Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what does it take to be a star?
Speaker 1: I think you either have to have enormous natural talent
Speaker 1: or rich and famous parents. I bet that helps. But
Speaker 1: what about a star out there in the universe. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's easier. All you need is like a lot of gas,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of gas, like the bourbon kind, or
Speaker 1: the other kind of gas, any kind of gas that
Speaker 1: kind of make a star out of methane. I don't
Speaker 1: really know how that would smell, but I bet it
Speaker 1: would burn pretty well. How about a starman out of
Speaker 1: laughing gas? That would be pretty funny. I am more
Speaker 1: handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel.
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist and I'm no kind of star.
Speaker 1: But I bet you're a gas. I try to make
Speaker 1: people laugh. Well. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of our Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: which we try to gas you up about all the
Speaker 1: incredible things out there in the universe, the things we understand,
Speaker 1: the things we don't understand, and the things that scientists
Speaker 1: are still puzzling over, and the things that make you
Speaker 1: curious about how our universe works. We try to wrap
Speaker 1: it all up and ject some jokes and make it
Speaker 1: all understandable to you. Yeah, because there is a lot
Speaker 1: out there in the universe to be curious about, including
Speaker 1: things that may or may not exist. Those are the
Speaker 1: best things to be curious about. Like is there a
Speaker 1: tiny little teacup between here in Venus? Yes? Can you
Speaker 1: prove it? Though I have faith, Daniel in the teacup hypothesis? Well, fortunately,
Speaker 1: we have better ways of exploring the universe than just faith.
Speaker 1: We have science, and science encourages us to think creatively,
Speaker 1: but then ask ourselves questions like how do we know
Speaker 1: that's true? And how could we approve it? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the universe is full of surprises. Sometimes we think some
Speaker 1: things are impossible, even though the math says that it's possible,
Speaker 1: and then we find those things out there in the cosmos. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have surprises, both experimentally and theoretically. Sometimes we look
Speaker 1: out into the universe with a new kind of telescope
Speaker 1: and we see something totally weird than we never expected
Speaker 1: and didn't understand, like the Fermi bubbles or all sorts
Speaker 1: of other weird stuff like pulsars. And then there are
Speaker 1: theoretical surprises where we find something in the math that
Speaker 1: says this thing could exist in the universe, maybe even
Speaker 1: should exist. Let's go and see if it's real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I feel like there's no there's nothing in the
Speaker 1: universe that says that what our expectations are of it
Speaker 1: or what our experience of it is has to dictate
Speaker 1: what is actually out there. Thank God for that, right,
Speaker 1: it's nice that the universe is filled with surprises. It
Speaker 1: would be borning of the universe was just like the
Speaker 1: surface of the Earth and not much else. Well, you
Speaker 1: know that old cars that says, I hope you have
Speaker 1: an interesting life. Yes, I want to live in interesting
Speaker 1: scientific times. Actually, I want to live in times when
Speaker 1: we discover crazy things that totally upend our knowledge of
Speaker 1: the universe and our understanding of our place in it.
Speaker 1: That's the power of science. That's the joy of it,
Speaker 1: is revealing the truth and stripping away our intuition and
Speaker 1: the ideas that came about just from like living on
Speaker 1: the surface of the Earth. Well, today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about what such thing the scientists think that could
Speaker 1: be out there. At least the math says it's possible,
Speaker 1: but we don't really know if it does exist. It
Speaker 1: would be pretty wild if it does. That's right. It
Speaker 1: turns out that even though we've talked about neutron stars
Speaker 1: and magnet oars and crazy white dwarves and all sorts
Speaker 1: of other kinds of stars. We've done the biggest stars
Speaker 1: in the universe, the weirdest stars in the universe, it
Speaker 1: turns out there are even weirder, stranger kinds of stars
Speaker 1: we haven't even scratched the surface of. So is this
Speaker 1: the weirdest Star Daniel episode in our Extreme series? This
Speaker 1: is the most hypothetical list Star I see, I see,
Speaker 1: the most imaginative star, maybe the most bunkers is Star. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because each of these sort of extreme examples tells something
Speaker 1: a little bit about what matter can and cannot do. Right,
Speaker 1: they're sort of like, you know, extreme examples of where
Speaker 1: you can take physics. Yeah, these are really useful thought experiments.
Speaker 1: You say to yourself, is this possible? And if the
Speaker 1: laws of physics say that it is, then you go
Speaker 1: out there and you hunt in the universe to see
Speaker 1: if you find it. And if you find it, cool
Speaker 1: you've learned something about the universe. And if you don't
Speaker 1: find it, if you can prove that it doesn't exist
Speaker 1: somehow that it should exist in the universe, but we
Speaker 1: don't see any of it. There's a clue, there's a
Speaker 1: hint that there's something about physics you don't yet understand.
Speaker 1: And those clues are super valuable because those are the
Speaker 1: ones that lead us down the path to revealing something
Speaker 1: true about the universe we didn't know before. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's the whole point of signs, to find out things
Speaker 1: we didn't know before. What It's not just to make
Speaker 1: us feel good or make us laugh sometimes, or do
Speaker 1: you have interesting careers. Science makes me feel good. You know.
Speaker 1: I had a tasty breakfast this morning because of science.
Speaker 1: I slept in a warmhouse last night because of science.
Speaker 1: I'm alive because of science. So, yes, science makes me
Speaker 1: feel good. I think you mean engineering, Daniel. I don't
Speaker 1: think a scientists, you know, fix your A C system.
Speaker 1: This scientist certainly didn't fix my own AC system. That's true. Well,
Speaker 1: today on the podcast will be asking the question what
Speaker 1: is a Boson star now, Daniel? That doesn't just refer
Speaker 1: to the press the button when they discovered the Higgs Boson, right,
Speaker 1: That would be me. Yes, I'm a star in the
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. Uh no, I was Did you press the button?
Speaker 1: I pressed lots of buttons, actually, yes, because I spent
Speaker 1: time in the control room at the large Hadron Collider,
Speaker 1: which looks a lot like you know, the way they
Speaker 1: depict the control room at NASA where they're launching the
Speaker 1: shuttle or whatever. It's a bunch of monitors and people
Speaker 1: at desk looking at screens, and you got buttons in
Speaker 1: front of you, and so yeah, sometimes you actually get
Speaker 1: to press a button. Yeah, did you press any buttons?
Speaker 1: Was your role there monitoring the collisions or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you monitor collisions, You make sure the data that's coming
Speaker 1: in looks reasonable, and then in very rare circumstances, there
Speaker 1: might be an emergency. I was actually on shift the
Speaker 1: large hingge On collider when they first turned it on,
Speaker 1: very early on. It was two thousand eight, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly, when we had that accident when there was
Speaker 1: a spot that was welded poorly and there was an
Speaker 1: arc and liquid helium was ejected and the whole thing broke,
Speaker 1: and this this big red button in the control room
Speaker 1: that you have to hit in the case of an emergency.
Speaker 1: And I had said at that desk for weeks looking
Speaker 1: at that button, wanting to press that button, because you know,
Speaker 1: buttons they have to be pressed right, And so I
Speaker 1: actually got to press that button. Wow. Now it wasn't
Speaker 1: just a coincidence that things went wrong when you weren't
Speaker 1: on the shift. It was a hud of coincidence that
Speaker 1: things went wrong when I was on shift. Absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: to do with me at all. It's not like I
Speaker 1: knocked coffee onto a critical control panel or something. Right
Speaker 1: with t But yeah, we're asking the question what is
Speaker 1: a Boson star? And I have to say, I've never
Speaker 1: heard of this concept a boson star. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: heard of the Higgs boson, and I think I know
Speaker 1: what a boson is. It's a kind of particle. But also,
Speaker 1: but put together with the word star, it's a whole
Speaker 1: new thing. Yeah. It's fun to just like take two
Speaker 1: science words and stick them together and say, hey, is
Speaker 1: this a thing in the universe. I wonder if that's
Speaker 1: how they came up with this idea. Let's come up
Speaker 1: with a few quantum black hole that is a thing?
Speaker 1: Man there, remote dynamic firm me on teleporting hamsters, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting concept in physics. Is it kind
Speaker 1: of like a new thing, or is it an old
Speaker 1: thing that people are rediscovering? What's the context here? It's
Speaker 1: not that old an idea. It's something people have been
Speaker 1: thinking about in the last few decades, but it's received
Speaker 1: a little bit of attention recently because one of the
Speaker 1: ingredients you need to make it a particularly weird kind
Speaker 1: of Boson has sort of seen a resurgence of interest
Speaker 1: as a candidate for what might explain the dark matter.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's see if people on the internet
Speaker 1: know what it is. As usual, Daniel went out there
Speaker 1: and as well, if they knew what a Boson star is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so my deepest gratitude as usual for people who
Speaker 1: are willing to volunteer to speculate without any preparation on
Speaker 1: tough physics concepts even Jorge hasn't heard about. So if
Speaker 1: you would like to participate in the future, please write
Speaker 1: to me. Two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, well here's what people have to say, no idea,
Speaker 1: the clowns of the star. Do you know there's bosons
Speaker 1: and fermions. Those are two types of particle. I think
Speaker 1: one adds up to a different charge and the other.
Speaker 1: So maybe a boson star is just a start, just
Speaker 1: completely made out of bosons. That's my best guess. I
Speaker 1: thought we are done with boson. We find the piggs
Speaker 1: boson then and that's it. Well and on, No, I
Speaker 1: don't boson stars. No, sorry, Well I've never heard of them.
Speaker 1: But my assumption would be that if you can have
Speaker 1: a star that's only made of neutrons, then you'd be
Speaker 1: looking at a star that's only made of bosons. However,
Speaker 1: what that would look like or how it behaves has
Speaker 1: completely lost all me. Boson stars are stars to give
Speaker 1: off a lot of bosons, um, and I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to back up a few podcasts to remember what bosons are.
Speaker 1: All right, A lot of good guesses. I like the
Speaker 1: one about clowns, Like I wonder how many boson stars
Speaker 1: can you fit into a small car? A lot? Actually
Speaker 1: a lot. You can seek me a lot of them
Speaker 1: into there because they're bosons. No. I love hearing these
Speaker 1: folks try to work it out on the fly. That's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing about this. It's not like I got
Speaker 1: your question. I like hearing people think about it and
Speaker 1: apply their knowledge of physics and try to put these
Speaker 1: things together and figure it out, you know, in fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: So thanks to everybody for your great ideas. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of good ideas here. Some people
Speaker 1: are saying they're stars that give off a lot of bosons,
Speaker 1: and some people may be saying, we're thinking that there
Speaker 1: are stars made out of bosons. Could it be a
Speaker 1: star that eats bosons? Yeah, and there's one person who
Speaker 1: suggested that maybe neutron stars are made out of bosons,
Speaker 1: which is a cool idea. Neutron stars are super awesome,
Speaker 1: but neutrons are not actually bosons. Even though you can
Speaker 1: have objects we call stars made out of only neutrons,
Speaker 1: that doesn't qualify as a boson star, but good try.
Speaker 1: All right, well let's get into it, Daniel, that us
Speaker 1: three it. What is a boson star? I guess maybe
Speaker 1: start with the word boson? What does that mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So there are two kinds of particles out there in
Speaker 1: the universe that we've discovered. There are fermions and there
Speaker 1: are bosons. And these are not just like cool names
Speaker 1: for things. These actually have meetings, and the meetings are
Speaker 1: important because fermions and bosons are very very different kinds
Speaker 1: of particles. What's the difference. Well, fermions tend to be
Speaker 1: the kind of particles that make up matter, and bosons
Speaker 1: tend to be the kind of particles that transmit forces. So,
Speaker 1: for example, electrons are fermions, Quarks are fermions. Even when
Speaker 1: you put three quirks together to make a proton or
Speaker 1: a neutron, you still get a fermion. And so all
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're made out of, me and you,
Speaker 1: and amsters and most of the stars in the universe
Speaker 1: are made out of fermions. Right, So all the matter
Speaker 1: in the universe are made out of fermions. Were fermion
Speaker 1: fellas we are, yes, and all the other kind of
Speaker 1: stuff like light beams and higgs bosons and the weak
Speaker 1: nuclear force and the strong force. These use particles to
Speaker 1: communicate between fermions. Like what happens when an electron repels
Speaker 1: another electron is the exchange a photon. That photon is
Speaker 1: a boson. So all the particles that represent how matter
Speaker 1: particles interact, those are force particles. Those are the boson particles.
Speaker 1: So fermion particles are matter particles, and boson particles are
Speaker 1: the force particles. Right, So is that the criteria like
Speaker 1: what they do. Isn't it technically like from a theory
Speaker 1: point of view that they're all just kind of the same.
Speaker 1: They're all just like excitations in a quantum field. They
Speaker 1: are all excitations of quantum fields. But those fields are different,
Speaker 1: and it's not just about what they do, like what
Speaker 1: role they serve. They actually have a fundamentally different mathematical
Speaker 1: structure because all the firm On particles, which are excitations
Speaker 1: of fer me On fields, have a different quantum spin
Speaker 1: than all the Boson particles, which are excitations of the
Speaker 1: Boson field. Remember we talked about quantum spin once in
Speaker 1: an episode. It's not like that the particles are actually spinning.
Speaker 1: It's just that they have this property which is really
Speaker 1: closely related to angular momentum, and so we call it
Speaker 1: quantum spin. But it's a quantum property which means you
Speaker 1: can only have a couple of values of it. So,
Speaker 1: for example, an electron has one half spin can either
Speaker 1: spin one half up or spin one half down. So
Speaker 1: for me, on all have these half integer spins half
Speaker 1: three halves, five halves, whatever. Bosons all have integer spins
Speaker 1: zero one or two. So if you can go sort
Speaker 1: of halfway up or halfway down, your fermion, and if
Speaker 1: you are on the integer number zero, one or two,
Speaker 1: then you're a boson. So they have different sort of
Speaker 1: mathematical structures, and that tells us about like the number
Speaker 1: of different configurations the field can be in. And so
Speaker 1: fermions and bosons really are fundamentally different kinds of particles.
Speaker 1: It's like they're part of a different kind of feel altogether, yes,
Speaker 1: which probably lets them do different things, yes, exactly. And
Speaker 1: there's a very important property that makes fermions and bosons different. Now,
Speaker 1: fermions they can't hang out in the same state, like
Speaker 1: you can't have two electrons hanging out in the same
Speaker 1: quantum state. You can't have them have the same spin
Speaker 1: and the same location and the same energy. They just
Speaker 1: don't get along. They exclude each other. And that's why,
Speaker 1: for example, when you have a complicated atom with eight
Speaker 1: electrons around it, for example, they're not all on the
Speaker 1: lowest energy state. They stack up on top of each
Speaker 1: other like a game of Connect four. So fermions cannot
Speaker 1: hang out in the same quantum state, but bosons can.
Speaker 1: It's the same for quarts, it's the same for quarks. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: for any kind of fermion. They will not hang on
Speaker 1: the same state like this one. In that state, it's done,
Speaker 1: it's filled in, it's checked off, and the next one
Speaker 1: that comes in has to settle in at some other state,
Speaker 1: either higher energy or a different spin or something. But
Speaker 1: only they're really close together or in the same exact spot.
Speaker 1: Location is part of your quantum state, And so if
Speaker 1: you're like isolated in a box, like in a quantum dot,
Speaker 1: or in a hydrogen atom or something, then the energy
Speaker 1: level or the spin or something else has to distinguish
Speaker 1: you from the other electrons. If you're in a different location,
Speaker 1: that counts as having a different quantum state. But bosons
Speaker 1: can overlap. Bosons can totally overlap. You can have two
Speaker 1: bosons in exactly the same quantum state. And you know,
Speaker 1: for example, take two flashlights and shine them at each other.
Speaker 1: The phote toons don't like bounce off each other. You
Speaker 1: can't fill up a room with like light from flashlights
Speaker 1: and have it be like stuffed full. But fermions repel
Speaker 1: each other, you know, That's why matter has volume, that's
Speaker 1: why things fill up. So bosons you can have as
Speaker 1: many of them as you like in the same state
Speaker 1: and We've done really interesting experiments that we talked about
Speaker 1: the podcast, like the bosons dyin condensate, which is an
Speaker 1: extreme example of this, when you get a huge number
Speaker 1: of bosons all together in the same quantum state. All right,
Speaker 1: so then a boson star and then is a star
Speaker 1: made out of bosons or that gives off the bosons? Yeah,
Speaker 1: a boson star is a star made out of boson.
Speaker 1: The Sun, for example, is made out of fermions. It's
Speaker 1: made out of quarks and electrons all mixed up in
Speaker 1: different configurations, but they're all fermions, And a Boson star
Speaker 1: would be a star made out of just boson, like
Speaker 1: a star made out of light, pure light. Yes, so
Speaker 1: not every boson is capable of making a Boson star,
Speaker 1: but yeah, photons are an example of bosons. They're like
Speaker 1: the most miss kind of boson. But think about sort
Speaker 1: of how hard it is to make a star. You
Speaker 1: can't just make a star out of anything. We talked
Speaker 1: on the podcast about the conditions for making a star.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite tricky, right, even like stars made out
Speaker 1: of fermions. You have to have enough mass so that
Speaker 1: there's gravity that pulls it together and you make like
Speaker 1: an object not just like a big fluffy cloud out
Speaker 1: there in the universe. Has to be gravity pulling it together,
Speaker 1: but there also has to be something else working in
Speaker 1: the other direction. So gravity doesn't like run away and
Speaker 1: give you a black hole. In most stars, that's fusion.
Speaker 1: Gravity comes together and it makes the core of the
Speaker 1: star really really hot, and so you get light and
Speaker 1: energy flying out and that pushes against gravity. So the
Speaker 1: key thing about making a star is this balance. You
Speaker 1: need something pulling in gravity and you need something pushing
Speaker 1: out to prevent the collapse. And this is not like
Speaker 1: an eternally stable thing, so it's not that easy to
Speaker 1: make it happen. Though in most stars you have fusion
Speaker 1: and gravity imbalance, and other stars that aren't burning like
Speaker 1: white dwarf, you know, other weirder stuff happening. But then
Speaker 1: the question about boson stars is like, what can you
Speaker 1: get to balance gravity to make a boson star? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the tricky part is that you say that
Speaker 1: bosons are the force particles that transmit forces. So are
Speaker 1: you talking about like a the idea that you can
Speaker 1: make a star out of force particles? Like what does
Speaker 1: that even mean? Daniel, Like a star that where you
Speaker 1: bring things that are pure force. Yeah, we'll remember that
Speaker 1: forces aren't transmitted by particles. But those particles can also
Speaker 1: be real. You know, photons are what electrons used to
Speaker 1: talk to each other. But photons can also just exist, right.
Speaker 1: They can fly across the universe, they can be part
Speaker 1: of a laser beam, and they're created all the time.
Speaker 1: And so these particles, you know, that's the role they
Speaker 1: play in our matter and sort of the story we
Speaker 1: tell about nature, but they can also just exist. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can get a huge pile of bosons all together
Speaker 1: and then ask questions like what happens to them? Do
Speaker 1: they form interesting structures? Right? That's the physics game we play.
Speaker 1: We think what happens when you've got a huge pile
Speaker 1: of how did yougen together? Oh? Look it does this
Speaker 1: cool thing. It makes a star. And now people are
Speaker 1: playing that game, like what happens if you've got a
Speaker 1: huge number of bosons together? Could you make a star
Speaker 1: at them? What would they do? Many? Could you fit
Speaker 1: into a small car? Big fundamental questions? All right, well
Speaker 1: let's get into how you might actually make a boson
Speaker 1: star and if they exist, what would they be like?
Speaker 1: But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're
Speaker 1: talking about boson stars, a hypothetical, possible, maybe theoretically plausible
Speaker 1: kind of star, but that maybe we haven't seen yet
Speaker 1: out there in the universe. We talked about how there
Speaker 1: are stars that might be made out of bosons. I
Speaker 1: guess my first question is, how would you even like
Speaker 1: get a bunch of bosons together? Like, do they have mass?
Speaker 1: Would gravity bring them together? Or do you need to
Speaker 1: capture them somehow or you know, lure them with big
Speaker 1: shoes and red noses? How do we bring them together
Speaker 1: really comically sized cookies? I think, and that just pulled
Speaker 1: them all in. No, that's a fair question. You know.
Speaker 1: You can ask two different questions. One is if I
Speaker 1: had a huge pile of bosons, would they form a star?
Speaker 1: And the other question is could I just get or
Speaker 1: should I expect to see in the universe a huge
Speaker 1: pile of bosons? Right, it's possible that this thing could
Speaker 1: potentially exist if you could assemble the ingredients, but that
Speaker 1: it just doesn't happen in our universe because it's not
Speaker 1: a consequence of the Big Bang in any way. So
Speaker 1: those are two totally interesting but separate questions. Oh, I see.
Speaker 1: One is like can it exist? And the other one
Speaker 1: is it doesn't exist? Yeah, exactly. And you know, we
Speaker 1: talked in this podcast about the infinity of the universe
Speaker 1: and everything that can happen will happen, and that's mostly true.
Speaker 1: But there's an important coffee out that you had need
Speaker 1: to have the right initial conditions. You know, it might
Speaker 1: be that even in an infinite universe, there's no way
Speaker 1: to start from a hot, dense state that we began
Speaker 1: from and end up with like a huge pile of
Speaker 1: bosons all in the same place that then, you know,
Speaker 1: do whatever they do, maybe make a star. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's play the first game. Then what if you suddenly
Speaker 1: have a bunch of bosons all in the same place
Speaker 1: or the same vicidity or like volume. What are we
Speaker 1: talking about? Yeah, that's exactly what you need to do.
Speaker 1: And you need to think about the two ingredients to
Speaker 1: make a star. One is gravity and the others outward pressure.
Speaker 1: So to have gravity, you need to have these objects
Speaker 1: having some appreciable mass, Right, you need to have gravity
Speaker 1: be able to work on these things. Now, they're folks
Speaker 1: out there probably thinking whole lot of second. I know,
Speaker 1: photons don't have mass, but they are affected by gravity
Speaker 1: because they can't, for example, escape black holes. And that's true.
Speaker 1: And we talked once on the podcast about how you
Speaker 1: could like focus enough photons together to maybe make a
Speaker 1: black hole, but to make a stable Boson star, you'd
Speaker 1: actually need to have a particle with at least little
Speaker 1: bit of mass, so gravity has like a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a handle to pull it together, right. Well,
Speaker 1: But it isn't like mass the same thing as energy, Like,
Speaker 1: if I have a lot of photons in one place,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that warp the space around it just like it
Speaker 1: as if it had a lot of mass. Yeah, absolutely would.
Speaker 1: And you could, for example, make a black hole if
Speaker 1: you concentrated photons together enough. But a star is a
Speaker 1: little bit different. It's actually harder to make than a
Speaker 1: black hole. Black hole is just like a bunch of
Speaker 1: energy in a super tiny space. A star is a balance, right,
Speaker 1: It has to be a balance to have just the
Speaker 1: right amount of gravity and just the right amount of
Speaker 1: outward pressure. So these two things match, And the calculations
Speaker 1: just don't suggest that photons could make a Boson star.
Speaker 1: They don't have enough mass to like pull together in
Speaker 1: the right density to get the outward pressure you need.
Speaker 1: I see. I think what you're saying is that for
Speaker 1: something to be called the star, I mean, it can't
Speaker 1: be a black hole basically, and it can't be an
Speaker 1: explosion either. It has to like shine and shine consistently.
Speaker 1: And you're saying thing that you just can't do that
Speaker 1: with bosons, like they wouldn't stick together if they don't
Speaker 1: have mass. You can't do that with photons. There are
Speaker 1: other bosons out there that might be candidates for making
Speaker 1: a boson star, but we don't think that photons can
Speaker 1: do all right, So which bosons could do it? Well,
Speaker 1: let's go through the kinds of bosons there are in
Speaker 1: the universe. What's on the menu next up our gluons.
Speaker 1: But gluons also have no mass. We've got to scratch
Speaker 1: them off. We also need a particle that's stable. We
Speaker 1: don't want our boson start to decay instantaneously into other
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff, and so that, for example, removes Higgs bosons.
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons exist in the universe, but very very briefly,
Speaker 1: they very rapidly decay into pairs of fermions, like a
Speaker 1: Higgs will decay into two bottom corks or into two
Speaker 1: muans or something like that. So we need a stable particle.
Speaker 1: So we don't think there are any Higgs stars out there,
Speaker 1: which is too bad because that would be kind of awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty good name recognition right there. And so that removes
Speaker 1: the possibility of a Hig star and also a W
Speaker 1: star or a Z star. WS and zs are the
Speaker 1: bosons associated with the weak nuclear force, and they're also
Speaker 1: very massive and they decay very quickly. Z s decay
Speaker 1: into a pair of corks. Ws decay also into a
Speaker 1: pair of corks or sometimes into leftons, and so you
Speaker 1: just can't make them out of those particles because they
Speaker 1: would just decay into a Meon star. Well, I'm sad
Speaker 1: that we can't have gluon stars, but we have glue balls. Actually,
Speaker 1: glue balls are a stable configuration of just gluons, a
Speaker 1: particle made out of just gluons, which is pretty but
Speaker 1: you can't have a gluon star unfortunately. Yeah. Also that's
Speaker 1: a sticky subject. So what does that leave us, which particle,
Speaker 1: which boson particle could we used to make a Boson star. Well,
Speaker 1: that basically crosses off all the bosons that we know exists.
Speaker 1: So all right, we're done, but we're not done because
Speaker 1: there are always more particles on the list, this long,
Speaker 1: infinite list of hypothetic goal particles, particles that we think
Speaker 1: might exist and if they did, could do other weird
Speaker 1: things that the particles were familiar with don't do. And
Speaker 1: near the top of that list is a particle which
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot of attention recently. Theoretically, it's called
Speaker 1: the axion. Yeah, we had an episode about that. Maybe
Speaker 1: remind folks what an axon is, And by folks I
Speaker 1: mean including myself. Well, an axon is named after a
Speaker 1: detergent because it was thought up by Frank Wilcheck and
Speaker 1: he was doing a grocery shopping while he was thinking
Speaker 1: about the name, and there's a detergent called axon, and
Speaker 1: he thought, oh, that's a cool name. So the axon
Speaker 1: particle is one that was thought up to sort of
Speaker 1: explain a theoretical puzzle in the strong force. People didn't
Speaker 1: really understand why the strong force was different from the
Speaker 1: weak force in a subtle way, and so they came
Speaker 1: up with this axion to explain it. But the reason
Speaker 1: that axons are interesting recently is that people think they're
Speaker 1: a good candidate for what might be the dark matter particle.
Speaker 1: Remember that while we no dark matter is a thing,
Speaker 1: we know it's out there. We know it's providing gravity.
Speaker 1: Most of the gravity in the universe actually comes from
Speaker 1: dark matter. We still don't know what it's made out of.
Speaker 1: It could be made out of one particle, or many particles,
Speaker 1: or some other weird kind of stuff. But we have
Speaker 1: this sort of list of candidates. One of the particles
Speaker 1: on that list is a firmion. It's called the WHIMP,
Speaker 1: the weekly interacting massive particle, and it's sort of the
Speaker 1: leading candidate for a long time, but nobody's founded. We
Speaker 1: have all these dedicated experiments looking for whimps and not
Speaker 1: seeing them. So recently people have been charted, I think
Speaker 1: a little more broadly, dig deeper into that bag of
Speaker 1: hypothetical particles to find other things. And the idea that
Speaker 1: the axion might be the dark matter is sort of
Speaker 1: popular these days. Wow, alright, I'm a little confused now.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that dark matter could be made out
Speaker 1: of something that's not matter, that's a force a force particle,
Speaker 1: and that's an axion, and that if these things exist,
Speaker 1: you could potentially put them together to make an action star. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: You totally understood it, so it must have been perfectly clear.
Speaker 1: So we don't know that acidons exist, right, it's an idea.
Speaker 1: It would be sort of beautiful theoretically and solvement of
Speaker 1: interesting problems. If you're interested in that, go dig into
Speaker 1: that podcast episode specifically on that topic. We don't know
Speaker 1: that they exist, but they would solve an interesting theoretical
Speaker 1: problem about the strong force. They might also be dark matter,
Speaker 1: and yes, they would be the perfect ingredient for making
Speaker 1: a Boson star because they are boson and they have
Speaker 1: a little bit of mass and they are stable. Hey
Speaker 1: did I tell you that Frank will Chick retweeted me
Speaker 1: the other day or mentioned being a tweet. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I didn't even know he tweeted you. I
Speaker 1: felt like an action star my cell there for a
Speaker 1: moment there, alright. So then if a Boson star exists,
Speaker 1: it would be potentially made out of actions, which is
Speaker 1: you're saying are stable and they do last for a while,
Speaker 1: and they do have mass, and so they could get
Speaker 1: sort of bunched together by gravity. Yeah, that's the requirements
Speaker 1: to be the dark matter, right, you need to have
Speaker 1: mass otherwise you can not explain in the dark matter.
Speaker 1: And you need to be stable on cosmological time scales,
Speaker 1: because we think dark matter sticks around a long time
Speaker 1: and still here after all. So axions satisfy both of
Speaker 1: those requirements. And then you have to ask the question like, well,
Speaker 1: what makes it a star? And I heard you saying earlier, like, well,
Speaker 1: it has to shine. And I know we've talked on
Speaker 1: this podcast before about the definition of a star versus
Speaker 1: a planet, and a star is defined to be something
Speaker 1: that has fusion happening at its core. Here though, unfortunately
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to be inconsistent and relax that definition
Speaker 1: because a boson star doesn't actually shine. How convenient. So
Speaker 1: what are we talking about then? That Like, if you
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of axons together, then gravity would
Speaker 1: keep them in a in a ball of axions, like
Speaker 1: a sphere of acions. What what would happen if I
Speaker 1: get a bunch of them together? But like, even even
Speaker 1: if I get two of them together, do they attract
Speaker 1: each other by gravity? They would attract each other with gravity. Now,
Speaker 1: just two particles would have infinitesimal gravitational force, And so
Speaker 1: that's why we don't think about gravitationally bound particle systems. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the proton and the electron, the gravitational force between
Speaker 1: them is basically zero. We should compare to the other forces.
Speaker 1: But if you have a lot of axions near each other,
Speaker 1: then yeah, you're going to have a lot of mass
Speaker 1: and that will make a gravitationally bound system. And so
Speaker 1: you can get a huge serving of axions and they
Speaker 1: would clump together and they would fall into each other,
Speaker 1: and then you have to ask the question, well, like
Speaker 1: why wouldn't you just make a black hole? Right? Remember,
Speaker 1: a star has to have two conditions, needs to have
Speaker 1: gravity to clump it together, and it needs to have
Speaker 1: something to resist falling into a black hole. The reason
Speaker 1: why our son is not a black holes because it's
Speaker 1: resisting that through fusion. The reason that white dwarfs, which
Speaker 1: is the future of our Son, aren't black holes is
Speaker 1: not because they're burning. It's because they're actually made out
Speaker 1: of fermions. And those fermions don't want to sit on
Speaker 1: top of each other. Right, Fermions have this exclusion principle,
Speaker 1: and so that's like quantum mechanics at work there, and
Speaker 1: that white dwarfs don't fall into black holes is because
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics of their fermions. But axons are different.
Speaker 1: Bosons are different. They can't do either of those things.
Speaker 1: They can't make fusion to have radiation pressure. They can't
Speaker 1: rely on the poly exclusion principle because that only applies
Speaker 1: to fermions, meaning like if you get a bunch of
Speaker 1: electrons at some point they'll repel each other, or protons
Speaker 1: or you know, balls of dirt or neutrons. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: like to make a planet, but bosons they can't sit
Speaker 1: on top of each other. So I guess if you
Speaker 1: get a whole bunch of them together, why wouldn't they
Speaker 1: just all sit in the same point. That's kind of
Speaker 1: what you're saying, right, And if they do, then you
Speaker 1: would form a black hole exactly. So you need a
Speaker 1: boson which would prevent itself somehow from collapsing. And the
Speaker 1: way you do that here is another property of quantum mechanics.
Speaker 1: So you're exactly right there. The reason a neutron star
Speaker 1: and a white dwarf don't collapse into a black hole
Speaker 1: is because the fermi pressure. Right, it's all these particles
Speaker 1: not wanting to sit on top of each other. Boson
Speaker 1: stars can't do that. But there's an another property of
Speaker 1: quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle, that just prevents axions and
Speaker 1: bosons from being too constrained. Right, if you have a
Speaker 1: bunch of axions and say they're all within the same
Speaker 1: sort of location, then that creates a large uncertainty on
Speaker 1: their position, because the uncertainty principle tells us that there's
Speaker 1: like a minimum amount of uncertainty in the momentum and
Speaker 1: the position of these particles. So if you can strain
Speaker 1: their position and their momentum becomes uncertain and then they
Speaker 1: fly off, the quantum mechanics sort of resists having these
Speaker 1: things collapse. What do you mean They can't merge like
Speaker 1: they can be used together like fermions. Well, not all
Speaker 1: fermions confuse together, only some, only some, but yeah, but
Speaker 1: bosons typically don't interact with themselves, like photons don't interact
Speaker 1: with other photons. Photons don't merge together to form something else.
Speaker 1: Some bosons do, like gluons or higgs. Bosons have a
Speaker 1: self interaction, but most bosons, including axions, don't interact with themselves.
Speaker 1: They just like don't even see each other, and unlike
Speaker 1: add up, Like if you have two in the same spot,
Speaker 1: don't they just add up. They don't add up because
Speaker 1: they don't like fill energy levels. Right, they can all
Speaker 1: be in the same energy level. That's not a problem
Speaker 1: for bosons, and they don't have any interaction. You know
Speaker 1: that field, the axon field doesn't interact with itself at all,
Speaker 1: just the same way photons don't. Photons, for example, only
Speaker 1: interact with charge particles. Right. They will ignore neutrons and
Speaker 1: neutrinos and anything else that has zero electric charge, including
Speaker 1: their photons, and axions are the same way they ignore
Speaker 1: all other axon. If I have two photons in the
Speaker 1: same spot, then they just become a bigger photon or
Speaker 1: are they still technically to fold doon, there's still two photons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I should add here that there are actually a
Speaker 1: few different flavors of axons, since they are a hypothetical particle.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're talking about the ones that don't interact
Speaker 1: with themselves or with photons, But there are other versions
Speaker 1: of these theories where they have some small self interaction
Speaker 1: and they can feel photons a little bit. Those variants
Speaker 1: can also make boson stars, and sometimes that self interaction
Speaker 1: can help if it's repulsive, because the axons might repel
Speaker 1: each other and then form that outward pressure to keep
Speaker 1: the axon star from collapsing. All right, well that's our
Speaker 1: main imaginary candidate for these imaginary stars, the axon, and
Speaker 1: so that's how you would make one. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about whether or not we actually see them out there
Speaker 1: in space and what they would be like. But first,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break a right. We're talking about
Speaker 1: boson stars that may exist out there in the cosmos,
Speaker 1: and if they do, they might be made out of axons,
Speaker 1: which themselves may or may not exist. I feel like
Speaker 1: we're stacking imaginaries here. The imaginary concepts exclude each other, Daniel,
Speaker 1: do they add up? Confused? Can they merge? These bonkers
Speaker 1: concepts are all boson, so we can have an infinite
Speaker 1: number of bonkers nous. I see, they don't exclude each other,
Speaker 1: so you can just stack him infinitely exactly until we
Speaker 1: get a bozo star. All right, Well, let's say that
Speaker 1: the axion does exist, and let's say that you could
Speaker 1: somewhere out there and get them all together enough to
Speaker 1: make some sort of axon object. That still doesn't tell
Speaker 1: me how that makes it a start, Like, why isn't
Speaker 1: wouldn't be called an axion planet or an axion you know, Well,
Speaker 1: if you were around when they were deciding on the
Speaker 1: name of these things, then that would have been a
Speaker 1: good idea axion planet. I think that makes more sense,
Speaker 1: you know, because the planet is a nonfusing blob of
Speaker 1: stuff out there in the universe made out of basically whatever.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these axions are also they're not fusing, they're
Speaker 1: not glowing, they're not giving off any light. They're just
Speaker 1: a stable collection of axions that are resisting collapsing into
Speaker 1: a black hole. So I think they called it a
Speaker 1: star just to sort of make it sound awesome, not
Speaker 1: because it's actually doing it really? Was that a in
Speaker 1: the physics paper in there, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: in the same way our neutron stars stars, right, they're
Speaker 1: just a big collection of neutrons that aren't collapsing into
Speaker 1: a black hole yet. But they're not glowing, right, They're
Speaker 1: not using there's no radiation being emitted there. So the
Speaker 1: same way like white dwarfs, right, we call those stars.
Speaker 1: So yeah, astronomy has got support to do. I think
Speaker 1: what you're saying. That is it? In physics, there are
Speaker 1: no standards for being a star. Anyone can be a star.
Speaker 1: It's like our society today. You need an Instagram account. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for famous parents. Being a physicist is easy. It's no
Speaker 1: big deal. No, I'm saying, I cannot defend the naming
Speaker 1: of this thing as a star. It's just there's nothing
Speaker 1: I can say about it, and that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: But I guess you're saying that it is possible theoretically
Speaker 1: to have a whole bunch of axons together in the
Speaker 1: same spot without collapsing into a black hole. And what
Speaker 1: keeps them from collapsing? Is this on certainty principle? He said, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: As he's trying to constrain them to be in a
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller location, the uncertainty grows on their energy,
Speaker 1: and that essentially resists them being constrained. So the uncertainty
Speaker 1: principle resists them from being collapsed too far into a
Speaker 1: tiny little spot. So how big would an actium planet
Speaker 1: evolve be? Like, if you get a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: them together, would it be just super tiny or would
Speaker 1: it actually be the size of a planet. It's a
Speaker 1: great question, And it depends on the mass of the
Speaker 1: boson star, and so a more massive boson star would
Speaker 1: be larger have a similar sort of structure two black holes,
Speaker 1: right or more massive black hole than just becomes larger
Speaker 1: and larger and larger sort of in volume. And so
Speaker 1: boson stars in the same way would resist collapsing. And
Speaker 1: the more bosons you have, the more resistance there is,
Speaker 1: and so they would just sort of like grow larger
Speaker 1: and larger. But the question is, like, you know, are
Speaker 1: there boson stars and if so, how big are they? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I feel like you're saying that the it's the
Speaker 1: uncertainty principle that keeps him kind of from collapsing. Can
Speaker 1: you have an uncertainty principle the size of a planet,
Speaker 1: like that's a big ball of uncert is a big
Speaker 1: ball of uncertainty, Yeah, exactly. But you know it also
Speaker 1: applies locally and not just globally, so you can have
Speaker 1: like patches of these things where you have bosons lying
Speaker 1: on top of each other. So yeah, I think it
Speaker 1: certainly could apply to something the size of a planet.
Speaker 1: I mean it does also for white dwarves righting, for
Speaker 1: neutron stars, there you have, like quantum mechanics at work
Speaker 1: preventing particles from overlapping on top of each other, providing
Speaker 1: the resistance to collapsing into a black hole. Does that
Speaker 1: apply to photons to like? Can photons also be stacked
Speaker 1: like that? Does the uncertainty principle also prevent photons from
Speaker 1: being on top of each other? Yeah? Absolutely. If you
Speaker 1: try to localize photons in the same way, then it
Speaker 1: will prevent you from knowing their energy in exactly the
Speaker 1: same way. The uncertainty principle applies to all quantum particles.
Speaker 1: It might be easier to understand the uncertainty principle if
Speaker 1: you think about it in terms of temperature. Quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: prevents anything from going to absolute zero temperature because there's
Speaker 1: always a minimum energy. Otherwise you'd know a particle's momentum
Speaker 1: and location at once because it'd be frozen in place.
Speaker 1: So there's a minimum temperature for any collection of particles.
Speaker 1: And that's quantum mechanics keeping something from collapsing into a
Speaker 1: single dot. So the way you, for example, you would
Speaker 1: make a black hole out of photons is not by
Speaker 1: trying to squeeze a bunch of photons that already exist
Speaker 1: into the same location, but by overlapping laser beams on
Speaker 1: top of each other, the photons from different directions are
Speaker 1: all coming together in the same place. Well, let's say
Speaker 1: that these stars exist, these boson stars exist. What would
Speaker 1: they be like? Could we see the one, would we
Speaker 1: feel attracted to them? Would they, you know, burn our
Speaker 1: eyes if we look at them? They would actually look
Speaker 1: a lot like black holes because they are dense gravitational objects.
Speaker 1: There contortions in space time right due to the mass
Speaker 1: of all the axons, And they're not glowing. They're not
Speaker 1: giving off any light or there's no fusion happening inside
Speaker 1: of them, but they're not black right. Light can escape them,
Speaker 1: so there's no event horizon. But they're sort of like transparent.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're more like transparent holes than black holes.
Speaker 1: It's weird to think that a whole is transparent, because
Speaker 1: the aren't all wholes transparent. Technically, I suppose that it
Speaker 1: would be a non weird hole for once. They would
Speaker 1: be essentially invisible, but they would distort the light around them,
Speaker 1: so it's sort of like just being seeing a big
Speaker 1: lens in the sky. It would look a lot like
Speaker 1: dark matter, right, dark matter you can't see visually, but
Speaker 1: you can detect that it's there because of its gravity,
Speaker 1: and so Boson stars would be the same. They would
Speaker 1: distort space around them, bending the path of light for example,
Speaker 1: so you would see gravitational lensing and all sorts of
Speaker 1: other weird stuff. There wouldn't be an event horizon I see,
Speaker 1: but wouldn't They wouldn't block or reflect, like like if
Speaker 1: I have a bunch of axons there and I shoot
Speaker 1: a laser beam into it. With the laser beam, just
Speaker 1: shoot right through it. It wouldn't interact with the with
Speaker 1: the axons. If you shot a laser beam into a
Speaker 1: Boson star, then no, nothing would happen to go right
Speaker 1: through because photons and axons don't interact with each other
Speaker 1: for some theories of axons. There are other versions of
Speaker 1: axons where the photons and axons can interact a bit.
Speaker 1: But here we're thinking about axions as dark matter with
Speaker 1: no reaction to photons. The only effect would be gravitational.
Speaker 1: If you shot your laser beams sort of near the
Speaker 1: Boson star, it might curve the path of your laser.
Speaker 1: It would bend your laser, but the axions and the
Speaker 1: photons is quantum particles don't interact, I see, and what
Speaker 1: these things need to be huge? Or could you have
Speaker 1: a small Bozon star? We don't know. Actually that's a
Speaker 1: great question. I think they might be really huge. In fact,
Speaker 1: there's some speculation that some of the black holes at
Speaker 1: the center of galaxies might actually just be Boson stars.
Speaker 1: But there's also the possibility that you could make them
Speaker 1: to be fairly small. In the same way that like
Speaker 1: black holes you can make to me, really really really small,
Speaker 1: you could also make Boson stars and it's fairly small
Speaker 1: helping as long as they were compact enough. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: so there would be basically transparent. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like could they have planets other planets, like real planets
Speaker 1: orbiting around them? Absolutely they could, and they might also
Speaker 1: not be transparent for very long because, for example, think
Speaker 1: about what happens if you toss a banana and a
Speaker 1: Boson star. What happens, Well, it passes through the axons
Speaker 1: and it falls towards the center because of the gravity,
Speaker 1: and then it just sort of stays there right like
Speaker 1: you just fall into it and not be able to escape.
Speaker 1: It has the gravitational pull of something else. With the
Speaker 1: same mass, and so things would fall into the core
Speaker 1: of it. It would collect normal matter at its core.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't get crushed or anything. Yeah, absolutely, it might
Speaker 1: get crushed. Your banana might not survive, but it also
Speaker 1: wouldn't escape. And so if these boson stars are near
Speaker 1: other matter, then that matter might fall into them and
Speaker 1: that would be visible. Oh you mean, like in the
Speaker 1: same way that dark matter, for example, kind of helps
Speaker 1: gather galaxy. Yeah, and acon star could help gather banana
Speaker 1: because the way stars tell us where dark matter is,
Speaker 1: bananas tell us where both stars are perfect analogy. And
Speaker 1: that would be super real because you see a banana,
Speaker 1: but it would have like the mass of a black
Speaker 1: hole exactly, like the most powerful banana in the universe,
Speaker 1: and it would attract other bananas and monkeys and r maybe,
Speaker 1: and you would also get other gravitational effects, like it
Speaker 1: might have matter swirling around it, the same way that
Speaker 1: black holes do. If you have nearby gas, it would
Speaker 1: get pulled in by the gravitational field. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: always collapse in, right, Not everything near a black hole
Speaker 1: automatically falls in because it's spinning. So some things instead
Speaker 1: of falling in gather into this accretion disc, and a
Speaker 1: Boson star might also get an accretion disk, and it
Speaker 1: might have radiation from that accretion disc. And the way
Speaker 1: that we detect black holes normally is we see like
Speaker 1: gravitational influence and an acretion disc and like signals from
Speaker 1: that accreation disc of incredible gravity tational stress. Those are
Speaker 1: also the signals of a Boson star. So how could
Speaker 1: we tell the difference? Or is it even possible that
Speaker 1: black holes are made out of bosons? Like you could
Speaker 1: throw bozons into a black hole and it would grow too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can throw anything into a black hole, and you
Speaker 1: can make a black hole out of anything, So it's
Speaker 1: possible that black holes have a lot of bosons or
Speaker 1: axons in them. Certainly, how could you tell the difference
Speaker 1: between a black hole and a Bozon star. You'd have
Speaker 1: to look really directly at it, because a Boson star
Speaker 1: doesn't have an event horizon. So, for example, when we
Speaker 1: directly image that black hole and we saw the shadow
Speaker 1: of the black hole, we saw the back of the
Speaker 1: event horizon in the front of it inside the accretion disk.
Speaker 1: That's pretty clearly not a Boson star because there's a
Speaker 1: black spot in the middle. But if you looked at
Speaker 1: one of these things directly and you didn't see the
Speaker 1: black spot, if you saw gas all the way through it,
Speaker 1: then you think, oh, that's probably a Bozon star. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: then how could we see these hypothetical Bozon stars if
Speaker 1: they exist? And there are two ways. One is direct
Speaker 1: imaging of them, right, just look at black hole candidates
Speaker 1: and see if you can see the event horizon. If
Speaker 1: you can't, then it might be a Boson star. There's
Speaker 1: another way, which is maybe easier, because directly imaging black
Speaker 1: holes is hard. You know, We've been working on it
Speaker 1: for a long time and only done it for one
Speaker 1: and that's it. Looking at the gravitational waves. Gravitational waves
Speaker 1: are generated from spinning black holes or from things moving
Speaker 1: around black holes, like neutron stars and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So because there's a slightly different structure in the field,
Speaker 1: because boson is of a different distribution than like a singularity,
Speaker 1: the heart of a black hole is a slightly different
Speaker 1: pattern in the gravitational waves, so you might be able
Speaker 1: to detect the difference. There's some recent paper is talking
Speaker 1: about like exactly how to look for gravitational waves that
Speaker 1: come from Boson star collisions rather than black hole collisions.
Speaker 1: So this is an imaginary event featuring two imaginary objects
Speaker 1: made out of an imaginary particle made out of a
Speaker 1: lot of imaginary particles. Yes, exactly. I feel like now
Speaker 1: we're going deeper into the rabbit hole here, we're being
Speaker 1: incepted to like level four and there's even level five
Speaker 1: inception there, which is, like, how did these things get
Speaker 1: made in the first place? Even if axions are real,
Speaker 1: even if all the laws of physics work the way
Speaker 1: we're talking about, so that if you put axons in
Speaker 1: the same place they would make a Boson star. Are
Speaker 1: their conditions in our universe for that to happen? Should
Speaker 1: it arise? So it's not easy to imagine how you
Speaker 1: would make that many axions. Really, you got to go
Speaker 1: all the way back to the Big Bang and say
Speaker 1: maybe during the Big Bang there was some crazy fluctuation
Speaker 1: and these things got made primordially and like before most
Speaker 1: particles were made, when maybe even early black holes were made,
Speaker 1: that you've got these weird collections of bosons created quantum
Speaker 1: mechanically during the Big Bang, and those are the seeds
Speaker 1: of current Boson stars. Because I guess you can't think
Speaker 1: of any circumstances right now in our universe in which
Speaker 1: you could get that many bo's. Yeah, and then maybe Daniel,
Speaker 1: we're just imaginary imagining these imaginary things. My brain feels
Speaker 1: like it's filled with banana sometimes, which might be imaginary
Speaker 1: themselves if they weren't so delicious. Good thing. Physics is
Speaker 1: so easy, right, all right? Well, so that's a Boson
Speaker 1: star and that's pretty interesting. And now are there people
Speaker 1: looking for these right now? Is this something that people
Speaker 1: are taking seriously or is it still kind of in
Speaker 1: the back of the conference room. There, It's definitely in
Speaker 1: the back of the conference room, but there are also
Speaker 1: some people taking it very seriously, which is sort of
Speaker 1: the way in physics. You've got like the mainstream stuff
Speaker 1: people are working on, and then you've got the people
Speaker 1: thinking in the back of the room, going, m what
Speaker 1: about this other weird thing? And sometimes those ideas are right.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that in science were open to all
Speaker 1: sorts of crazy ideas. And there are definitely people dedicated
Speaker 1: to this topic, you know, running detailed simulations of what
Speaker 1: Boson stars would look like and trying to understand like
Speaker 1: the plasma loops that might form around them, and how
Speaker 1: you would see those signals and gravitational wave detectors of
Speaker 1: the future. So it's definitely something people are thinking about.
Speaker 1: And how many of those can you fit into a
Speaker 1: clown car or how many of you are willing to
Speaker 1: get into one for the sake of physics. That's philosophy.
Speaker 1: That's philosophy, man, that's not science. See, that's the other
Speaker 1: imaginary science. Or maybe it's psychology. I don't know. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's always interesting to think about what could be out
Speaker 1: there in the universe, you know, like we have all
Speaker 1: these rules, and if you sort of think about those
Speaker 1: rules enough, you sort of come up with these weird
Speaker 1: things that may or may not exist. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: could be that we are in the era before the
Speaker 1: discovery of Boson stars, when people are just thinking about
Speaker 1: what could be out there in the universe. So if
Speaker 1: you are a budding astronomer or astrophysicist and you're thinking
Speaker 1: the universe has all been discovered, there is still plenty
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff out there for you to find. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because at some point even thinks like black holes in
Speaker 1: dark matter, they're all imaginary. Back at the conference room,
Speaker 1: these are now just Nobel prizes waiting to be one. Well,
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. And the next time you
Speaker 1: look at into the Start, I think about what you're
Speaker 1: not seeing that could be out there sucking bananas and
Speaker 1: turning them into smoothies. Thanks for joining us, see you
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
Speaker 1: Jorge explain the Universe is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio or more podcast or my heart Radio. Visit the
Speaker 1: I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows. Yeah,