Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, if we found a new quark, what
Speaker 1: would you call it?
Speaker 2: Pedro or vn? Well, what are the current ones called?
Speaker 1: Well, there's up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom.
Speaker 2: Oh, man, I feel like you can only go up
Speaker 2: from there.
Speaker 1: You're pretty down on these names. I mean they're pretty strange.
Speaker 1: I personally find them kind of charming.
Speaker 2: I guess you do like things that are off color.
Speaker 1: You might think this whole scheme needs a rewrite from
Speaker 1: the top.
Speaker 2: All right, well let's dive in. Bottoms up. Hi, I'm
Speaker 2: Horae madkerk Doda and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 1: at U c Irvine, and I hope to one day
Speaker 1: be involved in a big argument about how to name
Speaker 1: a new particle.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're not involved yet. I mean, don't you guys
Speaker 2: name things before you discover them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. We do name hypothetical particles that might
Speaker 1: not even be part of the universe.
Speaker 2: Can I lay a stick to that? Like, Hey, if
Speaker 2: anyone ever discovers a quark in the future, I'm naming
Speaker 2: it the Whore.
Speaker 1: I think you can call it whatever you like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: whether it catches on is another question.
Speaker 2: No, but I said it first. Doesn't that count? Do
Speaker 2: you have dibbs? In physics?
Speaker 1: There is no DIBs and physics we even have disagreements
Speaker 1: about what to name things which go.
Speaker 2: On for decades. What if I name the the dibbs?
Speaker 2: It DIBs both. But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel
Speaker 2: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Where we want to be the first to explain everything
Speaker 1: about the universe to you, from how all the tiny
Speaker 1: little particles work, from their interactions to their little bits
Speaker 1: of matter, to their quantum fields and the way they
Speaker 1: work together to make everything that's glorious and delicious and
Speaker 1: badly named in the universe.
Speaker 2: That's right, because it is a strange and charming universe
Speaker 2: out there, full of mysteries that we are still discovering.
Speaker 2: New discoveries are still being made even today about how
Speaker 2: the universe works and what are all the things in it.
Speaker 1: One way to answer the question how does the universe
Speaker 1: work is to figure out what its tiniest bits are
Speaker 1: and what rules they follow. In some sense, that would
Speaker 1: be an explanation because it's sort of the most fundamental description.
Speaker 1: In another sense, it's sort of lacking a lot of
Speaker 1: connection to reality. Even if you understand the tiny little bits,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily understand why BlackBerry ice cream is so delicious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's pretty amazing that we've discovered so much
Speaker 2: about what matter is made out of. Given that we
Speaker 2: have these kind of soft, squishy eyeballs, it really don't
Speaker 2: work all that well. All the time, we have augmented
Speaker 2: our bare senses with all sorts of amazing technological eyeballs,
Speaker 2: things that can gather ancient photons while orbiting the Earth,
Speaker 2: and devices that poke and probe little bits of matter
Speaker 2: to reveal their structure, or even as simple as reading glasses,
Speaker 2: which I forgot today to bring. So that's why I'm
Speaker 2: only about eighty percent sure of what we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Is that up from usual seventy five percent?
Speaker 2: I guess, I mean eighty percent sure? What's on this
Speaker 2: page in front of me?
Speaker 1: I see? Well, you know, I think we've been working
Speaker 1: together for more than a decade before I even learned
Speaker 1: that you wore glasses.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I only just started wearing reading glasses maybe
Speaker 2: a year or two ago. It came pretty fast.
Speaker 1: I see. So you're saying, after ten years of working
Speaker 1: with Daniel, you're incurring actual physical damage. That's right.
Speaker 2: I al was talking about tiny microscopic particles. I mean
Speaker 2: that would ruin anyone's eyesight.
Speaker 1: All right, there you have it, folks, a health warning
Speaker 1: for this podcast. We're five years in, which means you're
Speaker 1: all five years away from ruining your eyesight.
Speaker 2: M well, I did worse glasses for a long time.
Speaker 2: Then I got laser surgery, which is amazing. But now
Speaker 2: I'm getting older any reading glasses, which totally stinks. You
Speaker 2: haven't hit that wall yet.
Speaker 1: I've been wearing glasses since I was a teenager, and
Speaker 1: I'm definitely not getting my eyeballs lasered. Oh no, but.
Speaker 2: Aren't you physicists? Don't you trust the lasers.
Speaker 1: I'm a physicist, so I definitely don't trust the lasers.
Speaker 2: What have they made a lazing operation that? Did you
Speaker 2: see subpotomic particles?
Speaker 1: Oh boy? Yeah? Well, I would definitely volunteer other people
Speaker 1: for it and ask them all sorts of questions about it.
Speaker 2: Really, you wouldn't want to see particles with your naked eye.
Speaker 1: No, I prefer augmented technological eyeballs, and to keep my
Speaker 1: eyeballs unaltered.
Speaker 2: I want to see here, like take a picture.
Speaker 1: Exactly, build me device, put the picture on a screen.
Speaker 1: I'm happy with that.
Speaker 2: But anyways, it would be amazing to see at that
Speaker 2: microscopic level because we would discover maybe what matter is
Speaker 2: actually made out of.
Speaker 1: And we have made a lot of progress over the
Speaker 1: years and figuring out what the tiny little bits are
Speaker 1: that click together to explain our world and what the
Speaker 1: tiny bits inside those bits are and how they work together.
Speaker 1: But there are still lots and lots of questions, not
Speaker 1: just questions about the crazy weird particles we may or
Speaker 1: may not discover as colliders, but questions about what you
Speaker 1: and I are actually made out of.
Speaker 2: That's right, It's been a long road to discover the
Speaker 2: building blocks of stuff around us. We started with tiny
Speaker 2: hypothetical particles made out of earth, wind and fire, right,
Speaker 2: That's how the Greeks started, and then we moved on
Speaker 2: to atoms.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the Greeks thought about like wind
Speaker 1: particles and fire particles. They had lots of different crazy
Speaker 1: ideas about how the universe works. But yeah, you can
Speaker 1: do di dot from there to quiet Field theory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I isn't know what zoos is. Isn't zoos basically
Speaker 2: like a particle, the lightning particle.
Speaker 1: The Zeus particle. And I don't think I've ever heard
Speaker 1: that phrase before. That sounds like a really awesome young
Speaker 1: adult thriller.
Speaker 2: That sounds like what we should name the next next
Speaker 2: particle I discover, or that I propose we discovered.
Speaker 1: Well, some people do call the Higgs boson the god particles,
Speaker 1: so maybe we should just broaden that, you know, we
Speaker 1: should have the Jehovah particle.
Speaker 2: And that's right, be more inclusive about all religions.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But it has been a pretty amazing road to discover
Speaker 2: what things are made of. And at some point, I
Speaker 2: guess people discovered that we're made out of atoms, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. That's the first step, and it's in
Speaker 1: some ways the most amazing, the most incredible, the biggest
Speaker 1: sort of intellectual leap. They say that all the craziness
Speaker 1: in the universe, the almost infinite variety of stuff out there,
Speaker 1: can be explained with a small set of basic building blocks,
Speaker 1: the atoms. The about one hundred elements of the periodic
Speaker 1: table can be put together in all sorts of ways
Speaker 1: to explain everything that we've ever seen. Like philosophically, it's
Speaker 1: not obvious that we would have to live in a
Speaker 1: universe that works that way, where the arrangements of the
Speaker 1: smallest bits explain the complexity that we experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it could have been that we lived
Speaker 2: in a universe where everything was made out of earth,
Speaker 2: wind and fire, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Or everything could have been made out of its
Speaker 1: own different kind of stuff. Everything out there in the
Speaker 1: universe could have had its own elemental particle that explains it.
Speaker 1: But instead it seems like as you dig deeper and
Speaker 1: deeper into the firmament of the universe, things weirdly get simpler.
Speaker 2: And so we cracked open matter to discoverage made out
Speaker 2: of atoms, and then at some point we cracked open
Speaker 2: the atom to find out that it's made out of
Speaker 2: smaller particles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the nucleus has protons and neutrons, and then surrounding
Speaker 1: those are electrons, and those protons and neutrons themselves, we
Speaker 1: discovered are also not fundamental bits of the universe. They
Speaker 1: are made of even smaller particles bound together with an
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful force.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so we have a name for those particles.
Speaker 2: They're called quarks, and we think we know maybe what
Speaker 2: all the quarks are.
Speaker 1: We think we know, maybe that's definitely a good summary
Speaker 1: of the physics of basically anything.
Speaker 2: We think we know that maybe basic size, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Or really that's just human reality and anything that's out there.
Speaker 2: We just think we know it's there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at a comma, maybe at the end and
Speaker 1: you're golden or.
Speaker 2: Or a question mark.
Speaker 1: But the story isn't over.
Speaker 2: Maybe, And so.
Speaker 1: You've probably been told a familiar story about how the
Speaker 1: proton is made out of two different quarks, the upquark
Speaker 1: and the down but that's not the end of the story, Comma.
Speaker 2: Maybe it never is. Yeah, there might be only two
Speaker 2: kinds of quarks inside of the proton, but is that
Speaker 2: really the case? And so to the on the podcast,
Speaker 2: we'll be tackling the question are there quarks inside the proton?
Speaker 2: Are we basically asking if the proton is charming?
Speaker 1: We're asking about it's chat Yeah, is it good at
Speaker 1: having conversations or is it kind of dull?
Speaker 2: Does it have riz? Is a proton? Rizzy?
Speaker 1: Should you take a proton out with you on Friday night?
Speaker 1: To be your wingman or wing woman, that's.
Speaker 2: Right, or would it be too charming? You don't want
Speaker 2: you don't want that? Yeah, as your wingman or wing particle.
Speaker 1: We are in our desperate efforts to be relevant to
Speaker 1: modern culture here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or to pretend we're young and still go out
Speaker 2: on Friday nights. I mean, come on, let's face it,
Speaker 2: my Friday nights are and do not involve putting on
Speaker 2: anything besides pajama.
Speaker 1: Let me just squint through my reading glasses to read
Speaker 1: the latest slaying the youth for saying that.
Speaker 2: Like charisma.
Speaker 1: Oh is that what riz is short for?
Speaker 2: I was wondering, Oh man, you're even worse than me.
Speaker 2: I guess you are older than.
Speaker 1: Me, am. I I'm rounding up to fifty for sure.
Speaker 2: So well, I guess it's it's charmed, the same as
Speaker 2: charisma sort of.
Speaker 1: How would you shorten charm harm arm arm?
Speaker 2: Obviously? I mean I think we all associate cham with charm.
Speaker 1: And when I heard that word before cham about what
Speaker 1: is that? Can't place it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, pretty soon all the kids will say, like,
Speaker 2: oh man, that that kid really has cham.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's so chamming, he's a champion, that's right, Yes,
Speaker 1: with a cham pion. There you go. You are a
Speaker 1: particle a man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, you brought it back around to particle physics. Yes,
Speaker 2: the Champion, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Exactly, it's already a particle name after you, and.
Speaker 2: I hear it's the best one. It's like it beat
Speaker 2: out all the other particles. All right, Well, this is
Speaker 2: an interesting question. Are there charm forks inside the proton? Well,
Speaker 2: first of all, I feel like maybe not a lot
Speaker 2: of people know the conventional wisdom, which is that there
Speaker 2: are only two of the other kinds of quarks in
Speaker 2: the proton.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The story you're usually told is that the proton
Speaker 1: is made of just two kinds of quarks, the upquark
Speaker 1: and the down quark. These are the lightest quarks that
Speaker 1: exist out there, the ones that are stable and usually
Speaker 1: seen as the basic building blocks of matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the question is is there a third
Speaker 2: kind of quark inside the proton? And is it charming
Speaker 2: or is it kind of an annoying quark?
Speaker 1: Is the whole thing kind of strange?
Speaker 2: All right? Well, as usually, we were wondering how many
Speaker 2: people out there had thought about this question or wondered
Speaker 2: what exactly is inside the proton?
Speaker 1: Thanks very much to everybody who participates in this segment.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear your voice on the podcast, so
Speaker 1: please write to me. Get over that barrier that's been
Speaker 1: preventing you from participating, and send me an email to
Speaker 1: questions at Danielandjorge dot com.
Speaker 2: So think about it for a second. Do you think
Speaker 2: the proton is charming? Here's what people had to say.
Speaker 1: Is positively charged. I think something charming, it's positive Yes.
Speaker 3: I believe that a proton is made up of up
Speaker 3: quarks and down quarks, so I'm going to say no
Speaker 3: to the charm quark.
Speaker 4: I like the sound of charm quarks. I'm picturing that
Speaker 4: character from Star Trek now as he's trying to do
Speaker 4: a deal. That's a charm quark. I'm not sure what
Speaker 4: a charm quark is, but if there were quarks, there
Speaker 4: are up quarks and down quarks inside the proton, right,
Speaker 4: So I would say that if there are quarks, they're
Speaker 4: inside a proton. So yes, there are charm quarks inside
Speaker 4: the proton, and I look forward to learning exactly what
Speaker 4: a charm quark is.
Speaker 2: All right, some interesting ideas here, little Star Trek reference here,
Speaker 2: that was a star trek T andg reference.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I'm pretty sure quark only peer in the
Speaker 1: next generation and he is kind of charming.
Speaker 3: Mmmm.
Speaker 2: All right, well, most people seem positive that the proton
Speaker 2: is charming, although there was one person who said.
Speaker 1: No, Yeah, some people have heard the story that protons
Speaker 1: are just made of up quarks and down quarks.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's dig into it, Danielle. Maybe start
Speaker 2: with the basics. What is a quark and what is
Speaker 2: a charming one, and what is it not charming quark?
Speaker 1: So, quarks are the particles that we see inside the
Speaker 1: proton and inside the neutron, and also inside a bunch
Speaker 1: of other particles that we've seen in collisions and in
Speaker 1: cosmic rays, like chaons and pions and other particles that
Speaker 1: are not stable. But when you smash these particles together,
Speaker 1: you discover that there really are smaller bits inside of them,
Speaker 1: and those are the particles we call quarks.
Speaker 2: How are quarks named, by the way.
Speaker 1: How are the individual quarks named? Or how is the
Speaker 1: word quark invented?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Like, how did they come up with the word quark?
Speaker 2: Like it sounds kind of quirky? Was that a real
Speaker 2: before that they discovered the particle or did they invent
Speaker 2: any word?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a really interesting story. Quark actually is
Speaker 1: a thing out there in the world. It's like a
Speaker 1: yogurty thing that is eaten in Germany and other parts
Speaker 1: of Europe. But in English, quarks were named by Murray Gellman,
Speaker 1: and he actually took the word from a James Joyce
Speaker 1: poem Finnigan's Wake, where it says three quarks from master Mark.
Speaker 2: What did James Joyce mean by it?
Speaker 1: Well, there's some debate, of course, because James Joyce is
Speaker 1: a poet and so they never like use words in
Speaker 1: the ways that people expect.
Speaker 2: Meaning it was a typo, maybe.
Speaker 1: A genius typo, who knows. But the word quark here
Speaker 1: is like a variation of the word croak, and so
Speaker 1: the line in the poem is about like cheering the king.
Speaker 1: Three quarks from mister Mark is like three croaks or
Speaker 1: three cheers.
Speaker 2: And so the person who discovered these particles picked that
Speaker 2: because he thought there were three particles or why did
Speaker 2: they pick that word out of that poem.
Speaker 1: He's got a long story for why he pick this,
Speaker 1: but essentially it comes down to the fact that there
Speaker 1: were three of them at the time, at the time
Speaker 1: that he was coming up with a name for it,
Speaker 1: we thought that there were three different kinds of quarks,
Speaker 1: the up, the down, and the strange, and so he
Speaker 1: was looking for something connected to three.
Speaker 2: And by three, you mean like, you know, the more
Speaker 2: you do these collisions and you explore what matter is
Speaker 2: made out of, you find three different flavors of these particles.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, there's three different kinds of these particles that
Speaker 1: were initially identified. And it comes out of this era
Speaker 1: in particle physics called the particle Zoo, when we turned
Speaker 1: on colliders, smashed protons into stuff and saw all sorts
Speaker 1: of weird particles come out. When we saw pions, we
Speaker 1: saw chaons, we saw mega particles, we saw row particles. Basically,
Speaker 1: every time you turned on the collider and added a
Speaker 1: bit more energy, you saw new stuff come out. And
Speaker 1: so it was a very confusing time in particle physics,
Speaker 1: like what are all these particles? Are they all made
Speaker 1: from the same thing? Are they all their own different
Speaker 1: kind of thing? And quarks was an effort to unify that,
Speaker 1: to explain it. Murray Gelmon and other folks realized that
Speaker 1: with just three basic particles, the upcork, the down cork,
Speaker 1: and the strange quark. You could explain all the particles
Speaker 1: zoo is just being different combinations of these three basic
Speaker 1: building blocks. The same way you can explain like everything
Speaker 1: we experience in terms of one hundred elements. They were
Speaker 1: able to explain all of the elements of the particle
Speaker 1: Zoo in terms of these just three basic building blocks.
Speaker 2: Like maybe you could say, like a iron is not
Speaker 2: like a totally different particle than oxygen or carbon. It's
Speaker 2: just like they're just made of different arrangements of the
Speaker 2: same particles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. You can make any element with a certain
Speaker 1: number of protons and neutrons and electrons. Right, there's really
Speaker 1: only three building blocks there that explain all of that complexity.
Speaker 1: In the same way you can make pions out of
Speaker 1: an upcork and an anti upcork, you can make chaons
Speaker 1: if you mix in some strange quarks. You can make
Speaker 1: protons out of three quarks. You can make neutrons out
Speaker 1: of three quarks. And so they were able to explain
Speaker 1: all of this complexity using three basic building blocks, and
Speaker 1: they were even able to predict the existence of particles
Speaker 1: we hadn't seen yet. They said, if you mix all
Speaker 1: these particles together, there's one way to mix them that
Speaker 1: nobody's seen yet. And they predicted that that particle existed,
Speaker 1: and then they saw it, and so that's what really
Speaker 1: convinced everybody that it was real.
Speaker 2: What was it called?
Speaker 1: So it was the omega minus particle, which was made
Speaker 1: out of three strange quarks, and it was actually Gelman
Speaker 1: predicted it. He stood up at a conference and made
Speaker 1: this prediction, which is sort of ballsy, and then it
Speaker 1: was observed and people believe that they were real.
Speaker 2: Now the corks were hypothetical or do we eventually see
Speaker 2: them individually like at a collider?
Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. For a long time, people believe the
Speaker 1: math of these quarks and they said, all right, well
Speaker 1: the math works, but they're kind of hypothetical. But then
Speaker 1: there was sort of a philosophical debate about whether they're
Speaker 1: real or hypothetical because you can't actually see them by themselves.
Speaker 2: You cannot you.
Speaker 1: Cannot ever see a quark by itself. Yeah. The quarks
Speaker 1: feel this strong force, which is much stronger than electromagnetism,
Speaker 1: for example, and they're so tight bound together. There's so
Speaker 1: much energy in their interaction. If you pull them apart.
Speaker 1: That energy creates more quarks basically to shield it. It's
Speaker 1: such a powerful force that it always neutralizes itself the
Speaker 1: same way like lightning is neutralizing any charge difference between
Speaker 1: the ground and clouds. Because electromagntism is so powerful, the
Speaker 1: strong force does that as well, very very rapidly. So
Speaker 1: quarks can never be seen on their own. You can
Speaker 1: only ever see them put together in these various combinations.
Speaker 2: WHOA, So, then what makes you think that's an individual particle?
Speaker 2: Like if you never see some it alone, how do
Speaker 2: you know it's like a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great philosophical question, and you can actually
Speaker 1: ask the same question of basically anything. You could even
Speaker 1: ask that question of the electron, Like we never see
Speaker 1: the electron by itself. An electron is actually surrounded by
Speaker 1: a cloud of virtual particles, including lots of photons. You
Speaker 1: never actually probe the pure individual electron. So everything is
Speaker 1: just sort of like part of the fabric of reality.
Speaker 1: It's a bit of a philosophical question, and you declare
Speaker 1: that it's real. We have these models, we do these calculations.
Speaker 1: They're accurate, they predict the results of experiments, and so
Speaker 1: we think that probably they're real, But you know, we
Speaker 1: could be totally wrong. The whole story we're telling about
Speaker 1: the nature of the universe and how particles work could
Speaker 1: also just be totally wrong. The whole thing could just
Speaker 1: be an elaborate mathematical tool that mostly works. So it's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty subtle philosophical question what's real out there
Speaker 1: and what's just sort of part of the story we're telling.
Speaker 2: Well, you mean, we only actually think the quirk exists.
Speaker 2: Dot dot maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dot dot maybe, But there are some very powerful
Speaker 1: arguments that at least it's the right way to think
Speaker 1: about the universe. Whether it's like philosophically true and out
Speaker 1: there is sort of another question I see.
Speaker 2: It could be maybe like a non particle or some
Speaker 2: sort of weird thing that we can grasp our heads around.
Speaker 1: It could be that there's another way to think of
Speaker 1: what's inside these particles that works better. Because one problem
Speaker 1: we have is that the strong force is so powerful
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to make calculations with. Like, you get
Speaker 1: things a little bit wrong, and the power of the
Speaker 1: force makes things very very wrong, So it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to make predictions with Unlike electromagnetism, where we can make
Speaker 1: very very precise predictions about exactly what happens when two
Speaker 1: electrons bounce off each other, when two quarks collide, it's
Speaker 1: a huge mess, and we don't know how to do
Speaker 1: those calculations very well. So that might be a sign
Speaker 1: that we have it like the wrong idea. Maybe when
Speaker 1: aliens come, they'll have a better theory for what's going
Speaker 1: on inside all these particles, and it's just much simpler
Speaker 1: and crisper, and the mathematics of it makes sense.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's get into which quarks, if they
Speaker 2: do exist, are in the proton, and why we think
Speaker 2: the produc may or may not be charming. So let's
Speaker 2: dig into that, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2: All right, we're talking about whether there are charm quarks
Speaker 2: inside the proton. That's the I guess, the question on
Speaker 2: every once minds these days.
Speaker 1: You know, you joke, but it's actually a hot topic
Speaker 1: that's been debated in particle physics for it literally decades,
Speaker 1: whether the proton has charm in it or whether it's
Speaker 1: just made of ups and.
Speaker 2: Downs, That's what I mean. It's like it's on everyone's mind, right.
Speaker 1: And it's been a question basically since the charm cork
Speaker 1: was discovered. I mean you ask about, like, why do
Speaker 1: we think that quarks are real? I think the moment
Speaker 1: that the whole community went from these are cute, but
Speaker 1: we don't know to yeah, these are real was this
Speaker 1: day in November in nineteen seventy four, when the charm
Speaker 1: cork was discovered.
Speaker 2: What happened.
Speaker 1: It's called the November Revolution because it's so dramatic, and
Speaker 1: this is the moment when the charm cork was shown
Speaker 1: to be real. Experiments declared the discovery of the charm
Speaker 1: cork because the picture of having only three quarks, the up,
Speaker 1: the down, and the strange was a little weird, like
Speaker 1: the up and the down are sort of paired together.
Speaker 1: The strange cork is a lot like the down cork.
Speaker 1: It has the same electric charge or whatever, sort of
Speaker 1: like a cuss of the down cork. And people were wondering, like,
Speaker 1: is there a cousin of the upcork? Shouldn't the upcork
Speaker 1: also have a cousin? Shouldn't there be like patterns and
Speaker 1: symmetries and balance on all that stuff. So people predicted, Okay,
Speaker 1: this cork should exist out there. If these are real
Speaker 1: there should be another one, and so people were looking
Speaker 1: for this cork. And they were actually two competing groups,
Speaker 1: one at MIT led by Sam King and another one
Speaker 1: at Stanford led by Burt Richter, both looking for the
Speaker 1: charm cork, and they declared discovery of the charm cork
Speaker 1: on the same day in dueling press conferences across the
Speaker 1: country from each other, and they gave the particle. The
Speaker 1: charm cork makes different names.
Speaker 2: What what did they name them?
Speaker 1: So the charm cork combines with an anti charm cork
Speaker 1: to make this particle. Sam Ting called it the J particle.
Speaker 1: Apparently J is sort of similar to the character for
Speaker 1: his name in Chinese. Bert Richter called it the Si
Speaker 1: particle because he liked Greek names for particles. And so
Speaker 1: the same day we had a new particle given two
Speaker 1: different names that Jay and lipsidh.
Speaker 2: M like at the exact same minute, don't they doesn't
Speaker 2: count like which minute you make the announcement.
Speaker 1: In the Internet era, it does kind of matter. People
Speaker 1: like time their papers to try to get them on
Speaker 1: the archive at the top of the list on the
Speaker 1: first day or whatever to avoid being scooped. But I
Speaker 1: think back then the resolution of this stuff was more
Speaker 1: like dependent on like sending letters and mail, So if
Speaker 1: you made your announcements on the same day, counts as
Speaker 1: two independent discoveries that are basically simultaneous. But there is
Speaker 1: a lot of drama about how they happened to make
Speaker 1: these discoveries on the same day because Sam King's experiment
Speaker 1: was very slow. He was going to take like a
Speaker 1: year to figure this stuff out, but he didn't have
Speaker 1: to know where to look. It was like a very
Speaker 1: general kind of experiment. Bert Richter could discover this thing
Speaker 1: in like a few hours if somebody told him exactly
Speaker 1: where to look. And Richter did an initial skin and
Speaker 1: didn't see it. He sort of like accidentally skipped over it.
Speaker 1: And the story is like maybe somebody on Sam King's
Speaker 1: team tipped off Bert Richter and told him exactly where
Speaker 1: to look so that he could do the experiment and
Speaker 1: coming with a discovery at exactly the same moment as
Speaker 1: the MIT team. Nobody knows for sure what happened.
Speaker 2: Like I kinda make espionage, yeah or something.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of crazy stories, some of which are
Speaker 1: not safe for podcasting, which you can google and hear about.
Speaker 1: But to this day we have not settled.
Speaker 2: This not safe for podcasting. How solacious is this story?
Speaker 1: There are stories about scatological sabotage of various experiments.
Speaker 2: What you mean involving bodily fluids, Yes, exactly, M. I
Speaker 2: think that's safe for podcasting, but maybe I'm not desirable
Speaker 2: talk about in a podcast.
Speaker 1: It just sees to show you that there's sort of
Speaker 1: high drama, and you know, Nobel prizes were on the line.
Speaker 1: In the end, both of these guys won the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: They shared it for the discovery of this particle. Two
Speaker 1: charm quarks bound together. And we still call the particle
Speaker 1: j SI. We give it both names because we couldn't
Speaker 1: figure out how to settle this dispute.
Speaker 2: And so this is the moment you're saying that the
Speaker 2: charm cork was discovered. Because this particle is made out
Speaker 2: of two charm corks. What made them think it was
Speaker 2: made out of two charm quarks?
Speaker 1: It has all the properties that they predicted if the
Speaker 1: charm cork exists, they predicted that it would form this particle,
Speaker 1: which has about twice the mass of an individual charm cork,
Speaker 1: and it would decay in certain ways and the angles
Speaker 1: of those decays, so it basically looked exactly like what
Speaker 1: they expected, and there's no other way to explain this particle.
Speaker 1: And they can't explain this particle with just upquarks, down
Speaker 1: quarks and strange quarks. So that told them, ah, there
Speaker 1: must be this new quark out there, and that made
Speaker 1: people feel like, Okay, quarks are real because we've predicted
Speaker 1: a quark and then seen it. It's not just descriptive.
Speaker 1: It's not like we're just using it to tell a
Speaker 1: story about what we've already seen. It's helping us understand
Speaker 1: future experiments.
Speaker 2: All right. So that's how we discovered the charm cork.
Speaker 2: Now I guess the question is is there one inside
Speaker 2: the proton?
Speaker 1: So the simple story is no. I mean, this initial
Speaker 1: description of quarks as the building blocks of all these
Speaker 1: weird particles tell us that the proton is made of
Speaker 1: two upquarks and one down cork, and that works because
Speaker 1: the math is really weird for these particles. Like an
Speaker 1: upcork has charged two thirds, like an electron is charged
Speaker 1: minus one An upcork has charged two thirds, it's like
Speaker 1: fractionally charged, and the down cork has charged minus one third.
Speaker 1: So you add up two upquarks, you did four thirds
Speaker 1: of a charge. You add a down cork and it
Speaker 1: brings it back down to plus one. So the proton
Speaker 1: is explained in terms of two upcorks and a down cork,
Speaker 1: and that's a nice simple story, but like everything else
Speaker 1: in physics, there's always more to it.
Speaker 2: Now is that the only difference between an upcork and
Speaker 2: a down cork is there electrical charge.
Speaker 1: They're also difference in mass. The upcork is lower mass
Speaker 1: than the down cork, and they have differences in their
Speaker 1: other charges. Remember, the electrical charge is how we talk
Speaker 1: about the electromagnetic interaction. Things that have electrical charge interact electromagnetically.
Speaker 1: Things that don't don't interact electromagnetically, like a new trino
Speaker 1: no electric charge. No electromagnetic interaction ignores electric fields. But
Speaker 1: particles have other kinds of charges, Like if you feel
Speaker 1: the weak force, you have weak charges, and the weak
Speaker 1: force is very complicated. It has two different kinds of charge.
Speaker 1: So the upcork and the down cork are different also
Speaker 1: in their weak charges how they interact with the weak field.
Speaker 2: And so then the charm cork is just like an
Speaker 2: upcorek just heavier or why do you call it a
Speaker 2: cousin of the upcork.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it has all the same charges as the upcork.
Speaker 1: It's charged two thirds electromagnetically, it has the same spin
Speaker 1: as the upcork. It has the same weak charges as
Speaker 1: the upquirk. So if you make like a periodic table
Speaker 1: of the fundamental particles, it just makes sense to put
Speaker 1: the charm there next to the upcork, the way the
Speaker 1: strange is next to the down cork. Because the down
Speaker 1: and the strange they have all the same electrical charges
Speaker 1: and the weak charges, and so these particles are very
Speaker 1: similar to each other except their difference in.
Speaker 2: Mass, meaning that it just has more mass an quark
Speaker 2: but just heavier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an upcork, but just heavier. And that's explained,
Speaker 1: of course, because of its interactions with the Higgs boson.
Speaker 1: The charm interacts more with the Higgs field, and so
Speaker 1: it has more mass than the upcork, and not by
Speaker 1: a little bit. It has like six hundred times the
Speaker 1: mass of the upcork. It's actually more massive than the proton.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then you're saying that the question of whether
Speaker 2: there are charm quarks inside the proton. The answer is no,
Speaker 2: maybe question mark, So why the no.
Speaker 1: So the simplest story is just like you've got three quarks,
Speaker 1: You're done. But think about how those quarks are actually
Speaker 1: stuck together. How do quarks come together to make a proton.
Speaker 1: They don't like physically click together like pieces of a puzzle.
Speaker 1: They're bound together. There's a force that holds them together
Speaker 1: the same way they like a proton and an electron
Speaker 1: together make a hydrogen atom because of the electromagnetic force.
Speaker 1: The quarks are bound together with the strong force, which
Speaker 1: means that there's a bunch of gluons there also inside
Speaker 1: the proton. So the proton is like two up quarks
Speaker 1: in a day and a zillion gluons in between them.
Speaker 1: So already we know there is a little bit more
Speaker 1: to the proton than just the quarks.
Speaker 2: M I guess maybe I'm getting a little confused because
Speaker 2: a proton, you said, is two up quarks and a
Speaker 2: down courek, and a neutron, for example, is two down
Speaker 2: quarks and one upquark. Yes, so it's sort of like
Speaker 2: the same, but you just switch one.
Speaker 1: Of the quarks exactly. And that's why beta de cave
Speaker 1: requires just switching one down or up or back and forth.
Speaker 2: M Okay. So now we're asking if the proton has
Speaker 2: a different kind of quark in it. But if we
Speaker 2: change the quarks in a proton, it wouldn't be a
Speaker 2: proton anymore, would it.
Speaker 1: A proton is a proton is a proton. That's just
Speaker 1: the thing we find in nature. The question is what's
Speaker 1: in it. It might be that the proton's innerds are
Speaker 1: different from what we've been describing. For a while, our
Speaker 1: story might have been a little bit wrong. So if
Speaker 1: there are charm quarks also inside a proton, then that's
Speaker 1: what a proton is. We're not talking about replacing one
Speaker 1: of the upwork with a charm We're asking if there
Speaker 1: are more quarks in there, if it's not just up,
Speaker 1: up and down, if there's extra other little bits in there.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, Like a proton is still proton with
Speaker 2: two up quarks and a down quark. But like, maybe
Speaker 2: is there a charm cork jammed in there somehow? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we haven't seen before.
Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, exactly are there like little bits quantum mechanically
Speaker 1: of charm cork hanging out in there?
Speaker 2: Okay? And this is the burning question in particle physics, Now,
Speaker 2: why do you even have this question? Why? Why do
Speaker 2: you think there might be charm quarks inside the proton?
Speaker 1: Well, we're always just curious, like what is stuff made
Speaker 1: out of? We want to know definitively, like what is
Speaker 1: a proton? Because the proton's the basic building block of
Speaker 1: everything out there in the universe. When the universe cooled
Speaker 1: and stuff slowed down, this is what it decided to make,
Speaker 1: mostly protons. So, like you want to know the answer
Speaker 1: to the question, how does our universe work? What's it
Speaker 1: made out of? You got to understand the proton, and
Speaker 1: so we're always happy with the first answer, But then
Speaker 1: we want to dig deeper and say is that the
Speaker 1: total story? Is there more going on to the proton?
Speaker 1: And then there are hints, there are hints that maybe
Speaker 1: there is something else. And one of the hints is
Speaker 1: that we know that the glue between those particles has
Speaker 1: the capacity to make more quarks. Like those gluons we
Speaker 1: talked about that stick the upcorks and down corks together.
Speaker 1: They don't just hang out and stay gluons. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: turn it to quarks and then back. So you could
Speaker 1: have a gluon in the proton that's flying around. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden it turns into a bottom cork and
Speaker 1: an anti bottom cork, and then back into a gluon.
Speaker 1: So if you shoot a probe at a proton, sometimes
Speaker 1: you hit the main quarks, the upcorks and the down quarks.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you hit a gluon. Sometimes you hit a bottom cork.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you hit a charm cork, sometimes you hit a
Speaker 1: top cork. It's a big frothing mess.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it did sort of like quantum mechanical magic,
Speaker 2: where there's like an infinite number of particles popping into
Speaker 2: existence probabilistically. But we still say that the proton is
Speaker 2: made out of three quarks, right, then those are more
Speaker 2: real than the other imaginary quarks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are the intrinsic quarks. We say the two
Speaker 1: upcork and the down cork are like the building block
Speaker 1: of the proton because they're there all the time, right,
Speaker 1: they're just always part of the proton. They sort of
Speaker 1: define what the proton is. And we know that the
Speaker 1: gluons that they're slashing around and that, as you say,
Speaker 1: quantum mechanically, sometimes if you poke into them they can
Speaker 1: be turning into something else and you caught them in
Speaker 1: the act, and maybe you can interact with that particle.
Speaker 1: But we think about those as like extrinsic particles. We
Speaker 1: don't think of those as necessarily part of the proton itself,
Speaker 1: because the energy to create those and to make that
Speaker 1: interaction happen comes from the collision, Like you want to
Speaker 1: smash two protons together to see what's inside and to
Speaker 1: interact with those gluons. Then the energy to make like
Speaker 1: the bottom cork or whatever else other weird quarks you're
Speaker 1: talking about, comes from the energy you've put in. And
Speaker 1: so we're interested in more deeply the question like what's
Speaker 1: the proton itself made out of? And so this is
Speaker 1: the question people have been asking, like, when a proton
Speaker 1: is just sitting there by itself, does it also still
Speaker 1: have some charm cork in it?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 2: Wait, are you asking whether the proton has in addition
Speaker 2: to the up, up and down as intrinsic quarks, does
Speaker 2: it also have an intrinsic charm cork to it?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Are you asking whether it has a lot of extrinsic
Speaker 2: charm forks in it?
Speaker 1: We already know it has a lot of extrinsic charm corks,
Speaker 1: like it has extrinsic everything, because the gluons have so
Speaker 1: much energy and if you interact with them, they can
Speaker 1: basically make anything. We're asking whether it has intrinsic charm cork,
Speaker 1: Like when a proton is just sitting there, does it
Speaker 1: also actually have some charm cork in it? And that's
Speaker 1: conception a little hard to get your mind around, because like,
Speaker 1: what does that mean. We're talking about these three particles
Speaker 1: make up the quark, right, Remember that everything we're talking
Speaker 1: about is quantum mechanical, and so really we're talking about
Speaker 1: making the picture of the proton a little bit more complicated,
Speaker 1: not just like there are three particles, but like there
Speaker 1: are more options here. Sometimes it has two upquarks in
Speaker 1: a down Sometimes one of those is a charm cork.
Speaker 1: Sometimes one of those is an upcark. Sometimes one of
Speaker 1: those is a down cork. A little bit more of
Speaker 1: a complicated mixture of these particles. If there is intrinsic
Speaker 1: charm in the proton.
Speaker 2: Hmm okay, So you're sort of saying, like, if we
Speaker 2: have the picture that it's made out of two upquarks
Speaker 2: and when it down quark, but maybe the picture is
Speaker 2: more like it's changing all the time, like maybe the
Speaker 2: proton is transforming inside of itself into different combinations of quarks.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, And so people have been trying to answer
Speaker 1: this question for a long time. They've been doing it
Speaker 1: the only way that we know how, which is to
Speaker 1: try to break open the proton, throw other protons at it,
Speaker 1: or throw electrons add it, smash something into it. It's
Speaker 1: tricky though, because you want to distinguish between the scenario
Speaker 1: where like the proton has intrinsic charm quarks in it,
Speaker 1: you know, like the internals of it is like changing
Speaker 1: back and forth from upquarks to charm quarks, or you're
Speaker 1: creating charmqirks when you collide. You're manufacturing these extrinsic charm
Speaker 1: quirks in the process of probing it. It's been a
Speaker 1: very difficult set of experiments to do to distinguish between
Speaker 1: the charm quarks we see in the proto are they
Speaker 1: intrinsic or are they extrinsic? Not an easy experiment.
Speaker 2: Mmmm, all right, Well, let's dig into the details of
Speaker 2: this experiment and what it tells us about what's really
Speaker 2: inside a proton or what a proton really is actually
Speaker 2: made out of So let's dig into that. But first
Speaker 2: let's take another quick break. All right, we're asking what's
Speaker 2: really inside the proton? Is it just two up quarks
Speaker 2: and a down quark as we've been told, or as
Speaker 2: you and I have been telling people for years now. Daniel,
Speaker 2: I feel like maybe you're now calling his liars because
Speaker 2: it turns out that maybe the question of whether there's
Speaker 2: more to the proton than just these quarks, like maybe
Speaker 2: it's insides are changing all the time, from two up
Speaker 2: quarks and downcork to something else which involves another kind
Speaker 2: of cork, the trump part.
Speaker 1: I think everything we've been telling people for years has
Speaker 1: an implicit comma maybe dot dot dot at the end
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: I feel like, if you wanted to make that explicit,
Speaker 2: maybe we should make it more explicit than you. We
Speaker 2: wis should rename the podcast Daniel and Jore Explain the
Speaker 2: Universe dot dot dot.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know, it's just part of our scientific storytelling
Speaker 1: or always trying to come up with a way to
Speaker 1: describe the universe and then figuring out, oh, that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually capture all the details. Let's add some bells and
Speaker 1: whistles or let's simplify it. Well, let's throw the whole
Speaker 1: thing out and explain it in another way. It's just
Speaker 1: part of the journey.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like maybe all this time you
Speaker 2: could have just added, like we think that this is
Speaker 2: what it's made out of, not like I feel like
Speaker 2: for years have been saying, oh, yes, the proton is
Speaker 2: made out of two upcourse into the un cord, like
Speaker 2: that's a fact, but maybe it's not.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, when you're introducing people to really weird
Speaker 1: complex topics, you have to do it bit by bid.
Speaker 1: And if you start with all the qualifiers, all the
Speaker 1: reasons why don't understand it, they're never going to get
Speaker 1: to the things we think we maybe do understand.
Speaker 2: I think people can handle scientists think or we think
Speaker 2: it's made out of this.
Speaker 1: I guess I feel like that's implied with everything that
Speaker 1: comes out of my mouth. Anyway, for now on, listeners,
Speaker 1: insert a scientist think in front of everything. You hear
Speaker 1: me say, that's right.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should have like one of those quick read
Speaker 2: disclaimers at the end of each episode, like Daniel Horry explained,
Speaker 2: the universe has not been verified by the FDA or
Speaker 2: a valid international physics organization.
Speaker 1: Even valid international physics organizations. They just think stuff. Man,
Speaker 1: they can be wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, some things are more verified by experiments than others.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, yes, that's true, and that's what we're trying
Speaker 1: to capture here in the podcast, the current mainstream thinking
Speaker 1: for how the universe works.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I guess we'll tell Coreyer engineer to
Speaker 2: just add that disclaimer at the end of every episode
Speaker 2: from now and retroactively. Maybe also, can you do that?
Speaker 2: You know, maybe we've been deceiving people for five years, Daniel.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, they got to stick around for the twist.
Speaker 2: The twist where we revealed that we liked.
Speaker 1: These are approximations.
Speaker 2: They're not lying, I see, the betrayal.
Speaker 1: Good faith explanations.
Speaker 2: All right, So the idea is that the proton is
Speaker 2: mostly mind to up quarks and a down cork. But
Speaker 2: maybe you think there's a possibility that that changes sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so you're saying, first you said, the simple answer
Speaker 2: is that no, there's no charm cork in the proton.
Speaker 2: Why was that No?
Speaker 1: Again, that's just the sort of simplest answer, and it's
Speaker 1: also short of common sense. The charm cork has more
Speaker 1: mass than the proton. So it's sort of like saying
Speaker 1: that the proton is less than the sum of its
Speaker 1: parts if it has like a little bit of charm
Speaker 1: cork in.
Speaker 2: It, meaning like it's mostly two ups and quarks in
Speaker 2: that down cork. Right. Yeah, that's why the basic answer
Speaker 2: is no. But then you're saying, maybe there's more going on.
Speaker 2: Maybe it does change into some charminess sometimes. Is that
Speaker 2: what's going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because in quantum mechanics, anything that can happen
Speaker 1: will happen, and we don't see a reason why you
Speaker 1: can't sometimes have charm quarks hanging out inside the proton.
Speaker 1: But these calculations are really hard to do. You know.
Speaker 1: Quantum chromodynamics, the theory that explains how the strong interactions
Speaker 1: work and how quarks come together to make particles, is
Speaker 1: a bear to work with. We can't even do things
Speaker 1: like calculate from first principles what the mass of the
Speaker 1: proton should be or the mass of these other particles.
Speaker 1: It's like very very difficult to do anything with. So
Speaker 1: it's dominated by experiments. We have to go out and
Speaker 1: actually measure this stuff and see what's in the universe
Speaker 1: and then try to figure out how to explain it
Speaker 1: with our calculations, because we're really limited in the calculations
Speaker 1: we can do here. And so people have been doing
Speaker 1: experiments to see like what's inside the proton for a
Speaker 1: few decades now, and there were some hints, oh, look,
Speaker 1: this experiment says there actually is some charm inside the proton,
Speaker 1: some intrinsic charm, not charm that's created when we collide
Speaker 1: stuff together other out of that energy, but charm that
Speaker 1: was already there. And then another experiment that came along
Speaker 1: said Nope, we don't see any charm. And these things
Speaker 1: were limited because we didn't have enough data, we didn't
Speaker 1: have enough energy, we didn't have enough power. But recently,
Speaker 1: because the large Hadron Collider, we have more data, we
Speaker 1: have more energy, we can get more definitive measurements for
Speaker 1: what's inside the proton.
Speaker 2: M I feel like you're talking about charm, like it's
Speaker 2: a property, like riz, you know, or like actual charm.
Speaker 2: Is it like a property? I thought we were talking
Speaker 2: about the charm quark.
Speaker 1: Saying whether it has charm is just shorthand for saying
Speaker 1: whether there's a probability to find charm quarks in the proton.
Speaker 1: But we are changing a little bit what we mean
Speaker 1: by it's made out of right, we think of the
Speaker 1: atom is made out of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Like
Speaker 1: you have those things as ingredients, you put them together,
Speaker 1: and now you call it an atom. Here is a
Speaker 1: little bit different. It's a little fuzzyer. It's a little
Speaker 1: bit more quantum mechanical. We're saying, like the wave function
Speaker 1: of the proton has components of the upcork and the
Speaker 1: down cork, and maybe this is a component there for
Speaker 1: the charm cork, not like the charm cork is always there,
Speaker 1: but there's always a probability for it. So it changes
Speaker 1: a little bit what we mean by like this proton
Speaker 1: is made of something.
Speaker 2: But I guess then you get into the question of
Speaker 2: like where do you draw the line quantum mechanically, it
Speaker 2: is technically possible for my body to suddenly turn into
Speaker 2: the body of Brad Pitt, right, Like that's a quantum
Speaker 2: mechanical probability. It's very small, but it is technically a
Speaker 2: possibility right in this universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think you're both equally chamming, so
Speaker 1: you're already there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Brad Pitt is very chamming, but just because I
Speaker 2: can turn into Brad Pitt at any moment doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that I am Brad Pitt mm hm.
Speaker 1: But you can ask the question if I call Jorge
Speaker 1: a thousand times, what fraction the time does Brad answer?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: M m. And well, even if it's like one in
Speaker 2: a trillion or what point what number of phone calls
Speaker 2: should I change my name to Brad Pitt?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, if you've always called Jorge and Brad has
Speaker 1: never answered the you can't say that there's a Brad
Speaker 1: contribution to Jorge. But as soon as it happens, then boom,
Speaker 1: you've measured the Brad fraction of hoorhe sham.
Speaker 2: And then at what point do you say that I
Speaker 2: am made out of Brad Pit.
Speaker 1: When you can measure some Brad in hoorray the time
Speaker 1: the Brad answers, that's what will declare you are partially
Speaker 1: Brad Pit?
Speaker 2: Like is there a percentage that you would do that?
Speaker 2: Just like in the proton, is there a percentage of
Speaker 2: charm corking? Is that you would then say yes, the
Speaker 2: proton does have a charm cork in it, because technically
Speaker 2: it does right now, right there's a very small probability
Speaker 2: as you said that things in it can turn into
Speaker 2: a charm fork.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any minimum quantities. As long as
Speaker 1: you can measure it. As long as it's large enough
Speaker 1: for us to detect it, then we'll say we found
Speaker 1: charm in the proton and we know that it's there.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it's just sort of theoretical. It's like saying, you know,
Speaker 1: is there a teapot a zillion light years away? I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe there is, but we'll never detect it, so it's
Speaker 1: just theoretical. But as long as we measure some charm
Speaker 1: cork in the proton, then we can it's there. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just like a possibility. And again we can't really
Speaker 1: even do the calculations or we can predict theoretically and
Speaker 1: to say how much charm there should be in the proton,
Speaker 1: So it really has to be led by measurements.
Speaker 3: MM.
Speaker 2: But I guess maybe the question is like, are you
Speaker 2: saying that it's possible that the proton has the charm
Speaker 2: work in it, or is there maybe something the theory
Speaker 2: that says it's impossible, or is that what you're trying
Speaker 2: to get at, Like we need to prove it to
Speaker 2: make sure that it is possible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the theory says that it's possible, but the theory
Speaker 1: is very fuzzy and very hard to work with. So
Speaker 1: the best thing to do is to go out there
Speaker 1: and measure the charm fraction of the proton, and that
Speaker 1: might help us come back and improve our theories and
Speaker 1: get a better grip on what we think is going on.
Speaker 2: I see, so you think that maybe it is possible
Speaker 2: for the insights of a proton to turn into a
Speaker 2: charm cork, but you're not sure yet because you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it or confirmed it exactly in experiments. Some people have,
Speaker 2: some people haven't.
Speaker 1: That was the scenario until a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: and then using data at the Large Hadron Collider, we
Speaker 1: were able to confirmed that there really is charm cork
Speaker 1: inside the proton. So this is that paper that came
Speaker 1: out in twenty twenty two that had very powerful statistical
Speaker 1: evidence for charm quarks inside protons, which means we're pretty
Speaker 1: sure we can say the proton is charming. But you know,
Speaker 1: dot dot maybe question mark.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like the language you're using is maybe confusing,
Speaker 2: Like you're not saying it has charm inside of it,
Speaker 2: You're saying it sometimes turns into a charm cork. What's
Speaker 2: inside of the proton?
Speaker 1: I think the most precise way to say it is
Speaker 1: that the wave function for the proton has probabilities for upquarks,
Speaker 1: down quarks, and charm quarks. Sometimes when you look inside
Speaker 1: the proton, you will find a charm core.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, oh all right, So then it has been experimentally verified.
Speaker 1: You think maybe the latest evidence from about a year
Speaker 1: ago is pretty persuasive. It's more than three statistical sigmas
Speaker 1: of significance.
Speaker 2: Now, what's the difference there, Like, what's the thing that
Speaker 2: makes you more sure rather than not that it's not
Speaker 2: like coming from the energy when you collide these particles,
Speaker 2: for example, that it's actually there if you don't look
Speaker 2: at it.
Speaker 1: It comes from the patterns of how the particles emerge
Speaker 1: from the collisions. Like if it's coming from actually inside
Speaker 1: the proton, then you'll see these particles come out in
Speaker 1: the path that the protons were taking, because then the
Speaker 1: charm quirks are moving with the protons as they come
Speaker 1: into the collision. If the charm quirk wasn't there the
Speaker 1: whole time, it's just made during the collision, you tend
Speaker 1: to see these charm quarks fly out more like at
Speaker 1: the center. We're just where the collision happens. So there's
Speaker 1: some subtle patterns there that people have been looking for.
Speaker 1: But the spray of particles. You get a different prediction
Speaker 1: if the charm cork was there all the time than
Speaker 1: if the charm cork is only created in the moments
Speaker 1: of the collision. But it's a subtle effect, which is
Speaker 1: why this experiment was very difficult to do and needed
Speaker 1: a lot of data and was only wrapped up a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago.
Speaker 2: Okay, So now does that mean that the international physics
Speaker 2: community has issued a giant apology for all those textbooks
Speaker 2: and posters that say that the proton is made out
Speaker 2: of up quarks? In it down because all this time
Speaker 2: you've been wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, I think we're working on stickers on our web
Speaker 1: store that say dot dot dot maybe to be added
Speaker 1: to every textbook ever.
Speaker 2: Well no, but I mean it, like, you know, you
Speaker 2: walk down the physics department, do you see a poster
Speaker 2: with the fundamental theory of particle physics and it's as
Speaker 2: that a proton is made out of two upcoorse and
Speaker 2: douncork but now you have to change the story.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, yeah, it's an update to the story.
Speaker 1: It's part of science evolving and becoming more charming as
Speaker 1: we learn more about how the universe works.
Speaker 2: So are you going to change those posters? Do you
Speaker 2: think that? Or maybe the question is, do you think
Speaker 2: those posters need to be updated?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a tough question to sort of pedagogy, like
Speaker 1: how do you teach this stuff? You know, the story
Speaker 1: is mostly the same, but there are nuances, and so
Speaker 1: it might be worth introducing those at the very start,
Speaker 1: or it might be worth explaining those as you dig
Speaker 1: deeper into the story.
Speaker 2: I understand what you mean, because I do a lot
Speaker 2: of science communication. But there's sort of a fine line
Speaker 2: between not saying something that's not true yeah, and saying
Speaker 2: something that's more complicated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's a difficult line or walk I agree?
Speaker 2: So which one do you think it is? Do you
Speaker 2: think it needs to be updated at some point? If
Speaker 2: I say right now that the proton is made out
Speaker 2: into upworks and down quarks, you technically would have to
Speaker 2: say that's not true, or we think that's not true.
Speaker 2: So if I see it on a poster, does that
Speaker 2: need to be corrected.
Speaker 1: I think that basically everything we say in quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: and in particle physics is an approximation. So from that perspective,
Speaker 1: like nothing is exactly true, there's always qualifications anywhere to.
Speaker 2: Take exactly I don't say anything.
Speaker 1: At all, but it's still worth saying. It's still worth
Speaker 1: introducing people to these ideas, even if the story we
Speaker 1: tell at first is only approximately true and the end
Speaker 1: all of our understanding is probably only approximately true.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I feel like some things are stronger
Speaker 2: than others. Like you can say an atom is made
Speaker 2: out of protons and electrons. There's no cavea to that,
Speaker 2: is there.
Speaker 1: Well, there's other stuff in there, right, The photons can
Speaker 1: turn into other particles, and so when you interact with
Speaker 1: an atom, some times you find W bosons and z
Speaker 1: bosons inside there.
Speaker 2: In addition to the electrons and protons. But the elections
Speaker 2: and protons are still there.
Speaker 1: Nope, elections and protons are still there all right.
Speaker 2: Well, another interesting insight into how we're still firing things out.
Speaker 2: The universe is vast and mysterious, and our current theories
Speaker 2: may change tomorrow or today, or maybe they should have changed,
Speaker 2: a while ago.
Speaker 1: We're here trying to explain, are constantly evolving understanding to you?
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for
Speaker 2: joining us, See you next time.
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
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