universe will finally see a proton
decay in a trillion trillion trillion years. I hope they're
(43:31):
still giving out Nobel prizes. Then I hope our protons
are still around. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed
that and got a little bit of a sense of
how long things live in the universe. Apparently, some things do,
some things don't, and it's amazing the cosmic importance of
one little proton, a single proton in a vat of
water in Japan, decaying could crack open the answer to
(43:52):
these deep mysteries about the beginning of our universe, the
balance between matter and antimatter, how everything fits together. It's
incredibly import And then it just really highlights the connection
between particle physics and cosmology and astrophysics, and really, particle
physics is basically the whole universe. That's what I'm saying.
She's saying, give us more money. We're studying everything that's right.
(44:12):
That's what everything I say translates to effectively. All right, Well,
I hope that give you some stuff to think about.
The protons in your body and the electrons might live forever,
but particle physicists are hoping they don't see you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain
(44:35):
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. Or
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Yea
Hey, Daniel, I'm worried about how long I'm going to live? Man,
aren't we all these days? I know, but I mean
like down to the particle level, Like, are my who
electrons going to be around forever? Well, we actually have
good news there. We do think that electrons can live forever.
All right, that's cool. What about my protons? I got
(00:29):
some tough news there. Didn't last very long. Currently we
think protons live for only a trillion trillion trillion years.
I don't. Well, that's good. I guess even my protons
are procrastinators. They are professional protonic procrastinators. I am more
(01:00):
handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist, but I might one day decay
into something else, into a lighter Daniel or a lower
energy state. Unfortunately, I seem to be violating the laws
of physics and decaying into a heavier Daniel as to
all humans. Unfortunately that seems to be the direction. But
(01:21):
welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a production of I Heart Radio in which we take
the universe and crack it in half and pour all
those little explain eons into your brain. We take you
on a tour of all the amazing, the massive, the enormous,
the crazy and all the tiny, mysterious, weird quantum stuff
of the universe and explain it all to you. That's right,
(01:42):
so it lives in your head, possibly forever. Hopefully you
won't forget us. Will always be there in your brain,
because we all know that once you've understood something in physics,
you know it forever. I have never forgotten a single
thing that matter where Really it's hard to unlearn. Huh No,
that's exactly the opposite of true. I'm the kind of
person that can learn something fairly quickly and then forget
(02:04):
it fairly quickly. I guess, um, does the information decay
in your brain or it dissipates or I think it
just gets replaced by all the stuff on Twitter that
I scroll through and shoves it back out the other
side of my brain, pushes it out the other ear.
That's right. Information understanding decay. Yeah. We like to talk
about science and the cosmos and the universe and everything
(02:24):
in between, and including all the things that are out
there and all the things that are not yet out there,
and all the things that will not be out there
in the future. That's right because everything that you wonder
about the universe are the same things that scientists wonder
about the universe. Where did it come from, how did
it get here? How long will it last? And how
long will you last? Yeah, so big question is how
(02:45):
long do particles stay around? Do they live forever? Or
at some point are they not around? That's right because
particles are these weird, fleeting quantum objects, and I don't
always obey the same rules that you and I obey
that we're from earlier with that makes sense to us,
and yet we are made out of them. Everything in
the universe is made out of particles. So it's essential
(03:07):
that we understand how they work and the rules under
which they operate, because they might very well determine our future,
even if you have to wait a trillion trillion trillion
years to find out. Yeah, because we know that. You know,
as humans, we don't live forever, at least not yet.
I don't know. I've never died so far. How about you.
I think, probabilistically speaking, you are unlikely to be around
(03:31):
for a few years. Yeah, But it's mostly because the
arrangement of our particles and our atoms at some point
doesn't work and it dissipates in our particles go back
into the soil and back into dust. And so I
think an interesting question is, like how long do your
particles last? That's right? Like the particles that you're made
out of right now, are they gonna be there at
(03:52):
the end of the universe? That's right? Even if that
arrangement that makes you isn't around anymore. With that little
bit of your fingernail and that tip of your knows
will it be around inside some starr and get fused
into a piece of gold someday and get blown out
in a supernova and have trillions and trillions more cycles,
or will it only last a few more years and
decay into something totally unrecognizable? Right? Because I guess particles
(04:15):
come from nothing, right, Like you know, at some point
there weren't any particles and then they suddenly sort of
popped down, And we know that particles pop into existence
all the time in the vacuum, and so, but the
question is, once you form a particle, does it stay
around forever as a particle or do things happen to
it to make it disappear? Yeah, particles certainly were formed
in the very early universe. We had this hot, dense state,
(04:37):
all this energy stored in the fields, and then as
the universe cooled, that energy sort of isolated into these
discrete packets that we now call particles. And we'd like
to play this mental game as particle physicists say, you
had just one particle in the universe, what would it do?
Would it sit there forever or would it eventually spontaneously
break into lighter particles? And so that's the game we
(04:58):
play with electrons, and we think a single universe filled
with just one electron would stay that way forever. But
the open question is is that also true for proton
So to be on the podcast will be asking the
question do protons live forever? And if so, how do
(05:19):
they plan for their retirements? Right? Do they have professional
protonic um retirement accountant? I hope they've been proactive in
saving Yeah, I hope that there is paraded. If you
live forever, you would have like an infinite number of grandchildren,
which I suppose could support you in your old old age.
(05:39):
There you think they still like you after an infinite
number of years, Great great great great great Grandpa die
already and give us all your stuff. Now you have
to go great trade for infinity. Nobody wants to call you.
I ran at a time there. Yeah, alright, So electrons
live forever, we know that. That's like fact number one.
They never what does that mean? They never decayed or
(06:00):
they never like spontaneously disappear. It's an important distinction. Like
an electron, you can destroy it. You throw an electron
against a positron, you can turn that energy into something else.
You can turn it into a photon. Right, that kind
of stuff happens. But so you can kill an electron, yes,
but they just don't die on the that's right. And
you know in some superhero movies that is the definition
(06:22):
of immortal, like elves or in fantasy novels are often
immortal but can be killed in battle, which always confused me.
But electrons are sort of like elves. They will sit
around forever. Like you put an electron in its own universe,
it will just sit there forever, you know, learning how
to sing valid essentially, but never turning into anything else,
(06:42):
or not even spontaneously like you know, some particles just
they're sitting around, they can split into other particles, right,
that's right. Almost every particle decays. It's only the ones
that are the lightest ones that can turn into anything
else that are sort of stuck. Those are the ones
that we call stable. So an electron is a stay
able particle. A single electron universe will stay a single
(07:03):
electron universe basically forever. Like it can't break down into
something else spontaneously, or it probably won't know if it could,
it will eventually. So this is a statement about like,
not a statement about probability, but about possibility. If an
electron is really alone in the universe, if there's not
not even any like weird quantum positrons popping out of
(07:24):
the vacuum to annihilate it, it will sit there forever,
has zero chance of decaying into anything else, because what
could it decay into. There is no particle lighter than
the electron that the electron can turn into that follows
all the rules, and we'll dig into all of that. Okay,
So electrons are like elves, probably l ron or electron.
(07:45):
What would be his elf name or her name? Elvin,
elvin name Sorrylfish elfish or Elvin. Oh man, I'm way
on my depth here. So we're made out of electrons
and also protons. Under the question is do protons live forever?
That's right, and this is one of the deepest open
questions in modern physics. Does a proton sitting in the
universe by itself eventually turn into something else? Or will
(08:09):
it last forever? So that's an awesome question, and so
as usual, Daniel went out there and ask people on
the internet if they thought protons lived forever. So, as usual,
before you hear these answers, think about it for a second.
Do you think protons live forever? Here's what people had
to say. I don't really understand what living forever means
for protons, but I do understand that they are converted
(08:32):
into different forms. Seeing a bita plas t K where
the proton gets converted into a neutron and a positroon
is released. I believe protons, if kind of like left alone,
just by themselves, they probably could live till the end
of the eternity, till the end of the universe, unless
some external effects can either destroy them or change them
(08:58):
like maybe you know fusion or fish, and protons can
change from one to another, but they are still protos.
I do not believe they live forever. I know electrons
live forever because you guys covered that in a previous podcast.
But I believe protons can be broken down obviously, you
guys do it as certain by smashing them and creating
(09:19):
new particles. Intitively, I would say that, um, we know
that like prodom is made up of two upquarks and
one dunk parks. I think so that I would think
that a prodom may not live forever in a form
of a proto. I have no idea about this. I
would say that they probably do not live forever, because
(09:40):
it doesn't make sense that they would not decay at
some point. I would have to assume that protons don't
live forever, because before the Big Bang, we think the
universe was a big, hot, dense ball of energy, and
so I would have to guess that the universe could
return to such a state. I guess that decaying all
of time, and if the next holiday destination is Geneva,
(10:03):
then they really have a short time left. I don't
think so, alright. I feel like it's a lot of
confidence here in these answers. People are like no, and
some people are like yes, and some people are like
depends on what you mean living forever exactly. Got some
legalistic answers also, but it's fair because it's a bit
of a vague question, Like it's possible obviously to destroy
(10:25):
a proton. We do it every twenty five nanoseconds the
large change on collider by smashing them together. But really
the deep physics question is if you leave a proton alone,
will it decay into something else? Can you turn it
into something else? And that has deep implications for our
understanding of the very beginning of the universe, why our
universe is made out of matter, and also for like
(10:46):
our understanding of the fundamental theory of everything, how it
all links together. It turns out proton decay is really
little lynch pin for a lot of big questions. Wow,
that's a lot of stuff to hang on one simple question.
It's amazing, And it turns out proton decays really really
frustrating for particle theorist. Right, So it seems like we
can kill protons, but the question is do they spontaneously
(11:09):
die at some point or breakdown or did you have
a proton does it sit around forever? So maybe, Daniel,
let's step through it one thing at a time. First,
of all, let's talk about particles dying in the first place,
or I guess you use the term decay. That's right.
We prefer the term decay. Or you have transformed into
something else, something lighter and more femoral. We don't like
(11:29):
to talk about them dying. We call it passing, not dying.
You're graduating to the next phase of your particle existence,
you're leveling up. But yes, in general, particles do like
to decay, and that's just a function of time moving
forward and entropy. You know, the same way that you
can't have a bunch of gas particles in the corner
of a box and have them to stay there. They
(11:50):
like to spread out because energy likes to diffuse. That
increases entropy and disorder in the universe. You can't have
that much energy isolated in a quantum field, so that
a particle is in a really heavy state. They like
to decay down to the lowest state. They like to
spread that energy out. They give off a photon or
they eject another particle. They turned into multiple particles, and
(12:12):
they just essentially stepped down the ladder as far as
they and again we're not talking about like particles disassembling
you know, like if if I build a lego in
my house, you know, with my kids, it's not gonna
last very long. It's kind of eventually get dissembled. We're
talking really about like quantum transformation, like a particle literally
like transforms into other things. Yeah, let's take an example
(12:35):
of the muan. The muan is a heavy version of
the electron, and the muan turns into an electron and
then a couple of neutrinos to satisfy some conservation laws.
But the muan doesn't last very long at all, last
for micro seconds and it just turns into the electron.
And as you said, it's not like the muan is
just the electron with a couple of neutrinos bound together,
(12:56):
and then it breaks apart and those little internal pieces
fly out. This really is like alchemy. Like the muon
is an excited state of the muan field and then
it transforms into an excited state of the electron field
and to neutrino fields. And so that's our current understanding
of how this muon decay happens. You have isolated heavy
particle turns into three lighter particles. Right, it's not a
(13:19):
rearrangement and it just it doesn't spontaneously like it's just
sitting there. A muon is just sitting there and then
suddenly pop, it just turns into an electron and two neutrinus. Yeah,
it's one of the real quantum randomness is in our universe,
Like it has a probability at any moment to decay.
When an individual muan actually decays is determined by some
(13:40):
random quantum toss of the dice. If you have like
a thousand muons in a bottle, then half of them
will decay after a certain time, then another half after
another certain time, etcetera. On average, but each individual one
is determined by a random toss of the dice. It's
just like radioactive decay of a nucleus, which is exactly
the same kind of process. I see. It's not that
(14:01):
it's delicate and like you know, you're stacking blocks and
then suddenly when passed by or you push a little
bit and it topples over it. It's literally like you know,
in its fabric of its existence, to just spontaneously turn
into something else. Yeah. The picture I have in my
head is that it's like you know, flipping a coin
or rolling a die, every microsecond, and if it gets
(14:22):
the right answer, boom, it decays, and if it doesn't,
it sticks around it a new one for a while. Um.
And so it's just like keeps rolling that die or
picking a random number until it gets the right one
and then it decides. All right, now it's time for
me to become an electron and a couple of neutrinos. Right,
but you're telling me that it needs to have like
a path for the decay, like it has to have,
(14:44):
you know, kind of a solution for its decay. Yeah,
you can't just turn into anything, right. A muan can't
just like say, hey, I'm going to become a photon. Cool,
that sounds like fun. The universe has rules, and these
rules determine what particles can decay into other particles. The
important thing to understand about these rules is that mostly
we have no idea where they come from. They're just
(15:05):
like our description. It's like you watch a bunch of particles,
you see what happens. You try to notice patterns, and
you codify those patterns into rules. That doesn't mean you
know why that rule exists. So when we say, like,
you know, charge is conserved, doesn't mean we know why
it's conserved. It just means that we've never seen this
rule broken, so we think it's a fundamental rule of
(15:27):
the universe. And so that's one of them. Right. Why
can't a muan just turn into a photon. Well, muan
has electric charge and a photon doesn't, so to do
that would break that rule of conserving electric charge. Right,
it has to be a decay that makes sense to
the universe. Okay, it's not like a total magic like
an el can just turn into a dwarf, that's right.
You have to like fill out a big application and
(15:48):
submitted to the universe's lawyers and they have to check
all the boxes and they say, all right approved. It's
more like getting a bank loan than magically transforming, all right.
And if there's nothing for you to decay to, like
in according to the laws of the universe, then you
can't decay. You're like stuck, that's right. And that's the
situation with the electron. There's nothing lighter than the electron,
(16:09):
like the muon can decay to electron because the muon
is heavier than the electron. It can go down, but
to go up. It's not spontaneous decay. The electron can't
decay up into the muan. There's nothing for it to
go down to. It's the lightest thing on its ladder. Now,
there are other lower mass particles, like a photon for example,
but again an electron can't get to be a photon
(16:30):
because that would violate the conservation of electric charge. Okay,
so then there are rules. And if there's no step
down for you to go down to, then you're stuck.
That's right. And you know, there's another particle that's very
similar to the proton. It's the neutron. And the neutron
is almost the same as a proton. It's a slightly
different arrangement of quarks. Like the proton is made out
(16:51):
of these smaller particles called quarks, and the proton is
two ups and and down. The neutron is two downs
and an up. Now, the neutron is slightly heavier than
the proton, a tiny bit more mass, so the neutron
can turn into a proton, no problem. And it also
shoots off an electron to conserve electric charge. So that happens.
(17:13):
And if you have like a neutron sitting around and
on average, after about nine hundred seconds, it will turn
into a proton. But because the proton is lighter than
the neutron, there's nowhere for the proton to go. Because
there's this weird rule we have observed that says you
have to keep constant the number of cork triplets, like
the number of particles made out of three quarks cannot change,
(17:34):
all right, And there's kind of a rule that says
that when you decayed down into something, you need like
a force to help you do it. That's right. All
these decays happen through some force, right, Like when the
muon decays into the electron, he uses the weak force.
What does that mean, Like like the weak force has
to be involved or you actually need to like inject
some weak force into it. It means that the weak
(17:56):
force is involved. What actually happens when it decays is
that the mu and turns into immuon neutrino and a
w boson, and that w boson then turns into an
electron and a second neutrino, so it like mediates the decay.
It's like every time you feel a force the wall
is pushing back on you for example, Really that's happening
(18:17):
by the exchange of energy from photons, and so all interactions.
Every time particles talk to each other, it happens through
one of the forces. Okay, so then when you decay,
you need this force to kind of like pass the
energy around between the resulting bits. Yeah, exactly. And so
you know, another example is a particle called the pion.
(18:37):
Pion is two corks, a cork and an anti cork,
and this thing can turn into two photons, and that
happens via electromagnetism. Essentially, the cork and the anti cork
and decide to annihilate each other and turn into these
two photons. And so that there's something for it to
turn into doesn't break any of the rules, and there's
a force to make it happen. All right, So we
(18:57):
know that particles can decay if there's thing, you know,
less energetic that they can decay into, and if you
follow the rules of the universe. So now the question
is do protons de case So mostly you and I
are now to protons and electrons and neutrons, and so
the question is due protons decay? So let's get into that.
But first let's take a quick break, all right, Dianiel,
(19:30):
we're talking about whether protons live Forever, and I feel
like that's like an eighties song or something. Do Protons
Live Forever? Sounds like a heavy metal you know, hair band,
sounds like a love The protons of my love will
be here to the end of the universe. That's probably
in the next bill. There you go, Yeah, you have
(19:53):
a rock band in your garage with other physicists. No,
definitely not, And if I did, I would not admit
it here on the podcast. How I see you do
it under an alias another particle name. That's right exactly.
The rock and electrons, all right, So we're all made
out of electrons, protons and neutrons, and so the question
is do protons a because we know electrons cannot decay
(20:14):
spontaneously into someone else, but do protons decay? And so
the protons are different than electrons because protons are made
out of other particles. Right, Protons are made out of quarks.
So you take a proton, you look inside it, deep
inside it, and you find three particles. You find two
up corks and a down cork, and that means that
(20:35):
like it's made out of these three particles. It's just
an arrangement of those particles, right, But we have this
rule in the universe that we don't understand. And this
rule says that there's a fixed number of these cork triplets.
We call this a barrion. It's just three quirks together,
and you can make three qurks together and loss of
different arrangements. And for some reason, every time you have
an interaction, the number of baryons doesn't change. What do
(20:57):
you mean, like interactions, but corks always have and three. No,
but if you do have a triplet of quarks involved,
then you'll have the same number of triplets when you're done. So,
for example, a neutron decays to a proton. He started
with one triplet the neutron, which is an up down down,
and you ended up with one triplet the proton up
up down. Like, you can't go from one barrion to
(21:19):
zero baryons, or from ten burrions to eight burrions. You
have to have the same number of burrions when you
start and when you finish, which is not something we
understand at all. So it's not related to threes, like
if I start with two, I have to end up
with two as well. No, there's no conservation on cork pairs.
Cork triplets have this special property. If you have a
qurk triplet, you have to end up with a cork triplet.
(21:40):
And so, for example, when we smash protons together at
the large change on collider, two protons come in. We
destroy those two protons. We always make at least two
baryons that come out. Okay, So then neutrons, which were
also made out of those don't live forever. You're saying,
like a neutron, if you just leave it alone in
the universe, it's gonna not be a neutron for law.
(22:00):
That's right. It only lasts about eight hundred and eighty
seconds on its own. Now, the neutrons in your body
are much more stable because the environment in your body
keeps them sort of stuck together. But if you had
a neutron by itself in the universe, after about eight
hundred eighty seconds, it would turn into a proton and
an electron. And you notice that keeps the number of
baryons a number of cork triplets constant, because the neutron
(22:23):
is one and the proton is one. Oh, I see,
so alright, So a neutron by itself candycy, but it
turns into a proton basically turns into a proton plus
an electron to carry off the other half of the
electric charge. To follow that one rule. And so what
happens there for the neutron, like the quarks inside just
kind of flipped and then it becomes something else. Yeah,
one of the down corks becomes an up cork, and
(22:44):
it gives off a w boson, which is where you
get the electron and actually a little neutrino, which is
how neutrinos were discovered. But these arrangements of quarks, like
one arrangement of quarks and up down, down, it gives
you a neutron, a different set of quarks up up,
down that gives you a proton. The proton is the
lowest mass arrangement of quarks, Like, there's no way to
(23:06):
make an arrangement of quarks that has a lower mass
in the protons. So it's sort of like the lightest
thing on the ladder of bury on. But for quark triplet, Yes,
for quark, you can make something out of two quarks.
You can make something out of two quarks, like a
pion has lower mass. But the cork triplet ladder, for
some reason, it's on its own. It's like a special
thing in the universe. And if you're on that ladder,
you have to stay on that ladder, and the proton
(23:29):
is the bottom rung of that ladder. There's no lighter
arrangement of three quarks than the proton. So that's why
the proton seems to be stuck unless you can somehow
jump off this ladder. I see, it's like once he
has three quarks, instead of stuck having three quarts, exactly,
you can do something, make a different arrangement of three quarks.
You can move up or down the ladder by injecting energy.
(23:50):
You're waiting for it to decay. But you have to
have something on the ladder. Once you have something on
the ladder. But couldn't I like, you know, split up
that triplet. Can't three quarts make up a proton just
like you know, when they decide to go their separate ways,
then you destroy the proton. Basically, you can do that
if you create a larger system, right, so you like
involve it in some other bonds and some other configurations,
(24:13):
then you can destroy a proton, for example. But a
proton on its own will never decay. We think it
might be stable. We've never seen a proton jump off
the ladder, and every interaction we've ever seen keeps the
same number of these barrier I see. But I mean,
like can quarks exists on their own, you can't have
quirks on their own. They have such a strong interaction
(24:34):
with other corks, and the strength of that interaction gets
stronger and stronger as quirks get further and further apart,
which creates so much energy around them that they create
particles out of the vacuum to make these pairs and triplets.
So you never see corks by themselves. They're always in
these pairs or triplets or maybe in weird exotic larger
combinations tetra corks and hexa corks. But there's a special
(24:56):
relationship that the universe has with these triplets of quirks
that we don't understand. We've never seen a proton decay,
and so we think there might be some special rule
that protects these cork triblets. On the other hand, we
have very good reason to think that protons might decay
or that they should, So it's not for certain. It's
(25:18):
definitely not for certain. No, it's something we don't understand
it's a core mystery at the heart of physics. All right,
So you've never seen a proton spontaneously decay, and what
does that mean? Like, have we actually like put a
proton on their microscope and left it there for a
couple of hours or days or years. Yeah? Actually we
put like ten to the thirty four protons under a
microscope and we waited a few years to see if
(25:40):
any of them decay. What do you mean, like you
actually put them in a little container and left them
there a really big container. Right. One way to do this,
one way to ask, like does a proton decay? Can
we measure it? Is to take a single proton and wait.
But if you think that a proton might take like
a trillion trillion trillion years to decay, then your experiment's
going to take the trillion trillion trillion years. Instead, what
(26:02):
you can do is say, well, I'm gonna take a
trillion trillion trillion protons, which is not that hard to
make because every piece of matter has a lot of
protons and see if any of them decay. Because if
none of them decay within a year or two years,
then I can make a statistical argument about how long
they live. Oh, I see, So that's what you have
in the in the large hattern collider, not in the
(26:24):
large hedge and collider. That's not where we study proton decay.
But in big underground experiments like super Commo Conda and
the upcoming do and experiment are perfect for looking for
proton decays. All right, So you don't think that they
can decay, but do you think they might? What makes
you think they might decay? Well, the universe sort of
doesn't make sense if protons can't decay. Like, if protons
(26:44):
could decay, the whole universe would make a lot more sense,
which makes us want them to decay, even though we've
never seen them. And the reason it is that, well,
you know, we have more baryons in the universe than
anti barions. Well, we talked about earlier how you have
to have the same umber of barrions in the universe.
That's the opposite for anti berrions. Like you can actually
(27:05):
create a burrion and anti berion together because it keeps
the number of burrions the same because anti berrions count
for minus one. And again, a barion is a triplet
of court that's right. Yeah, And so we think that
the universe started off with no particles, as you said,
and then particles were made, which must have made the
same number of burions and anti burions, but somehow we
(27:26):
ended up with a lot more protons than anti protons. Like,
we think there are almost no antiberians out there, so
there must be something out there which lets us either
create burions on their own or destroy anti berions preferentially.
There's something out there to explain why we have so
much more matter than anti matter. Something allows us to
(27:48):
make these buryons. Right, But isn't it just sort of
like electrons to like, you know, you can create and
destroy electrons. What makes us think that then electrons can't
decay but protons might be able to so, right, the
same argument goes for electrons that we think, you know,
why do we have more electrons in the universe than positrons? Right?
This is this whole question of antimatter. But there are
(28:09):
other reasons that we think that protons might decay, and
that comes from like looking at the patterns of the forces.
We have the electromagnetism, which is a force. We have
the weak force, we have the strong force, and we
have gravity. And people like to try to put these together,
they say, well, it's weird to have like four different
forces or five different forces. Can we fit these together
(28:30):
into a larger pattern that has just one overarching you know,
ring to rule them all, so to force. And every
time the theorists do this, every time they put those
pieces together, it always ends up predicting a new little
force that we haven't seen very much anymore, that hasn't
been around since the beginning the universe, that can decay protons,
that turns protons into a pion and a pository. What So,
(28:55):
when you try to, you know, kind of squish all
the forces together like you think they're radically Like if
I try to come up with a like a super
megaporce that includes all the other forces, you're saying, I
have to come up with a new fifth force. Yeah, well,
it's sort of like it's a part of this megaporce
that doesn't happen very much anymore. So put all these
forces together into one megaphorce. And that megaphorce because it
(29:19):
was around in the early universe, before the universe cooled
and the forces broke into these different forces that we
know today, it would have treated all the particles equally
like quarks and electrons and all those stuff. And so
this force should be able to turn quirks into leptons
for example, and back and forth. And currently our forces
can't do that, Like, none of the forces that we
have today are capable of turning quirks into leptons. They
(29:43):
aren't capable of doing that. But this leftover force, there
might be a particle which exists in the universe but
requires so much energy to create that we hardly ever
see it, which means it's very unlikely for it to
do anything. But it might vary occasionally every true brillion
trillion trillion years be responsible for the decay of a proton.
(30:04):
I see, maybe protons have this secret weakness, that this
is hidden force that hasn't been around since the beginning
of time. Yeah, and maybe that's the key, right, because
every time they put one of these theories together, it
always predicts that protons will decay. It's just like a
natural consequence of making this megaphorce. It has this symmetry
where it treats the quarks and the leftons in the
(30:25):
same way. It always predicts this new X particle. The
X particle would take like the two up corks inside
the proton and turn them into like a positron and
a down cork, and that gives you a proton turning
into a pion and a positron. And so it's just inescapable.
And every time the theorists make one of these theories,
(30:46):
they're like, darn it, my theory predicts proton decay. It's
very frustrating for them that I can't escape this prediction.
I say, all right, well, let's get into how we
might be looking experimentally for evidence that the proton case
and when we can expect an answer. But first let's
take another quick break. All right, Daniel, do protons and
(31:18):
love live forever? It's the question, But I guess we're
only tackling the proton partire today. Yeah, don't come to
a particle physicist for questions about love unless it's about
love of particles. A right. So, um, there are reasons
to think maybe the proton does decay. One is that,
you know, it might explain antimatter, and the other one
is that the theory set of point to maybe a
(31:40):
possible kind of new force which would allow protons to decay.
Second of the idea, Yeah, and remember this is all theoretical.
This is like, we look at the way the universe
is arranged, and we think it would make more sense
if we added this one other piece, but that piece
would mean that protons should decay. So then we go
when we look for it, we said, well, maybe they do,
(32:00):
we just haven't noticed. Maybe it takes a long long time,
and so we just need to be really patient. Okay,
So it is that theoretically we don't think that the
proton can decay, but if it does, it kind of
means the existence of a new force. Is that kind
of the significance of this decay. Yeah, so we have
to invent this rule. This number of barriyons is fixed rule,
(32:21):
which we don't really like because it doesn't really make
any sense and it violates our understanding of matter and
antimatter asymmetry, and it keeps us from having this new
mega force, etcetera. So we'd love to get rid of
that and replace it with this new force and allow
protons to decay. But for that to be true, we
have to actually see one decay, and we have to
prove that they can, because nobody's ever seen. So if
(32:43):
you see one decay, then it's like you have to
break the laws of physics. Kind yes, if you see
one decay, that's guaranteed Nobel Prize because you get to
rewrite the laws of physics in a way that makes
much more sense to everybody, that like fits together with
some real symmetry and beauty. And so everybody's sort of
hoping that protons will decay. I mean not your protons,
not my protons, but some proton somewhere we hope will
(33:05):
eventually decay. Did they already print that Nobel Prize? Like
Nobel Prize for the decay of the proton. It's just
sitting on the shelf waiting for people to claim it.
You know. It's one of those experiments out there that
if you make it work, if you see this thing,
it's basically a guaranteed Nobel Prize. There are a few
things like that, you know, find the Higgs boson, see
gravitational waves, find a magnetic monopole. These things that people
(33:26):
have been looking for forever. They think should exist, but
nobody's ever seen one. If you found and it would
really you know, fill in a missing box in our
understanding of the universe. So yeah, go look for one.
Exposed the proton get a prize. That's right, This is
particle is ten most wanted list, right, So then there
are a couple of experiments out there that are actually
trying to win this Nobel prize. They're trying to see
(33:48):
if protons decay and and so what's involved here, Daniel?
Are they just put a bunch in a box and
then stare at them or or do you shake it?
Do you shake the box? What do you have to do?
He's trying not to shake the box. And in fact,
you know, you can play a sort of simple calculation
with any blob of protons like you. You know, you,
for example, have like ten to the twenty eight protons,
(34:09):
something like a trillion quadrillion protons in your body, so
you know already that protons lived for more than, you know,
a hundred years, because people don't tend to die of
proton decay, you know, like people just like suddenly disintegrate,
like Thanos snapping his thumbs. But also, I mean you
said that the protons in my body are kind of
bound together with other protons and neutrons, and that helps
(34:31):
him live longer. Yeah, but unfortunately that's the only kind
of proton we can really study like, we can't take
pure individual free protons and study them on their own.
All we can do is study protons that exist in matter,
which are in bound states. And so that's a big
asterisk on all of the results that we're going to
talk about today that none of them actually involves studying
(34:51):
free protons. Okay, So then stepping through, what are these
experiments and what are they doing? Well, the most powerful
result right now, the one that tells us the most
about proton decay, comes from this experiment in Japan. It's
super Commoo Conda, and they basically have a thirteen story
stack of water and it's just a huge container filled
with water, and it's surrounded by cameras essentially, and it's
(35:14):
totally dark and it's underground. And this is an experiment
that's mostly designed to look for neutrinos coming from the
Sun or coming from deep space or from supernovas, but
it's also good for looking for proton decay because if
proton decays in this tank, they think they will see it. Oh,
I see so, but it's filled with water. I guess
water has hydrogen oxygen, and those all have protons and
(35:38):
they have something like ten to the thirty two protons
basically sitting in the tank, and so if none of
them decay in a year, then you know that the
half life of the proton is more than ten to
the thirty two years. But these are not isolated protons.
They're in these bound states within the atoms. That doesn't
that protect them, it does protect them potentially. And so
(35:59):
as we were saying early here, like this is a
big asterisk in all of these results. We would love
to have ten to the thirty two free protons in
the container that we could study and then we could
directly understand this question. But we don't all the protons
we have our inbound states, and we don't have ionized
hydrogen gas in large enough containers that we build cameras around,
(36:20):
and so we just have to sort of like make
the measurement on bound protons and assume that it also
works for free protons. But it's a big assumption, but
it's also all we can do currently. All right, So,
staring at water, what expery went you make? Particle physics
sounds so exciting. I mean, look for variations and the
(36:42):
loss of physics in violations of symmetry of matter and
antimatter otherwise known as staring at water. If it happened,
it would be kind of dramatic because you would have
this special signature because you would get a pion on
one side, which turns into two photons. You get these
two little splashes in your camera, and on the other
side you would get a positron, which makes a little splash.
(37:04):
So they've simulated exactly what this would look like in
their cameras and it's very weird and unusual and different
from anything they've ever seen before. And so they've been
running this thing for years and years and years and
they've never seen a single one, and so that means
that they can pretty confidently say that the lifetime of
the proton is more than ten to the thirty four years,
(37:25):
which is a huge number because remember the universe, the
entire universe is only thirteen billion years old, so like,
this is many orders of magnitude longer than the history
of the universal But again, these are in bound states,
or do you calibrate for that as well? These are
in bound states. No, we can't really calibrate for that.
(37:45):
We don't really know how to extrapolate from bound state
protons to unbound protons to free protons. We just sort
of like assume it's going to be something similar. Okay,
So then that's one experiment. The super Cameo super co
Neo Conda Conda all right, sounds like superhero or something.
Is an awesome experiment in Japan, and then we're building
(38:08):
one here in the United States that we talked about
on a recent episode called Dune Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
And these neutrino experiments essentially for free, you get a
proton decay experiment because the same thing they can be
used to look for neutrinos in Dune's case from a
neutrino beam or from the Sun or from supernovas, can
(38:28):
also look for decays of protons. And this is kind
of a similar idea to write, like you have a
big vat of stuff and you wait for it to change. Yeah, exactly.
And in the case of Dune is not water, it's
liquid argone. They're pioneering a new technology to take this
noble gas argone and they cool it down until it's
a liquid, but it has the same property that it's
very quiet. So mostly if you have a huge several
(38:52):
ton container of liquid argone underground and you put cameras
on it, it'll stay dark. But if you see an
interaction like a new trino or or a proton decaying,
you should be able to spot that, because it's like
taking a picture of a single tiny flash of light
in a very dark room. Since it's camera can pick
that up. Cool, and so far they haven't seen it.
(39:12):
But again, this one is also you're looking at argons,
so you're looking at protons in a bound state inside
of the nucleus of the argon at them. That's right,
But hey, that's all we can do. Dune hasn't turned
on yet. They're still building it. It's gonna be turning
on in a few years. But because it's a much
larger volume, they have many more tons. It will provide
even more stringent limits on the lifetime of the proton.
(39:34):
Or maybe they'll get lucky, maybe they'll see one decay.
But I guess, why can't you just like isolate a
proton and look at it. Is that hard? I mean,
you guys do it at the large hattern collider. Yeah,
you can isolate a proton and you can look at it,
But a single proton will not tell you much about
the lifetime of the proton unless you wait a very
very long time. So you either need a lot of
protons or a lot of time, and a lot of
(39:57):
protons are very hard to keep isolated. I mean, could
have a gas of protons. We do that the hydrunk glider,
but you know we have like tend of the twelve
protons tend to thirteen protons. You need to keep these
things isolated. You need to watch them and then you
need to instrument it, right, You need to be watching
for them to decay. And so that's much easier to
do when you have a neutral substance, something which is quiet,
(40:19):
which doesn't otherwise make lots of flashes of light. Oh,
I see, it's like you can isolate a whole bunch
of protons, but then you actually have to notice if
like one of them the kids. Yeah, because a bunch
of protons together, it's called the plasma, and a plasma
is not a quiet thing to instrument, right, That's like
where we try to do fusion and stuff like that.
So it's a pretty trick the experiment to do for
actual free protons, which is why we only ever do
(40:41):
it for protons in a bound state. But you're right
that doesn't actually tell us about free proton. All right,
So there are people looking for this decay of the proton.
Then there's people staring at water and argon waiting for
one of these protons to suddenly die. That's right, staring
at water waiting for a Nobel prize to about out
of a little tiny proton. Hey, if I told you
(41:04):
stare at this tank, a Nobel prize might appear. You know,
you might devote a couple of years to that. Yeah,
shorter than a PhD. A couple of trillion years, why not?
Or you might not see anything. Unfortunately, that's usually the
case in particle physics. You're looking for something crazy. You're
hoping you might see something spectacular, but you see nothing.
But the good news is that most of our experiments
(41:26):
are still interesting even if you don't see anything, because
you can still say something. You can say, we didn't
see the proton decay. Therefore we know it doesn't decay
on average in less than tend of the thirty four
tend of the thirty five years. So you still get
to say something interesting about physics. Alright. So it sounds
like you're pretty confident then that we can say that
(41:46):
the proton does not decay or won't die, or we'll
live for at least ten to the thirty four years,
which is pretty much forever, right, it's almost forever. I mean,
it's a lot longer than our universe has been around
so far. But it's also still a real problem for
theoretical physicists when they try to construct their grain unified theories,
(42:07):
their theories of everything, when they want to understand what
happened to the very beginning of the universe, they have
to do it in a way that keeps the proton
from decaying, and that's theoretically very tricky. It's like, you know,
they have to pass through the eye of a needle
to keep the proton from decaying in their theory. And
so everybody would be very happy to see a proton decay, oh,
(42:27):
I see, because it would make the equations easier to solve.
It would mean that all the theories which predict proton
decay might actually be correct. And those equations are beautiful
and they make a lot of sense, and they answer
a lot of other questions about like matter and antimatter
and the forces being unified. But those equations can't be
right if the proton doesn't decay. If the proton doesn't decay,
(42:48):
those equations are just wrong, even though they're beautiful and
they're simple and they're attractive. So then we need to
find some other way to solve those problems. And theoretically
that's just much harder without proton decay. So it's not
just a whole bunch of physicists looking staring at water.
You're staring at water waiting for the proton to die, hoping, hoping.
You're hoping for the proteon to die here. That's right,
(43:10):
that's the big twist. You thought we would be rooting
for the proteon to lift forever, but instead we're anti protons.
You're like, just die already. We're cheering on its demise
to retire and win my noble pride. That's right. Somebody
in a very future universe will finally see a proton
decay in a trillion trillion trillion years. I hope they're
(43:31):
still giving out Nobel prizes. Then I hope our protons
are still around. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed
that and got a little bit of a sense of
how long things live in the universe. Apparently, some things do,
some things don't, and it's amazing the cosmic importance of
one little proton, a single proton in a vat of
water in Japan, decaying could crack open the answer to
(43:52):
these deep mysteries about the beginning of our universe, the
balance between matter and antimatter, how everything fits together. It's
incredibly import And then it just really highlights the connection
between particle physics and cosmology and astrophysics, and really, particle
physics is basically the whole universe. That's what I'm saying.
She's saying, give us more money. We're studying everything that's right.
(44:12):
That's what everything I say translates to effectively. All right, Well,
I hope that give you some stuff to think about.
The protons in your body and the electrons might live forever,
but particle physicists are hoping they don't see you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain
(44:35):
the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio. Or
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Yea
Hosts And Creators
Daniel Whiteson
Kelly Weinersmith
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