Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseWhat would happen if....
- Gravity turned off for 3 seconds
- The earth started rotating the other way
- All electrons within 1 light year suddenly disappeared
- Our sun shut off for 2 weeks
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield savings account through Applecard, apply for Applecard in the wallet app subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, Member, FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com.
Have you boosted your business with Lenovo Pro yet? Become a Lenovo Pro member for free today and unlock access to Lenovo's exclusive business store for technology expert advisors and essential products and services designed just for you. Visit Lenovo dot com slash Lenovo Pro to sign up for free. That's Lenovo dot Com slash Lenovo Pro Lenovo unlock new AI experiences with Lenovo's think Pad x one carbon powered by Intel Core ultraprocessors.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact, but the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit us dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
Hey Daniel, do you enjoy watching disaster movies?
You mean, do I like watching billions of people perish on screen?
Now you're making me feel bad about enjoying Titanic, But I guess I mean, do you like the physics of those disaster movies?
So?
Do you feel like it's always impossible or impossible?
Well? I feel like the solution in those movies is always either nuked or Bruce Willis.
What's wrong with sending Bruce Willis? Is that physically impossible?
He's basically the human nuke.
What about if a cosmic space bananas suddenly Korean storts Earth and crashes into our planet?
Well, I think then we have to send Bruce Willis with a nuke to blow that thing up to make a cosmic smoothie.
Well, okay, so if you were in Hollywood and you were pitching a physics space disaster movie. What would you pitch?
Oh man, we have so many good ways to end the world with physics.
That doesn't make me feel good. Hi am Jorhem, a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I think about how the world might end. He's an optimist, folks, I'm a planner.
Is there such a thing as an optimist physicist or are they all pretty pretty down on the end of the universe.
No, we are all optimistic because you know, we're relying on society to fund our abstract thinking about the nature of reality, the universe and stuff. So you got to believe in a sort of educated, optimistic, forward thinking society for physics to even be a thing.
Always believe in other people's money. Yes, you're optimist.
If the world ends or society crumbles, there's not going to be a lot of openings for physics professors in the end days.
All right, Well, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio, in.
Which we talk about all the amazing and crazy and silly and bonkers things space Cheetos and giant space bananas, and talk about it in a way that we hope you understand and enjoy.
And Bruce Willis, let's not forget Bruce Willis.
He's in a category of giant space bananas, right, He's a kind of banana.
Yeah. We talk about all the amazing things we know and all the amazing things we don't know about the universe, including some of the things we covered in our book We Have No Idea, A Guide to the Unknown Universe.
Yeah, in which we talk about all the crazy open questions of the universe, basic stuff that we should know about our cosmic neighborhood and our place in the universe, but physics still hasn't figured out.
Yeah.
It's a book that too, I think, up until recently, has now been translated to over twenty languages. So those of you out there listening across the world, I'm sure there is a book version of this book in your language.
Have you read it in any of the other languages.
I've read them on in all the different languages and don't understand any of it. But I think I had a pretty good idea of what we wrote.
I just wonder how all of our bad puns were translated like to Korean. Seems to me like an impossible tak.
Yeah, does graphical puns? I think is what you mean.
No, it's a fun book, and it talks about all the things that we don't know about the universe and the ways we might figure them out. One thing we didn't talk about in the book, though, is how humanity might end.
That's right. We talked a bit about how the universe might end, but there's a lot that can happen before the universe ends.
You're thinking they're not the same thing. You don't think humans are going to make it all the way.
I'm thinking that when we end, the universe ends for us.
Because we're going to cause the end of the universe, nothing else matters.
That's right. I wouldn't put it past physicists to sort of converge to those two things.
I knew you were going to pin it on physicists. You know, if somebody's going to cause the end of the universe, I'm going to blame politicians, not physicists.
Really, not physicists.
It's not going to be a physicist pressing that big red button you know that launches the death device, the doomsday device that creates the cosmic instability that you know, ruins the structure of space, time or whatever.
Yeah, you're right, I'll give you that. It's probably going to be the physicist grad student president.
But accidentally putting their coffee down on the button. Oops, what was that?
But Yeah, today's podcast, we'll be getting into a topic that a little bit dark about the outlook for humanity.
Yeah, we pay attention to our listeners and we read everything you guys write to us on email and on Twitter. So if you have a question about the universe or how humanity might end, or something you heard about you didn't understand, please send it to us. But this episode is in response to a very specific question that came in from listeners about different ways that physics might kill you.
And not just from boredom, right, not just from just kidding. No, physics is very exciting and Jason had a very interesting question here because he envisions four ways in which physics could possibly end the world as we know and possibly the universe. Do you think or just the Earth?
I think probably just the Earth, or just humanity. I think in all these four scenarios, the universe will truck on even if humanity is extinguished?
And what do you think Jason is thinking here? Do you think he's worried about these things happening? Do you think he is trying to cause these things to happen? Perhaps hopefully not.
Yeah, this is a similar Quanjy. I'm not sure if in answering his question, we are enabling a supervillain who's making plans to sort of ruin humanity or maybe somebody who's like planning to protect humanity against the coming of potential supervillains. This classic question in philosophy. You know, by creating technology and spreading knowledge, are you enabling war or preventing it?
Do you think Jason might be the Bruce Willis of Twitter or he might be the lex Luthor, right, one of those two. Either way, We're going to answer your question, Jason and Hope for the best and so to be. On the podcast, we'll be asking the question what are four ways in which physics could end the world?
And we got more than four ways.
We only have time to cover four ways, right, we're under we're only explaining four of them today.
That's right. This is the top four of a very very long list of ways to kill everybody under abusing physics.
These are the top just because these are the ones Jason picked. Or do you think Jason nailed the four most concerning ways that physics could end the world.
Oh, I think it's like a thousand way tie for first place. But these are the four that Jason thought about.
I guess, I guess if it ends the world, they're all equally bad, right, They're equally good for somebody, not us.
No, but these are four very creative ways to potentially kill off humanity, and they probe sort of an understanding of the nature of matter and gravity and electrons and all that stuff. So I thought it'd be a lot of fun to go through them and really think about the physics of what would happen in each scenario.
So this is what Jason wrote in his tweet. He wrote, rate these events from most catastrophic to least. Number one, gravity turns off for three seconds and then back on.
Number two, the Earth suddenly starts spinning backwards.
Number three, every electron within one light year of Earth suddenly disappears.
Number four the Sun shuts down for two weeks, and then he later clarified that it's still there. But it's just sort of turned off and went dark.
It winks for two weeks.
That's a long wink, man.
It's very specific to two weeks. It's like, you know, not you know, three weeks, not you know, sixteen days. He's like, yeah, it sounds like he's planning for this.
Yeah, he is making some specific plans. These are not just arbitrary numbers, you know. I think he's really tuned. These catastrophic events. Makes me wonder about how much planning he's done.
Well.
I think it's pretty cool that one of our listeners sort of sat around, you know, and thought of all the all the things that could happen in the universe and wondered what how if these things were plausible, and how they would affect us.
Yeah, and I think a lot of these have sort of physics implications that you might not think of when you first hear it. There's an initial idea, and then there's some subtlety to each one. So they're awesome not just because they might cause the death of billions of people, but they might along the way teach those billions of people something about this.
They all sound pretty hmm. I'm not sure how to say this.
Were you gonna say plausible.
It sort of sounds like the plot of a spy movie or a disaster movie. You know.
Yeah, a lot of these movies start off with some catastrophic event or some dramatic event that makes you wonder like, ooh, how did that happen? Or how did the aliens get control of gravity? Or you know, who's deleting all these electrons from the universe or something. But most of these movies end up unsatisfying. They're like, oh, it's the infinitely folding proton, they can do anything or something.
Oh I see or dark matter. Always go with dark matter or quantum realm. That's darkly matter.
Oh man, don't get me started on the science fiction novels that lean on dark matter. You go to a dark place, do I recently read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, and it basically has nothing to do with dark matter.
You think he just meant like matters that are dark.
I don't know what he meant. It's really more about the quantum multiverse. It's like the many worlds theory, So dark matter. I think it was just like random clickbait physics title. Maybe we should This is not fair though for me to criticize him, but it crouds. If you're a listener, please come on the podcast and argue with me about the science in your novel.
Invitation extended today, Well, it's going to be a little bit of a different episode. So we're going to tackle each of these possible scenarios that Jason came up with, and we're going to ask people on the street what they think of it, and we're going to try to explain what would happen if these things actually happened.
That's right. So I had the hilarious and enjoyable task of walking around campus that use the airline and asking people what they thought would happen in these catastrophic scenarios.
And the people look at you with a fear in their eyes or were they amuse? Did they run away?
They didn't look me the way. We sort of mentally looked at Jason for posing these questions. They weren't worried that I was planning to enact any of these scenarios. I think they enjoyed thinking about them.
Yeah, all right, well let's tackle these one at a time, and so we'll start with Adjason's number one on the Liz, which is what would happen if gravity turns off for three seconds and then it turns back on.
Here's what people had to say, what do you think would happen if a gravity just shut off for like three seconds?
People, I think would be flying up the buildings. I think like, if their foundations are strong enough, they would stay here on the Earth, but the people would like fly up for a little bit, and then when the gravity comes back on, they'll fall down.
If there's no gravities, that means the Earth cannot hold us everyone, Maybe we'll just fly to the sky and three seconds and after a three seconds to gray is back and we will just fall off.
What do you think it'd be pretty realistic with people in vision?
Yeah?
Mostly I think people think about the immediate thing that they are being held to the earth, and then that would stop if gravity was turned off, and then they're worried about, you know, like how high up are you going to to get and how catastrophic would it be a gravity turned back on.
Well, this is an interesting scenario, I guess. I guess we all sort of wonder what would happen if gravity didn't exist? But I think he's asking what would happen if it's suddenly turned off. Yeah, Like one second we have gravity and the next millisecond we don't have gravity.
Yeah, because we wouldn't even be here without gravity.
Right.
Gravity is the reason why we have the Earth. It's the reason why we have any sort of structure or anything going on without gravity, stuff which should still be floating out there diluted in space. So you need gravity to make the Earth, that people, and the Sun and all that stuff. And this question is about what happened if somebody like bumped against the gravity light switch accidentally in the Universe control room.
That's right, God, she accidentally lean against the wall hit the switch.
Yeah, you put her coffee down on the wrong spot or something.
Right.
A lot of people said that you would fly up, right, and you know gravity is holding us down. That's certainly true. But if gravity disappeared, you wouldn't immediately fly up.
Oh interesting, Well, I guess my first question before we get into the effects, is is this even possible? It could gravity just turn off for three seconds and then back on, Not that.
I'm aware of. I mean, we have no way to manipulate gravity or understand the structure of space time. We don't even really know what gravity is, you know, is it just like the way that space is bent by having mass and energy around? Is it a force like the other ones? But of course we don't have an understanding of the quantum nature of it, so we don't really understand what gravity is and how it works, so we definitely don't know how to turn it on and off. We even talked on a podcast about like anti gravity devices.
Yeah, I guess. I mean, do you know of any situation in physics in the universe in which gravity doesn't work? You know, like we talked once about like anti gravity particles. Maybe could we somehow some suddenly be washed over by antigravity particles or you know, is it even possible for gravity to suddenly not work?
I don't think you could turn off gravity. The thing you might be able to do is counteract it. Like if you ranked up dark energy right here at the Earth, dark energy is basically doing the opposite of gravity, right It's stretching space and moving things further apart. So if you somehow were able to manipulate dark energy in a way to like expand space to change its curvature locally, then you could effectively have the opposite effect of gravity canceling it out, so you might be able to balance gravity. I mean, this is really a stretch. We don't even know what dark energy is. But if I have to go somewhere, I would instead of turning off gravity, I would try to balance it with dark energy. But that's a maybe with a with a maybe on top of it.
So if I was writing the Tom Hanks down Brown novel, I would have the evil Zealot create a dark energy bomb, A dark Yeah, that's somehow I've just been balling here, and there's not a suggestion for anyone out there. But in the movie, you might get a bomb that suddenly, you know, gives off a lot of dark energy which cancels gravity for three seconds here in Earth.
What do you think would have the most sort of first weekend ticket sales? A dark energy bomb or a dark energy laser or a dark energy gun.
As long as it's called dark energy, I think the name will totally just sell it.
Then the title of Blake Crouch's next novel that has nothing to do with dark energy?
All right, Well, it sounds like, you know, there is not impossible there, there's you know that you could envision a movie using this plot device.
And like the way you call it not impossible, which makes it sort of which sort of suggest that maybe it's possible, but like in the same way, like it's not impossible that we could be the number one podcast in the world. Wait, we're not could happen. We need the dark podcast bomb to go off for that to happen.
That's right, and boost our ratings. At least in my universe. We're number one, Daniel.
We're the number one podcast that I listen to.
All right, so let's get into what would happen if you actually turned off gravity for three seconds and then turn it back on. But first, let's take a quick break.
With big wireless providers, what you see is never what you get. Somewhere between the store and your first month's bill, the price, your thoughts you were paying magically skyrockets. With mint Mobile, you'll never have to worry about gotcha's ever again. When mint Mobile says fifteen dollars a month for a three month plan, they really mean it. I've used mint Mobile and the call quality is always so crisp and so clear I can recommend it to you, So say bye bye to your overpriced wireless plans. Jaw dropping monthly bills and unexpected overages. You can use your own phone with any mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with your existing contacts. So dit your overpriced wireless with mint Mobiles deal and get three months a premium wireless service for fifteen bucks a month. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintmobile dot com slash universe. That's mintmobile dot com slash universe. Cut your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month At mintmobile dot com slash universe. Forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower about forty gigabytes On unlimited plan. Additional taxi spees and restrictions apply. See mint mobile for details.
AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It's storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested, so buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power, so how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control. It's time to upgrade to the next generation. Of the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure or OCI. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has fourty eight times the bandwidth of other clouds, offers one consistent price instead of variable regional pricing, and of course nobody does data better than Oracle, So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, like Uber eighty eight and Data Brooks Mosaic, take a free test drive of OCI at Oracle dot com slash Strategic. That's Oracle dot com slash Strategic Oracle dot com slash Strategic.
If you love iPhone, you'll love Applecard. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high Yield Savings account through Applecard. Apply for Applecard in the wallet app, subject to credit approval. Savings is available to Applecard owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and Savings by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch Member FDIC terms and more at applecard dot com.
All right, Daniel, walk us through this scenario. So pain us the picture. If I turn up gravity for three seconds, what would happen?
Well, the first thing would happen is that you would fly off the Earth, but not straight up.
Well, I can't fly down, I'm guessing you mean like I would fly in the direction that the Earth is rotating.
Yeah, you can think of yourself as sort of orbiting the Earth just above the surface. Think about what would happen to the moon if gravity turned off, the Moon would not fly straight away from the Earth. It would keep going the direction it's going. It would shoot off in a line tangent to the circle it's moving in, right, Because what gravity's doing is is sort of bending it in a circle. So gravity disappears, the moon shoots off sort of sideways. So if you're like a little moon of the Earth, everybody's their own little tiny moon, then what happens is that you shoot off sort of at an angle to the surface.
Oh, I see, like a it's tangent to the circle too.
Right, Yeah, precisely, it's tangy.
Just keep going. It would no longer be rained into an orbital circle. I would just it's like you cut the string that is tying it to the Earth.
Yeah, and remember when gravity turns off, there's nothing like pushing you away from the Earth. It's not like you're getting forced away. I've seen a lot of science fiction movies, you know that when gravity, when you get into space or whatever, things sort of automatically float away from you. They don't necessarily unless you give them a push. But in this case, you're already moving away from the Earth, and it's gravity that keeps you on the Earth. So when you turn that off, then you just sort of keep going in the direction you were going. So everybody would float up.
Yeah, you wouldn't. I guess you wouldn't float technically away from the Earth. But to us here on Earth where I'm standing, it would seem like I'm floating.
Up because the Earth is rotating under you.
Right, Yeah, Like the house will keep moving around the Earth, but I am sort of now going tangent to the Earth, but it's also moving with me, so it'll seem like I'm floating up.
Yeah, it will. But eventually, if it's for long enough, then the Earth will curve away from you and you no longer be directly above your house or your garden. Or wherever you stood. Like if you painted an X under you and then gravity turned off, the X would seem to be under you for a little while, but then it would no longer be right under you because of the curve of the Earth.
And so what this happen? And suddenly or slowly, you know, like let's say, boom, I turn off gravity? Am I now like falling up? Or am I? You know, be like, wait, what's going on? Would it be slow or fast?
It wouldn't be too fast. You'd be floating up because the curvage of the Earth is pretty small, and so you're mostly already going in the right direction.
Oh, I see, It wouldn't be like I was falling up. It would be more like detaching from the earth.
Yeah. And the Earth would continue to curve sort of away under you, and you keep going in the same direction, and so the distance would increase sort of a nonlinear rate. But the very first few seconds you wouldn't get that high.
How high would you actually get if gravity turned off for three seconds, I start floating up? How high do you think I would I get?
It's a great question. I actually had to sit down and do this calculation because I wasn't sure. And the way to think about it is that the Earth is sort of rotating out from under you. Remember you're still moving in a straight line, and the Earth is rotating out from under you.
I am now heading straight to the moon or something.
Yeah, you're being shot out into space. It's a massive slingshot, you know where, Like think about the Earth as a big merry go round and you suddenly let go and then getting flung out into space. But the Earth is really big and really round, and the curvature, as you know, is not that easy to spot. So the only reason you're leaving the surface of the Earth is because of that curvature. And so in three seconds, you would actually only float up about fourteen centimeters.
So if gravity turned off for three seconds, I would meet elephants, drabs cars out there. Would float for about fourteen centimeters and then come back down.
Yeah, so it's like you take a little hop right. It's big enough for you to notice, but not big enough to really be dangerous.
But I would feel it right like probably a lot of people would throw up then feeling of free fall for three seconds.
If you suddenly floated a foot into the air. Yes, I'm pretty sure you would notice that. And if it continued, you know, if like the person who turned off gravity was sort of like fumbling for the switch and it took longer, then it gets more dramatic. Pretty quickly. After thirty seconds, you'd be like fourteen meters above the ground.
Oh that's not good. That's nice. That one. You don't recover from easily.
No, unless you're wearing a lot of protective gear.
All right, And so I would fly. That doesn't sound too bad. It sounds at least before the world ends, I would get to fulfill my dream of flying and floating in space. And so what else would happen besides me floating?
Well, he talked about gravity turning off, and he didn't limit it to Earth's gravity. He was just like gravity period.
Oh, in the universe, the whole universe, the universe.
Yeah. Yeah, And most importantly, that means that like all the Earth's gravity is gone and the Sun's gravity is gone, and that has some consequences.
If we would shoot off into space.
Yeah, just like we would float off of the Earth's orbit. The Earth would fall out of its orbit and keep going for three seconds out of its orbit.
Oh, and then when it turns back on, we would be in a totally different orbit.
Yeah, and we might have the wrong traject might not any longer be in a stable orbit, and so we might sort of get kicked out of the Solar system.
That doesn't sound good.
That does not sound good. There's lots of ways to move around the Sun, and only a few of them are a stable orbit. And so if you just sort of all of a sudden drift out to a larger radius, but you haven't picked up any speed, then you're not in a stable orbit anymore.
With the Earth crack or anything like that, Like with our atmosphere suddenly proof away. What are some of the things physically that would happen to our planet.
Yeah, the atmosphere also is held to the Earth by gravity, and so the atmosphere would float away from the Earth the same way because it's spinning.
It would just dissipate.
Yeah, it would just dissipate out into space. But you know, three seconds is not that long, so you wouldn't lose a whole lot of atmosphere.
Oh I see three seconds, Okay, got it, got it. It would dissipate a little, but then it might come back down. But by then we will be in a different orbit.
We'll be in the wrong orbit, and then the Earth. You know, it'll get sucked back by the Earth Sun's gravity when it turns back on. But it might then get sucked into something that's not a stable orbit. It could like whizz around closer to the Sun and then get thrown into interstellar space. But that's not even the worst part.
Okay, what's the worst? What's the worst that could happen?
The biggest deal, the cataclysmic end to your Michael Bay movie, is that. Remember that gravity plays a really important role in holding the Sun together.
It's the only reason it's a ball of fire, right otherwise. I mean it's a constant explosion being held by gravity.
Yes, it's being pinned down by gravity. And so if you turn gravity off, then it like unleashes the Sun's fury for three seconds and the Sun would basically explode. I mean, it's a huge nut of your bomb being held together by gravity.
In three seconds, that would be enough to explode the Sun.
It would definitely explode. What would happen when you turned it back on, I don't know, Like could he gather it back together? It would definitely change the dynamics of the Sun, and so it might be a very different star when you turn it back on. It might be burning at a different temperature, or have a different radius or a different opacity.
In oh, I see, it's like in a stable little cycle. And you would be totally disrupting that.
Yeah, you'd like kick the fire, you know, and that you've got to try to get it going again, and it might you know, sputter out or flame up, or do something totally crazy.
So for three seconds, we would see the Sun suddenly get bigger for three seconds, and then gravity turns back on, and then it something else will happen.
Something else will happen, And it's not easy to figure out what you know, we don't understand the way a lot of these stars work anyway. So you know, nobody's done this kind of simulation. To figure out, like in detail, what would happen. You need to run a massive simulation of the sort of hydrodynamics of inside the star, and nobody has done that calculation. It's not something you can sit down and do with a pencil and paper.
And in those three seconds, is it possible where the sun grows? Is it possible that it'll fry us, or you know, like if it sort of explodes for three seconds, is that, you know, shower of energy going to fry the planet?
Probably not. Remember that the Sun is light minutes from the Earth, so we're really far away from the Sun, and so three second there's a tiny fraction of that and you know, there might be like a pulse of energy which gets shot out. But then remember gravity turns back on and so any of that plasma is going to get slowed down and dragged back into the Sun. I bet you get like an enhanced solar wind, but we still have a magnetic field to protect us from that solar wind, all.
Right, So I think that paints a not a great picture, which is that you know, we might get kicked out of the Solar system, we might ruin the Sun. But here on Earth we'll float for three seconds and then come back down. So a lot of cars maybe you know, might float and then crash back down. That wouldn't be too bad, but the worst is that we might get kicked out or the Sun would explode.
Yeah, overall, pretty bad. I rate this on the on the badness scale, has pretty bad scenario.
Pretty bad, especially dur show the range of your scale here, does it go from pretty bad to utterly terrible or from don't worry about it too?
Keep listening because some of these scenarios get pretty nasty.
All right, let's get into the second one here, Jason Wright, what would happen if the Earth suddenly starts spinning backwards?
So I walked around campus again and I ask people this insane question, what do you think it would be like on Earth if the Earth suddenly started rotating the other direction?
I think everything would go insane, Like the probably seas were just in the ways to go the obbosit directions, tsunamis.
Would happen, and probably storms.
I've never thought about it because I just haven't really come with I mean, you just hear.
How it goes and like, okay, well it does what it does.
But I've never thought what happens?
Well, it does the opposite much?
Okay, all right? Bad stuff, bad stuff. None of this was supposed to be sort of cozy scenarios. I'm supposed to make anybody smile and cuddle up with a book and a cup of tea or anything.
Do you think he means, like, if you you know the Earth is spinning right now? And we're all very comfortable. But suddenly the spinning inverts. Do you think he means like it stops and then it starts spinning the other way.
Yeah, it's a critical difference because if you could sort of snap your fingers and all of a sudden everything is going the other direction, that's not actually that big a deal. I mean in that scenario, like, yeah, the sun.
Is like everything, like the oceans. You mean, if we're you know, suddenly we're spinning moving the other way, not much would happen.
Not much would happen. Yeah, the sun would rise and set on the other side. Right, m But a lot of things about the Earth are pretty symmetric.
Would it change like the magnetic poles.
It certainly might. It might flip the magnetic field, you know, because the magnetic field is generated by what's going on inside the Earth, the rotation of like that hot magnetic liquid inside the earth, And so if you're flipping that, then you're flipping the magnetic field. But that just makes north endto south. Right, things still work. You still have a magnetic field to protect you from solar flares and cosmic radiation. Everything still sort of holds together. It doesn't really break everything. It just sort of puts a minus one in front of a lot of stuff.
Oh okay, I think I get it. I think if you define the Earth as the brock and everything on it, including us and the satellites, then not much would happen.
And the atmosphere, Yeah.
And the atmosphere, not much would happen. But if you maybe define the Earth is just a ball of rock, then things might get bad. Right.
Oh man, if just the Earth started going in the other direction and we were still going this way, yeah, that would be very.
Bad because how fast? How fast am I technically going sitting here on Earth?
Yeah, you're going pretty fast. I mean the Earth's circumference is what twenty four thousand miles and it does that in a day, and so it's one thousand miles per hour as the Earth's surface is moving. So if all of a sudden it's moving the other way, basically two thousand miles per hour, and that would be pretty bad.
That's like going in a car at two thousand miles per hour and then suddenly the car stopped. Yeah, we're crashing to.
A wall, right, Yeah, not recommended not We would.
All just get smooshed mm. Hmmm, or we would get you know, if you're outside, you would just certainly be flung at two thousand miles per hour.
Yeah, and also be crazy winds, right, because the atmosphere is also rotating with the Earth, So just the Earth started going the other direction, basically all the air and Earth would have a wind speed of two thousand miles per hour. That's like much stronger than any hurricane. So we basically flatten every city.
Right, but me included would also be going at two thousand miles per hour, so I would I guess I would get throwned if I was outside. This is the best case scenario. I'm outside, the Earth changes direction.
You're wearing a lot of protective gear.
I hope, I'm wearing a lot of and insulated.
Lab coat and goggles.
Yeah, I get flung off into the sky at two thousand miles pro but the wind is also going with me at two thousand miles per hour, so I think for a few short seconds I would be flying again until you hit something, until I hit something right like the earth, Yeah.
Over your house or something.
Yeah. Oh, I see all right.
But there's another scenario. When I read this, I thought of something else. I thought, what does it take to flip the Earth to go the other way? I thought, you know, maybe you like stop that, you slow down the Earth and get it going the other way, and you do that in a very short amount of time, you like actually apply the brakes and then give it a push the other direction. Because you know, in physics, nothing gets accomplished instantaneously. You can't be going one hundred miles an hour in one direction and then instantly the other direction. Right, that's an acceleration, that's a change of velocity, and that only happens with a huge force.
Can it happen with the giant dark energy bomb?
I think it'd be more a dark energy laser, you know, fire at the surface. I'll make a note, but that's an even worse scenario because if you apply an enormous acceleration to the whole Earth, that would break a lot of stuff.
Well, it's kind of like the opposite. It's just a milder version of the instantaneous flip of the rock. Right.
The instantaneous flip is actually easier because you don't have to go through the transition, you don't have to feel the acceleration. Acceleration is what's really bad. It's like, if you're in a fighter jet, going at zero miles per hour is no big deal. Going at five thousand miles per hour also not that big a deal because velocity is not an issue. But the acceleration from zero to five thousand, those g's you would feel them. It would like pulverize your insides. Humans can't survive more than a few g's without liquefying our organs.
So it sort of depends on a lot of things. It depends on whether Jason meant the ball of rock or everything on it, and also in how quickly this operation happens.
Yeah, because if you actually do it physically correctly and accelerate the earth the other direction to get it spinning that way, then you have to be really careful. If you don't include the oceans, for example, then you're going to get like ridiculous tsunamis like miles high waves slashing around.
See, you got to do it carefully because you've got to get everything on board with or change of direction otherwise is chaos.
Do you ever feel just like a pan of water and try to walk it across your kitchen. It's almost impossible to not have that water like slosh around and splash on your toes. Now, imagine you have like oceans on the Earth and you're spitting it the other way. You are going to drown Tokyo and everything else.
Oh man, all right, So then how would you rate this potential physics disaster? Is this? Is it too dependent on the specifics or do you think we should it's clearly bad?
In any case, I'd say it's less catastrophic than turning off gravity. I'm pretty worried about the Sun being unleashed for three seconds and being kicked down into a different orbit. So if I had to pick, I would say gravity turning off is more catastrophic. That's the champion so far.
Okay, so what's below pretty bad? Pretty bad, but not as.
Bad A bad idea? Not recommended?
Is there a physics rating system like you know, gee good, good to go PG physics good? This one's yeah, not recommended without the supervision of a physicist.
Especially with the supervision. Physicists don't offer this option. Any physicists.
You know, they can't resist pushing the button, can they.
Whenever I'm in front of a big red button, my fingers just crawl on and I got to touch it, and like, what do I feel like depressing? What would happen?
I'm gonna create a button, Daniel that transfer transfers all your money to my bank account, and I'm gonna leave it in your front door.
See what, No, that's my personal twilight Zone episode.
It's like your nightmer is a house full of red buttons? Is that what it is? That's your twilight Zone episode?
And one of them kills everybody on earth.
Oh that is a good plot idea.
Oh man, we are pitching so many good movies today.
I know it's like Saw but for physics. There we go. All right, get into the last two scenarios that Jason imagine that the Levy came up with. But first, let's take a quick break.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite. But the people in the dairy industry are us. Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times. The same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. So the next time you grab a slice of pizza or lick an ice cream cone, know that dairy farmers and processors around the cuntry are using the latest practices and innovations to provide the nutrient dense dairy products we love with less of an impact. Visit usdairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
California has millions of homes that could be damaged in a strong earthquake. Older homes are especially vulnerable to quake damage, so you may need to take steps to strengthen yours. Visit Strengthen your House dot com to learn how to strengthen your home and help protect it from damage. The work may cost less than you think and can often be done in just a few days. Strengthen your home and help protect your family. Get prepared today and worry less tomorrow. Visit strengthen your House dot com.
There are children, friends, and families walking, riding on paths and roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too. Go safely, California from the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans.
All right, Daniel, we have two more potentially catastrophic scenarios for the Earth and humanity and potentially the universe that one of our listeners here, Jason, came up with, and so we need to rate them. We need to explain them and see how bad they are. So the third idea that Jason had was.
Yeah, He asked, what would happen if every electron within one light year of Earth disappeared?
Is it for three seconds you think or forever?
It just says gone, Yeah, we're not getting these electrons back, you know, they have just been deleted from the universe. Could we survive?
But only within one light year? He's very specific at one point zero, Like you, I.
Think he's trying to include like our entire cosmic neighborhood, you know, the Sun, planets, that maybe the worst cloud, but not the whole universe.
He's not building to spec here, He's just curious, right, I hope not all right, So the scenario is that every electron that we know that's inside of my body, the Earth, the Sun, the planets, all the I guess nearby solar system right.
Now, the nearest star is three light years away, three or four light years away, so there are no other stars involved.
So basically just our solar system. Every electrons suddenly disappear.
In the Solar system. And so let's preface this by reminding people sort of how important and ubiquitous electrons are. Okay, They're not just something in batteries, right, They're not just a thing that you juice up your iPhone with. Everything you know, everything you see, everything you have ever eaten, everything you are made of has electrons in it and needs those electrons.
Right, And in a way, it's almost they're almost it's like one third of all matter, isn't it.
Technically kind of yeah, Like you take an atom and it has protons and neutrons and electrons. Now, the electrons are very very light, right, they don't have a lot of mass, but they are responsible for balancing the electric charge of the atom. You know, there's the positive proton and then there's the negative electron, and so it's pretty key.
I'm thinking this is not good. But let's see what people had to say on the street.
Yeah, so I walked around and I asked people what they thought. Here's what they had to say. What do you think would happen if all of the electrons, like within a light year, just suddenly disappeared.
I don't think that'd be good or bad. It was simply dis joy out of so kind of considering I'm an electrical engineer, that'd be that'd be probably pretty bad. I like this last one, that last one where the engineer is worried about his career. Yeah, that's his main percupation.
I know.
I was like, dude, you're going to have to become a proton engineer instead of electron engineer. That's what I was thinking.
How would you what would that new career be called protonical engineer?
Pratonical engineer? Yeah, I suppose. So, although you know, if this happens, we're not going to be around to be hiring anybody.
Okay, so you think it's pretty catastrophic if all electrons suddenly disappear.
Yeah, every atom, all of a sudden gets a positive charge. Or you have a hydrogen atom, you delete its electron. You got a proton. And if you had a gas of hydrogen atoms, which we do in lots of places like the sun, then you deleted all those electrons. All of a sudden. You have all these positive protons, and they're not gonna be happy just hanging out. They're gonna push against each other.
Oh I see if I have a canister of hydrogen and I take away the electrons, suddenly have I just have protons.
Yeah, and those protons feel a very powerful force against each other.
Is it my canister gonna explode? Or is it just gonna feel pressure?
It's gonna explode. Your canister also used to have electrons in.
It doesn't anymore.
You used to have electrons in, it doesn't anymore. That's what I'm talking about. Like electrons are everywhere. Every are electron. We are made of electrons. The Sun is made of electrons. Earth is made of electrons. So you delete electrons all of a sudden, every atom you know within a light year hates every other atom and wants to be really far away from me.
You think maybe Jason was just thinking, like, hey, what if we didn't have electricity for a little while.
No what you're thinking, But Jason, please do not do this. Everything would explode. The Earth would explode, the Sun would explode. You would explode, My brain would explode, your career would explode.
I sense real fear in your voice here, Daniel. I feel like we actually touch in something that makes you afraid at a very core level.
Yeah. Also, I take this one a bit personally. I mean, I'm a particle physist. I feel something for particles. You can't just delete electrons, man, I mean it's so cruel, like they've been doing so much for you for years or any thanks, and then you're just going to erase them, literally, erase them from the universe.
It's like, don't cancel, don't cancel the election exactly.
This cancel culture has gone too far. People. If we're canceling particles now.
People want to cancel the electron.
And how come nobody ever wants to cancel protons. It's always the electrons, right.
It sounds like you're pretty afraid of this scenario, like it would be bad.
There's no recovering from it, right, If you have no electrons, then there's no way to balance the charges. I mean, there are other particles in the universe that have negative charges, like the W minus, and some quarks have fractional negative charges, So you might be able to assemble some other hadrons to give you negative charges and make really weird chemistry. You know, you can make like an omega minus particle to balance the proton and make a whole new kind of atom. But who knows what kind of thing you could build out of that. Certainly not me or you or anything you're familiar with, So it's like you're rewriting the laws of the universe. It'd be totally catastrophic.
One second would be sitting here talking on the next second, we're just exploding, flying through space and this massive protons floating out there in the universe.
Yeah, exactly. We'd be a plasma of protons pushing away from each other really really hard. Because remember, electromagnetism is a powerful force and it has an infant in an extent, and so everything within our light year would become a dilute gas of protons eventually.
All right, so I think you would rate this is not just pretty bad, but like maybe ultimately bad. This is this is up there.
This is up there, This sort of like saturate the scale, you know, this like red lines as maximumly catastrophic like this one terrifies me.
I see, this is the stuff physicist nightmares are made of. That and red button rooms with red buttons.
One of these buttons will delete electrons.
No, and the other might transfer all your funds to Jorge No. All right, so I'm impressed that Jason saturated your disaster scale, like you you wouldn't even want to see this movie.
No, I mean, what's going to happen? Everything blows up in the first moment boom movie over, Like there's no drama there, just building anything.
All right, Well, let's get into his fourth scenario here. Maybe that will have a little bit more drama. So Jason writes, what would happen if the sun shuts down for two weeks but the mass is still there. He's very cautious about that. It's just he's saying, like what if it's stuff stops giving off light for two weeks?
Right, Yeah, the Sun basically goes dark or winks at us in you know, technical terms, but.
It's still there. It's still making the planets go around, but it's just not giving off any light or particles.
Like imagine if the Sun became a black hole, it's effectively what would happen, oh, for two weeks, for two weeks, but then then it comes back from vacation. Yeah, So I walked around and I asked folks, were they worried about the Sun shutting down? And what did they think would happen in that scenario? What do you think would be like on Earth if the Sun shut down for like two weeks?
I don't think there would be life, but there.
Like we'd all die within two weeks, I think so plus like then there'd be like no gravity. I don't know it, Like, I don't think there would be life.
I don't all. So, what happened that the only one person was willing to talk to you at this point? Run away?
After you ask people about electrons disappearing and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, they sort of like I had somewhere else to be.
Do you make them rethink their lives and what they're doing with their precious time that we have here.
Yeah, I hope they ran off and to tell all their loved ones how important they are to them.
He's envisioning what would happen if the sun suddenly turned off, But I guess physically we wouldn't feel it, right, things would just go dark.
Yeah. First of all, the sun would keep burning for eight minutes apparently in the sky, because remember it takes time for a light to get here from the sun. So in the first eight minutes or so of this two week hiatus, things would seem normal, and then all of a sudden, boom, the sun would go black and it's basically like nighttime for two weeks. Astronomers would be very excited.
They can actually work for two weeks, two weeks stray thout, sleeping. Do you think they would be excited.
They're brewing a big pot of coffee in anticipation. Astronomers basically lose half of their observing time because of the sun. It just blots out everything in the sky. You would get great views of the stars.
Right, and it sort of blocks telescopes also just from like light pollution too. Right, It's not just the direct sunlight, it's also just like light in our solar system yep.
And it heats of the atmosphere and makes it wiggly, and so it makes it harder to see that star light that's sort of limped across the universe for billions of years and finally gotten here has to go through a wiggly atmosphere. It gets all smeared out, and so the Sun is sort of the enemy of astronomy.
It's not particle physicists, it's the Sun.
Particle physicists always beat astronomy. So we don't even.
Think, I think we do bring an astronom right here to have an arm wrestling fight with you here, an intellectual arm wrestling fight.
No, we love astronomers and we feel a kinship of course with all the physics, but especially with astronomers and cosmologists, because we're all wondering about the big questions of the universe.
All right, well, it doesn't sound too catastrophic. It sounds like we just get a two night, a two week night, which sounds great to me because I can sleep the whole catchup of my sleep.
Your sleep. You mostly work a night. I get emails from you like three in the morning, so you would get so much done. If the sun.
Disappeared for two weeks, me and this astronomers would die from exhaustion.
Assuming your kids sleep for two weeks, right, yeah, it'd be pretty hard though. You know, I don't think it's very fun to endure two weeks of night. But you know, they are parts of the Earth that don't see the sun for weeks and months at a time.
Right Yeah. People are like near the North Pole.
The sun sets you know, in whatever October November, depending where you are, and then just doesn't come up again in February until February.
Watch, so they all depending on when it happens. Some people might not even notice.
In the wintertime, folks would be like, what are you talking about?
The sun? Is the sun turned off?
What?
There's no sun anyway? Yeah, And it'd be more than just two weeks of night because we rely on sort of the reheating of daytime, and so eventually there we get pretty chilly. And the thing I wonder about is like plants. You know, could plants go for two weeks without any sun and then just sort of like snap back into health two weeks later?
Right? Yeah? Can't plants? Would plants just kind of go into hibernation or something.
Yeah, it might like kill off agriculture for a whole cycle, so we might all be hungry for a year. But you know, that's a question sort of for biologists, like if you shut down sunlight to plants for two weeks, would they die or would they come back? I'm guessing you wouldn't all die, but you'd get definitely reduced yields, so you'd have less food for that next winter.
Oh boy, so our culture, our society might collapse.
Yeah, you know, I like reading science fiction novels that highlight the sensitivity of our entire civilization. You know, like we are all three days away from total riots. Like if the truck stop driving, and these supermarket shells, we're no longer filled with food, We're like three days away from total chaos.
Better stuck up on those lentils.
That's right, lentils exactly. Everybody should have lentils in their basement, all right.
But then you're saying that the earth might get colder, Like how much colder would we suddenly be thrown into like a two week winter or would it just would we see it sort of slowly get chillier.
It would be sort of like a two week winter, because you'd get the dips for a nighttime and then you wouldn't come back up again during the day, and so you just keep cooling off and getting colder and colder and colder, and eventually, if the sun was out for months or weeks or years, then you get a new ice age and the earth would really frost over.
On the plus side, we would solve global warming. On the negative side, society might collapse.
You forgot to add more astronomy and cartoons to the plus.
Yes, right, more creativity for nighttime artists. That's another I think that. I think that justifies the rest.
To be honest, maybe we should think about actually doing this.
Yeah, I mean Jason already thought about it, and that's why.
He's Jason's like using the other scenarios to make this one sound reasonable.
Right, He's worked it all out. He just wants to make sure.
I was thinking it was more of the Calvin and Hobbs strategy. You know, they're like, hey, mom, can I have a flamethrower?
No?
Well, can I have a cookie?
Sure?
And he's like, can I turn off all the electrons? No, don't do that. Can I just turn off the sun for two weeks. All right, that seems reasonable.
Well, he I guess he has my permission. If his options are disappear electrons or turn off the sun for two weeks, I would say turn off the sun.
Yeah, so my vote for most catastrophic would be turn off the electrons, then probably turning off gravity, then the Earth spinning backwards, and then shutting off the Sun for two weeks. That would be the least catastrophic in my book.
All right, and that covers the range from not so bad to ultimately bad.
To please, please, please, don't even think about this. Don't start doing research on it, but don't imagine what it'd be like or how much fun it would be. Let's just avoid the topic.
Wow, this really you don't even want to talk about it, Danny.
Let's wrap up the podcast.
I'm not comfortable. Take you. This is triggering you, I feel in ways that are making you uncomfortable.
Well, you know, every time somebody has a crazy sounding idea that seems impossible, somebody out there starts thinking about it and like, hmm, maybe that isn't embossible. I have a few ideas, and that's how research gets started.
Man oh Man, all right, let's let's end the podcast then, before we quit, before we go too.
Far, it might already be too late.
All right, Well, I think thinking about these scenarios is pretty interesting because, first of all, it makes you think about how precious we life is and hear on earth. And also it kind of makes me think about how at the whim of these physical laws we're you know, if things change, we might not be here.
Yeah, we are in a delicate balance, and the universe is this way which allows for our life and our and our loves and everything we enjoy about the universe. But if it was slightly different then we wouldn't be able to survive, And were the deepest questions in physics is could it be slightly different? Why is it this way? Is this the only way that the universe could be so we are a natural consequence? Or are there billions of ways to have universes and we just happen to be in this one. We don't know the answer to that really basic question about our own existence. And I like these questions because they sort of make you think about all of those issues.
Yeah, the big question like what would happen if we didn't have Bruce willis.
Who would go and nukee that cosmic banana if we couldn't call Bruce.
All right, Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that.
And if you have a question you'd like to hear us talk about in a silly manner, please send it to us at Questions at Danielanjorge dot com.
See you next time.
Before you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Have you boosted your business with Lenovo Pro yet? Become a Lenovo Pro member for free today and unlock access to Lenovo's exclusive business store for technology expert advisors and essential products and services designed just for you. Visit Lenovo dot com slash Lenovo Pro to sign up for free. That's Lenovo dot Com slash Lenovo Pro unlock new AI experiences with Lenovo's think Pad X one carbon powered by Intel Core ultraprocessors.
When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. How is us dairy tackling greenhouse gases? Many farms use anaerobic digesters to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as Dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
As a United Explorer Card member, you can earn fifty thousand bonus miles plus look forward to extraordinary travel rewards, including a free checked bag, two times the miles on United purchases and two times the miles on dining and at hotels. Become an Explorer and seek out unforgettable places while enjoying rewards everywhere you travel. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC subject to credit approval offer subject to change.
Terms apply
