Speaker 1: Hello everyone. Quick note that this episode is part two
Speaker 1: of my conversation with theoretical physicist Matt Stressler about his
Speaker 1: new book Waves in an Impossible Scene. If you haven't
Speaker 1: yet heard part one, pause this episode and go back
Speaker 1: listen to the first part. This stuff is hard enough
Speaker 1: without listening to it backwards, so do the first things first.
Speaker 1: Pause this episode and come right back. We'll wait for you. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: explain the Universe, in which we dig deep into the
Speaker 1: nature of space and time and particles, in which we
Speaker 1: want you to understand our new ideas about how the
Speaker 1: universe works and be bewildered with us about everything we
Speaker 1: don't understand about the universe. Today we have an unusual episode,
Speaker 1: and then it's part two. This is the second half
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Professor Matt Stressler. In the first
Speaker 1: part of the conversation, we reviewed relativity. How waves travel
Speaker 1: through media, but light waves seem to travel through empty space.
Speaker 1: How you can measure the speed of most waves like sound,
Speaker 1: relative to their medium, but you can't measure the speed
Speaker 1: of light relative to space, only to other things in space.
Speaker 1: Matt is painting us a careful and insightful picture of
Speaker 1: how everything is made out of waves, and why that's
Speaker 1: crucial to understanding the last, the craziest, the most recent
Speaker 1: wave to be discovered, waves in the Higgs field. So
Speaker 1: here is part two of my conversation with Matt. Give
Speaker 1: us a glimpse of how your mind works, how you
Speaker 1: see the universe as being built out of waves, and
Speaker 1: why you think this is so important for understanding the
Speaker 1: Higgs field.
Speaker 2: I'll take you through that in a few steps, but
Speaker 2: the most important to start with is we have to
Speaker 2: deal with words. And this is a theme of the
Speaker 2: book because I think it's a theme of human affairs
Speaker 2: in general, and it's certainly a theme of scientific communication.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, And physics is terrible about words. I mean,
Speaker 1: we use names for things totally inappropriately. Quarks have color
Speaker 1: and flavor, Like, what are we talking about here? Why
Speaker 1: don't we just invent new words to describe new things? Right?
Speaker 2: And we used to? I mean, you know, this is
Speaker 2: in some sense of mid twentieth century development. But that said,
Speaker 2: in order to think about things ourselves, we often borrowed
Speaker 2: words from English, and particle is one of them. Wave
Speaker 2: is another force, even theory. We have lots of words
Speaker 2: that are part of physics dialect that we have taken
Speaker 2: from English. And we humans, just in ordinary language, are
Speaker 2: spectacularly good at using a single word with many definitions,
Speaker 2: right we all know. You go to the dictionary and
Speaker 2: you look up simple words and there's twelve definitions of
Speaker 2: the same word. And yet in language we communicate with
Speaker 2: each other switching definitions all the time. We may use
Speaker 2: the same word in one sense in two different ways
Speaker 2: and it doesn't bother us. Well, this is true of
Speaker 2: physicists as well. We have our dialect, some words have
Speaker 2: multiple meanings. We switch back and forth without a problem.
Speaker 2: But of course, when you are switching dialects, when you
Speaker 2: are trying to communicate physics to a non physics speaking
Speaker 2: English speaker, just as when you try to switch from
Speaker 2: French to English and you're trying to use words that
Speaker 2: have multiple meanings without even thinking about it, you may
Speaker 2: easily confuse your listener. And we do this all the time.
Speaker 2: So they are famous phrases like an electron is part particle,
Speaker 2: part way, it's a wave, part of the time, and
Speaker 2: it's a particle part of the time. And aside from
Speaker 2: the fact that that could mean many different things, and
Speaker 2: over history it has meant at least two different things
Speaker 2: to two different classes of people. It's really problematic that
Speaker 2: the word particle has multiple meanings and the word wave
Speaker 2: has multiple meanings, and the most common meanings in English
Speaker 2: are not the ones that we are using here. So
Speaker 2: we will not get anywhere if I don't spend a
Speaker 2: minute on those definitions. So I'll start with wave. We'll
Speaker 2: talk about waves for a while, because waves are such
Speaker 2: a wonderful phenomenon. They underlie so many aspects. Obviously, I'm
Speaker 2: the sound I'm using to communicate and the radio waves
Speaker 2: that we're using to send all this information back and forth.
Speaker 2: And also they're the fundamentals in music, just surrounded by
Speaker 2: music in our modern world in the best and we're
Speaker 2: senses and we should take a moment to think about
Speaker 2: what we mean. And one thing we do not mean
Speaker 2: is the thing that everybody means when they go to
Speaker 2: the beach. Right, you go to the beach, Oh, that
Speaker 2: is a great wave. I want to serf that one. Ooh,
Speaker 2: here comes a big wave. Okay, what do we mean.
Speaker 2: We mean, here comes a big crest in the water,
Speaker 2: a big high point in the water, and it is
Speaker 2: separated from the next high point by two low points,
Speaker 2: and we call that crest a wave. That is not
Speaker 2: what we are talking about here. We are not made
Speaker 2: from single wave crests. No. Yet, the word wave as
Speaker 2: used in science is a rich concept. There are waves
Speaker 2: of many different shapes and sizes. For example, I'm speaking
Speaker 2: now making sound waves, or if you're a recording engineer,
Speaker 2: you will say I'm making a sound wave singular. So
Speaker 2: a wave can be a very complicated shape. But to
Speaker 2: keep things focused, let's talk about the simplest waves. And
Speaker 2: the simplest waves are the ones that you make when
Speaker 2: you sing. You sing a note, or you make a
Speaker 2: pure tone on a musical instrument, and then you are
Speaker 2: making a wave which consists of a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: high points and a whole bunch of low points, a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of crests and troughs equally spaced, and it
Speaker 2: may be a long series of them.
Speaker 1: So imagine like a sine wave extending all the way
Speaker 1: from negave infinity to positive infinity along the x axis
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 2: If you like your tenth grade, eleventh grade math, Yes exactly,
Speaker 2: or if you don't, it's just the ripples that you
Speaker 2: would make in a pond. If you put your hand
Speaker 2: in the water and moved it up and down regularly,
Speaker 2: you would get a set of ripples. It would move outward.
Speaker 2: That's a wave in science rather than a set of waves.
Speaker 2: So it's more what a beach gore would call a
Speaker 2: wave set or a wave train. And now even that
Speaker 2: has a subtlety which I'll come back to you. But
Speaker 2: of the types of waves that we encounter which scientists
Speaker 2: talk about, there are two types, both of which are
Speaker 2: really important and which have slightly different properties. And the
Speaker 2: first one is the one that you would talk about
Speaker 2: when you're talking about sound waves most of the time
Speaker 2: from my voice to your ears. Those are traveling waves,
Speaker 2: traveling meaning, as you would guess, they're moving in a
Speaker 2: certain direction at a certain speed. And traveling waves include sound,
Speaker 2: they include ocean waves, they include the seismic waves which
Speaker 2: across the earth. They include light waves which cross the universe,
Speaker 2: and they include the things we call particles and when
Speaker 2: they're moving around. And the other type of wave that
Speaker 2: we encounter is standing waves and standing waves have crests
Speaker 2: and troughs that don't go anywhere. They just sort of
Speaker 2: vibrate in place. So a classic example would be the
Speaker 2: way in which a guitar string or a violin string
Speaker 2: vibrates pluck it. It goes up and down and up
Speaker 2: and down and up and down. There's a crest where
Speaker 2: it bends upward, and then a moment later it's a
Speaker 2: trough where it bends downward, and it goes up and
Speaker 2: down and up and down and up and down. Or
Speaker 2: maybe the air vibrating in an organ pipe. When you
Speaker 2: make the organ pipe sound, what you're doing is you're
Speaker 2: making the air inside ripple back and forth where it's
Speaker 2: more dense in one place and then less dense, and
Speaker 2: it goes back and forth and back and forth in
Speaker 2: a regular repeating fashion. But it's not actually moving outside
Speaker 2: the organ pipe. It's staying in the organ. OK. So
Speaker 2: we have these two different types of waves, traveling waves
Speaker 2: which move around, standing waves which they put and in
Speaker 2: the case of traveling waves, as I described, it's not
Speaker 2: a single wave crest, it's a whole set of them.
Speaker 2: With standing waves, it can be any number of crests,
Speaker 2: including just one. So it's still not a wave at
Speaker 2: the beach because the wave of the beach is moving.
Speaker 2: But it can be as simple as a wave at
Speaker 2: the beach in the case of a guitar string, for example.
Speaker 2: So we have these distinctions, which we're gonna have to
Speaker 2: keep track of for a minute, between traveling waves and
Speaker 2: standing waves. And what I want to emphasize is how
Speaker 2: important both types of waves are in music. You can't
Speaker 2: have music without both of them. And the reason is
Speaker 2: that what you do when you play the guitar, or
Speaker 2: play a piano or play an organ is you're creating
Speaker 2: a standing wave somewhere on the instrument. You're making a
Speaker 2: wave in a part of the instrument that doesn't have
Speaker 2: to move anywhere. It's staying on the instrument. The instrument
Speaker 2: is not moving. There's a piece of it that's vibrating
Speaker 2: back and forth, but it's vibrating in place.
Speaker 1: So the guitar string has a standing wave on it exactly.
Speaker 2: But that standing wave then creates traveling waves in the air,
Speaker 2: and those sound waves then move outward a wave from
Speaker 2: the instrument and eventually reach the ears of listeners. So
Speaker 2: you need both of them. You need something to happen
Speaker 2: on the instrument, and then you need that whatever it
Speaker 2: is to create waves that can go somewhere and be heard.
Speaker 2: And this brings up the most important distinction between these
Speaker 2: two types of waves for the purposes of particle physics,
Speaker 2: aside from the fact that one of them goes somewhere
Speaker 2: the other doesn't, which is that traveling waves can vibrate
Speaker 2: at any frequency you like, standing waves cannot. So what
Speaker 2: do I mean by that, Well, when you pluck a
Speaker 2: guitar string, assuming you're not putting your hands on it anywhere,
Speaker 2: just you just take the guitar string as it is
Speaker 2: and you pluck it. Where you take a violin and
Speaker 2: string and you pluck it, or you take a string
Speaker 2: on a piano and you hammer it, you will get
Speaker 2: one tone and it's the same tone every time. And
Speaker 2: so a musical instrument like a piano or like a
Speaker 2: guitar piano is a better example because with guitars, we
Speaker 2: put our hands on the instrument shortened the strings of
Speaker 2: it gets complicated, and a piano, we just hit the strings.
Speaker 2: We only get the notes we get. We can't get
Speaker 2: notes in between, because each string gives you a particular note,
Speaker 2: and so you know there are eighty eight notes on
Speaker 2: a piano keyboard, and we have eighty eight sets of strings,
Speaker 2: one for each.
Speaker 1: Note, and each one is a different length, etc. And
Speaker 1: that's what gives them the different.
Speaker 2: Notes, different length and tension. But yes, each one has
Speaker 2: a particular frequency associated with it, and the reason for
Speaker 2: this is a phenomenon known as resonance. It's the same
Speaker 2: reason that when we strike a pendulum or make a
Speaker 2: pendulum swing back and forth, as in the old pendulum
Speaker 2: clocks of previous generations, they vibrate with a predictable frequency.
Speaker 2: And this predictability and this single mindedness, this resonance phenomenon,
Speaker 2: is what allows us to make musical instruments of most types,
Speaker 2: because most musical instruments, the human voice being an exception,
Speaker 2: are not designed to make all possible notes. They're designed
Speaker 2: to make some set of them. But fortunately this is
Speaker 2: not true of traveling waves, which can have any frequency.
Speaker 2: And if you think about it, that's essential in music.
Speaker 2: Suppose that air and its waves could only carry specific frequencies, well,
Speaker 2: then you'd have to match your instrument to the air
Speaker 2: or the sound just wouldn't go anywhere. Whereas in fact,
Speaker 2: musical instruments of any frequency, or if you sing a note,
Speaker 2: no matter what note you see, it will always travel
Speaker 2: through the air because traveling waves are free to go out,
Speaker 2: they're flexible. So that's a key distinction that standing waves
Speaker 2: have to do with resonance and traveling waves have to
Speaker 2: do with non resonant phenomena and can have any frequency
Speaker 2: they like. OK, this is as I said, It's key
Speaker 2: for music, but it's also key for the.
Speaker 1: Universe connected to us. For the universe, how do this
Speaker 1: concept of standing waves and traveling waves help us understand
Speaker 1: what we're made out of and how everything works.
Speaker 2: There's certain things about light and light waves, which are
Speaker 2: essential features of all the waves of the universe, but
Speaker 2: there's also a thing they don't have. Light waves are
Speaker 2: always traveling waves, or precisely, lightwaves in empty space are
Speaker 2: always traveling waves. You can do things in materials to
Speaker 2: make them do other things, but that's not really critical.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to focus our attention on what happens in
Speaker 2: empty space, and lightwaves can cross empty space just fine,
Speaker 2: no matter what their frequency. Radio waves, microwaves, gamma rays,
Speaker 2: X rays, and visible light. They all cross the universe
Speaker 2: at the speed of light, and they have no problem
Speaker 2: with that, and they can have any frequency you like,
Speaker 2: all the colors that we can see, and then all
Speaker 2: the other frequencies that our eyes cannot detect, but our
Speaker 2: scientific instruments can. So light waves are of a certain sort,
Speaker 2: and there are a couple of other types of waves
Speaker 2: that are part of the cosmos. Gravitational waves are another
Speaker 2: example that have this property. They're only traveling lives. But
Speaker 2: the waves that we are made from that ultimately we
Speaker 2: call electrons or the quarks out of which protons and
Speaker 2: neutrons are made. These waves can both travel and stand,
Speaker 2: and that's connected with the fact that the particles that
Speaker 2: we call electrons can move and they can also stop,
Speaker 2: whereas the particles that are associated with light, which we
Speaker 2: call photons, they cannot stop in empty space. They always
Speaker 2: are traveling.
Speaker 1: So we talk about this on the podcast sometimes and
Speaker 1: we say that particles can have energy of motion, the
Speaker 1: kinetic energy they're moving through the universe, but they can
Speaker 1: also have energy in their mass. Right so electron just
Speaker 1: sitting there has energy inside of it. It's equals mc squared,
Speaker 1: but that photons only have energy of motion.
Speaker 2: For example, right now, we have to be careful about
Speaker 2: language again because the word mass is also ambiguous. We
Speaker 2: are specifically talking about what scientists referred to as rest mass,
Speaker 2: which is the mass that's intrinsic to an object. You
Speaker 2: will also hear people say that mass increases with speed.
Speaker 2: They are talking about a different type.
Speaker 1: Of mass, right, And we had a whole podcast episode
Speaker 1: about relativistic mass and why it's actually just to stand
Speaker 1: in for energy, and so people should go dig into
Speaker 1: that if they're curious. But here we're talking about mass
Speaker 1: as being the energy of an object at rest.
Speaker 2: That's right, And so photons don't have any and effectively
Speaker 2: that's why they can never stop. But electrons and quarks
Speaker 2: and most of the different types of particles that we
Speaker 2: know about so far in the universe, most of them
Speaker 2: do indeed have the ability to be at re and
Speaker 2: they have a certain amount of energy even when they're
Speaker 2: at rest, and that energy, via equals mc squared, translates
Speaker 2: into what we call their mass, which is the difficulty
Speaker 2: for anyone to make them go from at rest to
Speaker 2: moving at a certain speed. It's a form of stubbornness.
Speaker 2: If a rock has mass, it's the statement that you're
Speaker 2: going to have to make an effort if you want
Speaker 2: to throw it across the room.
Speaker 1: I hear you trying to avoid using the word inertia.
Speaker 1: You're explaining all the same concepts where you're not using
Speaker 1: that word.
Speaker 2: Why is that, Well, inertia has, like most words in English,
Speaker 2: has a couple of different meanings. Right, Inertia is certainly
Speaker 2: a notion of the difficulty of making something stop in English, Right,
Speaker 2: if something has inertia, you mean that I'm not going
Speaker 2: to be able to change its direction or slow it
Speaker 2: down very much. It's going to continue doing what it's
Speaker 2: doing via inertia. But what scientists mean by inertia is
Speaker 2: subtly different from that. It's not exactly the same. So
Speaker 2: it's another word which requires a discussion. And the unnecessary
Speaker 2: discussions are ones that I don't I don't avoid because
Speaker 2: they're not worth having. But we only have so much time,
Speaker 2: and there's only so many pages in a book. We
Speaker 2: have to pick our battles carefully, so I decided not
Speaker 2: to pick that one.
Speaker 1: All right. I have a bunch more questions for Matt
Speaker 1: about how the universe works and how we can really
Speaker 1: understand the Higgs field correctly. But first, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. Okay, we're back and we're talking to Professor
Speaker 1: Matt Stressler, author of the new book Waves in an
Speaker 1: Impossible See, who wants us to really understand how the
Speaker 1: universe is all made of waves and how that's crucial
Speaker 1: to understanding how particle physics and the Higgs Boson works.
Speaker 1: All right, so now you've described the universe to us
Speaker 1: in terms of waves, and you're saying that particles that
Speaker 1: have mass are little standing waves, and particles in motion
Speaker 1: are traveling waves. And this is kind of re utionary
Speaker 1: way to think about the universe, but it's also something
Speaker 1: we hear about sometimes, like particles are ripples and quantum fields,
Speaker 1: they're not actually little dots of stuff. And so I
Speaker 1: went out there and I asked our listeners to give
Speaker 1: us their sort of mental image of these things, because
Speaker 1: I wanted us to be able to calibrate this conversation,
Speaker 1: and also I was curious your reaction to some of
Speaker 1: these thoughts. So I asked our listeners to give us
Speaker 1: their mental picture of an electron, and then I also
Speaker 1: asked them to give us their mental picture of a
Speaker 1: ripple in a quantum field, which was a little bit
Speaker 1: of a trick question because you know, we think of
Speaker 1: an electron as a ripple in a quantum field. I
Speaker 1: was curious if listeners had the same mental picture for
Speaker 1: these two or not. So here's what listeners had to
Speaker 1: say for the mental picture of an electron, and those
Speaker 1: of you out there listening, pause for a moment and think,
Speaker 1: what is your mental picture of an electron.
Speaker 3: My mental image of an electron is probably still from
Speaker 3: back in my Navy days when I learned electronics, a
Speaker 3: group of a small little marbles surrounded by a one
Speaker 3: or more spinning marbles in an orbit around the center,
Speaker 3: looking more like a nuclear power plant logo or something.
Speaker 4: I see an electron as kind of like a ripple,
Speaker 4: almost like in space itself, in a certain way that
Speaker 4: you can squeeze closer together in anyone direction, so you
Speaker 4: can look at it closer and closer in anyone direction,
Speaker 4: but as you squeeze it, it gets bigger in the
Speaker 4: other directions, keeping you from like localizing it. I used
Speaker 4: to think of it as a particle, but that didn't
Speaker 4: super make sense to me, because you can always localize
Speaker 4: it down smaller, so it would have no volume. So
Speaker 4: I think of it as a ripple in something though
Speaker 4: I'm not really sure what.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know, like a little fuzzy blob that's
Speaker 5: right where I see it, except it's not where I
Speaker 5: see it, because something about observing something changes it. But
Speaker 5: it's not really there anymore.
Speaker 1: And here's what people say when I asked them what
Speaker 1: they thought about a quantum field ripple.
Speaker 3: I would have to say the best way to describe
Speaker 3: for me is like looking at a piece of lasagna
Speaker 3: with ripples in at lengthwise. That's the only thing I
Speaker 3: can think of, like a.
Speaker 1: Wave in a pond, but without the vertical more of
Speaker 1: a horizontal side side.
Speaker 4: In a lot of ways, it's the same thing as
Speaker 4: a particle to me. It's really just a wave that's
Speaker 4: sort of localized in one space.
Speaker 2: When I think about a quantum field, I see the
Speaker 2: image of a three dimension of great space moving.
Speaker 6: Like a wave.
Speaker 5: It's like the geometry of existence shifts. It doesn't look
Speaker 5: like it normally does, and you can almost see through
Speaker 5: to the other side of it.
Speaker 7: Pretty much. I think as you would have a ripple
Speaker 7: in a pond if you threw a stone in so
Speaker 7: concentric series of waves heading away but getting less in magnitude,
Speaker 7: but trying to imagine that is going out in three
Speaker 7: dimensions as opposed to two.
Speaker 8: Well, actually it's a black space surrounded by a water
Speaker 8: like wave small one.
Speaker 9: That is, so if you imagine an infinite plane and
Speaker 9: then someone takes I don't know around, you know, lollipopper sucker,
Speaker 9: and this plane is somehow elastic, are made of rubber,
Speaker 9: and you push up on that plane, except that it
Speaker 9: only wants to deform locally. It doesn't stretch out evenly
Speaker 9: across the width of the plane. I sort of envision
Speaker 9: it as a large plane with like a sort of
Speaker 9: three D parabolic shape pushed up into it.
Speaker 6: I guess I kind of picture a sheet that you've
Speaker 6: been pulled taut and then shake it like a salt shaker.
Speaker 10: I picture a quantum field being kind of like a
Speaker 10: transparent sphere, and then a ripple in it would be
Speaker 10: like a little light bulb or something in the middle
Speaker 10: flicking on.
Speaker 1: So quite a variety of answers here, Matt, What do
Speaker 1: you think about these mental pictures of electrons versus quantum fields.
Speaker 1: Do any of these aligned with the way you think
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 2: I love this range of answers because I think it
Speaker 2: points out a range of fascinating challenges that both non
Speaker 2: scientists have and trying to understand what physicists are saying,
Speaker 2: and physicists have and journalists are trying to convey the
Speaker 2: stuff have in trying to come up with a language
Speaker 2: that is clear enough, and of course some of the
Speaker 2: things we've been talking about, the difficulty of understanding the
Speaker 2: word wave as scientists use it and don't use it
Speaker 2: is one of the difficulties because if your image of
Speaker 2: an electron is as a single crest in water, well
Speaker 2: that may or may not work very well. For example,
Speaker 2: if your image of a photon, a particle of light
Speaker 2: is as a single crest. If your mental image somehow
Speaker 2: takes a light wave that consists of many crests and
Speaker 2: it divides it into its individual crests, well then it's
Speaker 2: confusing because why would a photon if it's just a
Speaker 2: single crest have a frequency or a wavelength. Wavelength has
Speaker 2: to do with how far apart the crests are. You
Speaker 2: end up in puzzles that you can't pull yourself out of.
Speaker 2: And then we have the problem of the word particle.
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about it yet. So let's spend a
Speaker 2: moment on that. In English, we have all sorts of
Speaker 2: things that we would refer to as a particle, a dust, particle,
Speaker 2: it's a tiny little thing that it looks a little
Speaker 2: bit like a ball or something, you know, ball like
Speaker 2: but small, A particle of sand, it's a grain, it's
Speaker 2: a little thing. You could put it in your hand,
Speaker 2: it'll just sit there. And that is a concept of
Speaker 2: particle which is reinforced for those who do take physics
Speaker 2: in freshman year, that's the way it's talked about. For
Speaker 2: those who even go on to junior year quantum physics,
Speaker 2: that's still kind of the way it's talked about. Even
Speaker 2: though there's some wavelike things that come in when we
Speaker 2: talk about particle, we still sort of envision this thing
Speaker 2: with a position. And if you've read about quantum physics
Speaker 2: just as a layperson, and you read what Neils Bore,
Speaker 2: the great quantum physics pioneer, had to say about the electrons,
Speaker 2: he said, sometimes they're like particles, sometimes they're like waves.
Speaker 2: And what did he mean. He meant that it's an
Speaker 2: object with a position. But come nineteen forties, nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: slowly but surely, the math stopped talking about electrons that way.
Speaker 2: And the weird thing is that the language of physicists
Speaker 2: it's took much longer to change, and even the way
Speaker 2: I was taught, because first I learned junior quantum physics,
Speaker 2: in which we think of particles as things with positions
Speaker 2: and moving around. Maybe you can't specify how they move
Speaker 2: around as well as you did, but a particle is
Speaker 2: an object with a position that moves around on some path.
Speaker 2: That is not what we mean when we talk about
Speaker 2: elementary particles, not since the nineteen fifties or so, and
Speaker 2: instead we mean something much stranger and much less familiar.
Speaker 2: And so I'll come back to that, but you need
Speaker 2: to step away from the notion of particle that's in
Speaker 2: your head, and a notion which is hard to step
Speaker 2: away from because, as a number of listeners sort of
Speaker 2: referred to, there is this cartoon of an atom, which
Speaker 2: is a part of our culture. It consists of a
Speaker 2: blob at the center made of neutrons and protons, with
Speaker 2: these electrons going around in orbits outside, and the electron
Speaker 2: is drawn as a dot usually blue. Okay, it's not blue,
Speaker 2: but it's also not a ball or a dot. That's
Speaker 2: not the right way to think about it, and this
Speaker 2: is critically important if you want to understand why an
Speaker 2: electron has mass. Why does an electron that is at
Speaker 2: rest have any energy if it's just the dot, why
Speaker 2: would there be any in there? Where would it come from?
Speaker 2: You know, that's a fundamental puzzle, and understanding that electrons
Speaker 2: are waves in the nineteen fifties language of what is
Speaker 2: the math of what is known as quantum field theory
Speaker 2: is where we get our modern notion of what electrons
Speaker 2: are and what their mass consists of. And in that picture,
Speaker 2: electrons are not to be thought of as dots going
Speaker 2: around on paths. Now, quantum physics of the nineteen twenties
Speaker 2: already taught us that, but even the word particle as
Speaker 2: we use it in quantum field theory should not be
Speaker 2: thought of in that way. So let's now take a
Speaker 2: step back with that rather cryptic remark and look at
Speaker 2: what the language of quantum field theory really tells us
Speaker 2: about electrons and photons, because we should kind of do
Speaker 2: them in parallel. Remembering there's this difference that electrons can
Speaker 2: be standing waves or traveling waves, but photons are easier
Speaker 2: to think about because we know something about them in life,
Speaker 2: and our eyes absorb them. Let's kind of do them
Speaker 2: a little bit in parallel. So the real surprise about
Speaker 2: light is that it doesn't behave like we'd expect waves
Speaker 2: to behave. And yet another way, and one way to
Speaker 2: talk about that is to talk about sound. We have
Speaker 2: this naive notion which makes perfect sense that if you
Speaker 2: speak at a certain volume, you could speak at half
Speaker 2: that volume and then the sound would be quieter, or
Speaker 2: you could speak at half of that volume and then
Speaker 2: be even quieter, and half of that and be even quieter,
Speaker 2: and you could keep going, you know, sort of a
Speaker 2: you know's paradox kind of thing. Divide in half and
Speaker 2: then divide in half and find and you can just
Speaker 2: speak in a quieter and quieter voice as far down
Speaker 2: as you like. And you could have the same idea
Speaker 2: about a beam of light like a laser, like a
Speaker 2: laser pointer, that you could, you know, sort of turn
Speaker 2: it down so it's half as bright, and turn it
Speaker 2: down so it's half as bright again, and half is
Speaker 2: bright again every time, we just get a dimmer beam,
Speaker 2: and you could go down as far as you like
Speaker 2: to infinity. It's not true, and it's similar to the
Speaker 2: idea that if you were a person who'd never seen
Speaker 2: paper before, and you were given a gigantic stack of
Speaker 2: paper six feet high, you might not initially realize that, oh,
Speaker 2: this thing is actually made of a large number of
Speaker 2: sheets of paper. It's so big you don't recognize it.
Speaker 2: But of course if you took the thing apart, you
Speaker 2: would realize, oh, this stack of paper is made from
Speaker 2: a huge number of individual sheets. In a similar non
Speaker 2: obvious way, a light wave and again that's a series
Speaker 2: of crests and troughs corresponding to a laser beam, can
Speaker 2: be pulled apart into individual lit miniature waves and again
Speaker 2: wave meaning a series of crests and troughs stacked together
Speaker 2: to make something bright, but made from a huge number
Speaker 2: of things that are extremely dim. And so you can't
Speaker 2: take your bright thing and make it half as bright
Speaker 2: and half as bright and half as bright again, any
Speaker 2: more than you could take your stack of paper and
Speaker 2: divide it in half, and divide it in half, and divide
Speaker 2: and half forever, you would eventually reach individual sheets, and
Speaker 2: you couldn't go any further. Well, that's the way it
Speaker 2: is with laser light. It's not obvious, but you can
Speaker 2: break laser light up in half and again and again,
Speaker 2: and you will eventually find yourself with something indivisible in
Speaker 2: individual indivisible flashes of light, which we call photons. And
Speaker 2: it was Einstein who proposed this without really fully understanding
Speaker 2: yet how it would work. But he's responsible for this
Speaker 2: idea too. So that's our first image of what photons are.
Speaker 2: But remember, particle physicists call them particles. But you see,
Speaker 2: they're not dots. They're like laser beams, only much dimmer.
Speaker 1: Right, They're flashes. They're not dots.
Speaker 2: They are particulate in the sense of indivisible, but they
Speaker 2: are not particle like in the sense of dust boats
Speaker 2: or sand grains. They don't have that shape. That's really
Speaker 2: critically important. And what I've just told you about photons
Speaker 2: is also true of electrons. They are not dots. They
Speaker 2: are waves of minimal height, minimal brightness, you could say.
Speaker 2: All of course, we understand the word brightness for light.
Speaker 2: The word we use is intensity. In the scientific context,
Speaker 2: we would say light has a certain intensity and there's
Speaker 2: a minimum intensity that it can have, and electrons, in
Speaker 2: a sense, are waves in something with a minimum intensity.
Speaker 2: And the question now, though, is all right, But the
Speaker 2: light waves they're always traveling. With electrons, they could be
Speaker 2: traveling or they could be standing what's the difference. And
Speaker 2: as you make an electron slow down, which you could
Speaker 2: do with a battery nothing special, you can ask yourself, well,
Speaker 2: how is the electron changing shape? Does it still look
Speaker 2: like a long series of crests and troughs. And the
Speaker 2: slower it is, the more it looks like just one
Speaker 2: or two crests and troughs. And by the time you
Speaker 2: slowed it down, it really does look a lot like
Speaker 2: the ripple on a guitar string, just one crest standing still.
Speaker 2: It's still vibrating, though like a guitar string, it's going
Speaker 2: up and down. In some sense, it's diving back and forth.
Speaker 2: It's doing something that's i mean, exactly how you visualize
Speaker 2: it is a bit of a matter of taste. But
Speaker 2: what's for sure is it might be standing still, but
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean it's not doing anything.
Speaker 1: It's a standing wave, it's a vibration.
Speaker 2: It's a standing wave. So standing waves don't go anywhere,
Speaker 2: but they're still doing something. And that picture an electron,
Speaker 2: rather than being a dot, is a vibrating thing is
Speaker 2: critical to understanding what it is and how it works.
Speaker 2: And in particular, unlike a dot, which if it's moving,
Speaker 2: would have motion energy, but if it's stopped, doesn't seem
Speaker 2: dive energy at all. A vibrating thing has energy even
Speaker 2: when it's not going anywhere. Ah, that's where the E
Speaker 2: comes from. That gives us the mass the mc squared,
Speaker 2: it's the energy of the vibration, and that's generally true.
Speaker 2: That's fundamentally how particle physics works. The particles that have
Speaker 2: mass can be slowed to a stop, at which point
Speaker 2: they are standing waves. But they are not standing and
Speaker 2: doing nothing. They are standing and vibrating, and they have
Speaker 2: a certain amount of energy associated with them. So that
Speaker 2: is why the particles of nature have a variety of
Speaker 2: specific masses. They're standing waves, and remember, traveling waves can
Speaker 2: have any energy you like, but standing waves tend to
Speaker 2: have a specific energy associated with the idea of resonance.
Speaker 1: So an electron is a little vibration of the electron field,
Speaker 1: and when it's at rest, it's vibrating at the resinant
Speaker 1: frequency of the electron field, and the muon fields has
Speaker 1: its own resonant frequency, and the quark fields have their
Speaker 1: own resonant frequency, and that's what gives all these particles
Speaker 1: different masses.
Speaker 2: That's the bigger picture, right. So up to this point,
Speaker 2: I've really only explained that the electron is a resonant,
Speaker 2: vibrating thing, but I haven't told you what it's a
Speaker 2: vibration of. And that does bring us back to the
Speaker 2: question at the very beginning when I suggested that you know,
Speaker 2: we're made of waves, but I avoided the question of
Speaker 2: what we are waves in. Yeah, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe we're waves of the universe in some sense, and
Speaker 2: scientists don't know what we are waves in in some
Speaker 2: sort of deep sense, but we do know something. We
Speaker 2: understand how these waves work. And the language that we
Speaker 2: use is the language of fields, which are things that
Speaker 2: are present everywhere in the universe, the most famous being
Speaker 2: the electric field or the magnetic field, which scientists put
Speaker 2: together into the electromagnetic field that you treat them as
Speaker 2: a single unit. And waves in the electromagnetic field are
Speaker 2: what we call light. And there are again these quote particles, namely,
Speaker 2: the dimmest possible wave in the electromagnetic field is what
Speaker 2: we call a photon, a quote particle of light. So
Speaker 2: that gives us a conceptual package where Okay, there's something
Speaker 2: called the electromagnetic field that's an aspect of the universe.
Speaker 2: We don't really understand what it is, but we understand
Speaker 2: how it works. We know that it has waves, and
Speaker 2: those waves have the dimmest possible flash associated with them,
Speaker 2: the dimmest possible wave, and those waves are what we
Speaker 2: call particles. Although, as I emphasized the book, the word
Speaker 2: particle is not a very good word, and there is
Speaker 2: another word available, which once I reach that part of
Speaker 2: the book, I only use that word afterwards, which is
Speaker 2: the word wavecle And I like it because it emphasizes
Speaker 2: this thing is really wavelike and not dust particle like.
Speaker 2: But it also brings forth the notion that it's particulate.
Speaker 2: It's somehow a bit of a wave, and yet it's
Speaker 2: sufficiently unfamiliar as a term that it carries less cultural
Speaker 2: and conceptual baggage. It leaves your brain fear to understand
Speaker 2: what it might actually be. And so this little bit
Speaker 2: of a wave is a good concept, I.
Speaker 1: Think, yeah, And I'll say that reading your book it
Speaker 1: made it, at the same time easier to understand, because
Speaker 1: you invented some of your own words for clarity. It
Speaker 1: also made it more of a challenge because it was
Speaker 1: sometimes harder to connect it to existing established ideas and
Speaker 1: concepts that people might have in their heads. But I
Speaker 1: think it's beautiful as a sort of like standalone structure,
Speaker 1: Like I'm gonna start from nothing and build up a
Speaker 1: bunch of concrete ideas and piece them together for you.
Speaker 1: You follow along that road, it really does all come together.
Speaker 1: All right, We're gonna get even deeper into this, but
Speaker 1: first we're going to take a quick break. We're back
Speaker 1: and I'm talking to Professor Matt Strassler, author of Waves
Speaker 1: and an Impossible See. So bring it together for us now,
Speaker 1: because we could talk for hours, but I want to
Speaker 1: get our listeners to a place where they can understand
Speaker 1: how this wavecle picture of the universe and wavecles as
Speaker 1: like either standing waves or traveling waves or both, helps
Speaker 1: us understand the Higgs boson and then why this new
Speaker 1: understanding can be consistent with the principle of relativity.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's summarize kind of where we've which is
Speaker 2: a long way. We went from electrons being these blue
Speaker 2: dots and now suddenly they are these standing vibrations. They
Speaker 2: have energy associated with their vibration. And it's really important
Speaker 2: to understand the electron is really the vibration. It's not
Speaker 2: that an electron is vibrating. The electron is the vibration. Right.
Speaker 2: There is this thing which is a part of the universe.
Speaker 2: We don't understand it very well. We call it the
Speaker 2: electron field. It's analogous to the electromagnetic field, whose ripples
Speaker 2: are associated with photons. There is this thing we call
Speaker 2: the electron field. We understand good math for it, we
Speaker 2: don't understand what it is, but its vibrations are what
Speaker 2: we call electrons, and those electrons have a particular frequency
Speaker 2: when they are standing. There is a resonance associated with
Speaker 2: the electron field that determines how fast a stationary electron vibrates,
Speaker 2: and that in turn determines how much energy it has
Speaker 2: and therefore determines how much mass it has. This connection
Speaker 2: between resonant frequency, energy and mass, which comes out of
Speaker 2: Einstein's core ideas, is what gives us a link between
Speaker 2: resonance and mass. But now, what about this resonance, What
Speaker 2: is resonating? Well, again, what's resonating is the thing that's vibrating,
Speaker 2: the electron field itself. We don't understand what it is,
Speaker 2: but we understand what it's doing. It is vibrating in
Speaker 2: a resonant way, somewhat as a guitar string, when plucked,
Speaker 2: will vibrate at a particular resonant frequency. So when you
Speaker 2: take a guitar or piano and you play all its notes,
Speaker 2: you get various frequencies. When you take the universe and
Speaker 2: you make it vibrate in all the ways it likes
Speaker 2: to vibrate, you get the particle masses. There's a direct
Speaker 2: link between the frequencies at which the universe likes to
Speaker 2: vibrate and the masses of the elementary particles. And now
Speaker 2: that gives us a chance to guess what the Higgs
Speaker 2: field is actually doing. The Higgs field is changing the
Speaker 2: frequencies of the other field. It's like tuning a guitar.
Speaker 2: It is able to change the electron field's resonant frequency,
Speaker 2: and therefore it can change the mass of the electron. Now,
Speaker 2: a guitar player would be able to change all the
Speaker 2: frequencies independently, right if you could tune anyone's string independently
Speaker 2: of all the others. The Higgs field can't do all that.
Speaker 2: It just changes the frequencies of all of the elementary
Speaker 2: particles together, starting from zero and moving them up to
Speaker 2: where they are today.
Speaker 1: But they all get different values.
Speaker 2: They all get different values, and the key to why
Speaker 2: they get different values is related to how strongly the
Speaker 2: Higgs field interacts with a particular field. So, for example,
Speaker 2: the electron field. The electron has a relatively small mass,
Speaker 2: and that reflects the fact that the electron field interacts
Speaker 2: relatively weakly with the Higgs field, and so when the
Speaker 2: Higgs field does its thing, it doesn't change the electron
Speaker 2: frequency that much. But the top quark, which is the
Speaker 2: particle whose mass is largest among all the particles known
Speaker 2: so far, that is a vibration of the top quark field.
Speaker 2: We're really inventive with our names, right. Top quark is
Speaker 2: a vibration of the top quark field. The top quark
Speaker 2: field interacts very strongly with the Higgs field, and therefore
Speaker 2: the top quark field has a high resonant frequency, and
Speaker 2: therefore the top quark has a high mass.
Speaker 1: So the Higgs is changing how all these fields vibrate,
Speaker 1: changing their resonant frequencies, which really changes the masses of
Speaker 1: what we're calling particles or wavecles. There's no molasses or
Speaker 1: snow involved at all.
Speaker 2: That's right. In fact, if you think about it, what
Speaker 2: the Higgs field is doing is really not affecting particles directly, right.
Speaker 2: It affects the other fields, changes their properties, and then
Speaker 2: it's just a consequence of quantum physics that the waves
Speaker 2: in those fields come in these unks that we call
Speaker 2: quote particles or wavehicles. And then it's a consequence of
Speaker 2: relativity that the energy of their vibration has something to
Speaker 2: do with mass equals mc squared. The direct link between
Speaker 2: the mass of the electron and the Higgs field doesn't
Speaker 2: really exist. You have to go through these other pieces,
Speaker 2: and that is why in order to explain how the
Speaker 2: Higgs field works, I had to explain both quantum physics
Speaker 2: to some degree and relativity to some degree in the
Speaker 2: book before we could get to that. So, in a way,
Speaker 2: the book was about trying to make sure some aspects
Speaker 2: of relativity were clear, some aspects of waves were clear,
Speaker 2: some aspects of quantum physics were clear, and then bringing
Speaker 2: them all together so that we could understand what wavecles are.
Speaker 2: And at that point explaining what the Higgs field does
Speaker 2: is not so difficult. Just change the frequency of a field.
Speaker 2: Changes the frequency of a field, then it changes the
Speaker 2: way it vibrates, and that's going to change the mass
Speaker 2: of the corresponding particle. That's all. You have to first
Speaker 2: understand that electrons aren't like dust particles, and they don't
Speaker 2: get their mass through any mechanism that particles could possibly have.
Speaker 2: They have to be vibrating objects in order for that
Speaker 2: to make any sense.
Speaker 1: And photons, you're saying, are just traveling waves, which means
Speaker 1: there is no standing wave for a photon. Photons have
Speaker 1: no resonant frequency because the Higgs doesn't interact with the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be more precise, the electromagnetic field has no
Speaker 2: resonant frequency, and correspondingly, it has no standing waves in
Speaker 2: empty space, and therefore photons don't have any rest mass.
Speaker 2: And yes, one reason for this, let's say, is that
Speaker 2: the Higgs field does not directly interact with the electromagnetic field.
Speaker 2: But it's important that not only the Higgs field that
Speaker 2: we know doesn't do that, but there aren't any other
Speaker 2: Higgs like fields that get in the way either. Now,
Speaker 2: why is this? Why is it that the electromagnetic field
Speaker 2: has this property whereas the electron field doesn't. Why is
Speaker 2: it that the electromagnetic field doesn't interact with the Higgs
Speaker 2: field and its particles remain massless while the electron field does.
Speaker 2: We don't know. We don't have an understanding of the
Speaker 2: pattern of which fields the Higgs field interacts with, or
Speaker 2: more precisely, we have partial understanding. We understand why Higgs
Speaker 2: field of the sort that we have in our universe
Speaker 2: can't interact with the electromagnetic field, but we don't know
Speaker 2: why we had to have a Higgs field of that
Speaker 2: particular sort as opposed to Higgs field of some other sort.
Speaker 2: And we certainly don't know why the electron fields interaction
Speaker 2: with the Higgs field is weak while the top quarnfield's
Speaker 2: interaction with the Higgs field is strong. We don't understand
Speaker 2: that pattern at all, and not that there haven't been
Speaker 2: many attempts to understand it. I, as a theoretical physicist,
Speaker 2: have tried a few times, many others have, and we
Speaker 2: have lots of great ideas, but we have no idea
Speaker 2: which one of these ideas, if any, is correct, And
Speaker 2: we keep hoping that particle physics garments will give us
Speaker 2: some clues, and up to now Unfortunately they have not, and.
Speaker 1: It's really crucial because if the photon had even a
Speaker 1: tiny amount of mass, it wouldn't have this property that
Speaker 1: it's only a traveling wave, which would mean that you
Speaker 1: could catch up to it. You could see photons at rest.
Speaker 1: You could have like a handful of photons, the way
Speaker 1: you could have a handful of electrons, and you could
Speaker 1: have them at various velocities, which would mean that observers
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to see the speed of light always as
Speaker 1: the speed of light. It would feel like a very
Speaker 1: different universe.
Speaker 2: It certainly would feel very different because there would be
Speaker 2: situations in which light and radio waves from a single
Speaker 2: event would arrive at different times. There would be distortions
Speaker 2: of things that you see. I mean, you can sort
Speaker 2: of imagine if sound waves didn't all arrive at the
Speaker 2: same time, if the speed of sound weren't basically a constant.
Speaker 2: Just think what would happen to music. You play a
Speaker 2: piano and then the low notes arrive late and later
Speaker 2: than the I mean, it would make a mess I.
Speaker 1: Thing the cellists have to play ahead of the violinists.
Speaker 2: Speaking would be tough, right, would be a very different world,
Speaker 2: and so it is an important feature of our world.
Speaker 2: Not only that speeds of different frequencies of light would
Speaker 2: be different, but there's another consequence which in a way
Speaker 2: might be even more important depending on how much mass
Speaker 2: photons would have, which is that the range of electric
Speaker 2: and magnetic fields would not be as large. The connection
Speaker 2: is not obvious, and the reason has to do with
Speaker 2: the following that the way that the Higgs field changes
Speaker 2: the resonant frequency of another field is it makes it stiffer.
Speaker 2: It makes it more difficult for it to vibrate, but
Speaker 2: even more generally, it makes it more difficult for it
Speaker 2: to change to vary. And so when you have an
Speaker 2: electrically charged object, it can make in our universe an
Speaker 2: electric field that goes out into the stars. A planet
Speaker 2: can have a magnetic field that goes way out beyond
Speaker 2: where the planet is, and that's very important for us
Speaker 2: because the magnetic field off the Earth deflects particles from
Speaker 2: the Sun that are flung out during solar flares, and
Speaker 2: it protects us from the damage that such particles would do.
Speaker 2: But if the photon had a mass, or more precisely,
Speaker 2: if the electromagnetic field had a resonant frequency, that in turn,
Speaker 2: would mean that the electromagnetic field would have more difficulty
Speaker 2: spreading out, and magnetic fields wouldn't spread as far, and
Speaker 2: so you could end up with a situation where the
Speaker 2: magnetic field of the Earth might not reach out beyond
Speaker 2: the surface of the Earth, and then we would not
Speaker 2: be protected from these solar storms. So you know, we'd
Speaker 2: survive because evolution is that way, right, Evolution would find
Speaker 2: a way to create life that could survive all of that. Right,
Speaker 2: we wouldn't, but we are certainly dependent upon this particular
Speaker 2: feature of the universe, and so you know that's one
Speaker 2: of the many ways in which the details of particle
Speaker 2: physics affect the universe on a macro scale.
Speaker 1: Well, I think my last question for you is to
Speaker 1: try to interpret what this all means. You've painted a
Speaker 1: picture of the universe as field with waves, and in
Speaker 1: your book, near the end, you write the universe rings
Speaker 1: everywhere in everything, which I thought was very poetic. But
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder, why is this, like, Why is
Speaker 1: it that the mathematics of waves, which are very simple
Speaker 1: and beautiful, are everywhere. Why are waves all over our universe,
Speaker 1: both fundamental and emergent at so many different scales? What
Speaker 1: does that say about the universe, that waves are everywhere?
Speaker 2: Well, I think maybe that question has two parts to it.
Speaker 2: The first is why are waves everywhere? Even in the
Speaker 2: macroscopic universe? Why do we see ocean waves and seismic
Speaker 2: waves and waves and rubber And if you look closely
Speaker 2: as find waves in metal. If you strike a bell,
Speaker 2: there's waves inside. The why is that? And that turns
Speaker 2: out to be a consequence of a simple idea, which
Speaker 2: is that if I have a substance which is fairly
Speaker 2: uniform and spread out like a chunk of metal, then
Speaker 2: it is very easy to cause waves to occur. Let's
Speaker 2: take the example of just water. Maybe that's simplest. If
Speaker 2: you take a huge bucket of water or a big
Speaker 2: pond or something, why is it so easy to get
Speaker 2: ripples in it? Well, it's because it's so easy to
Speaker 2: do something to one little piece of the water. Put
Speaker 2: your hand in the water in one place, but that
Speaker 2: is then going to have an impact on the bits
Speaker 2: of the water right around it, which in turn is
Speaker 2: going to have an impact on the parts of the
Speaker 2: water right around them. You do something locally to the water,
Speaker 2: but then the water can bring that effect outward. Further
Speaker 2: and further away from where you pressed on the water
Speaker 2: or hit the water, whatever it is you did to it,
Speaker 2: And that propagation of an initial effect through this uniform
Speaker 2: material almost automatically leads to waves. The math of waves
Speaker 2: drops out of the equations, no matter what their details.
Speaker 1: So as long as you have a material where information
Speaker 1: doesn't propagate instantly, then you're going to get propagation of
Speaker 1: information and those are waves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it needs to be a uniform material because
Speaker 2: if it isn't uniform, if it's just an agglomeration of
Speaker 2: lots of different things, then as things move out, they'll
Speaker 2: move out of completely different speeds depending on exactly what
Speaker 2: they run into. But when you have a single material
Speaker 2: like water or air, the speed at which things propagate
Speaker 2: is constant or mere constant, and so as things propagate out,
Speaker 2: they do so in a nice uniform way, and that
Speaker 2: allows you to get ripples, where you get waves which
Speaker 2: are simple and remain simple as they travel. So that's true.
Speaker 2: In any material that's uniform, you almost always can get
Speaker 2: waves of a certain type. So that's why they're ubiquitous
Speaker 2: around us in ordinary materials. Now, if you think the
Speaker 2: universe is like a material, it's certainly a uniform leaving
Speaker 2: aside places where there's actually stuck. But if you go
Speaker 2: out into the deep space, you're surrounded by whatever space is.
Speaker 2: It's the same in all directions. It's the same in
Speaker 2: all places. And we know this because we can measure
Speaker 2: what the laws of nature are by looking at stars
Speaker 2: or looking at other things in space, and the stars
Speaker 2: are the same basically all across the universe. We don't
Speaker 2: see big differences, so we know the universe is remarkably uniform,
Speaker 2: and so to the extent it's a uniform material like thing,
Speaker 2: the fact that it has waves in it is no surprise.
Speaker 2: But we don't know why it's a uniform thing, and
Speaker 2: so at some level there's still plenty of why questions
Speaker 2: that are out there for which we don't know answers.
Speaker 2: That's kind of where we.
Speaker 1: Are, wonderful. Well, tell us again the title of your
Speaker 1: book and where listeners can find it if they'd like
Speaker 1: to understand even deeper all of these concepts.
Speaker 2: Well, the title I came up with, and I'm delighted
Speaker 2: that the publisher accepted it is waves in an impossible see,
Speaker 2: beautiful waves being us the stuff we're made from and
Speaker 2: the impossible see being this space we live in that's
Speaker 2: kind of like a material and kind of isn't. And
Speaker 2: the book is available at any of your independent local
Speaker 2: bookstores and of course at Amazon and Barnes and Noble
Speaker 2: and all the other monsters that are happy out there
Speaker 2: to show you the full range of books that are
Speaker 2: available in the world. But yes, it's going to be
Speaker 2: widely carried in bookstores and you should definitely check it out.
Speaker 1: Wonderful. Well, thanks again very much for coming on to
Speaker 1: talk to us about all these incredible concepts and sharing
Speaker 1: your particular view of the universe with all of us.
Speaker 11: Thank you so much, Dan, It's been really fun, all right,
Speaker 11: interesting conversation there, sort of like a new way to
Speaker 11: look at the world and to look at physics and
Speaker 11: the nature of reality. Almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hope that it gives listeners and readers of the
Speaker 1: book a new way to think about these objects that
Speaker 1: form the foundations of our whole world. That when you
Speaker 1: take your body apart and imagine that it's made out
Speaker 1: of atoms and protons and electrons, that you think about
Speaker 1: those particles a little bit differently. Maybe you replace your
Speaker 1: high school concept of an electron as a tiny little
Speaker 1: blue ball with a little ripple in that electron field,
Speaker 1: and have a better understanding for what's rippling there and
Speaker 1: why the electron has mass, and how it's all connected
Speaker 1: to the Higgs boson.
Speaker 11: Well, I was waving in and out of the interview
Speaker 11: a little bit. So then the idea is that everything
Speaker 11: is a wave. So it was wave, would you say
Speaker 11: is a better word to describe what's going on at
Speaker 11: the fundamental levels?
Speaker 1: Maths vision is that everything is a wave, a wave
Speaker 1: in these things we call quantum fields that we don't
Speaker 1: really understand. But if you dig into what it means
Speaker 1: for a quantum field to do some waving, it can
Speaker 1: give you a better understanding of what motion is, of
Speaker 1: what mass is, of what energy is, and how the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson gives those particles mass, not by filling the
Speaker 1: universe with molasses that slows things down, but by changing
Speaker 1: how those fields resonate, which really is what mass is
Speaker 1: all about. So standing wave of resonance and a quantum field.
Speaker 9: Mmm.
Speaker 11: Interesting, Well, another cool idea out there, and it may
Speaker 11: be a revolutionary way to look at the universe on
Speaker 11: this journey to figure out how everything works.
Speaker 1: That's right. Matt Straussler is not just a super smart
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist. He really does have a gift for accessible
Speaker 1: explanations of deeply important concepts using intuitive ideas. Sometimes he
Speaker 1: makes up his own words, like wavehicles because he wants
Speaker 1: to avoid the baggage of words you've already heard. But
Speaker 1: if you listen carefully and follow along, I really think
Speaker 1: it can give you a deeper understanding of quantum fields.
Speaker 11: All right, well, check out his book Waves in an
Speaker 11: Impossible Scene. We hope you enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. For more
Speaker 1: science and curiosity, come find us on social media where
Speaker 1: we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, this
Speaker 1: word instant and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and remember
Speaker 1: that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production
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