Could a huge void cause the illusion of dark energy?

Daniel and Jorge talk about whether our galaxy is in the middle of a giant void that could have fooled us into thinking the expansion of the Universe is accelerating.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 11 (02:38):
Hey, Daniel, what are we talking about today?

Speaker 1 (02:40):
On the episode, we are talking about avoid.

Speaker 11 (02:43):
As in you're gonna avoid my questions?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
No voids as in vast empty spaces.

Speaker 11 (02:52):
Is there a scientist that discovered them? And if so,
is it kind of a scam because you just discovered nothing.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
I'd love to get famous for discuss for nothing. That's
basically what I've done my whole career.

Speaker 11 (03:02):
Same here, same here.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
For that you got the no Prize instead of the
Nobel Prize.

Speaker 11 (03:07):
Oh, you don't get any bells and whistles, so you
do get the Nobel Prize.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
I think I want to avoid myself with these jokes.

Speaker 11 (03:14):
Oh avoid. Hi am Jorge mccartoonez, an author of Oliver's
Great Big Universe.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
at UC Irvine, and I got into this business to
make radical, universe changing discoveries. But I haven't made any.

Speaker 11 (03:45):
The whole reason we're here, it has been all for nothing.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Well, you know, research has no guarantees. You could go
out there into the vast plane of undiscovered territory and
find all sorts of incredible stuff or just nothing. We
have no promises from nature.

Speaker 11 (04:01):
Well, Daniel, you sound a little defeated. Did you have
a lot of years ahead of you in your career?

Speaker 1 (04:08):
No, I'm not defeated. I rolled the dice and I
knew there were risks, and you know, physics is a
lot of fun along the way even if you don't
make a big discovery.

Speaker 11 (04:16):
But don't you have like at least twenty thirty years
of work still or are you just planning to coast
the rest of the way.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
On adviceive counsel. I'm going to not answer that question.

Speaker 11 (04:29):
You're like, it's called being emeritus.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
I'm rapidly approaching emeritus.

Speaker 11 (04:35):
Well, whether you're emeritus or active, Welcome to our podcast,
Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
In which we guide you through all the incredible mind
shattering discoveries of the last few hundred years that have
revealed a universe that's weird, that's bizarre, that's strange, and
yet somehow maybe understandable, And we also try to guide
you through potential discoveries in the next few years, in
the next decades, may be made by me or my team,
or by some of the listeners to this podcast or

(05:04):
their great great grandchildren. Whenever those discoveries come, we want
you to be prepared for them by understanding what we
do and don't know about the universe.

Speaker 11 (05:14):
That's right, because it is an incredibly huge and amazing
universe out there, full of incredible phenomenon, astounding events, and
also a whole lot of mouthing.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Indeed, the universe really is something, even if that something
is often nothing. But there's lots of mysteries remaining about
the nature of the universe. As much as we've discovered
in the last one hundred years, about how big the
universe is, about how it's expanding, about how that expansion
is accelerating, about how galaxies swirl around invisible dark matter,

(05:44):
there's still a lot of pieces that don't fit together,
which tells us probably the next few decades or few
hundred years will reveal even more mind blowing discoveries about
the nature of our cosmos.

Speaker 12 (05:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (05:57):
The amazing thing about this universe and about science is
that all the pieces are out there for us to see,
for us to discover, for us to observe, and for someone,
maybe you, maybe us, to put it all together and
make sense of this amazing cosmos. Oh wait, wait, sorry, sorry,
not Daniel, he's already given up.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Hey, you know, if it falls to my lap, I'm
not saying no.

Speaker 11 (06:18):
But yeah, well, it's not like you just throw it
in the trash.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
You know. The universe is like a giant mystery novel.
Often all of the clues are out there staring us
in the face. It just requires the insight, that moment
of clarity to see how it all fits together into
one coherent story. And currently we're struggling a little bit
to understand all of those clues to tell a story
that makes sense to us and that holds together mathematically.

(06:46):
And it could be that some elements of our current
story are drastically wrong. We've certainly done that lots of
times in history, gone down the wrong path for decades
or even centuries before having to backtrack and come up
with a completely new, radical interpretation of how the universe works.

Speaker 11 (07:02):
Yeah, leaving all those other scientists to have discovered nothing.
But all the clues are out there, but one of
the problems is that they're really far away. That's because
the universe is full of nothing, a lot of big
empty void in spaces that are preventing us from reaching
and touching some of the important clues that are out there.
But there is maybe the idea that some of these

(07:24):
huge voids of nothingness could maybe hold the answer to
one of the biggest questions in the universe.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
That's right, Maybe the biggest question in modern science today
is what is driving the expansion of the universe? Why
is it going faster and faster every year. We have
a placeholder idea we call dark energy, but as you'll hear,
it's not even really a single coherent concept and we
might need completely new explanations for it.

Speaker 11 (07:52):
So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
could a huge void cost the illusion of dark energy?
So the wait, what are you saying, Daniel that dark
energy is not something? And in fact it might be nothing.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Wouldn't it be a huge dramatic plot twist. If the
answer the biggest question in science was nothing.

Speaker 11 (08:20):
I feel like we can already preview that, right, Like
what came before the universe? Nothing? What's going to happen
after the universe? Nothing? We're just to blip in the
nothing is.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
I think the answer to both of those questions is
actually we don't know or we have no idea, which
is a little bit different from nothing. And you know, philosophically,
nothing is a complicated concept, like what does it even mean? Right?
We've talked on the podcast about how space is never
really empty and all of it has quantum fields and
it So what does nothing even really mean? It's actually

(08:52):
quite a deep philosophical question.

Speaker 11 (08:54):
It is very tricky.

Speaker 12 (08:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (08:55):
For example, I have a doctorate in philosophy, but I
know nothing about philosophy.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
So you're saying you know nothing. Wow, you're an expert
in nothing.

Speaker 11 (09:05):
Well, I guess that's something.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
I would say. I'm no expert in nothing. Nothing is
actually quite complex.

Speaker 11 (09:12):
I lost track of the negative, is there?

Speaker 13 (09:15):
No?

Speaker 11 (09:15):
You didn't No, I didn't No, I didn't not know
nothing about something?

Speaker 1 (09:21):
There you go. Well, let's check in with the listeners
to see if they don't not know nothing about nothing?

Speaker 13 (09:25):
Yea.

Speaker 11 (09:25):
As usual, Daniel went out there to ask people if
they think maybe a huge void could be causing what
we see as dark energy.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
Thanks very much to everybody who sent in their answers.
I would love to hear your voice on the podcast.
That's right, I'm talking to you. You've been listening for years,
but never chimed in. Today's the day. Write to me
two questions at Danielanjorge dot com.

Speaker 11 (09:48):
So think about it for a second. Do you think
dark energy could be explained by a huge amount of nothingness.
Here's what people had to say.

Speaker 10 (09:57):
I don't think so. Even without the accelerated expansion of
the universe, it's still possible to have huge voids in space.
Perhaps if we were able to detect that a huge
void wasn't there before, we might be able to use
that as evidence towards the cosmological constant, but I think
that would take a long time.

Speaker 13 (10:17):
Perhaps the void is filled with dark energy which we
cannot yet detect, So perhaps these areas could be responsible
for the accelerated expansion rate, if only we could learn
what dark energy truly is.

Speaker 14 (10:28):
I'm going to assume in your definition of space. You
ascribe to quantum field theory and avoid in space would
be an area where the fields from all the fundamental
particles are somehow blocked from this area. One could posit
that some of these fields might feel a sort of
pressure to fill the void, causing an expansion. So sure,
I'll say it could.

Speaker 15 (10:50):
Aha dark energy explained. Sure it could be space expanding
into a void. But then where is that void, what
is that void made out of and how is it
expanding into it? And what does that even mean? I
don't know about this one.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I'm confused by that comment. What's the difference between a
huge amount of nothingness and a small amount of nothingness?
If they're all nothing, it's like ten times zero versus
one time zero.

Speaker 11 (11:16):
I think the difference is a nothing.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Nice. Well, I like these listeners answer some really well
informed thoughts here.

Speaker 11 (11:26):
You seem surprised, Daniel, No, I'm impressed as usual, had
you given up on our listeners as well.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
I think your reaction is based on nothing. I have
nothing but respect for these listeners, their efforts to understand
the universe, their willingness to contribute. I'm in awe.

Speaker 11 (11:41):
Well, they do have some interesting answers here, And it's
kind of an interesting question that maybe the biggest part
of what we see in the universe, ninety five percent
of all the mass and energy in the universe, maybe
is not really something or mass or energy. Maybe it's
just something that can be easily explained with nothing.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, that's right. In order to explain this accelerating expansion
of the universe, we've had to add into our equations
something very weird, very awkward, something we really struggle with.
And so people have been working for a long time
to find alternative explanations, sort of more prosaic ideas that
would explain the strange things we see out there in
the universe.

Speaker 11 (12:21):
My question, Daniel, is why didn't we think of this before?
I mean, you see something mysterious, shouldn't the first thing
you ask be maybe it's nothing.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, it's a good question. This particular idea that we're
going to talk about today is uncomfortable in other ways
for scientists. It violates some like philosophical principles that they
really hope the universe respects, and that's why it's a
little bit weird and a little bit uncomfortable to consider.
But hey, sometimes when the universe confronts you with data.
You just got to accept it.

Speaker 11 (12:52):
I mean, after like twenty thirty years of trying to
explain it in other ways.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I guess, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 11 (12:58):
Just because it makes you uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
I like that the universe makes us uncomfortable. I like
when we go what it doesn't make any sense at all?
How could the universe be that way? Those the moments
we really learn something, when we really have to confront
some fundamental assumption that is probably wrong.

Speaker 11 (13:14):
Right right, you like it, but only if you're sitting
comfortably in your couch, right.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah exactly. Let me get comfortable before you make me uncomfortable.

Speaker 11 (13:23):
Yeah, let's draw online here. I want to be physically
comfortable but intellectually uncomfortable. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yes, serve me some chocolate while you tell me the
results of this study. Yes, absolutely, a little bit of
sugar makes the medicine.

Speaker 11 (13:37):
Go down, right, right, you've given up even getting up
up for your couch. But anyways, Daniel, for those of
us who are sitting in our couches, wait to hear
the answer. What don't you start us with the basics?
What is this thing that we call dark energy?

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yeah, So the thing that we're struggling to explain is
something we call dark energy. But dark energy is not
really like a theory as much as a description of
something we observe in the universe for which we don't
have a great explanation, and that's the fact that the
universe is expanding, and it's not just expanding the same
rate every year. It's expanding at an accelerated rate. It

(14:16):
seems like the distances between clusters of galaxies is increasing,
so that's expansion, but it's increasing faster and faster every year.
This is something we discovered about twenty five years ago now,
when we first learned how to figure out how far
away things are in the universe, and it was really
a shocker. You know, people before that were wondering how

(14:37):
quickly the expansion of the universe was slowing down. That
was the big question in science because you have the
universe expanding when it's very very young, but then it's
filled with matter. There's all this heavy stuff in the universe,
galaxies and black holes and whatever that tends to pull
stuff back together, and so people were wondering, hey, is
there enough gravity to pull stuff back together to make
like a reverse big bang like a big crunch, or

(15:00):
they're not enough and it's just going to gradually slow
down for a long time to keep drifting apart. And
when they went out to measure it, they discovered, shocker,
neither of those were true. The universe preferred secret answer, see,
which is that things are getting further apart faster and faster.
So dark energy is sort of like our placeholder name
to explain how that might be happening.

Speaker 11 (15:20):
So, I think we've known that the universe is expanding
for about one hundred years, right, But you're saying it's
only recently we figured out it's accelerating.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, if you want to go further back into history,
around the time that Einstein was developing the theory of relativity,
we thought the universe was static. We thought that there
was just like our galaxy hanging out there in empty
space and that was it. Then Edwin Hubble and Henrietta
Levitt developed this way to measure the distance to things
in the sky to tell how far away they were,

(15:49):
And what they discovered is that some smudges we saw
in the sky that we thought were just like clouds
of gas in our galaxy were actually much further away.
There were further than any of the stars in the sky.
There were actually other galaxies. And on top of that,
those galaxies were moving away from us. So we discovered
that the universe was not only just our galaxy, it
was filled with galaxies, and that the universe was expanding.

(16:12):
Everything was running away from us. That was about one
hundred years ago.

Speaker 11 (16:15):
And how do we know that we're moving away from
us from the red shifting the Doppler effect.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Yeah, exactly. You can look at the light from those
galaxies and you can see how it's frequency shifted things
that are moving away from us. As you said, the
Doppler effect, The light from those things is shifted in frequency,
and you can tell because we have an idea for
what frequency of light should be emitted by galaxies to
have these particular fingerprints, and so when they're shifted over

(16:40):
twenty nanometers or one hundred nanimeters or whatever in wavelength,
then we can tell. And that we use that to
measure the velocity.

Speaker 11 (16:48):
And so back then, did we think or measure that
everything was moving away from us at the same speed
or we just didn't know enough to know at what
rate things were moving away from us.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Back then, Hubble's discovery allowed us to measure the distance
to other galaxies, but sort of only in us nearby sphere.
Hubble couldn't tell that the universe was expanding and accelerating
because he couldn't measure the distance to far away enough stuff.
He and Henriette Levitt developed this technique to measure the
distance to stuff looking at these particular variable stars called sephids,

(17:20):
but you had to be able to see them, and
if galaxies were far enough away, then you couldn't see
those stars in the galaxies, so he could sort of
only see a little bubble. But about twenty five years
ago we developed a new technique that allowed us to
see much further and to measure the distance much further,
and so then we could see the change over time
as we look back into the history of the universe,
and we noticed this effect. So Hubble couldn't see it

(17:42):
because he didn't have enough data. He didn't have a
long enough lever arm in history to see things changing.

Speaker 11 (17:48):
It was being able to tell how far away things
were and then measuring on top of that their velocity
that let us figure out that things we're accelerating.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Yeah, exactly. It was the development of this technique using
type onea supernova supernova of course the implosion of stars
leading to an extraordinarily bright explosion, so bright that they
outshine the galaxies they're in. And so you can measure
these things for very very distant galaxies and understanding the
physics of it and understanding how bright they are at
their source without knowing how far away they are. Let's

(18:19):
you figure out how far away they are by looking
at how bright they are here on Earth, because things
here are dimmer when they arrive, so that'll lets you
know how far away things are. And that's absolutely crucial
because knowing how far away something is tells you when
the light left it right. And so as we look
further into space, we're looking further back in time. So
that's how we can see the history of the expansion

(18:41):
of the universe. We can see how fast is stuff
moving away from us that's close by i e. Recent history,
and then we can ask how fast it was stuff
moving away from us earlier in the universe by looking
further away. So this is absolutely crucial to understanding how
dark energy works and also how it might be wrong.
What we see is that the expansion is faster for

(19:02):
things that are closer to us, and we interpret that
to mean the expansion is speeding up. So deeper into space,
the expansion looks slower. Closer to us, the expansion looks faster.
That's what leads us to conclude that the expansion is accelerating.

Speaker 11 (19:16):
So things we can tell are really far away don't
have as much of a red shift as the things
that we can see that are closer to us.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
They're further away, so they're actual distance. The red shift
is larger, but hasn't accumulated over time, right, And so
it's the acceleration is like the slope of that velocity curve.
So those things are very far away, they are very
very red shifted, but the change in that slope we
can see over time as we look at these things
from further away to closer in.

Speaker 11 (19:45):
All right, So then that tells us that the universe
is expanding more and more rapidly. And we have a
name for that, which is dark energy, or at least
the thing that might be causing this acceleration. That's what
we call dark energy.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Yeah, we call it dark energy. And I feel like
there's a lot of confusion out there about what we
do and don't know. And I think this is really
interesting insight into sort of the way physics works. Like
we often begin thinking about an idea before we have
it all worked out. We just sort of like start
fleshing it out, the way you might like design your house,
starting from what you wanted to look on the outside

(20:18):
before you figured it out, like, Hey, what are all
the structural supports? And can I really have pipes over here?
And is it possible to have a shower on the
roof or whatever. You know, you haven't always figured out
the details, some of which might be absolutely essential. And
so if you look at the beginning days of.

Speaker 11 (20:32):
The development, I know every house you'd have a shower
on the roof.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
My wife is a big fan of an outside shower.
She's always wanted to put one in. So I'm always suggesting,
let's put it on the roof. And I don't know
why that's not a popular idea. But anyway, if you
look at the history of the development of big ideas
and physics, this is how it works. And so we've
done that with dark energy. We're like, wow, this is weird.
How do we explain this? Okay, first, let's give it
a cool name. Now, let's start to think about how

(20:58):
it might be possible, and we definitely don't have all
the details worked out. We have some conception of how
in general relativity you might generate this effect, we definitely
don't have all the pieces together.

Speaker 11 (21:10):
And we say that it's ninety five percent of the energy, mass,
and energy of the whole universe, because that's how much
energy you need to explain something that's accelerating the entire
observable universe.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, it's something like seventy percent. Dark matter and dark
energy together make ninety five percent, but the dark energy
portion is seventy percent. Yeah, and you're exactly right. And
the way we get that seventy percent is a few
different ways. But one way is to say, all right,
how in general relativity could you cause the universe to expand?
Because usually gravity causes things to come together. Right, you

(21:45):
have two masses in space, they curve space, they tend
to move together. But general relativity is much more complex
than Newtonian gravity includes all sorts of complicated terms and
effects in there. And one of the possible effects in
general relativity is if you have a field in space,
the electromagnetic field or the weak field or the electron field.
We know space is filled with these fields. But if

(22:05):
these fields have a lot of potential energy, meaning they
have like stored energy inside of them because of their
configuration the way the Higgs field does. For example, having
a lot of potential energy in space will generate this expansion,
just like part of the mathematics of general relativity, you
have a negative sign in front of this term in
the equations, and so it generates expansion of space. So

(22:26):
if you had a field with a lot of potential energy,
it would generate the expansion. So we calculate how much
potential energy do you need, and that comes out to
be about seventy percent of the energy in the universe.

Speaker 11 (22:36):
So this whole idea that dark energy is seventy percent
of the universe comes from the assumption, if I'm understanding right,
the assumption that what's causing the acceleration of the universe
is something kind of baked into space itself.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Yeah, exactly, And there's some supporting evidence for it, and
there's also a bunch of stuff that doesn't work about it.
Like one supporting piece of evidence is that we can
go out and measure all of the energy in the
universe because it affects the overall curvature of the universe, like,
is the universe overall flat or curve negatively or curved positively.
That depends very sensitively on how much energy is there

(23:09):
in the universe. And we go out and we measure that,
and then we measure the energy out there in the
universe to be exactly what we need to make it
flat and to add up very nicely with this seventy
percent number. So the dark matter, the normal matter, and
the dark energy in the universe all adds up perfectly
to make the universe flat, which is what we observe.
That's very cool.

Speaker 11 (23:27):
Oh interesting, All right, well, let's get into the things
that don't work about dark energy and why. Maybe nothingness
could be the key to understanding how it all works.
So let's dig into that. But first let's take a
quick break.

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a little magic.

Speaker 17 (25:36):
Listen to the Taken a Walk podcast on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
Hey, I'm Jackie Thomas, the host of a brand new
Black Effect original series, black Lit, the podcast for diving
deep into the rich world of black literature. I'm Jackie Thomas,
and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant
community of the terry enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating
our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for

(26:07):
those who listen to audio books while commuting or reading errands,
for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge
between the chapters, from thought provoking novels to powerful poetry,
We'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, We'll
dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of

(26:28):
the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to
amplify the voices of black writers and to bring their
words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 6 (26:45):
I'm doctor Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcasts.
The US elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier
and more divided than ever, But in a new Copple
season of my podcast, I'll share with the science really
shows that were surprisingly more united than most people think.

Speaker 8 (27:03):
We all know something is wrong in our culture and
our politics, and that we need to do better, and
that we can do better.

Speaker 6 (27:10):
With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamiale Zaki.

Speaker 16 (27:13):
It's really tragic.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
If cynicism were appeal, it'd be a poison.

Speaker 6 (27:17):
We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with,
are more generous than we assume.

Speaker 20 (27:22):
My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot
of us are actually looking for a way to disagree
and still be in relationship with each other.

Speaker 6 (27:31):
All that on the Happiness Lab Listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 12 (27:47):
We think of Franklin is the doddling dude flying a
kite and no rain. But those tweamens are the most
important scientific discoveries of the time.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
I'm ev'ing right left.

Speaker 21 (27:57):
Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with
biographer Walter Isaacson. This time we're diving into the story
of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted
off from history.

Speaker 12 (28:08):
His media empire makes him the most successful self made
business person in America.

Speaker 11 (28:13):
I mean, he was never.

Speaker 12 (28:15):
Early to bed, an early to rise type person. He's
enormously famous. Women shut wearing their hair in what was
called the coiffor a la Franklin.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
And who's more relevant now than ever.

Speaker 12 (28:28):
The only other person who could have possibly been the
first president would have been Benjamin Franklin, but he's too
old and once Washington do it.

Speaker 21 (28:37):
Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 11 (28:53):
All right, we're talking about dark energy and giant voids
in the universe. And could those two things be related.
Could dark energy just be a whole bunch of h nothing.
Could it be explained by perhaps the absence of things
in space. So we talked a little bit about dark energy,
what it is, what we know about it. But Daniel,

(29:14):
there's something wrong with that picture of dark energy. What's
wrong with it.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
What's wrong with it is that we have no idea
where all this potential energy would be coming from. In
order to have the universe expand and accelerate at the
rate that it has been, we need space to be
filled with some kind of potential energy.

Speaker 11 (29:31):
Well, here's a question like, does dark energy need to
be something that's like a field or baked into space,
or could it be some maybe hidden property of gravity
perhaps or electromagnetism, or is that the same thing.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
It could definitely be something totally brand new, some new
kind of physics we've never seen before, or change in
general relativity. That's definitely possible, and there are people out
there working on other crazy ideas. But so the mainstream
effort is to say, like, well, can we incorporate this
into general relativity, because it's kind of interesting that general
relativity has this capacity already it's something that Einstein's relativity

(30:07):
can do expand space and accelerate that expansion. The problem
is that to make that happen, you need to fill
space with all of this energy. Either you say, look,
that's just the way it is. You just put a
number in there, and that's called the cosmological constant, and
you say, like, it's not explained, that's just the nature
of space. It just has this energy kind of unsatisfying,

(30:27):
or you find the source of that energy you say, oh,
look it's this particular quantum field that can do it.
And we look through our list of quantum fields we ask, well,
how much potential energy do they have? And one of
them has a lot of potential energy. The Higgs field
is filled with potential energy. Remember that most of the
fields in the universe like to relax down to zero.
They like to be in their lowest energy state. But

(30:49):
the Higgs field is really weird, has this wrinkle in it,
so it sort of gets stuck at high potential energy.
When the universe is cooling. The Higgs field doesn't collapse
down to zero the way the other ones do. It
has all this potential energy all right, So this is
really exciting right, dark energy needs some field filled with
potential energy to explain the accelerating expansion in the universe,
and over here we have a field filled with potential energy. Awesome.

(31:13):
So people sat down to do the calculations and say,
does the Higgs field have enough energy to explain the
accelerating expansion in the universe. The answer is no, and
it's not even close. The answer is off by ten
to the one hundred and twenty. So the fields we
have can definitely not explain the expansion of the universe
as we see it.

Speaker 11 (31:33):
But I guess if it's not a field, if it's
something else, would it still account for seventy percent of
the universe or like, what are some of these other
things that could.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Be ooh not a field, man, That blows my mind.
Currently our theories of the universe are that everything's a field, right,
Like all the particles are ripples in fields, and all
the energy out there is stored in some kind of field.
So mostly people are developing like new kinds of fields.
Maybe there's some other kind of field, not the Higgs field,
something else out there in the universe that contains all

(32:03):
of this energy, and then you have to explain like
why we wouldn't have seen it and it has no
other effects that we could detect. For example, that's the
way a lot of people are going. Non field explanations
for the accelerating expansion in the universe. Those are pretty
far out of the mainstream, but you know, it could
be right. Physicists tend to work like within the framework
of the ideas we have. Doesn't mean that that's where

(32:23):
we're going to find the answer.

Speaker 11 (32:25):
Or what if it's like a part of gravity itself
or general relativity, like maybe gravity gets it turns the
negative if you get really far away from something, would
that still be a field?

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Technically, I don't think that's compatible with general relativity. So
in order to have that be the explanation, you have
to change general relativity. And the thing people like about
this dark energy framework is that you don't have to
change general relativity because it's been tested up and down
the wazoo and it really is accurate for huge distances
or huge distances yeah, I mean, it explains an enormous

(32:57):
amount about the structure of the universe as we see it,
and so changing general relativity is pretty uncomfortable, except in
places where it hasn't been tested like inside black holes
or the very very early universe, things we haven't been
able to observe yet, basically where quantum mechanics arises. So
it's difficult to make changes to general relativity without messing

(33:18):
up a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 11 (33:20):
That would just be uncomfortable and also require a lot
of work.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
And it could be the path too huge discoveries. But
you know, the way physics works is, hey, let's try
the easiest thing first. And so there is this door
open in general relativity, like, let's see if we can
explain it using the framework we have, which requires discovering
this field that explains where all the energy is and
that we don't have an answer for.

Speaker 11 (33:43):
So then that's the problem with our current theories about
dark energy is that you think it requires a field,
but we don't know what field it could be because
it needs to have more energy than anything we know about.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, that's the major problem, sort of the conceptual problem.
There are also a few smaller problems, experimental problems, like
our picture of the universe as being mostly dark energy
and a big chunk dark matter and a little bit
of baryonic matter and normal matter. It explains an enormous amount.
It explains how the universe started out filled with radiation
and then that radiation got diluted and it was matter dominated,

(34:14):
and it was expanding, but that expansion was slowing down.
But the expansion led to more dark energy, which then
accelerated the expansion, and the universe became dark energy dominated
like six billion years ago. It's an amazing, beautiful story
that explains an enormous amount, but it doesn't quite explain everything.
Like there's this discrepancy between our observation of how fast
the universe is expanding now and how fast it was

(34:37):
expanding the very early days. This is called the Hubble
tension because the Hubble constant is kind of a measure
of the expansion rate, and that's not something we can
really explain. We don't really understand how the expansion the
early universe connects for the expansion in the late times.
At first, it was very fuzzy measurements. We thought, all,
we'll figure it out. But as we make more and
more precise measurements, they don't really agree. So that might

(34:59):
require a tweak to this, or it might be a
crack that undermines the whole theory. So it's not like
it's a perfect description of everything we see, even if
you knew where this energy was coming from.

Speaker 11 (35:09):
So then I guess what's the alternative if it's not
something like a field.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
So one of the alternatives is to question one of
the basic assumptions of this whole picture of the universe
that we've been talking about. We usually talk about the
universe in terms of density, Like when we say seventy
percent or twenty five percent, we're saying, take a random
chunk of the universe, how much of that is dark
energy or how much of that is normal energy. When
you do that, you're kind of making an implicit assumption

(35:34):
that all chunks of the universe are about the same.
The stuff is spread out through the universe basically evenly,
like we know, it's not completely evenly. There's definitely clumpiness,
like we're a big clump in the universe. The Earth,
the Sun, the galaxy is a clump. But that if
you zoom out far enough, the universe is evenly spread
out on the giant scales. The universe is basically the
same everywhere. That's kind of a philosophical preference. They call

(35:58):
it the cosmological principle or Copernican principle. But one of
the ideas to explain the accelerating expansion of the universe
is to say, maybe it's not expanding in an accelerating way.
Maybe it just looks like it is because we're stuck
at the center of a huge void where there's less
stuff in this bubble than outside of it, and that
gives us the illusion that the universe's expansion is accelerating,

(36:19):
even if it isn't. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Speaker 11 (36:22):
Wait a minute, how does this even work? Is the
idea then that maybe outside of the observable universe there's
a whole bunch of nothingness for a while. Is that
kind of what the picture you're thinking about?

Speaker 1 (36:33):
The idea is that the bubble we're living in, even
though it has galaxies and stars and whatever, is less
dense than the stuff outside some bubble.

Speaker 11 (36:41):
But then wouldn't we be able to see those things
outside the bubble and tell if it's more or less dense.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Yeah, and we can get into the observations and whether
this idea actually lines up with what we see in
the universe. But if this bubble exists, it'd be a
little tricky to see because we'd be looking really really
far out. Sort of three D map of the universe
is best for close by stuff, and it sort of
fades out a little bit as you get further out.
It's hard to make these big three D maps of

(37:09):
the universe. At this void, if it exists, would basically
describe everything we see so far. So it's sort of
suggesting that out there in the deep dark reaches of space,
where we haven't really mapped very well yet, galaxies might
be a lot denser than they are here. Then that
might be confusing us about the expansion of the universe.

Speaker 11 (37:28):
Wait, I think you're saying that maybe you know the
galaxies we've seen to come to the conclusion that the
universe is expanding in an accelerated way. You know, we
use galaxies we've seen, but maybe those galaxies we seen
don't go all the way to the edge of the
observable universe. Is that what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
We've used those galaxies and they do go all the
way to the edge of the observable universe, but it
might be the things change as you go from here
to the edge of the observable universe, and that could
be confusing us about this accelerated expansion. The key concept is,
remember that we decided that the expansion the universe was
accelerating because we saw that changing as we look further
and further into space, right, and we decided that's because

(38:07):
things are changing over time. But what if things aren't
changing over time, they're just changing over space. Right. What
if the universe is different as you go further away
than it is here. What if the universe is denser
further away and then it is closer by, and that's
what's creating this effect. We see an effect in space,
and we're assuming that it means an effect over time.

(38:29):
But what if it's just an effect over space. What
if the universe is different further away.

Speaker 11 (38:34):
I see what you're saying. I think you're saying that
some of those galaxies were using to measure the expansion
of the universe, maybe where they're not where we think
they are.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
I'm saying that we see faster expansion close by and
slower expansion further away, right, And we interpret that to
mean that there was slower expansion earlier in the universe,
and there's faster expansion later in the universe. So the
expansion is accelerating. But what if the universe is just
denser further away and so it's not expanding as fast
because there's more gravity it's holding stuff together. And so

(39:05):
what if we're confusing nearby faster expansion for expansion increasing
more recently. Right what if it's not increasing more recently,
it's just we're in a bubble that's expanding faster. If
you go further away from us in the universe, things
are expanding more slowly because the universe is denser. There
there's more gravity to hold it together. So instead of saying, oh,

(39:25):
the universe was expanding slower further away, back further in time,
and it's expanding faster closer to us more recently, what
if it's not a function of time, it's just a
function of space because we're in this bubble that happens
to be under dense and so has faster expansion because
it's less stuff to hold it together.

Speaker 11 (39:47):
I feel like my mind is a void right now.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Daniel. Yeah, if you have more stuff in the universe,
if these there's more galaxies, for example, then there's more
gravity to battle against this expansion. Stuff stays closer.

Speaker 11 (39:57):
Together, so there is still an expansion of the un.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Yes, there would still be an expansion, but it wouldn't
be accelerating. It's just the expansion depends on how much
stuff you have around you, which makes perfect sense.

Speaker 11 (40:07):
So you're saying that there is an expansion of the
universe that's still happening. Yeah, but you're saying, maybe what
if it's maybe even and not accelerating. Maybe it's just
a constant, steady expansion of the universe, which would still
be a mystery.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Though right now you can have the expansion of the
universe without any sort of like weird dark energy in
the universe.

Speaker 11 (40:28):
Okay, so then we are assuming still a steady expansion.
But you're saying that maybe the acceilerit that expansion looks
faster around us, even though it's not. It just looks faster.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
It is faster around us. It's just that it's faster
around us because there isn't as much stuff, not because
the expansion is changing over time. There's less stuff near us,
and so there's less stuff to hold stuff together, and
so that's why it's expanding faster closer than further away.

Speaker 11 (40:54):
Oh, because you're saying that gravity somehow affects the expansion
of space.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Absolutely, Yes, gravity hold stuff together. If there was more
stuff in the universe, then things expand more solely because
gravity is pulling on them. Right.

Speaker 11 (41:05):
Well, but space itself, it doesn't hold space together, or
does it. Is that what you're saying, that it somehow
holds space itself together?

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Absolutely, The more stuff you have in the universe, the
slower things move apart from each other. Remember, we talk
about creating a new space, but really we're talking about
increasing the distance between galaxies, and that's all we can measure, right,
Space itself is not something where you can measure distances
relative to space. It's always distance is measured between objects.

Speaker 11 (41:29):
The things are being held together because in the same
way that I'm being held together with the Earth or
are we talking about some you know, relativistic something something.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
No, the first way, Yeah, the same way that you're
being held near the Earth.

Speaker 11 (41:45):
Oh okay, but I always thought that, like I'm being
held to Earth, and so I'm not expanding away from
the Earth. But the space that we're both sitting in
is expanding.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah, there's two effects happening there. Right. Gravity is holding
you together and dark energy is expanding that space. But
gravity wind because gravity is much more powerful. Over great distances,
gravity weakens, right, and you can't hold things together, so
dark energy takes over.

Speaker 11 (42:08):
Right. But like right here on Earth, I'm sitting here
on Earth and being held together on Earth. I'm not
expanding away from the Earth, but sort of like somebody's
moving the chair under me, or somebody's stretching the rug
under me, the space we're sitting in is expanding, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, that's a helpful way to think about it, but
it can also be misleading, right, Like, really, what we're
saying there is if you deleted the Earth and replaced
it with like a point particle proton, for example, would
dark energy be increasing the space between you and that
point particle that proton? Yes, absolutely, because there is dark
energy everywhere. That's the point of that comparison. But these

(42:40):
are like two things happening in the equations at the
same time. The net effect, because gravity dominates, is that
you and the Earth stay close to each other. You
can't really separate them out and say they're both simultaneously happening.
It's like two force vectors that you add together. If
you have a huge amount of force on an object
from two directions, it adds up to zero force, right,
this net zero force. You can talk about what would

(43:02):
happen if you were removed one, or you could talk
about what happened if you remove the other, but you
can't really say that there's any force on that object
because they balance each other out in the same way.
Dark energy tends to push things apart and curvature tends
to pull things together. So you could talk about what
would happen if you only had one or the other,
but really what's happening to you is a combination of
the two.

Speaker 11 (43:23):
All right. So then the idea is that maybe we're
wrong that the universe is expanding faster and faster. It's
just sort of looks like it because things are denser
out there, and so they're moving apart from each other less.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, exactly. So as we look further into the universe,
which is further back in time, we see less expansion.
But maybe that expansion isn't changing with time. Maybe it's
fixed with time, but it's happening less further away than
closer by because there's more stuff further away. Maybe we
happen to be in some huge bubble where the stuff

(43:57):
near us is under dance, this less stuff in our bubble,
and so things can expand further and further away because
there's less mass to sort of counteract that expansion.

Speaker 11 (44:07):
I guess what's confusing me is that if it's denser
out there in the far reaches of space, things are
being held together there. But wouldn't I still see an acceleration,
or not an acceleration from relative to me.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
An acceleration of the expansion.

Speaker 11 (44:23):
Yeah, Like I always thought that the acceleration of the
expansion is because like the thing I see really far
away is moving away from me slower than the things
that are closer to me.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
Yeah, that's exactly right. But maybe the reason things are
moving away from you closer is because of an under density,
not because of a change in the expansion over time. Right,
maybe everything has the same expansion over time. The things
that are farther away have a smaller expansion because of
the conditions over there, not because of some change in
the universe over time.

Speaker 13 (44:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
We can only see this one slice of the universe
in space and time. We can look further back time.
You can see the universe really far away as it
was a long time ago, and we don't know what
is that part of the universe like now, And so
we see this one particular slice where we can see
close by stuff recently and far away stuff a long
time ago. So it's hard to tell the difference between

(45:16):
things that change over space and things that change over time.
And we see a change in that story, and we
interpret that as a change over time, but it could
be that it's the same over time. It's just changing over.

Speaker 11 (45:26):
Space, meaning that we are measurements of the distance of
those things. How far away they are from us or
from each other is.

Speaker 1 (45:33):
Wrong, how far away they are from us? Yeah. Imagine
you looked out into the universe and you saw that
aliens on nearby planets were all eating white chocolate. And
as you look deeper and deeper into the universe, you discovered, oh,
they're all eating dark chocolate. And you say, well, oh, well,
that's older information. The dark chocolate information has taken a
long time to get here, and so maybe what's happened

(45:55):
over time is that everybody switched from dark chocolate to
white chocolate. And that explains why my older observations from
distant galaxies the aliens are eating dark chocolate, and my
recent observations from nearby galaxies. The aliens are eating white chocolate.
And then another scientist goes, no, no, no, maybe they
just prefer dark chocolate out there in the deep reaches
of space, and we live in a white chocolate bubble

(46:15):
where everybody seems to eat white chocolate. Those two explanations
both work. One is a change over space, the other
is a change over time, and we can't tell the
difference because we have this one set of observations linked
in space and time.

Speaker 11 (46:28):
I'm not sure adding flavor to the helping. So then
you're saying, like, maybe what's explaining dark energy is that
there's more stuff in the periphery of the universe. There's
more stuff in the perimeter of our vision mm hmmm,
or or of what we can see, yeah, exactly, but
still within the observable universe.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Still within the observable universe. Yes, of course, this is
a big idea, and if it's true, you have to
make sense of it and why we would be living
in the middle of this big void and what else
it would mean. And there's lots of ways we can
check this idea.

Speaker 11 (46:59):
All right, Well, let's dig into how we're testing this idea.
Is it a stretch or is it a whole bunch
of nothing as well? So let's dig into that, but
first let's take another quick break.

Speaker 17 (47:14):
I'm buzs Knight and I'm the host of the Taking
a Walk podcast Music History on Foot.

Speaker 18 (47:19):
John Oates Great songs endured, and I'm very proud and
happy to know that i was part of something that
will endure.

Speaker 17 (47:27):
The podcast is an audio diary of insightful conversations with
musicians and the inside stories behind their music.

Speaker 19 (47:34):
Russ Kunkle, The basic connection that I had with someone
that was great coming out of the Whiskey was David Crosby.
David I met David and Steven and Graham kind of
around the same time, basically through my wife Leah, who
is Cass Elliott's sister.

Speaker 17 (47:50):
The message of the podcast is simple, honest conversation with
musicians about the music they create. Mike Campbell of the Heartbreakers.

Speaker 13 (47:59):
It is correct.

Speaker 7 (48:00):
I rarely work things out. I like to go off
the cup and try to grab things out of the
air while you're playing the song and try to catch
a little magic.

Speaker 17 (48:07):
Listen to the Taking a Walk Podcast on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Hey, I'm Jackie Thomas, the host of a brand new
Black Effect original series, black Lit, the podcast for diving
deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jackie Thomas,
and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant
community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.

(48:35):
Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who
listen to audio books while commuting or running errands. For
those who find themselves seeking solad, wisdom, and refuge. Between
the chapters, from thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, We'll
explore the stories that shape our culture. Together. We'll dissect
classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the

(48:58):
brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify
the voices of Black writers and to bring their words
to life. Listen to black Lit on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 6 (49:15):
I'm doctor Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.
Is the US elections approach It can feel like we're
angrier and more divided than every but in a new
copable season of my podcast, I'll share with the science
really shows that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.

Speaker 8 (49:33):
We all know something is wrong in our culture and
our politics, and that we need to do better, and
that we can do better.

Speaker 6 (49:40):
With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamiale Zaki.

Speaker 16 (49:43):
It's really tragic.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison.

Speaker 6 (49:47):
We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with,
are more generous than we assume.

Speaker 20 (49:52):
My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot
of us are actually looking for a way to disagree
and be in relationships with each other.

Speaker 6 (50:02):
All that on the Happiness Lab, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 9 (50:16):
I'm Carrie Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports,
where we live at the intersection of sports and culture.
Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Caitlin
Clark versus Angel Reese.

Speaker 8 (50:28):
I know I'll go down in history.

Speaker 11 (50:29):
People are talking about women's basketball is just because of
one single game.

Speaker 10 (50:32):
Every great player needs a foil.

Speaker 7 (50:34):
And hear them wise, I just come here to play basketball.

Speaker 14 (50:36):
Ray kendled that, and that's what I focused.

Speaker 9 (50:38):
On from college to the pros. Clark and Reeves have
changed the way we consume women's sports.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically black.

Speaker 11 (50:49):
I love her.

Speaker 9 (50:50):
What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so
good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these
two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to
get better because the talent is getting better. This new
season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to
Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network. iHeartRadio, app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by diet Coke.

Speaker 22 (51:16):
Hey, I'm Bruce Bosi on my podcast Table for two.
We have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch with the best
guest you could possibly ask for, people like David Duchovny.

Speaker 18 (51:27):
You know in New York's have a reputations being very tough,
but it's not.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
It's not that way at all. They're very accepting.

Speaker 22 (51:32):
Jeff Goldbloom, Are you saying secret fries, secret fries, That's
what you're saying.

Speaker 8 (51:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:38):
And Kristen Wig, I.

Speaker 8 (51:40):
Just became so aware that I'm such a loud cheer.

Speaker 6 (51:42):
My husband's just like sometimes I'll be eating and he'll
just be looking at me.

Speaker 11 (51:45):
I'm like, I'm just.

Speaker 6 (51:46):
Eating, like I don't know how else to two.

Speaker 22 (51:50):
Table for two is a bit different from other interview shows.
We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal
and the stories start flowing. Our second season is Aaron
right now, so you can catch up on our conversations
that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious. Listen to Table
for two with Bruce Bosi and the iHeartRadio app, Apple

(52:11):
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 11 (52:23):
All right, we're talking about nothing, Dan, Is this like
the Seinfeld episode of the podcast? Just about nothing?

Speaker 1 (52:32):
As long as that can be Sinfeld instead of George.

Speaker 11 (52:34):
Then sure, YadA, YadA YadA the universe.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Or maybe I should be Kreamer. I don't know, as
long as I'm not Newman, oh Man.

Speaker 11 (52:45):
I want to be a Lean. She's the coolest one.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
She definitely is. It is a really fun idea, and
it's always cool to think about how your conception of
the universe could be totally different from what everybody's been imagining.
Right the biggest ideas are the sexiest, because that also
give you those moments you're like, Wow, the universe is
this way and not some other way. And this would
be a pretty big idea. I mean, this would be

(53:10):
putting our galaxy near the center of an enormous cosmic
feature in order to explain the redshifts that we are seeing.
To fit this to the data, you have to have
a big void, something that's three billion light years in radius,
a gigaparsec.

Speaker 11 (53:29):
And that's the only way this works. Or what does
that mean.

Speaker 1 (53:32):
That's the only way this works.

Speaker 11 (53:33):
It's the only nothing explanation that fits what we currently see.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah, because when we look out into the universe, we
see the sort of same history in every direction. Right,
So if you look one direction, you see things closer
by expanding more quickly than things further away. If you
look in another direction, another direction, another direction, it's very isotropic.
And so to explain that by like a coincidence of
the density, you need the universe to be more dense

(54:00):
basically in every direction, which requires a huge void, and
it requires us to be at the center of it,
and it requires that void to be basically spherical, So
you have the same weird density as a function of
distance effect in every direction, and so yeah, that's kind
of a big cosmic coincidence if it's.

Speaker 11 (54:20):
True, meaning like we're right smack in the middle of
this giant void.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Yeah, and like it doesn't have to be exactly in
the middle to within like a centimeter, but on cosmic
distance scales, we'd have to be very close to the
center because we've measured this expansion effect in lots of
different directions and it seems the same in every direction.
So yeah, we'd have to be at the center of it.
And this really violates this Copernican principle, this idea that

(54:45):
like the universe is basically the same everywhere, and like, yeah,
there's a little bit of clumpiness, but there's no huge
features that make this neighborhood totally different from that neighborhood.
And you know that's not something we know. It's just
something we've assumed. It makes sense, it fits with the
way we'd like to think about the universe. Until nature
shows us that it's not true. We're kind of going

(55:06):
to go with it because we like the idea. Doesn't
mean that it is true, right, It doesn't mean that
the universe has to be the same everywhere.

Speaker 11 (55:12):
I guess you know. What's confusing me is like, couldn't
we tell if we were in a void, Like you know,
we can look with our telescopes and we can see
galaxies all the way out to the observable universe. Wouldn't
we have notice by now that there are more of
them further away than what we can see close to us.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah, absolutely, we could tell if we had seen all
the galaxies out there and map the density. But you know,
things that are really far away are hard to see.
In order to see things super duper far away, you
have to point a very powerful telescope at them, and
you have to look for a while because these galaxies
are very very dim and they're very very red shifted.

(55:49):
So we have a telescope that can do that, like
James web has been breaking records and seeing galaxies really
really far away into the early universe. But James Webb
is very expensive, and we have one of it, and
it can only point in some directions at a time,
and space is extraordinarily vast. The number of galaxies we're
talking about are huge, so we basically just haven't really
looked far enough, like we've seen nearby stuff, and we'd

(56:10):
like to think that we've seen to the edge of
the observable universe. We only have really done that in
a few tiny directions, and so like our detailed three
D map of the universe definitely does not extend all
the way out to the observable universe. There are lots
of places out there where it's very fuzzy.

Speaker 11 (56:26):
But I guess you wouldn't need to see all of
the universe. You just need to see whether things are
dense or out there near the edge of the observable
universe than they are here. Isn't that sort of a
easy check.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Well, we don't see any evidence of that, right, but
they could still make the data fit. Because our observations
are still limited. They can make this data fit, And
so you can come up with a theory of the
universe that respects general relativity and describes all of the
redshifts that we see from type one A supernova and
our observations of galaxy densities so far, and doesn't require

(57:02):
any dark energy. But it does require this sort of
like bubble where the density of the universe is smaller
in our neighborhood. But you can still do that and
be consistent with all of these observations. I know that
sounds crazy.

Speaker 11 (57:14):
Oh, I see what you're saying. You're saying like maybe
it could be that all of the are checks of
the density of the universe out there were somehow we
just looked in the wrong places kind of, So what
you're saying.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Kind of and I think probably people overestimate how much
we've looked into the deep universe. We really don't have
that much data. So it's not that hard to squeak
it a little bit and still be consistent with the
deep images of the distant universe, because those are pretty rare.
But there are other ways that we could tell whether
we were in a bubble. There are other impacts this
theory has on things that we can measure much more

(57:46):
precisely than just like actually looking and measuring the density.
This idea has consequences for other things that we have
very sensitive probes for.

Speaker 11 (57:55):
All Right, what are some of those ways, Well.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Maybe the most powerful is the cosmic microwave background radiation.
Like we look at the structure of the universe. Now,
as you're saying, how much density is there? Where are
the galaxies? But all that structure is seeded in little
density fluctuations from the early universe. Right. The whole reason
we have structure, the reason we have a galaxy here
and not a galaxy there, is because in the early
universe there was a little spot that was little denser,

(58:19):
and gravity gathered stuff together to make galaxies, for example.
So we can predict how stuff should be distributed in
the universe today based on those fluctuations in the cosmic
microwave background radiation. That light from the very early universe,
and that life from the very early universe is very,
very smooth. Right. It tells us that there should be
no huge features. It tells us exactly how big those

(58:41):
density fluctuations should be, and it lines up with what
we see. Right. The stuff we see in the universe,
both close and far away, has just about the right
density fluctuations, meaning like galaxies and clumps of galaxies and
actually big voids between those galaxies. We have seen huge
voids between clusters galaxies, not as big as the one

(59:01):
this requires, but there are big voids out there in space,
and all that is perfectly described by the cosmic microwave
background radiation. And a huge megavoid that we're at the
center of is not consistent with what we see in
the CMB, there's no fluctuations in it that would give
such an enormous.

Speaker 11 (59:18):
Feature, Like, you don't see other voids in the cosmic
microwrate background, But would you see this void, this potential
giant void we're in in the cosmic micro rate background
or does it tell you that there isn't avoid the.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
Cosmic microwave background tells you that there should be no
huge void, and it does predict other voids. It does
predict that we should see big gaps between galaxies, and
we see those and we measure those, but it suggests
that they should not get voids this big. Right. Basically,
the size of the wiggles in the early universe limits
how big the features can be in our current universe. Right,

(59:53):
you'd need huge wiggles in the CMB to make huge
wiggles now. We only see small wiggles in the early universe,
So we should have small voids in small clumps now,
And that's basically what we see.

Speaker 11 (01:00:04):
Wait, it tells you that it's impossible or does it
tell you that it's rare for us to be in
a huge void like that?

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
I think technically it tells you that it's very, very
unlikely because the light we're seeing from the CMB is
not the light from the plasma that was here that
formed our structures. It's the lighte from the plasma that
was very far away, and it's been traveling to us
the whole history of the universe. So we're not actually
seeing the patterns that led to the formation of our structure.

(01:00:30):
We're seeing the patterns that led to the formation a
structure that's very far away now, and so we can't
actually see like the blueprints that led to our structure.
We can just see the blueprints that led to other structure,
and we see nothing like that anywhere else in the universe,
and so it'd be very unlikely for that to happen
here if it's never happened anywhere else in the universe.
So that's sort of the argument, m.

Speaker 11 (01:00:53):
All right, So the CMB says probably not.

Speaker 7 (01:00:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
And there's another argument, which has to do with how
elements are made. The early universe was very very dense,
dense enough briefly to cause nuclear fusion to make protons
and for some of those protons to make helium, and
the density of that really determines what elements were made.
We have a very good understanding of how that works,
and if it lines up very very well with what

(01:01:18):
we see out there in the universe, how much helium
and hydrogen and lithium there was made during the Big Bang.
This whole field is called Big Bang and nucleosynthesis. And
so that's a very sensitive probe of the density of
the early universe in our neighborhood. And so if we
got that wrong somehow, if the universe weirdly was under
dense in our region, you would see that in the

(01:01:38):
amount of helium made in the Big Bang, and we don't,
and so that's pretty hard to reconcile with what we see. Also,
we've more recently measured a lot more Type one A supernova.
This idea of the big void was very popular, like
maybe ten years ago, when we had many fewer measurements
of the supernova and there were some gaps, and so

(01:01:58):
it was easier to sort of like fit this to
the data. But more recent measurements by the Sloan Digital
Sky Survey, for example, make it much harder to explain
the red shifts using this sort of like weird void bubble.

Speaker 11 (01:02:10):
Thing, meaning we have better data about where things are
out there.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Yeah, exactly we sort of filled in some gaps by
taking more and more measurements of type one A supernova,
and that makes it harder and harder to even explain
the red shifts using this void.

Speaker 11 (01:02:24):
Meaning we're more confident that things are not denser out there, yeah,
or we're just more confident by where things are.

Speaker 1 (01:02:30):
We're more confident about where things are, and that makes
it harder to come up with a consistent picture of
us being at the center of a void as an
alternative explanation for the red shifts that we're seeing. But
you know, there's lots of remaining to be understood, Like
some of the voids that are out there in space.
We don't understand how they formed and how big they got.
And there's still the hubble tension, like the expansion of
the universe. So it's not like the explanation we have

(01:02:52):
is perfect. There's lots of holes in it, lots of
things that still don't work, lots of opportunities for other ideas.
But I think this void theory, as cool as it sounds,
works less well than the current mainstream dark energy.

Speaker 11 (01:03:03):
Idea, this idea that there's this mysterious invisible energy that
we can't explain either exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
There's still a lot of work left to do to
make that even like a coherent theory. But it's sort
of like our best current idea.

Speaker 11 (01:03:17):
H Well, I guess if it has so many counts
against it, why are people even considering this? Why do
we just spend an hour talking about it?

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
I think people are still considering other ideas because the
whole concept of dark energy does have flaws, and it
is a big idea, and it's healthy to maintain different
directions of research because we could run into a big problem.
You know, in sketching out the details of dark energy,
we could discover a fundamental flaw in the whole plan,
so that doesn't hang together. You know. It's like when

(01:03:46):
you build a house and you discover while the plumbing
is just not going to fit with the electrical like,
we got to go back to the drawing board. So
it's important to keep your mind open and consider other ideas.

Speaker 11 (01:03:56):
Plus, it's fun, right, right, other ideas for other people
to try to figure out the tree right exactly? Just
not you, Yeah, maybe I should You're done.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
Maybe I should just send the couch, eat chocolate and
let somebody else figure it.

Speaker 11 (01:04:08):
Out, right, but dark chocolate or white chocolate? Any which
part of the universe are you in?

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
If our part of the universe is turning into white chocolate,
then I'm thinking about moving.

Speaker 11 (01:04:19):
You know what, sounds like you already gave up on
the whole universe, so now you're just giving up on
the local universe exactly, all right? Well, an interesting discussion
about maybe the biggest mystery in the entire universe. What
is dark energy? What's causing the universe to expand faster
and faster? Is it just all a big illusion or
is there really some sort of mysterious energy out there?

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Well, I think the theory of dark energy is on
the right track. It's really important to think about other ideas,
and it also helps us understand the strengths and the
weaknesses of dark energy, what we do and what we
don't really know.

Speaker 11 (01:04:54):
We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See
you next time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Instant,
and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
and Jorge explain the universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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