Speaker 1: Jorgey, you're a fan of oatmeal, aren't you. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: been done too eatable every once in a while. So
Speaker 1: how hot do you like your oatmeal? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: not too hot, not too cold, you know, maybe in
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks zone. So then, in physics terms, does that
Speaker 1: mean like hotter than the surface of Pluto, maybe colder
Speaker 1: than the surface of the Sun. Yes, somewhere in there.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a big range. All right, let's narrow
Speaker 1: it down. Maybe hotter than room temperature on Earth, colder
Speaker 1: than room temperature on Venus. Yeah, I'm not sure which
Speaker 1: one's hotter or colder, but that that sounds about right. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe we should use chemistry instead, like hotter than a
Speaker 1: frozen cube of oatmeal, colder than oatmeal plasma. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I should leave you in charge of my breakfast.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to come up with creative menus for
Speaker 1: the Daniel and Jorge restaurant. I'm not sure I should
Speaker 1: leave in charge by lunch either. H I am Poor
Speaker 1: hammy cartoonists and the co author of Frequently Asked Questions
Speaker 1: about the Universe. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist
Speaker 1: and a professor at UC Irvine, and I'm not a
Speaker 1: fan of menu writing. Oh have you had to do
Speaker 1: it several times? No, I mean that I'm a critic
Speaker 1: of menu writing, and I'm not often impressed. You know,
Speaker 1: those menus to have things like wild Mountain raspberry sauce
Speaker 1: or you know, they just keep adding adjective to everything
Speaker 1: to make it sound more impressive. I see you just
Speaker 1: want like what food like you know, menu options, food
Speaker 1: and dessert. That sounds pretty good. Yeah, make it direct,
Speaker 1: like surprised me, none of this flower language. Yes, I'll
Speaker 1: order dinner please. Why even have a menu, Daniel, Just
Speaker 1: go to a restaurant and just haven't bring you food
Speaker 1: that sounds great. Actually, I would love to be at
Speaker 1: the chef's whim. You don't have to make any decisions
Speaker 1: fight it could just put a tube down your throat
Speaker 1: and then you'd be out of there in five minutes.
Speaker 1: Eating is a hassle anyway, But anyways, Welcome to a
Speaker 1: podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio in which we serve up the entire
Speaker 1: menu of all of the mysteries of modern physics and
Speaker 1: the questions about the nature of reality and our universe.
Speaker 1: We serve up the delicious dish of all of our
Speaker 1: curiosity about the way things work, how everything came together
Speaker 1: to form the universe that we know and love, and
Speaker 1: how it may all fall apart in the future. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we try to nurse you with amazing facts about
Speaker 1: the universe and fill you up with nutritious and sometimes
Speaker 1: hot titbits about our amazing cosmos. The universe is quite
Speaker 1: a meal, after all. It's more than an appetizer, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. It's more like a litter or brunch. What
Speaker 1: do you think. I think it's an all you can
Speaker 1: eat buffet. I mean I could just keep going back
Speaker 1: and back and back until I blow up with physics knowledge.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that violate the love of energy conservation and endless fae? Well,
Speaker 1: as long as the universe keeps expanding and my waistline
Speaker 1: keeps expanding, then we're all in harmony. Oh man, Wait,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you turn into a black hole eventually? My plan
Speaker 1: is to just red shift my way down to weight loss.
Speaker 1: I see red. It's a slimming color. Is that what
Speaker 1: you're saying? If I'm moving away at high speeds, then
Speaker 1: technically I have less energy absolutely. Oh yeah, And there's
Speaker 1: also like left contraction right as you're moving faster, you
Speaker 1: seem smaller, but only in one direction. So just make
Speaker 1: sure they get your good side. I'll rely on that
Speaker 1: when I whizz by the photographer. Wit, how do they
Speaker 1: take your picture if you're going faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of light? And do you actually post before the pictures taken?
Speaker 1: You know, the whole sequence of events here gets all
Speaker 1: you know, relativity confusing. Yeah, I think we're confusing ourselves
Speaker 1: with physics and pr I don't think they're a good combination.
Speaker 1: But it is a pretty wonderful universe, full of many
Speaker 1: options for us to dive into and explore and taste.
Speaker 1: I guess it's sort of like there's a tasting menu
Speaker 1: and and this is what this podcast is. And the
Speaker 1: universe offers so many stories that so many different temperatures.
Speaker 1: You can study the frozen interior of crazy ice planets,
Speaker 1: you can study the hot, intense environment at the center
Speaker 1: of our sun. There are mysteries at all temperatures. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question. What is the range of possible
Speaker 1: temperatures in the universe? Right, Like you could have zero
Speaker 1: degrease kelvin. That's one extreme. Could you have infinite temperature?
Speaker 1: On the other side, We did a whole podcast episode
Speaker 1: about the hottest things in the universe and another one
Speaker 1: about the coldest things in the universe, so check those
Speaker 1: out if you're interested. But briefly, we know that things
Speaker 1: can't actually get down to zero degrees kelvin because quantum
Speaker 1: and certainty requires things to always be vibrating a tiny
Speaker 1: little bit. Quantum fields can never relaxed actual zero, but
Speaker 1: you can get pretty close. On the other side, there
Speaker 1: is a temperature above which we don't think temperature really
Speaker 1: makes any sense. It's called absolute hot, and it's sort
Speaker 1: of the maximum temperature you can have in which things
Speaker 1: sort of stay. Things above that quantum gravity has to
Speaker 1: take over them. We don't even really know how who
Speaker 1: describe the universe at that crazy high energy density, Well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a vodka brand. Absolute hot, So what
Speaker 1: does that mean. It's like when the matter particles are
Speaker 1: moving it close to the speed of light. It's more
Speaker 1: than just the particles moving near the speed of light
Speaker 1: because velocity is relative. It's about energy density. It's about
Speaker 1: having things being really compact and also having high speeds
Speaker 1: when things get really really crazy compact, then gravity takes over.
Speaker 1: But if you have really small distances, then quantum mechanics
Speaker 1: is important. And so it's sort of like asking the question,
Speaker 1: what is the state of matter at the heart of
Speaker 1: a black hole? We just don't really know, and extrapolating
Speaker 1: to those conditions from our knowledge of the universe doesn't
Speaker 1: really even make sense. So absolute hot is sort of
Speaker 1: like a statement about we can't really say anything above
Speaker 1: this temperature because we're pretty sure our theory would be wrong. Well,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely interesting, it is, and thermodynamics is very complicated.
Speaker 1: These connections between density and temperature, some of them break
Speaker 1: down our ideas of like what temperature is. And if
Speaker 1: you're interested in those questions and the subtle connects between
Speaker 1: energy and density and velocity, check out our episode on
Speaker 1: what is the hottest thing in the universe. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's how hot things can get in the universe, and
Speaker 1: then there's how hot are the things that we've seen
Speaker 1: in this universe. And things can get pretty hot as
Speaker 1: far as we've seen in this universe, right, that's right.
Speaker 1: The buffet of our universe offers a lot of different
Speaker 1: things to explore from the temperature that we are used to,
Speaker 1: sort of like between zero and a hundred degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: Two hotter things inside stars or inside neutron stars, or
Speaker 1: sometimes even hotter temperatures whoa hotter than a star is
Speaker 1: in a star sort of like the hottest anything can get,
Speaker 1: right like at the center of the Sun or the
Speaker 1: center of neutron star. No, it actually it turns out
Speaker 1: that some of the plasma in between galaxies and in
Speaker 1: between stars can be even hotter because the particles are
Speaker 1: moving very very high speeds. But again, those guys are
Speaker 1: not very dense, so if you put yourself in the
Speaker 1: interstellar plasma or in the intergalactic medium, then you would
Speaker 1: freeze really quickly because there isn't a lot of heat there.
Speaker 1: But the particles are moving really really fast. So technically
Speaker 1: there are super high temperatures. But the hottest things in
Speaker 1: the universe are actually things created here on Earth by
Speaker 1: particle physicists. Well, they are pretty hot. We are the
Speaker 1: hottest people in the universe creating the hottest things in
Speaker 1: the universe. We are too hot to handle. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's what I mean. It's like if you have
Speaker 1: a particle out there in space and it's moving it
Speaker 1: close to the speed of light. Wouldn't technically the space
Speaker 1: around it be super duper hot, right, because temperature is
Speaker 1: sort of like about the average like per particle kinetic energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we talked about in that episode. The definition of
Speaker 1: temperature is a statistical property, so it's something you can
Speaker 1: talk about for a set of particles. And most theorists
Speaker 1: say the temperature isn't defined for a single particle, like
Speaker 1: it just doesn't have a meaning. It's something, as you say,
Speaker 1: it's about the average motion of these particles, not the
Speaker 1: specific velocity of one. So what's the temperature of a
Speaker 1: single particle flying through the universe? It's not defined. Temperature
Speaker 1: is some thing you can only really talk about for
Speaker 1: a set of particles. What about the temperature for a
Speaker 1: dred particles moving at the speed of light. I feel
Speaker 1: like we're gonna have this negotiation and you're gonna ask
Speaker 1: me what's the smallest number of particles for which you
Speaker 1: can talk about temperature? At one point? Can you say
Speaker 1: something is hot? Daniel? So this is thermal physics, and
Speaker 1: temperature is a macroscopic quantity. It's something which emerges from
Speaker 1: the motion of microscopic quantities. It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: concept of value in economics. You know, what is the
Speaker 1: value of a certain painting. If there's only one person
Speaker 1: in the world, and they can say the value is
Speaker 1: whatever they want, they have to be able to sell it.
Speaker 1: They have to be able to transfer to somebody else.
Speaker 1: So value in the market depends on there being like
Speaker 1: a bunch of people buying and selling something, so you
Speaker 1: can get a sense for the value. It's sort of
Speaker 1: the same with temperature. You can't have the temperature of
Speaker 1: an individual particle. You have to the temperature of a
Speaker 1: set of objects. There's no like fixed threshold where you
Speaker 1: can define temperature, and the concept of temperature sort of
Speaker 1: loses meaning as the number of particles gets smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1: So what's the threshold? I don't know. A hundred is
Speaker 1: probably safe, but you're on the edge. It sounds like
Speaker 1: we need to write a new best selling book called
Speaker 1: physics economics. Sounds pretty freaky. But anyways, we are talking
Speaker 1: today here about something that is maybe even hotter than
Speaker 1: the inside of stars, something that is actually made here
Speaker 1: on Earth by physicists. So today on the podcast will
Speaker 1: be tackling the question what is a quark gluon plasma.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of a worth mouthful to say it is.
Speaker 1: But it's super fascinating because it lets us explore how
Speaker 1: the universe looks different at different temperatures. You know, the
Speaker 1: universe at its smaller scale of made of something we
Speaker 1: don't know. But as you crank up the temperature, all
Speaker 1: sorts of really fascinating and interesting properties emerge. You know,
Speaker 1: normal matter or gases or plasmas. All these properties sort
Speaker 1: of arise from how these lower level bits come together.
Speaker 1: It's really cool to make the universe show you like
Speaker 1: a new thing that it can do. Mmmm. I think
Speaker 1: you guys just sit around and pair up different interesting
Speaker 1: words together and then then and then that sets your
Speaker 1: research agenda. You should just like cork gluon plasma. Sure,
Speaker 1: let's go with that. Yeah, next we're gonna look for
Speaker 1: like the cork tiger plasma. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe a hit Netflix show as well. But this
Speaker 1: is an interesting state of matter, something that's maybe hotter
Speaker 1: than the insights of neutron stars, which is a little
Speaker 1: mind blowing. But as usually, we were wondering how many
Speaker 1: people out there chart to her of these three words
Speaker 1: put together cork glue on plasma. So Daniel went out
Speaker 1: there into the internet to ask people what the cork
Speaker 1: gluon plasma. So thank you very much to those who
Speaker 1: volunteered to speculate on this question without the chance to
Speaker 1: google it. We're very happy to know your thoughts, and
Speaker 1: if you out there listening right now, would like to
Speaker 1: hear your voice on the podcast for everyone else to appreciate.
Speaker 1: Please don't be shy right to us two questions at
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. So think about it for
Speaker 1: a second. What do you think a cork glue on
Speaker 1: plasma is? Here's what blood to say. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would guess that it has something to do with,
Speaker 1: for example, pressure or temperature. Being at such an extreme
Speaker 1: point that matter, but the state of matter changes drastically
Speaker 1: and becomes something similar to well plasma or both Einstein condensate. Well,
Speaker 1: the plasma has probably obtained when you have really high temperatures,
Speaker 1: so I guess this probably existed in the early state
Speaker 1: of the universe. I don't know, just guess. A quark
Speaker 1: gluon plasma is a small unit of blood glued onto
Speaker 1: an organ to increase the absorption of oxygen. Well, I
Speaker 1: know the quirks are what make up the lutron and proton,
Speaker 1: and the gluons are what buying them together using the
Speaker 1: strong nuclear force. Since they can't exist on their own
Speaker 1: without being closely bound. I would assume it's high energy
Speaker 1: state that the gluons are in the kind of bind
Speaker 1: them together, almost like a liquid adhesive. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that a quark gluon plasmas when you have a
Speaker 1: high enough energy state so that the quarks can actually
Speaker 1: break out of their groups of three and roam around
Speaker 1: freely with gluons passing back and forth between these quirks.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this level of energy is possible
Speaker 1: in our current universe, but maybe it could have been
Speaker 1: in the very early stages of the Big Bang. This
Speaker 1: is something that hardy might be inside a netron star
Speaker 1: as far as I know. That's when you have a
Speaker 1: lot of energy and matter. Basically, uh, the separation between
Speaker 1: protons breaks down and all these quirks just sort of
Speaker 1: mingle in like a soup of quirky goodness. Oh, I
Speaker 1: know that it's a plasma of quirks and gluons really hot,
Speaker 1: all right? It sounds like someone confused blood plasma with
Speaker 1: physics plus. Right, that's something in your blood, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: plasma is something in your blood, but that's totally different.
Speaker 1: That's just the same letters. That means something completely different
Speaker 1: than sort of physics plasma. So don't get a physics
Speaker 1: plasma injection next time you go to the doctor. And
Speaker 1: that's for the vampire physicists to do rasor truck exactly.
Speaker 1: Quark gluon vampires. That's the next crossover event. But some
Speaker 1: pretty good answers here. I think most people sort of
Speaker 1: associate plasma with something really hot, I guess, and then
Speaker 1: it did a lot of people here seem to know
Speaker 1: it's a state of matter, and so I guess you
Speaker 1: just kind of put two and two together, and so
Speaker 1: it's a plasma of quarks and gluons. They're on the
Speaker 1: right track in thinking that it's a new state of matter,
Speaker 1: like another thing that matter can do, another way the
Speaker 1: universe can operate. It's one that really lets us explore
Speaker 1: deep and fundamental questions about the nature of the universe
Speaker 1: and the early universe and why we are all here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but most people seem to also know that it's associated
Speaker 1: with temperature and so that that it's something really hot,
Speaker 1: and so let's dive into it, Daniel, Let's maybe take
Speaker 1: it back to the basics. What is the basic definition
Speaker 1: of a cork blue on plasma? So cork gluon plasma
Speaker 1: is an extension of our idea of states of matter.
Speaker 1: So you're probably familiar with solids and liquids and gases
Speaker 1: as different states of matter. You take the same basic
Speaker 1: objects in this case atoms, right, helium, hydrogen, neon, whatever,
Speaker 1: and it's just a question of how hot they are,
Speaker 1: and the temperature they are determines how they move. So
Speaker 1: that's what the states of matter are. In a solid,
Speaker 1: the atoms are bound together in a lattice, right, it's
Speaker 1: like a crystal where they're like not moving and they're
Speaker 1: squeezed together. As that melts becomes a liquid and the
Speaker 1: particles are free to slide around, but you're sort of
Speaker 1: constant volume. And then if he heats up even more,
Speaker 1: the particles loosen up even more and they fly around
Speaker 1: freely and they're going everywhere. Beyond that, there's another state
Speaker 1: of matter, plasma that people are probably heard of, where
Speaker 1: you break things up even further. So you take the atom,
Speaker 1: and now you crack it open. Instead of just having
Speaker 1: atoms flying around, you have the constituents of the atom
Speaker 1: separating from each other. So the electrons leave the nucleus
Speaker 1: and go off on their own because there's enough temperature
Speaker 1: for them to like escape from the energy bonds of
Speaker 1: the nucleus. So now you have charged particles. So plasma
Speaker 1: is like a gas, but with charged particles instead of
Speaker 1: neutral particles, which makes it much more complex and intense. Right,
Speaker 1: I think you sort of hit when you said that
Speaker 1: it's something escapes the bonds of something, and so I
Speaker 1: think that's a big thing in these this idea of
Speaker 1: states of matter, right, because you know, at the at
Speaker 1: the end of it, insologist particles put together in different ways,
Speaker 1: but there seems to be some sort of like transcision
Speaker 1: points or things that either like stuck together in a
Speaker 1: certain way or not stuck together or not stuck together
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, exactly. So the whole universe is just
Speaker 1: like particles put together in different ways, and in the
Speaker 1: end you should be able to describe any configuration using
Speaker 1: like the most fundamental rules of how those particles work.
Speaker 1: We don't have those most fundum mental rules. We don't
Speaker 1: really understand the basic rules of the universe. But what
Speaker 1: we do have are these effective rules. Like we say,
Speaker 1: in this configuration, when things are stuck together, the most
Speaker 1: important thing are these bonds between the atoms, and they
Speaker 1: can be described roughly using this kind of mathematics. Fascinating
Speaker 1: things as you say that there are these transitions when
Speaker 1: like things get loosened up, and now you can use
Speaker 1: a different kind of mathematics to describe it, Like the
Speaker 1: math of crystals is totally different from the math of fluids,
Speaker 1: from the math of gases, right, And it's fascinating that
Speaker 1: there are these transitions. That's why we even say that
Speaker 1: we have states of matter instead of just saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look we've got particles and here are the rules. It's
Speaker 1: because these phenomena emerged, just like we were saying earlier,
Speaker 1: the temperature is an emergent phenomena, the property of many objects.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of states of matter, of solids and
Speaker 1: liquids and gases emerges from what's going on underneath, right,
Speaker 1: I guess what I mean. It's like, it's not something
Speaker 1: we're imagining, right, It's not like the universe is actually
Speaker 1: sort of like a continuous grade in between things are
Speaker 1: pact really close together and things that are just out
Speaker 1: there loose. It's like the universe really does sort of
Speaker 1: like click into certain ways of arranging matter. That's a
Speaker 1: really subtle philosophical point. Whether this is our interpretation or
Speaker 1: whether this is inherent to the universe, it really depends
Speaker 1: on what you think about, like the primacy of mathematics,
Speaker 1: whether it's part of the universe or just part of
Speaker 1: our thought. You know, we might, for example, meet alien
Speaker 1: physicists who think that, like our definition of phases are
Speaker 1: a nonsense, and they have a different way of looking
Speaker 1: at it because different quantities are important to them. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's not clear whether this is like
Speaker 1: part of the universe or just our description of it.
Speaker 1: But either way, it's something that's very useful for us, right,
Speaker 1: because it's a way for us to simplify things and
Speaker 1: have like simple mathematical stories that work without having to
Speaker 1: every time go down to string theory and new calculations
Speaker 1: from there. Right, It's not like the universe like actually
Speaker 1: changes or like the rules of the universe change, Like
Speaker 1: the universe is continuous, you know, things don't like suddenly change,
Speaker 1: but there does seem to be sort of this interesting
Speaker 1: thing where like when I'm sort of sort of closing
Speaker 1: up to each other, then certain forces become more dominant,
Speaker 1: and so then things, for example, click into place as
Speaker 1: a crystal. But if you sort of exceed some sort
Speaker 1: of energy level, then other forces are more important, and
Speaker 1: then the particles the items don't arrange and crystal as
Speaker 1: they sort of arrange as a liquid. You're exactly right,
Speaker 1: and that's the most important thing. That the universe is
Speaker 1: following the same basic laws the whole time, whatever those
Speaker 1: basic laws are, and we notice these patterns. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like if you wanted to categorize books in the library.
Speaker 1: You know, all the books in the library follow the
Speaker 1: same rules, are like sequences of words that follow each other,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, these are dramas, these are comedies,
Speaker 1: this one on the edge. I'm not really even sure
Speaker 1: or somebody invented a whole new genre, right, Where is
Speaker 1: a genre? After all? It's just a way for us
Speaker 1: to like categorize things that we see, patterns that emerge
Speaker 1: in writing, things that work, and so in the same way,
Speaker 1: like phases of matter are ways for us to simplify
Speaker 1: a whole set of phenomena in terms of simplistic mathematical descriptions.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, why can't we just use
Speaker 1: the most fundamental theory every time? And you know the
Speaker 1: answer is that we just can't do those calculations. It's
Speaker 1: really complicated, the same reason that you can't like predict
Speaker 1: hurricanes even if you understand how drops work, because chaos
Speaker 1: prevents you from extrapolating from the very small scale to
Speaker 1: the very high scale. And also we don't even know
Speaker 1: if there is a fundamental theory, like maybe all of
Speaker 1: our theories, even like the ones about corks and leptons
Speaker 1: and the standard model, maybe that's just an effective theory,
Speaker 1: the same way like fluid dynamics is and the ideal
Speaker 1: gas law, you could all just be like ignoring what's
Speaker 1: going on underneath because we can't see those details. Right. So,
Speaker 1: so far we have sort of four basic states of matter.
Speaker 1: You said, solid when which is when the atoms are
Speaker 1: stuck together kind of in a grid. Liquid when the
Speaker 1: atoms are moving about but sliding around with each other.
Speaker 1: And then there's gas, which is when the atoms are
Speaker 1: flying around freely. But then there's the fourth type of matter,
Speaker 1: which is when the atoms start to break apart, right,
Speaker 1: and then you sort of have a gas of free
Speaker 1: flying um protons and electrons. Yeah, protons and new trons
Speaker 1: and electrons. So you have atomic nuclei. You know. For example,
Speaker 1: if you have hydrogen plasma, then it's just protons and electrons.
Speaker 1: There are no atoms there. There isn't really hydrogen anymore.
Speaker 1: That if every proton having an electron pair. Now the
Speaker 1: protons and electrons are just all flying around on their own,
Speaker 1: so they're not like confined to each other anymore. They
Speaker 1: can move freely throughout. And so that's what a plasma
Speaker 1: is relative to a gas. Plasma is sort of like
Speaker 1: a gas of charged particles, right, but the nucleus still
Speaker 1: stays together, or the nucleus breaks apart. In these atoms
Speaker 1: that are in the plasma, the nucleus still stays together,
Speaker 1: like the protons and neutrons are still bound together to
Speaker 1: each other. I see. It's just that the in the
Speaker 1: regular plasma, the electrons separate from the nucleus, and so
Speaker 1: you have nuclei and electrons flying around like a gas exactly,
Speaker 1: and that is a gas of charged particles. That's what
Speaker 1: a plasma is. And it makes sense that a plasma
Speaker 1: is hotter because in order for that to happen, you
Speaker 1: have to pump a lot of energy into those electrons
Speaker 1: so they can climb all the way of that energy
Speaker 1: better and eventually basically be free. It's like you've given
Speaker 1: the electrons enough energy to reach their escape velocity from
Speaker 1: the nuclei. Right. It's like when you give too much
Speaker 1: sugar to a kid. They started to, you know, separate
Speaker 1: from their family at the park exactly, they go into
Speaker 1: really fast orbits and then they were gone. We but
Speaker 1: we see plasma and everyday life. It's not just like
Speaker 1: a weird idea. You know. The Sun, of course, is
Speaker 1: a huge ball of plasma, so you see it every day.
Speaker 1: There's also a plasma down here on Earth. Like lightning
Speaker 1: has plasma in it, light bulbs have plasma in them.
Speaker 1: We create plasma all the time to do fusion research
Speaker 1: like a tocomax and stuff like that. So plasma is weird.
Speaker 1: It's not something you can touch, but it is a
Speaker 1: part of our everyday life. Yeah, It's what makes a
Speaker 1: fluorescent lights. Right, Like if you're work in an office
Speaker 1: or any time you go to any kind of commercial space,
Speaker 1: there are fluorescent lights, and that's plasma, right, that's plasma,
Speaker 1: and plasma is a different kind of state of matter
Speaker 1: because it doesn't follow the rules of gases. You need
Speaker 1: different kinds of mathematics to describe plasma. It's called magneto
Speaker 1: hydro dynamics, and it combines electrodynamics, you know, the laws
Speaker 1: of how electrically charged objects feel each other and push
Speaker 1: on each other, with fluid dynamics hydro dynamics. So it's
Speaker 1: massively complicated, and it's one of the reasons that fusion
Speaker 1: research is really complicated because charge gases are very unstable
Speaker 1: and very hard to confine and very hard to do
Speaker 1: any calculations with as well. Yeah, they're very nasty. They
Speaker 1: even sound like a marble supervillain with those names together,
Speaker 1: and so so then that's when the atom starts to
Speaker 1: break apart. So, but you can go even further maybe
Speaker 1: and break apart the nucleus if you keep I guess,
Speaker 1: pushing the temperature, pushing the energy of the system exactly,
Speaker 1: And so you can get to the next stage of
Speaker 1: matter by cranking up the energy even hotter so that
Speaker 1: you break even more bonds. As you're saying, states of
Speaker 1: matter a sort of defined by the transitions where you're
Speaker 1: breaking bonds and different things become dominant. So the next frontier, then,
Speaker 1: beyond plasma, is to break open the nucleus and break
Speaker 1: open the protons and neutrons inside of it. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's get to the next frontier of the states of matter,
Speaker 1: quark gluon plasmas. We'll dive into that, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All Right, we're talking about Marvel supervillains, right, Daniel,
Speaker 1: We're always talking about Marvels. Marvel should be paying us,
Speaker 1: or at least um funding a good part of our podcast.
Speaker 1: I guess they pay us in movies somehow, entertainment. I
Speaker 1: suppose so. But everybody else out there who's not making
Speaker 1: a podcast is also getting those movies. But we, I
Speaker 1: guess we get to talk about it. We can hopefully
Speaker 1: fair use man fair use, we get to make good
Speaker 1: jokes about it. Well, but the latest superhero here we're
Speaker 1: talking about is called the core gluon plasma. And we
Speaker 1: talked a little bit about states of matter and how
Speaker 1: you can go from solid to liquid to gas too. Plasma,
Speaker 1: this kind of plasma is sort of like the next
Speaker 1: level of a state of matter. Like if you take
Speaker 1: plasma and what you heat it up even more, if
Speaker 1: you take gas and you heat it up even more,
Speaker 1: then you can break up the next level of confinement,
Speaker 1: the next thing that's sort of making this up. And
Speaker 1: so if you take the simplest sort of thing like
Speaker 1: protons and electrons, and you take those protons and you
Speaker 1: heat them up, then you can break them open into
Speaker 1: what's inside them. Right, And remember that protons are not
Speaker 1: fundamental objects and not point particles. They're actually made of
Speaker 1: smaller pieces that are inside them, the same way in
Speaker 1: atom is made of a nucleus and electrons. Proton is
Speaker 1: made of smaller bits and those bits are quirks held
Speaker 1: together by gluons. But I feel like you skip the
Speaker 1: step though, right, Like we've heard plasma, and that was
Speaker 1: nuclei and electrons flying around, and if you heat it up,
Speaker 1: at some point, the nuclear i break up into protons
Speaker 1: and neutrons. Is that called anything or do we just
Speaker 1: totally ignore that? Or is that also just a regular plasma?
Speaker 1: That would also be a regular plasma that's sort of
Speaker 1: like fission. Right, You take a big nucleus and break
Speaker 1: it up into smaller pieces that's fission. That's something we
Speaker 1: can do. Breaking open the proton and breaking open the
Speaker 1: nuke leaves are related because breaking open a proton means
Speaker 1: cracking the bonds between the quarks inside the proton. Well,
Speaker 1: what's holding the nucleus together anyway? Like why does the
Speaker 1: nucleus stick together If it's a bunch of protons and
Speaker 1: a bunch of neutrons that's only just charged particles plus
Speaker 1: charges and zero charges, Why does that anyway stick together?
Speaker 1: It sticks together because of the bonds between the quarks
Speaker 1: inside them, And so anyway, you can sort of think
Speaker 1: of a nucleus is sort of like a really big
Speaker 1: quirky particle where all the corks are held together not
Speaker 1: just into protons and neutrons, but also those quirks are
Speaker 1: holding onto the other quarks inside the other protons and
Speaker 1: neutrons to keep it together. So really, what you want
Speaker 1: to do to get to quark glow and plasma is
Speaker 1: just crack open all those quirky bonds, right, But I
Speaker 1: guess there is sort of an intermediate step, is what
Speaker 1: I mean. It's like, you know, you have plasma with
Speaker 1: nuclei and electrons, and at some point you break open
Speaker 1: the nuclei into protons and neutrons. Is there a state
Speaker 1: of matter where it's like protons still held together, neutrons
Speaker 1: and electrons flying around. Yeah, that would just be a
Speaker 1: plasma there. You've taken heavier nuclei and you've broken it
Speaker 1: down into hydrogen, because hydrogen is protons. Okay, So then
Speaker 1: at some point you heat it up so much that
Speaker 1: the protons stands start to break apart. Yeah, then you
Speaker 1: can break open those protons. And so protons have three
Speaker 1: quarks inside held together by gluons, but these are held
Speaker 1: together really tightly. The energy of the bonds holding the
Speaker 1: proton together is much greater than the energy of the
Speaker 1: bonds holding the electron to the proton, so it takes
Speaker 1: much higher temperatures to crack open that proton. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. I mean, even just to break
Speaker 1: up the nucleus is a lot, right, Like an atomic
Speaker 1: bomb is basically what happens when you start breaking up
Speaker 1: nuclei in in atoms exactly. And so in order to
Speaker 1: break up the proton into its bits, you need to
Speaker 1: get up to trillions of degrees kelvin. So five and
Speaker 1: a half trillion kelvin is an estimate for the temperature
Speaker 1: of the next stage of matter. And that's what a
Speaker 1: cork gluon plasma is is to break open the proton
Speaker 1: so the quarks and then luans inside can now run free.
Speaker 1: So just in the same way that a plasma is
Speaker 1: breaking open and atom, so the electron and then proton
Speaker 1: can fly free. Now you're breaking open what's inside the
Speaker 1: proton so that it can run free. You're saying, like,
Speaker 1: do you heat things up and things are moving and
Speaker 1: crashing into each other so crazily that it actually like
Speaker 1: breaks open the protons. Yeah, that's basically like the melting
Speaker 1: point of a proton. You heat it up to five
Speaker 1: and a half trillion kelvin and there's enough energy for
Speaker 1: the quarks to break the bonds of those gluons and
Speaker 1: to fly around free. You have a bunch of them
Speaker 1: all together, and you basically get a soup. You get
Speaker 1: a super particles that are not neutral in the strong force. Right.
Speaker 1: A plasma is interesting because it's like a gas, but
Speaker 1: it's not neutral electrically. A quark gluon plasma is like
Speaker 1: a gas, but it's not neutral in the strong force
Speaker 1: what we call color charge. So you have a gas
Speaker 1: of colored particles. Whoa interesting, Well you you've got a
Speaker 1: soup before, but now you're saying, like the bits of
Speaker 1: the super Now they're charged not just with electromagnetism but
Speaker 1: also the strong force color charge. Yeah, exactly, they're charged
Speaker 1: in every possible way. They're charged in the weak force,
Speaker 1: they're charged and electromagnetism because they have electric charge and
Speaker 1: they have color. So they can now move freely. You know,
Speaker 1: corks are usually confined. They're like stuck inside a particle
Speaker 1: that we've ever seen. An individual cork usually just like
Speaker 1: trapped inside a proton or a neutron or some other
Speaker 1: kind of particle like a pion or you know other masons.
Speaker 1: But here, now the corks can like fly free in
Speaker 1: the same way like electrons and a plasma are now
Speaker 1: flying freely. They're not trapped to an individual nucleus. The
Speaker 1: quarks and a cork glue in a plasma can now
Speaker 1: move freely all the way around anywhere inside the plasma
Speaker 1: like all by themselves. Right, that's the idea that they're
Speaker 1: not stuck to anything else. They're not stuck to anything else,
Speaker 1: but they're also not all by themselves. A cork by
Speaker 1: itself in space, wouldn't be a cork glue on plasma,
Speaker 1: it would just be a cork and corks can't really
Speaker 1: be by themselves and base it would have so much
Speaker 1: energy you would just pop all these other particles out
Speaker 1: of the vacuum. A quark, glu and plasma is when
Speaker 1: you have all huge density of particles, also all at
Speaker 1: high temperatures, and so they're sort of like happily living
Speaker 1: in this frothing vacuum. Mm hmm. I see, well, I
Speaker 1: guess maybe before we go further, just an naming question,
Speaker 1: like why still call it a plasma. It seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, this should maybe get its own category of
Speaker 1: state of matter. What you call it, like a quirklue
Speaker 1: and banana? Yeah, why not? I mean, if you're giving
Speaker 1: me the naming rights, sure, let's go with the bananas
Speaker 1: state of matter, because it is pretty bananas, right, like
Speaker 1: the trillions of degrees um sells. That's that's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: It is pretty crazy. I like the name plasma because
Speaker 1: it borrows the concept of the plasma we're familiar with
Speaker 1: that you're breaking things open and now you have charged objects,
Speaker 1: but they're just charged in another way. So it's sort
Speaker 1: of like generalizes the concept of plasma, and the plasma
Speaker 1: we're familiar with should be called like electric plasma um,
Speaker 1: and so this could be called like a color plasma
Speaker 1: or something like that. But you know, there's a relationship
Speaker 1: between the plasma we're familiar with and this kind of plasma.
Speaker 1: So I think it works. But you know, whatever, I
Speaker 1: have a name. How about calling it coasma because you
Speaker 1: know it's a quantum cork plasma coasma? Yeah, what do
Speaker 1: you think? Quasma? That sounds like something that leaks from
Speaker 1: your wounds when they haven't been treated well. But that
Speaker 1: that's good, right. It brings up interesting associations. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's better than coming up with a blood that's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. That is pretty weird. But this stuff is
Speaker 1: also super weird and super fascinating to study. You know,
Speaker 1: not only would it be really really hot, it's also
Speaker 1: is super duper dense. Like a cubic centimeter of this
Speaker 1: stuff like a tea spoon, you know, with weigh about
Speaker 1: forty billion tons here on Earth. It's incredibly strange stuff. Wait,
Speaker 1: I guess you're confusing me here bringing in density. Now,
Speaker 1: I guess I think what you're saying is that this
Speaker 1: weird state of plasma which we're going to called kasman now,
Speaker 1: maybe only happens if you have that much density, right,
Speaker 1: Like you, The only way to break open a proton
Speaker 1: is if things are like super dense, right, because as
Speaker 1: you said, if you just have a proton out in space,
Speaker 1: it's not going to split open. Or if it is
Speaker 1: split open into corks, the courts are just gonna you know,
Speaker 1: explode or disappear. So you sort of need this super
Speaker 1: dense state in order to have a cosma. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: remember that there's a tight connection between temperature and density.
Speaker 1: You can object to a certain temperature and you squeeze it,
Speaker 1: it gets hotter, right, And so increasing the density also
Speaker 1: increases the temperature. And so the conditions under which we
Speaker 1: have created cork gloom on plasmas are this temperature and
Speaker 1: this density. And also think in your mind of like
Speaker 1: that phase diagram maybe you learned about in school. The
Speaker 1: transitions between phases are not just temperature dependent, they're also
Speaker 1: density dependent right there, depending on the pressure. So for example,
Speaker 1: where water freezes or where it turns into gas, it
Speaker 1: doesn't just depend on the temperature. It also depends on
Speaker 1: the pressure the effectively the density of the material. I see.
Speaker 1: So when you're saying like this is the state of
Speaker 1: matter that happens when things get really hot, that's not
Speaker 1: quite the whole truth, right, Like you have to get
Speaker 1: it both hot and dance in order to get a quasma. Exactly,
Speaker 1: A single proton flying through the universe at very high speeds,
Speaker 1: or even a hundred of them flying at very high
Speaker 1: speeds don't get you a quasma. Yeah, that keeps saying it.
Speaker 1: If you keep saying it, it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: It's kind of growing on me. It's fun to say quasma. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make you cleans. And you're right. You need
Speaker 1: density and temperature, and so all of these phase transitions
Speaker 1: are temperature and density dependent. Mostly we think about them
Speaker 1: as temperature because that's the dominant effect. But there really
Speaker 1: is a two dimensional diagram you have to keep in mind, right,
Speaker 1: or just one dial, which is the bananas dial, right,
Speaker 1: Like if things get more bananas, you know, if you
Speaker 1: take a solid and put it under bananas conditions, it's
Speaker 1: gonna melt right, right, Well, then the question is, because
Speaker 1: there's a maximum temperature absolute hot Is there a maximum bananas?
Speaker 1: Can you get to absolute banana? Is in the universe?
Speaker 1: I don't know, you tell me. Is that basically what
Speaker 1: this podcast is about, the search for absolute bananas, the
Speaker 1: absolute state of bananas. That's the you know, most major
Speaker 1: religions are after that state of enlightenment. We'll get there
Speaker 1: one day, another hundred episodes or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a journey. But yeah, so a quasma danas when
Speaker 1: things get so bananas that even protons break apart. And
Speaker 1: so you have this soup and you're saying that it's
Speaker 1: so intense that actually if you try to like grow
Speaker 1: this or have like a whole sun full of quasma,
Speaker 1: it would be crazy, would be like super duper you
Speaker 1: basically maybe even get a black hole. Yeah. I haven't
Speaker 1: done the calculations, but it would be incredibly intense, and
Speaker 1: the amount of energy to make a sun sized blob
Speaker 1: of quasma would be astronomical. Absolutely, We've only ever made
Speaker 1: super tiny amounts of it here on our colliders on Earth.
Speaker 1: M M. All right, we'll get into whether we've seen
Speaker 1: it and what it all means, but I guess, but
Speaker 1: the main picture you're trying to paint is that it's
Speaker 1: sort of like a quantum It's not so much as
Speaker 1: super like a quantum mechanical soup, right, like, because quarks
Speaker 1: can really be by themselves, so they need to sort
Speaker 1: of be around gluons kind of for them to stick around, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's very sort of quantum mechanical dependent. I
Speaker 1: guess what I mean. It's like it's a quantum mechanical thing.
Speaker 1: Is definitely a quantum mechanical thing. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons it's super fascinating is that we are forcing the
Speaker 1: universe to reveal a different kind of thing that it
Speaker 1: can do. You know, solids and liquids and gases. These
Speaker 1: are all just like the dances of lots of tiny
Speaker 1: particles operating together, and it's incredible what emerges, you know.
Speaker 1: And so here we have forced the universe to show
Speaker 1: us another trick that it can pull off. How many
Speaker 1: phases are there? We don't know, right this is like
Speaker 1: an idea that came about a few decades ago, and
Speaker 1: we achieved it and improved it and are studying it.
Speaker 1: We don't know how many different phases of matter there
Speaker 1: might be and what each of them might tell us
Speaker 1: about the most fundamental picture in the early universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I guess why. What I mean is that in
Speaker 1: a quasma you can't really keep track of one court,
Speaker 1: can you. It's like it's all sort of like bound
Speaker 1: together in weird plant of mechanical ways, but not as
Speaker 1: bound as in the inside of a proton, but it's
Speaker 1: still sort of like, you know, it's all sort of entangled,
Speaker 1: I guess, is what I mean. They're all bound together
Speaker 1: and slashing about, and there's a huge amount of energy,
Speaker 1: so you're constantly creating new corks and anti quarks and
Speaker 1: then destroying them as well. So in that sense, he
Speaker 1: has like a frothing pile of these particles. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's hotter than anything that we've seen, right, even like
Speaker 1: the inside of a neutron star is not as hot.
Speaker 1: That's right. It was the champion in our what is
Speaker 1: the Hottest Thing in the Universe? Episode? The neutron star
Speaker 1: interior might get up to like a hundred billion degrees kelvin,
Speaker 1: but cork glue on plasmas, we think, reach into the trillions,
Speaker 1: and so it might actually be the hottest thing in
Speaker 1: the universe, unless, of course, alien particle physicists are even
Speaker 1: hotter than we are, and they've reached absolute banana. Maybe
Speaker 1: they are bananas, which automatically makes them hot, I guess,
Speaker 1: depending on how hungry you are hold on. If aliens
Speaker 1: are bananas, then what's their favorite snack? Is it podcasters?
Speaker 1: Let's hope not. Maybe they have a whole podcast where
Speaker 1: they joke around about eating or what ortunists or physicists. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess. Then the question is, can you have a
Speaker 1: quasma cork gluon plasma naturally out in nature, Like can
Speaker 1: you imagine anything having that like? Or would you have
Speaker 1: to like maybe go inside of a black hole for that.
Speaker 1: We don't know what's going on inside a black hole.
Speaker 1: It's possible that you get that kind of thing there.
Speaker 1: We also don't know what's going on at the heart
Speaker 1: of neutron stars. It's also very hot and very dense.
Speaker 1: Probably not hot and dense enough to make cork gluon plasmas,
Speaker 1: but still uncertain. However, we do think that there was
Speaker 1: a moment in the history of the universe when everything
Speaker 1: was a cork gluon plasma, when that's all there was.
Speaker 1: The whole universe was nothing but quasma. You mean, I
Speaker 1: get the big Bank yes, very early on. Before there
Speaker 1: were particles, before there were protons, before there were bananas,
Speaker 1: there was quasma. All right, well let's get into more
Speaker 1: of the Big Bang and whether, if not, we've recreated
Speaker 1: this Coasma or corn blue on plasma here on Earth.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, we're
Speaker 1: talking about Coasma, the latest um Marvel supervillain that we
Speaker 1: just made up. All rights reserve. I think I think
Speaker 1: it was one of the Infinity Stones, maybe the Quamas Stone.
Speaker 1: You know. We got a question on Twitter yesterday about
Speaker 1: how I laugh at your jokes and whether I'm actually
Speaker 1: laughing every time or if I have a button eye
Speaker 1: press over here to just like generate the same chuckle
Speaker 1: over because my jokes are so bad? Is that the idea?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Or maybe I just laughed the same
Speaker 1: exact way every time and it sounds suspicious like a laughter.
Speaker 1: I see. Well, I have a button right here, It's
Speaker 1: my whoa button. Whenever you say something mind blowing, I
Speaker 1: just go whoa. The same something should sample about to
Speaker 1: make a song just based on my laughing and your
Speaker 1: what yeah? Yeah, I will not be listening to that.
Speaker 1: It makes me very queasy in klasmic. Alright, we're talking
Speaker 1: about couark glue on plasma, which is I guess sort
Speaker 1: of like a fifth state of matter or would you
Speaker 1: say it's still part of the fourth state of matter.
Speaker 1: It's definitely its own state of matter. How many states
Speaker 1: of matter there are is another question, you know, like
Speaker 1: does a Bose Einstein condensate count as a state of matter?
Speaker 1: Some people would say yes, So the number of states
Speaker 1: of matter is a little bit fuzzy. But this is
Speaker 1: definitely its own thing, right, And you said that it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen or maybe it probably doesn't happen at the
Speaker 1: center of neutron stars, which get up to you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of billions of kelvin, which is kind of crazy
Speaker 1: to me because a neutron star is basically the like
Speaker 1: the hottest thing in the universe right now, and it's
Speaker 1: like one step removed from a black hole. So you're saying,
Speaker 1: like a quark glow and plasma basically sort of can't
Speaker 1: really happen naturally in the universe. Yeah, if you think
Speaker 1: humans aren't natural, then it can't really happen naturally. We
Speaker 1: think that at the heart of neutron stars there are
Speaker 1: still neutrons right that the protons and electrons have been
Speaker 1: squeezed together, so the electron is forced inside the proton
Speaker 1: and basically converts it into a neutron, and that what
Speaker 1: you have is a very powerful soup of neutrons with
Speaker 1: very strong forces that we struggled to calculate and to
Speaker 1: understand the pressure and the density and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: We did an episode recently about Nicer, which is a
Speaker 1: telescope trying to study the interior of neutron stars, specifically
Speaker 1: to answer that question what's going on? And it's so
Speaker 1: hard because the strong force is really tricky to do
Speaker 1: calculations with. But we don't think that the pressure and
Speaker 1: temperature inside a neutron star are hot enough to actually
Speaker 1: break those neutrons up. So you have like essentially one
Speaker 1: big object. You can think of a quark glowing plasma
Speaker 1: sort of like a super particle, where all the quarks
Speaker 1: are all bound together into one big object because they're
Speaker 1: all feeling each other. Or conversely, you could think of
Speaker 1: like a proton is like a tiny little serving of
Speaker 1: quirk gluon plasma. Make a little teaspoon of it. What
Speaker 1: about like in a supernova, like if a star explodes.
Speaker 1: Could you have a little bit of a quasma moment momentarily,
Speaker 1: at least potentially, you could get collisions. Right. The way
Speaker 1: to make a cork glue in plasma is to recreate
Speaker 1: super high energy collisions, and we do that here on Earth,
Speaker 1: and so it's possible that there are cork gluon plasmas
Speaker 1: produced in supernovas. It's also possible that there's tiny amounts
Speaker 1: of corklu and plasma produced when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. Remember,
Speaker 1: super high energy protons or iron nuclei are hitting the
Speaker 1: atmosphere all the time. So you strike it just right
Speaker 1: and you might get flashes of cork gluon plasma. Whoa,
Speaker 1: we could be like being rained down upon by quasima
Speaker 1: exactly Quasma rain. I think that was a song by
Speaker 1: Prince right. Well, the artists formally know just like quasma
Speaker 1: is the state of matter formally known as the cork
Speaker 1: gluon plasma exactly. We always sounds so hip yeah, so um,
Speaker 1: I guess you're saying it happens in collisions, and so
Speaker 1: you make it basically at the particle collider they're engineering,
Speaker 1: we do make it, but you can't make it by
Speaker 1: just smashing protons together. There aren't like enough quarks and
Speaker 1: gluons in there. What you need is really much more
Speaker 1: like a soup that we make it when we collide
Speaker 1: heavier stuff. Our collider is capable not just of accelerating protons,
Speaker 1: but also of accelerating things like lead or gold nuclei.
Speaker 1: You strip away all the electrons again just by heating
Speaker 1: it up. You have like a gold or lead plasma.
Speaker 1: You take all the positively charged stuff you put into
Speaker 1: the accelerator, you zip that around a really high speed,
Speaker 1: and you smash it together, and you make this crazy
Speaker 1: soup of quarks and gluons all smashed together. And so
Speaker 1: people have been doing that for decades and trying to
Speaker 1: see if we can make a cork gluon plasma. Very
Speaker 1: briefly in the collider. M I guess if you just
Speaker 1: smash protons together, like but proton smashes another proton, you
Speaker 1: will get sort of a soup of courts and fluance. Right.
Speaker 1: It just maybe won't last very long or I'll just
Speaker 1: fly off. Yeah, there's not really enough there to make
Speaker 1: the density you need. You can't break protons open by
Speaker 1: smashing them against each other. That's what we do. When
Speaker 1: you get cork quirk interactions directly, you don't really get
Speaker 1: this new state of matter the same way like you know,
Speaker 1: two particles don't make a gas. To define this state
Speaker 1: of matter, you need the temperature and you also need
Speaker 1: the density, and then it has to follow these new
Speaker 1: rules of this state of matter. They're like equations that
Speaker 1: define what happens in this state of matter. So to
Speaker 1: quirks and sort of like float around freely. That doesn't
Speaker 1: happen when you just have two protons smashing into each other,
Speaker 1: and maybe even like trading quirks. The quirks don't have
Speaker 1: a chance to like muck around and do all sorts
Speaker 1: of interesting things that they couldn't otherwise do. I see,
Speaker 1: because when you're smashing I guess, as you smashed two protons,
Speaker 1: you really only have six corks to play with. And
Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is that, you know, six
Speaker 1: courts still make a quasma. It's sort of like if
Speaker 1: you have two cars, people can swap cars, and that's
Speaker 1: what happens when two pro putons collide, Like two quarks
Speaker 1: go over here, two quarks go over there. What we're
Speaker 1: talking about is more like you got two busses and
Speaker 1: everybody gets off the bus and has a party. And
Speaker 1: that's pretty different than people just like swapping cars. And
Speaker 1: so it's the physics of that party between the quarks.
Speaker 1: When the quarks can really fly around free, that makes
Speaker 1: it a quark glue on plasma, right, And you're saying
Speaker 1: that you can do that in the collider by smashing
Speaker 1: gold nuclei together. And so what's going on, like this
Speaker 1: nuclei smashing to each other and all the protons and
Speaker 1: neutrons inside of those nuclei break apart, and then you
Speaker 1: have that quirk party for a little bit. That's what
Speaker 1: we think happens, but it's really tricky to figure out
Speaker 1: if that's what's actually happening, because even if you don't
Speaker 1: get a quark gluon plasma, when you smash two nuclei together,
Speaker 1: you get a big mess, right, you destroy both nuclei,
Speaker 1: you get protons and neutrons and all sorts of other
Speaker 1: things happening. It's sort of like you have, you know,
Speaker 1: eighty proton collisions on top of each other. All sorts
Speaker 1: of crazy stuff is made. So to figure out whether
Speaker 1: a quark glue on plasma is made or another big
Speaker 1: kind of mess. Was a big challenge and required a
Speaker 1: lot of subtle so of statistical analysis and thinking about
Speaker 1: like what that quarkloo on plasma does for the brief
Speaker 1: nanoseconds that it exists, and how you can tell that
Speaker 1: it was there. Right, that's the other thing about it,
Speaker 1: because it's a little weird that you would call it
Speaker 1: a state of matter because it basically doesn't last, right,
Speaker 1: It's not actually a state. It's more like a like
Speaker 1: an explosion maybe, or like a crash that you you know,
Speaker 1: pause in the middle kind of because you know, you form,
Speaker 1: you smash these gold nuclei together, everything sches together. Then
Speaker 1: the quarks are sort of like floating around briefly, but
Speaker 1: it's so crazy and bananas that it just all flies
Speaker 1: off and explodes immediately, right, almost not quite immediately. We
Speaker 1: think it lasts for long enough to do some sort
Speaker 1: of quirkloow on plasma e kind of stuff, And that's
Speaker 1: why we concluded that it's there. That's a real thing,
Speaker 1: that it actually is a state of matter, because it
Speaker 1: lasts long enough to produce effects that you can't otherwise get.
Speaker 1: You're right, that doesn't last very long and unless it's
Speaker 1: surrounded by other corkloo in plasma, you will definitely just
Speaker 1: expand and cool and then just turn into a bunch
Speaker 1: of particles. So it doesn't last for very long, but
Speaker 1: it does last long enough to do unique things things
Speaker 1: you can't see without a cork gluon plasma. And that
Speaker 1: time is short but not zero, right like maybe for
Speaker 1: a brief you know, Nana. Second, it follows the rules
Speaker 1: of a coasma exactly. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: a quasm that can do that a plasma cannot is
Speaker 1: that it seems to have, for example, a very very
Speaker 1: low viscosity. Like these things act like sort of super fluids.
Speaker 1: Works can move from one side to the other without
Speaker 1: facing sort of any resistance at all, which is very
Speaker 1: confusing because quarks have very strong interactions with each other.
Speaker 1: And so this is like property that just sort of
Speaker 1: like emerges when you have all these quirks in this
Speaker 1: crazy condition, take a party, like everyone becomes more uninhibited.
Speaker 1: They do exactly you're saying, it last like a nanosecond.
Speaker 1: How long does it last? And when you do it
Speaker 1: in the collider, it doesn't last for very long. We're
Speaker 1: definitely talking about times less than a pico second. The
Speaker 1: precise lifetime depends a little bit on the energy and
Speaker 1: on what went in. But we're talking about super duper
Speaker 1: tiny amounts of time, less than tend of the minus
Speaker 1: twelve or ten of the minus fifteen seconds. But I
Speaker 1: guess you could still claim that for that brief amount
Speaker 1: of time, you created a court luan plasma. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: because we've seen evidence of it. Like they can do
Speaker 1: calculations and they predict what a qurkloan plasma can do,
Speaker 1: like this low viscosity condition or the kind of particles
Speaker 1: that shoot out of a cork luon plasma. Corklan plasma
Speaker 1: has its own special density, and so it tends to
Speaker 1: like stifle particles from flying out. If you didn't have
Speaker 1: a quarkloan plasma, you tend to see like more particles
Speaker 1: flying out at weird angles. And if you don't see that,
Speaker 1: it suggests you probably did see a quark luan plasma
Speaker 1: like quenches the emissions of some of these particles, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the signatures that led them to conclude
Speaker 1: that they really had created this thing at the large
Speaker 1: hage On colider m. I see, it's like if if
Speaker 1: you didn't have the quasma, things would just fly off,
Speaker 1: like they would just kind of bounce off of each other,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But if you sort of do click
Speaker 1: into this new state of matter, at least briefly, it's
Speaker 1: going to change how all the things. The thing actually
Speaker 1: explodes exactly, and it does other really weird stuff like
Speaker 1: changing into a new kind of matter changes also the
Speaker 1: temperature of the thing in a really weird way, because remember,
Speaker 1: temperature depends not just on the velocity of the objects
Speaker 1: inside you, but also in the number of ways that
Speaker 1: they can wiggle. If you've done any statistical physics, you
Speaker 1: know the temperature is related to the number of degrees
Speaker 1: of freedom, which means like can you have vibrations? Can
Speaker 1: you have rotations? And a quark gluon plasma has more
Speaker 1: ways to wiggle because you've broken the particles up into
Speaker 1: their constituents. And so actually what happens when you create
Speaker 1: a quark gluon plasma is that the temperature goes up
Speaker 1: briefly because now you have more degrees of freedom, more
Speaker 1: ways to wiggle. So the temperature is like has a
Speaker 1: new definition and it goes up, and then of course
Speaker 1: it very rapidly cools, and so there are these very
Speaker 1: strange thermal effects of a quark gluon plasma. It gets
Speaker 1: like even more banana exactly, it approaches maximum banana. And
Speaker 1: in the end, it's something that we want to understand
Speaker 1: because we do think that our whole universe came from
Speaker 1: a cork gluon plasma that in the very early days,
Speaker 1: the energy density was so great that before protons and
Speaker 1: neutrons were made, everything was just this big soup of
Speaker 1: quarks and gluons, and you know, how they came together
Speaker 1: to make particles really determines how the universe is shaped.
Speaker 1: Like the reason we have protons and neutrons, the reason
Speaker 1: the protons and neutrons have the mass that they do
Speaker 1: is because the power of the strong force to bind
Speaker 1: them into these particles. So it's something we'd really like
Speaker 1: to understand, something which will really reveal the whole structure
Speaker 1: of the matter of the universe that we enjoy. Right
Speaker 1: Like I think if you sort of like hit the
Speaker 1: rewind button on the universe, you start with now, which
Speaker 1: is that things are solid and liquid and gas and
Speaker 1: some plasma here and there. But as you turn back
Speaker 1: time towards a big bang, closer to the Big Bang
Speaker 1: things sort of, we're all plasma and even closer to
Speaker 1: the origin of the Big Bank than things were quasma. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what I think what you're saying. It's like before
Speaker 1: there was plasma and stuff and planets and things like that,
Speaker 1: everything was just a big quark glue on soup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and who knows what's beyond that was like what's beyond quasma?
Speaker 1: Maybe banasma? There you go, Can we can we get
Speaker 1: credit for coining it? I don't know it's going to
Speaker 1: create a coin asma, big banasma, big banasma. That's the
Speaker 1: new theory of the origin of the universe. But jokes aside, Yes,
Speaker 1: exactly as you crank back time, you go up in temperature,
Speaker 1: and so you reveal that the universe went through these
Speaker 1: phase transitions, and we think that there are even more
Speaker 1: beyond quasma where the rules of the universe are effectively different. Right,
Speaker 1: in every different temperature regime, the rules of how things
Speaker 1: work tend to change, right, you know, the same way
Speaker 1: that like the rules of solids and gases and liquids
Speaker 1: are different from plasmas and quasmas and Banasma's the effective
Speaker 1: laws of the universe are different. We don't know what
Speaker 1: the fundamental laws are. If there's like the highest temperature,
Speaker 1: there's the deepest level, or it's just like an infinite
Speaker 1: stack of effective laws. But we'd like to learn what
Speaker 1: those laws are and understand as far back as we can, right,
Speaker 1: because I think you do have sort of ideas for
Speaker 1: this banasma, right like closer to the Big Bang is
Speaker 1: kind of when like even the quantum fields start to
Speaker 1: melt together, right, Yeah, exactly, the very rules of quantum
Speaker 1: theory change, and for example, the weak force is no
Speaker 1: longer weak. Like a quasma exists when there's already a
Speaker 1: Higgs field that tells the corks how much mass they have.
Speaker 1: At some time the very early universe, at very very
Speaker 1: high temperatures, the Higgs field hasn't even relaxed to its
Speaker 1: low level, and so particle masses aren't even well defined.
Speaker 1: At some point, all particles have zero mass in the
Speaker 1: very very early universe, so the effective laws of how
Speaker 1: things work are completely different. That's not something we can
Speaker 1: achieve in our collider today, of course. Well, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting to think that maybe you know, right now you're
Speaker 1: smashing these things together and you're get into this quart
Speaker 1: gluon quasma. Is it possible you think that one day
Speaker 1: you'll smash things together so much that you'll actually like
Speaker 1: get to that banasma level where even the quantum fields
Speaker 1: are getting melted together. It's possible because cork could be
Speaker 1: made of even smaller particles. They could be bound together
Speaker 1: by something else. So if one day we can smash
Speaker 1: open corks and see what's inside them, then eventually maybe
Speaker 1: we could smash corks together at such high speeds that
Speaker 1: we can make a plasma of whatever is inside corks.
Speaker 1: We have no idea if those particles exist, and what
Speaker 1: energy would be required to make that sort of next
Speaker 1: level plasma, we don't know, but in theory it's probably possible,
Speaker 1: And you know the structure of the universe, it seems
Speaker 1: to be hierarchical. It seems like as you get down
Speaker 1: to the smaller and smaller pieces, it's always made of
Speaker 1: something smaller, which is made of something smaller. Very unlikely.
Speaker 1: We are now at the smallest level, so it's very
Speaker 1: likely that corks are made of some smaller things. So
Speaker 1: in principle, that state of matter can't exist and probably
Speaker 1: did exist in the very early universe. Well, it must have. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know, but we don't understand, and at some
Speaker 1: point our whole theory of quantum mechanics breaks down because
Speaker 1: gravitational effects start to be important because the energy density
Speaker 1: is so high. At that point, you need a theory
Speaker 1: of quantum gravity, which we just don't have. And so
Speaker 1: that's when you get to like absolute hot and beyond that,
Speaker 1: we just can't even predict what matter or you know,
Speaker 1: the universe itself would be like right right, you need
Speaker 1: banessma theory to peel away and the secrets of the
Speaker 1: universe to slice it up into your very hot oatmeal,
Speaker 1: slip it through that, you know, moment of truth. And
Speaker 1: it's really the forefront of particle physics because it's the
Speaker 1: thing that we understand the least. The strong force is
Speaker 1: the strongest force, but it's also the hardest to probe
Speaker 1: because it's so powerful that almost everything around us is
Speaker 1: already tightly bound by the strong force. For example, electrodynamics
Speaker 1: has been tested like one part in a billion, the
Speaker 1: weak force has been tested like one part in a
Speaker 1: few thousand. The strong force has only been tested to
Speaker 1: like one or two parts in a hundred. So it's
Speaker 1: the thing that we understand the least, but it's maybe
Speaker 1: the most important part of the universe. So corkol and
Speaker 1: plasma is super awesome because it lets us test our
Speaker 1: understanding of the strong force. Right, Yeah, it's pretty amazing that, like,
Speaker 1: as humans who are the product of the universe, we've
Speaker 1: been able to recoil at least you have been able
Speaker 1: to recreate, you know, conditions in the universe that are
Speaker 1: closer to the Big Bank than anything it existing out
Speaker 1: there basically in the universe, Like the universe itself hasn't
Speaker 1: been able to go back to that state probably, but
Speaker 1: like humans playing around with um, some magnets can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we think that the cork gluon plasma probably existed like
Speaker 1: ten to the minus ten seconds after the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: and very briefly only for like maybe ten to the
Speaker 1: minus six seconds. So it's been a long time since
Speaker 1: the universe has been making this stuff. So yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: it's sort of like nostalgic. It's like, oh, I remember
Speaker 1: that that was cool or mazed going what are you doing?
Speaker 1: You're gonna kill us all one of the two maybe,
Speaker 1: but we'll learn something along the way. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's some cork gluon plasma, which we are calling in
Speaker 1: this episode coasma. Again, we totally made that up. And
Speaker 1: don't go to a physics conference with a paper titled
Speaker 1: quasma unless you, I guess give us credit. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: good luck with that. But it is interesting to think
Speaker 1: about kind of all the different states of matter that
Speaker 1: matter and energy in the universe can take, right, It's
Speaker 1: almost like it likes to um play around at different levels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of another way to explore the universe.
Speaker 1: Instead of taking one particle apart and looking inside of it,
Speaker 1: and then looking inside of that one, It's like, let's
Speaker 1: make the universe reveal the different kind of dances that
Speaker 1: it can do. What happens when you take a lot
Speaker 1: of particles and squeeze them together. What mathematics emerges that
Speaker 1: can describe that in a simple way. It's mind blowing
Speaker 1: to me that it's even possible. You know, why are
Speaker 1: there simple mathematical rules to describe how gases work. It
Speaker 1: should be incredibly complicated. It should be like chaos that
Speaker 1: emerges from string theory. It should be impossible. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, our universe is describable in terms of simple
Speaker 1: mathematical rules. At lots of different levels, and here we
Speaker 1: have found another one. Right. Well, it's because these forces
Speaker 1: have sort of different ranges, right, Like, some forces are
Speaker 1: important at the microscopic level and some forces are more
Speaker 1: important at the at the grander level. And so you
Speaker 1: you can have these sort of rules that describe it, right,
Speaker 1: you can, But it's not always possible. You know, why
Speaker 1: are hurricanes hard to describe because it's a chaotic combination
Speaker 1: of lots of smaller things. Even if there is just
Speaker 1: one rule describing how drops interact, it's not trivial to
Speaker 1: describe the motion of billions and trillions of drops altogether.
Speaker 1: It's chaotic. It's hard to model. But sometimes it's not.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you can find a simple mathematical story that summarizes
Speaker 1: the important bits and ignores all the details. Why that
Speaker 1: happens is a mystery to me, but I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it does. Yeah, we'll leave it to the hurricane plasma
Speaker 1: or harasma physicist to figure out. I think we've coined
Speaker 1: enough terms for today, so we better wrap up. We
Speaker 1: reach our allowance. Our heart is gonna be like, all right, guys,
Speaker 1: wrap it up, all right. Well, the next time you
Speaker 1: look up at the sky, or the night's car, even
Speaker 1: the day's guy. Think about all the quasimas that's being
Speaker 1: may be formed out there and raining down upon you,
Speaker 1: showering you with little bits of matter that hasn't existed
Speaker 1: since the beginning of the universe. And think about all
Speaker 1: the amazing and crazy things that our universe can do,
Speaker 1: and all those things that you can taste on the
Speaker 1: buffet of the universe's physics. Thanks for joining us, See
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.