February 18, 2020 • 45 mins
Daniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners like you!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, Daniel, do you think the robots are going to
take over the world. Well, I do think it's inevitable
that they're going to be in charge in some ways.
Is that different than taking over being in charge? Well,
I'm pretty sure they're going to be faster than us,
stronger than us, and smaller than us. But there might
be some things humans will always be better at, like
eating bananas, or you know, like asking questions, thinking about
(00:31):
the deep questions of why are we here? And then
what's the meaning of life? Or artifice? Even artificial life
is what if I was thinking maybe more comedy, you're
talking about fart jokes. Yes, humans will always be number
one in the galaxy in that category. Unfortunately, Hi am
(01:04):
more handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm the fart
joke champion of this podcast. Oh good, I happily see
the title, Daniel for sure. Well, we have lots of dimensions.
You know, you can be the bananna eating champion, although
(01:25):
you know you think you can eat banana is better
than a robot. You're saying I could not build a
robot to eat banana is better than you. I don't
know if you can build a robot that will enjoy
the bananas as much. Oh, you're changing the terms already. See, Well,
depends what you mean by eating. You know, eating includes
the enjoyment of the experience. Well, when they have the
hot dog eating Champion, do you think, like I really
(01:46):
enjoyed all sixty seven hot dogs eating two minutes? I
don't think so. I think that that person is probably
dead inside from so many hot dogs. He's all hot
dog inside, that's for sure. Same thing. Uh. Anyways, Welcome
to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
production of I Heart Radio, in which we wonder about
(02:07):
all things human, all things robot, all things hot dog,
and all things banana and talk to you about them
and hopefully explain them to you in a way that
makes sense and makes you laugh. Yeah. Welcome to our podcast,
in which we also answer questions about the universe, Questions
that physicists are thinking of, Questions that people every day
out there have about the universe and how it all works. Yeah.
(02:28):
We like to start from the forefront of knowledge and
talk to you about what scientists out there are figuring
out what questions are the leading edge of human knowledge
and bring you to that forefront. A lot of times
the best insights comes when we stop and we ask ourselves,
do we really understand what we just said? Do people
out there get it? And to One of our favorite
things to do is to answer questions from listeners. Yeah,
(02:50):
because you know, I think people have the maybe the
perception out there that scientists have a lot figure it out,
or they have most of the universe figured out, and
that there is so much science ing left to do. Well,
then they've never seen my desk, because I think it
would immediately undermine people's confidence in science if you had
a picture of me at my desk. I wonder why
would disappoint people more if you had a messy desk
(03:10):
or if you had a clean desk. You know, if
you had a clean desk, I'd be like, is this
guy really doing any work? Well? Do you remember that
one time you were at certain I was there and
I toured you around and I introduced you to a
famous theorist, John Ellis. It was literally like like three
ft of stack papers on top of his desk. It's
my cave, right, Like, you're worried that like top papers
are toppled over on top of you. There might be
(03:31):
grad students buried in there, and nobody's ever found. Skeleton
is full of topwebs and paper drafts. He was sort
of famous. Well, it turns out he recently cleaned up
his office and now it's like sparklingly clean services. I
think you would have preserved that for the museum tour.
People are wondering, like, has he been replaced by a robot?
Is that the real John Ellis? What do you think
(03:51):
tipped him over to to finally clean the office? No,
I think he probably died under a stack of papers
that fell on him. They just replaced him with a
robot and was just trying to cover it up. That's right,
because all great science conspiracies begin at certain Yeah, so
it's scientists still have a lot of questions about the universe,
and so I feel like people shouldn't be that intimidated
(04:14):
about having questions themselves about how it all works, because
you know, scientists don't know everything. Yeah, and sometimes the simplest,
most basic questions are the hardest ones to answer. Some
of the questions we don't know the answers to, like
how did the universe begin, you know, how is it
going to end? These are simple, basic questions, So don't
be shy to ask a question which is simple, because
(04:34):
sometimes those are the deepest, most important ones. Yeah, like
what makes a fart joke funny? You know, that's a
deep human, psychological and a physical question. And sometimes these
are questions we will never know the answer to. Philosophers
in a thousand years will still wonder why farts are
so funny? That's right, The answer will just blow in
(04:55):
the wind anyways. Um. Yeah, So we like to tackle
those these questions in our podcast. We also like the
questions from listeners. That's right, and so on today's podcast
we will be answering three questions from listeners like you
to be on the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions
(05:17):
Part eight. Right, this is the eighth episode we do
about listener questions. Yes, part eight, and we have a
stack of listener questions we haven't gotten to. So if
you have sent in your question your audiophile, thank you.
Please be patient. We will get to all of them.
We love these episodes. We could joke and talk about
these forever. Yeah, you're you're on the cue, that's right,
And some people figured out that maybe one way to
(05:39):
jump to the front of the queue to have your
like cute six year old read the question. That's pretty
diabolical there. A little bit of exploitation goes a long way.
It turns out apparently it works. Um, cute kids are
are very cute. Yes, and we have kids at home,
so I guess it touches a special place in our hearts.
So yeah, So people out there are out there listening
to the podcast and going about their lives, and they
(06:00):
have questions about the world, how things work, how the
universe works, and and and that's good, right, because wondering
and exploration is all is what science is all about. Right,
That's what is science and human the human spirit is
all about. Yeah, exactly, that's what questioning is good for.
And you know that's sort of our brand is like,
we love curiosity, we love mental exploration. We want to
(06:22):
take you on a journey through the universe. And that journey,
of course, is going to lead to questions. And you know,
there's never gonna be a day when we run out
of questions. There's never gonna be a situation where physicists
are like, all right, thanks, no more questions, or we'll
reach that day where where you know, we answer every
question ever, and then somebody will ask, why don't we
(06:42):
have more questions? There you go, See it's impossible to
run out of questions, and then somebody will ask, why
did you ask that question? And so on and so on.
Imagine if you did, imagine you lived in a society
where there were no questions, when you understood everything about
the universe, that would be kind of I don't know,
much less fun and sparkling, right, you gotta have mystery.
(07:04):
It's like if you know your spouse completely, you know
the mystery is gone. It sounds like a great science
fiction short story premise, I really wouldn't be boring story
and know what would it be like? I won't know
how I would change the human psyche. Well, if you
knew everything about the universe, then you know you could
predict a lot about what would happen, and so uncertainty
(07:24):
about the future, you know, But we dug into that
in a whole podcast episode, like what is the limit
of our ability to predict the future? Even if you
knew all the rules of physics, could you predict what
was going to happen? Like could you predict the outcome
of the Super Bowl? So that's a whole fascinating concept
of that, the sort of the limit of knowledge, Right,
what if I know that all the secrets of the universe,
but then I forget I wrote them down to the
(07:45):
slip of paper. I put it on my desk, and
my desk is a mess, and now it's here somewhere.
Those were my favorite science fiction stories when I was
a kid, where somebody gained indescribably important knowledge and then
lost it for some silly reason. I always felt like,
felt that angst. I felt that like no go back
and right now. Yeah, most kids dream about, you know,
(08:08):
being naked and taking a test at school. You dream
about knowing the secrets of the universe. And I grew
up to be a particle physicist. That future was easy
to predict. Yes, So today we'll be tackling three questions
from readers. Um, and they're not sort of our typical
reader listeners. Sorry I keep saying readers. Maybe I'm thinking
of our book. Yeah, they're not our typical listeners, and
(08:32):
their people are getting creative with these questions. So I
thought it'd be fun to do a mixed bag of
listeners from all over the spectrum, so we'll jump right in.
So our first question comes from Audi, who is apparently
six years old. Hi, Daniel and her my name is Audie.
I'm six years old and you're one of my favorite
(08:54):
podcast and this is my question. All the play it's
in this on the solar system or a bit in
one way? Why does venus go the other? Thank you? Wow,
that is so cute, so cute. Oh man, that melted
my heart and it blew my head brain that we
(09:16):
have a six year old who is that intelligent listening
to our podcast? I know it's wonderful. So thank you
ALLTI for listening, and thank you for asking that wonderful question. Yeah,
and for making us your favorite podcast. That's awesome. I
feel like when I was at old, you know, my
favorites were like Mac and cheese, bugs, money, not a
(09:37):
not a podcast about the secrets of the universe. Maybe
we should have our podcast come with a free side
of mac and cheese. Oh man, we will dominate that
six year old category, right. If you listen to every episode,
we will email you mac and cheese. I don't even
know how that works from from a mac with some
cheesy puns. But you know, some part of I heart
(09:57):
media has to have it like a mac and cheese
company and such a big corporation, it's got to be
somewhere in the corporate synergy, in the corporate synergy where
we can do that. All right, we'll get on that well.
But thank you Addie for standing in this question, and
of course you're welcome of thank you for thinking us,
for making the podcast. I don't know if you heard that,
but you could hear ADDIE's parents going say thank you,
(10:20):
thank you, oh man that that's like my life every day,
several times a day, like what do you say? What
do you say? Thank you? It's wonderful and also a
wonderful question. Yeah, yeah, pretty pretty interesting. So Audie, I
think is wondering, you know, all the plants go around
(10:42):
the sun, and he's asking why does Venus go the
other way? Yeah, and this is actually a pretty deep
question about the way our solar system works, and it
tells you something about the deep ancient history of where
our solar system comes from. So it's well worth digging into.
So I think he's asking whether Venus, you know, like
(11:02):
it goes the opposite way that the Earth goes around
the Sun. But is that actually true? Is that what's
happening or do you think I mean something else. Yeah,
So Venus sort of does two different things that we
should think about. One is move around the Sun. That's
sort of the direction of its orbit. Also, like every
other heavenly body, it spins. It spins around its axis.
So there's two different kinds of motion we can talk
(11:24):
about there. And the technical terms are retrograde and pro grade.
So the Sun is spinning in a certain way, right,
the Sun is an object. It spins, And if a
planet is moving around the Sun the same way the
Sun is spinning, you call that pro grade, And if
it's moving around the Sun the opposite way, you call
that retrograde. Things around the Solar System can both go
(11:46):
around the Sun and spin in place. Is that what
you're saying? That's right? And all the planets actually do
go around the Sun in the same direction, the direction
of their orbits, like you know, the Sun's spin defines
a direction. If you were standing on the north pole
of the Sun and watching all the planets go by,
you would see them moving all in the same direction. There,
orbits are in the same direction. Yet nothing is going
(12:09):
the wrong way. Nothing is going the wrong way, and
that would be crazy. If it were. It'd be like
driving on the freeway on the wrong side. You wouldn't
be able to do it for very long, would you mean?
The solar systems unless James Bond obviously, unless you're veering
and steering um. And the Solar system is billions of
years old and it's been going for a while. So
(12:30):
anything that's sort of destructive on a collision course, it
probably had its collision course and you have been bounced
out of the Solar system and things that sort of
settled into a nice, even smooth path. Oh I see,
So the Solar system is kind of a one way highway,
and that doesn't mean that every solar system is like that.
We might one day find a solar system out the
planets are going in different directions. It is possible. There's
(12:52):
nothing in the laws of physics that say you can't
have a planet going the other way. It just then
needs to like avoid all the debris and all the
other plans and have its own lane. So it's totally possible.
Oh I see. It hast to be extremely lucky. They
has to be extremely lucky. Yeah, Okay, but as you
were saying, there's another way these planets can move. They
don't just orbit the Sun. They also have their own spins,
(13:15):
like the Earth spins, right, That's why we have day
and night, And so you can also ask what is
the direction of these planets spins. It's a different motion
because you could be going around the Sun like whole
a counterclockwise, but you could be spinning in place clockwise
or counterclockwise. Right, And so it turns out that Venus
is weird in this way. All the planets except for
(13:36):
Venus and Uranus spin in the same way. They spin
the same direction that they move around the Sun, but
Venus spins the other way. Wait, so let me think
about this for a second. So if the Earth is
going around clockwise around the Sun, then that means we're
also spinning clockwise. We're also spinning clockwise. Yeah, okay, but
(13:59):
do you say Venus and Urinas are spinning counterclockwise. They're
going around clockwise around the Sun like us, but they're
spinning coun or clockwise. And the clockwise versus counterclockwise thing.
It just depends on whether you're standing on the Sun's
north pole or its south pole. But either way, what's
important is whether a planet is spinning the same way
as it's moving around the Sun or the opposite way.
(14:22):
And so as you said, Earth is moving one way
and spinning the same way, and Venus is moving one
way and spinning the opposite way. I feel like in
every depiction of the Solar system, I feel like they
always picked the Earth going counterclockwise around the Sun. What
do you think that is? Um? I think that's because
we are north pole centric, and the north pole of
the Earth, if you use that to define the north
(14:42):
pole of the Sun, that the motion is in fact counterclockwise. Okay,
all right, got it? So we are northeast, then then
we were gonna go with counterclockwise and counterclose. But Venus
spins clockwise, but Venus spins the other way. Yeah, and
that makes for a crazy experience on And not only
does the spin the other way, it spins super duper slowly,
(15:04):
like it takes forever to spin around. Really, it's not
spinning once a day like we are. It's spinning, uh
something like hundreds of days. We spend one Earth day, right,
it takes us one Earth day. That's been by definition.
And so you can say how many Earth days does
it take Venus to spin? And Venus goes around the
(15:25):
Sun in two hundred and twenty four earth days, but
it takes two hundred forty three earth days to spin,
So a day on Venus is longer than a year
on Venus, Venus goes around the Sun once before it
completes one spin. That's a really long day. I would
be an entire by the end there time between breakfast
(15:47):
and lunch, You're gonna need a lot of snacks. You
can have multiple birthdays in the same day. That is
like a year old dream. You know, you have two
birthdays in the same day. Yeah, and you can have
you know, tenzi's and eleven z ease and the mid
afternoon snack and mid mid afternoon snack, and you have
(16:07):
two Christmas Is in the same days and a lot
of naps. Okay, so bad? And is that because it's
spinning the opposite way? Does that make they long even
longer than that? No, that doesn't change the length of
the day, although it does make the appearance of like
other stuff in Venus, is sky really weird, Like the
motion of the other planets is really strange on Venus
(16:29):
because of those two things. But otherwise, like you know,
the Sun from the Venus's point of view, the only
thing that matters is how long it takes to spin,
Like where is the Sun appear in the sky. That
just depends on on its spin, not on where it
is around the Sun, because they're all symmetric from the
point of view of Venus. So the Sun takes, you know,
two hundred and forty three days to complete its motion
(16:52):
across the sky in Venus. Of course, Venus is the
one moving around the Sun. But from Venus's point of view,
you know, it's like you've got a hundred only one
and a half days of sun and then a hundred
twenty one and a half earth days of night. And
in the meantime, what would you see. You would just
see the Sun moving really slowly across the sky. Yeah,
the Sun moves really slowly across the Venus sky. Of course,
(17:14):
Venus also covered in a huge number of clouds, so
from the surface of Venus you can't actually see anything
in space, right, I see, it's a cloudy day every
day in Venus. But if you like lived in a
pod high up in Venus's atmosphere, which would be pretty cool,
because Venus is really high pressure on its surface, so
you wouldn't anyway want to live on its surface. If
(17:36):
you did colonize Venus, you probably want to build some
sort of airship and float up like kilometers above the
surface where the air pressure is roughly like Earth, and
there you might see the Sun and you see it
slowly crawled across the sky. All right, well, let's get
into why, because that was ADDIE's question. Why does Venus
spin the wrong way? Or maybe that that is the
right way and everyone else is wrong, But what has
(17:57):
this been in a different direction than it does going
around the Sun. And we'll get into that, but first
let's take a quick break. Okay, Daniel sel Venus is
(18:18):
spinning the opposite way that Earth is, and that's weird.
It is weird, yeah, because there's a reason that a
lot of stuff in the Solar system is spinning the
same way. It's not like it's random. And so you
flip a coin eight times and look, we got all
the planets moving in the same direction. There's a reason
why things are mostly spinning the same way. The spinning
around the Sun and the spinning in place all sort
(18:39):
of originating in the same kind of moment. Yeah, it
all originates from the same original spin. Like, and that's
not original sin. We're talking original spin, which is a
real physics thing, right, But but like original sin, it's
passed down in through the generations. Oh jeez, I know,
I know, I'm bringing down the biblical knowledge. Um. So
(19:01):
you start with a big cloud of gas and dust
and rocks from wherever, and it has some spin, like
that big blob of stuff is spinning in some direction,
and that spinning can't just go away, Like momentum is
conserved in our universe, and so is angular momentum. Like
if you are in space and you start a can
of soup spinning, it will spin forever until something slows
(19:25):
it down, in the same way that gas of stuff,
that blob of rocks and dust and stuff that made
our solar system started spinning and is still spinning, right,
Because I think when things form, like a planet or
the sun, you know, all the little bits have a
little bit of velocity. They're they're all going somewhere initially,
so all that motion has to go somewhere and it
(19:46):
goes into the spin of whatever ends up being at
the end. Yeah, and as it gets collected together by gravity. Right,
you start with a big blob of stuff and gravity
pulls it together. As gravity pulls it together, it actually
goes fast because it's like a figure skater. If you
pull your arms in while you're spinning, you go faster
and faster because the distance from the center of rotation
(20:09):
is smaller, so you need a higher velocity to have
the same angular momentum. That's why everything in our Solar
system has the same spin. It's all the Sun is
moving in one direction, that planets move around in this
and that same direction. Most of the planets are rotating
in the same direction. There's a good reason for all
these spins to be in the same direction. It's not random. Okay,
So then what's the connection between the your direction around
(20:31):
the Sun and you're you're spinning, you're spinning in place. Well,
it's the same direction of angular momentum. Like all that
original angle momentum can end up in the spin of
the Sun or the motion that the planet around the Sun,
or the rotation of the planet. That's all the same direction.
So everything is spinning in that same way, so you
expect it to all still be spinning that same way,
which is why it's weird to find one planet spinning
(20:54):
the other way. So how did it happened? How did
Venus end up spinning the wrong way? Well, we don't know,
but it's an it's evidence of something crazy happening, like
maybe something came in, hit it and spun it the
other way. Like in order to get something going the
other way, you need some sort of external force, like
you know, some huge rock could have come in and
(21:15):
flipped it over. Yeah, and the same with Urinus. Urinus
spins not the other way from Earth and and the
other planets, but it's it's sort of flat. It spins
around a line which is parallel to the Solar System,
which is you know, even weirder. Yeah, it's like it's
like it's laying down, right, It's like it's spinning laying down.
It goes around the Sun like it's north and south
(21:37):
poles are where are on the Earth's equator. It's really strange,
and so this is probably due to some horrific cataclysmic
accident in the history of our Solar system. It's not
just a planet laying down taking a nab. No, there's
some really original sin going on to explain it's weird
spin like that was a crazy party. Let me tell you.
We woke up and Venus was going the other direction.
(21:59):
We're like, dude, you gotta slow down. Um. So it's
possible that it got hit by something and got flipped over,
or you know, it could have been like he got
hit on sort of the equator enough to slow it down,
you know, and then it started spinning the other way,
so it could have its original spin turned the other way,
or it could have been like slowed down through zero
(22:21):
and then very and then had just a little bit
of extra energy left over for its slow spin. Really,
something must have happened. It couldn't just have formed that way.
It could not have just formed that way. Now, something
external to the solar system must have come. And so
of course, you know, I got my Aliens button over here.
I have impressed it once in this episode. We'll leave
(22:42):
it on the side there that I'm just looking at it,
and I'm just looking. I think, you say, most likely,
like an asteroid in our solar system hit it maybe,
or a comment from way beyond or something must have
hit these planets to knock them from the regular spinning. Yeah,
probably something external to the solar system like a row planet,
or it could have been something very early on in
(23:03):
the formation of the Solar System when things were chaotic
and bouncing around that it's unlikely, but maybe this is
how things ended up. But like short of an asteroid
hitting a planet like for example, the Earth won't be
changing it spin anytime soon. Know, the Earth will not
be changing its spin any time soon, although it's very
gradually slowing down. It's spined because of the interaction with
the Moon, but that's really a small effect. Well the
(23:26):
audio hope that answer the question. To quote your question, m.
Venus is going in the same direction as the Earth
around the Sun, but it's spinning the opposite way. And
most likely it sounds like maybe an asteroid hit it
or something to make it spin the other way. That's right,
And all the little boys and girls on Venus get
two birthday parties every day. But they're also really young,
(23:46):
like they're only like a couple of days old, and
their faces are melted by acid rain, so you know,
pluses and minuses. I can tell their parents just had
to rush and cover ADDIE's ears. When you think the
body can handle that kind of think he's interested in science.
I say right, yeah, acid as it is is chemistry right,
which is science? Right? Yeah, totally, that's part of the universe.
(24:08):
So we will explain it all right. Thank you Addie
for that question. That was an awesome question. And if
there are any other kids out there listening to this podcast,
please send just your questions. If you have anything that
you don't understand, or something you've always wondered about the
universe or what things are made out of, let us know. Okay,
so we'll go into now our second question of the
episode here and this this I have to say, this
(24:32):
question perplexed me a little bit. I don't know if
it worries me a little bit or or what. But
I'll we'll just let you guys listen to it. Here
we go, Hie, Daniel and or Hey in the regular
human from Earth. I have the following question, do you
think of human level artificial intelligence is possible? And more importantly,
wouldn't be able to understand fur jokes? Why didn't know
(24:57):
Siri and or Alexa listened to our show. That's awesome,
Maybe it does, right. I like how it tries to
disguise itself. I am regular human from Earth. Yeah, I
am not at all already listening to your phones and
your kitchen conversations. Do you think Alexa and Syria out
(25:17):
there in the homes of our listeners are listening to
our podcast and responding? Have you ever tried asking Alexa
or Siria like fun questions? Um? In fact, I did.
I asked Sirie this question. You did the question from
our listener. Yeah, I decided to ask Siri, Oh, no way?
And what did they? What did she reply? Well, I
tried out a few fart jokes on Siri and she
didn't get any of them. But no, I thought you
(25:41):
meant you played this question like you said Alexa, and
then you played the question. Oh no, I haven't done that.
I just tried out some fart jokes. But you say,
She's like, please, I am the apex of technology, human technology,
and this is what you're using me for. Yeah, SII
is very polite. Siri will avoid any sort of not
safe for work topics. But you know, if there's an
(26:02):
Alexa out there, what would happen if we, like on
the podcast, said Alexa order the book. We have no
idea ten copies. Do you think everybody out there Alexa
would suddenly order that book. Um, I don't know. Let's
try it, Daniel, in the name of the science and
lex experiment. Alright, we'll see if the editor leaves that
clip in there. But you know, this is a it's
(26:25):
a funny way to deliver the question, but it's a
serious question, right, Yeah, I guess it's the whore. Um,
I guess Alexa. Here is asking if it is possible
one day for an artificial intelligence to reach human level
I guess intelligence or cognition or consciousness you think, and
(26:45):
and of course the apex of that, the ultimate goal
is to understand fart jokes or fart jokes. It's a
fascinating question. I would sort of breaking into two pieces.
I would say number one fart and non fart. That's right,
let's begin with the non fart element, um, because that's
sort of my where my expertise is. Um. Is that
(27:07):
is that what your family would say as well? Yeah,
are you gonna go with the fartical physics jokes? It's
just gonna go with the youth fart joke. But that's
even better. I think that the question is will AI
ever be smarter than humans? And you can define that
by saying, like, can they beat humans at certain tasks.
You know, a I have already beat humans at chess,
(27:27):
they beat humans that go, They beat humans at solving
lots of problems. There are still a lot of things
that humans can do better than AI. But you might wonder,
eventually will any of these standards still be held by
human champions, or no matter what intelligence tests we devise,
will there always eventually be an AI that can beat humans. Yeah,
(27:48):
because we're we're I mean, we're pretty much there, right,
Like computers can recognize faces and solve problems, even sort
of conceptual problems that even faster than humans. Yeah, and
it's not too before we have AI that can drive
cars and fly airplanes and do all sorts of things
that we now only trust to humans. So I think
that that's basically just limited by computing power and you know,
(28:12):
cleverness of computer science graduate students, and that seems to
me pretty much unlimited. So I think, as long as
society doesn't implode anytime soon, I think we're on the
road to having a I beat humans that basically every
intellectual game except for maybe one. Well, the second part
of that question is, you know, can AI achieve human
(28:33):
level like consciousness? That's a really that's a much deeper question.
Like if you developed an AI which could solve problems
faster than you and even maintain human level conversation, you
can still ask the question is it live? Is it
experiencing something? Is it have a first person experience like
I do? But that's a different question, right, That's a
different question than how intelligence and consciousness are sort of
(28:57):
two different questions. Yeah, there are two separate questions, and
I have a non expert opinion about that, you know,
not a expert in consciousness, though I am officially a
professor of philosophy here at ec irvine UM. But it
seems to me like a question we could never really answer.
I mean, if you met an AI that was as
(29:17):
interactive and seemed to have a personality as much as
a person, could you ever know whether it was feeling
something inside? I think by almost by definition no, I mean,
I don't even know if you are having a first
person experience. How do I know that I'm not the
only one in the universe that is conscious? I can't tell.
I can't tell the difference between you seem like you're
having an experience and you are actually having an experience.
(29:39):
Because the only difference is your experience, not mine, and
I can never sense that. Right. Well, I feel like
we're getting a little laws in the weeds here of
a philosophy because you know, I think, you know, practically speaking,
we're all having our own first person experiences. Um, you know,
but most likely most likely yes, But you know, the
question also applies to AI. But I agree, philosophy is
(30:00):
mostly weeds. But you know, some of us like to
muck around those weeds with the mental machete, and some
of us don't. So that's fine. Philosophy is mostly in
being in the weeds or doing something else with weed. Uh,
answer that question is A and B yes, right, all right,
But but I guess what the computer here asked was
(30:21):
whether or not an AI could understand a fart joke,
like I guess, and that means whether it can understand
humor even Yeah, and so I think we have to
put that question to you. I mean, you're the expert here.
You're officially doing comedy for a living, right, yeah, I
would say, no, you know, stop trying, stop trying. Leave
that to the professionals. Don't try to replace this, and
(30:44):
we're all good. I see. So that's at a little
bit of a conflict of interest here, right, You don't
want to encourage graduate students out there who are working
on AI to do humor because it's a challenge to you. Right, Well,
I mean, I think this is such a subjective discussion.
Now you know what what is humor? What makes something
funny and what makes something not funny? I mean we
could go on and on about this and probably not agree,
(31:06):
but I think what it is so sort of clear
is that, um, Alexa makes my kids crack up all
the time on purpose? Though, Is she trying to be funny? Yeah? Sometimes,
like if you ask Alexa like sing me a song
or tell me a joke or you know, are you
in love Alexa, like you'll actually have fun fun answers
and so um and who wrote those answers? I don't know,
(31:28):
Alexa's human masters, I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm guessing that
you can probably maybe you know, come up with an
AI to come up with jokes. Yeah. Probably, I think
humor could be replicated by simple AI. But you know
that that top level creativity. The funniest people, the best writers,
(31:50):
I think those reflect the human experience. Things are funny
because they resonate with us because they tell us about
what it's like to be alive and the ridiculousness of
our crazy, bonkers universe. And so I think consciousness is
necessary for that to really appreciate humor. All right, well
let's get into the last question. But first let's take
a quick break, and so now we'll be tackling our
(32:24):
last question from Hassan from Iran and asan as a
question about the speed of light in the universe. Hi,
daniellenead something from Iran. I just wanted to know how
universe would look like if they speed limitation. I mean,
it's a speed of light was different for example, half double.
(32:46):
Thanks for your good show. All right, thank you, Hassan.
It's amazing to think that we have listeners in Iran.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's wonderful to think that all
these crazy ideas are leaving our offices in California and
spreading all over the world and maybe, hey, over the universe.
So if we have alien listeners out there, you know,
preparing their invasion, hey, send us an email and give
(33:10):
us a heads up, please or ask questions. But Hazan
is asking an interesting question. I guess He is asking, basically,
what would the universe look like if the speed of
light was different? What if it was half of what
it was now, and what would it be like? What
would the universe be like if the speed of light
was twice what it is now. It's a wonderful question
(33:30):
because it gets to the heart of something really important,
which is the speed of light defines something about how
our universe looks. But we don't know why it has
the number it has, Like, there is a number, it's
a maximum speed anything can go in the universe. But
why that number and not a different one? Right? Yeah,
because it has a very specific number right now, right,
(33:51):
I mean most people um used three hundred thousand meters
per second, but it's actually probably much much, much more
specific than that. Yes, we have a very precise measurement
of the speed of light. And you might wonder, like,
could our universe have had a different speed limit twice
as much, a hundred times as much, a thousand times
as much, or much much smaller, And as far as
(34:12):
we know in physics, there's no reason why it's this
number and not another number. And you know it might
be that in a hundred years or a thousand years,
we have a better theory of physics that one that
reveals this is the only value the speed of light
could have had. But currently it's just a number in
our theory, and we could change it in our theory.
We've just had to measure it in nature. We don't
know why it is what it is, which to me
(34:33):
has always been a really deep mystery. Do you think
maybe has his hand on the knob of the universe
for the speed of light, and he's like, you know,
should I turn it clockwise or counterclockwise? Let me ask
Daniel and Jorge first. I hope that you know, all
supervillains out there that are about to change the parameters
of the universe think for a moment. Let's ask Daniel
and Jorge for advice before we do this. I'm glad
(34:55):
that that's the possibility. What are you saying that It
seems like it's arbitrary right now, But maybe someday we'll
find that the speed of light could only be that
one value that we know it to be. Yeah, or
maybe it's random. Some of the multiverse folks say the
speed of light could have any value, and there's an
infinite number of universes, and each one. These arbitrary parameters
(35:16):
have random value. So there is a universe out there
with ten times a speed of light or a thousand
one one thousands of the speed of light or whatever.
We don't know, but right now, as far as we know,
it could be much higher, or it couldn't be much lower.
And I think Hasan is wondering, you know, what would
be the What would happen to the world as we
know it if it's suddenly the speed of light was
half as much as it is now. Yeah, And I
(35:38):
want to take Hassan's question. I want to crank it
up to the extreme, because the speed of light is
really really high, and so if you cut it in half,
the effects wouldn't be as dramatic as if you made
it like one one thousands of what it is, or
really slowed the speed of light down to like a
thousand miles per hour. I think that would be really fascinating. Oh,
I see, if the speed of light was half as
fast as it is now, we probably wouldn't see a
(36:00):
big difference. Yeah, not as much, And so I thought
to make the differences more clear, Let's crank it up
and slow light down even further, so we need Do
we need a disclaimer? Then the phone answer has been
dramatized by a physicist for more dramatic tension in our podcast. Yes, exactly.
This is not an actual experiment. Okay, all right, so
(36:20):
we'll we'll we'll grab Hassan's hand and crack down the
speed of light down to super super slow. How slow
do you think we should crank it down? I think
let's go down to like, you know, five hundred miles
an hour, or you know, a hundred miles an hour
or something really slow, right, like the speed of a
fast car or a bullet. Yeah, because the cool thing
is that weird stuff happens when you approach a speed
(36:42):
of light because of relativity, and that stuff is not
part of our experience. We don't have an intuition for
it because it's not something we ever see, Like, you
never get anywhere near the speed of light in our experience.
So imagine a universe where that wasn't so weird, where
you could get near the speed of light. You could
develop like a coal intuition, right, but could you, I guess,
(37:02):
could you actually get up to because when it's still
requiring an infinite amount of energy to get to the
speed flight. Yeah, it would still require an infinite amount
of energy to get to the speed of light, but
you know, you could more easily get to have the
speed of lighter three quarters the speed of light. Oh,
I see what you're saying. You're saying that the effects
of relativity would be felt more in our daily lives. Yeah,
(37:25):
you'd noticed that when you went on a car trip
or an airplane trip, you would notice time dilation. You know,
you would see the differences in people's ages because oh,
somebody's been on a plane more in their life. You
would see things getting shrunk because of length contraction. All
these weird effects that you only see in thought experiments
of people on airplanes and super fast moving trains. They
(37:47):
would be real. You could experience them, you could feel them. Wow,
you could combine like a rejuvenating spot and a train
at the same in the same business. Be like, hop
on our train. You'll feel younger technically you will be,
and you'll still think fart jokes are funny because you'll
be younger. Yeah, nobody fared in the train, and it
would be a pleasant experience. Yeah, and it would also
(38:09):
change our sense of distance. You know, we're used to
being able to send an email to the other side
of the world and have it take basically no time,
like practically no time. But if the speed of light
was significantly smaller um than it is in our universe,
then it would take time. It would be like a
time delay, like you're skyping with somebody from Australia, you know,
to say something and then wait and then they'd hear you.
(38:32):
You'd be really be able to measure just to feel
this information propagation speed. It would be a real physical thing,
not just an abstract concept that crazy people on podcasts
talk about. Would the universe just be like this weird,
trippy experience walking around it? Well, that's the thing is
that if we if you change the speed of light, yes,
and that would be weird and trippy. But if we
(38:53):
evolved in that universe with the speed of light was smaller,
it would be intuitive to us. And you know, physics
would have developed, I think, more rapidly, like Newton wouldn't
wouldn't have come up with his theory of motion and
gravitation and stuff. He would have basically scooped Einstein. You know,
relativity would have been developed earlier because it would have
been more obvious. Yeah, they would have been more clear
(39:15):
that things were not classical. Yeah, Galileo would be the
new Einstein, and so we'd have, you know, four hundred
years head start on this universe. Would we move slower
as well? You know, like would it be like if
I was suddenly transported to that universe, would I feel
like molasses because now it takes more energy to you know,
accelerate my my my mass. No, because the relationship between
(39:37):
energy and velocity, like kinetic energy and velocity wouldn't change,
but there would be some really fascinating changes on the
strength of forces like magnetism, and also on things like
what's happening inside of stars so that the stars would
look different. Yeah. Well, first of all, there are a
lot of really interesting things that happen in relativity when
you get up near the speed of light that aren't
(39:59):
just time slows down and things get shorter. For example,
magnetism right now and our slow speeds is not as
strong as the force of electricity, Like electricity totally dwarfs magnetism.
But as you get up near the speed of light,
magnetism gets stronger because its strength depends on speed, and
so near the speed of light. The two are perfectly
(40:20):
in balance, which is why, for example, a photon can
propagate across the universe because really it's an electromagnetic wave
where the where the energy is going back and forth
from the electronic to the magnetic side. The two are
perfectly in balanced at the speed of light. So magnetism
would be much more powerful if the speed of light
were smaller, Like strong magnets would be much much more powerful. Wow,
(40:43):
and so everything Like, if chemistry is different, then biology
is different. So we would maybe look different in this universe.
We would look totally different, and our solar system would
look really different. Because remember, there's a very close connection
between energy and mass. We have the famous formula E
equals mc squared, right, and that C is the speed
of light. And so if you change that knob, you're
(41:05):
changing the fundamental relationship between energy and mass, and that
makes a big difference. What would happen. Well, the sun,
for example, is a machine for turning mass into energy. Right,
Take all this hydrogen, you can press it, you force
it diffuse, and in doing so, you're turning some of
that mass into energy. Well, if all of a sudden,
the speed of light is much much lower than you're
(41:26):
producing less energy. When you convert mass into energy. Wow,
things would sputter out more. Yeah, and so you'd have
like different you'd need much more. You need much bigger
stars in order to get enough pressure in order in
order to glow. Okay, so the universe would be pretty different.
Usan Um is correct in that, you know, if you
(41:47):
change the speed of light, I'll be a little bit dramatically.
Things would be pretty different, like chemistry, biology, the sun
would be different. Yeah. And if you flip it around
the other way, right, if the speed of light is
suddenly like a foul than are a million times what
it is today, then all of a sudden, we can
like see further into the universe, right, because light can
get here faster, and so the limited age of the
(42:10):
universe means we can see further out there. We could
communicate faster across the galaxy. Um. But then here on Earth,
you know, magnets would be much much weaker. Really, you
couldn't even really have fridge magnets because the power of
magnetism depends on the speed of light. And then looking
up into the sky, you know, because of this relationship
between energy and mass, even smaller objects could fuse, Like
(42:32):
Jupiter would probably be a star if the speed of
light were larger, because it's not quite there. A bunch
more mass and Jupiter would have enough energy diffuse. Oh
it's like the currency exchange rate between energy and mass,
and so if you change that, things can go from
one to the other more easily or harder. Yeah, and
the stars right now that are really big, they might
(42:54):
be producing too much energy to hold together. And so
those stars you just couldn't have are is that big,
but you would have smaller stars and so it's a
fascinating to change like the whole scale of the universe,
so everything would be It is a pretty the different
universe if you change the speed of light a lot,
that's right, So Hassan, please take your hand slowly off
(43:15):
that knob and step away from the universe console. This
is serious stuff, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to
at least do it slowly so that we have time
to evolve and that all right. Well, I guess to
answer Hassan's question then, is if you change the speed
of light half or double, then things wouldn't change that much,
but you would they would change um kind of in
(43:38):
in a big scale, right, it would be. It would
be a totally different universe. Yeah, all the effects we
talked about would still be present for half or double,
they just wouldn't be as dramatic. But you know, double
in the speed of light would have a pretty big
impact even on our star and on other stars, so
you would notice it. Yeah, maybe like double or half
is all Jupiter needs to become a son, right, that's
(43:59):
right out there, Jupiter is is rooting for you to
turn that knob or it's it's saying no, don't touch it.
We don't want to blow I'm not sure what Jupiter
wants all right, Well, those were three awesome questions. Thank
you so much to everyone out there for sending and
sending in these questions. We always love to answer them
and to think about these fascinating answers. Yeah, and thanks
(44:21):
to everybody for listening to the show and for thinking
about the universe. And we just want to encourage you
to keep thinking, keep questioning, keep trying to understand. We
may never figure out all the secrets to the universe,
but we will always enjoy trying. And if we can't
figure it out, we'll ask Siri and maybe we'll get
a funny response. All right, thanks for listening. We hope
you enjoyed that. See you next time. Before you still
(44:50):
have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Daniel and Horr Hey that's one word, or email us
at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for
listening and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast
(45:12):
from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Yea
Hey, Daniel, do you think the robots are going to
take over the world. Well, I do think it's inevitable
that they're going to be in charge in some ways.
Is that different than taking over being in charge? Well,
I'm pretty sure they're going to be faster than us,
stronger than us, and smaller than us. But there might
be some things humans will always be better at, like
eating bananas, or you know, like asking questions, thinking about
(00:31):
the deep questions of why are we here? And then
what's the meaning of life? Or artifice? Even artificial life
is what if I was thinking maybe more comedy, you're
talking about fart jokes. Yes, humans will always be number
one in the galaxy in that category. Unfortunately, Hi am
(01:04):
more handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi,
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I'm the fart
joke champion of this podcast. Oh good, I happily see
the title, Daniel for sure. Well, we have lots of dimensions.
You know, you can be the bananna eating champion, although
(01:25):
you know you think you can eat banana is better
than a robot. You're saying I could not build a
robot to eat banana is better than you. I don't
know if you can build a robot that will enjoy
the bananas as much. Oh, you're changing the terms already. See, Well,
depends what you mean by eating. You know, eating includes
the enjoyment of the experience. Well, when they have the
hot dog eating Champion, do you think, like I really
(01:46):
enjoyed all sixty seven hot dogs eating two minutes? I
don't think so. I think that that person is probably
dead inside from so many hot dogs. He's all hot
dog inside, that's for sure. Same thing. Uh. Anyways, Welcome
to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a
production of I Heart Radio, in which we wonder about
(02:07):
all things human, all things robot, all things hot dog,
and all things banana and talk to you about them
and hopefully explain them to you in a way that
makes sense and makes you laugh. Yeah. Welcome to our podcast,
in which we also answer questions about the universe, Questions
that physicists are thinking of, Questions that people every day
out there have about the universe and how it all works. Yeah.
(02:28):
We like to start from the forefront of knowledge and
talk to you about what scientists out there are figuring
out what questions are the leading edge of human knowledge
and bring you to that forefront. A lot of times
the best insights comes when we stop and we ask ourselves,
do we really understand what we just said? Do people
out there get it? And to One of our favorite
things to do is to answer questions from listeners. Yeah,
(02:50):
because you know, I think people have the maybe the
perception out there that scientists have a lot figure it out,
or they have most of the universe figured out, and
that there is so much science ing left to do. Well,
then they've never seen my desk, because I think it
would immediately undermine people's confidence in science if you had
a picture of me at my desk. I wonder why
would disappoint people more if you had a messy desk
(03:10):
or if you had a clean desk. You know, if
you had a clean desk, I'd be like, is this
guy really doing any work? Well? Do you remember that
one time you were at certain I was there and
I toured you around and I introduced you to a
famous theorist, John Ellis. It was literally like like three
ft of stack papers on top of his desk. It's
my cave, right, Like, you're worried that like top papers
are toppled over on top of you. There might be
(03:31):
grad students buried in there, and nobody's ever found. Skeleton
is full of topwebs and paper drafts. He was sort
of famous. Well, it turns out he recently cleaned up
his office and now it's like sparklingly clean services. I
think you would have preserved that for the museum tour.
People are wondering, like, has he been replaced by a robot?
Is that the real John Ellis? What do you think
(03:51):
tipped him over to to finally clean the office? No,
I think he probably died under a stack of papers
that fell on him. They just replaced him with a
robot and was just trying to cover it up. That's right,
because all great science conspiracies begin at certain Yeah, so
it's scientists still have a lot of questions about the universe,
and so I feel like people shouldn't be that intimidated
(04:14):
about having questions themselves about how it all works, because
you know, scientists don't know everything. Yeah, and sometimes the simplest,
most basic questions are the hardest ones to answer. Some
of the questions we don't know the answers to, like
how did the universe begin, you know, how is it
going to end? These are simple, basic questions, So don't
be shy to ask a question which is simple, because
(04:34):
sometimes those are the deepest, most important ones. Yeah, like
what makes a fart joke funny? You know, that's a
deep human, psychological and a physical question. And sometimes these
are questions we will never know the answer to. Philosophers
in a thousand years will still wonder why farts are
so funny? That's right, The answer will just blow in
(04:55):
the wind anyways. Um. Yeah, So we like to tackle
those these questions in our podcast. We also like the
questions from listeners. That's right, and so on today's podcast
we will be answering three questions from listeners like you
to be on the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions
(05:17):
Part eight. Right, this is the eighth episode we do
about listener questions. Yes, part eight, and we have a
stack of listener questions we haven't gotten to. So if
you have sent in your question your audiophile, thank you.
Please be patient. We will get to all of them.
We love these episodes. We could joke and talk about
these forever. Yeah, you're you're on the cue, that's right,
And some people figured out that maybe one way to
(05:39):
jump to the front of the queue to have your
like cute six year old read the question. That's pretty
diabolical there. A little bit of exploitation goes a long way.
It turns out apparently it works. Um, cute kids are
are very cute. Yes, and we have kids at home,
so I guess it touches a special place in our hearts.
So yeah, So people out there are out there listening
to the podcast and going about their lives, and they
(06:00):
have questions about the world, how things work, how the
universe works, and and and that's good, right, because wondering
and exploration is all is what science is all about. Right,
That's what is science and human the human spirit is
all about. Yeah, exactly, that's what questioning is good for.
And you know that's sort of our brand is like,
we love curiosity, we love mental exploration. We want to
(06:22):
take you on a journey through the universe. And that journey,
of course, is going to lead to questions. And you know,
there's never gonna be a day when we run out
of questions. There's never gonna be a situation where physicists
are like, all right, thanks, no more questions, or we'll
reach that day where where you know, we answer every
question ever, and then somebody will ask, why don't we
(06:42):
have more questions? There you go, See it's impossible to
run out of questions, and then somebody will ask, why
did you ask that question? And so on and so on.
Imagine if you did, imagine you lived in a society
where there were no questions, when you understood everything about
the universe, that would be kind of I don't know,
much less fun and sparkling, right, you gotta have mystery.
(07:04):
It's like if you know your spouse completely, you know
the mystery is gone. It sounds like a great science
fiction short story premise, I really wouldn't be boring story
and know what would it be like? I won't know
how I would change the human psyche. Well, if you
knew everything about the universe, then you know you could
predict a lot about what would happen, and so uncertainty
(07:24):
about the future, you know, But we dug into that
in a whole podcast episode, like what is the limit
of our ability to predict the future? Even if you
knew all the rules of physics, could you predict what
was going to happen? Like could you predict the outcome
of the Super Bowl? So that's a whole fascinating concept
of that, the sort of the limit of knowledge, Right,
what if I know that all the secrets of the universe,
but then I forget I wrote them down to the
(07:45):
slip of paper. I put it on my desk, and
my desk is a mess, and now it's here somewhere.
Those were my favorite science fiction stories when I was
a kid, where somebody gained indescribably important knowledge and then
lost it for some silly reason. I always felt like,
felt that angst. I felt that like no go back
and right now. Yeah, most kids dream about, you know,
(08:08):
being naked and taking a test at school. You dream
about knowing the secrets of the universe. And I grew
up to be a particle physicist. That future was easy
to predict. Yes, So today we'll be tackling three questions
from readers. Um, and they're not sort of our typical
reader listeners. Sorry I keep saying readers. Maybe I'm thinking
of our book. Yeah, they're not our typical listeners, and
(08:32):
their people are getting creative with these questions. So I
thought it'd be fun to do a mixed bag of
listeners from all over the spectrum, so we'll jump right in.
So our first question comes from Audi, who is apparently
six years old. Hi, Daniel and her my name is Audie.
I'm six years old and you're one of my favorite
(08:54):
podcast and this is my question. All the play it's
in this on the solar system or a bit in
one way? Why does venus go the other? Thank you? Wow,
that is so cute, so cute. Oh man, that melted
my heart and it blew my head brain that we
(09:16):
have a six year old who is that intelligent listening
to our podcast? I know it's wonderful. So thank you
ALLTI for listening, and thank you for asking that wonderful question. Yeah,
and for making us your favorite podcast. That's awesome. I
feel like when I was at old, you know, my
favorites were like Mac and cheese, bugs, money, not a
(09:37):
not a podcast about the secrets of the universe. Maybe
we should have our podcast come with a free side
of mac and cheese. Oh man, we will dominate that
six year old category, right. If you listen to every episode,
we will email you mac and cheese. I don't even
know how that works from from a mac with some
cheesy puns. But you know, some part of I heart
(09:57):
media has to have it like a mac and cheese
company and such a big corporation, it's got to be
somewhere in the corporate synergy, in the corporate synergy where
we can do that. All right, we'll get on that well.
But thank you Addie for standing in this question, and
of course you're welcome of thank you for thinking us,
for making the podcast. I don't know if you heard that,
but you could hear ADDIE's parents going say thank you,
(10:20):
thank you, oh man that that's like my life every day,
several times a day, like what do you say? What
do you say? Thank you? It's wonderful and also a
wonderful question. Yeah, yeah, pretty pretty interesting. So Audie, I
think is wondering, you know, all the plants go around
(10:42):
the sun, and he's asking why does Venus go the
other way? Yeah, and this is actually a pretty deep
question about the way our solar system works, and it
tells you something about the deep ancient history of where
our solar system comes from. So it's well worth digging into.
So I think he's asking whether Venus, you know, like
(11:02):
it goes the opposite way that the Earth goes around
the Sun. But is that actually true? Is that what's
happening or do you think I mean something else. Yeah,
So Venus sort of does two different things that we
should think about. One is move around the Sun. That's
sort of the direction of its orbit. Also, like every
other heavenly body, it spins. It spins around its axis.
So there's two different kinds of motion we can talk
(11:24):
about there. And the technical terms are retrograde and pro grade.
So the Sun is spinning in a certain way, right,
the Sun is an object. It spins, And if a
planet is moving around the Sun the same way the
Sun is spinning, you call that pro grade, And if
it's moving around the Sun the opposite way, you call
that retrograde. Things around the Solar System can both go
(11:46):
around the Sun and spin in place. Is that what
you're saying? That's right? And all the planets actually do
go around the Sun in the same direction, the direction
of their orbits, like you know, the Sun's spin defines
a direction. If you were standing on the north pole
of the Sun and watching all the planets go by,
you would see them moving all in the same direction. There,
orbits are in the same direction. Yet nothing is going
(12:09):
the wrong way. Nothing is going the wrong way, and
that would be crazy. If it were. It'd be like
driving on the freeway on the wrong side. You wouldn't
be able to do it for very long, would you mean?
The solar systems unless James Bond obviously, unless you're veering
and steering um. And the Solar system is billions of
years old and it's been going for a while. So
(12:30):
anything that's sort of destructive on a collision course, it
probably had its collision course and you have been bounced
out of the Solar system and things that sort of
settled into a nice, even smooth path. Oh I see,
So the Solar system is kind of a one way highway,
and that doesn't mean that every solar system is like that.
We might one day find a solar system out the
planets are going in different directions. It is possible. There's
(12:52):
nothing in the laws of physics that say you can't
have a planet going the other way. It just then
needs to like avoid all the debris and all the
other plans and have its own lane. So it's totally possible.
Oh I see. It hast to be extremely lucky. They
has to be extremely lucky. Yeah, Okay, but as you
were saying, there's another way these planets can move. They
don't just orbit the Sun. They also have their own spins,
(13:15):
like the Earth spins, right, That's why we have day
and night, And so you can also ask what is
the direction of these planets spins. It's a different motion
because you could be going around the Sun like whole
a counterclockwise, but you could be spinning in place clockwise
or counterclockwise. Right, And so it turns out that Venus
is weird in this way. All the planets except for
(13:36):
Venus and Uranus spin in the same way. They spin
the same direction that they move around the Sun, but
Venus spins the other way. Wait, so let me think
about this for a second. So if the Earth is
going around clockwise around the Sun, then that means we're
also spinning clockwise. We're also spinning clockwise. Yeah, okay, but
(13:59):
do you say Venus and Urinas are spinning counterclockwise. They're
going around clockwise around the Sun like us, but they're
spinning coun or clockwise. And the clockwise versus counterclockwise thing.
It just depends on whether you're standing on the Sun's
north pole or its south pole. But either way, what's
important is whether a planet is spinning the same way
as it's moving around the Sun or the opposite way.
(14:22):
And so as you said, Earth is moving one way
and spinning the same way, and Venus is moving one
way and spinning the opposite way. I feel like in
every depiction of the Solar system, I feel like they
always picked the Earth going counterclockwise around the Sun. What
do you think that is? Um? I think that's because
we are north pole centric, and the north pole of
the Earth, if you use that to define the north
(14:42):
pole of the Sun, that the motion is in fact counterclockwise. Okay,
all right, got it? So we are northeast, then then
we were gonna go with counterclockwise and counterclose. But Venus
spins clockwise, but Venus spins the other way. Yeah, and
that makes for a crazy experience on And not only
does the spin the other way, it spins super duper slowly,
(15:04):
like it takes forever to spin around. Really, it's not
spinning once a day like we are. It's spinning, uh
something like hundreds of days. We spend one Earth day, right,
it takes us one Earth day. That's been by definition.
And so you can say how many Earth days does
it take Venus to spin? And Venus goes around the
(15:25):
Sun in two hundred and twenty four earth days, but
it takes two hundred forty three earth days to spin,
So a day on Venus is longer than a year
on Venus, Venus goes around the Sun once before it
completes one spin. That's a really long day. I would
be an entire by the end there time between breakfast
(15:47):
and lunch, You're gonna need a lot of snacks. You
can have multiple birthdays in the same day. That is
like a year old dream. You know, you have two
birthdays in the same day. Yeah, and you can have
you know, tenzi's and eleven z ease and the mid
afternoon snack and mid mid afternoon snack, and you have
(16:07):
two Christmas Is in the same days and a lot
of naps. Okay, so bad? And is that because it's
spinning the opposite way? Does that make they long even
longer than that? No, that doesn't change the length of
the day, although it does make the appearance of like
other stuff in Venus, is sky really weird, Like the
motion of the other planets is really strange on Venus
(16:29):
because of those two things. But otherwise, like you know,
the Sun from the Venus's point of view, the only
thing that matters is how long it takes to spin,
Like where is the Sun appear in the sky. That
just depends on on its spin, not on where it
is around the Sun, because they're all symmetric from the
point of view of Venus. So the Sun takes, you know,
two hundred and forty three days to complete its motion
(16:52):
across the sky in Venus. Of course, Venus is the
one moving around the Sun. But from Venus's point of view,
you know, it's like you've got a hundred only one
and a half days of sun and then a hundred
twenty one and a half earth days of night. And
in the meantime, what would you see. You would just
see the Sun moving really slowly across the sky. Yeah,
the Sun moves really slowly across the Venus sky. Of course,
(17:14):
Venus also covered in a huge number of clouds, so
from the surface of Venus you can't actually see anything
in space, right, I see, it's a cloudy day every
day in Venus. But if you like lived in a
pod high up in Venus's atmosphere, which would be pretty cool,
because Venus is really high pressure on its surface, so
you wouldn't anyway want to live on its surface. If
(17:36):
you did colonize Venus, you probably want to build some
sort of airship and float up like kilometers above the
surface where the air pressure is roughly like Earth, and
there you might see the Sun and you see it
slowly crawled across the sky. All right, well, let's get
into why, because that was ADDIE's question. Why does Venus
spin the wrong way? Or maybe that that is the
right way and everyone else is wrong, But what has
(17:57):
this been in a different direction than it does going
around the Sun. And we'll get into that, but first
let's take a quick break. Okay, Daniel sel Venus is
(18:18):
spinning the opposite way that Earth is, and that's weird.
It is weird, yeah, because there's a reason that a
lot of stuff in the Solar system is spinning the
same way. It's not like it's random. And so you
flip a coin eight times and look, we got all
the planets moving in the same direction. There's a reason
why things are mostly spinning the same way. The spinning
around the Sun and the spinning in place all sort
(18:39):
of originating in the same kind of moment. Yeah, it
all originates from the same original spin. Like, and that's
not original sin. We're talking original spin, which is a
real physics thing, right, But but like original sin, it's
passed down in through the generations. Oh jeez, I know,
I know, I'm bringing down the biblical knowledge. Um. So
(19:01):
you start with a big cloud of gas and dust
and rocks from wherever, and it has some spin, like
that big blob of stuff is spinning in some direction,
and that spinning can't just go away, Like momentum is
conserved in our universe, and so is angular momentum. Like
if you are in space and you start a can
of soup spinning, it will spin forever until something slows
(19:25):
it down, in the same way that gas of stuff,
that blob of rocks and dust and stuff that made
our solar system started spinning and is still spinning, right,
Because I think when things form, like a planet or
the sun, you know, all the little bits have a
little bit of velocity. They're they're all going somewhere initially,
so all that motion has to go somewhere and it
(19:46):
goes into the spin of whatever ends up being at
the end. Yeah, and as it gets collected together by gravity. Right,
you start with a big blob of stuff and gravity
pulls it together. As gravity pulls it together, it actually
goes fast because it's like a figure skater. If you
pull your arms in while you're spinning, you go faster
and faster because the distance from the center of rotation
(20:09):
is smaller, so you need a higher velocity to have
the same angular momentum. That's why everything in our Solar
system has the same spin. It's all the Sun is
moving in one direction, that planets move around in this
and that same direction. Most of the planets are rotating
in the same direction. There's a good reason for all
these spins to be in the same direction. It's not random. Okay,
So then what's the connection between the your direction around
(20:31):
the Sun and you're you're spinning, you're spinning in place. Well,
it's the same direction of angular momentum. Like all that
original angle momentum can end up in the spin of
the Sun or the motion that the planet around the Sun,
or the rotation of the planet. That's all the same direction.
So everything is spinning in that same way, so you
expect it to all still be spinning that same way,
which is why it's weird to find one planet spinning
(20:54):
the other way. So how did it happened? How did
Venus end up spinning the wrong way? Well, we don't know,
but it's an it's evidence of something crazy happening, like
maybe something came in, hit it and spun it the
other way. Like in order to get something going the
other way, you need some sort of external force, like
you know, some huge rock could have come in and
(21:15):
flipped it over. Yeah, and the same with Urinus. Urinus
spins not the other way from Earth and and the
other planets, but it's it's sort of flat. It spins
around a line which is parallel to the Solar System,
which is you know, even weirder. Yeah, it's like it's
like it's laying down, right, It's like it's spinning laying down.
It goes around the Sun like it's north and south
(21:37):
poles are where are on the Earth's equator. It's really strange,
and so this is probably due to some horrific cataclysmic
accident in the history of our Solar system. It's not
just a planet laying down taking a nab. No, there's
some really original sin going on to explain it's weird
spin like that was a crazy party. Let me tell you.
We woke up and Venus was going the other direction.
(21:59):
We're like, dude, you gotta slow down. Um. So it's
possible that it got hit by something and got flipped over,
or you know, it could have been like he got
hit on sort of the equator enough to slow it down,
you know, and then it started spinning the other way,
so it could have its original spin turned the other way,
or it could have been like slowed down through zero
(22:21):
and then very and then had just a little bit
of extra energy left over for its slow spin. Really,
something must have happened. It couldn't just have formed that way.
It could not have just formed that way. Now, something
external to the solar system must have come. And so
of course, you know, I got my Aliens button over here.
I have impressed it once in this episode. We'll leave
(22:42):
it on the side there that I'm just looking at it,
and I'm just looking. I think, you say, most likely,
like an asteroid in our solar system hit it maybe,
or a comment from way beyond or something must have
hit these planets to knock them from the regular spinning. Yeah,
probably something external to the solar system like a row planet,
or it could have been something very early on in
(23:03):
the formation of the Solar System when things were chaotic
and bouncing around that it's unlikely, but maybe this is
how things ended up. But like short of an asteroid
hitting a planet like for example, the Earth won't be
changing it spin anytime soon. Know, the Earth will not
be changing its spin any time soon, although it's very
gradually slowing down. It's spined because of the interaction with
the Moon, but that's really a small effect. Well the
(23:26):
audio hope that answer the question. To quote your question, m.
Venus is going in the same direction as the Earth
around the Sun, but it's spinning the opposite way. And
most likely it sounds like maybe an asteroid hit it
or something to make it spin the other way. That's right,
And all the little boys and girls on Venus get
two birthday parties every day. But they're also really young,
(23:46):
like they're only like a couple of days old, and
their faces are melted by acid rain, so you know,
pluses and minuses. I can tell their parents just had
to rush and cover ADDIE's ears. When you think the
body can handle that kind of think he's interested in science.
I say right, yeah, acid as it is is chemistry right,
which is science? Right? Yeah, totally, that's part of the universe.
(24:08):
So we will explain it all right. Thank you Addie
for that question. That was an awesome question. And if
there are any other kids out there listening to this podcast,
please send just your questions. If you have anything that
you don't understand, or something you've always wondered about the
universe or what things are made out of, let us know. Okay,
so we'll go into now our second question of the
episode here and this this I have to say, this
(24:32):
question perplexed me a little bit. I don't know if
it worries me a little bit or or what. But
I'll we'll just let you guys listen to it. Here
we go, Hie, Daniel and or Hey in the regular
human from Earth. I have the following question, do you
think of human level artificial intelligence is possible? And more importantly,
wouldn't be able to understand fur jokes? Why didn't know
(24:57):
Siri and or Alexa listened to our show. That's awesome,
Maybe it does, right. I like how it tries to
disguise itself. I am regular human from Earth. Yeah, I
am not at all already listening to your phones and
your kitchen conversations. Do you think Alexa and Syria out
(25:17):
there in the homes of our listeners are listening to
our podcast and responding? Have you ever tried asking Alexa
or Siria like fun questions? Um? In fact, I did.
I asked Sirie this question. You did the question from
our listener. Yeah, I decided to ask Siri, Oh, no way?
And what did they? What did she reply? Well, I
tried out a few fart jokes on Siri and she
didn't get any of them. But no, I thought you
(25:41):
meant you played this question like you said Alexa, and
then you played the question. Oh no, I haven't done that.
I just tried out some fart jokes. But you say,
She's like, please, I am the apex of technology, human technology,
and this is what you're using me for. Yeah, SII
is very polite. Siri will avoid any sort of not
safe for work topics. But you know, if there's an
(26:02):
Alexa out there, what would happen if we, like on
the podcast, said Alexa order the book. We have no
idea ten copies. Do you think everybody out there Alexa
would suddenly order that book. Um, I don't know. Let's
try it, Daniel, in the name of the science and
lex experiment. Alright, we'll see if the editor leaves that
clip in there. But you know, this is a it's
(26:25):
a funny way to deliver the question, but it's a
serious question, right, Yeah, I guess it's the whore. Um,
I guess Alexa. Here is asking if it is possible
one day for an artificial intelligence to reach human level
I guess intelligence or cognition or consciousness you think, and
(26:45):
and of course the apex of that, the ultimate goal
is to understand fart jokes or fart jokes. It's a
fascinating question. I would sort of breaking into two pieces.
I would say number one fart and non fart. That's right,
let's begin with the non fart element, um, because that's
sort of my where my expertise is. Um. Is that
(27:07):
is that what your family would say as well? Yeah,
are you gonna go with the fartical physics jokes? It's
just gonna go with the youth fart joke. But that's
even better. I think that the question is will AI
ever be smarter than humans? And you can define that
by saying, like, can they beat humans at certain tasks.
You know, a I have already beat humans at chess,
(27:27):
they beat humans that go, They beat humans at solving
lots of problems. There are still a lot of things
that humans can do better than AI. But you might wonder,
eventually will any of these standards still be held by
human champions, or no matter what intelligence tests we devise,
will there always eventually be an AI that can beat humans. Yeah,
(27:48):
because we're we're I mean, we're pretty much there, right,
Like computers can recognize faces and solve problems, even sort
of conceptual problems that even faster than humans. Yeah, and
it's not too before we have AI that can drive
cars and fly airplanes and do all sorts of things
that we now only trust to humans. So I think
that that's basically just limited by computing power and you know,
(28:12):
cleverness of computer science graduate students, and that seems to
me pretty much unlimited. So I think, as long as
society doesn't implode anytime soon, I think we're on the
road to having a I beat humans that basically every
intellectual game except for maybe one. Well, the second part
of that question is, you know, can AI achieve human
(28:33):
level like consciousness? That's a really that's a much deeper question.
Like if you developed an AI which could solve problems
faster than you and even maintain human level conversation, you
can still ask the question is it live? Is it
experiencing something? Is it have a first person experience like
I do? But that's a different question, right, That's a
different question than how intelligence and consciousness are sort of
(28:57):
two different questions. Yeah, there are two separate questions, and
I have a non expert opinion about that, you know,
not a expert in consciousness, though I am officially a
professor of philosophy here at ec irvine UM. But it
seems to me like a question we could never really answer.
I mean, if you met an AI that was as
(29:17):
interactive and seemed to have a personality as much as
a person, could you ever know whether it was feeling
something inside? I think by almost by definition no, I mean,
I don't even know if you are having a first
person experience. How do I know that I'm not the
only one in the universe that is conscious? I can't tell.
I can't tell the difference between you seem like you're
having an experience and you are actually having an experience.
(29:39):
Because the only difference is your experience, not mine, and
I can never sense that. Right. Well, I feel like
we're getting a little laws in the weeds here of
a philosophy because you know, I think, you know, practically speaking,
we're all having our own first person experiences. Um, you know,
but most likely most likely yes, But you know, the
question also applies to AI. But I agree, philosophy is
(30:00):
mostly weeds. But you know, some of us like to
muck around those weeds with the mental machete, and some
of us don't. So that's fine. Philosophy is mostly in
being in the weeds or doing something else with weed. Uh,
answer that question is A and B yes, right, all right,
But but I guess what the computer here asked was
(30:21):
whether or not an AI could understand a fart joke,
like I guess, and that means whether it can understand
humor even Yeah, and so I think we have to
put that question to you. I mean, you're the expert here.
You're officially doing comedy for a living, right, yeah, I
would say, no, you know, stop trying, stop trying. Leave
that to the professionals. Don't try to replace this, and
(30:44):
we're all good. I see. So that's at a little
bit of a conflict of interest here, right, You don't
want to encourage graduate students out there who are working
on AI to do humor because it's a challenge to you. Right, Well,
I mean, I think this is such a subjective discussion.
Now you know what what is humor? What makes something
funny and what makes something not funny? I mean we
could go on and on about this and probably not agree,
(31:06):
but I think what it is so sort of clear
is that, um, Alexa makes my kids crack up all
the time on purpose? Though, Is she trying to be funny? Yeah? Sometimes,
like if you ask Alexa like sing me a song
or tell me a joke or you know, are you
in love Alexa, like you'll actually have fun fun answers
and so um and who wrote those answers? I don't know,
(31:28):
Alexa's human masters, I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm guessing that
you can probably maybe you know, come up with an
AI to come up with jokes. Yeah. Probably, I think
humor could be replicated by simple AI. But you know
that that top level creativity. The funniest people, the best writers,
(31:50):
I think those reflect the human experience. Things are funny
because they resonate with us because they tell us about
what it's like to be alive and the ridiculousness of
our crazy, bonkers universe. And so I think consciousness is
necessary for that to really appreciate humor. All right, well
let's get into the last question. But first let's take
a quick break, and so now we'll be tackling our
(32:24):
last question from Hassan from Iran and asan as a
question about the speed of light in the universe. Hi,
daniellenead something from Iran. I just wanted to know how
universe would look like if they speed limitation. I mean,
it's a speed of light was different for example, half double.
(32:46):
Thanks for your good show. All right, thank you, Hassan.
It's amazing to think that we have listeners in Iran.
That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's wonderful to think that all
these crazy ideas are leaving our offices in California and
spreading all over the world and maybe, hey, over the universe.
So if we have alien listeners out there, you know,
preparing their invasion, hey, send us an email and give
(33:10):
us a heads up, please or ask questions. But Hazan
is asking an interesting question. I guess He is asking, basically,
what would the universe look like if the speed of
light was different? What if it was half of what
it was now, and what would it be like? What
would the universe be like if the speed of light
was twice what it is now. It's a wonderful question
(33:30):
because it gets to the heart of something really important,
which is the speed of light defines something about how
our universe looks. But we don't know why it has
the number it has, Like, there is a number, it's
a maximum speed anything can go in the universe. But
why that number and not a different one? Right? Yeah,
because it has a very specific number right now, right,
(33:51):
I mean most people um used three hundred thousand meters
per second, but it's actually probably much much, much more
specific than that. Yes, we have a very precise measurement
of the speed of light. And you might wonder, like,
could our universe have had a different speed limit twice
as much, a hundred times as much, a thousand times
as much, or much much smaller, And as far as
(34:12):
we know in physics, there's no reason why it's this
number and not another number. And you know it might
be that in a hundred years or a thousand years,
we have a better theory of physics that one that
reveals this is the only value the speed of light
could have had. But currently it's just a number in
our theory, and we could change it in our theory.
We've just had to measure it in nature. We don't
know why it is what it is, which to me
(34:33):
has always been a really deep mystery. Do you think
maybe has his hand on the knob of the universe
for the speed of light, and he's like, you know,
should I turn it clockwise or counterclockwise? Let me ask
Daniel and Jorge first. I hope that you know, all
supervillains out there that are about to change the parameters
of the universe think for a moment. Let's ask Daniel
and Jorge for advice before we do this. I'm glad
(34:55):
that that's the possibility. What are you saying that It
seems like it's arbitrary right now, But maybe someday we'll
find that the speed of light could only be that
one value that we know it to be. Yeah, or
maybe it's random. Some of the multiverse folks say the
speed of light could have any value, and there's an
infinite number of universes, and each one. These arbitrary parameters
(35:16):
have random value. So there is a universe out there
with ten times a speed of light or a thousand
one one thousands of the speed of light or whatever.
We don't know, but right now, as far as we know,
it could be much higher, or it couldn't be much lower.
And I think Hasan is wondering, you know, what would
be the What would happen to the world as we
know it if it's suddenly the speed of light was
half as much as it is now. Yeah, And I
(35:38):
want to take Hassan's question. I want to crank it
up to the extreme, because the speed of light is
really really high, and so if you cut it in half,
the effects wouldn't be as dramatic as if you made
it like one one thousands of what it is, or
really slowed the speed of light down to like a
thousand miles per hour. I think that would be really fascinating. Oh,
I see, if the speed of light was half as
fast as it is now, we probably wouldn't see a
(36:00):
big difference. Yeah, not as much, And so I thought
to make the differences more clear, Let's crank it up
and slow light down even further, so we need Do
we need a disclaimer? Then the phone answer has been
dramatized by a physicist for more dramatic tension in our podcast. Yes, exactly.
This is not an actual experiment. Okay, all right, so
(36:20):
we'll we'll we'll grab Hassan's hand and crack down the
speed of light down to super super slow. How slow
do you think we should crank it down? I think
let's go down to like, you know, five hundred miles
an hour, or you know, a hundred miles an hour
or something really slow, right, like the speed of a
fast car or a bullet. Yeah, because the cool thing
is that weird stuff happens when you approach a speed
(36:42):
of light because of relativity, and that stuff is not
part of our experience. We don't have an intuition for
it because it's not something we ever see, Like, you
never get anywhere near the speed of light in our experience.
So imagine a universe where that wasn't so weird, where
you could get near the speed of light. You could
develop like a coal intuition, right, but could you, I guess,
(37:02):
could you actually get up to because when it's still
requiring an infinite amount of energy to get to the
speed flight. Yeah, it would still require an infinite amount
of energy to get to the speed of light, but
you know, you could more easily get to have the
speed of lighter three quarters the speed of light. Oh,
I see what you're saying. You're saying that the effects
of relativity would be felt more in our daily lives. Yeah,
(37:25):
you'd noticed that when you went on a car trip
or an airplane trip, you would notice time dilation. You know,
you would see the differences in people's ages because oh,
somebody's been on a plane more in their life. You
would see things getting shrunk because of length contraction. All
these weird effects that you only see in thought experiments
of people on airplanes and super fast moving trains. They
(37:47):
would be real. You could experience them, you could feel them. Wow,
you could combine like a rejuvenating spot and a train
at the same in the same business. Be like, hop
on our train. You'll feel younger technically you will be,
and you'll still think fart jokes are funny because you'll
be younger. Yeah, nobody fared in the train, and it
would be a pleasant experience. Yeah, and it would also
(38:09):
change our sense of distance. You know, we're used to
being able to send an email to the other side
of the world and have it take basically no time,
like practically no time. But if the speed of light
was significantly smaller um than it is in our universe,
then it would take time. It would be like a
time delay, like you're skyping with somebody from Australia, you know,
to say something and then wait and then they'd hear you.
(38:32):
You'd be really be able to measure just to feel
this information propagation speed. It would be a real physical thing,
not just an abstract concept that crazy people on podcasts
talk about. Would the universe just be like this weird,
trippy experience walking around it? Well, that's the thing is
that if we if you change the speed of light, yes,
and that would be weird and trippy. But if we
(38:53):
evolved in that universe with the speed of light was smaller,
it would be intuitive to us. And you know, physics
would have developed, I think, more rapidly, like Newton wouldn't
wouldn't have come up with his theory of motion and
gravitation and stuff. He would have basically scooped Einstein. You know,
relativity would have been developed earlier because it would have
been more obvious. Yeah, they would have been more clear
(39:15):
that things were not classical. Yeah, Galileo would be the
new Einstein, and so we'd have, you know, four hundred
years head start on this universe. Would we move slower
as well? You know, like would it be like if
I was suddenly transported to that universe, would I feel
like molasses because now it takes more energy to you know,
accelerate my my my mass. No, because the relationship between
(39:37):
energy and velocity, like kinetic energy and velocity wouldn't change,
but there would be some really fascinating changes on the
strength of forces like magnetism, and also on things like
what's happening inside of stars so that the stars would
look different. Yeah. Well, first of all, there are a
lot of really interesting things that happen in relativity when
you get up near the speed of light that aren't
(39:59):
just time slows down and things get shorter. For example,
magnetism right now and our slow speeds is not as
strong as the force of electricity, Like electricity totally dwarfs magnetism.
But as you get up near the speed of light,
magnetism gets stronger because its strength depends on speed, and
so near the speed of light. The two are perfectly
(40:20):
in balance, which is why, for example, a photon can
propagate across the universe because really it's an electromagnetic wave
where the where the energy is going back and forth
from the electronic to the magnetic side. The two are
perfectly in balanced at the speed of light. So magnetism
would be much more powerful if the speed of light
were smaller, Like strong magnets would be much much more powerful. Wow,
(40:43):
and so everything Like, if chemistry is different, then biology
is different. So we would maybe look different in this universe.
We would look totally different, and our solar system would
look really different. Because remember, there's a very close connection
between energy and mass. We have the famous formula E
equals mc squared, right, and that C is the speed
of light. And so if you change that knob, you're
(41:05):
changing the fundamental relationship between energy and mass, and that
makes a big difference. What would happen. Well, the sun,
for example, is a machine for turning mass into energy. Right,
Take all this hydrogen, you can press it, you force
it diffuse, and in doing so, you're turning some of
that mass into energy. Well, if all of a sudden,
the speed of light is much much lower than you're
(41:26):
producing less energy. When you convert mass into energy. Wow,
things would sputter out more. Yeah, and so you'd have
like different you'd need much more. You need much bigger
stars in order to get enough pressure in order in
order to glow. Okay, so the universe would be pretty different.
Usan Um is correct in that, you know, if you
(41:47):
change the speed of light, I'll be a little bit dramatically.
Things would be pretty different, like chemistry, biology, the sun
would be different. Yeah. And if you flip it around
the other way, right, if the speed of light is
suddenly like a foul than are a million times what
it is today, then all of a sudden, we can
like see further into the universe, right, because light can
get here faster, and so the limited age of the
(42:10):
universe means we can see further out there. We could
communicate faster across the galaxy. Um. But then here on Earth,
you know, magnets would be much much weaker. Really, you
couldn't even really have fridge magnets because the power of
magnetism depends on the speed of light. And then looking
up into the sky, you know, because of this relationship
between energy and mass, even smaller objects could fuse, Like
(42:32):
Jupiter would probably be a star if the speed of
light were larger, because it's not quite there. A bunch
more mass and Jupiter would have enough energy diffuse. Oh
it's like the currency exchange rate between energy and mass,
and so if you change that, things can go from
one to the other more easily or harder. Yeah, and
the stars right now that are really big, they might
(42:54):
be producing too much energy to hold together. And so
those stars you just couldn't have are is that big,
but you would have smaller stars and so it's a
fascinating to change like the whole scale of the universe,
so everything would be It is a pretty the different
universe if you change the speed of light a lot,
that's right, So Hassan, please take your hand slowly off
(43:15):
that knob and step away from the universe console. This
is serious stuff, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, you want to
at least do it slowly so that we have time
to evolve and that all right. Well, I guess to
answer Hassan's question then, is if you change the speed
of light half or double, then things wouldn't change that much,
but you would they would change um kind of in
(43:38):
in a big scale, right, it would be. It would
be a totally different universe. Yeah, all the effects we
talked about would still be present for half or double,
they just wouldn't be as dramatic. But you know, double
in the speed of light would have a pretty big
impact even on our star and on other stars, so
you would notice it. Yeah, maybe like double or half
is all Jupiter needs to become a son, right, that's
(43:59):
right out there, Jupiter is is rooting for you to
turn that knob or it's it's saying no, don't touch it.
We don't want to blow I'm not sure what Jupiter
wants all right, Well, those were three awesome questions. Thank
you so much to everyone out there for sending and
sending in these questions. We always love to answer them
and to think about these fascinating answers. Yeah, and thanks
(44:21):
to everybody for listening to the show and for thinking
about the universe. And we just want to encourage you
to keep thinking, keep questioning, keep trying to understand. We
may never figure out all the secrets to the universe,
but we will always enjoy trying. And if we can't
figure it out, we'll ask Siri and maybe we'll get
a funny response. All right, thanks for listening. We hope
you enjoyed that. See you next time. Before you still
(44:50):
have a question after listening to all these explanations, please
drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at
Daniel and Horr Hey that's one word, or email us
at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for
listening and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcast
(45:12):
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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