Speaker 1: Or Hey, I have a cartoon physics question for you.
Speaker 1: Go for it. I have a PhD in cartoon physics.
Speaker 1: You know, all right, I'm just glad to hear that
Speaker 1: there is some physics and cartoons. But my question is,
Speaker 1: if you were a superhero in a cartoon, who would
Speaker 1: be your corresponding villain? Like the anti Jorge? You know,
Speaker 1: working to spoil all my plans exactly? Paint us a
Speaker 1: picture of who this character would be. There. Probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be an anti Jorge, you know, no, why not? Because
Speaker 1: I think you know, my plans are usually pretty simple,
Speaker 1: you know, draw cartoons and take naps. Who we want
Speaker 1: to foil that? I guess maybe the anti Jorge would
Speaker 1: just want to join you for a nap and a snack.
Speaker 1: I guess that means you are the anti Jorge. M
Speaker 1: I am my worst enemy him or handmay cartoonists and
Speaker 1: the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a
Speaker 1: particle physicist and a professor at you see Irvine, and
Speaker 1: I can read a comic without criticizing the physics of it.
Speaker 1: You cannot, or you can't. I can, Yeah, I can
Speaker 1: totally suspend my physics disbelief when I see the Green
Speaker 1: Goblin floating above the streets of New York City, What
Speaker 1: I mean he could be on a drone. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: now like personal drones. Yeah. I don't see any spinning
Speaker 1: blades on the Green Goblins platform, though there's some weird
Speaker 1: anti gravity device. They're green on green, that's why you
Speaker 1: can't see them. What about Marvel movies? Can you watch
Speaker 1: those and and suspend your physics disbelief? That's a little harder,
Speaker 1: especially when the plot revolves explicitly around bending the laws
Speaker 1: of physics and ways that make no sense, or when
Speaker 1: they go into the quantum universe. That's alright, it's when
Speaker 1: they try to time travel and tie their plot into nonsense,
Speaker 1: sical knots that it drives me bonkers. Makes you want
Speaker 1: to be a villain in the Marble universe, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: all the villains in the Marble Universe seem to have
Speaker 1: a PhD. They do. Hey, and you could be Doctor
Speaker 1: Stranger maybe. But welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe, a production of Our Heart Radio in
Speaker 1: which we critique the physics of the real universe. Does
Speaker 1: everything out there makes sense? Is it possible to take
Speaker 1: the entire physical universe, with all of its black holes
Speaker 1: and supernovas and strange bendings and ripples of space, and
Speaker 1: squeeze it all down into a human brain. Is it
Speaker 1: possible to build a mental, mathematical model of the universe
Speaker 1: that actually describes what's going on out there? Can we
Speaker 1: ever wrap our minds around this crazy, bonkers physical reality.
Speaker 1: We're not sure, but we can have a lot of
Speaker 1: fun trying. Yeah, because it is a pretty amazing universe.
Speaker 1: It's really big and really old, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: to explore in it, a lot of interesting stories and
Speaker 1: lots of interesting characters to give us fascinating insight into
Speaker 1: how everything works. And we exploded so many different levels.
Speaker 1: We think about the physics of hurricanes, we think about
Speaker 1: solar systems, we think about galaxies. We also think about
Speaker 1: tiny little particles. And I am constantly amazed that, frankly,
Speaker 1: any of this works, since we don't understand the universe
Speaker 1: at the tiniest level of vibrating strings or little space pixels.
Speaker 1: It's incredible to me that we can understand the way
Speaker 1: things emerge, that there's this sort of simplicity that arises.
Speaker 1: It's not always chaotic and that lets us tell nice
Speaker 1: little mathematical stories about what's going on around us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that is one of the goals of human existence,
Speaker 1: I think, is to understand our context and to understand
Speaker 1: how and why we're here and how we can make
Speaker 1: it better. Yeah, and to make better and faster iPhones.
Speaker 1: We need to understand how the world works so that
Speaker 1: we can bend it to our will. But there's another
Speaker 1: deeper pleasure there in just knowing and just understanding and
Speaker 1: just unraveling the mysteries of the universe and having some
Speaker 1: mastery of it to meet. There's a deep, deep satisfaction
Speaker 1: in feeling like we have grasped something true about the universe.
Speaker 1: Then it made it sound like we're here to critique
Speaker 1: the universe or we physics critics. Is that what this
Speaker 1: podcast is about? A little bit we are, you know,
Speaker 1: we are trying to say, hey, this doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: And because it seems like the arc of the scientific
Speaker 1: universe it bends towards understanding when something doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: or when something is ugly. That's sort of a clue.
Speaker 1: It's a clue that says, maybe there's a simpler explanation,
Speaker 1: maybe there's a beauty here that we haven't yet unwrapped.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like points us in the right direction,
Speaker 1: right right, or when they use the same old tired plot,
Speaker 1: or it is a physical law and so therefore it's
Speaker 1: not not as novel. Yeah, and sometimes we're here just
Speaker 1: a critique how phys this name things, right, which isn't
Speaker 1: exactly a critique of the universe as much as a
Speaker 1: critique of scientists, right right. Hey, we need some kind
Speaker 1: of like grading system. You know how some people have
Speaker 1: the stars, and so some people use thumbs up or
Speaker 1: thumbs down. Well what you would use bananas exactly? Would
Speaker 1: but would five bananas be the worst or the best? Like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's bananas? Is that a positive review or a negative review?
Speaker 1: I think it's just kind of like a self explanatory
Speaker 1: you know, like this thing is five bananas, it's one banana.
Speaker 1: You know, how bonkers is it? That's the rating system? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I like that, Yes, as representing the bonker's nous of
Speaker 1: the universe. Well, I'm pro banana in that context. At least,
Speaker 1: I want the universe to be many bananas, so that
Speaker 1: when we finally understand the true nature of reality, our
Speaker 1: little minds are blown well, what's the most bananas you
Speaker 1: would give something like the theory of the universe. I
Speaker 1: don't think we should limit ourselves. I think there should
Speaker 1: be the possibility of infinite bananas. The rating system goes
Speaker 1: from zero to infinity. Yes, there's always something that's more
Speaker 1: bananas than anything we've ever seen before. Maybe should be
Speaker 1: five bananas maximum, but then each banana can have bananas
Speaker 1: inside of it, or be made up of other bananas.
Speaker 1: It's a continuous banana spectrum or likes all the way down,
Speaker 1: but it is. We like to talk about this universe
Speaker 1: and everything in it, not just kind of the big
Speaker 1: amazing things like black holes and galaxies and quasars and
Speaker 1: incredible stars, but also the little tiny particles that make
Speaker 1: up everything, including you and I, exactly because we have
Speaker 1: this hunch that one key to understanding the true nature
Speaker 1: of reality is to pull it apart, used to figure
Speaker 1: out what the smallest bits are and how they relate
Speaker 1: to each other. What are the rules that these smallest
Speaker 1: bits have to follow. Those should be the deepest rules
Speaker 1: of the universe. And if you could somehow write down
Speaker 1: the list of the basic elements of the universe and
Speaker 1: how they interact, you would be looking at like the
Speaker 1: source code of the universe and you could finally give
Speaker 1: a definitive answer to how bananas is the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be like Neo, you know, when he's finally sees
Speaker 1: the matrix, sees what everything is made out of. Behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, that's the goal. But we know that we
Speaker 1: aren't there yet, that the things that we are looking
Speaker 1: at are now the basic constituents of the universe, because
Speaker 1: there are things about them that don't make sense yet.
Speaker 1: That suggests that there must be some deeper layers, some
Speaker 1: smaller bits that follow even more fundamental rules. When we
Speaker 1: look at the particles and we have understood there are
Speaker 1: things about them that sort of jump out at us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you'd like to sort of talk about the
Speaker 1: sort of the story arc of humanity and our understanding
Speaker 1: of what things are made of, and how it's sort
Speaker 1: of like each time we get closer and smaller and
Speaker 1: we sort of get down to the smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: bits of Lego like you talk about how the universe
Speaker 1: is sort of put together like a Lego set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. It's incredible to me that all of the
Speaker 1: complexity that we see in the universe. You know, the bananas,
Speaker 1: the black holes, the boogie boards, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: None of that is fundamental to the universe. And the
Speaker 1: way that that complexity arises is not in like the
Speaker 1: nature of the boogie board or the banana, but how
Speaker 1: it's little bits are put together, as you were saying,
Speaker 1: like lego pieces. You can use the same little bits
Speaker 1: to make boogie boards or bananas or ban in the bread.
Speaker 1: It's all made out of the same fundamental ingredients. And
Speaker 1: so the key is understanding how those things come together.
Speaker 1: What are the rules that let you arrange things into
Speaker 1: different configurations? Why are some things allowed and other things
Speaker 1: not allowed? Those are the deepest rules of the universe,
Speaker 1: the ones that we want to uncover, right right? And
Speaker 1: why do they hurt so much when you step on them?
Speaker 1: It's another big question. I think there's a whole branch
Speaker 1: of philosophy devoted just to that question, to lego or
Speaker 1: to letting go, to the existential pain of legos, of
Speaker 1: having to pick them up all the time? Is there
Speaker 1: a universe in which legos feel good on your feet? Right?
Speaker 1: Is there a universe in which they picked themselves up
Speaker 1: by themselves? That that one I would give more bananas to.
Speaker 1: Is there a universe in which legos step on us
Speaker 1: and then the legos scream? Yeah. But we made a
Speaker 1: lot of progress in the last few thousand years. We know,
Speaker 1: we went from thinking that the universe was made out
Speaker 1: of four elements win, fire, air, and another one and
Speaker 1: uh dad, to like the periodic table of elements, and
Speaker 1: now to like the fundamental particles. So we're golud and
Speaker 1: smaller and more precise. I think it's fire, air, water,
Speaker 1: and bananas. Those are the fundamental elements of the universe. Yes,
Speaker 1: I agree from my reading of Greek philosophy, forget the
Speaker 1: standard model. Let's switch to a hore hip banana model exactly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we have peeled back lots of layers of reality,
Speaker 1: and we have a really nice description of how particles interact.
Speaker 1: But you know, we look at this description and we
Speaker 1: ask questions about it, questions that just sort of jump
Speaker 1: out at you when you look at the patterns of
Speaker 1: the particles. Yeah, and one of those interesting patterns is
Speaker 1: this idea of antiparticles. It seems that every particle out
Speaker 1: there that we know about has an antiparticle. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you look at a picture of the particles of the
Speaker 1: standard model. They show you like up corks and down corks,
Speaker 1: electrons and neutrinos. But what they don't show you is
Speaker 1: that every particle that's there has a partner particle, and
Speaker 1: like shadow twin electrons exist, but so do anti electrons.
Speaker 1: Quarks exist, but so do anti corks. Every single kind
Speaker 1: of matter particle out there, the things that make up
Speaker 1: stuff that me and you and all the things in
Speaker 1: the cosmos, they can exist, but also their antiparticles can exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these fundamental particles are not the only kind of
Speaker 1: particles there are in the universe. Physicists have found sort
Speaker 1: of other kinds of particles that don't necessarily make up
Speaker 1: matter but kind of exist both mathematically and possibly in
Speaker 1: the real world exactly. This is one of those kinds
Speaker 1: of patterns. What we say, it's interesting that all the
Speaker 1: particles we've seen so far have antiparticles, and it's possible
Speaker 1: mathematically for there to be particles without antiparticles where they
Speaker 1: are their own antiparticles. And so because it's possible mathematically,
Speaker 1: physicist wonder is it real physically? Yeah, These kinds of
Speaker 1: special particles have a name. They're called my Urana particles
Speaker 1: named after the physicist tore Magurana, and they'd be important
Speaker 1: to those to how everything works, including neutrinas and maybe
Speaker 1: even making quantum computers. That's right. And they might also
Speaker 1: be clues to a real true crime mystery in physics,
Speaker 1: which is what happened to a Torre Marana himself. Wait what,
Speaker 1: there's a murder mystery in this in this podcast too.
Speaker 1: They just suddenly turned into one of those murder shows.
Speaker 1: That's right. We are now a true crime podcast for real.
Speaker 1: Tore My Irana, a genius Italian physicist, came up with
Speaker 1: this idea for the Marana particle in the thirties, and
Speaker 1: one year after he came up with this proposal, he
Speaker 1: mysteriously disappeared. Whoa man, I can't wait for ratings to
Speaker 1: go up. Now that we're a crime podcast, are we
Speaker 1: going to interview like everyone he knew and the neighbors
Speaker 1: and stuff. We're gonna take field trips to Venezuela and
Speaker 1: Argentina to track down potential sightings and no or not?
Speaker 1: I mean if we have the budget. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: real stuff. He bought a boat ticket from Palermo to
Speaker 1: Naples and sent a really cryptic telegram and then he
Speaker 1: was never seen again. But there are pictures of people
Speaker 1: who look a little bit like him which surfaced later
Speaker 1: in Venezuela and in Argentina, so that all these theories.
Speaker 1: Was he killed by a rival physicist, did he actually
Speaker 1: escape to Venezuela because he knew he was going to
Speaker 1: be killed, or did he just get on the wrong
Speaker 1: boat and got confused. Oh man, Daniel, I am totally serious.
Speaker 1: Let's do a crime Ast episode about this man. It's
Speaker 1: a crossover podcast. But anyways, this theory is that there
Speaker 1: are at least things called Mariorana particles, and they're kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because they're sort of not like real particles maybe,
Speaker 1: and also they are their own anti particles, or at
Speaker 1: least they don't have antiparticles exactly. They are fascinating new
Speaker 1: idea and how the universe can exist, and so maybe
Speaker 1: part of the future of understanding the nature of the
Speaker 1: universe and also potentially a path to building more robust
Speaker 1: quantum computers. So on the podcast, we'll be tackling the
Speaker 1: question are there particles that don't have antiparticles? I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a double negative question, Daniel. They don't have
Speaker 1: anti parts. Does that mean they're pro particles or they're
Speaker 1: they're anti antiparticles? Aren't they're not antiparticles that don't not
Speaker 1: have their own antiparticles? No, never say never. No, it's
Speaker 1: an interesting question, you know, are their matter particles that
Speaker 1: sort of are their own antiparticles that can like annihilate
Speaker 1: with themselves. Maybe that's what happened to Tori ma Uranna.
Speaker 1: He realized he was his own anti ma Uranna and
Speaker 1: then that the knowledge immediately annihilated him. Wow, you may
Speaker 1: have just cracked this mystery podcast over. You just spoiled
Speaker 1: our trip to Venezuela. Man, Now we don't have to go, well,
Speaker 1: we don't. This won't air for a while, right, we can,
Speaker 1: all right, But he sort of invented this idea of
Speaker 1: the Mayorana particles, and it's sort of an interesting concept
Speaker 1: that maybe a lot of people don't know about. So
Speaker 1: it's usually we're wondering how many out there had heard
Speaker 1: of this and what they think it might be. So
Speaker 1: thank you very much to everybody on the internet who
Speaker 1: continues to participate and give answers to these random questions.
Speaker 1: They're very helpful in guiding our podcast. If you like
Speaker 1: to participate and hear your own voice on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Please don't be shy. Everybody is welcome just right to
Speaker 1: questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about
Speaker 1: it for a second. What do you think is a
Speaker 1: Mayorona particle? Here's what people have to say. I've read
Speaker 1: about them on wikipea, but I think they're a weird
Speaker 1: combination of quirks. So Magorana particles I think are probably
Speaker 1: some kind of ultraspin for me, where it's has like
Speaker 1: three half spin or five half spin, and it's has
Speaker 1: just a very large excessive charge to it that brings
Speaker 1: about very specific and unique properties that is kind of
Speaker 1: only synthetically made and has never been discovered naturally, so
Speaker 1: disappeared guests. But by the looks of the name, I
Speaker 1: think it's a collection of particles which are very common
Speaker 1: or a very larger number around us. Major Anna particles
Speaker 1: are a big part of history. They're the remnants of
Speaker 1: the Fall of Berlin, produced in May when Major Anna
Speaker 1: Nicolina of the Red Army hoisted a Russian flag over
Speaker 1: the Rice Stagg. The Majorana particles, I have no idea,
Speaker 1: sounds like something somebody might put in a pipe and
Speaker 1: smoke or something. I've known no clue, but I'm guessing
Speaker 1: they're bigger and more major than the minor on a particles.
Speaker 1: Sorry best guess. Yeah, not a whole lot of people
Speaker 1: really knew anything about my orana particles. It did feel
Speaker 1: a little bit technical, and so I thought, well, let's
Speaker 1: try something new. Instead of asking random people to answer
Speaker 1: a particle physical question, I thought, how well will a
Speaker 1: particle physicist answer a question without any preparation? So you
Speaker 1: asked your post doc who is from Scotland? That's right,
Speaker 1: So here's Mike, my Scottish post doc, trying to answer
Speaker 1: this question without any chance to prepare. My name is Mike, I,
Speaker 1: UM post doc with Daniel at u C. I and
Speaker 1: I research particle physics and machine learning, aspecifically top quarks
Speaker 1: my irana particle. So you have different extensions to the
Speaker 1: standard model can give you different kinds of UM interactions,
Speaker 1: so you have to RAQ and my irana neutrinos and
Speaker 1: I forget exactly what one is what, but they obeyed
Speaker 1: different statistics and I should know which one's which, and
Speaker 1: I don't. So I hope that makes you feel better,
Speaker 1: and folks out there who didn't know what MYRNA particle is.
Speaker 1: Even professional particle physicists people with PhDs don't always have
Speaker 1: these things at their fingertips. So are you going to
Speaker 1: fire him then, Daniel? Are we are we announcing that
Speaker 1: here on the podcast? No, I'm giving him karma points
Speaker 1: for participating Karma points. Oh, that sounds like you're going
Speaker 1: to collect later on. I might have to make a
Speaker 1: withdrawal at some point. You he owes you a favor. Well,
Speaker 1: good luck to him in the future with that favor.
Speaker 1: But it is an interesting question, this idea of mayoruna particles, Daniels,
Speaker 1: So maybe step us through it first. What are they
Speaker 1: and what do we know about them? So my aerna
Speaker 1: particles would be like a different kind of matter particle
Speaker 1: from all the ones that we are familiar with. And
Speaker 1: to understand where this comes from, you sort of have
Speaker 1: to go back to the early days of quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: and understand how our current theory of matter arose and
Speaker 1: why your anti matter comes from. And he goes back
Speaker 1: to Paul DrAk He was trying to do something very difficult,
Speaker 1: which is to bring together the new field of quantum mechanics,
Speaker 1: which was describing how electrons and photons operated with the
Speaker 1: new field of special relativity, which was trying to describe
Speaker 1: how things operated at very very high speeds. Quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: at that point had only really been able to solve
Speaker 1: problems of sort of slow moving quantum objects, and Diract
Speaker 1: was wondering, what happens when things get going really fast?
Speaker 1: You have electrons at very high speed or photons moving
Speaker 1: at the speed of light? Can we describe things which
Speaker 1: are both quantum and relativistic? So you found a bunch
Speaker 1: of particles that sort of follow this mathematical framework or
Speaker 1: equations that direct made up, right, Yeah, So Diract made
Speaker 1: up a mathematical framework. It's called the Dirac equation, and
Speaker 1: it's basically like the super fast version of the shrouding
Speaker 1: Er equation. But when he was putting that equation together,
Speaker 1: he noticed something. He was trying to just describe electrons
Speaker 1: and matter particles, but what he noticed was that his
Speaker 1: equation had a symmetry to it that he could also
Speaker 1: at the same time describe another kind of particle, a
Speaker 1: particle with like a positive charge. So he called this
Speaker 1: an antiparticle. He sort of discovered the antiparticle on the page. Right,
Speaker 1: It's sort of like you invented the multiplying things by
Speaker 1: itself and you find out that not only does one
Speaker 1: kinds one equals one, but also like minus one minus
Speaker 1: one is also equals one exactly. So he found that
Speaker 1: the math that described the universe and the particles that
Speaker 1: we saw also describe things that we hadn't yet seen.
Speaker 1: And then he made this incredible sort of philosophical leap.
Speaker 1: He was like, well, if the math describes it, it
Speaker 1: must also be real. So he proposed that these things
Speaker 1: might be real, that they might actually be out there,
Speaker 1: and then pretty soon afterwards in experiments people found them.
Speaker 1: They saw evidence of antiparticles, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: you can't really overstate the sort of philosophical brevera. They're like,
Speaker 1: if the math describes it, it is real. Is really
Speaker 1: a huge step to take. Yeah, Because he was trying
Speaker 1: to come up with the equations that described something that
Speaker 1: he had seen, and then he found these questions also
Speaker 1: worked for like the inverse of the particles, and so
Speaker 1: he said, hey, maybe those exist too, Maybe those exist too, right,
Speaker 1: And he was right. This guy direct was sort of
Speaker 1: famous for not being short on sort of intellectual self confidence.
Speaker 1: As he was giving his Nobel Prize acceptance speech for
Speaker 1: basically predicting the existence of the positron the anti electron,
Speaker 1: he made more predictions for more antiparticles, which were then
Speaker 1: borne out a few years later. Like what in his
Speaker 1: in his acceptance speech he embedded some bananas inside the bananas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was right about all of it. Wow, what
Speaker 1: do you do? When he accepted the Nobel Prize for
Speaker 1: those he predicted the anti Nobel Prize, he invented a
Speaker 1: whole new kind of a prize. But he wasn't the
Speaker 1: only one out there playing with the mathematics of quantum
Speaker 1: mechanics and special relativity. And the formulation that he came
Speaker 1: up with, it does seem like it describes the matter
Speaker 1: that we see in our universe. But there was another
Speaker 1: physicist at Torre Marana. He came up with another equation,
Speaker 1: another equation which also unified quantum mechanics and special relativity.
Speaker 1: But the symmetry of his equation was different. It didn't
Speaker 1: require the existence of these anti particles. It didn't have
Speaker 1: this like other shadows side to the universe that it
Speaker 1: suggested in my Irana's equation. Every particle sort of was
Speaker 1: its own antiparticle. Well wait, wait, wait, what do you mean,
Speaker 1: like he did did he know about diras work or
Speaker 1: was he working independently? You knew about diracs work, it
Speaker 1: was famous, but he was just like, well, let's see
Speaker 1: what else we can do. Also, you know, the communication
Speaker 1: between folks back then in the thirties wasn't nearly as
Speaker 1: tight as it is today. People don't just like post
Speaker 1: their papers on the Internet and the next day you
Speaker 1: read about it. So I'm sure it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing he had been thinking about and playing with for
Speaker 1: several years, even if he was aware of Dirac's work,
Speaker 1: and so you can probably treat it as an independent
Speaker 1: line of study. Though I'm sure he was aware of
Speaker 1: what Dirac was doing. But he came up with this
Speaker 1: other equation, and this equation, unlike diracx equation, didn't sort
Speaker 1: of like look different in the mirror directs equation. If
Speaker 1: you flip the signs, you get equations to describe a
Speaker 1: different kind of matter antimatter. My Irona's equation has a
Speaker 1: symmetry in it so that if you flip the signs,
Speaker 1: everything just looks the same. But what was he trying
Speaker 1: to do, I guess is the question was was he
Speaker 1: trying to describe regular particles like electrons and protons and
Speaker 1: things like that in quirks or was he just playing
Speaker 1: around with the equations. That's sort of a good question
Speaker 1: for all of theoretical physics. What are you guys trying
Speaker 1: to do? Are you trying to describe the universe? Are
Speaker 1: you just playing around with the equations? Are you doing
Speaker 1: cartoon physics or real physics? Sometimes just playing around with
Speaker 1: the equations is discovering the nature of the universe, right,
Speaker 1: Like what is possible mathematically might be what is real physically.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the amazing thing about diracts discovery, right
Speaker 1: that just because antimatter particles were possible mathematically, he predicted
Speaker 1: they existed physically. And so my Irono was sort of exploring, like,
Speaker 1: what other ways can we follow the rule equantum mechanics
Speaker 1: and follow the rules of special relativity and be mathematically coherent.
Speaker 1: Maybe that kind of matter also exists out there in
Speaker 1: the universe. Was he thinking it was a different kind
Speaker 1: of matter or did he think, like, hey, maybe this
Speaker 1: will eventually describe the regular matter. His kind of equation
Speaker 1: can't describe electrons for example, because myrona particles that they
Speaker 1: exist have to have zero charge so that they are
Speaker 1: their own antiparticle. That you can't be a plus one
Speaker 1: charged particle and be a myrona particle because then your
Speaker 1: antiparticle would be minus wine charge. So his equation can
Speaker 1: only describe uncharged particles. So that rules out most matter particles, right,
Speaker 1: because most matter particles have some sort of charge. If
Speaker 1: it's not electromagnetic, it's you know, the strong force or
Speaker 1: the weak force. Right, that's right. But there are some
Speaker 1: particles that don't have electric charge and might be their
Speaker 1: own antiparticle, and those are neutrinos. Neutrinos are still very mysterious,
Speaker 1: and we still don't know today if neutrinos are direct
Speaker 1: particles as described by directs equation or if they are
Speaker 1: myrona particles as described by myron as equation. M sounds
Speaker 1: like another mystery podcast. Who killed the neutrino? Why is
Speaker 1: it so neutral? All right, well, let's get into more
Speaker 1: about this interesting new kind of particle and what other
Speaker 1: particles might fit into that category. But first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. All right, we're talking about particles that
Speaker 1: maybe don't have antiparticles. I guess they're pro particles, Daniel,
Speaker 1: they're not antiparticles, so they must be pro particle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are some particles in nature we
Speaker 1: know of that are their own anti particles. For example,
Speaker 1: the photon. The photon doesn't have an anti photon to it,
Speaker 1: and the higgs doesn't have an anti higgs. That doesn't
Speaker 1: make it a myrona particle because myerna particles describe fermions
Speaker 1: matter particles like quarks and electrons or maybe neutrinos, whereas
Speaker 1: photons are bosons. They're a different kind of particle and
Speaker 1: aren't described by myronics equations. But in that sense, we
Speaker 1: do have examples of particles that don't have antiparticles. Interesting,
Speaker 1: I guess what's the difference between fermions and bosons? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you where do you draw the line? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we draw the line in how they spin. Remember
Speaker 1: we talked about how particles have this weird property called
Speaker 1: quantum spin, which is sort of related to real spin,
Speaker 1: but it's not really the same because you can't think
Speaker 1: of them as like actually spinning. You think of it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a label that particles have, though it's
Speaker 1: deeply connected to angular momentum, so it's more than just
Speaker 1: a label. Anyway, you go check out our whole episode
Speaker 1: about quantum spin. It's at least one hour of material
Speaker 1: right there. But fermions have half spin, which means they
Speaker 1: can be spin up or spin down, and bosons have
Speaker 1: integer spin. So the eggs boson just doesn't spin at all.
Speaker 1: It's spin zero. The photon is spin one, which means
Speaker 1: that it can spin up or can spin down. And
Speaker 1: you can do another weird thing, have like a circular polarization,
Speaker 1: and so it just depends on what kind of spin
Speaker 1: states these particles can have. Bosons are integers and fermons
Speaker 1: are half integers. Wait are you saying the only difference
Speaker 1: between being a matter particle and not being matter is
Speaker 1: the half spin the half spin. I think usually what
Speaker 1: we call matters like stuff that feels substantial, right, that
Speaker 1: sort of like makes stuff up in the in the universe.
Speaker 1: And usually that's the stuff that feels gravity and force, right,
Speaker 1: like dark matter. We say it's matter because it feels gravity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, but remember gravity actually couples to everything with energy,
Speaker 1: so gravity is influenced by photons and by Higgs bosons.
Speaker 1: You know, some people think that the Higgs field is
Speaker 1: the thing that's driving the accelerated expansion of the universe
Speaker 1: because it's a large potential value. So actually, even though
Speaker 1: matter is the thing makes up stuff, all the energy
Speaker 1: inside your body is some of it's contained in bosons,
Speaker 1: like gluons inside your protons contribute to your mass. So
Speaker 1: I think the confusion is that we call these things
Speaker 1: matter particles, but really what you are made out of
Speaker 1: is both a combination of fermions and bosons, all of
Speaker 1: which contributes to your gravitational effect on the universe. I
Speaker 1: see you're saying, we're we're all just energy. At the end,
Speaker 1: the word matter doesn't really matter. I guess um. It's
Speaker 1: just really from a physics point of view, the word
Speaker 1: matter just means that it has a half spin half
Speaker 1: quantum spin. As usual, we've taken a word that has
Speaker 1: a common sense meaning and used it in a slightly
Speaker 1: different way to be very confusing. Yeah, and it seems, uh,
Speaker 1: in an arbitrary way, a little bit arbitrary. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we call matter fields everything that's a fermion, and radiation
Speaker 1: fields everything that's a boson. And there are other differences. Right,
Speaker 1: Bosons can all be in the same state, and fermions
Speaker 1: can't be in the same state, so they really are
Speaker 1: different kinds of fields. Okay, so the rex equations supplied
Speaker 1: both matter and non matter particles, but you say my
Speaker 1: urannas equations only applied to matter particles or non matter particles.
Speaker 1: Dirac and my irona both just described fermions. So these
Speaker 1: equations only described fermions, but directs equation describe fermions that
Speaker 1: have anti fermions, whereas my irons equations described fermions that
Speaker 1: are their own anti fermion, which is not a particle
Speaker 1: we've seen before. Like in all the list of particles
Speaker 1: we have in the universe, we have all different kinds
Speaker 1: of fermions, but we haven't ever seen one that is
Speaker 1: its own. Antiparticles, but we know that antiparticles exist, So
Speaker 1: I guess what makes us think that my uronas equations
Speaker 1: are a good way to describe the universe. You're right,
Speaker 1: antiparticles exist, and that's exactly what makes us think that
Speaker 1: maybe my irna was on the right track. The mantra
Speaker 1: is sort of like, the universe does everything that's allowed
Speaker 1: when particle physics. If something isn't prohibited. It just happens
Speaker 1: like those are the rules. Particles will do everything that's
Speaker 1: not like explicitly prohibited. They're sort of like children in
Speaker 1: that way. You know, if you don't say that you
Speaker 1: can't put chocolate chip cookies up your nose, eventually your
Speaker 1: kids will try it. That's a whole different mystery right there.
Speaker 1: That's right now, this is switched into being a parenting podcast.
Speaker 1: Oh man, those are also super popular. Let's just make
Speaker 1: like the one podcast that unified, the grand unifying podcast
Speaker 1: of everything exactly. But the philosophy here is, Look, if
Speaker 1: the mathematics says it's okay, quantum mechanics says it has
Speaker 1: no problem with it, relativity says it has no problem
Speaker 1: with it, then maybe the universe is doing it. Right,
Speaker 1: if there's no reason not to do it. Then what
Speaker 1: we've seen in the past is that the universe does
Speaker 1: it just like with antiparticles. We had never seen one before,
Speaker 1: but the mathematics said it's possible, and then turns out, yeah,
Speaker 1: the universe has a lot of antiparticles in it also.
Speaker 1: So the idea is just like, if it's allowed, then
Speaker 1: probably the universe is doing it. I see and so
Speaker 1: you're saying that there are particles that don't have an
Speaker 1: antiparticle like their their own antiparticle, and so does that
Speaker 1: mean that they can't be described within the wract equations
Speaker 1: or they still can, but there also could be described
Speaker 1: by mayoranas equations. So there are bosons like photons that
Speaker 1: are their own antiparticle. They are not my aerona particles
Speaker 1: because their bosons Myrona only describes fermions. So what we're
Speaker 1: looking for is whether there are fermions that are their
Speaker 1: own antiparticle. And so we know that electrons are not
Speaker 1: myorona particles. They're definitely direct because we've seen their antiparticles.
Speaker 1: We know that quarks are direct particles because we've seen
Speaker 1: anti quarks. One question is what about neutrinos. Are neutrinos
Speaker 1: direct particles? Are there anti neutrinos or are they actually
Speaker 1: myrona particles Like a neutrino is its own antiparticle. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, like maybe a new trina shouldn't be grouped
Speaker 1: in with the other particles. Maybe it's like its own
Speaker 1: whole other category of mathematical particles. Yeah, because neutrinos are
Speaker 1: very very weird. Not only do they have no electric charge,
Speaker 1: which means that they could theoretically be their own anti particle.
Speaker 1: They're also just different in so many other ways. Right.
Speaker 1: For example, neutrinos have very very very tiny little masses. Particles,
Speaker 1: as we talked about, get their masses from the Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't explain like why particles have certain masses,
Speaker 1: and there's a huge range of these masses, like top
Speaker 1: corks are billions of electron bolts, and leptons are millions
Speaker 1: of electron bolts, and then really far down on the
Speaker 1: other edge of the scale are neutrinos, which have masses
Speaker 1: of like single electron bolts or even less, so they're
Speaker 1: like one million the mass of everything else. And that
Speaker 1: makes people wonder, like do they really talk to the Higgs?
Speaker 1: That's the way the other particles do. It seems sort
Speaker 1: of like a different kind of thing. But they do
Speaker 1: have some mass, even if it's super little. That means
Speaker 1: it does interrite with the Higgs. Well, there are other
Speaker 1: ways to get mass. Remember, the Higgs is one way
Speaker 1: to get particles mass. It's a meta chanism that can
Speaker 1: give mass to particles, but it's not the only way
Speaker 1: that particles can get mass, and we suspect that there
Speaker 1: are other things out there in the universe that are
Speaker 1: not getting mass from the Higgs. For example, dark matter.
Speaker 1: Dark matter we're pretty sure is out there. We think
Speaker 1: it might be a particle, and if so, it's almost
Speaker 1: certainly not getting mass from the Higgs. In order to
Speaker 1: be a particle and get your mass from the Higgs,
Speaker 1: you have to satisfy a couple of requirements. One is
Speaker 1: you have to be a direct particle, you have to
Speaker 1: have an antiparticle, and the other is that you have
Speaker 1: to feel the weak force, because the Higgs boson is
Speaker 1: all tied up with the weak force. So dark matter
Speaker 1: might have an antiparticle, So there might be anti dark matter.
Speaker 1: We don't know, but it doesn't feel the weak force
Speaker 1: and so it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs.
Speaker 1: The ntrino definitely feels the weak force, it's definitely part
Speaker 1: of that. So that's possible, but we don't know if
Speaker 1: it has an antiparticle, and that's necessary in order to
Speaker 1: get your mass from the Higgs boson, because remember the
Speaker 1: way the Higgs boson gives a particle it's mass is
Speaker 1: that you have like this particle sort of swimming through
Speaker 1: space and it can sort of emit a Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: But in order for that to happen, you have to
Speaker 1: be able to have a Higgs boson talk to a
Speaker 1: particle and an antiparticle at the same time. It means,
Speaker 1: for example, like a Higgs boson needs to be able
Speaker 1: to decay into that particle and it's antiparticle. There's just
Speaker 1: no way for a Higgs particle to talk to particles
Speaker 1: that don't have their own antiparticles. Well, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a really big change from how people usually talk
Speaker 1: about things because you know, when they describe the Higgs boson,
Speaker 1: even like here on the podcast, we usually say it's
Speaker 1: the particle that gives other particles mass, but really we
Speaker 1: should be saying it's the particle that gives some particles mass.
Speaker 1: Like maybe other particles don't get their mass from the Higgs,
Speaker 1: like maybe the Higgs um. That is not the last
Speaker 1: word on giving things mass. Yeah, we're pretty sure it's
Speaker 1: not the only way to give mass. Two particles. We
Speaker 1: haven't ever seen other particles get mass in other ways.
Speaker 1: So it's like we know for sure it's not the
Speaker 1: only way for particles to get mass, but we've never
Speaker 1: seen anything else do it, and so it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the possibility is there theoretically, but you know, until
Speaker 1: we've seen another example, the Higgs is sort of the
Speaker 1: only one on the playing field I see. So I
Speaker 1: guess the question or the story is that when you're
Speaker 1: you're saying that maybe some particles like neutrinos or maybe
Speaker 1: even dark matter could be the whole different kind of particle,
Speaker 1: like maybe a urana particle that doesn't interact with the Higgs,
Speaker 1: it gets mass in a totally different way exactly. And
Speaker 1: and for neutrinos, really the only clue we have is
Speaker 1: that their masses are weird. Right. The way the particles
Speaker 1: get masses from the Higgs field is that they interact
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field, and different particles get different masses
Speaker 1: because they interact with the Higgs field that different strengths.
Speaker 1: The top cork interacts a lot with the Higgs field,
Speaker 1: so it gets a big mass. The electron interacts less
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field, so it gets less mass. So
Speaker 1: it's possible the neutrinos just like very barely hardly interact
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field and so get any tiny masses.
Speaker 1: But that would be really weird, like why are those
Speaker 1: numbers so so tiny a million times smaller than the
Speaker 1: other particles. Maybe instead it's a more natural, simpler explanation
Speaker 1: if they're getting their mass another way, if they have
Speaker 1: Myerona masses instead of direct masses from Higgs field. WHOA,
Speaker 1: and you're saying they could also explain maybe dark matter,
Speaker 1: like maybe dark matter is good to also be a
Speaker 1: mi Orona particle. That would also explain why we can't
Speaker 1: see it. Dark matter could be a Myrona particle. Exactly,
Speaker 1: we know that dark matter, if it has mass and
Speaker 1: it's a particle, it has to get its mass in
Speaker 1: some other way from the Higgs field, because we don't
Speaker 1: think that it feels the weak force. So exactly, it's
Speaker 1: possible that dark matter also gets its mass through a
Speaker 1: Myrona mechanism. We cracked the mystery releasa how to ask
Speaker 1: about it? Maybe dark matter killed my ironic because it
Speaker 1: didn't want it to like spill its secrets. Cosmic conspiracy.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into whether or not we've
Speaker 1: actually seen my Orana particles and what we can claim
Speaker 1: we've seen about them. First, let's take another quick break,
Speaker 1: all right, we're talking about murder mystery. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: what happened to a torm Rana? Only particles in the building.
Speaker 1: It was a dark and stormy night. It probably was
Speaker 1: a dark and stormy night. Yeah. He might have gone
Speaker 1: to Argentina. He might have gone to Venezuela. He might
Speaker 1: have also sadly killed himself. There are also some theories
Speaker 1: that he gave up physics and his entire life and
Speaker 1: just became a beggar wandering the streets of Naples forever?
Speaker 1: Does that happen often with physicists? I think there's sometimes
Speaker 1: this dream of a simpler life, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: struggling with funding agencies and intellectual rivals. I don't know,
Speaker 1: not something that I've been tempted by. Interesting. All right, well, um,
Speaker 1: so we talked about how there might be this whole
Speaker 1: new class of particles called magorona particles. There's totally different
Speaker 1: than the other particles we know about the quarks and
Speaker 1: the electrons, because they're described by totally different mathematical equations.
Speaker 1: But the only reason we think they might exist is
Speaker 1: because there is a mathematical equation that might describe them,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a loop and thinking there, but
Speaker 1: we haven't actually seen any, have we We have not
Speaker 1: seen any Myrona particles in the universe. But there's sort
Speaker 1: of two ways that we could see them. We could
Speaker 1: see like fundamental Myrona particles, like things we think are
Speaker 1: fundamental elements of the universe, like electrons and quarks, whatever,
Speaker 1: and in neutrino would be in that category. If a
Speaker 1: neutrino was a Myrona particle instead of a direct particle,
Speaker 1: that would be mind blowing, That would be a huge discovery.
Speaker 1: Another way is to see like quasi particles that follow
Speaker 1: the same mathematics of the myron equation, but there aren't
Speaker 1: really particles in the exact same sense of the word, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're not fundamental to the universe. They're just they
Speaker 1: just kind of like come up kind of like um
Speaker 1: sometimes atoms get together and they form a little ball,
Speaker 1: and you can treat that as a particle. Sort of
Speaker 1: goes to a deeper question, which is like what is
Speaker 1: a particle anyway? You know? And quasi particles we have
Speaker 1: a whole fun podcast episode about what they are. They're
Speaker 1: like persistent quantized discrete you know, excitations of solids instead
Speaker 1: of like persistent, quantized, discrete excitations of fundamental fields of
Speaker 1: the universe. So instead of like you know, an excitation
Speaker 1: in the electron field, you have an excitation in some
Speaker 1: like weird semiconductor or in some crystal or in some fluid.
Speaker 1: But mathematically they follow the same rules, and so we
Speaker 1: call them quasi particle. Right. It's sort of like an
Speaker 1: ocean wave, like a wave in the in the ocean
Speaker 1: or a lake. It's actually a wave in water. It's
Speaker 1: not a wave in the sort of fundamental field of
Speaker 1: the of the universe, but it's still described by a
Speaker 1: wave equation. Yeah, exactly, it's the same mathematics. And so
Speaker 1: you know, you could say, hey, quasi particles are particles too,
Speaker 1: and that's this reasonable point, you know, philosophically, Really, what's
Speaker 1: the difference. It's just the underlying thing that is oscillating,
Speaker 1: Like an ocean wave is still a wave. Ocean waves
Speaker 1: are definitely still waves, especially when they slam down upon you.
Speaker 1: Even if they're not waves in the fundamental fabric of
Speaker 1: space time still powerful. Be funny if people could serve
Speaker 1: a strap concepts, it'd be cool to be a gravity
Speaker 1: wave surfer. That sounds like a cool superhero, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that has already been invented actually by Marvel.
Speaker 1: He's called the Silver Surfer. What is he sing on anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe gravitational waves. But it's still possible
Speaker 1: that we could discover fundamental myron of particles. Like the
Speaker 1: jury is still out on whether the neutrino is its
Speaker 1: own antiparticle or not. And if it is its own antiparticle,
Speaker 1: it can do something really interesting. You can annihilate itself.
Speaker 1: So like when a neutrino hits another neutrino, they could
Speaker 1: just like poof, turn into a little blob of energy,
Speaker 1: the same thing that happens when an electron it's a positron,
Speaker 1: they annihilate and turn into like a photon. So if
Speaker 1: neutrinos are my or on a particles, they can annihilate
Speaker 1: into each other. Well, but I guess the question is
Speaker 1: with the netrino, if it is a ma Urona particle,
Speaker 1: does that mean that it's it's like it's writing some
Speaker 1: other type of quantum field, like a Maurana quantum field,
Speaker 1: or would it still be right in the same kind
Speaker 1: of field as the other particles, or maybe not even
Speaker 1: a field at all. Yeah, great question. It's still would
Speaker 1: be a quantum field, and it still would be an
Speaker 1: oscillation in that quantum field. But yeah, it would be
Speaker 1: sort of a different field that follows a slightly different equation.
Speaker 1: But these rules for what happens to fields are all
Speaker 1: following quantum mechanics and relativity. Right. But you're saying, like,
Speaker 1: maybe there are many fields in the universe, some of
Speaker 1: them follow one set of equations and others follow another
Speaker 1: different set of equations. Absolutely, And we know that's true
Speaker 1: already because we see like Fermion fields and Boson fields
Speaker 1: and fields with mass and fields without mass. Right, you
Speaker 1: can unify these all into like one grand equation perhaps,
Speaker 1: but there are different equations that describe the emotions of
Speaker 1: different fields. And again here we're talking about are like
Speaker 1: how oscillations move through the fundamental fields of the universe,
Speaker 1: And we're developing mathematics wave equations, for example, to describe
Speaker 1: that that are also consistent with the underlying quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: and rules of special relativity. And so we're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: if the fields can do this kind of wiggle and
Speaker 1: some other fields can do that other kind of wiggle,
Speaker 1: oh interesting, alright, So then um, but you're saying that
Speaker 1: we've seen we've sort of seen myrna particles, but maybe
Speaker 1: at like the water wave level, but not at the
Speaker 1: like the fundamental level. They are really cool experiments trying
Speaker 1: to see fundamental myrona particles neutrinos, And if you're interested
Speaker 1: in that, you should check out our episode on neutrino
Speaker 1: masses and neutrino lists double beta decay, which is crazy
Speaker 1: set of experiments that are basically trying to smash neutrinos
Speaker 1: into each other to see if they annihilate. But there
Speaker 1: are other ways to look for myrona particles, and those
Speaker 1: are myron a quasi particles, as you say, like the
Speaker 1: wave level version, and here people are trying to create
Speaker 1: myrona fermions not as neutrinos, but as like emergent properties
Speaker 1: of semiconductors. But they wouldn't be fundamental, right like they
Speaker 1: wouldn't They would just be sort of like a thermodynamics
Speaker 1: law or something something that describes links at a much
Speaker 1: sort of higher level than fundamental particles. Yeah, not individual
Speaker 1: fundamental particles, but if you can get fundamental particles to
Speaker 1: act together so that together they do something which follows
Speaker 1: the rules of the Myron equation. Then you can say, oh, look,
Speaker 1: we've seen an emergent Myron AFFIRMI on the same way, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about waves, they're following the wave equation.
Speaker 1: What are the individual particles of the way of doing
Speaker 1: Who knows? They're not following the wave equation. But together
Speaker 1: all those particles acting in concert are following the wave equation.
Speaker 1: So now you get a bunch of electrons together, put
Speaker 1: them under very strange conditions nano wires and very strong
Speaker 1: magnetic fields, and get them to do a funny dance,
Speaker 1: a dance which is described by the mayrona equation. Then
Speaker 1: you can say I've seen a Mayer on a quasi particle. Woa.
Speaker 1: But I guess that would just validate that the equation works.
Speaker 1: But it wouldn't. Would it tell you something fundamental about
Speaker 1: the universe. Oh, that's a really good question and a
Speaker 1: huge argument between different fields of physics. You know, people
Speaker 1: say like, well, if you discover myronof fermions in solid
Speaker 1: state physics as quasi particles, does that tell you that
Speaker 1: they're allowed in the universe? I don't really know. It
Speaker 1: tells you that the physics of the equation is valid
Speaker 1: the same way like seeing waves tells you. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: wave equation works, and that helps you have confidence that
Speaker 1: you can use the wave equation to talk about fluctuations
Speaker 1: of quantum fields. Also, it doesn't mean that there are
Speaker 1: quantum fields following that same equation necessarily, So there's a
Speaker 1: deep argument there about what it really tells you about
Speaker 1: the universe. Yeah, just because you see an ocean wave
Speaker 1: doesn't mean wouldn't necessarily mean that fundamental particles act like waves, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. But you know there's a lesson there, Like
Speaker 1: it says that the mathematics is correct, that the mathematics
Speaker 1: really does describe something the physical universe does, and so
Speaker 1: that suggests that there might also be parts of the
Speaker 1: universe that behave the same way, that this might be
Speaker 1: sort of a universal phenomena in the wave equation. We
Speaker 1: see it everywhere, right, and so there is some reason
Speaker 1: to think that if you found a mathematically valid description
Speaker 1: of what the universe does, that maybe it also does
Speaker 1: at other places. Oh, I see, we're sort of at
Speaker 1: the point where we have worked out the my Urano
Speaker 1: equations or my Urona did and people like it, but
Speaker 1: we haven't actually seen them even in a sort of
Speaker 1: ocean wave level. I thought that we had because we
Speaker 1: talked about sort of seeing holes in materials that act
Speaker 1: like my Orona particles. So there's been a controversy because
Speaker 1: there's a group in eighteen that claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: my Irna fermions in matter. They created these nano wires
Speaker 1: that were like a hundred nanometers wide and one micrometer long.
Speaker 1: They put them at a very very cold temperatures and
Speaker 1: very strong magnetic fields actually made them into a topological
Speaker 1: superconductor that we talked about on the podcast recently, And
Speaker 1: they claimed in that these were Myrona fermions, that they
Speaker 1: had arranged the electrons in this fancy way, that they
Speaker 1: followed the rules of myron Its equation. Then people couldn't
Speaker 1: reproduce their results. Then people dug into the details of
Speaker 1: their paper and found some mistakes, so they actually had
Speaker 1: to retract this paper and this claim that they remiron
Speaker 1: A fermions. Wow, it seems like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: ever going into confirming this theory, Like is this theory
Speaker 1: that interesting or beautiful or like we've only ever found
Speaker 1: two theories that describe maybe things at the fundamental level,
Speaker 1: it's not easy to bring quantum mechanics and relativity together.
Speaker 1: They're sort of famously difficult to get to play together
Speaker 1: in the same field. It's not something we've achieved in general,
Speaker 1: like general relativity and quantum mechanics just do not cooperate.
Speaker 1: This special case of quantum mechanics and special relativity is
Speaker 1: easier task, but still difficult. So the fact that there
Speaker 1: are two solutions to it is really intriguing makes people
Speaker 1: really want to dig into it. There are also possible applications.
Speaker 1: If you could develop myron a fermions in sort of
Speaker 1: solid state physics, and these like excitation of electrons their
Speaker 1: applications to quantum computing. They can make quantum computing much
Speaker 1: much more powerful and much more robust to errors. Oh
Speaker 1: why is that because they're they're bigger. Has to do
Speaker 1: with building a very different kind of quantum computer than
Speaker 1: the one we're used to thinking about. Normal quantum computers
Speaker 1: are like individual ions in a certain quantum state. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's been up, maybe it's been down, And the power
Speaker 1: of the quantum computer comes from not knowing exactly. And
Speaker 1: it's key that for those cubits, those quantum bits that
Speaker 1: they stay isolated that they don't get like bothered by
Speaker 1: the environment, because then they decohere and they lose all
Speaker 1: of their quantum fuzziness. They're like forced to choose already
Speaker 1: spin up, already has been down. That's the typical quantum
Speaker 1: computer that we've been talking about. But there's a new
Speaker 1: idea for a quantum computer called a topological quantum computer,
Speaker 1: where the information isn't stored in the state of an
Speaker 1: individual particle, but rather in the relationships between particles. Like
Speaker 1: I have these two particles over here and they're sort
Speaker 1: of entangled with each other, and myrono fermions can do
Speaker 1: that because myrona fermions don't come from an individual particle.
Speaker 1: They come from like the connection of two electrons into
Speaker 1: this sort of emergent state of a myrona particle. And
Speaker 1: if you put them under these very special conditions, then
Speaker 1: it's much easier for those particles to retain that quantum
Speaker 1: information because the information is instored in like the details
Speaker 1: of where the electron is, but how these two electrons
Speaker 1: are sort of connected to each other, so they're sort
Speaker 1: of protected by some of the symmetries of the myrona
Speaker 1: behavior from decohering. Yeah, and that's good for like error protection, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you have a quantum computer that uses these things,
Speaker 1: because the cupids are tied together, they they're less likely
Speaker 1: to get kind of a destroyed exactly. And that's the
Speaker 1: problem with comin and computing is that it's very hard
Speaker 1: to keep your quantum bits isolated from the environment. But
Speaker 1: a topological quantum computer sort of doesn't care as much
Speaker 1: if it gets bothered by the environment because the interesting parts,
Speaker 1: the parts that you care about, aren't in the details
Speaker 1: of where the particles are, but how those particles are
Speaker 1: related to each other. So connected to this idea of topology,
Speaker 1: you know, there's this famous example, like a topologist says that,
Speaker 1: like a coffee cup is the same thing as a donut,
Speaker 1: because fundamentally they're the same shape. They both have like
Speaker 1: one hole in them. There's this property of having one
Speaker 1: hole which doesn't change as you like slowly deform a
Speaker 1: coffee cup into a donut or back. I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: there are different things. You wouldn't want to dunk your
Speaker 1: coffee cup in your coffee cup, but topologically those are similar.
Speaker 1: You don't want to know your own a lot tap
Speaker 1: and The idea is that a topological quantum computer the
Speaker 1: information and it is invariant to the kind of transformations
Speaker 1: that the universe typically applies to quantum computers, which is
Speaker 1: that it pokes them, it bumps them, it it's hard
Speaker 1: to keep them separate. So the information there is sort
Speaker 1: of invariant to the kinds of things that the universe
Speaker 1: typically does. Two objects, and so it's easier to keep
Speaker 1: the information preserved and to not have a deco here.
Speaker 1: And that's the kind of thing you can do with
Speaker 1: myron affermions if you can build them, but nobody's successfully
Speaker 1: done it so far. Yeah, speaking of cart and physics
Speaker 1: actually made a video about to his I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know that, like seven years ago, about this
Speaker 1: idea of using my uranna particles and quantum not to
Speaker 1: like do error protection and quantum computers. Oh very cool. Well,
Speaker 1: I know that this big group of cal Tech that
Speaker 1: are experts in this, John Preskill and Jason Alca, they
Speaker 1: work on this kind of stuff. It's mind boggling and amazing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. I work with them to make the videos.
Speaker 1: So if you're interested, you can on YouTube. You can
Speaker 1: search for quantum knots and maybe also PhD comics and
Speaker 1: you'll see the video that might help you. Yeah, awesome,
Speaker 1: because a lot of this stuff is very tricky to visualize,
Speaker 1: and so I'm sure you're awesome. Cartoons would be helpful
Speaker 1: to listeners, So go check that out if you want
Speaker 1: a better visual for what's going on. But I guess
Speaker 1: the main point is that, you know, we have these
Speaker 1: equations in my Uranna, equations that also maybe potentially describe particles,
Speaker 1: and they might describe from the mental particles like the
Speaker 1: neutrino or dark matter, and they might describe things that
Speaker 1: we can use pretty usefully for quantum computers exactly. And
Speaker 1: it's a sort of fun question to explore, Like the
Speaker 1: math says that this can exist, so does it exist?
Speaker 1: And some physicists are totally convinced. Professor Sarma from University
Speaker 1: of Maryland. As his quote in one article I read,
Speaker 1: he says, I guarantee you the myrona will be seen
Speaker 1: because the theory is pristine. This is an engineering problem,
Speaker 1: this is not a physics problem. That's a direct quote.
Speaker 1: So wait, are you saying, Daniel, that physicists are really
Speaker 1: just here to confirm the math for mathematicians. Are you
Speaker 1: saying mathematicians are really at the top here. You know,
Speaker 1: mathematicians explore universes that might not exist. Also, they don't
Speaker 1: have to follow the rules of quantum mechanics and special relativity.
Speaker 1: But mathematics that follows the rules of the universe. You know,
Speaker 1: that's likely to be physics. Yeah, I feel like you're
Speaker 1: saying that the physics are religious. The middleman between mathematicians
Speaker 1: and engineers exactly, as long as we get our cut,
Speaker 1: we're happy to be the middleman put on top. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe that explains what happened to myrona right, Maybe the
Speaker 1: mathematicians and the engineers got together to cut out the middleman.
Speaker 1: Oh man, don't dun't done the plot? Thinkins It was
Speaker 1: his closest collaborator, the engineer. You got to watch out
Speaker 1: for those engineers. Yeah, they'll stab you in the back.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting to think that, you know, how we
Speaker 1: um this process of discovering how the universe works. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a sort of a combination of poking around but
Speaker 1: also kind of thinking about these equations and seeing what's
Speaker 1: possible from a mathematical sense, because sometimes that means that
Speaker 1: it is true Yeah, we can do exploration in different ways.
Speaker 1: We can go out and see what the universe is
Speaker 1: actually doing, and you can follow the breadcrumbs of the
Speaker 1: mathematics to think what else the universe might be doing.
Speaker 1: And sometimes that's right. Often that's right, you know. The
Speaker 1: Higgs Boson is another great example. The mathematics says this
Speaker 1: is the simplest way for particles to get mass, and
Speaker 1: then we went out and found it. So there really
Speaker 1: are two different arms of exploration that are working hand
Speaker 1: in hand. Well, we hope you enjoyed that and then
Speaker 1: made you think a little bit about what we know
Speaker 1: and don't know about the universe. It seems like maybe
Speaker 1: we don't know how all of the quantum field in
Speaker 1: the univers could work. And thanks for joining us. See
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio or more podcast For my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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