#13: Fundamental forces in a bathhouse
TRANSCRIPT
Corinne Caputo
Welcome to pale blue pod the astronomy podcast for people who are overwhelmed by the universe but want to be its friend.
Moiya McTier
That's me. I want to be the universe's friend and I believe I am. I am Dr. Moiya McTier, astrophysicist and folklorist and friend, to the universe and to you. Who are you?
Corinne Caputo
I am Corinne Caputo, a writer, comedian, friend to the universe. I feel like you Moiya are like the universe's hype woman in like a fun way you're like really... like getting me on board with it.
Moiya McTier
Oh, that's what I aspire to be. But I feel like I have to love the universe a lot to be a its hype-woman. And that's something that I struggle with sometimes.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah I get it. I get it. It is I think anything that is fascinating and we've devoted our lives to get there's like the slumps of like, I don't know about this.
Moiya McTier
I'm going to be totally honest with you listeners today. I'm in one of those slumps. Today, I know that I am a friend to the universe. But I don't know if the universe is a friend to me. Yeah. Mm hmm. I had a moment earlier today, when I was preparing for this episode, where I just felt real dumb. And I just thought maybe maybe that will help some of you feel better. You know, like, I know that a lot of you think of me as a very smart person. And most of the time I am. But sometimes even even the smartest people are like, wow, I know nothing. Because once you learn enough, you realize how much you don't know. And I was I was caught in that trap today.
Corinne Caputo
I know. I laugh because it's, we can be so harsh on ourselves. But like, I never think of you as someone who's not smart. You just like we all have our niches and it's funny how I have the same self talk sometimes, especially after a moment of being like, super disappointed in myself. None of us think that about you, Moiya.
Moiya McTier
Oh, thank you, Corinne. I gave the the mean voice in my head a name. And its name is Karl. So earlier today. I heard myself say aloud, "Oh, I'm so stupid." And then I caught myself and I was like, No, Moiya didn't say that. That was Karl. Karl. You suck. Shut up, Karl. So I was screaming by myself and my friend earlier today. Shut up Karl.
Yeah, so sometimes if if you have a mean voice in your head, give it a name and then you can tell it to shut up and it usually works.
Corinne Caputo
I love that idea. I'll have to think of the name.
Moiya McTier
But I kicked Karl out of my head and of this space that we're in because this space is too beautiful for Karl or any of his kin. Right now we are recording this episode in a peaceful bathhouse in the sauna room. Their are naked people around, but I'm not letting that affect me and my ability to communicate science.
Corinne Caputo
That's just all part of the universe, ya know?
Moiya McTier
Yeah, it is you know, they're naked bodies, they are also space. You can hear the the gentle lapping of the water. You can smell the soaps in the air. It's just it's a really nice cozy spot.
Corinne Caputo
I have to say the soaps at bath houses and saunas, especially in this one are so much better than whatever soaps I'm using. I need to bring some of that luxury home.
Moiya McTier
Corinne I'm gonna get you some better soap.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah I know, I did look up finally, like an ace up soap $45
Moiya McTier
Excuse me!
Corinne Caputo
I Know
Moiya McTier
you can make your own soap for less money.
Corinne Caputo
If you can get dial for
Moiya McTier
you. You could go by a whale and render its fat and make your own soap.
Corinne Caputo
I could do it. You could do that. Yeah, crazy. But that's like, that's why we're here. We're treating ourselves to a luxury day.
Moiya McTier
We are. We deserve this pampering. Because what we're talking about today is not the easiest stuff to imagine and think about. So we wanted to give ourselves a little treat for thinking about today's topic, which is little drum roll that the four fundamental forces of the universe. Can you imagine a sports announcer using their voice to talk about the fundamental forces of the universe? And then the crowd goes wild.
Corinne Caputo
I think that'd be a really fun move for like a middle school science teacher to try.
Moiya McTier
That'd be great. I I'm sure it's happened. And I would love to see it. So modern scientists have identified four different forces that underpin all of the motion, all of the dynamism all of the dynamicism. Yeah, fuck words are hard. Modern scientists have identified four fundamental forces that underpin all of the motion, and like energy stuff in the universe. That's not to say that there aren't more. And actually, that's not to say that there aren't fewer, really, because science is actively happening as we speak. Tomorrow, they might come out with a different idea of the four fundamental forces. But right now, scientists are saying that there are four forces, and those are gravity, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the strong nuclear force, and that's in order from weakest to strongest, actually.
Corinne Caputo
oh! Gravity is even weaker than weak force?
Moiya McTier
Yes, this is what happens when we name things poorly in astronomy, it gets people confused. So gravity, as the force that we are all most familiar with, in our day to day life, it is actually the weakest of these four forces, which is surprising to a lot of people, including me.
Corinne Caputo
That feels like naming documents in your like final final, or like final revised to you just keep getting to the next or discovering the next thing. And you're like, No, this forum is the final.
Moiya McTier
I did that with my dissertation files.
Corinne Caputo
Oh, my God.
Moiya McTier
You appreciate that the strong nuclear force is the strongest of the forces that makes me happy.
Corinne Caputo
I do like that, too. That makes sense to me.
Moiya McTier
But we haven't always known about these forces. The earliest of these was discovered in the 1600s. The latest of these was discovered in the 1900s. But before that, people observed stuff moving around in the world, but didn't know about these four forces. So they attributed it to other things. So first, in this episode, I'd like to take us through a little walk about the historical understanding of forces in the universe.
Corinne Caputo
Let's do it.
Moiya McTier
So humans have always observed the natural world around us. That's how we survive, we have to see things and react to it to keep ourselves alive. But we weren't always trying to explain the natural world around us. Once we started explaining it we, most humans, most of our ancestors did it with mysticism, and with magic. Many cultures were animistic Have you heard of animism?
Corinne Caputo
Is that like animal? Is that related to animals
Moiya McTier
kind of? So animism was the belief that animals as well as inanimate objects, like trees, and other forces of nature had their own life force that was very popular in a lot of pagan religions. And it's actually kind of coming back now with modern ideas of psychology and consciousness with the idea of Pan psychism. So some modern psychologists would believe that every object, whether it's inanimate, whether it's sentient or not, has some level of consciousness
Corinne Caputo
okay, this that is when my OCD is like really peaking that's what I'm thinking in my head. I'm like, I can't pick out this can of beans because I would separate it from the other can of beans. It's like the Toy Story like thing of like everything comes alive when I'm not looking.
Moiya McTier
Yes there you go, that is animism that is panpsychism. So our ancestors who believe this would attribute the motion of those objects or any thing that they do to maybe their inherent lifeforce or to some supernatural deity outside of that object that was moving it according to their will. But we didn't. We stayed there for well for several 1000 years as a species. But then some 2500 years ago, we started to explain these natural phenomena around us with math and base those explanations on first principles. So getting rid of the supernatural angle of it just based on what we can observe and what we know to be true in the world around us. How do we think this works? That's like the start of physics. It's the start of science, which is very exciting. For me. There are a lot of people who would call the ancient Greek thales, or thales, who lived in the five hundreds BCE, the first physicist, he believed that all matter in in the world, and then the universe was based on a single element, water. And then because they knew water had different phases, it has its solid ice phase, and it has its gaseous vapor phase, that all of the different forms of matter that we see are different combinations of water in its various forms.
Corinne Caputo
Cool.
Moiya McTier
Obviously, we know that's not true.
Corinne Caputo
In my head, I'm like, I buy it.
Moiya McTier
I'm so gullible. If someone came up to me on the street and was like, everything's made of water. I'd be like, Well, yeah, okay.
Corinne Caputo
I'd be like, of course.
Moiya McTier
But then there were like, for several 100 years, there was this, I'd say, rampant debate about what the fundamental constituents of matter in the universe actually are. A little bit after thales, there was a scientist, an early scientist named Anaximander.
Corinne Caputo
Okay, that's a good name, that name is going to come back
Moiya McTier
right, Anaximander We have Anaximander there was also Anaxigoris in an earlier episode that we talked about, yeah, like there are some good names and in ancient Greece. So Anaximander proposed that there was another basic constituent of matter called Apeiron
Corinne Caputo
okay.
Moiya McTier
He didn't really say what that was. But then there was another person Heraclitu, who countered that the only thing that really matters, that the, the thing that makes a difference between different types of matter is how they change over time...
Corinne Caputo
Okay
Moiya McTier
So he was one of the first people to bring in a time element, which is really important. And then it's in the three hundreds BCE, we're finally at the time of Aristotle, who added a bit more a bit more science to everything. A lot of people would consider Aristotle and Plato like the fathers of modern science and scientific thought.
Corinne Caputo
That's definitely who I did like, elementary school projects on.
Moiya McTier
So Aristotle and his contemporaries, the people who were around at the same time as him, they believe that everything all matter was made up of different combinations of five elements. And those elements, maybe you can guess most of them Corinne.
Corinne Caputo
I know this from Avatar the Last Airbender.
Moiya McTier
Exactly.
Corinne Caputo
Which is water, fire, wind or air, I guess. And Earth.
Moiya McTier
Yes, yeah. Yes. So those are the four and then the fifth would be ether.
Corinne Caputo
Okay. a catch all group?
Moiya McTier
Well, ether was the stuff outside of the terrestrial sphere.
Corinne Caputo
okay.
Moiya McTier
And so, they believe that the earth was all of these four elements arranged in like concentric spheres. So in the middle, you had water, because water comes from under the ground, like they have water tables, they would have known that. So in the middle, you have water, then you have earth, then you have air because they're like, Oh, we're breathing air in the atmosphere. Then there's fire, which is what all the stars are. And then there's ether, which is like the, the stuff between stars, between and beyond stars. And for them, motion was often seen as objects made of different elements trying to return to their own realm. So I'm quoting from this article that I found, "A stone fell to the earth because it was trying to return to its own element and flames rose because they wanted to return to the realm of all enveloping fire, whilst smoke a combination of air and fire also rose towards the heavens, because that's where the air and the fire realms where water flowed downwards, because the realm of fire lay below the realm of the earth." And so that's how things move.
Corinne Caputo
Looks really good.
Moiya McTier
They just want to go home things just want to go home Corinne.
Corinne Caputo
I love that. That's me.
Moiya McTier
Aristotle also believe that heavier things for fell faster to the ground, because they had a more of an inherent quality called like heaviness or gravitas. That word will come back later. But he was proven wrong by Galileo who dropped things of different masses and showed that they're all accelerating towards the Earth towards the surface of the Earth at the same speed. So Aristotle was wrong in so many ways. But this does take us to Galileo Galilei, one of the best scientists names, I think, in the history of science. And Isaac Newton, both of them were around in like the 15th, and 16th hundreds. And they are very important in our modern understanding of gravity. So gravity, this is now the first fundamental force that we're talking about. It's the weakest of the four forces, and I'm going to go through them in that order from weakest to strongest. And this is also like, roughly in order of how they were discovered too. So gravity was discovered first, a lot of people will credit Isaac Newton with the discovery of gravity, though I don't, he didn't discover it. To help people know that gravity was there. He was just the person who like thought about at the most, and figured out how it worked. Kind of.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah.
Moiya McTier
So Isaac Newton was an English mathematician who lived in the mid 1600s. He helped invent calculus, and he determined that white light was actually a combination of all of the other rainbow colors. So he has other claims to fame. But he is most well known for this legend of him discovering gravity because Apple Yes, apple fell on his head. Yes, Everyone knows that story. And it did. It did most likely happen. But there was a lot of work that was required after that for him to say, Oh, hey, I discovered gravity. He was the person who called the force gravity after the Latin word gravitas, which means weight or weightiness. So, Isaac Newton was admitted to University of Cambridge in 1661. He's a British boy. And four years later, the bubonic plague hit Europe. He was he had just finished one of his degrees, but he was still associated with the university like he basically finished his bachelor's and was saying on to do his masters or whatever. But when the bubonic plague hit the university shut down. Yeah, we're all very familiar with that. Well, unfortunately. And so while he was in lockdown for the bubonic plague, Isaac Newton was sitting under a tree one day he saw the apple fall, and he started thinking more in depth about gravity, following in the footsteps of Galileo and Aristotle and all the people who had thought about the force of gravity before him.
Corinne Caputo
I think I remember seeing in COVID lockdown, someone, like posted a thing of like, Newton discovered gravity during his lockdown. What are you doing? And I was like, We're surviving. All we're doing right now is staying alive and loving on the people we love. All we need to do. That's all we need to do.
Moiya McTier
People. Yeah, I heard that too. People were like, you know, Isaac Newton, he discovered gravity. He wrote his big magnum opus during lockdown, actually is not true. Oh, good. Thank God. Yeah. So the lock down was from 1666 to 1667. Newton didn't publish his mathematical principles of natural philosophy, often shortened to Principia until 1687. So for 20 years after this lockdown, he was working on figuring out how gravity worked. And in that that big publication in the Principia, Isaac Newton also laid out his three laws of motion. So those laws, the three Newton's laws are number one, the law of inertia, which says an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Have you heard of this? I've heard of that one. Yes. Number two is the law of acceleration, which gives us a beautiful formula that I have used to derive other formulas. So many times. This is the force equals mass times acceleration. I love that. It's elegant. It's beautiful. I think this is just me speaking. I think it's even better than E equals MC squared.
Corinne Caputo
I think so too. You know why it's accessible? Yes.
Moiya McTier
Yes, you know what else it is? It's accurate because E equals MC squared is not the whole equation we are earlier when we say the equals MC squared, we're totally leaving out the momentum factor of the equation. Whereas force equals mass times acceleration, that thing you can use that small three letter equation to derive so many force equations across different conditions. It's beautiful so that that's the second law. And then Newton's third law is the law. of action and reaction. Corinne, do you have any idea what that might say?
Corinne Caputo
I do know that one that is any action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Moiya McTier
Yes, it's the equal and opposite reaction law. Thank you. So Newton, he published those laws. He was also one of the first to say that the force that pulls apples down to the earth, so this gravity is the same as the force that makes planets orbit the sun. And he was doing that largely based on Kepler's observation of planetary motion. Earlier in the 17th century.
Corinne Caputo
It feels like a big connection.
Moiya McTier
Very big connection. Yeah, like it's a, it's a big leap to go from Okay, the thing that makes us fall is the same as the thing that keeps us around the sun. That's because so Kepler made his three laws of kabalarian motion by studying the motion of planets around the sun, and also like the moon around the earth and the moon around other planets. But he didn't know why that was working. And so Newton looked at Kepler's laws and assigned gravity to be the thing that made those laws work and figured out that, yeah, when you add gravity to the equation, that that is what's what's keeping the planets in place. Einstein added to Newton's theory of gravity in the 1900s, with his theories of general and special relativity, which are still being tested, and largely proved correct today, but we, in the future will probably do its own episode on special and general relativity, because there's a lot up in there. The cool thing about gravity, there are a lot of cool things about gravity. But I think one of one of the most cool things about gravity, despite the fact that it is the weakest of these four forces, it is the force that operates on like the longest scales. So gravity can operate at infinite scales, pretty much because it is just an inherent quality to anything that has matter. If you have two things with mass no matter how far apart they are, they will feel some type of gravitational attraction. Of course it if they're super, super far apart, the attraction between them might be so low that it's basically negligible. But they it's still there.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, I love teaching that to kids in at the space center of just talking about how like anything with maths has gravity because we have this really fun like true or false game where like it ended on like, people have gravity true or false, and everyone was like noooo, but then we got to be like we do, but like we don't, it doesn't even matter because everything else is so much more massive. But that was so fun.
Moiya McTier
I love that, little kids realizing that they have gravity. You have mass, you have gravity, you matter. Yeah. So the big equation that Newton came up with to describe the force of gravity aside from mass equals acceleration, this is f equals g times the two masses multiplied together over the distance between them squared, and G that G that I said, that is a constant, that is what we call the gravitational constant, which is this, this factor that can be used to scale the force of gravity. It does have a value. But that value wasn't determined until almost 100 years later, in an experiment by Lord Henry Cavendish, who experimentally derived the value of this constant that Newton put into his equations. Cool stuff. Any any questions or thoughts on gravity? Before we move on to electromagnetism?
Corinne Caputo
I love gravity. I don't think I have any questions on it. I just think it's my favorite. But the others impressed me. But
Moiya McTier
yeah, I'm wondering if this is just the what's it called the mere exposure effect where you you know, gravity really well. So maybe that's why it's my favorite. That's absolutely what it is. Yeah, let's get you understanding the other forces a bit and then you can tell me what your real favorite is. So the next force is the electromagnetic force. If gravity acts between any two things that have mass, then the electromagnetic force acts between any objects with an electric charge. And this force is if I had to describe it, or like summarize it in in a short phrase, it would be opposites attract, the electromagnetic force is the one responsible for opposite electrical charges, attracting and like electrical charges repelling each other. So this is actually split up into, like two different types of forces that scientists thought were separate, but then realized that they're, they're actually the same thing. And that is the electric force and the magnetic force, because we had observed them separately, but it wasn't until the 1820s that we realized they're actually the same thing. So the electric force happens between static charged particles, so charged particles that are not moving, whereas the Magnetic Force operates between charged particle holes that are moving. And since you can use a magnetic field or an electric field to produce the other, they're essentially the same thing. So in 1820, a scientist named Hans Ørsted showed that magnetic force and electric force are connected because a moving electric charge generates a magnetic field. And if you have a magnetic field, and you put a conductor through it, that will also generate an electric charge. So you can go from one to the other, which we didn't realize until the 1820s,
Corinne Caputo
okay.
Moiya McTier
Electro Magnetic magnetic forces operate on also pretty long distances, because they are carried by the photon, which is the particle of light, and that has no mass and it has no electric charge. So it can just fly through space. But it also operates best on short distances. So, it's weird because you can carry electromagnetic energy across the entire universe in a single photon. But for this opposites attract thing to work, you have to be close enough for those for those charges to actually come in contact. So the electromagnetic magnetic force is responsible for generating light, which is also known as electro magnetic radiation. So that's the connection there. And it's why we don't fall through chairs and other solid objects are like, really, we, it's what keeps us separate from everything that is not us. So I remember in high school, learning about the fact that because our entire body is made up of atoms and atoms have electrons on the outside, anytime you touch something else, the electrons that are your body are repelled by the electrons on the outside of their body or like anything. So you're in chemistry class, our teacher told us that we are never actually touching anything. And one of my friends reacted to that by saying, Well, I just don't trust science, because I know I touch this. And he just told me that science says I don't touch things.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, well, so that can't be true.
Moiya McTier
This is this is why people need to be really careful when they just say cool scientific facts. Like, if they don't tell you the nuance if they don't tell you how or why things work, people walk away from those little factoids with inaccurate information. So I really hope that that friend of mine trusts science now, especially because she is an elementary school teacher. So that's electromagnetism. It's also why you asked once I think in in an earlier episode, when we were talking about dark matter if we could touch it, and the electromagnetic force is why we couldn't touch it. Because dark matter only interacts with gravity, it does not interact with the electromagnetic force, which means we could not touch it.
Corinne Caputo
Oh, interesting.
Moiya McTier
That's like how our touching works. Yeah, so it's why we don't fall through chairs. Which makes me think that maybe ghosts have like a selective interaction with the electromagnetic force because they can sometimes walk through things but they don't like fall through the floor.
Corinne Caputo
Okay, I made a web series about ghosts years ago, which is online, if anyone wants to see it. But um, one of the rules we established for these ghosts is that they can go through anything but glass, which we made up randomly, but I think it's actually an X Files episode too. But that was one of the things we decided ghosts can do. I mean, we also walked around but but we specifically could not manipulate glass
Moiya McTier
was that because the glass would just reflect you like what would happen if we had to go through glass?
Corinne Caputo
No, I don't know if we had a justification for it. But what happened if we like touch the glass bottle was like we were moving it the way a person would. So like, hypothetically, in this universe, we could have like, picked up a glass cup and carried it around it room and then scared somebody.
Moiya McTier
Interesting.
Corinne Caputo
I don't think it ever affected the plot. If I rewrote this series now. It would have been purpose.
Moiya McTier
It must you just left Chekhov's glass? I know
Corinne Caputo
Season Two people season two. Let's go.
Hi, it's Corinne here to give a shout out to our amazing patrons who are supporting this podcast. Thank you as always to our sun like stars Sean Llewellyn Finn and Ian Williams. And thank you to our latest red dwarf stars Riley, Oliver and Sarah Callahan. You too can support us hear your name on this podcast and make it to our patrons star chart. Oh by supporting us on Patreon. Find the star chart patron info and more at our website pale blue pod.com or go right to the source patreon.com/pale blue pod.
Moiya McTier
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Now we can move over to the weak nuclear force
Corinne Caputo
weak.
Moiya McTier
They did these forces dirty I would be really bad. If some if like I had a twin, and they were like that's the weak twin, strong twin.
Corinne Caputo
I do have a twin and I am the weak one. And that's fine. When
Moiya McTier
do you actually have a twin? Yeah, well, yeah,
Corinne Caputo
we definitely talked about this. I have a twin brother forgot. Yes. Hi, Tom.
Moiya McTier
Tom, I totally forgot about this.
Corinne Caputo
I don't think we look alike. I guess we kind of look like siblings. He's taller than me. He's blond. He's great. But we're not. He's definitely stronger than me. No doubt about it. Well, but I will fight on camera for the Patreon. No.
Moiya McTier
I'm saying you know if it's if it's physical strength, like maybe he's stronger than you but if it's if it's comedy, muscles Corinne Yeah. He's very, you know, in my in my headcanon, he's not.
Corinne Caputo
He's very good at. He's an engineer. So it's a right brain left brain kind of twinship.
Moiya McTier
Okay, interesting. Twins. Twins are so fascinating. Some some stars are born as twins.
Corinne Caputo
I read a book called binary star. And it was like a fictional book. But there were there were paragraphs explaining that I have no idea if it was true.
Moiya McTier
Well, we can we can talk more about that in the next episode about stellar types. That's a hint. That's well, that's more than me telling you. That's what the next episode is friends
Corinne Caputo
get excited.
Moiya McTier
Okay, so the, the weak nuclear force, I refuse to believe that you are the weak twin, Corinne So this is not you. This is the Tom force. And the weak nuclear force is responsible basically, for changing particles into other types of particles. Because we've talked about this on the show before, space is dynamic. The universe is constantly changing on big and small scales. And one of the types of changes on small scales is that particles can just spontaneously turn into other types of particles
Corinne Caputo
that might be I might declare that I'm the weak twin after hearing that because that does seem like a superpower I want.
Moiya McTier
It is it is very cool. So in in the 1920s Enrico Fermi, who we talked about with the the SETI episode, the namesake of the Fermi Paradox, he was studying radioactive decay of elements. It was mostly for gross bomb reasons. Remember, he was very instrumental in building the like the nuclear bombs, but that did lead to the death cover of the week force, which was originally called fermi interaction. That's
Corinne Caputo
about well, he's dragging himself with that.
Moiya McTier
Oh, maybe they changed the name to week force instead of fermi interaction after he had like, a real bad day on the basketball court or something.
Corinne Caputo
Exactly it. He bet he actually bet the name of the force. And last.
Moiya McTier
We're gonna say that's true. Now,
Corinne Caputo
anything on this podcast is true.
Moiya McTier
Everything. We call it the weak nuclear force, because Enrico Fermi made a very bad bet about his physical ability in a basketball game. Yes, so the weak force, formerly known as Fermi interaction, acts only on very small scales. And when I say small, I mean, like the size of atomic nuclei, because it works within an atomic nucleus. So atomic nuclei are made out of protons and neutrons, that's what's in the nucleus, and then you have electrons on the outside. And electron is a fundamental particle, you cannot break it down into any smaller bits. But protons and neutrons can both be broken down into their building blocks, which are called quarks. Quarks themselves are fundamental particles, meaning there's nothing inside them. It's just a quark, you can't break it up into any smaller bits. But there are different types of quarks, physicists and other scientists who deal with particles, they have a signed quarks, six different flavors. Those are up down strange charm, top and bottom. Okay. Hank Green has a really fun song that I used to study for the physics GRE. When I was a senior in college, it's called strange charm. And it explains the different the different flavors of quarks. So yes, there are six flavors. But all of those flavors of quarks can also come in three different colors of quarks, red, blue, and green. Wow, that's a lot. So I guess in total there, there are what like 18 different possible ways that a cork can exist. But mostly, we just talked about the flavors here. And the most common flavors of cork are the up and down quark, they are the least massive types of quarks. And they are the most stable so strange, charm top and bottom, they usually don't survive for very long amounts of time
Corinne Caputo
to be named charm in a science context,
Moiya McTier
I would have, I would love to have been a fly on the wall in that meeting, where they decided what to call these.
So up and down quarks are the most common, they have a different charges and slightly different masses. So up quarks have a positive two thirds charge, whereas down quarks have a negative 1/3 charge. And if that math, if those numbers stress you out, or like, cause your mind to go cloudy, just forget about them. Then, what you need to know are that protons, so protons and neutrons, they're both made of three quarks, but different combinations. So a proton is made of two ups and one down. And the reason I said those charged values before, is because if you add up to the charges of the quarks and a proton to UPS plus one down, you get one positive charge,
Corinne Caputo
okay,
Moiya McTier
that's two thirds plus two thirds minus 1/3, which is one,
Corinne Caputo
okay.
Moiya McTier
Neutrons are made of two down quarks and one up quark. So that if you add it up, is a neutral charge because it's minus 1/3 minus 1/3, plus two thirds.
Corinne Caputo
Okay, so zero, yeah
Moiya McTier
yeah, so there's zero charge. The weak force works by flipping the cork flavor in one of these particles. So in a proton, if it takes one of those up quarks and flips it to a down quark, that proton is now going to be a neutron. Except there are rules in the universe and in physics, about maintaining or conserving electrical charge, and mass and energy. So if you take a proton and you flip a quark and you turn it into a neutron, you've taken a positively charged particle and turn it into a neutrally charged particle that that doesn't work that doesn't balance out. So you also need to produce an electrically negative charged particle like an electron. So in these in all of these reactions that are fueled by the weak nuclear force, you get a proton that turns into a neutron plus an electron and like a neutrino or something. The opposite can also be true. You can take a neutron and turn it into a proton, but then you have to, like you have to generate byproducts that balance everything out. Okay? This also works On electrons, I said that the electron is a fundamental particle, meaning it can't be broken down, but it can be manipulated. So the weak nuclear force, when you when you take the electron, and you combine it with other things can also generate other things like a, like an electron neutrino, or a proton. So the the weak force takes particles, turns them into other particles and generates byproduct particles.
Corinne Caputo
That's a lot of work for a weak force
Moiya McTier
it is, which is why I think it's a terrible name.
Corinne Caputo
Maybe it's trying to lay low, maybe it wants to be called weak force, it doesn't want you to really look too hard at it.
Moiya McTier
Do not perceive me, I'm just the weak force not doing anything over here. Why is that the voice of the weak nuclear force?
Corinne Caputo
That's Definitely the voice.
Moiya McTier
I actually didn't realize this until I was well into my career. As an astronomer, I had always heard that it's the strong nuclear force that's responsible for nuclear fusion in the course of stars. But now I know that you also need the weak nuclear force. Because when you take atoms and you're fusing them together, they also need to change to become a new element. And then they're going to be a bunch of byproducts. Usually in the Corps of stars, when you're getting nuclear fusion. The byproduct is like a neutrino and a photon, because that's what makes stars hot, and bright and shiny, beautiful. So we need the weak nuclear force to do fusion. But we also need the strong nuclear force, which is what we're talking about next. Yes. Any thoughts? Questions about weak force?
Corinne Caputo
Not one. I think I'm an expert on it now. Nothing's coming to mind. But I think I have a good grip on what it does. And I do agree that the name is not quite right. Yeah.
Moiya McTier
Like that's a great superpower. It's a it's a transformative superpower. Yeah, that's really cool. That's what I would want.
Corinne Caputo
I feel like these were named in relation to each other instead of like, in their independence abilities.
Moiya McTier
Yeah, they work because the, both of these nuclear forces were discovered very much around the same time. Okay, that makes sense. So the strong nuclear force is the strongest, and it's the force that operates on on some of the smallest scales, the strong nuclear force will not work on scales larger than an iron atom, which is one of the reasons that nuclear fusion and the cores of stars will not make elements heavier than iron, because like the strong nuclear force kind of just stops working at that scale. There are other reasons to like, by the time you start fusing elements heavier than iron, that actually requires energy instead of producing energy. So there are a few reasons but one of them is that the strong force, it means teeny tiny scales. So this force is responsible for holding atomic nuclei together. Because in the nucleus of an atom, you have protons, you have neutrons, but if you remember back to the electromagnetic force, like charges repel, so it should be really difficult to get a bunch of protons smushed together in a small space, they should all be repelling each other. And they do but the strong nuclear force is so much stronger than electromagnetic force that it can overcome the repulsion between them and hold them together. Oh, so the strong nuclear force holds them together with with a particle called a gluon which I think is one of the most appropriately named things in all of science is a particle that glues and hold stuff together.
Corinne Caputo
Absolutely. It also sounds like something I would like go get it Michael's see like to go like I'm working on this project this weekend. I fuck I'm all out of gluon
Moiya McTier
That's that's the special high powered glue that they like NASA developed that
Corinne Caputo
I use for like doll houses.
Moiya McTier
The strongest fucking dollhouse on Earth. So the strong nuclear force was theorized in 1935 by a Japanese physicist named Hideki Yukawa. But the how of the strong nuclear force wasn't discovered until the 1970s, when they learned more about the the nature of quarks. And the reason I mentioned the cork colors earlier, was because they are important for the strong nuclear force. The weak nuclear force has to do with the flavors of quarks. But the strong nuclear force has to do with their color. There are three different colors and they have to be balanced. So let's let's say a proton is made of of three quarks, two up one down. It will also have a red Quark, a blue Quark, and a green Quark, gluons and the strong nuclear force will spontaneously I think that's the word change the color of a cork, and it'll change the colors of all the quarks so that they are so that they are balanced. And a weird thing about the strong nuclear force, unlike the other forces is that if you try to pull these quarks apart, the further the quarks get apart, up to up to a limit, the stronger the strong nuclear force is. It's kind of like a rubber band.
Corinne Caputo
That's what you want out of glue. Yes, that's what you want. Glue? Yeah.
Moiya McTier
So if you if you connect two things with a rubber band, as you pull them apart, the rubber band is working harder to pull them back together. And that's kind of what the glue on is doing. It is it's, it's really working to work. stuff together. Yeah. So that that that is the strong nuclear force, which we didn't understand very well until the 1970s. But we were thinking about it for for like 40 years. Yeah. So all of these forces that I'm talking about, are part of or can like, in some ways be explained by the Standard Model of particle physics and quantum field theory. Of course, of course. So, the Standard Model of particle physics says that there are broadly two types of particles, there are matter particles, which are fermions, like quarks and leptons, which are like electrons, there's there are so many types of particles. But broadly speaking, there are matter particles that give stuff like substance and then there are force carrying particles, which we call Bosons. Have you heard the word Boson before.
Corinne Caputo
It's ringing a bell? I don't know what it is.
Moiya McTier
Yes, several times over the last like 25 years, there have been brief spikes in the word Boson being used in media, mostly because of the Higgs Boson particle
yeah, that's what I know.
a lot of people who don't remember in like the 2010s, were really trying to find the Higgs Boson particle which they called the God particle. Because the the Higgs boson, this force carrying particle, we believe is responsible basically for giving objects their mass, or at least giving like fundamental particles, their mass. According to this model, each of these four fundamental forces should be carried by one of those bosons by one of those force carrying particles. So the electromagnetic force we know is carried by the photon, the weak force is carried by both the W and Z bosons. There are two types, which is probably a holdover from a time when we thought that it was two separate forces, electric and magnetic forces. And then the strong force is carried by the glue on again, the most appropriate in all of science. We have not yet found a force carrier for gravity. And we're trying to if we did, we would name it the graviton, which I think is also pretty appropriate. But the fact that we haven't found it yet is confusing a lot of people and is encouraging the search for what people are calling the grand unified theory
Corinne Caputo
that especially because gravity feels like so prevalent and like has been thought about the longest.
Moiya McTier
Yeah, it's like, why is this thing that we are most familiar with?
Corinne Caputo
Yeah.
Moiya McTier
Why is it also the weakest of these forces? And why is it the only one that we can't explain answers for? Yeah, yeah. So it's gravity is is messing a lot of our models up, which is why we're coming up with new theories of gravity. While we're also simultaneously over and over again, proving Einstein's general and special relativity Correct. Like, gravity is causing a lot of drama. And this is what I'm saying,
Corinne Caputo
A gravitas?
Moiya McTier
Oh, I love that little work play to the standard model is part of quantum field theory, which is the way that most scientists today tried to explain all the particles and forces and matter stuff that is going on in the universe. According to quantum field theory, particles aren't tiny little balls that exist independently of everything else. They're not like physical spheres going around the universe. Instead, according to quantum field theory, particles are spikes in an energy or quantum field.
Corinne Caputo
Okay.
Moiya McTier
Yeah. So I can see the confusion on your face. I like I get it. I have never taken a quantum class. I'll be very upfront about that. But this is the way that I understand quantum theory. For this, I am actually going to be reading from my book, The Milky Way, an autobiography of our galaxy, because I was very proud of the way that I explained quantum field theory in the book. So let me let me read it for you. Each of these particles is just a long lived discrete energy spike in its own so called quantum field. I feel the need to stress that these are not actual physical fields. that you can directly manipulate in any way. There are a convenient and constructed mathematical arrangement, a hypothetical medium for transferring different types of energy around the universe, it might be easier for you to think of these fields as software programs running on the back end of the universe. There's a program or a field that describes and controls electrons, a program for muons, another for influence, and other for gluons and so on. These programs rely on each other. So they interact in a way where if you change or perturb one, it may or may not affect one or more of the other programs, switching back to your scientists language, they would call these interdependent software programs, coupled fields.
Corinne Caputo
I love that.
Moiya McTier
Yeah. So these each of these fields determines the placement and like the direction and the motion and the behavior of a type of particle. And they can interact in different ways. So when people call the Higgs boson, the God particle, because it gives other particles that are mass, what they're saying, according to quantum field theory, is that the Higgs field, when it interacts with the electron field, for example, it interacts less strongly than it does with the quark field, because quarks are heavier than electrons.
Corinne Caputo
Okay?
Moiya McTier
So like if a particle is heavy, it interacts very strongly with the Higgs boson field. And you can do that between all of the fields for all of the particles.
Corinne Caputo
Cool.
Moiya McTier
Does that make sense?
Corinne Caputo
I think so. Like electrons and quarks are these fundamental pieces. Yeah, and they interact differently with these fields based on how heavy they are.
Moiya McTier
not just on how heavy they are. That was that was just one example
Corinne Caputo
one example. Everybody don't quote me
Moiya McTier
Right? It's so so these, these electrons, these quarks, every single type of particle, according to this theory, is in itself, one representation, one local representation of the larger field. So there's an electron field, there is a Higgs field, there's a quark field. And every like the quark field can interact with the electron field, the electron field can interact with the muon field, and so on and so forth. And the different types of interactions determine their behavior
Corinne Caputo
that I get work. That's kind of how I interact with like different friend groups or like different family or friends. Yes,
Moiya McTier
sir. Yeah, yes, yes. And you might have some friends, like in different friend groups who you know, can interact well with each other. Yeah. But you might also have some, some separate friend groups who you never want to mix because they don't interact
Corinne Caputo
together. And that's why bachelorette parties are chaos. Because every field is coming together.
Moiya McTier
Stay tuned, because coming from pale blue pod is a treatise on how the bachelorette party is just a real world example. If we go to field theory,
Corinne Caputo
if we see the eclipse in Austin, we like also interview these bachelorette parties.
Moiya McTier
So many of them and they're on that that bus. Oh, my also has
Corinne Caputo
five pedals. Okay, they're all over Portland, Maine to the summer, why?
Moiya McTier
are they actually doing the work? Or is it motorized? I
Corinne Caputo
think you are doing the work, which is why I never want to do it. That's too much.
Moiya McTier
No, thank you. So the reason I went into that long explanation of quantum field theory, maybe maybe maybe too long, is because understanding these particles as interacting fields makes it easier for us to compare their strength, which is why we're able to say something like gravity is so much weaker than the strong nuclear force, because they don't like they're totally different things. It's it would be like saying, an apple is, I don't know, wetter than an orange or an apple, an apple is louder than an orange. Like, what does that even? Yeah. So instead, you can come up with these coupling constants for each of these different fields, which is a measure of how well it couples with other fields and the strong nuclear force, the gluon couples very strongly with other fields. Yeah, I buy that much more strongly than, than gravity, which we don't even have a particle for. So those are those are the four fundamental forces and like roughly how we think of them in terms of particles, but also as fields. Remember that light can be a particle and a wave. So all particles can either be particles or just spikes in an energy field. Why not? There might also Corinne be a fifth fundamental force. So this would be kind of like the antithesis to gravity, where gravity is an inherent quality of matter if you have mass, then it will attract other mass towards it through gravity, there might be a fifth fundamental force that is inherent to the absence of matter. A repulsive force that is inherent to the absence of matter, called Quintessence which, which might be what dark energy is.
Corinne Caputo
I would love that.
Moiya McTier
we still have a lot more observing of dark energy across long time and distance scales. Before we can say whether it's it's this Quintessence but that is one of the hypotheses for what dark matter could be like it just be basically like the anti gravity is all is already a word. But Quintessence is even more anti gravity than whatever you're thinking of as anti gravity. Yeah, because it's so gravity is like, mass will attract and Quintessence or dark energy might be the absence of mass makes things move apart. Oh, we don't know yet.
Corinne Caputo
We don't know. Wow, I can't wait to find out.
Moiya McTier
So those are the forces Corinne, how do you feel? What are you thinking?
Corinne Caputo
I think there's a lot going on that I'm not aware of.
Moiya McTier
Yes, there's a lot out there. But
Corinne Caputo
I do think gravity remains my favorite. Okay, just because it's what I'm dealing with every day. Mm
Moiya McTier
hmm. What do I like? I think I gotta go electromagnetism because yeah, you know, I am an astronomer. And up until 2015. All of the information we had about the universe was gained through the electromagnetic force, because it was late. But then in 2015, we saw gravitational waves for the first time, so we started getting information through gravity. So yeah, I'm okay with our collectively two favorite forces being gravity and e&m.
Corinne Caputo
It's funny that neither of us are like, weak force. For the little guy.
Moiya McTier
If I had to say like, if we were to take all of these forces and turn them into superpowers, where you like e&m, it makes stuff glow, and gravity makes stuff stick to each other. And well, so does the strong nuclear force. So many of these forces make stuff stick to me? Yeah. But the weak nuclear force is the only one that like, turns things into other things. That's definitely the cooler power.
Corinne Caputo
It's an incredible power. Yeah, it's a really good power. And that is definitely the power I'd want. That will solve all my problems. Like I could turn this water bottle into like spaghetti.
Moiya McTier
That's what the alchemists were trying to do. The alchemists were just trying to tap into the power of the weak nuclear force, before they knew what it was. Yeah, that's all that's it. So Corinne, what? What fun, what fun activity do you have planned for me today,
Corinne Caputo
I have a little fun activity. And we can do it quick. But it was me coming up with other famous four forces. And seeing if we can guess the names of the four and then if we want to do a bonus, if there's, if you can pick the a fifth mystery one, you can. Okay, so this one we already did, which is from Avatar Last Airbender, there are for bending arts,
Moiya McTier
I believe, pretty strongly that I would most likely be an earthbender
Corinne Caputo
I see that for you.
Moiya McTier
Thank you.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, I have no idea what I would be. I think I would end up being like fire like it would be something that I don't want to do. I don't think I'm a fire person.
Moiya McTier
I don't think of you as a fire person, either.
Corinne Caputo
Maybe water.
Moiya McTier
I can see that. Or air but I feel like that's claimed. You can be an airbender whenever they need to repopulate.
Corinne Caputo
Alright there is the last one so they might need another. Yeah. Um, okay. The four forces of flight which we talked about at the Space Center a lot. Oh, for a plane forces of flight like, like, what are the four forces that work together to and keep this plane in the air? Oh, like,
lift lift?
Exactly. The next Oh, okay. Lift and then when we talked about today, gravity,
yeah. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool.
Then there's think of lift as like, the arrow going up and gravity is the arrow going down? There's also an arrow going like left and right.
Moiya McTier
That's not pitch and yaw. Is it that's like the, that's like that's the motion
Corinne Caputo
of the plane. But like, the one going towards let's imagine like a 2d plane, the the arrow that will be pointing to the back of the plane starts with the D rag. Yes, yes. And then the arrow pointing forward starts with the T.
Moiya McTier
Thrust. Yes. Oh, cool. I was gonna say propulsion. Yeah, it starts with a tee. Okay.
Corinne Caputo
Those are those arrows are just like for me to conceptualize it, but like it's lift, thrust, drag and gravity.
Moiya McTier
Wow, great clue. Yeah.
Corinne Caputo
And then there are four Ninja Turtles
Moiya McTier
okay, I know they're all I know they're all like Renaissance artist
Corinne Caputo
I can give you the first letter again.
Moiya McTier
No no no it's I know there's a I know that's a Donatello.
Corinne Caputo
Yes.
Moiya McTier
I know there's a Michelangelo?
Corinne Caputo
Yes.
Moiya McTier
Leonardo
Corinne Caputo
Yeah
Moiya McTier
Raphael.
Yes
Corinne Caputo
that's it
Moiya McTier
you can't see it listeners I'm doing such a happy dance.
Corinne Caputo
Okay and then this is this is there are four Jonas Brothers there are three main ones and there is a fourth little brother.
Moiya McTier
That poor fourth Jonas Brother is like the third Hemsworth brothers. Jonas Brothers. Okay, well, I know there's, there's There's Nick. There's Joe. And Kevin. If Kevin
That's the three.
Okay, so just another another white dude name. I don't know. Like, I don't know, like a like a mark
Corinne Caputo
like no, but that is you're in the right realm of thinking of like generic white. Okay, not that you would know this starts with an F.
Moiya McTier
Frank?
Corinne Caputo
Frankie,
Moiya McTier
Frankie, Frankie Jonas?
Frankie Jonas.
That's a bad name. I don't like it.
Corinne Caputo
Well those are the famous four forces that aren't... I will say the first question I thought of for this little game was the Jonas Brothers and then I had to go back and like, kinda sorta science.
Moiya McTier
I think you did a great job. That was really fun. I'm really proud of myself for knowing all of them. Thank you. Thank you. Fuck you, Karl.
Corinne Caputo
Yeah, Karl Jonas.
Moiya McTier
I don't know if it's important for anyone but it is Karl with a "K"
Corinne Caputo
with because I was just thinking that maybe my main voice should be called Karen because Corinne is so often pronounced as Karen like at Starbucks and I'm like, Oh, my name is Corinne and they spell it like K R I N so maybe that's my alter ego I love that. We already hate her. Yeah,
Moiya McTier
fuck you Karl. Karen so sorry to any Karl's and parents in the audience. We are not talking to you unless you happen to be living in our craniums
Corinne Caputo
nothing to do with you. Absolutely not unless you're evil.
Moiya McTier
And whether or not you have any sort of voice occupying your head, remember that you are safe
pale blue pod was created by Moiya McTier and Corrine Caputo with help from the multitude productions team. Our theme music is by Evan Johnston and our cover art is by Shay McMullen. Our audio editing is handled by the incomparable Misha Stanton,
Corinne Caputo
stay in touch with us and the universe by following at pale blue pod on Twitter and Instagram. Or check out our website pale blue pod.com. We're a member of multitude and independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like pale blue pod you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude dot productions.
Moiya McTier
If you want to support pale blue pod financially, join our community over at patreon.com/pale blue pod for just about $1 per episode, you get a shout out on one of our shows and access to director's commentary for each episode. The very best way though to help pale blue pod grow is to share it with your friends. So send this episode this link to one person who you think will like it and we will appreciate you for forever.
Corinne Caputo
Thanks for listening to pale blue pod. You'll hear us again next week bye.