What is quantized inertia?

Daniel and Jorge explore the mystery of inertia and whether a controversial theory can explain it.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Good morning, or hey, have you left the house yet today?
I have? Yeah, I record in my garage. I have
a set up there, so thankfully I'm out of the house.
But if you mean like leaving the premises of my house, no,
I haven't done that yet. I mean it's not even noon.
Who leaves the house before noon? M I guess most
of humanity have that experience. Are you saying I'm not
part of humanity? I'm just saying maybe you have more

(00:30):
inertia than the rest of us. Yes, Hey, cartoonists, address
tends to stay in rest less than external deadline is
applied to it. Yeah, I think that's Newton's forgotten fourth
law of cartooning physics forgotten or he never got to
it because he had too much inertia he never managed
to change out of his pajamas. Yeah, Hi am for

(01:04):
handy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel.
I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine,
and I have my own kind of inertia. Oh yeah,
is it mostly around your waist or you have a
very inertial head. It's sort of more conceptual inertia. Once
I have an idea, I don't like to let go
of it, so the idea has inertia though, Is that

(01:25):
what you mean? Is it a heavy idea or a
light idea? It's sort of stubbornly sticks around in my brain.
Sometimes I'll get curious about something and it just will
not leave me for months or years, until eventually I
find an answer. Aren't you describing all physicists though? Is
a nurse a certain sense amount of compulsion that you
need to be a you know, a researcher, a scientist.

(01:45):
I think there is in fact a minimum quantum level
of obsession you have to have in order to dedicate
your life to these crazy ideas. Well. Welcome to our
podcast Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe, hopefully your new obsession,
which is a production of our heart, in which we
explore the entire universe without leaving our houses or changing

(02:05):
out of our pajamas. We help you perform the incredible
feat of trying to import the entire universe, all of
the stars and galaxies and tiny particles and alien landscapes
that might be out there, into your brain without ever
leaving your home. If you're lying in bed or sitting
on your couch or otherwise chilling out. We hope to
bring the entire universe to you. That's right, because it

(02:28):
is a pretty heavy universe, full of massive and amazing
revelations and things to discover. Did we try to fit
all inside of your head. It's a big project to
understand how the universe works, and something we've been working
on for a long time, decades, centuries, even millennia. If
you take seriously early Greek physics, which you don't write,

(02:50):
I've seen you talk about Greek physicists, or as you
like to call them, Greek guess you know, they had
a different approach. They began by thinking internally just what
made sense to them. The concept of empiricism came a
little bit later, actually going out and testing these ideas
to see if they do describe our universe is a
little bit more modern than the ancient Greeks. I feel

(03:12):
like it's a little bit unfair though, because like, you
know a lot more than them, but only because there
were a lot of people who did signs and research
before you did. Like if you were born in Greek times,
who knows what you might be thinking. Oh, that's definitely true,
and I don't claim to be smarter than Aristotle or Galileo.
I think the lesson to take away from it is
that progress is slow, and the things that seem obvious

(03:33):
to us were actually big intellectual steps forward, and we
can't really recognize that anymore because we are so marinated
in our current way of thinking. We forget how big
an intellectual leap it was to try to describe the
universe in terms of mathematics and make predictions and go
out and test those things. All of that was a
big idea that took thousands of years to bubble up

(03:56):
from inside human brains. Yeah, although it all seems like
Greek to me, there is a lot of scientists have
discovered and theorize about the universe, and we've made a
huge amount of progress. We have a pretty solid theory
about what things are made out of and also how
the stars and the galaxies and the black holes out
there moved. It is kind of incredible how much progress
we have made. Our mastery of technology is evidence that

(04:19):
we understand how the universe works at a very microscopic
scale all the way up to a macroscopic scale. We
can use computers which are based on the motions of
tiny little particles to guide enormous things like a seven
forty seven across the ocean. It's this harmony between the
very very small and the very very big. We have
explored the universe at all of these scales and many

(04:41):
scales in between, and at each step we can find
some story to tell about what's going on, how things work,
what laws they seem to be following. It never ceases
to amaze me that the universe is understandable. It is
pretty amazing. Although even though we have theories that can
predict things like the motion of particles and the motion
of galaxies in stars out there in space, that doesn't

(05:02):
necessarily mean that we understand these theories or what they
mean or where they come from. Yeah, we tell a
little mathematical stories about the universe, but sometimes it's useful
to stop and say, like, what is this thing we
are talking about anyway? Like we have the Shorteninger equation
that tells us the wave function of a particle and
how it moves through space, but it leaves unanswered important

(05:22):
questions like well, what is a particle anyway? And it
turns out that physicists and philosophers have riotously different opinions
about what this thing is we're talking about. But we
can still tell stories about these objects even if we
don't quite understand what they are. But it's very fun
and very fruitful to dig into these questions and try
to understand exactly what it is we are talking about. Yeah,

(05:44):
there are still very basic things about the universe we
don't understand. And they don't just relate to tiny, little
miniscule particles that you can't see. It also applies to
you and me and what you do every day, which
is to move or to not move, and to just
sitting your chair all day long. They described physicists or
cartoonists or both. I was just being general. I don't

(06:07):
know why you're particular responding. You know, well, why are
you mentioning in it? Well, it's this sort of mysterious process. Right.
You sit in your chair, and you stay sitting in
your chair. You expect that, unless you're getting up to
move across the room or go fetch another banana, you're
going to be in your chair all day long. And
that's the kind of thing that seems obvious to you,
And it seems obvious to Aristotle, and it seems obvious

(06:28):
to everybody but understanding the mechanics have feel like why
things at rest stay at rest, why things in motion
stay in motion? Raisism really fascinating issues about like what
is momentum? What is inertia? What is mass? Anyway, so
today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question what

(06:50):
is quantized inertia? Guessing this means quantum mechanics of inertia.
It's too buzzwords stuck together to make a buzzword, Sam,
I'm not sure inertia is a buzzword. The people use
it to denote, you know, exciting things, not usually Yeah,
inertia is never a good thing. Is it like Silicon
Valley disruptors. They're usually looking to disrupt industries that have

(07:14):
too much inertia? Yes, it's something you want to break,
I guess unless you're a controonism, which case you enjoy
a little bit of inertia sometimes. But it is a
fascinating question because I feel like inertia is a word
that you know, even as a little kid, you learned
pretty early on that it's just like what heavy things
have that makes them hard to move. And so to

(07:36):
think about the idea that we don't know what it
is is kind of crazy. M. It's interesting word also
because I'm not sure if it comes from physics and
then we use it in our lives to describe, like
our emotional states or our motivation levels as a metaphor
for a concept from physics, or if when the other
direction and physics stole it from English because it's similar

(07:57):
to the concept that already existed. M. There's no history
of words and physics. Oh, I'm sure there is, but
I'm not an expert in linguistics. Somebody out there who
knows the history of the word inertia right in and
let us know. Well, Also, it depends what you call scientists,
right maybe like early caveman saw big rock and they
found it hard to move, and they said, you know,

(08:17):
came up with a word for it. And that's kind
of like being a scientist, right. That's certainly being descriptive.
I think philosophers of science might quibble about whether you're
doing science just by describing your experience in the world.
I think maybe science also requires developing a model to
explain what you've seen, what you've experienced that also predicts
what would happen in the future. I'm sure they predicted

(08:38):
that the rock wouldn't move. Rock was heavy yesterday, Rock
heavy today, rock heavy tomorrow. Me scientists me published first
paper or first rock. Yeah, first don't tablet. First case
painting got a publication range of one impact factor one.
But it is a pretty amazing question to ask, because

(08:58):
I imagine it's not a question people ask every day,
like what is inertia? We just kind of take it
for granted that inertia exists. We do take it for granted,
especially because we have fairly solid theories of physics which
use it, you know, Newtonian physics, Einsteinian relativity. They all
rely in this concept of mass and on inertia, so
they play a role in the mathematical stories these theories tell,

(09:20):
but that doesn't mean that they necessarily explain what it
is or where it comes from. You know, Einstein's relativity
can tell us that things with energy in them have mass,
and that mass has inertia, but doesn't answer the question
why why do things with energy in them tend to
need a force to accelerate them? For example. Yeah, it's
a pretty fascinated question, and so, as usual, we were

(09:41):
wondering how many people out there had thought about this
question or had heard of the term quantized inertia. So
the things very much to everybody who volunteers for these
to be on the mic for the podcast, We really
appreciate it. If you'd like to hear your voice speculating
about future topics for the podcast, please don't be shy
right to us to instants at Daniel and Jorge dot com.

(10:02):
So think about it for a second. What do you
think is quantized inertia? Here's WHATULD be glad to say. First,
I'm going to take a wild guess that quantized inertia
is essentially as the quantized view of inertia. And secondly
that you're using the same definition of inertia as I
learned in school way back when I guess you would

(10:24):
just build the quantum of inertia with the quantum of
mass times the quantum of distance over the quantum of time,
and quantized inertia would be inertia momentum whatever you wanna
call it, measured in that unit. Quantized inertia sounds to
me like it's going to be small packets of movement

(10:48):
that can be discreetly segmented into you know, little little
individual quantized bits of movement. So it's not this continuous
everything stays in motion as long as it's in motion
that we would expect from Newtonian physics inertia, but quantized
quantized inertia. So m hmm, I don't know. I don't

(11:11):
know what contest inertia means, but I'm guessing it's something
to do with inertia that originates from something that doesn't
have mass. So if you were to take a box um,
an empty box, like completely empty, I mean, apart from
virtual particles, I guess. But if you had an empty
box um and waited, it would real less than if
you took a box with photons in it, even though

(11:33):
photons are massless according to the currently prevailing theory, um
just because of the emotion, because of the momentum, that
box would have inertia. So I don't know. Because photons
are the quanta of the lecture magnetic fields, so maybe
that's what quantized inertia means, but I'm not sure. All Right,

(11:55):
not a lot of solid gases here. I like the
person who said it's inertia but quantized. Isn't that what
quantum physics is. It's physics, but quantized, that's a quantum
everything is right quantum dessert dipping dots? Yeah, yeah, I
think quantizing your dessert would probably help with your own
inertia around your waist. I don't know. I think the
smaller the pieces are, the more of them you can have.

(12:16):
So you just end up consuming an infinite number of
dipping dots. They're so small. How can they possibly add
up to anything that seems physically impossible to you? You're
a physicist, I can bend logic when it comes to dessert. Yeah,
does make it harder to bend your body. But I
did really like the answer that suggested that quantized inertia
could come out of quantized distance and quantized time. Essentially,

(12:38):
if all of reality is quantized, then everything is quantized,
including inertia and dessert. Yeah. Yeah, I guess if space
is quantized, and technically moving through space or not moving
through space is also quantized. That's right. Either you're eating
dessert or you're not, unless it's quantum mechanics, in which
case maybe you're doing both at the same time. The

(12:58):
dessert on certainty for stable. So this is a really
funny topic, quantized inertia. I like it because it touches
on a really core question of physics, like what is
inertia and mass? Anyway? But also, let's this explore a
recent hypothesis suggestion that might answer those questions. Right, And
I guess, just to be clear, quantized inertia is a
concept that comes from a theory that tries to explain

(13:20):
what inertia is. Yeah, that's exactly right. It suggests that
inertia comes from tiny, little quantum effects in the universe.
All right, well, let's jump into it. And I guess
let's start at the beginning. What physicists call inertia? How
do they define it? So inertia first appears in Newton's theory, right,
it tells us that things in motion will stay in
motion and that things at rest will stay at rest.

(13:42):
And in that sense, it's another way to state the
conservation of momentum. You know, things that have no momentum
their mass times their velocity will continue to have no
momentum unless you apply a force to them, unless you
accelerate them by applying a force. Things who have constant
velocity constant momentum will continue to have that momentum unless again,

(14:02):
you apply a force to change that momentum. So that's
the principle of inertia. Right. It's kind of the idea
that if something has velocity, it's hard to change that
things velocity. Right, So that's kind of the concept. And
maybe the more of it that you have, the more
inertia that you have, the harder it is to change
that velocity. Yeah, and that's where Newton's laws of physics

(14:23):
come in. Right, you have a certain velocity, you need
to apply a force to change that velocity. And because
force is mass times acceleration, then to get a larger acceleration,
you need a larger force. Because force is mass times acceleration.
The more mass you have, the larger the force you
need to get the same acceleration. So things that have
more mass therefore need bigger forces in order to accelerate them.

(14:46):
Like if you push on a tiny rock, you're going
to accelerate it more than if you push on the
entire Earth with the same force. Right, So then I
guess is inertia related to mass? Does it include mass
or is it just the general concept that you need
to force to move a mass? You know what I mean?
The mass that we're talking about there we often call
inertial mass because we think it's the mass that gives

(15:07):
things inertia the property of having mass. If you didn't
have mass, then you wouldn't have inertia. So if the
inertia comes from having mass, because you also need that
mass to have momentum. Right, Although could you also say
that you can't have mass if you don't have inertia,
or that what we call mass is actually the property
of inertia. I think it's the second that what we

(15:28):
call mass is actually the property of inertia. That's why
we get more specific and we call it inertial mass, right,
because there are other kinds of masses. There are other
kinds of masses exactly. It's also a subtle distinction between
momentum and inertia because it is possible to have momentum
without mass, Like photons have momentum even though they don't
have any mass. Does that mean photons have inertia or not?

(15:51):
Or is it all very light? Well, photons do carry momentum, right,
And so a photon, for example, can bounce off of
something and push it, you know, like a solar sale
is a photon pushing on something and transferring its momentum
to that object. So messence to have momentum, but inertia
is like the resistance of an object of changing its velocity,

(16:12):
and photons can't change their velocity, right, they always travel
at the speed of light. So inertia when it comes
to photons is very confusing. Does that mean photons have
infinite inertia? That's an interesting question. You can change the
direction of a photon even though you can change its velocity,
and that does actually count as a change in its
velocity vector because you're changing its components. Something with infinite

(16:35):
inertia you wouldn't be able to change its direction either.
So light is a sort of special category there. M
I think you're saying that like does have inertia, or
maybe that it doesn't apply to things without inertial mass.
I think there's a few different concepts here. There's momentum,
which light definitely carries, but inertia here we're talking about
inertial mass, and photons definitely don't have any inertial mass.

(16:57):
All right, So some particles in the universe seemed to
have inertial mass, and it's sort of related to ecelind
theories about gravity too, right, that's right, And there's another
interesting wrinkle about inertial mass there, which is it doesn't
just come from the mass of your particles, right. So
for example, particles have their own little mass which they
get from the Higgs boson. But then you can put
them together and use energy to build those bonds, and

(17:19):
that energy also contributes to the mass of the object. So,
for example, a proton is made of little quirks. Those
corks have really really tiny inertial masses. The proton has
a lot of inertial mass because of the energy in it.
So the proton, this bound state of all the corks,
has a lot more mass than the things it's made
out of. And that's because energy inside an object is

(17:40):
sort of what gives it mass, it gives it inertia.
So there's all these different ideas here. What is mass?
What is inertia for an object? It reflects how much
energy is sort of stored inside the object, not just
the mass of the objects inside of it. Right, And
in our book frequently ask questions about the unerse We
tackled this in a whole chat there where we basically

(18:01):
conclude that there's no such thing as mass, right, like
everything is just energy because most of what we call
mass in our bodies is actually the energy stored in
the between the particles. And also like even the mass
of a particle is really just the energy it has
with the Higgs field, right, and so it's all just energy,
which means there is such a thing mass. It is

(18:21):
all just energy, but it does seem to have inertia,
and that's too. Also in other counterintuitive examples, like with photons.
Photons have no mass, but if you put a bunch
of photons in a box with mirrors inside, for example,
so they're bouncing around, then that will have more mass
than an empty box. So you can like make a
box more massive by shooting a laser into it and

(18:42):
capturing those photons because you put energy into it. So
it is all just energy, but that energy has this
property of inertia. Right. It's kind of seems like, um,
maybe the right order of these concepts is that you know,
whenever you have energy localized or put together in a
particular object or spa or even a box, it's somehow
difficult to move that box or object, like you need

(19:06):
to apply some kind of energy to change its velocity.
And then that's the concept of inertia. And then what
we call mass is kind of a measure of its inertia. Yeah,
mass is like a dial that tells you how much
stored energy there is inside of it, And there's this
relationship between the stored energy inside of it and how
hard it is to move that thing. And mass is

(19:28):
that multiplicative factor between those two things, exactly right, which
means inertia? Is it kind of like predates mass or
is more important or you know, it comes before the
concept of mass, So it's pretty pretty important, right before
in what sense, like chronologically or conceptually, I mean like conceptually,
like in terms of the way that we think about
these ideas, the order of concepts, it comes first, right, Yeah,

(19:50):
you can definitely think about it that way. What we
observe is that there are things in the universe and
those things seem to have inertia. We explain that by
coming up with this concept of mass for these things.
That is sort of the origin of their inertia. But
it's really just more of a description than an actual explanation.
We don't really understand the mechanism by which energy resists

(20:10):
changes in its inertia. I think that's what you mean. Well,
I think I mean, like in your light box. Example,
if I put light inside of a box with mirrors
inside of it, it's going to have inertia, But that
doesn't mean that the light it put into it has mass.
So it's almost like inerish is kind of a more
important or overarching, kind of fundamental concept than mass. I
think big inertia will be happy to hear you say that.

(20:31):
Oh good, wait for the check. All right, Well, let's
get into this idea of anerition, why we don't understand
what it is, and also a new theory that might
have an answer for it. First, let's take a quick break.

(20:58):
All right, we're talking about nourish and um. Ironically, it's
taken as a well to get to this topic. You
might say, we have a lot of inertia, and there's
also some sort of inertia in the field about answering
these questions at the foundations. Once we have a theory
that works that we can use to describe the universe,
a lot of people like to just run with it
and go off and predict things and build ideas on

(21:18):
top of it. There isn't always an appetite for like
digging into the details of like what does this mean?
It feels to people a little bit like doing philosophy,
which is why for a long time people ignore questions
at the heart of like quantum mechanics, you know, what
our particles and is the way of function actually collapsing?
Because we had the theory that worked. But I think
it's really interesting and really important to dig into these

(21:39):
details and try to understand what is this foundation on
which we're building all of our theories. Yeah, and so
we define inertia as kind of the basically the observation
that whenever you have an object which is mostly energy,
or whenever you have a lot of energy in one spot,
in one kind of thing, it's kind of hard to
make that thing move or to slow it down, or

(22:00):
basically to change its velocity. And so that observation, that's
what we call inertia. Yeah, that's what we call inertia. Okay,
But I guess the big question is like why is that?
Why is the universe like that? Well, like why is
it hard to change the velocity of things that have
a lot of energy. That's a great question, and I
think it's important when we ask big questions like that
to think about what kind of answer are we looking for?

(22:24):
Are we looking for an answer that's like this is
the only way the universe can be because it's the
only way the mathematics hangs together in a consistent way,
Like there is no way to build another theory of
physics that doesn't have this property. It's like a necessary
consequence of something fundamental to our universe. Or another kind
of answer would be like, oh, here's the mechanism, here's

(22:44):
microscopically what's happening when you try to push on that
box of photons, like to understand the little details of
exactly what's happening and why. This concept of inertia sort
of emerges from that, Right, I think you're talking about
the difference between giving up and throwing your hands up
in the air. Think just the way, that's the way
the universe is, and the other option, which is to

(23:05):
dig in deeper and see if there's maybe a simpler
explanation for things like innernship. Right, Like, at some point
you could just say, hey, that's just the way the
universe is, because there's no other way that the universe
could have been. Differently, the innersha is just there because
it's there, Or you can might dig in deeper and say,
oh no, look actually it's because of this other thing

(23:25):
that we know about the universe, right. I think it's
just a question of which rabbit hole you want to
go down. If you want to go down the path
of like finding fundamental principles that force the universe to
be this way, then you can make arguments like the
ones we make about conservation a momentum. Why does momentum
seem to be conserved in our universe? We think because
of not H's theorem and various symmetries. That is, because

(23:45):
space is the same everywhere, And so then you can ask, all,
why it's space the same everywhere. It's a fun rabbit
hole to go down, but it's sort of a different
structure of the argument to say that it's constrained by
certain physical principles, and then you can of course ask like, well,
why those physical principles, So you never really get to
an answer, I think, but it's just sort of like
a different direction to try to explore. I don't think

(24:05):
either one should be called giving up. Giving up is
like staying at home in your pajamas all day, unless
you're doing physics in your pajamas at home. Isn't that
what you do? A lot of the time too. Yeah,
I stay home, I said, in my pajamas, I eat
dipping dots and I think about the universe. There you go. See,
inertia can be a good thing. I feel like it
gets a bad rap it does. Well, let's talk about

(24:25):
inertia is a negative thing, whereas momentum, Now that's a
good thing usually. See, I think you're just a shill
for big inertia. I think you're being paid on the
side by big inertia to rehab its image in the community,
in the physics community. You're here telling us that it
shouldn't be a negative thing. You're here telling us that
it's more fundamental than mass. I mean, these are basically

(24:47):
big inertias talking points. Well, I think we're all on
the thumb of inertia. So really I kind of want
to make it happy, right, You don't want to inertia
to turn against you. I see now you're resorting to threats.
Fall in line everyone, or big inertia will get you.
I didn't say that you did to any But in
terms of the question of what is inertia, I guess then,

(25:08):
so which answer are we looking for? Are we looking
for a way to say that inertia is because the
universe couldn't have been any other way without inertia, or
are we trying to find mechanism for inertia. People are
going in both directions. There are some folks on the
sort of philosophical side trying to understand whether we can
connect it to symmetries of the universe, etcetera. But today

(25:28):
we're gonna dig into this theory of quantized inertia, which
is trying to describe it from the bottom up, explaining
the mechanism of it, from the quantum scale, from the
microscopic picture of the universe, what is actually out there
pushing back against you when you try to move that
heavy rock? I see. So maybe like you're trying to
find a way to say that not that inertia is
just is it's like the result of this other simpler

(25:51):
theory that we have about the universe, exactly the way that,
for example, we can explain the mass of little particles
by saying, oh, it's the interaction with this field. There's
a physical mechanism, the Higgs field that's changing the way
particles move as if they have mass. Right, that's a
nice mechanistic explanation or why these particles seem to move
in this way. Can we find a more general, similar

(26:11):
sort of description, an explanation for something that's happening out
there in space that's pushing back on things, that's changing
how they move in a way that we describe as innersia, right,
And I guess this gets us to this kind of
very subtle distinction between the inertia of fundamental particles and
the inertia of objects like you and me. Like, we
know that for small fundamental particles, their inertia comes from

(26:33):
the interaction with the Higgs field, Right, But we don't
understand is why collections of particles, or when you have
energy like stored in a spot between particles, why that
has inertia because that's not interacting with the Higgs field.
So what you're saying, it's a good question. I mean,
we can describe what happens when an electron is moving

(26:53):
through the universe and interacting with the Higgs field as
certain mathematical properties of that interaction. We think the electro
on by itself without the Higgs field would have no mass.
We travel always at the speed of life, for example,
and we can describe exactly how the interaction of the
electron with the Higgs field changes this motion just the
same way as if you sort of like created mass

(27:13):
for this particle, if you just gave it inherently this inertia.
We don't have a mechanism for the Higgs boson to
do that to like a collection of electrons. Differently than
it's just its interaction with the individual electrons. Like we
can describe how the Higgs talks to one electron, but
now put a thousand electrons together in a box and
give them energy, it has more inertia. We can't explain

(27:35):
that using the Higgs field. The Higgs field just interacts
with the individual electrons. So then the inertia of a
box field of electrons is due to something else Entirely,
you're saying, we don't understand the source of that inertia,
but it sort of acts exactly like the Higgs field
acts on fundamental particles in the sense that they both
have inertia. Yes, they both have inertia, which we can

(27:55):
describe as mass. They resist changes in their motion, right,
But isn't it this vicious that it's exactly the same,
like you know, an electronics just a little bit of
energy and it interacts with the Higgs field, and that's
how it gets its inertia. But then, when you have
a whole bunch of energy together from multiple particles, wouldn't
you think that also interacts with the Higgs field. You might,
but we don't think the Higgs boson has a monopoly

(28:17):
on inertia or on mass. We think that there are
other ways even fundamental particles might get mass. For example,
dark matter we suspect is a particle. We're also fairly
certain it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs boson,
because the Higgs boson only interacts with particles that feel
the weak force, and we're pretty sure dark matter doesn't
feel the weak force. Neutrinos even might get their mass

(28:40):
not from the Higgs boson, through some other mechanism if
they are Myrona particles. Check out our whole episode about
neutrino masses. So we think that there might be multiple
ways for even fundamental particles to get mass. The Higgs
boson is not the only way, and so more broadly,
we think it might be possible for collections of these
objects to get mass via other mechanisms. And that's exactly

(29:02):
what quantized inertia is is another way to give mass
to objects. All right, let's get into this theory of
quantized inertia. It's a recent theory right by one person.
It is a fairly recent idea and it's championed by
one particular physicist in the UK, Mike McCullough, and has
a sort of nice collection of ideas inspired by black
holes and event horizons and quantum mechanics all mixed together

(29:25):
and sort of clever package. He's like, let's throw everything
that we can into this to give it a more
inertia or momentum, whichever sounds better. It is a bit
of a grab bag, and recently he's used this theory
quantized inertia to try to explain mysteries like dark matter
and also things like sono luminescence and the Pioneer anomaly
and free energy and also dark energy in the expansion

(29:49):
of the universe. So it's sort of a very useful
toolbox for him. Can I come up with cartoon ideas
also that would be more helpful for being I'm thinking
maybe you can also explain who sha j K. I mean,
let's just solve all the mysteries while we're at it. Well,
technically inertia did kill you kids. But I guess the
main question here that we're the physicist are trying to

(30:10):
solve is why do collections of energy, like when you
pull energy together, why is it hard to move it
from one place to another? And this theory says that
maybe it's due to quantum effects. That's what it's called
quantized inertion, right exactly. He takes the picture of the
universe as filled with quantum particles. Right, All space has fields,
and these fields can't have zero energy, so they're always

(30:31):
sort of oscillating out there in the universe, and in
certain situations these fields do weird things, like, for example,
if you have a black hole, you have an event
horizon beyond which you can't see anything. Stephen Hawking predicted
that if you have these fields near an event horizon,
it generates radiation, so it's called Hawking radiation. It's the
particular combination of having these quantum fields and an event horizon.

(30:53):
Nor for those fields to be sort of self consistent,
you need the black hole to be generating some radiation.
You need to propagation of waves through that field outward
from the event horizon in order for sort of mathematically
things to add up. So the lesson there is that
event horizons tend to cause radiation. Right, That's why they
say that a black hole will eventually evaporate, right, or

(31:16):
black holes are always evaporating. Although has this been actually
observed or is this just a theory that black holes
have radiation just a theory, definitely never observed. Talking radiation,
if it exists, would be extremely faint. For small black holes,
it's quite bright, but for the black holes we expect
are out there in the universe, it would be very
very low intensity, so very difficult to observe, especially this

(31:37):
far from black holes. So we don't know for sure
that it exists. But in the theory, these quantum waves
which fill the universe, if they encounter an event horizon,
it generates radiation in the other direction. And it's this
kind of radiation that mccaullus suspects causes inertia. Wait, what
do you mean, So if I have a black hole,
it has an event horizon, which is like the edge
of the black hole where stuff can fall in and

(31:59):
will never it out. You see a quantum wave hits it,
or a quantum field interacts with it, what's the difference.
Quantum fields exists all through space. If you're going to
solve the equations for that field, to get a consistent solution,
you have to figure out what happens to those fields
at the event horizon. So Hockeings derivation shows that in
order to satisfy the wave equations of quantum fields, there
has to be outward radiation. And so you're saying this

(32:20):
is kind of an example of what's also happening with inertia.
It's an example of an important principle at the heart
of quantized inertia, which is event horizons cause radiation. It's
not suggesting that black holes cause inertia. Is just an
example of how event horizons cause radiation. These argument needs
one more piece, which is how every time we move,
we're basically creating event horizons. What what do you mean

(32:45):
every time we move where I'm creating like lack a
black hole, sort of like a black hole. We did
an episode once about whether or not it's possible to
outrun a beam of light. Right, you might imagine that
if somebody shoots a beam of light at you, that
there's no way you can run fast and to avoid it, Right,
if you run away from me and then I turn
on my flashlight, that eventually that light will catch up

(33:05):
to you because it's traveling at the speed of lighting.
You can't travel at the speed of light, so eventually,
given infinite time, it will catch you. That's not actually
true if you run away with constant acceleration. So if
you move with constant acceleration, it actually creates an event
horizon behind you, a part of the universe which no
longer can reach you. We did a whole episode about

(33:27):
this counterintuitive principle where acceleration itself causes event horizons. Right,
although it seems impossible to have constant acceleration forever, wouldn't
that take an infinite amount of energy? It definitely would
take an infinite amount of energy. Practically, it's not something
I know how you could achieve or I would recommend.
But in principle, mathematically, if you are undergoing constant acceleration,

(33:49):
then you are cutting yourself off from part of the universe,
as part of the universe whose messages will never reach you,
and those light beams will get closer and closer to
you every year, but never actually touched your back. Basically,
you're leaving the rest of the universe that's behind you
in the dust kind of what you're saying, right Like,
if I move with coustant acceleration in one direction, I'll
never kind of see the stuff behind me, maybe forever.

(34:12):
But then, how does this related to inertia. Now, take
these two ideas. One is event horizons caused radiation. Its
second is acceleration causes event horizons. Put them together and
you get acceleration causes event horizons, which cause radiation. So
now every time you accelerate, you're creating an event horizon
behind you that's sort of similar to the end of
a black hole, which is going to create radiation for

(34:35):
the same reason you get hawking radiation. So every time
you accelerate, you're creating this event horizon behind you, which
is going to generate a kind of radiation behind you
and basically bathe you in radiation from the universe. Because
this radiation is not the same in all directions, because
the event horizon is behind you and not ahead of you,
it can change the way you move. And that's the

(34:56):
core principle of quantized inertia, that the way you move
is changed by this quantum radiation caused by the event
horizons created as you accelerate. That's a long sentence there.
I guess I'm still stuck in this idea that every
time I move. You're saying, every time I move or
accelerate even my hand, I'm creating an event horizon. But
earlier you said I need an infinite amount of acceleration

(35:19):
to generate that event horizon. What are you trying to
say that even a little bit of acceleration causes an
event horizon right behind it a really far away or
how does it work? In order to outrun the beam
of light? You would need to accelerate forever. You need
to create that event horizon and never let it dissipate.
So you need to accelerate forever, and that would require
infinite energy, not necessarily infinite acceleration, but you'd have to

(35:39):
be accelerating till the end of time to avoid that
beam of light. But every time you accelerate, you do
create an event horizon. That event horizon collapses when you
stop accelerating, because now those parts of the universe can
reach you. So you create an event horizon temporarily when
you accelerate, it collapses when you stop accelerating. If you
want to maintain it. You need to keep going forever.
Where does that if horizon get formed? Not right behind me? Right?

(36:02):
Probably super far away, isn't It depends on how fast
you're going and how much you accelerate. The faster you're going,
the closer that event horizon is to you. Okay, So
then if I move my hand. Let' say I'm waving
my hands here in front of me, where is the
event horizon for me? Well, you're moving at fairly slow velocity,
I'm assuming, and so that event horizon would be like
light years away. Okay. So you're saying, like, if I
move my hand forward, it's someone during that brief time

(36:25):
that I'm moving my hand, someone in Alpha Centauri shooting
a laser on me. Technically that in theory, like, if
you do the math, that laser won't reach my hand,
and if you kept accelerating your hand, that laser would
never hit your hand. Since you probably stopped accelerating your hand,
that event horizon collapses and it will eventually fry you. Right. Okay,
So now I created a little event horizon with respect

(36:48):
to my hand. Is event horizon is light years away
in Alpha cent Tori? How is this related to internship
because event horizons create radiation. So when you did that,
you generated a kind of radiation from the quantum fields
of the universe. This is called Unrue radiation, named after
a physicist whose last name is unru U n r
u h. And so this radiation generated by this event horizon,

(37:12):
Mike McCullough thinks is the source of inertia because it
basically is pushing against you. I feel like you're saying
that me moving my hand is creating particles in Alpha Centaur.
Is that what you're saying. It's creating radiation from the
event horizon that may be very very far away. Yes, so,
and it's instantly community Like the movement of my hand
is instantly communicating to Alpha Centauri to make particles out

(37:33):
of nothing. It's not making particles out of nothing. The
event horizon that you created in Alpha Centauri triggers radiation
in the rest of the universe is quantum fields. So
Unrue radiation, which is a whole interesting thing that people
actually believe exists, suggests that anybody who's accelerating will feel
this quantum radiation from the universe. And Mike McCullough suggests
that quantum radiation is responsible for inertia, right. I guess

(37:56):
it's a little hard to I guess process this because
if like you're saying that the rest of the universe
somehow cares if I move my hand forward, we're all
tied together by these quantum fields. But it's light years away.
But I'm feeling the inertiative of my hand right now. Yeah,
it definitely doesn't take millions of years for you to
feel that inertia. I think that's because the event horizon
that's created as you accelerate isn't immediately formed really far

(38:20):
away from you, sort of like sweeping away from you
as you accelerate, because even in Alpha Centauri, they don't
know that you've moved your hand. So that event horizon
is sort of like being created as the information propagates
out to Alpha Centauri, and as it's doing so, it
can also generate this quantum radiation that's pushing back at you.
All right, I'm feeling a lot of inertia in my

(38:40):
head right now. I'm sure a lot of people are.
So let's dig into this a little bit more and
figure out how this crazy quantum radiation gives us inertia.
And also how true this theory is. But first, let's
take another quick break or I we're talking about quantized inertia,

(39:11):
which is not like inertia chopped up with the little bits.
It's more like the idea that inertia is caused by
quantum effects. Yeah, I think that the picture of quantized
inertia is that accelerating things in the universe generate this
radiation from the background quantum fields that change the way
they move. It's sort of similar to the way electron
gets mass from the Higgs field. Right as electron moves

(39:32):
to the Higgs field, it's interacting with that field and
that interaction changes the way it moves. So here the
picture is you're moving through the universe and your acceleration
is now creating these virtual particles, which you can think
of as interacting with the background quantum fields of the
universe in such a way to change your motion and
effectively give you inertia. Right, And you said, it's because

(39:53):
when I move my hand, I'm creating an event horizon
of a point that things that move at the speed
of like can't each my hand. And somebody that creates
particles out of thin air, which in creating these particles,
I guess takes energy, which then means that I need
energy to move my hand. Yes, somehow they all work
together so that when you're trying to accelerate, you basically

(40:14):
running into this quantum wind of virtual particles pushing you back. So,
according to this theory, the reason it's hard to get
a blob of energy going is that when you push
on it, the universe sort of pushes back with all
these virtual particles. But it pushes you back, or it
pulls you back. I feel like it's pulls you back
because you're creating an event horizon behind you. Right. Remember

(40:35):
that quantum interaction, especially with the virtual particles, can also
pass negative momentum, so it's a little bit counterintuitive whether
to think about that as a push or a pull.
Like with quantum particles. I can throw you a ball
that has a negative momentum, which is sort of like
pulling on you even though I've thrown something to you, right,
it pushes your back, which I think most people would
say is pulls you back, all right. Cool. So it's

(40:56):
an interesting combination of ideas. This idea of unrue radiation
is a real idea that's taken very seriously quantized inertia
sort of co opted it to try to use it
to explain inertia. One big problem with it, though, is
that people don't expect unrue radiation sort of way that
virtual particles will hit you when you accelerate, to be
something we could ever actually measure. It's predicted to be

(41:18):
like super duper duper tiny. What does that mean? Isn't
inertia pretty significant? Like if you have a big block
of lead or iron, it feels a lot inertia, So
it's unrue radiation should be pretty significant. You're exactly right.
And that's a big problem for quantized inertia because if
you calculate the unrue radiation you get for reasonable accelerations,
it just isn't enough to explain the effects we see

(41:41):
from inertia. So, for example, if you accelerate an object
that one ms per second squared, and you calculate how
much is unru radiation heating that object up or pushing
back on, how much energy is bathing that object from
unrue radiation, it's usually measured is how much you would
heat that object up. You get like tend them in
this twenty one degrees kelvin so one meter per second

(42:04):
squared acceleration, which is pretty typical normal kind of thing
to feel on Earth, is basically imperceptible amounts of radiation
you would get from the quantum fields. So it doesn't
seem like enough to explain actual inertia. You mean, like
if you apply the theory of under radiation, it wouldn't
be enough to count for innerttion. Also, like if you're
creating a bunch of particles in your wake every time

(42:26):
you move, wouldn't you like see these particles. People have
looked for unreradiation, but nobody's ever seen it because it's
so tiny. It's sort of like looking for Hawking radiation.
We think maybe it's there, but nobody's ever seen it
because it's so faint it's so difficult to detect. Also,
it would technically be really far away, right like when
I moved my arm, you said that my the event

(42:46):
horizon that forms is like light years away. Wouldn't that
be there were the particles form. It's difficult to pin
these things down because we're talking about quantum waves, which
aren't necessarily always very well localized. Right, as we said before,
the eventure rice is probably created as an outgoing wave
in these quantum fields. So I think it's tricky to
think about the sort of special relativity of the motion

(43:07):
of these quantum fields. But I guess where is this
theory now, Like does it work out mathematically or is
it still kind of a stretch. It's not taken very
seriously in mainstream physics. People don't think that mechanistically it works.
I've read a paper analyzing and carefully they found a
bunch of flaws in the derivation of quantized inertia. Wouldn't
that just kill it? If there are flaws mathematically. I

(43:31):
think that's one reason why it's not taken very seriously
in mainstream physics. But it has gotten a lot of press,
and one reason is that it's been used to try
to explain some other big mysteries in the universe. So like,
maybe it explains inertia, maybe not. But the proponent of
quantized inertia has also suggested that maybe it can explain
dark matter, and maybe it can explain how to build

(43:53):
warp drives, and maybe you can explain the pioneer anomally,
and maybe you can explain dark energy. Sort of sort
of taking this tool and trying to apply to all
the big mysteries of the day, which makes it easier
to get like click bait articles. Wait to how would
it explain things like dark matter just because it would
give dark matter inertia or mass with that can't be
explained any other way. So we can explain dark matter

(44:15):
by changing how much inertial mass we think stars might have.
Remember that one of the origins of the whole idea
of dark matter was that galaxies are spinning, and they're
spinning way too fast for the gravity of those galaxies
to hold them together. And in order to do that calculation,
you have to assume you understand how stars move. Do

(44:36):
you understand their inertia and the force of gravity on
those stars quantized inertia? Says, well, maybe we've been miscalculating
the inertia of these stars, or that maybe for things
that are not accelerated very much, they have less inertia.
So he poses a different relationship between inertia and acceleration.
He says that really small accelerations, maybe things have less inertia.

(44:58):
And so the picture then is that maybe these stars
at the edge of the galaxy you don't need as
much gravity to hold onto them. Because they actually have
less inertia than we thought they did. So you solve
the problem not by saying, oh, there's more matter, which
provides more gravity, but by saying you don't need as
much gravity because those stars can be held in without
a stronger force because they have less inertia than you thought.

(45:20):
So this quantitized inertia isn't explaining dark matter. It's just
it's actually saying it doesn't exist. It's saying that there
is no dark matter. What we're seeing is really just
that inertia doesn't scale the way we think it does exactly.
It's more similar to Mond the idea that gravity changes
over very very large distances. You're right, it doesn't explain

(45:40):
dark matter. It explains the mysteries that originated the ideas
of dark matter, but without dark matter. So it's an
alternative to dark matter, and some people actually like it
better than Mond. Mond members the theory that gravity works
differently at different distances. But Mind has a sort of
arbitrary parameter, and it says like below some acceleration, and

(46:00):
gravity works differently than above some acceleration. People don't like
when it's like an arbitrary number in a theory like
why that number? Why not something else? And so people
have argued that quantized inertia is a more elegant explanation
for this because it doesn't have this arbitrary parameter in it.
But then again, also it doesn't really work, so yeah,

(46:21):
so um and and is it well known that this
theory doesn't work mathematically or is it just like a setback, like, oh,
you have this error, but you know, eventually they might
be able to fix that error, Like why are we
still talking about this if the math doesn't work? We're
talking about ever? Two reasons. One is that a bunch
of listeners wrote in and saying, hey, what is this
theory of quantized innertia? I keep hearing about it because

(46:43):
the main proponent of it has been successful in like
giving ted talks and writing public articles and getting attention
for it. So it's an idea that's out there in
the community about like explaining this deep mystery of inertia.
I don't think that it works. I think most mainstream
physicists think it has big problems with it. That doesn't
mean it's raw long, it doesn't mean that those problems
might not be solvable at some point in the future.

(47:04):
But as it stands today, it's sort of like a
vague idea that doesn't really hang together to actually explain
anything I see. So like the specific ideation or instance
of it right now doesn't seem to quite work. But
it's still an interesting idea to think that maybe what
we think is stuff like dark matter, or maybe the
way we can explain things like inertia is you know,

(47:27):
matter and energies interaction with the quantized fields and the
creation of these event horizons. That's the idea that maybe
is still sticking around. Yeah, and it's important to remember
that we can't solve these problems all at once. He's
taking out a really big problem like what is inertia,
and you don't expect somebody to come up with the
complete explanation in their basement all by themselves. And the

(47:49):
way the process works is somebody has an idea which
sort of takes you in a certain direction and maybe
doesn't work, and five years later somebody comes up with
another idea and maybe solve the problem and makes it
work or brings you closer. So it's sort of this
iterative search. It's not like evolution, where theory has to
work at every stage to survive. We can keep a
theory around even if it's not quite working yet because
it might potentially come together later. Al Right, Well, it

(48:12):
sounds like an interesting idea that might solve a pretty
fundamental question about our universe. Why do things have inertia?
Because without inertia, the universe would be totally different, right,
Without inertia, things would be pretty chaotic. Yeah, our entire
experience of the universe would be very different without inertia.
Inertia is a basic property of matter and motion, and

(48:34):
yet it's something we still don't really understand. So I
love when people take on these deep questions and think
out of the box and try to combine ideas they've
heard in the ways that might explain them. Doesn't mean
that their first idea will be right, but it's definitely
the kind of thing that's worth pursuing, right right. I
think what you just said is that inertia is a
good thing. Right, Am I getting some of that sweet

(48:56):
big inertia money. I'm getting the money to turn you alright,
you don't get a cut, alright, put me on your
list of converts. I' pro inertia. Al right. Well, hopefully
these ideas fit inside your head and maybe nudged them
with a little bit of inertia, a little bit of
momentum to think differently about the world around you and

(49:17):
about how interesting things that we maybe never thought about
could explain why things are the way they are. And too,
those young scientists out there being encouraged because there are
still deep and basic questions about the universe. We do
not know the institute. Somebody out there and will figure
these things out. It might be even those of you
sitting in your pajamas at home. Well, we hope you

(49:38):
enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, see you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained
the universe. Is a production of I Heart Radio. For
more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Io, guests, or wherever you listen to

(50:02):
your favorite shows. H