September 24, 2019 • 39 mins
How do we relate to the unseen worlds of particle physics and distant stars? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, physicist Daniel Whiteson, co-host of the podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe drops in for a chat about particle physicists, science communication and the wonders of our cosmos.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome
to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And I was just out
of town for about a week and a half. So
where were you recorded some interviews while I was out?
That's right, I didn't have you to talk to, so
(00:24):
I'm like, who am I going to talk to? So
I just started calling people up and saying, hey, let's
let's talk about some stuff. And one of these individuals
was Daniel Whitson, who is a physicist and the co
host of the podcast Daniel and Jorae Explain the Universe.
We've been meaning to talk to these guys for a while,
and I'm sorry I missed the chance to chat with
(00:45):
you and Daniel, but I'm excited to hear what you
all talked about. Yeah, this is a this is a
fun little conversation we talked. We talked a little bit
about you know, physics and particle physics, a little bit
about science communication and just also just the nature of science.
And yeah, it was just really a really fun little chat.
It was nice to to actually, you know, chat with
a physicist about this, because you know, there are times
(01:06):
where you and I we we are not physicists, so
a little bit not and and so when we're tackling
some of these like really complicated physics related topics, you know, uh,
we're we're at times struggling with the content, and you know,
having and helping the listeners struggle with the content is
when our nature is generalists is brought out. Yes, and
(01:27):
I think there's a there's certainly an advantage in being
a journalist and listening to a journalist, but uh, it
was also just really cool to to speak to an
expert about some of these topics. So yeah, it's a
it's a really really fun one. Uh So, without further Ado,
let's go ahead and jump into the interview, and we'll
jump out for ad Rex of course, and then we'll
(01:48):
meet you at the end. Hi, Daniel, welcome to the show.
Can you go ahead and just introduce yourself, your name,
and your title for for everybody out there listening, Hey,
thanks a lot for having me on. I'm Daniel Whiteson.
I'm a professor of experimental particle physics at University of
California at Irvine, I'm also the co host of Daniel
(02:11):
and Jorge Explain the Universe, our podcast that comes out
twice a week about mind blowing crazy stuff about the universe,
and together with Jorge cham we also wrote a book
called We Have No Idea, A Guide the Unknown Universe
that tells you all about all the things that we
don't know about the universe. And uh, how, let's see,
(02:33):
how when did the show actually start? I know it's
been going for uh for for quite a while. Now
you have a number of episodes banked up. Yeah, we're
actually just hit a hundred episodes. Oh nice, So we've
been Yeah, it comes out twice a week, and so
we've been doing it for just over a year. And
you know, the topics vary from like how big is
the universe to more pedantic stuff like how does lightning work?
(02:55):
And does anybody actually understand it? We just look for
mysteries anywhere, you know, puzzles that physicists like to unravel,
and we hope our listeners like to hear us blather about.
Now again, you're you're a physicist and a science communicator.
Jorge is um a science communicator and a comic artist. Correct,
(03:16):
that's right. But he actually also has a PhD of
his own. Oh yeah, he has a hilarious background. He
went to grad school in robotics and was developing little
robots that could run like cockroaches, which is pretty hilarious.
But on the side he started doing a comic strip
just so sort of procrastinated the real work he should
have been doing. And then that took off and became,
(03:39):
you know, frankly more popular than his academic research and
turned into a full time gig for him. So how
did you guys come together first on the book and
then again you know, the podcast to follow. Well, we
met on Tinder of course. Like no Um, Jorge is
sort of is something of a celebrity in academia. Um
his comics that he's been putting out, called pah d Comics,
(04:01):
really captured the sort of existential angst or doing research
and working under a professor and being a grad student.
And so when I was a grad student, I loved
his work, and everybody around me loved his work because
they expressed something we were all feeling, you know, how
you can be in the lab all day and make
no progress or even move backwards. So he was something
of a celebrity, and maybe ten years ago, I was
(04:22):
working on some science communication and I had the idea,
what if we could use comics to explain some of
these complicated concepts in physics that might be much simpler visually.
But the problem was I don't have any artistic skill myself,
so I couldn't draw these things. So my wife, who's
also an academic, she suggested to me. She's like, oh,
why didn't you email Jorge cham and asked him to
(04:44):
do your drawings? And I was like, yeah, and then
I'll email Brad Pitt and asked him to a movie
with me, right, I mean, it's sort of at the
same level for me. But emailed Jorge cold email and
he actually wrote back, and I thought it was sounded
like a fun project, and we've been working on stuff
ever since. Awesome. Well, yeah, I mean obviously it worked
well together in the book. But and then on the
(05:04):
podcast you guys have Wonderful or four. Yeah, we um,
we had fun. We have fun doing the podcast, mostly
because we have fun talking science to each other. I mean,
when we were working on the book, we would spend
a lot of time talking about the concepts and figuring
it out and Um, something that Jorge is really good
at is teasing out what's interesting about a topic and
figuring out how to connect it to the general public.
(05:26):
You know, he's not trained as a physicist, but he
has a science background obviously the brain force, so we
can understand these concepts, but he's outside the field, so
he's able to sort of bridge between you know, the
the hard science and the general public. And so I
think that works really well. But yeah, we just had fun.
We're just laughing all the time while talking, and so
we thought it'd be fun to, hey, record those conversations
(05:47):
and share them with people. So you are you already
touched on this a little bit, but the you know
part of this. You know, as a scientist and a
science communicator, you you're you're privy to the the inside
world of scientific research and an acade me, but then
you're you're communicating it to a more general audience. And
you mentioned the you know, the idea of going in
(06:07):
working every day and either feeling as if you're not
making progress or feeling like you're you're slipping backwards. Do
do you feel that there is a like there's a
myth or a misconception concerning science in the general public
that you know, regarding like the rate of progress uh
in in science or what progress looks like. Yeah. Absolutely,
(06:28):
I think that most people have no idea what the
life of a scientist is like, just out of not
having had the experience. You know. I think most people
go to work and they have a pilot work in
front of them, and then they work through it, you know,
and then at the end of the day they've done
something right. You know, even somebody who's job is very simple,
like a chopping wood or something right. This is famous
(06:49):
time when Einstein spent a day chopping wood and he
was like, wow, that is really satisfying. Spend a day,
you get a day's worth of work done. Um. Whereas
in science you can work for or months and make
no progress or ruin things that you have established. But
then one day, you know, you can make a huge
leap forward, and those are the days we live for.
(07:09):
It's very stochastic, um. And it's hard for me to
really remember what I thought science was like before I
became a scientist. But you know, as a kid, I
imagined it was days filled with insight and discovery and
mind blowing realizations about the universe, you know, but those
are very rare and few and far between. Yeah, I
think on you know, on the exterior and in the
(07:32):
general public, we tend to focus in on those those
big moments, right, those aha moments, those discoveries, like the
final paper, or not the final paper, but the resulting
paper that comes out. Uh, you know. It's it's those
moments and not the day to day to day that
we end up focusing on. That's right. And in order
to be a scientist, you need to be interested in
those big moments, those drive you, that's what pulls you
(07:52):
through the work. But you also have to have an
appreciation for the craft of it, right, the day to
day actual work. And I learned this when I was
trying to become a scientist because I first joined the
field that I thought was exciting, like I became a
plasma physicist when I was um first exploring physics, and
because because I wanted to solve the world's energy problem
(08:13):
and develop fusion, I thought that was really awesome. But
the day to day work of working on these reactors,
I found mine knowingly dull, right, just the concept like
I might one day develop a fusion reactor wasn't enough
to interest me every day. And and then I tried
condensed matter physics, where you're like shooting lasers at GOO
and trying to make it do weird stuff, and I
(08:34):
thought that was awesome, But day to day you're like
tweaking a laser and trying to make it work, and
that wasn't that much fun. And then eventually I stumbled
on particle physics, where most of the work day to
day is writing computer programs, so you're solving these little
intellectual puzzles involved with debugging computer programs and understanding statistics,
and for me, that was really fun. It's totally separate
(08:56):
from the actual big questions we're trying to answer every day.
You know, what's the universe? It out of what's the
smallest thing. So I tell this a lot to grad
students who are thinking about particle physics. I say, find
a field where you're excited about the big questions, but
you also got to enjoy the day to day wood
shopping because that's what you're mostly doing. So in your work,
you you deal with sub atomic particles and UH and astronomy,
(09:17):
you deal with reality at the micro scale and the
macro scale. Distances smaller and and vaster than our our
as humans are evolved sensory perceptions. What does it feel
like as a as a human scientist to be sort
of trapped between these two realms that you know at
times are are difficult to imagine. Yeah, it makes me
(09:38):
feel very very small. You know. It's ah. I feel
like the job of physics at this level is to
expand our horizons. You know, we've seen the universe sort
of the scale of stuff that's like a meter down
to a centimeter, down to maybe a millimeter we can
grasp right with our minds, and what we're trying to
do is push those boundaries to the very very small
(09:59):
and very very large. And you know, the first thing
you learn is that there's a huge amount going on
at the very small level and at the very big level.
And that just makes me feel like, you know, small
and insignificant in so do the best possible way. I mean,
it's like it tells me that the universe is so
fascinating and so filled with mysteries, um that we're really
(10:20):
just beginning to crack the surface. And I love that feeling.
I love feeling like there are amazing discoveries out there
waiting for us, and so it makes me feel like,
you know, I'm an explorer and there's a huge amount
of territory that is left to touch. So it's an
exciting feeling, but also intimidating. Now there's I guess there's
you know, even no matter how you know, large or small,
(10:41):
the you know, the details of the universe you're dealing
with your there there is this bedrock experience of reality
and uh, you know, I've I've I've read a little
bit about you know, the idea that you know can
read lead to um like a reality bias. Is that
a problem for physics? A reality bias? That's awesome? Um,
(11:02):
I think it's a problem for physics. But it's also
the only thing we can do. I mean, most of
what we do in physics is try to extrapolate from
what we know into what we don't know. Right, let's
explore the new territory, the sum atomic particles. How does
that stuff work? What does it look like? When we
do that, we build mental models, right, models in our
(11:22):
mind of what might be happening that are based on
the kind of things we know. Right. When I say particle,
probably in your head you're thinking tiny little ball, Right,
maybe it's spinning or something. Why do you think that?
Because that's one of the things in the catalog of
your mind. It's harder to come up with a completely
new thing. Right. It's like if somebody gave you a
(11:43):
totally new fruit you've never eaten before, you might be like,
it's kind of like apple with maybe a little bit
of cherry and banana in it. Right. You describe things
you don't know in terms of things you know, because
that's the only thing we really can do. So, yeah,
we have a reality bias because we've experien oarence the
world in this sort of very specific, unusual set of
(12:03):
circumstances where we're not moving close to the speed of light,
where don't have as much energy as the sun. And
because of that, we have a sort of a set
of basic objects we can build off of. And and
that that changes how we see the world, and it
changes um what we think we have learned about the world,
and and it leads to mistakes, right, Like photons and
other particles are not tying little balls, and there are
(12:26):
a lot of misconceptions there. But it's also I think
all we can do. I can't sweep away everything we've
learned and start tabby larassa. You know, I think one
exciting way to probe that reality bias, frankly is talking
to alien physicists. This is why I'm so excited for
the arrival of extraterrestrial because I have so many questions
(12:46):
I want and I want to know, like how do
you guys think about photons? Or do you think about
photons or you know all this? I have so many
questions for the aliens, and right, you know, I was
I was thinking about this the other day when my
my son, who's um, whose seven, is asking about about
light and light years. I think it had to do
with its telling about some news about a planet a
hundred and eleven light years away and UM and trying
(13:09):
to explain it to him. And I was thinking at
the time, well, it's kind of like I have I
have two ways of looking at or thinking about light.
There's the you know, the explanation of photons, and then
there's this kind of default but incorrect version of like
of light that I kind of fall back into, you know,
the sort of like sight as a laser beam, um,
(13:31):
you know, where where it's something emitted rather than received,
but but based on on the way you just described
it, it it makes me think, well, maybe they're really doing
like three different levels. They're sort of like photons as
they actually are. The metaphor metaphorical version of photons that
we used to understand that, and then the you know whatever,
the sort of basic incorrect version based on just the
(13:53):
experience of physical reality is yeah, and we even have
more than one metaphor right, because one doesn't do the
job right. Photons is a particle. We also have photons
as a wave because sometimes photons do things like, you know,
interfere with each other um in patterns that we see
waves do. And so we're like, oh, well, let's explain
that using our wave analogy. And then we're like, okay,
(14:15):
but now the photons are like bouncing around the way
particles do. Okay, now let's use our particle analogy. And
the question we often get on our podcast is like,
our photons particles or are they waves? Or are they both? Right?
And the answer is there neither right. They're not. They're
not particles, they're not tiny little balls, they're not waves.
Those are two different metaphors we used to try to
(14:36):
capture the fundamental essential weirdness of this thing, which we
never can completely describe in terms of things we're familiar with,
because they're totally different from anything we've ever seen before. Right,
it's this weird quantum mechanical particle. They can do things
that basketballs and water waves just cannot do. So some
(14:56):
combination of those two ideas comes closer to this scribing
what it is. But I don't think we'll ever truly
deeply understand it the way we understand the way basketball bounces,
just because we didn't grow up experiencing it. Right. It's
like if you don't grow up hearing Chinese, you're never
going to speak it without an accent. It's just impossible.
In the same way we're never going to really understand photons,
(15:18):
no matter how many banan appeals we smoke. Um. I
like the idea you mentioned about about alien physicists, So
so yeah, if they had to do you know, any
Unfortunately I do not. But but but I love the
idea of of an alien being, you know, not only
having you know, perhaps access to you know, different technological
(15:40):
levels of understanding regarding you know, the cosmos, but having
access to like different metaphors based on uh, you know,
different levels of sensory awareness, etcetera. Yeah, and I think
we would learn so much, you know, in terms of
like what is the language they used to describe this stuff?
Are they mathematical? You know? We have questions about like
is a something that comes out of human the human
(16:02):
mind is reflect the way we think, or is it
something deep about the universe. It seems to us like
it must be deep about the universe because it's so
pure and crystalline and and clean, right, and and all
of our physical laws can to be described in terms
of mathematics, so it must be deep and true. But
that's a thought in human minds, shared between human minds, right,
(16:25):
we might meet an alien species that doesn't think about
math and has some other deep insight into the way
the universe works. The thing that excites and frustrates me
is those movies where the aliens come and then like
five minutes later, their physicists and our physicist around a
chalk at a chalkboard, excitedly making progress. And I'm like,
we've spent like ten years figuring out what zero means,
(16:47):
you know, and then another five talking about real numbers,
and then maybe you know, twenty years and we can
start talking about science or something. I suspect that we
would have that that our entire you of the universe
and that we we think about physics and math is
so biased by our experience. Of course, it has to
be that we would learn a tremendous amount just by
(17:10):
encountering those aliens and trying to communicate with them. Yeah,
that's interesting to think about, because a lot of times
we do fall back on this idea of of math
be at a be at this you know, wonderful human
invention that gets to the heart of reality, or being
this thing that underlies reality that we've discovered. That either way,
it would be like this universal language that would not
in itself require translation. Yeah, and and and demonstrating that
(17:34):
by finding an alien species and discovering that they also
think in math, that would be an enormous question answered,
like one of the deepest questions in the history of
human experience crossed off the list. That would be a
great day. All right, it is time for a sponsor break.
Let's take a break, and we're back with the interview. Now.
(17:56):
In terms of of things that you know, various scientific experiments, uh,
you know, large scale experiments, especially h that that humans
are engaged in. Want. One question that we've asked on
the show before that I'd like to ask you is
if you could summon the collective will, the political capital
and of course the funding to um, you know, to
(18:16):
launch any terrestrial based scientific experiment, you know, be at
a collider, a telescope, etcetera. What would it be? And
uh and why oh no, oh no, you're gonna ask
me to betray my own field. Um. Well, you know,
I'm a particle physicist and I work with these amazing facilities.
They caused tens of billions of dollars to smash particles together,
(18:38):
and they're wonderful and they provided me a lifetime so
far of intellectual curiosity, etcetera, etcetera. Um, last decade or so,
I haven't really revealed that many surprises. You know, we
smashed particles together. We don't know what we're gonna find.
Maybe crazy new purple bananas may mean nothing. Um, it's exploration. Recently,
we haven't really found anything. And we don't know if
(19:00):
building a bigger one for a hundred billion dollars would
provide anything or just or or you know more nothing.
We don't know. Um. But The thing that's always amazed
me is about is telescopes, because every time we build
a new telescope that looks out into the universe, either
in a new way like X ray or you know,
um infra red or whatever, or looks in a new
(19:23):
direction or looks deeper like the hubble, we always find
crazy stuff that blows your mind. Stuff that astronomers think,
what why is that there? Or we didn't think that
was possible. So astronomy amazes me because every time humans
open up new eyes into the universe, they see something
crazy and new that teaches us something deep about the
(19:44):
universe and was out there. So I think, if I
had to choose, I would build, you know, a huge, fancy,
amazing telescope that lets us look ever deeper into the
universe with clearer and clearer eyes, because there's just so
much to discover there. It feels like it feels like
every dollar spent there is a dollar of understanding. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean, in regularly consuming the you know, the science
(20:07):
headlines and the new studies that come out, it's it's
easy to sort of grow numb to some of the
especially the anthropomorphized headlines. But like just in like the
last few weeks we've had we you know, we've just
yesterday there's the uh, the the new Exo planet that
they've been discussing, the one that's a hundred eleven light
(20:27):
years away, you know, the possible presence of water there,
the Fermi bubbles from Sagittarius, a star. You know, there's
all there's there's something exciting. You know, it seems like
almost every week if you just you know, pay attention
to it. Yeah, and and you don't you can also
just focus on this stuff we've already found that nobody understands, like,
(20:48):
you know, where are these crazy particles coming from with
super high energy. Nobody knows what's the source of these
fast radio bursts, these crazy little, super loud, very short
bursts of radi of energy from other galaxies. We have
no idea. It's incredible how much stuff is already out
there that we're clueless about. That if we could look
deeper and find more of them, we could start to
(21:09):
get clues of where are they coming from, what makes them,
and what's going on over there. And it's wonderful to
me to to learn about these things happening in the
universe that are sort of of shocking scale. You know,
like you learned about the amazing magnetic field around some
of these neutron stars, or the incredible density of stuff,
or the huge temperatures, and again, it just makes me
(21:30):
feel sort of wonderfully small. And you know, the universe
is so much bigger than we ever imagine, but it's
also so much more extreme. You know, there's dense stuff
and hot stuff and fast stuff and crazy stuff, and
I love that because it just tells me that there
are more these crazy, mind blowing moments in the future,
and that's that's what I live for, right and in
any of them close to home. You know, it's easy
(21:52):
to get wrapped up in the various exoplanet stories and
you know, considerations of of black holes. But but then
like all the mysteries that relate just to our Solar system,
and you know, the the end, the less uh known,
you know, outer reaches of it are always fascinating. Yeah,
that we have moons of Jupiter that have like oceans
(22:13):
underneath their surface that might have life on them. Right,
there's potentially incredible discoveries basically just around the corner. So
I mean, I would love to send something up there
to drooll into that ice and figure out what's underneath
and what's swimming around in that ocean. Like, I would
definitely pay more tax if we could have more missions
to explore just our own solar system for sure. Sign
(22:34):
me up. So you're a you're a scientist and a
science communicator, and we we find ourselves in a time when,
especially in the United States, there's a there's a certain
amount of hostility to certain scientific topics, generally politicized topics,
especially climate change. Uh. And of course the stakes for
the future are are huge when it comes to climate change.
(22:54):
Do you do you think there have been mistakes, any
mistakes in science communication that let us see, Um, I
think everybody makes mistakes because everybody's human and everybody comes
from their own perspective. And you know, I've heard people
be asked questions like is there a chance the large
Hadron collider will destroy the Earth? And you know the
(23:15):
answer to that question, of course, is there's a chance. Right.
But you have to know your audience, right, you have
to know really what are they asking? They're asking should
I be worried? Right? And the answer to that is no, um.
And so it's it's a matter of sort of bridging
those communities of knowing who your audience is and knowing
how to talk to them. And um, you know, I
wouldn't blame anybody in particular. I think everybody was well
(23:37):
intentioned and doing their best. And I commend any scientist
who's trying to explain what we're doing and why we're
doing it to the public, because in the end, we're
doing it for the public. The public are paying for it. Um,
it's their science also, so I think we have an
obligation to try to share with them and everybody why
we're doing it, and and also to reach out to
(23:59):
to the next generation and excite them, right because the
next generation of scientists comes from the next generation of children.
And the reason a lot of us are scientists is
because some scientists took the time to explain why they
were amazed and what they learned. UM. So I don't
think it's that useful to assign blame and say, like,
this person said the wrong thing. But I think we
(24:19):
can think about, you know, how has it done well?
And um, I think that we should find those scientists
who are good at it and who have a passion
for it. You know, one thing I really like about
science is that it's mostly people following their passions. It's
not like somebody came and told me, Daniel, study deuced topic.
I'm doing this particular one because I'm pulled into it
because I want to know the answers. Somebody else is
(24:41):
doing plasma physics because they love it and they love
the day to day work of climbing around on the
fusion reactor. And some people love science communication, and other
people like hiding in their office and never talking to
human beings. And so you know, let's let the huge
and varied set of talents we have do their best.
So it times, you know, in in dealing with things
(25:03):
that the macro or the micro scale, dealing with things
like like radiation, you know, we're dealing with things that
are again beyond our our our our ability to really perceive.
You know, as humans were kind of dealing with invisible realms.
And and one thing that was kind of striking me
when I was, you know, thinking about things to ask
(25:23):
you about, was we have um, you know, we we
have for for ages humans have have have been willing
and able to comprehend invisible realities. Uh, you know, along
spiritual models and religious models Um. And yet sometimes like
the invisible or you know, uh difficult to to understand
(25:47):
aspects of the scientific invisible realms seems to be kind
of a stumbling block to some people. Uh why do
you think that is? Like if you like, if you
just put it on paper, it seems so seemed like, oh, well, look,
for thousands of years people have had no, no problems
buying into you know, models of reality and and reasons
(26:09):
for their conditions that that that are not visible. Well,
you know, it seems like they would have a natural
proclivity to to take to these uh more you know,
you know, seemingly exotic scientific explanations. Yeah, I agree. I
think that's one of the attractive things about it, right,
that science let's you sort of open up a new
set of eyes and get a glimpse of another way
(26:31):
that the universe is working. You know, it's like discovering
that you've been blind for a thousand years and finally
you can see the universe in a new way, the
stuff going on you never even imagined. Um. So I agree,
I think it gives you a new view, and it
gives you a new insight. It also shows you what
tiny fraction of the universe you can actually experience, you know,
(26:52):
I tell people a lot, for example, that that um,
every second, one billion new trino passes through your fingernails.
Like the air around us is just stuffed filled with
these new trinos. Right, You don't notice them. You go
around your everyday life. You never think about them. They
never think a at you either, right, So sort of
like being snubbed on the street. But it tells you
(27:15):
it's a clue that there's a huge amount of stuff
going on around you all the time that you're not
aware of that you're seeing a tiny little slice of
what's happening. So actually, I think the opposite. I think
that UM, people's historical acceptance of mysticism and hidden powers
and invisible actions UM lets them makes it easier for
(27:35):
them to understand that the universe is filled with invisible
crazy stuff UM that they might not have imagined. So
I've actually had the opposite experience UM. I think that
that people are quite receptive to this kind of thinking UM,
and that they love hearing about it. They love that
the feeling of awe when you when you show them
that the universe that you can peel back a layer
(27:55):
of reality and show them the universe is different from
what they imagine because the and that's what physics is
trying to do, right, peel back layers of reality and
show us sort of what's really there. Alright, time for
a break to hear from the sponsor. We will be
right back, and we are back with the interview. Coming
(28:16):
back to just the idea of public perceptions of science
and uh and the work of scientists. What are some
other examples that that you've encountered before, you know, big
misconceptions that the general public has about about science or scientists.
You know, I think a lot of people think that
science is always fun, you know, and it's not. There
(28:37):
are days when I'm pulling my hair out because I
just can't make something work, or I thought I understood
something and then it turns out I've been wrong for
five years. Um. And and the other thing I think
that's important for people to understand is that science is
not some church of objectivity, right. Science is people. It's
(28:58):
people trying to understand the universe. It's just a community
of of of people, right. And so you know, when
we talk about science, we try to some people imagine
this like edifice of knowledge that we're building up this
list of facts. But it's really it's just a community
of the curious, right And those people are of course subjective.
I'm not perfectly objective. I've things I've biases, and things
(29:20):
I like and things I'm interested in and things I'm
not interested in. And so as a scientist you can't
be just like off on your own figuring out the universe.
You have to sort of move the community with you,
right Like, for example, I get a lot of emails
from people who think they have figured out the universe. There,
here's my theory. I've I've been thinking about it, and
(29:40):
here's my theory. And I think that's wonderful because I
love the people out there thinking about this stuff, that
they're inspired by the grand mysteries of physics to try
to solve it. Awesome. And often these are technical folks
of an engineered Boeing who on the side is thinking about,
you know, the nature of light or whatever. That's cool.
The thing that I think they don't understand is that
you can't just work on your own own for twenty
(30:00):
years and then deliver your magnum opus the theory of everything,
because nobody knows how to digest that even you're speaking.
You're inventing your own mathematics and working on your own
for two decades. You're so far away from where we're thinking,
there's hard for us to even understand what you're doing.
It's like meeting an alien physicist. And so to be accepted,
to change the direction of science, to make some progress,
(30:22):
you have to be part of the community and sort
of steer the ship a little bit and convince people
that what you're doing is interesting so that they will
get involved and digested and build on your work. Right,
So it's not a bunch of people delivering grand insights
in front of an audience of people who totally unprepared.
It's the slow accumulation of work, the movement of the
crowd of minds sort of in a new direction. That's
(30:44):
what leads to these really big insights. We we um
cite the website Eon a lot, and you actually wrote
a wonderful piece for them a little while back titled
the most Wonderful Words and Science We have no idea yet, uh,
And it gets into this idea you know that the
science is this ever expanding under understanding of reality like
(31:07):
we've been discussing, and it's it's the kind of thing
that always makes me think of like a slime mold
and in an experimental maze, you know, in the most
flattering possible way. Yes, yeah, yeah, And that it's it's expanding,
it's following uh potential pathways, shrinking back from the ones
that don't have food, but just expanding uh uh. And
(31:27):
you mentioned in your your piece that if we were
to grab a science textbook from uh, like a thousand
years in the future, that it would be beyond our understanding.
And it reminds me a lot of the I don't
know if you've encountered this, but the you know, the
idea of fixed versus growth mind sets, and you see
this a lot in business circles, for instance. Is science
sort of a um a growth mindset process for a
(31:51):
fixed growth species. Yeah, I think it's um it's the
slow evolution of concepts, right, that build on each other.
And I think what I was trying to get up
with that is that you can't leap frog. You can't
just like fast forward a thousand years and digest everything
those physicists have been doing. Like if I want a
thousand years in the future and try to talk to
(32:11):
those physicists. They would be not just using some crazy
technology to talk to each other, and right, you know,
they wouldn't have chalkboards or white boards. They will probably
have crazy kinds of math that made no sense to me, right,
even if they were still speaking English. And so it's
you know, you have to in order to catch up.
I need to probably go through a thousand years of
work to get from where I am to where they are. Right.
(32:33):
You need to sort of build that bridge. You can't
just take an enormous leap out into nothing. Um. But
the thing that amazes me is the children. The children
in that time they will never have known anything else,
and so they will have been have They will have
been introduced to these concepts from the beginning, and they
will think they're totally natural. Right. So things that those
(32:55):
those scientists learned nine years from now and then teach
to children a thou us and years from now, we'll
be totally natural to those kids and totally alien to us. Um.
And I think that it's again it's just a process
of explaining what we don't know in terms of what
we do know. And then that basis set of ideas,
you know, what the basic concepts we think we understand
(33:16):
that slowly evolves. You know, take for example, trying to
get some perspective. Um, it's only been a hundred years
that we've understood that there's more than one galaxy in
the universe, right that that it was Hubble like less
than a hundred years ago who looked out and found
what he saw were star he thought were stars that
turned out to be way too far away. Nobody understood,
(33:38):
oh my gosh, those are other galaxies. Like that's a
completely different mindset about the universe. Right, So if you
go back a hundred years and try to explain to
people your research about how galaxies form, they'll be like,
what what do you mean galaxies? There's just so many
basic things to explain before you can get to the
interesting bit. So that's why I was trying to capture,
(33:59):
is trying to express how, on one hand, somebody from
my time, our time would have a hard time knowing
what those scientists are working on. At the same time,
those children would find it totally intuitive because they would
know nothing else, and so that would be really fascinating.
And frankly, if I went to the year three thousand,
I would not be prepared to read anything other than
a children's book, because everything else would be so far
(34:20):
beyond us. Awesome, Well, let's let's be As we begin
to close out here, I want to come back to
the podcast and uh, you know, part of the podcast
mission statement, um is to explain the universe. Uh, where
where are you? A one year in on the you know,
your completion level of explaining the universe? I would say
(34:41):
approximately zero percent. No, you know, science has you know
what fraction in the universe has science understood? I think
zero percent is a good estimate. You know, we've only
recently stumbled across big questions, you know, questions like why
is the universe expanding and expand ning faster and faster? Um,
(35:02):
This is a question we only discovered twenty years ago,
and we still have no idea how to explain it.
And what that tells me is that there are huge
questions out there that we haven't even discovered yet. You know,
there are also other questions we don't even know how
to make progress on, like what is the nature of time?
Why does it only move forwards? What is even space?
(35:22):
You know it has three dimensions or maybe more. It
can wiggle and shake and expand and bend. What is
this stuff? Um, there's so many things we have not
yet scratched, and I think the deepest questions we have
not even discovered the questions yet, and so um, I
think a zero percentage is approximately a fair estimate. You know.
There are other ways to look at it, though, Like
(35:43):
we know, for example, how much energy there is in
the universe sort of crazy and amazing, But we can
measure the total energy density of the universe by measuring
how much it bends space, and then we can ask, like,
how much of that energy can we account for? And
there we've made a solid five percent progress because five
percent of the energy is in terms of matter like
(36:05):
me and you and hamsters and bananas. So that's some
concrete progress, you know, but it leaves of the totally unexplained.
So um, there's lots of stuff to keep exploring and
definitely lots of material for future episodes. So for anyone
out there who is checking out Daniel Joy explaining the
(36:25):
universe for the first time, what do you recommend? Start
at the beginning, Start with the most recent episodes or
their key episodes that you would recommend. Uh in particular,
we try to cover a pretty broad variety of stuff
from like how big is the universe? Too? Is the
universe of simulation? Down to more you know, everyday stuff
like how does a microwave work? Or you know how
(36:46):
today's episode was, like how is it possible for stones
to skip on water? And so what I would suggest
people just sort of skim the titles and find one
that pulls them in and says, oh, I want to
know about that, because everybody's got different curiosity and different passion,
and um, my favorite ones are the particle physics ones.
You know what is a quantum fielder? Is light, a
particle or a wave. That's the kind of stuff that
(37:08):
really gets me going. But I think, well, they're all fun,
and people should follow the ones that touch their personal curiosity. Now, obviously,
if people want to find the podcasts, they can, they
can find it wherever podcasts are available. But what are
some other key addresses or contact points you want to
get out there? Yeah, you can find us on Twitter
Daniel and Jorge or Facebook and Instagram, and you can
(37:31):
look at our website Daniel and Jorge dot com. And
if you have a question that you'd love us to answer,
just email us questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
We answer all of our listener emails every physics question
we get, and we love suggestions from listeners because we
want to know what you want to hear about. Awesome. Well, Daniel,
(37:51):
thanks for taking time out of your day to chat
with me here on the show. And uh, you know,
Joe and I may take you up on on that
that email situ wish and because we have physics questions
from time to time that we certainly cannot answer, so
it would be nice to bounce some of them off
of you. Awesome, Well, thanks so much for having me on.
Really fun to talk about this stuff. I love the
questions and uh, thanks again. All right, so there you
(38:14):
have it again. That was Daniel whiteson uh, co host
of Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, and you can
find that at Daniel and Jorge dot com. You can
also find that podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. It's
a it's an in network show. There are essentially our
co workers on the other side of the continent here,
but it's a's tremendous show. I highly recommended awesome. In
(38:36):
the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
of Stuff to Blow your Mind heading over to stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com because that is where
you will find them. We also find them everywhere you
get your podcasts, and as always we ask you, if
you have a chance, support the show by leaving a
nice rating and a review. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like
to get in touch with us to let us know
(38:57):
feedback on this episode or any other, to Joe, to
topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
(39:18):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. B
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, are you welcome
to Stuff to Blow your Mind? My name is Robert
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And I was just out
of town for about a week and a half. So
where were you recorded some interviews while I was out?
That's right, I didn't have you to talk to, so
(00:24):
I'm like, who am I going to talk to? So
I just started calling people up and saying, hey, let's
let's talk about some stuff. And one of these individuals
was Daniel Whitson, who is a physicist and the co
host of the podcast Daniel and Jorae Explain the Universe.
We've been meaning to talk to these guys for a while,
and I'm sorry I missed the chance to chat with
(00:45):
you and Daniel, but I'm excited to hear what you
all talked about. Yeah, this is a this is a
fun little conversation we talked. We talked a little bit
about you know, physics and particle physics, a little bit
about science communication and just also just the nature of science.
And yeah, it was just really a really fun little chat.
It was nice to to actually, you know, chat with
a physicist about this, because you know, there are times
(01:06):
where you and I we we are not physicists, so
a little bit not and and so when we're tackling
some of these like really complicated physics related topics, you know, uh,
we're we're at times struggling with the content, and you know,
having and helping the listeners struggle with the content is
when our nature is generalists is brought out. Yes, and
(01:27):
I think there's a there's certainly an advantage in being
a journalist and listening to a journalist, but uh, it
was also just really cool to to speak to an
expert about some of these topics. So yeah, it's a
it's a really really fun one. Uh So, without further Ado,
let's go ahead and jump into the interview, and we'll
jump out for ad Rex of course, and then we'll
(01:48):
meet you at the end. Hi, Daniel, welcome to the show.
Can you go ahead and just introduce yourself, your name,
and your title for for everybody out there listening, Hey,
thanks a lot for having me on. I'm Daniel Whiteson.
I'm a professor of experimental particle physics at University of
California at Irvine, I'm also the co host of Daniel
(02:11):
and Jorge Explain the Universe, our podcast that comes out
twice a week about mind blowing crazy stuff about the universe,
and together with Jorge cham we also wrote a book
called We Have No Idea, A Guide the Unknown Universe
that tells you all about all the things that we
don't know about the universe. And uh, how, let's see,
(02:33):
how when did the show actually start? I know it's
been going for uh for for quite a while. Now
you have a number of episodes banked up. Yeah, we're
actually just hit a hundred episodes. Oh nice, So we've
been Yeah, it comes out twice a week, and so
we've been doing it for just over a year. And
you know, the topics vary from like how big is
the universe to more pedantic stuff like how does lightning work?
(02:55):
And does anybody actually understand it? We just look for
mysteries anywhere, you know, puzzles that physicists like to unravel,
and we hope our listeners like to hear us blather about.
Now again, you're you're a physicist and a science communicator.
Jorge is um a science communicator and a comic artist. Correct,
(03:16):
that's right. But he actually also has a PhD of
his own. Oh yeah, he has a hilarious background. He
went to grad school in robotics and was developing little
robots that could run like cockroaches, which is pretty hilarious.
But on the side he started doing a comic strip
just so sort of procrastinated the real work he should
have been doing. And then that took off and became,
(03:39):
you know, frankly more popular than his academic research and
turned into a full time gig for him. So how
did you guys come together first on the book and
then again you know, the podcast to follow. Well, we
met on Tinder of course. Like no Um, Jorge is
sort of is something of a celebrity in academia. Um
his comics that he's been putting out, called pah d Comics,
(04:01):
really captured the sort of existential angst or doing research
and working under a professor and being a grad student.
And so when I was a grad student, I loved
his work, and everybody around me loved his work because
they expressed something we were all feeling, you know, how
you can be in the lab all day and make
no progress or even move backwards. So he was something
of a celebrity, and maybe ten years ago, I was
(04:22):
working on some science communication and I had the idea,
what if we could use comics to explain some of
these complicated concepts in physics that might be much simpler visually.
But the problem was I don't have any artistic skill myself,
so I couldn't draw these things. So my wife, who's
also an academic, she suggested to me. She's like, oh,
why didn't you email Jorge cham and asked him to
(04:44):
do your drawings? And I was like, yeah, and then
I'll email Brad Pitt and asked him to a movie
with me, right, I mean, it's sort of at the
same level for me. But emailed Jorge cold email and
he actually wrote back, and I thought it was sounded
like a fun project, and we've been working on stuff
ever since. Awesome. Well, yeah, I mean obviously it worked
well together in the book. But and then on the
(05:04):
podcast you guys have Wonderful or four. Yeah, we um,
we had fun. We have fun doing the podcast, mostly
because we have fun talking science to each other. I mean,
when we were working on the book, we would spend
a lot of time talking about the concepts and figuring
it out and Um, something that Jorge is really good
at is teasing out what's interesting about a topic and
figuring out how to connect it to the general public.
(05:26):
You know, he's not trained as a physicist, but he
has a science background obviously the brain force, so we
can understand these concepts, but he's outside the field, so
he's able to sort of bridge between you know, the
the hard science and the general public. And so I
think that works really well. But yeah, we just had fun.
We're just laughing all the time while talking, and so
we thought it'd be fun to, hey, record those conversations
(05:47):
and share them with people. So you are you already
touched on this a little bit, but the you know
part of this. You know, as a scientist and a
science communicator, you you're you're privy to the the inside
world of scientific research and an acade me, but then
you're you're communicating it to a more general audience. And
you mentioned the you know, the idea of going in
(06:07):
working every day and either feeling as if you're not
making progress or feeling like you're you're slipping backwards. Do
do you feel that there is a like there's a
myth or a misconception concerning science in the general public
that you know, regarding like the rate of progress uh
in in science or what progress looks like. Yeah. Absolutely,
(06:28):
I think that most people have no idea what the
life of a scientist is like, just out of not
having had the experience. You know. I think most people
go to work and they have a pilot work in
front of them, and then they work through it, you know,
and then at the end of the day they've done
something right. You know, even somebody who's job is very simple,
like a chopping wood or something right. This is famous
(06:49):
time when Einstein spent a day chopping wood and he
was like, wow, that is really satisfying. Spend a day,
you get a day's worth of work done. Um. Whereas
in science you can work for or months and make
no progress or ruin things that you have established. But
then one day, you know, you can make a huge
leap forward, and those are the days we live for.
(07:09):
It's very stochastic, um. And it's hard for me to
really remember what I thought science was like before I
became a scientist. But you know, as a kid, I
imagined it was days filled with insight and discovery and
mind blowing realizations about the universe, you know, but those
are very rare and few and far between. Yeah, I
think on you know, on the exterior and in the
(07:32):
general public, we tend to focus in on those those
big moments, right, those aha moments, those discoveries, like the
final paper, or not the final paper, but the resulting
paper that comes out. Uh, you know. It's it's those
moments and not the day to day to day that
we end up focusing on. That's right. And in order
to be a scientist, you need to be interested in
those big moments, those drive you, that's what pulls you
(07:52):
through the work. But you also have to have an
appreciation for the craft of it, right, the day to
day actual work. And I learned this when I was
trying to become a scientist because I first joined the
field that I thought was exciting, like I became a
plasma physicist when I was um first exploring physics, and
because because I wanted to solve the world's energy problem
(08:13):
and develop fusion, I thought that was really awesome. But
the day to day work of working on these reactors,
I found mine knowingly dull, right, just the concept like
I might one day develop a fusion reactor wasn't enough
to interest me every day. And and then I tried
condensed matter physics, where you're like shooting lasers at GOO
and trying to make it do weird stuff, and I
(08:34):
thought that was awesome, But day to day you're like
tweaking a laser and trying to make it work, and
that wasn't that much fun. And then eventually I stumbled
on particle physics, where most of the work day to
day is writing computer programs, so you're solving these little
intellectual puzzles involved with debugging computer programs and understanding statistics,
and for me, that was really fun. It's totally separate
(08:56):
from the actual big questions we're trying to answer every day.
You know, what's the universe? It out of what's the
smallest thing. So I tell this a lot to grad
students who are thinking about particle physics. I say, find
a field where you're excited about the big questions, but
you also got to enjoy the day to day wood
shopping because that's what you're mostly doing. So in your work,
you you deal with sub atomic particles and UH and astronomy,
(09:17):
you deal with reality at the micro scale and the
macro scale. Distances smaller and and vaster than our our
as humans are evolved sensory perceptions. What does it feel
like as a as a human scientist to be sort
of trapped between these two realms that you know at
times are are difficult to imagine. Yeah, it makes me
(09:38):
feel very very small. You know. It's ah. I feel
like the job of physics at this level is to
expand our horizons. You know, we've seen the universe sort
of the scale of stuff that's like a meter down
to a centimeter, down to maybe a millimeter we can
grasp right with our minds, and what we're trying to
do is push those boundaries to the very very small
(09:59):
and very very large. And you know, the first thing
you learn is that there's a huge amount going on
at the very small level and at the very big level.
And that just makes me feel like, you know, small
and insignificant in so do the best possible way. I mean,
it's like it tells me that the universe is so
fascinating and so filled with mysteries, um that we're really
(10:20):
just beginning to crack the surface. And I love that feeling.
I love feeling like there are amazing discoveries out there
waiting for us, and so it makes me feel like,
you know, I'm an explorer and there's a huge amount
of territory that is left to touch. So it's an
exciting feeling, but also intimidating. Now there's I guess there's
you know, even no matter how you know, large or small,
(10:41):
the you know, the details of the universe you're dealing
with your there there is this bedrock experience of reality
and uh, you know, I've I've I've read a little
bit about you know, the idea that you know can
read lead to um like a reality bias. Is that
a problem for physics? A reality bias? That's awesome? Um,
(11:02):
I think it's a problem for physics. But it's also
the only thing we can do. I mean, most of
what we do in physics is try to extrapolate from
what we know into what we don't know. Right, let's
explore the new territory, the sum atomic particles. How does
that stuff work? What does it look like? When we
do that, we build mental models, right, models in our
(11:22):
mind of what might be happening that are based on
the kind of things we know. Right. When I say particle,
probably in your head you're thinking tiny little ball, Right,
maybe it's spinning or something. Why do you think that?
Because that's one of the things in the catalog of
your mind. It's harder to come up with a completely
new thing. Right. It's like if somebody gave you a
(11:43):
totally new fruit you've never eaten before, you might be like,
it's kind of like apple with maybe a little bit
of cherry and banana in it. Right. You describe things
you don't know in terms of things you know, because
that's the only thing we really can do. So, yeah,
we have a reality bias because we've experien oarence the
world in this sort of very specific, unusual set of
(12:03):
circumstances where we're not moving close to the speed of light,
where don't have as much energy as the sun. And
because of that, we have a sort of a set
of basic objects we can build off of. And and
that that changes how we see the world, and it
changes um what we think we have learned about the world,
and and it leads to mistakes, right, Like photons and
other particles are not tying little balls, and there are
(12:26):
a lot of misconceptions there. But it's also I think
all we can do. I can't sweep away everything we've
learned and start tabby larassa. You know, I think one
exciting way to probe that reality bias, frankly is talking
to alien physicists. This is why I'm so excited for
the arrival of extraterrestrial because I have so many questions
(12:46):
I want and I want to know, like how do
you guys think about photons? Or do you think about
photons or you know all this? I have so many
questions for the aliens, and right, you know, I was
I was thinking about this the other day when my
my son, who's um, whose seven, is asking about about
light and light years. I think it had to do
with its telling about some news about a planet a
hundred and eleven light years away and UM and trying
(13:09):
to explain it to him. And I was thinking at
the time, well, it's kind of like I have I
have two ways of looking at or thinking about light.
There's the you know, the explanation of photons, and then
there's this kind of default but incorrect version of like
of light that I kind of fall back into, you know,
the sort of like sight as a laser beam, um,
(13:31):
you know, where where it's something emitted rather than received,
but but based on on the way you just described
it, it it makes me think, well, maybe they're really doing
like three different levels. They're sort of like photons as
they actually are. The metaphor metaphorical version of photons that
we used to understand that, and then the you know whatever,
the sort of basic incorrect version based on just the
(13:53):
experience of physical reality is yeah, and we even have
more than one metaphor right, because one doesn't do the
job right. Photons is a particle. We also have photons
as a wave because sometimes photons do things like, you know,
interfere with each other um in patterns that we see
waves do. And so we're like, oh, well, let's explain
that using our wave analogy. And then we're like, okay,
(14:15):
but now the photons are like bouncing around the way
particles do. Okay, now let's use our particle analogy. And
the question we often get on our podcast is like,
our photons particles or are they waves? Or are they both? Right?
And the answer is there neither right. They're not. They're
not particles, they're not tiny little balls, they're not waves.
Those are two different metaphors we used to try to
(14:36):
capture the fundamental essential weirdness of this thing, which we
never can completely describe in terms of things we're familiar with,
because they're totally different from anything we've ever seen before. Right,
it's this weird quantum mechanical particle. They can do things
that basketballs and water waves just cannot do. So some
(14:56):
combination of those two ideas comes closer to this scribing
what it is. But I don't think we'll ever truly
deeply understand it the way we understand the way basketball bounces,
just because we didn't grow up experiencing it. Right. It's
like if you don't grow up hearing Chinese, you're never
going to speak it without an accent. It's just impossible.
In the same way we're never going to really understand photons,
(15:18):
no matter how many banan appeals we smoke. Um. I
like the idea you mentioned about about alien physicists, So
so yeah, if they had to do you know, any
Unfortunately I do not. But but but I love the
idea of of an alien being, you know, not only
having you know, perhaps access to you know, different technological
(15:40):
levels of understanding regarding you know, the cosmos, but having
access to like different metaphors based on uh, you know,
different levels of sensory awareness, etcetera. Yeah, and I think
we would learn so much, you know, in terms of
like what is the language they used to describe this stuff?
Are they mathematical? You know? We have questions about like
is a something that comes out of human the human
(16:02):
mind is reflect the way we think, or is it
something deep about the universe. It seems to us like
it must be deep about the universe because it's so
pure and crystalline and and clean, right, and and all
of our physical laws can to be described in terms
of mathematics, so it must be deep and true. But
that's a thought in human minds, shared between human minds, right,
(16:25):
we might meet an alien species that doesn't think about
math and has some other deep insight into the way
the universe works. The thing that excites and frustrates me
is those movies where the aliens come and then like
five minutes later, their physicists and our physicist around a
chalk at a chalkboard, excitedly making progress. And I'm like,
we've spent like ten years figuring out what zero means,
(16:47):
you know, and then another five talking about real numbers,
and then maybe you know, twenty years and we can
start talking about science or something. I suspect that we
would have that that our entire you of the universe
and that we we think about physics and math is
so biased by our experience. Of course, it has to
be that we would learn a tremendous amount just by
(17:10):
encountering those aliens and trying to communicate with them. Yeah,
that's interesting to think about, because a lot of times
we do fall back on this idea of of math
be at a be at this you know, wonderful human
invention that gets to the heart of reality, or being
this thing that underlies reality that we've discovered. That either way,
it would be like this universal language that would not
in itself require translation. Yeah, and and and demonstrating that
(17:34):
by finding an alien species and discovering that they also
think in math, that would be an enormous question answered,
like one of the deepest questions in the history of
human experience crossed off the list. That would be a
great day. All right, it is time for a sponsor break.
Let's take a break, and we're back with the interview. Now.
(17:56):
In terms of of things that you know, various scientific experiments, uh,
you know, large scale experiments, especially h that that humans
are engaged in. Want. One question that we've asked on
the show before that I'd like to ask you is
if you could summon the collective will, the political capital
and of course the funding to um, you know, to
(18:16):
launch any terrestrial based scientific experiment, you know, be at
a collider, a telescope, etcetera. What would it be? And
uh and why oh no, oh no, you're gonna ask
me to betray my own field. Um. Well, you know,
I'm a particle physicist and I work with these amazing facilities.
They caused tens of billions of dollars to smash particles together,
(18:38):
and they're wonderful and they provided me a lifetime so
far of intellectual curiosity, etcetera, etcetera. Um, last decade or so,
I haven't really revealed that many surprises. You know, we
smashed particles together. We don't know what we're gonna find.
Maybe crazy new purple bananas may mean nothing. Um, it's exploration. Recently,
we haven't really found anything. And we don't know if
(19:00):
building a bigger one for a hundred billion dollars would
provide anything or just or or you know more nothing.
We don't know. Um. But The thing that's always amazed
me is about is telescopes, because every time we build
a new telescope that looks out into the universe, either
in a new way like X ray or you know,
um infra red or whatever, or looks in a new
(19:23):
direction or looks deeper like the hubble, we always find
crazy stuff that blows your mind. Stuff that astronomers think,
what why is that there? Or we didn't think that
was possible. So astronomy amazes me because every time humans
open up new eyes into the universe, they see something
crazy and new that teaches us something deep about the
(19:44):
universe and was out there. So I think, if I
had to choose, I would build, you know, a huge, fancy,
amazing telescope that lets us look ever deeper into the
universe with clearer and clearer eyes, because there's just so
much to discover there. It feels like it feels like
every dollar spent there is a dollar of understanding. Yeah. Absolutely.
I mean, in regularly consuming the you know, the science
(20:07):
headlines and the new studies that come out, it's it's
easy to sort of grow numb to some of the
especially the anthropomorphized headlines. But like just in like the
last few weeks we've had we you know, we've just
yesterday there's the uh, the the new Exo planet that
they've been discussing, the one that's a hundred eleven light
(20:27):
years away, you know, the possible presence of water there,
the Fermi bubbles from Sagittarius, a star. You know, there's
all there's there's something exciting. You know, it seems like
almost every week if you just you know, pay attention
to it. Yeah, and and you don't you can also
just focus on this stuff we've already found that nobody understands, like,
(20:48):
you know, where are these crazy particles coming from with
super high energy. Nobody knows what's the source of these
fast radio bursts, these crazy little, super loud, very short
bursts of radi of energy from other galaxies. We have
no idea. It's incredible how much stuff is already out
there that we're clueless about. That if we could look
deeper and find more of them, we could start to
(21:09):
get clues of where are they coming from, what makes them,
and what's going on over there. And it's wonderful to
me to to learn about these things happening in the
universe that are sort of of shocking scale. You know,
like you learned about the amazing magnetic field around some
of these neutron stars, or the incredible density of stuff,
or the huge temperatures, and again, it just makes me
(21:30):
feel sort of wonderfully small. And you know, the universe
is so much bigger than we ever imagine, but it's
also so much more extreme. You know, there's dense stuff
and hot stuff and fast stuff and crazy stuff, and
I love that because it just tells me that there
are more these crazy, mind blowing moments in the future,
and that's that's what I live for, right and in
any of them close to home. You know, it's easy
(21:52):
to get wrapped up in the various exoplanet stories and
you know, considerations of of black holes. But but then
like all the mysteries that relate just to our Solar system,
and you know, the the end, the less uh known,
you know, outer reaches of it are always fascinating. Yeah,
that we have moons of Jupiter that have like oceans
(22:13):
underneath their surface that might have life on them. Right,
there's potentially incredible discoveries basically just around the corner. So
I mean, I would love to send something up there
to drooll into that ice and figure out what's underneath
and what's swimming around in that ocean. Like, I would
definitely pay more tax if we could have more missions
to explore just our own solar system for sure. Sign
(22:34):
me up. So you're a you're a scientist and a
science communicator, and we we find ourselves in a time when,
especially in the United States, there's a there's a certain
amount of hostility to certain scientific topics, generally politicized topics,
especially climate change. Uh. And of course the stakes for
the future are are huge when it comes to climate change.
(22:54):
Do you do you think there have been mistakes, any
mistakes in science communication that let us see, Um, I
think everybody makes mistakes because everybody's human and everybody comes
from their own perspective. And you know, I've heard people
be asked questions like is there a chance the large
Hadron collider will destroy the Earth? And you know the
(23:15):
answer to that question, of course, is there's a chance. Right.
But you have to know your audience, right, you have
to know really what are they asking? They're asking should
I be worried? Right? And the answer to that is no, um.
And so it's it's a matter of sort of bridging
those communities of knowing who your audience is and knowing
how to talk to them. And um, you know, I
wouldn't blame anybody in particular. I think everybody was well
(23:37):
intentioned and doing their best. And I commend any scientist
who's trying to explain what we're doing and why we're
doing it to the public, because in the end, we're
doing it for the public. The public are paying for it. Um,
it's their science also, so I think we have an
obligation to try to share with them and everybody why
we're doing it, and and also to reach out to
(23:59):
to the next generation and excite them, right because the
next generation of scientists comes from the next generation of children.
And the reason a lot of us are scientists is
because some scientists took the time to explain why they
were amazed and what they learned. UM. So I don't
think it's that useful to assign blame and say, like,
this person said the wrong thing. But I think we
(24:19):
can think about, you know, how has it done well?
And um, I think that we should find those scientists
who are good at it and who have a passion
for it. You know, one thing I really like about
science is that it's mostly people following their passions. It's
not like somebody came and told me, Daniel, study deuced topic.
I'm doing this particular one because I'm pulled into it
because I want to know the answers. Somebody else is
(24:41):
doing plasma physics because they love it and they love
the day to day work of climbing around on the
fusion reactor. And some people love science communication, and other
people like hiding in their office and never talking to
human beings. And so you know, let's let the huge
and varied set of talents we have do their best.
So it times, you know, in in dealing with things
(25:03):
that the macro or the micro scale, dealing with things
like like radiation, you know, we're dealing with things that
are again beyond our our our our ability to really perceive.
You know, as humans were kind of dealing with invisible realms.
And and one thing that was kind of striking me
when I was, you know, thinking about things to ask
(25:23):
you about, was we have um, you know, we we
have for for ages humans have have have been willing
and able to comprehend invisible realities. Uh, you know, along
spiritual models and religious models Um. And yet sometimes like
the invisible or you know, uh difficult to to understand
(25:47):
aspects of the scientific invisible realms seems to be kind
of a stumbling block to some people. Uh why do
you think that is? Like if you like, if you
just put it on paper, it seems so seemed like, oh, well, look,
for thousands of years people have had no, no problems
buying into you know, models of reality and and reasons
(26:09):
for their conditions that that that are not visible. Well,
you know, it seems like they would have a natural
proclivity to to take to these uh more you know,
you know, seemingly exotic scientific explanations. Yeah, I agree. I
think that's one of the attractive things about it, right,
that science let's you sort of open up a new
set of eyes and get a glimpse of another way
(26:31):
that the universe is working. You know, it's like discovering
that you've been blind for a thousand years and finally
you can see the universe in a new way, the
stuff going on you never even imagined. Um. So I agree,
I think it gives you a new view, and it
gives you a new insight. It also shows you what
tiny fraction of the universe you can actually experience, you know,
(26:52):
I tell people a lot, for example, that that um,
every second, one billion new trino passes through your fingernails.
Like the air around us is just stuffed filled with
these new trinos. Right, You don't notice them. You go
around your everyday life. You never think about them. They
never think a at you either, right, So sort of
like being snubbed on the street. But it tells you
(27:15):
it's a clue that there's a huge amount of stuff
going on around you all the time that you're not
aware of that you're seeing a tiny little slice of
what's happening. So actually, I think the opposite. I think
that UM, people's historical acceptance of mysticism and hidden powers
and invisible actions UM lets them makes it easier for
(27:35):
them to understand that the universe is filled with invisible
crazy stuff UM that they might not have imagined. So
I've actually had the opposite experience UM. I think that
that people are quite receptive to this kind of thinking UM,
and that they love hearing about it. They love that
the feeling of awe when you when you show them
that the universe that you can peel back a layer
(27:55):
of reality and show them the universe is different from
what they imagine because the and that's what physics is
trying to do, right, peel back layers of reality and
show us sort of what's really there. Alright, time for
a break to hear from the sponsor. We will be
right back, and we are back with the interview. Coming
(28:16):
back to just the idea of public perceptions of science
and uh and the work of scientists. What are some
other examples that that you've encountered before, you know, big
misconceptions that the general public has about about science or scientists.
You know, I think a lot of people think that
science is always fun, you know, and it's not. There
(28:37):
are days when I'm pulling my hair out because I
just can't make something work, or I thought I understood
something and then it turns out I've been wrong for
five years. Um. And and the other thing I think
that's important for people to understand is that science is
not some church of objectivity, right. Science is people. It's
(28:58):
people trying to understand the universe. It's just a community
of of of people, right. And so you know, when
we talk about science, we try to some people imagine
this like edifice of knowledge that we're building up this
list of facts. But it's really it's just a community
of the curious, right And those people are of course subjective.
I'm not perfectly objective. I've things I've biases, and things
(29:20):
I like and things I'm interested in and things I'm
not interested in. And so as a scientist you can't
be just like off on your own figuring out the universe.
You have to sort of move the community with you,
right Like, for example, I get a lot of emails
from people who think they have figured out the universe. There,
here's my theory. I've I've been thinking about it, and
(29:40):
here's my theory. And I think that's wonderful because I
love the people out there thinking about this stuff, that
they're inspired by the grand mysteries of physics to try
to solve it. Awesome. And often these are technical folks
of an engineered Boeing who on the side is thinking about,
you know, the nature of light or whatever. That's cool.
The thing that I think they don't understand is that
you can't just work on your own own for twenty
(30:00):
years and then deliver your magnum opus the theory of everything,
because nobody knows how to digest that even you're speaking.
You're inventing your own mathematics and working on your own
for two decades. You're so far away from where we're thinking,
there's hard for us to even understand what you're doing.
It's like meeting an alien physicist. And so to be accepted,
to change the direction of science, to make some progress,
(30:22):
you have to be part of the community and sort
of steer the ship a little bit and convince people
that what you're doing is interesting so that they will
get involved and digested and build on your work. Right,
So it's not a bunch of people delivering grand insights
in front of an audience of people who totally unprepared.
It's the slow accumulation of work, the movement of the
crowd of minds sort of in a new direction. That's
(30:44):
what leads to these really big insights. We we um
cite the website Eon a lot, and you actually wrote
a wonderful piece for them a little while back titled
the most Wonderful Words and Science We have no idea yet, uh,
And it gets into this idea you know that the
science is this ever expanding under understanding of reality like
(31:07):
we've been discussing, and it's it's the kind of thing
that always makes me think of like a slime mold
and in an experimental maze, you know, in the most
flattering possible way. Yes, yeah, yeah, And that it's it's expanding,
it's following uh potential pathways, shrinking back from the ones
that don't have food, but just expanding uh uh. And
(31:27):
you mentioned in your your piece that if we were
to grab a science textbook from uh, like a thousand
years in the future, that it would be beyond our understanding.
And it reminds me a lot of the I don't
know if you've encountered this, but the you know, the
idea of fixed versus growth mind sets, and you see
this a lot in business circles, for instance. Is science
sort of a um a growth mindset process for a
(31:51):
fixed growth species. Yeah, I think it's um it's the
slow evolution of concepts, right, that build on each other.
And I think what I was trying to get up
with that is that you can't leap frog. You can't
just like fast forward a thousand years and digest everything
those physicists have been doing. Like if I want a
thousand years in the future and try to talk to
(32:11):
those physicists. They would be not just using some crazy
technology to talk to each other, and right, you know,
they wouldn't have chalkboards or white boards. They will probably
have crazy kinds of math that made no sense to me, right,
even if they were still speaking English. And so it's
you know, you have to in order to catch up.
I need to probably go through a thousand years of
work to get from where I am to where they are. Right.
(32:33):
You need to sort of build that bridge. You can't
just take an enormous leap out into nothing. Um. But
the thing that amazes me is the children. The children
in that time they will never have known anything else,
and so they will have been have They will have
been introduced to these concepts from the beginning, and they
will think they're totally natural. Right. So things that those
(32:55):
those scientists learned nine years from now and then teach
to children a thou us and years from now, we'll
be totally natural to those kids and totally alien to us. Um.
And I think that it's again it's just a process
of explaining what we don't know in terms of what
we do know. And then that basis set of ideas,
you know, what the basic concepts we think we understand
(33:16):
that slowly evolves. You know, take for example, trying to
get some perspective. Um, it's only been a hundred years
that we've understood that there's more than one galaxy in
the universe, right that that it was Hubble like less
than a hundred years ago who looked out and found
what he saw were star he thought were stars that
turned out to be way too far away. Nobody understood,
(33:38):
oh my gosh, those are other galaxies. Like that's a
completely different mindset about the universe. Right, So if you
go back a hundred years and try to explain to
people your research about how galaxies form, they'll be like,
what what do you mean galaxies? There's just so many
basic things to explain before you can get to the
interesting bit. So that's why I was trying to capture,
(33:59):
is trying to express how, on one hand, somebody from
my time, our time would have a hard time knowing
what those scientists are working on. At the same time,
those children would find it totally intuitive because they would
know nothing else, and so that would be really fascinating.
And frankly, if I went to the year three thousand,
I would not be prepared to read anything other than
a children's book, because everything else would be so far
(34:20):
beyond us. Awesome, Well, let's let's be As we begin
to close out here, I want to come back to
the podcast and uh, you know, part of the podcast
mission statement, um is to explain the universe. Uh, where
where are you? A one year in on the you know,
your completion level of explaining the universe? I would say
(34:41):
approximately zero percent. No, you know, science has you know
what fraction in the universe has science understood? I think
zero percent is a good estimate. You know, we've only
recently stumbled across big questions, you know, questions like why
is the universe expanding and expand ning faster and faster? Um,
(35:02):
This is a question we only discovered twenty years ago,
and we still have no idea how to explain it.
And what that tells me is that there are huge
questions out there that we haven't even discovered yet. You know,
there are also other questions we don't even know how
to make progress on, like what is the nature of time?
Why does it only move forwards? What is even space?
(35:22):
You know it has three dimensions or maybe more. It
can wiggle and shake and expand and bend. What is
this stuff? Um, there's so many things we have not
yet scratched, and I think the deepest questions we have
not even discovered the questions yet, and so um, I
think a zero percentage is approximately a fair estimate. You know.
There are other ways to look at it, though, Like
(35:43):
we know, for example, how much energy there is in
the universe sort of crazy and amazing, But we can
measure the total energy density of the universe by measuring
how much it bends space, and then we can ask, like,
how much of that energy can we account for? And
there we've made a solid five percent progress because five
percent of the energy is in terms of matter like
(36:05):
me and you and hamsters and bananas. So that's some
concrete progress, you know, but it leaves of the totally unexplained.
So um, there's lots of stuff to keep exploring and
definitely lots of material for future episodes. So for anyone
out there who is checking out Daniel Joy explaining the
(36:25):
universe for the first time, what do you recommend? Start
at the beginning, Start with the most recent episodes or
their key episodes that you would recommend. Uh in particular,
we try to cover a pretty broad variety of stuff
from like how big is the universe? Too? Is the
universe of simulation? Down to more you know, everyday stuff
like how does a microwave work? Or you know how
(36:46):
today's episode was, like how is it possible for stones
to skip on water? And so what I would suggest
people just sort of skim the titles and find one
that pulls them in and says, oh, I want to
know about that, because everybody's got different curiosity and different passion,
and um, my favorite ones are the particle physics ones.
You know what is a quantum fielder? Is light, a
particle or a wave. That's the kind of stuff that
(37:08):
really gets me going. But I think, well, they're all fun,
and people should follow the ones that touch their personal curiosity. Now, obviously,
if people want to find the podcasts, they can, they
can find it wherever podcasts are available. But what are
some other key addresses or contact points you want to
get out there? Yeah, you can find us on Twitter
Daniel and Jorge or Facebook and Instagram, and you can
(37:31):
look at our website Daniel and Jorge dot com. And
if you have a question that you'd love us to answer,
just email us questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
We answer all of our listener emails every physics question
we get, and we love suggestions from listeners because we
want to know what you want to hear about. Awesome. Well, Daniel,
(37:51):
thanks for taking time out of your day to chat
with me here on the show. And uh, you know,
Joe and I may take you up on on that
that email situ wish and because we have physics questions
from time to time that we certainly cannot answer, so
it would be nice to bounce some of them off
of you. Awesome, Well, thanks so much for having me on.
Really fun to talk about this stuff. I love the
questions and uh, thanks again. All right, so there you
(38:14):
have it again. That was Daniel whiteson uh, co host
of Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, and you can
find that at Daniel and Jorge dot com. You can
also find that podcast anywhere you get your podcasts. It's
a it's an in network show. There are essentially our
co workers on the other side of the continent here,
but it's a's tremendous show. I highly recommended awesome. In
(38:36):
the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes
of Stuff to Blow your Mind heading over to stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com because that is where
you will find them. We also find them everywhere you
get your podcasts, and as always we ask you, if
you have a chance, support the show by leaving a
nice rating and a review. Huge thanks as always to
our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like
to get in touch with us to let us know
(38:57):
feedback on this episode or any other, to Joe, to
topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
(39:18):
my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. B
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