Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, are we made out of particles or waves?
Speaker 2: M That depends on what depends on what you mean
Speaker 2: by particle and what you mean by wave.
Speaker 1: That's a very particular answer.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not just gonna wave my hands when I
Speaker 2: answer a question.
Speaker 1: I would have thought that a particle physicists would have
Speaker 1: leaned into the particle answer.
Speaker 2: Well, I do have kind of a particle brainwave about it.
Speaker 1: I think you're just trying to wave me off.
Speaker 2: In particular.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm poorhe Mae, cartoonist and the author of Oliver's
Speaker 1: Great Big Universe.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 2: at UC Irvine, and i'd like to think i'm I'm
Speaker 2: also a wavular physicist.
Speaker 1: A wavuler. I don't think I've ever heard that word.
Speaker 2: I just made it up. Man, aren't physicists great at
Speaker 2: naming things?
Speaker 1: Would it be more perpetsey you're a wavy physicist or
Speaker 1: a waiver physicist?
Speaker 2: I got wavy hair, and I do sometimes waver about
Speaker 2: my decisions.
Speaker 1: There you go, waves dominate your life and you didn't.
Speaker 3: Even know it.
Speaker 2: I'm waving everybody right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she'd waveright it? But anyways, Welcome to our podcast
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: In which we try to dig deep into the nature
Speaker 2: of the universe around us. How is it all put together?
Speaker 2: How does it all work when you zoom in on
Speaker 2: the tiniest little bits? What are they actually like? Are
Speaker 2: they little bits of sand? Are they weird? Quantum ripples?
Speaker 2: Are they both? Are they neither? Are they something else
Speaker 2: completely different? Our goal in this podcast is to tackle
Speaker 2: these questions directly and do our best to explain everything
Speaker 2: we do and don't understand to you.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's an amazing universe full of mysteries out
Speaker 1: there for us to look out and ponder about and
Speaker 1: ask questions about. But sometimes the biggest mysteries are within us,
Speaker 1: inside of us, and they're about our very nature of
Speaker 1: how we exist.
Speaker 2: That's right, because we are part of the universe. When
Speaker 2: we ask what is the universe made out of? How
Speaker 2: does that actually work? We also want to understand ourselves.
Speaker 2: One of the deepest goals in physics, but something we
Speaker 2: don't often say directly is that we want to understand
Speaker 2: how everything works so well that we can understand ourselves.
Speaker 2: That we could build up from our picture of the
Speaker 2: microscopic world, the tiny little quantum particles, all the way
Speaker 2: up to our microscopic world, which means us and ice
Speaker 2: cream and blueberries. Somehow, we hope that revealing the nature
Speaker 2: of the universe on the tiny level will give us
Speaker 2: a crack and understanding why we're here and what to
Speaker 2: do with ourselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's a huge challenge to connect what's happening
Speaker 1: at the microscopic level to what's happening at the cosmic
Speaker 1: and universe level. That is the goal of science to
Speaker 1: make those connections and give us a sense of the
Speaker 1: big picture of how it's all put together.
Speaker 2: That's right, because we assume that there is a way
Speaker 2: it's all put together, that the universe is following rules,
Speaker 2: that it has a nature that we could know, that
Speaker 2: we could understand, that we could maybe even describe with
Speaker 2: our primitive human mathematics and predict and manipulate it in
Speaker 2: a way that might improve our lives. That at least
Speaker 2: is the goal of trying to understand the universe. Whether
Speaker 2: or not we've made any progress is another question.
Speaker 1: It seems like we've done pretty well, Like we discovered
Speaker 1: our bodies then we discovered we're made out of cells,
Speaker 1: and then we discovered those cells are made out of molecules,
Speaker 1: and those molecules made out of atoms, and then those
Speaker 1: atoms made out of particles. I feel like we've drilled
Speaker 1: down pretty deep into the makeup of the universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty impressive how far we've gone and how
Speaker 2: we've been able to make some connections between how things
Speaker 2: happen on a small scale and what we experience on
Speaker 2: a larger scale. Even just like the idea of germs
Speaker 2: and disease, that tiny little bugs swimming around in the
Speaker 2: air and in our bodies can have a big effect
Speaker 2: on our experience. The whole germ theory is sort of
Speaker 2: a triumph of the idea that the microscopic world controls
Speaker 2: the macroscopic world.
Speaker 1: Wait, do you mean like a virus can have an
Speaker 1: impact in our lives? News flash, isn't it all made
Speaker 1: up by scientists?
Speaker 2: M I'm not even going to touch that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to touch those viruses.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to take a deep breath of that.
Speaker 2: But at the forefront of human knowledge, what you described
Speaker 2: as the latest bit of our understanding, you know, the
Speaker 2: particles that make us all up. What are those really?
Speaker 2: We had a whole podcast episode where we dug into
Speaker 2: the question like what is a particle? Because a particle,
Speaker 2: in some sense is an extrapolation from things we find
Speaker 2: intuitive in our world, little bits of stuff. The particulates
Speaker 2: we think make up our world just sort of like
Speaker 2: extended down to the very very tiny. We find when
Speaker 2: we get down there is that particles obey very different rules.
Speaker 2: And it's almost a bit of a scam to use
Speaker 2: a word that relies on our classical intuition to describe
Speaker 2: something that happens at the quantum world.
Speaker 1: WHOA, WHOA are you saying that physics it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a scam.
Speaker 2: I'm saying physics has been kind of lazy in using
Speaker 2: its words, and that we're often borrowing words that have
Speaker 2: like intuitive baggage that's misleading. And when we talk about
Speaker 2: particles and we talk about waves, we're often not really
Speaker 2: clear about what we actually mean when we're talking about
Speaker 2: these things, and I think we're often misleading people.
Speaker 1: It seems like we drilled down right beyond the atom
Speaker 1: into the particles that we're made out of, but then
Speaker 1: we sort of hit a wall in terms of our understanding,
Speaker 1: because once you get to these tiny quantum particles, you
Speaker 1: get to ask, like, what are these particles, what are
Speaker 1: they made out of? What's their origin?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have a mathematical description that works really,
Speaker 2: really well. Quantum field theory can describe these interactions and
Speaker 2: make predictions and tell us what's going to happen in
Speaker 2: our experiments. With challenging is developing an intuitive picture in
Speaker 2: your mind for what's going on the microscopic scale, And
Speaker 2: that's always going to be challenging because what's happening down
Speaker 2: there has no analog in our experience. There are some similarities, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: electron is a little bit like a little bit of stuff,
Speaker 2: and ripples in a quantum field are a little bit
Speaker 2: like what happens in your baptub when you splash your
Speaker 2: hands around. But those are like stepping stones towards a
Speaker 2: real understanding. They aren't the deepest, most intuitive understanding of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's going on at those deep levels? And what
Speaker 1: is matter and energy actually made out of? And so
Speaker 1: to the on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question
Speaker 1: is the universe made of waves?
Speaker 2: Are you made of waves? Man?
Speaker 1: I am a little wavy. I guess right now, I
Speaker 1: think I'm in a lull. For sure.
Speaker 2: It feels like that question through you for a wave.
Speaker 1: Yes, I wasn't able to serve my way to a
Speaker 1: with answer. I wipe out, physics wipeout.
Speaker 2: I think this question is interesting because we know fundamentally
Speaker 2: that all the laws of quantum field theory are wave equations.
Speaker 2: Like at the heart of it, everything is described in
Speaker 2: terms of waves. But we have this intuitive sense that
Speaker 2: we're made of stuff, and we like to think of
Speaker 2: ourselves as built of little bits of stuff, maybe lashed
Speaker 2: together with forces. But it's hard to imagine ourselves as
Speaker 2: like made of waves, that you and I are both
Speaker 2: just like waves in the universe.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like you know someone who listens casually
Speaker 1: to physics. You know, you sort of grow up learning
Speaker 1: about this idea of whether things are made out of
Speaker 1: particles or waves, and you know that there was a
Speaker 1: big debate at the turn of the last century, and
Speaker 1: then you sort of learn about the idea of the
Speaker 1: wave particle duality, like things are both particles and waves.
Speaker 2: I think the wave particle duality is well intentioned, but
Speaker 2: very confusing and often misleading because it gives people the
Speaker 2: idea that electrons or particles or photons or whatever switch
Speaker 2: between being waves and being particles, Like they are both,
Speaker 2: but sometimes they're being a particle and sometimes they're being
Speaker 2: a wave. I think that's very confusing and misleading.
Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely confusing, but I guess you know, as
Speaker 1: a casual consumer, I've always just accepted that things are
Speaker 1: like two things at the same time, Like, isn't that
Speaker 1: kind of the nature of quantum physics, Like things can
Speaker 1: be two things at the same time, and if you
Speaker 1: look at it one way, it's a particle, and if
Speaker 1: you look at another way to wave. Isn't that kind
Speaker 1: of the basic thing that physicists have been teaching.
Speaker 2: I like that you apply quantum superposition to like our
Speaker 2: understanding of it, Like, well, I understand it this way,
Speaker 2: and I understand it that way in a quantum mechanical sense,
Speaker 2: Like I have two ideas in my mind at the
Speaker 2: same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bad point and a good point at
Speaker 1: the same time. It's both deep and shallow at the
Speaker 1: same time. I am both smart and dumb when it
Speaker 1: comes to quantum physics.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you a good explanation and a
Speaker 2: bad explanation at the same time. Hold them both in
Speaker 2: your heads. No, I think what's confusing about that is
Speaker 2: that physicists say that, but they mean something specific when
Speaker 2: they say the word particle, and it mean something specific
Speaker 2: when they say the word wave, And I don't think
Speaker 2: it's understood that way.
Speaker 1: What do you mean? What do they mean when they
Speaker 1: say particle? What do they mean when they say waves?
Speaker 2: When they say particle, really they just mean you've made
Speaker 2: a localized measurement of something, not that it's like converted
Speaker 2: into a little bit of stuff, and it's not flying
Speaker 2: along through space with a definitive path and location and
Speaker 2: momentum and velocity and all the things you expect of
Speaker 2: a little bit of stuff. And when they say wave,
Speaker 2: what they really mean is it still has uncertainty that
Speaker 2: you haven't collapsed it. You haven't asked the universe to
Speaker 2: tell you where it is. You haven't made a measurement it. Really,
Speaker 2: it's all still just waves. Even this idea of a
Speaker 2: particle being localized in one spot like a dot on
Speaker 2: a screen, a measurement you make, that's also a property
Speaker 2: that a quantum wave can have. It can collapse into
Speaker 2: one local spot.
Speaker 1: And so that's where this question comes from, Like is
Speaker 1: the universe made out of waves? Are you sort of
Speaker 1: making the argument that the word particle doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: and it's really all just waves?
Speaker 2: In the end, the word particle makes sense if you
Speaker 2: give it a sensible definition, but everybody seems to have
Speaker 2: a different idea of what particle means. So it's sort
Speaker 2: of like an overloaded word that's more confusing than clarifying.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, So people shouldn't like major in a
Speaker 1: field if the name is confusing or misleading, is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying, or devote their whole careers to it.
Speaker 2: Hmm, I see, you're walking me down the garden path here. Absolutely, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't have like a PhD and a professorship in
Speaker 2: a word that you don't even understand what it means.
Speaker 1: Yes, I totally agree.
Speaker 2: That would be ridiculous. Anybody who did that should be
Speaker 2: mocked and ridiculed.
Speaker 1: Yes, mocked, ridiculed, and also given a podcast.
Speaker 2: Absolutely totals agree.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, if this idea that everything is
Speaker 1: a wave and the word particle doesn't make sense, doesn't
Speaker 1: that sort of challenge your whole you know, feel the
Speaker 1: research and the whole particle collider idea.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to switch over to being a waveular.
Speaker 1: Physicist, yeah, or a wavy physicists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're just going to collide waves from now on.
Speaker 1: Man, Waveler, I don't even know how to process that word.
Speaker 1: Why would you use that word?
Speaker 2: It seems like the natural adjective version of waves.
Speaker 1: But is it an adjective wave?
Speaker 2: You aler?
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're a particle physicist, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: particles inadjective.
Speaker 2: Particles describing physics there right, I guess I could be
Speaker 2: a particular physicist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I mean. That's why Waveler feels so weird.
Speaker 2: Oh I see, all right. Well, in the conversation with
Speaker 2: our guest today, he introduces another word wave it cull
Speaker 2: because he also doesn't like the word particle.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Why don't you have everyone come up
Speaker 1: with their own words? M and let's do science that way.
Speaker 2: That's basically what we've done so far, and it's not
Speaker 2: working very well.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, I came up with a word, he's mine. No,
Speaker 1: he's fine.
Speaker 2: It's a basic principle of language that words are supposed
Speaker 2: to have meetings, but we've been pretty bad about that
Speaker 2: in physics.
Speaker 1: Well, I vote for wavy wavy physicists.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to position my department for a
Speaker 2: change of my title.
Speaker 1: Well, today we're doing something a little bit interesting, which
Speaker 1: is we're jumping right into an interview that you did
Speaker 1: with a professor of physics who has a new book out.
Speaker 2: That's right, my colleague, professor Matt Strassler. He's a theoretical
Speaker 2: physicist and listeners to the podcast might already know him
Speaker 2: because he's the author of a pretty well known blog
Speaker 2: on particle physics called of Particular Significance. He should be
Speaker 2: called of wavular Significance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like he might be invalidating his own blog.
Speaker 2: And he's an excellent writer for a general audience. And
Speaker 2: he's got a new book out called Waves in an
Speaker 2: Impossible See where he shares his vision for how the
Speaker 2: world works on a microscopic scale.
Speaker 1: Interesting he didn't name it Wavecles in an Impossible See.
Speaker 3: Cale.
Speaker 2: I suggest everybody get a popsicle and going enjoy the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. All right, Well, what are some
Speaker 1: of the things you talk about with Professor Strassler.
Speaker 2: We try our best to sketch out the argument in
Speaker 2: his book Walk You through the principles that lead you
Speaker 2: to a new vision for how the universe works, from
Speaker 2: relativity to fields to waves, and how that's all crucial
Speaker 2: for getting a real understanding of how the Higgs field works.
Speaker 1: I see it's not just a being handwavy about things. Well,
Speaker 1: I can wave to dive into it. So here's Daniel's
Speaker 1: interview with Professor Matt Strassler, author of the book Waves
Speaker 1: in an Impossible Scene.
Speaker 2: Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to introduce the podcast.
Speaker 2: Professor Matt Strassler a friend and colleague. Matt is a
Speaker 2: theoretical physicist and an author. He's been a researcher at
Speaker 2: the Institute for Advanced Studies, a professor at the University
Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania, University Washington, and at Rutgers University, as well
Speaker 2: as a visiting professor at Harvard. He's very well known
Speaker 2: in the academic particle phys community for as many new
Speaker 2: ideas and influential concepts, such as the possibility of a
Speaker 2: hidden valley, which isn't about a new kind of ranch dressing,
Speaker 2: but the idea that significant parts of the universe could
Speaker 2: be mostly shut off from us, hidden by our limited
Speaker 2: ability to interact with them. He's also widely respected for
Speaker 2: his scientific writing. His blog of particular Significance is an
Speaker 2: example of scientific writing for a general audience at its finest.
Speaker 2: This isn't just more the same, where you'll find a
Speaker 2: few tired analogies recycled. Matt writes with a unique voice
Speaker 2: that demonstrates his deep intuitive understanding of the physics, which
Speaker 2: he can convey with a crisp but logical and accessible explanation.
Speaker 2: Listeners to the podcast who write to me to ask
Speaker 2: for more details on virtual particles or the Higgs field
Speaker 2: will often get a response back that includes a link
Speaker 2: to some of Matt's blog posts, because it's some of
Speaker 2: the best explanations out there for these weird and tricky concepts.
Speaker 2: So I was very happy to hear, of course, that
Speaker 2: Matt decided to write a book, and having just finished
Speaker 2: reading it, I can tell you that it lives up
Speaker 2: to my hopes. It's clear and compelling journey through the
Speaker 2: complex topics that gives you a new way of looking
Speaker 2: at the world and thinking about the complicated ideas you
Speaker 2: often hear about waves and particles and fields. And mass
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. So Matt, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Daniel, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: So tell me first why you decided to write a book.
Speaker 2: What question is this book an answer to?
Speaker 4: Well, I think, as with many books, the question that
Speaker 4: the book ended up being in the answer to is
Speaker 4: not the question I was originally trying to answer. Not
Speaker 4: that the questions aren't connected. But as you and many
Speaker 4: of your readers and listeners will know, there was a
Speaker 4: big event in particle physics back in twenty twelve, and
Speaker 4: that was the discovery of the famous Higgs boson, which
Speaker 4: is a type of particle that the news media likes
Speaker 4: to call the God particle, and most physicists think this
Speaker 4: is a ridiculous thing. But so much for science journalism.
Speaker 4: We're stuck with that. And the thing which was one
Speaker 4: of the tasks of science journalists and scientists at the
Speaker 4: time of that discovery before or to explain why it
Speaker 4: was that physicists were looking for this thing, was to
Speaker 4: explain why it's important to do that. Why are we
Speaker 4: spending a substantial amount of money and a lot of
Speaker 4: people's time to go looking for this one type of
Speaker 4: particle who cares?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: So obviously this was something that scientists thought a lot
Speaker 4: about how to explain what is fundamentally a tricky concept.
Speaker 4: And there were some explanations that were really not so great,
Speaker 4: but there were.
Speaker 3: A few that were not bad, and one of them that.
Speaker 4: Took on a life of its own and sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, people started to take it kind of seriously
Speaker 4: at the level that it started appearing often in science
Speaker 4: journalism and even started appearing in long form books about
Speaker 4: the Higgs particle correctly explained that the Higgs particle isn't
Speaker 4: really the big deal here. The Higgs particle was a
Speaker 4: means to an end. We were trying to understand something
Speaker 4: much deeper, which is called the Higgs field. The Higgs
Speaker 4: field is something that present throughout the universe. It has
Speaker 4: an enormous impact on our lives, a secret impact, but
Speaker 4: nonetheless something we can't live without.
Speaker 3: And so the better.
Speaker 4: Explanations said, Okay, don't worry about the Higgs particle, that's
Speaker 4: just a means to an end. We really want to
Speaker 4: understand the Higgs field. Then the next question was, all right, well,
Speaker 4: if the Higgs field is important, why is that? And
Speaker 4: the answer is that it has something to do with
Speaker 4: how certain elementary particles get mass, and mass turns out
Speaker 4: to be essential in our universe for us, because if
Speaker 4: electrons didn't have mass, there would be no atoms. I
Speaker 4: don't need to explain beyond that point how important the
Speaker 4: Higgs field is.
Speaker 2: I like Adams, atoms are good. Yeah, I'm planning to
Speaker 2: have atoms for dinner tonight. For example.
Speaker 4: You may have them for the rest of your life,
Speaker 4: I certainly hope so, so, yes, we can't really do
Speaker 4: without them. But then came the next question, which was,
Speaker 4: all right, if the Higgs field gives mass to things,
Speaker 4: how does.
Speaker 1: It do it?
Speaker 4: And that's where things went a little off the rails again,
Speaker 4: not because anybody was trying to, you know, pull the
Speaker 4: rug over people's eyes or somehow try to mislead, but
Speaker 4: to actually explain it takes some cleverness and it takes
Speaker 4: a little while, and so if you're asked to give
Speaker 4: a sound bite, you can't quite do it. So the
Speaker 4: SoundBite that people came up with was that the way
Speaker 4: it works is kind of like this. The Higgs field
Speaker 4: is like a substance that fills the universe like a soup,
Speaker 4: or like snow or like molasses.
Speaker 2: I've heard the molasses one many times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the molasses is a great one.
Speaker 4: Right. You kind of imagine yourself swimming through molasses and
Speaker 4: somehow breathing through it, and it slows things down, just
Speaker 4: as molasses would do, or soup.
Speaker 3: What do you try to get through it? It slows
Speaker 3: you down.
Speaker 4: And because it slows things down, that's how it gives
Speaker 4: things mass.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, this is the common popular science
Speaker 2: explanation that we're not happy.
Speaker 4: This is unacceptable, and the reason that's unacceptable is that
Speaker 4: it not only mis explains how the Higgs field works,
Speaker 4: but it does so in a way that contradicts probably
Speaker 4: the single most important principle of physics that you have
Speaker 4: to understand to be able to understand pretty much anything
Speaker 4: about how the universe works, and that is the principle
Speaker 4: of relativity. That's the principle that explains why the Earth
Speaker 4: can go round the Sun for billions of years without
Speaker 4: slowing down and crashing into the Sun. That's the principle
Speaker 4: that explains why light can move across the universe and
Speaker 4: atoms can move through the universe all you know, over
Speaker 4: enormous distances, and if you abandon the principle of relativity
Speaker 4: because you want to try to explain how the Higgs
Speaker 4: field works. You're giving up something even more important to
Speaker 4: explain something and not even really explain it.
Speaker 3: So that just doesn't make said.
Speaker 2: I hear that question from our listeners all the time
Speaker 2: because they hear this explanation and then they're like, wait
Speaker 2: a second, having mass doesn't mean you slow down, Like
Speaker 2: you can be really massive and fly through the universe
Speaker 2: without slowing down. Exactly, how is the Higgs slowing things down?
Speaker 2: And they're right, and that's really any sense, And then
Speaker 2: I link them to your blog. But this was the
Speaker 2: initial motivation you're saying for like, why you wanted to
Speaker 2: write this book. You felt like it was a missing
Speaker 2: part of the story here. Is that what the book
Speaker 2: ended up being about.
Speaker 4: Also, well, in a way, yes, in that I think
Speaker 4: it does provide for the first time a complete and
Speaker 4: coherent and correct explanation as to what the Higgs field
Speaker 4: is actually doing.
Speaker 3: And in particular, not only.
Speaker 4: Does it not have anything to do with slowing things down,
Speaker 4: it doesn't have to do with motion at all, and
Speaker 4: it gives mass to electrons via an indirect route, which
Speaker 4: in order to understand one has to first understand what
Speaker 4: electrons actually are, and that, in the end, in a way,
Speaker 4: is more what the book was about, essentially by necessity,
Speaker 4: because in order to explain what the Higgs field does,
Speaker 4: I have to really explain how the universe works in
Speaker 4: its most basic sense, and that requires understanding relativity, not
Speaker 4: in detail, not with the math, but the basic conceptual framework.
Speaker 4: And it also requires understanding a little bit about the
Speaker 4: basic framework of quantum physics.
Speaker 2: All Right, I have a bunch more questions for Matt
Speaker 2: about how the universe works and how we can really
Speaker 2: understand the Higgs field correctly. But first let's take a
Speaker 2: quick break. Okay, we're back and we're talking to Professor
Speaker 2: Matt Strassler, author of the new book Waives in an
Speaker 2: impossible see, who wants us to really understand how the
Speaker 2: universe is all made of ways and how that's crucial
Speaker 2: to understanding how particle physics and the Higgs boson works.
Speaker 2: And I will say that I was surprised when I
Speaker 2: started reading the book because I expected it to be
Speaker 2: about how the universe is all made of waves or
Speaker 2: how the Higgs field actually works. And then you start
Speaker 2: off with Galleo in relativity, and I'm like, wow, we
Speaker 2: are going back to the beginning. Matt is rebuilding all
Speaker 2: of physics for us. But by the end I could
Speaker 2: tell why you had done it, because you relied on
Speaker 2: crucial details in that understanding to give a cogent explanation
Speaker 2: for how this all works. So kudos to you.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Daniel.
Speaker 4: But as you say, the key to writing the book
Speaker 4: in a way was to I mean, obviously, the universe
Speaker 4: is enormous in many different senses of the word, but
Speaker 4: you could write ten books explaining it. The key in
Speaker 4: a sense was to pick out those things which were
Speaker 4: most critical and explain them really well, and to try
Speaker 4: not to explain too many things, but to really go
Speaker 4: to the heart of the matter, in hopes that a
Speaker 4: reader would come away not onunderstanding everything, but understanding a
Speaker 4: few things really well, so that at the end what
Speaker 4: the Higgs field is doing and how it gives mass
Speaker 4: to things would make sense. And I try to do
Speaker 4: it without watering things down. You know, I'm not using
Speaker 4: math in it, but I am trying to make sure
Speaker 4: the concepts are a complete story.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And for those of you who want to understand
Speaker 2: the higgs Field in a deep, conceptual and intuitive way.
Speaker 2: Really encourage you to get the book and to read
Speaker 2: it carefully and to think about it, and to write
Speaker 2: us with questions if something in there doesn't job with
Speaker 2: your understanding, because that's a learning moment. On today's podcast,
Speaker 2: I hope that we can get a sketch of these ideas.
Speaker 2: Of course, we can't do justice to the whole book
Speaker 2: and all of its careful explanations, but maybe we could
Speaker 2: do an abbreviated version to give people an idea of
Speaker 2: this important way of thinking about the universe that makes
Speaker 2: the Higgs field make actual sense rather than molasses sense.
Speaker 2: So let's start at the beginning. You started with relativity
Speaker 2: for a reason, because we need to understand relativity to
Speaker 2: understand what it is the higgs field is doing and
Speaker 2: is not doing. What is the principle of relativity that
Speaker 2: people really need to.
Speaker 3: Understand well in a way.
Speaker 4: You know, the word relativity comes with Like most words
Speaker 4: that we physicists use when we try to explain what
Speaker 4: we do to the wider public, it comes with baggage.
Speaker 4: And the cultural baggage of the word relativity couldn't be heavier, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, we're talking Einstein. But what most people don't
Speaker 4: realize is that the principle of relativity goes back to
Speaker 4: Galileo and the year sixteen thirty two. And this is
Speaker 4: when Galileo wrote down for a reading public that you
Speaker 4: cannot tell just by looking around you, or by watching
Speaker 4: other objects around you, or by doing simple experiments, how
Speaker 4: fast you're moving. And this is hard enough for us
Speaker 4: to think about. I mean, you know, if you're in
Speaker 4: a car, if you're moving thirty miles an hour, of
Speaker 4: the car bumps around a little bit, Whereas if the
Speaker 4: car isn't moving at all, well you don't feel any bumps.
Speaker 4: So I mean, we're used to the idea that if
Speaker 4: you're traveling faster, the bumps are more and you can
Speaker 4: tell how fast you're moving. But we forget that at
Speaker 4: this very moment, where I am seated in my chair,
Speaker 4: and many of your readers are seated in their chairs
Speaker 4: or doing something that means that they're not moving relative
Speaker 4: to their room. They are nevertheless going around the axis
Speaker 4: of the Earth as it spins. They are going round
Speaker 4: the Sun once a year, at twenty miles a second.
Speaker 4: The Sun and Earth and the whole solar system are
Speaker 4: going around the center of the galaxy at one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty miles per second, and we don't feel it.
Speaker 4: And this was Galileo's realization based on some experiments that
Speaker 4: he did, but it was central in the history of
Speaker 4: human thought because up until that point there were many
Speaker 4: brilliant thinkers, including Tycho Brahe, who was the person who
Speaker 4: collected the data that Kepler then used to figure out
Speaker 4: how the solar system works. And bri was after Copernicus
Speaker 4: by fifty years. So Copernicus said, you know, the Earth
Speaker 4: goes round the Sun, but people didn't necessarily believe him because,
Speaker 4: as Brahe himself said around sixteen hundred, look, I mean
Speaker 4: if the Earth were moving, we'd feel it. And he
Speaker 4: was wrong, not because he was dumb, but because this
Speaker 4: principle of relativity is so weird and so counterintuitive that
Speaker 4: whatever space is, whatever the empty space that we call
Speaker 4: the vacuum or just deep space is, we can move through.
Speaker 3: It as though it's nothing.
Speaker 4: And then you might say, well, okay, maybe it is nothing.
Speaker 3: What's the big deal?
Speaker 4: And that's a perfectly good answer until Einstein comes along
Speaker 4: and says, no, it can't really be just nothing, because
Speaker 4: it can expand I mean when we say the universe
Speaker 4: is expanding, we don't mean that there's stuff flying out
Speaker 4: into empty space. We mean empty space is growing. And
Speaker 4: when we say gravity is a manifestation of the shape
Speaker 4: of empty space, we're saying that empty space is something
Speaker 4: that can bend. And the big Nobel Prize of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: the big discovery of twenty fifteen was the observation of
Speaker 4: gravitational waves. Gravitational waves are ripples in space, So you
Speaker 4: can't really explain away the idea that, okay, the reason
Speaker 4: we move through space without feeling anything is that space
Speaker 4: is nothing, because then you have to explain how can
Speaker 4: nothing ripple and stretch and do all these crazy things.
Speaker 4: So now you have a puzzle. How can it be
Speaker 4: that Galilee is right that you can't tell how fast
Speaker 4: you're moving even though you're moving through a substance or
Speaker 4: something that acts like a substance. I mean, maybe it's
Speaker 4: not a substance. We haven't ever you know, bottled it
Speaker 4: and sold it in stores. But it's very strange that
Speaker 4: this should be true. So this was a place to
Speaker 4: start because it forces us to confront a sort of
Speaker 4: fundamental confusion that we seem not to be able to
Speaker 4: detect whether we're moving through this substance, but it does
Speaker 4: seem to be a substance. And this has been confusing
Speaker 4: since the time of Einstein. I don't know whether I
Speaker 4: should say he was confused about it. That I think
Speaker 4: would be unfair, but he understood this was a fundamental
Speaker 4: puzzle or conceptual. Maybe puzzle is even the wrong term
Speaker 4: because it's not clear it needs a solution, but it's
Speaker 4: a conceptually strange thing about the space that makes.
Speaker 3: Up the universe.
Speaker 2: And just to make it like explicit, the thing that's
Speaker 2: confusing is, if you're moving through space, why can't you
Speaker 2: measure your speed relative to space? If space is a thing, right,
Speaker 2: if it has properties, it can ripple, it can expand,
Speaker 2: and you can put numbers in it, why can't you
Speaker 2: measure your velocity relative to space, which would give you,
Speaker 2: like a way to absolutely measure your velocity around the Sun,
Speaker 2: or around the galaxy, or inside a ship or inside
Speaker 2: a car. That's the central puzzle here.
Speaker 4: In a way, there's two interesting puzzles, and they're related,
Speaker 4: and yet the answer to the two puzzles is contradictory
Speaker 4: or seemingly contradictory. The first puzzle is why can we
Speaker 4: move through space without slowing down? If it's a substance,
Speaker 4: I mean, we can't move through air without slowing down.
Speaker 4: If that's why airplanes need engines, and you can't move
Speaker 4: through water without slowing down, that's why submarine isn't itine?
Speaker 4: And one potential answer to that has to do with
Speaker 4: the idea that we are made from waves, that the objects,
Speaker 4: namely the electrons and quarks and other fundamental particles, really
Speaker 4: should be understood as waves. And one way to see
Speaker 4: that is that if you ask yourself whether you and
Speaker 4: I could move through solid rock, Well, that's a ridiculous idea, right,
Speaker 4: killed instantly if we tried to do that. And yet
Speaker 4: seismic waves from earthquakes they just go right through the earth.
Speaker 4: In fact, scientists use them to probe the inside of
Speaker 4: the earth. The waves go right through Why because they're
Speaker 4: part of the rock. They're the rock doing something right.
Speaker 4: Sound waves it's the same thing. Why is it that
Speaker 4: an airplane needs engines and sound waves don't need engines.
Speaker 4: Soundwaves can travel thousands of miles and they don't slow down.
Speaker 3: Why not?
Speaker 4: Well, they're the air in action. So the idea that
Speaker 4: we might be made from things that are really sort
Speaker 4: of the universe in action waves in some sense of
Speaker 4: the universe, arises very naturally from these observations. Maybe the
Speaker 4: reason we don't feel any friction, any drag when we
Speaker 4: move through the universe is that we're kind of made
Speaker 4: of it in some gunal sense.
Speaker 2: You're saying we are wiggles in the universe, the way
Speaker 2: seismic waves are wiggles in rock.
Speaker 4: I will qualify that by saying there's a little more
Speaker 4: complexity to it, but that's the basic idea. Now, the
Speaker 4: simplest ripples in empty space are precisely gravitational waves, and
Speaker 4: we're not made from those. But it is possible for
Speaker 4: space to have sort of unseen properties, unknown properties which
Speaker 4: could have waves in them, and we might be made
Speaker 4: from those. That's a way of possibly interpreting what we're
Speaker 4: made of. And for example, in string theory, although this
Speaker 4: is not limited to string theory, that is a common
Speaker 4: way of understanding space.
Speaker 3: It's more complicated.
Speaker 4: Specifically, it has extra dimensions and weird shapes, and so
Speaker 4: there are properties of space that are not obvious to us,
Speaker 4: at least through our senses and waves that have to
Speaker 4: do with those properties might be the things that we
Speaker 4: are made from.
Speaker 3: That's speculation.
Speaker 4: But the idea that we are made of waves that
Speaker 4: are somehow made of things that are integrated into the universe,
Speaker 4: that follows from the math that we use today in
Speaker 4: a sense that's less speculative. It's a way of interpreting
Speaker 4: the math that we already have. And so that's one
Speaker 4: puzzle and one possible solution that oh, okay, the unuse.
Speaker 3: Really is a substance.
Speaker 4: It's got these properties, there are waves in those properties,
Speaker 4: and we're made from those waves. Okay, great, We can
Speaker 4: still worry about the fact that it's not so easy
Speaker 4: to build objects out of waves that you and I
Speaker 4: are familiar with. You've never seen a cathedral built from
Speaker 4: sound waves, and you've never seen an elephant made out
Speaker 4: of seismic waves. There is this question how are you
Speaker 4: going to make things out of waves? But we'll come
Speaker 4: back to that because that's the question of quantum physics
Speaker 4: and how electrons can be waves in.
Speaker 3: The first place. But there's a second puzzle that has
Speaker 3: to do with space. So again the puzzles that had
Speaker 3: to do with space.
Speaker 4: The first one was how can we move through it
Speaker 4: if it's a substance without feeling any drag, without slowing down.
Speaker 4: And one solution is, we're made of waves.
Speaker 2: Of this substance.
Speaker 4: Okay, great, But then you ask yourself, fine, it's a substance,
Speaker 4: let's go feel it, let's make a bottle of it,
Speaker 4: let's track.
Speaker 2: It down, Let's measure our velocity relative to it exactly.
Speaker 4: And there are many ways that you can think of
Speaker 4: doing that. So for us moving through air, that's not difficult.
Speaker 4: You use a wind meter that tells you how fast
Speaker 4: the air is moving relative to you, or vice versa.
Speaker 4: If you want to know how fast you're moving through
Speaker 4: the water on a boat, just put your hand in
Speaker 4: the water and you'll feel, you know, the water will
Speaker 4: pull your hand in some direction, and which direction it
Speaker 4: pulls your hand in and how hard will depend on
Speaker 4: how fast you're moving through the water. That's not quite
Speaker 4: a fair comparison, though, if I've just told you that
Speaker 4: we're made of waves of that stuff, right, So then
Speaker 4: you want to ask yourself, well, supposing you were a
Speaker 4: creature made out of ocean waves, how would ocean waves
Speaker 4: know how fast they're moving through the water, Which is
Speaker 4: a weirder question, and we're not used to asking that.
Speaker 3: But you can ask it.
Speaker 4: And one way that ocean waves can tell is they
Speaker 4: can look at other ocean waves as they come by,
Speaker 4: at least in principle, right, if you're made out of
Speaker 4: ocean waves and here comes your friend made out of
Speaker 4: ocean waves, they're coming in a different direction, how fast
Speaker 4: are they moving? And you can tell from looking at
Speaker 4: how they behave how quickly you yourself are moving through
Speaker 4: the water. And one way to say this is hidden
Speaker 4: in the notion of the speed of sound. So in air,
Speaker 4: when we measure the speed of sound and we say
Speaker 4: it's eleven hundred feet per second, well, it's a speed.
Speaker 4: What is that speed relative too? And the answer is
Speaker 4: it's relative to the air. The speed of sound is
Speaker 4: eleven hundred feet per second relative to the air. And
Speaker 4: so if the air we're blowing by you at some velocity,
Speaker 4: if there's some strong wind, well then the sound waves
Speaker 4: going in the direction of the wind will pass you faster.
Speaker 4: Then the sound waves go in the opposite direction because
Speaker 4: they're being pulled along by the air as it flows
Speaker 4: by you. And if you're a supersonic jet, you're out
Speaker 4: running your own sound. The sound is moving eleven hundred
Speaker 4: fet per scond relative to the error, and you're moving faster.
Speaker 4: But with light, when we talk about the speed of light,
Speaker 4: what is that relative to And in the analogy that
Speaker 4: we've been talking about, you might imagine that, well, it
Speaker 4: should be whatever it is one hundred and eighty six
Speaker 4: thousand miles per second relative to space or whatever it
Speaker 4: is that fills space that makes up the thing in
Speaker 4: which light is a wave. But that's not how it works. Somehow,
Speaker 4: the way the universe works is that the speed of
Speaker 4: light is measured relative to an observer who is trying
Speaker 4: to measure it, and not relative to space. And the
Speaker 4: importance of that is that it allows for something bizarre,
Speaker 4: which is that no matter how fast you're moving, no
Speaker 4: matter how fast some object that's emitting light is moving,
Speaker 4: the speed of light when it passes you is always
Speaker 4: the same from all directions and from any source. That's
Speaker 4: not true for sound, it's not true for ocean waves.
Speaker 4: And those facts are directly tied with the fact that
Speaker 4: you can tell whether you're moving what relative to the
Speaker 4: substance of air or water. But the way it works
Speaker 4: for light, despite all the analogies between waves of sound
Speaker 4: and waves of light, and of course our ability to
Speaker 4: perceive them.
Speaker 3: It just works differently.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to get even deeper into this,
Speaker 2: but first we're going to take a quick break. We're
Speaker 2: back and I'm talking to Professor Matt Strassler, author of
Speaker 2: Waves and an Impossible Sea. Is that a consequence of
Speaker 2: the nature of space you always measure the speed of
Speaker 2: light to be the same thing, because you can't measure
Speaker 2: your speed relative to space. Or is it go the
Speaker 2: other direction that because you have to measure the speed
Speaker 2: of light the same for all observers, therefore you cannot
Speaker 2: measure your velocity relative to space.
Speaker 4: It's a great question because in a sense, the cause
Speaker 4: of relation isn't clear. Yeah, we know these are facts,
Speaker 4: we know they are related, but we don't fundamentally know
Speaker 4: which thing should be considered sort of primary and which
Speaker 4: things should be considered a consequence. And so, just to
Speaker 4: bring everything full circle, what Einstein was doing when he
Speaker 4: proposed that the speed of light was a constant from
Speaker 4: all observers point of view, which had not occurred to
Speaker 4: anyone prior to him, was deeply tied with this inconsistency
Speaker 4: between what relativity ala Galileo says that you should not
Speaker 4: be able to measure your speed and what light waves
Speaker 4: tell you, which is well, light as a wave's just
Speaker 4: like sound as a wave, So there should be some
Speaker 4: substance relative to which light speed can be measured. You
Speaker 4: can't have it both waves, because if light does have
Speaker 4: a speed relative to a substance, and you can measure
Speaker 4: your speed relative to the light, then you can also
Speaker 4: measure your speed relative to the substance, and then Galileo's
Speaker 4: relativity is no longer true. You can tell how fast
Speaker 4: you're moving through the universe. And what Einstein said was
Speaker 4: maybe Galileo's principle is still true, and there's something about
Speaker 4: the way you're thinking about light waves that is fundamentally
Speaker 4: different from how it works for sound waves.
Speaker 2: So it's truly Galileo's theory of relativity that Einstein protected
Speaker 2: correct or rescue.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's exactly now. Einstein's theory of gravity is
Speaker 4: a bigger deal. And not to say this was a
Speaker 4: small deal. I mean, saving galileos relativity was a major achievement.
Speaker 4: But it's important to understand that fundamentally what Einstein was
Speaker 4: doing was saving Galileo's principle at the expense of the
Speaker 4: notion of space and time, which seemed obvious in order
Speaker 4: to make it possible for light to do something that
Speaker 4: seemed impossible. And it does leave us with this notion
Speaker 4: of space as this substance like thing with respect to
Speaker 4: which we cannot measure our motion.
Speaker 2: And we don't really have a great explanation for why
Speaker 2: that is.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: We can see that as a consequence of the speed
Speaker 2: of light being constant for all observers, but we don't
Speaker 2: have like a ground truth the fundamental reason for why
Speaker 2: a space has this property based on what it is. Right,
Speaker 2: sort of going backwards, we're saying it just has this
Speaker 2: property because we know it can't do this thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's an experimentally derived fact in the end, right,
Speaker 4: it was Einstein's idea that maybe space and time works
Speaker 4: this way. But the reason we know it's true is
Speaker 4: one hundred years of experiments and doing things like building
Speaker 4: giant particle accelerators, which would not work at all if
Speaker 4: these facts weren't true in detail. So the fine tuning
Speaker 4: of an engineered particle accelerator requires that Einstein's formulas be
Speaker 4: correct to many decimal places, and so these are not
Speaker 4: speculative ideas anymore. Even though when Einstein wrote the down
Speaker 4: at that time it was a proposal, he didn't know
Speaker 4: it was true, but it turns out that it is.
Speaker 2: But there's a difference between being well established and being understood.
Speaker 2: Absolutely can say, well, we know this is correct and
Speaker 2: describes the universe, but gosh darn it, we don't understand
Speaker 2: what it means about the universe right correct.
Speaker 4: There are many speculations about what it might tell us
Speaker 4: about space and time that would take us far afield
Speaker 4: from the story of this book. In my book, I've
Speaker 4: tried to avoid speculations and stick to the things that
Speaker 4: we know, because I think it's really important for anyone
Speaker 4: who wants to read this speculative stuff. I mean, there's
Speaker 4: wonderful ideas out there, which most of which, of course
Speaker 4: will turn out to be wrong, but they're based on
Speaker 4: these fundamentals, and so you really have to understand the
Speaker 4: fundamentals to grasp what deep problems physicists are grappling with.
Speaker 4: And what's wonderful and exciting and challenging about what I've
Speaker 4: just told you about space is that you don't need
Speaker 4: to be a mathematician or an expert in physics to
Speaker 4: understand the problem, to understand how deep a puzzle this is.
Speaker 4: And that's part of why I thought a book like
Speaker 4: this could really work. And I think it's important that
Speaker 4: as many people as possible appreciate just how spectacular these
Speaker 4: types of problems are. It shouldn't hurt your head to
Speaker 4: learn about the problem, and yet it should hurt your
Speaker 4: head when you try to understand the problem in just
Speaker 4: the same way it hurts mind.
Speaker 3: It's not as though.
Speaker 4: These things are hard because it's difficult to understand what's strange.
Speaker 4: They're hard because any human being, including the experts, find
Speaker 4: this strange.
Speaker 2: And so I want to share with listeners the picture
Speaker 2: that you paint in the second half of the book
Speaker 2: how the universe works, so that we can better understand
Speaker 2: the Higgs field and the context of this discovery of
Speaker 2: space and light and how things wiggle, and you were
Speaker 2: mentioning it earlier, how everything is made out of waves.
Speaker 2: This is all super wonderful and fascinating and making me
Speaker 2: rethink how the universe around me works and how it's
Speaker 2: all made of tiny waves. But before we dig into
Speaker 2: the rest of this and understand the Higgs boson. We're
Speaker 2: going to have to pause here and pick up this
Speaker 2: discussion in the next episode, Part two of my conversation
Speaker 2: with Professor mattz Stressler, where we'll talk about how the
Speaker 2: universe is actually all made of waves and why that's
Speaker 2: vital to understanding what the Higgs field is and what
Speaker 2: it does how it gives us all mass. So hold
Speaker 2: on to your thoughts about how the universe works and
Speaker 2: check out Matt's book Waves in an Impossible See available
Speaker 2: everywhere right now, See you next time for the second
Speaker 2: part of this conversation. For more science and curiosity, come
Speaker 2: find us on social media where we answer questions and
Speaker 2: post videos. We're on Twitter, Discorg, Insta, and now TikTok.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
Speaker 2: the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows.