Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseAre there particles that don't have anti-particles?
Daniel and Jorge discuss whether Majorana particles are real, and crack a real life mystery about the fate of Ettore Majorana.
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 Apple Card, 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. 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 digesters 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.
As a United Explorer Card, 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.
What's good, It's coly Wit and Eating Waldbroke is back for season three, brought to you by The Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. We're serving up some real stories and life lessons from people like Van Laythen, DC, Young Fly, Phone Thugs and Harmony and many more. They're sharing the dishes that got them through their struggles and the wisdom they gained along the way. We're cooking up something special, So tune in every Thursday. Listen to Eating wall Broke on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by State Farm like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Hey, Jorge, I have a cartoon physics question for you.
Ooh, go for it. I have a PhD in cartoon physics.
You know, all right, I'm just glad to hear that there is some physics and cartoons. But my question is, if you were a superhero in a cartoon, who would be your corresponding villain.
Like the Antijorge, you know, working to spoil all my plans?
Yeah, exactly. Paint us a picture of who this character would be.
Uh.
There probably wouldn't be an anti Jorge, you know, No, why not? Because I think you know, my plans are usually pretty simple, you know, draw cartoons and take naps. Who would want to foil that?
I guess maybe the anti Joge would just like want to join you for a nap and a snack. I guess that means you are the anti Horge.
M I am my worst enemy. Hi. I'm horehemd made cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics.
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at you see Irvine, and I can read a comic without criticizing the physics of it.
You cannot, or you can't.
I can. Yeah, I can totally suspend my physics disbelief when I see the Green Goblin floating above the streets of New York City.
What I mean? He can be on a drone. Yeah, those now like personal drones.
Yeah. I don't see any spinning blades on the Green Goblins platform, though there's some weird anti gravity device.
They're green on green, that's why you can't see them. What about Marvel movies? Can you watch those and suspend your physics disbelief?
That's a little harder, especially when the plot revolves explicitly around bending the laws of physics and ways that make no sense.
Or when they go into the quantum universe.
That's all right, it's when they try to time travel and tie their plot into nonsensical that it drives me boonders.
Makes you want to be a villain in the Marvel universe.
Well, you know, all the villains in the Marvel universe seem to have a PhD.
They do, Hey, and you could be Doctor Stranger maybe. But welcome to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we critique the physics of the real universe. Does everything out there make sense? Is it possible to take the entire physical universe, with all of its black holes and supernovas and strange bendings and ripples of space and squeeze it all down into a human brain. Is it possible to build a mental mathematical model of the universe that actually describes what's going on out there? Can we ever wrap our minds around this crazy bonker's physical reality. We're not sure, but we can have a lot of fun trying.
Yeah, because it is a pretty amazing universe. It's really big and really old, and there's a lot to explore in it, a lot of interesting stories and lots of interesting characters to give us fascinating insights into how everything.
Works, and we explore at so many different levels. We think about the physics of hurricanes, we think about solar systems, we think about galaxies. We also think about tiny little particles. And I am constantly amazed that, frankly, any of this works. Since we don't understand the universe at the tiniest level of vibrating strings or little space pixels. It's incredible to me that we can understand the way things emerge, that there's this sort of simplicity that arises, it's not always chaotic, and that lets us tell nice little mathematical stories about what's going on around us.
Yeah, because that is one of the goals of human existence, I think is to understand our context and to understand how and why we're here and how we can make it better.
Yeah, and to make better and faster iPhones. We need to understand how the world works so that we can bend it to our will. But there's another deeper pleasure there in just knowing and just understanding, in just unraveling the mysteries of the universe and having some mastery of it. To me, there's a deep, deep satisfaction in feeling like we have grasped something true about the universe. Then you made it sound like we're here to critique the universe? Are we physics critics? Is that what this pot becaus is about a little bit we are, you know, we are trying to say, hey, this doesn't make any sense. And because it seems like the arc of the scientific universe, it bends towards understanding when something doesn't make sense or when something is ugly. That's sort of a clue. It's a clue that says, maybe there's a simpler explanation, maybe there's a beauty here that we haven't yet unwrapped. It sort of like points us in the right direction.
Right, right, or when they use the same old tired plot, or it's a physical law and so therefore it's not not as novel.
Yeah, and sometimes we're here just a critique how physicists name things, right, which isn't exactly a critique of the universe as much as a critique of scientists.
Right right, Hey, we need some kind of like grating system. You know how some people have use stars, and so some people use thumbs up or thumbs down. Well, what should we use bananas?
Bananas? Would five bananas be the worst or the best? Like, wow, that's bananas? Is that a positive review or a negative review?
I think it's just kind of like a self explanatory view, you know, like this thing is five bananas, it's one banana. You know, how bonkers is it? That's the rating system? Yeah?
Oh I like that. Yes, as representing the bonkerousness of the universe. Well, I'm pro banana in that context. At least, I want the universe to be many bananas, so that when we finally understand the true nature of reality, our little minds are blown. Wow, what's the most bananas you would give something? But the theory of the universe, I don't think we should limit ourselves. I think there should be the possibility of infinite bananas.
The rating system goes from zero to infinity.
Yes, there's always something that's more bananas than anything we've ever seen before.
Maybe it should be five bananas maximum, But then each banana can have bananas inside of it, or be made up of other bananas.
It's a continuous banana spectrum.
Or like Chris is all the way down, but it is. We like to talk about this universe and everything in it, not just kind of the big amazing things like black holes and galaxies and quasars and incredible stars, but also the little tiny particles that make up everything, including you and.
I, exactly because we have this hunch that one key to understanding the true nature of reality is to pull it apart, is to figure out what the smallest bits are and how they relate to each other. What are the rules that these smallest bits have to follow. Those should be the deepest rules of the universe. And if you could somehow write down the list of the basic elements of the universe and how they interact, you would be looking at like the source code of the universe, and you could finally give a definitive answer to how bananas is the universe.
Yeah, you'd be like a neo, you know, when he finally sees the matrix, sees what everything is made out of. Behind the scenes, that's the goal.
But we know that we aren't there yet, that the things that we are looking at are now the basic constituents of the universe, because there are things about them that don't make sense yet. That suggests that there must be some deeper layers, some smaller bits that follow even more fundamental rules. When we look at the particles that we have understood, there are things about them that sort of jump out at us.
Yeah, I mean you like to sort of talk about the sort of the story arc of humanity and our understanding of what things are made of, and how it's sort of like each time we get closer and smaller and we sort of get down to the smaller and smaller bits of Lego, like you talk about how the universe is sort of put together like a Lego set.
Yeah, that's right. It's incredible to me that all of the complexity that we see in the universe, you know, the bananas, the black holes, the boogiey boards, all of that stuff. None of that is fundamental to the universe. And the way that that complexity arises is not in like the nature of the boogiey board or the banana, but how its little bits are put together. As you were saying, like lego pieces, you can use the same little bits to make boogey boards or bananas or banana bas It's all made out of the same fundamental ingredients. And so the key is understanding how those things come together. What are the rules that let you arrange things into different configurations? Why are some things allowed and other things not allowed? Those are the deepest rules of the universe, the ones we want to.
Uncover, right, right? And why do they hurt so much when you step on them? It's another big question.
I think there's a whole branch of philosophy devoted just to that question, to lego or to letting go, to the existential pain of legos.
Of having to pick them up all the time.
Is there a universe in which legos feel good on your feet? Right?
Is there a universe in which they pick themselves up by themselves? That one I would give more bananas too.
Is there a universe in which legos step on us, and then the legos scream. Yeah.
But we made a lot of progress in the last few thousand years.
You know.
We went from thinking that the universe was made out of four elements wind, fire, air, and another one and dad, to like the periodic table of elements, and now to like the fundamental particles. We've got smaller and more precise.
I think it's fire, air, water, and bananas. Those are the fundamental elements of the universe.
Yes, I agree.
From my reading of Greek philosophy.
Forget the standard model, let's switch to the horhet banana model exactly.
But yeah, we have peeled back lots of layers of reality and we have a really nice description of how particles interact. But you know, we look at this description and we ask questions about it, questions that just sort of jump out at you when you look at the patterns of the particles.
Yeah, and one of those interesting patterns is this idea of anti particles. It seems that every particle out there that we know about has an anti particle.
Yeah. When you look at a picture of the particles of the standard model, they show you like upquarks and down quarks, electrons and neutrinos. But what they don't show you is that every particle that's there has a partner particle, and like shadow, twin electrons exist, but so do anti electrons. Quarks exist, but so do anti quarks. Every single kind of matter particle out there, the things that make up stuff that me and you and all the things in the cosmos, they can exist, but also their anti particles can exist.
Yeah, and these fundamental particles are not the only kind of particles there are in the universe. Physicists have found sort of other kinds of particles that don't necessarily make up matter but kind of exist both mathematically and possibly in the real world exactly.
This is one of those kinds of patterns where we say, hmm, it's interesting that all the particles we've seen so far have anti particles, and it's possible mathematically for there to be particles without anti particles, where they are their own anti particles, And so because it's possible mathematically, physicists wonder is it real physically?
Yeah. These kinds of special particles have a name. They're called Maurana particles, named after the physicist Torre Maurana, and they might be important clues to how everything works, including Neutrina's and maybe even making quantum computers.
That's right, and they might also be clues to a real true crime mystery in physics, which is what happened to Ettore Marana himself.
Wait what, there's a murder mystery in this podcast too. Did just suddenly turn into one of those murder shows?
That's right, we are now a true crime podcast. No man or reels etorium. Maerana, a genius Italian physicist, came up with this idea for the Marana particle in the thirties, and one year after he came up with this proposal, he mysteriously disappeared.
Whoa man. I can't wait for ratings to go up. Now that we're a crime podcast. Are we going to interview like everyone in you and the neighbors and stuff?
We're going to take field trips to Venezuela and Argentina to track down potential sightings.
No we're not. I mean, if we have the budget, I'll go.
Yeah, this is real stuff. He bought a boat ticket from Palermo to Naples and sent a really cryptic telegram and then he was never seen again. But there are pictures of people who look a little bit like him, which surfaced later in Venezuela and in Argentina, so that all these theories. Was he killed by a rival physicist, did he actually escape to Venezuela because he knew he was going to be killed, or did he just get on the wrong boat and got confused.
Oh man, Daniel, I am totally serious. Let's do a cry Past episode about this man.
It's a crossover podcast.
Yes, But anyways, the theory is that there are these things called Mariorana particles, and they're kind of interesting because they're sort of not like real particles maybe, and also they are their own anti particles, or at least they don't have antiparticles exactly.
There are a fascinating new idea in how the universe can exist, and so maybe part of the future of understanding the nature of the universe and also potentially a path to building more robust quantum computers.
So the podcast we'll be tackling the question are there particles that don't have anti particles? I feel like that's a double negative question, Daniel. They don't have anti party does that mean they're pro particles or there they're anti anti particles.
Aren't they're not anti particles that don't not have their own anti particles. No, never say never. No, it's an interesting question, you know, are there matter particles that sort of are their own anti particles that can like annihilate with themselves.
Maybe that's what happened to Tori Maurana. He realized he was his own anti Aurana and then that the knowledge immediately annihilated him.
Wow, you may have just cracked this mystery podcast over. You just spoiled our trip to Venezuela. Man, Now we don't have to.
Go, well, we don't this one air for a while, right, so we can all right, but yeah, he he sort of invented this idea of the Mayorana particles, and it's sort of an interesting concept that maybe a lot of people don't know about. So usually were wondering how many out there had heard of this and what they think it might be.
So thank you very much to everybody on the internet who continues to participate and give answers to these random questions. They're very helpful in guiding our podcast. If you'd like to participate and hear your own voice on the podcast, please don't be shy. Everybody is welcome. Just write two questions at Danielandjorge dot com.
So think about it for a second. What do you think is a Mayorana particle? Here's what people have to say.
I've read about them on Wikipedia, but I think they're a weird combination of quarks.
So Magarana particles I think are probably some kind of ultra spin.
For me on where it's.
Has like three half spin or five half spin and it has just a very large excessive charge to it that brings about very specific and unique properties that is kind of only synthetically made and has never been discovered naturally.
So disappure, guess, But by the looks of the name, I think it's a collection of particles which are very common or very large a number around us.
Major Anna particles are a big part of history. They're the remnants of the Fall of Berlin, produced in May nineteen forty five, when Major Anna Nicolina of the Red Army hoisted a Russian flag over the Reichstag.
The Majorana particles have no idea.
Sounds like something somebody might put in a pipe and smoke or something.
No clue about that. I'm guessing they're.
Bigger and more major than the minorana particles.
Sorry, best guess, yet, not a whole lot of people really knew anything about mayorana particles. It did feel a little bit technical, and so I thought, well, let's try something new. Instead of asking random people to answer a particle physics question, I thought, how well will a particle physicist answer a question without any preparation?
So you asked your post doc who is from Scotland?
That's right. So here's Mike, my Scottish postdoc, trying to answer this question without any chance to prepare. My name is Mike.
I am postdoc with Daniel at UCI and I research particle physics and machine learning, specifically top quarks a Marana particle, so you have different extensions to the standard model can give you different kinds of interactions. So you have DrAk and marana neutrinos, and I forget exactly what one is what, but they obey different statistics and I should know which ones which, and I don't.
So I hope that makes you feel better. And folks out there who didn't know what in my particle is, even professional particle physicists, people with PhDs don't always have these things at their fingertips.
So are you going to fire him then, Daniel, are we announcing that here on the podcast?
No, I'm giving him karma points for participating.
Karma points. Oh, that sounds like you're going to collect later on.
I might have to make a withdrawal at some point.
Yeah, he owes you a favor. Well, good luck to him in the future with that favor. But it is an interesting question, this idea of may your aunt a particles, Daniels, So maybe step us through it first. What are they and what do we know about them?
So, Marana, particles would be like a different kind of matter particle from all the ones that we are familiar with. And to understand where this comes from, you sort of have to go back to the early days of quantum mechanics and understand how our current theory of matter arose and where your anti matter comes from. And it goes back to Paul Durak. He was trying to do something very difficult, which is to bring together the new field of quantum mechanics, which was describing how electrons and photons operated, with the new field of special relativity, which was trying to describe how things operated at very very high speeds. Quantum mechanics at that point had only really been able to solve problems of sort of slow moving quantum objects, and Direct was wondering what happens when things get going really fast? You have electrons at very high speed or photons moving at the speed of light? Can we describe things which are both quantum and relativistic.
So you found a bunch of particles that sort of follow this mathematical framework or equations that Direct made up, right.
Yeah, so made up of mathematical framework. It's called the Dirac equation, and it's basically like the super fast version of the Schrodinger equation. But when he was putting that equation together, he noticed something. He was trying to just describe electrons and matter particles, but what he noticed was that his equation had a symmetry to it that he could also at the same time another kind of particle, a particle with like a positive charge. So he called this an anti particle. He sort of discovered the anti particle on the page.
Right, It's sort of like you invented the multiplying things by itself, and you find out that not only does one times one equals one but also like minus one thinks minus one is also equals one exactly.
So he found that the math that described the universe and the particles that we saw also described things that we hadn't yet seen. And then he made this incredible sort of philosophical leap. He was like, well, if the math describes it, it must also be real. So he proposed that these things might be real, that they might actually be out there, and then pretty soon afterwards in experiments people found them, they saw evidence of anti particles, and you know, I think you can't really overstate the sort of philosophical bravura there, Like, if the math describes it it is real. Is really a huge step to take.
Yeah, because he was trying to come up with equation that this decribed something that he had seen. And then he found these questions also worked for like the inverse of the particles, and so he said, hey, maybe those exist.
Too, Maybe those exist too, right, And he was right. This guy Durraq was sort of famous for not being short on sort of intellectual self confidence. As he was giving his Nobel Prize acceptance speech for basically predicting the existence of the positron the anti electron, he made more predictions for more anti particles, which were then born out a few years later.
What in his acceptance speech. Yeah, so he embedded some bananas inside the bananas.
Yeah, and he was right about all of it.
Wow, what did he do when he accepted the Nobel Prize for those.
He predicted? The anti Nobel Prize?
He invented a whole new kind of prize.
But he wasn't the only one out there playing with the mathematics of quantum mechanics and special relativity. And the formulation that he came up with it does seem like it describes the matter that we see in our universe. There was another physicist at Torre Mayorana. He came up with another equation, another equation which also unified quantum mechanics and special relativity. But the symmetry of his equation was different. It didn't require the existence of these anti particles. It didn't have this like other shadow side to the universe that it suggested. In Marana's equation, every particle sort of was its own anti particle.
Wait, wait, what do you mean like he did did he know about Dirac's work or was he working independently?
He knew about Diract's work. It was famous, but he was just like, well, let's see what else we can do. Also, you know, the communication between folks back then in the thirties wasn't nearly as tight as it is today. People don't just like post their papers on the Internet and the next day you read about it. So I'm sure it's the kind of thing he'd been thinking about and playing with for several years, even if he was aware of Dirac's work, and so you can probably treat it as an independent line of study. Though I'm sure he was aware of what Duraq was doing. But he came up with this other equation, and this equation, unlike Diract's equation, didn't sort of like look different in the mirror Direct's equation. If you flip the signs, you get equations to describe a different kind of matter antimatter. Myrona's equation has a symmetry in it, so that if you flip the signs, everything just looks the same.
But what was he trying to do, I guess is the question. Was he trying to describe regular particles like electrons and protons and things like that in quarks or was he just playing around with the equations.
That's sort of a good question for all of theoretical physics. What are you guys trying to do. Are you trying to describe the universe? Are you just playing around with the equations?
Are you doing Carton physics or real physics?
Sometimes just playing around with the equations is discovering the nature of the universe, right, Like, what is possible mathematically might be what is real physically. That's sort of the amazing thing about Diract's discovery, right that just because antimatter particles were possible mathematically, he predicted they existed physically, And so Mayroana was sort of exploring, like, what other ways can we follow the rules of Quon mechanics and follow the rules of special relativity and be mathematically coherent. Maybe that kind of matter also exists out there in the universe.
Was he thinking it was a different kind of matter or did he think like, hey, maybe this will eventually describe the regular matter.
His kind of equation can't describe electrons, for example, because Mayorana particles that they exist have to have zero charge so that they are their own antiparticle. You can't be a plus one charged particle and be a Mayorana particle, because then your antiparticle would be minus one charge. So his equation can only describe uncharged particles.
So that rules out most matter particles, right, because most matter particles have some sort of charge. If it's not electromagnetic, it's you know, the strong force or the weak force.
Right, that's right. But there are some particles that don't have electric charge and might be their own anti particle, and those are neutrinos. Neutrinos are still very mysterious, and we still don't know today if neutrinos are direct particles as described by directs equation or if they are maroana particles as described by Myrona's equation.
Hmmm, sounds like another mystery podcast.
Who killed the nutrino?
Why is it so neutral? All right, well, let's get into more about this interesting new kind of particle and what other particles might fit into that category. 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 you thought 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 dig 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 build a 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 s fees 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 four to 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 eight by eight and Data Bricks 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. When you pop a piece of cheese and 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 country 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.
All right, we're talking about particles, then maybe don't have antiparticles. I guess they're pro particles, Daniel, They're not antiparticles, so they must be pro particle.
Yeah, and you know, there are some particles in nature we know of that are their own anti particles. For example, the photon. The photon doesn't have an anti photon to it, and the higgs doesn't have an anti higgs. That doesn't make it a Mairana particle because Marona particles describe fermions matter particles like quarks and electrons or maybe neutrinos, whereas photons are bosons. They're a different kind of particle and aren't described by myronics equations. But in that sense, we do have examples of particles that don't have antiparticles.
Interesting, I guess what's the difference between fermions and bosons, Like, where do you draw the line.
Yeah, well we draw the line in how they spin. So remember we talked about how particles this weird property called quantum spin, which is sort of related to real spin, but it's not really the same because you can't think of them as like actually spinning. You think of its sort of like a label that particles have, though it's deeply connected to angular momentum, so it's more than just a label. Anyway, go check out our whole episode about quantum spin. It's at least one hour of material right there. But fermions have half spin, which means it can be spin up or spin down, and bosons have integer spin. So the Higgs boson just doesn't spin at all. It's spins zero. The photon is spin one, which means that it can spin up or it can spin down, and it can do another weird thing have like circular polarization, and so it just depends on what kind of spin states these particles can have. Bosons are integers and fermions are half integers.
Wait are you saying the only difference between being a matter particle and not being matter is the half spin?
The half spin.
I think usually what we call matter is like stuff that feelsbstantial, right, that sort of like makes stuff up in the universe. And usually that's the stuff that feels gravity in force, right, like dark matter. We say it's matter because it feels gravity.
Yeah, that's true, but remember gravity actually couples to everything with energy, So gravity is influenced by photons and by Higgs bosons. You know, some people think that the Higgs field is the thing that's driving the accelerated expansion of the universe because it's large potential value. So actually, even though matter is the thing that makes up stuff, all the energy inside your body is some of it's contained in bosons, like gluons inside your protons contribute to your mass. So I think the confusion is that we call these things matter particles, but really what you are made out of is both a combination of fermions and bosons, all of which contributes to your gravitational effect on the universe.
I see you're saying we're all just energy. At the end. The word matter doesn't really matter. I guess it's just really from a physics point of view, the word matter just means that it has a half spin have quantum spin.
As usual, we've taken a word that has a common sense meaning and used it in a slightly different way to be very confusing.
Yeah, and it seems in an arbitrary way.
A little bit arbitrary. But yeah, we call matterfields everything that's a fermion, and radiation fields everything that's a boson. And there are other differences, right, Bosons can all be in the same state, and fermions can't be in the same state, so they really are different kinds of fields.
Okay, so Directs equations apply to both matter and non matter particles, but you're saying maurana As equations only apply to matter particles or non matter particles.
Diract and myron and both just describe fermions. So these equations only describe fermions, but Directs equation describe fermions that have anti fermions, whereas myron As equations described fermions that are their own anti fermion, which is not a particle we've seen before. Like in all the list of particles we have in the universe, we have all different kinds of fermions, but we haven't ever seen one that is its own anti particle.
But we know that anthiparticles exist, So, oh, I guess what makes us think that Maurana's equations are a good way to describe the universe.
You're right, antiparticles exist, and that's exactly what makes us think that maybe Marana was on the right track. The mantra is sort of like the universe does everything that's allowed. When in particle physics, if something isn't prohibited, it just happens like those are the rules. Particles will do everything that's not like explicitly prohibited. They're sort of like children in that way. You know, if you don't say that you can't put chocolate chip cookies up your nose, eventually your kids will try it.
That's a whole different mystery right there.
That's right now this is switched into being a parenting podcast.
Oh man, those are also super popular. Let's just make like the one podcast that unify the grand unifying podcasts of everything exactly.
But the philosophy here is, Look, if the mathematics says it's okay, quantum mechanics says it has no problem with it, relativity says that has no problem with it, then maybe the universe is doing it right. If there's no reason not to do it. Then what we've seen in the past is that the universe does it, just like with antiparticles, we had never seen one before, but the mathematics said it's possible, and then it turns out, yeah, the universe has a lot of antiparticles in it also. So the idea is just like, if it's allowed, then probably the universe is doing it.
I see. And so you're saying that there are particles that don't have an antiparticle, like they're their own antiparticle, and so does that mean that they can't be described with in direct equations or they still can, but there also could be described by Mayurana's equations.
So there are bosons like photons that are their own antiparticle. They are not Mayorana particles because they're bosons. Mariana only describes fermions. So what we're looking for is whether there are fermions that are their own antiparticle. And so we know that electrons are not Maorana particles. They're definitely direct because we've seen their antiparticles. We know that quarks are direct particles because we've seen anti quarks. One question is what about neutrinos are neutrinos direct particles, Are there anti neutrinos or are they actually mayorana particles, Like a neutrino is its own anti particle.
Oh, I see, Like maybe a neutrino shouldn't be grouped in with the other particles. Maybe it's like its own whole other category of mathematical particles.
Yeah, because neutrinos are very very weird. Not only do they have no electric charge, which means that they could theoretically be their own anti particle, they're also just different in so many other ways. Right. For example, neutrinos have very very very tiny little masses. Particles, as we talked about, get their masses from the Higgs boson, but that doesn't explain like why particles have certain masses, and there's a huge range of these masses, like top quarks are billions of electron bolts, and leptons are millions of electron bolts, and then really far down on the other edge of the scale are neutrinos, which have masses of like single electron volts or even less, so they're like one million the mass of everything else. And that makes people wonder like, hmm, do they really talk to the Higgs. This is the way the other particles do. It seems sort of like a different kind of thing.
But they do have some mass, even if it's super little. That means it does interact with the Higgs.
Well, there are other ways to get mass. Remember, the Higgs is one way to get particles mass. It's a mechanism that can give mass to particles. But it's not the only way that particles can get mass. And we suspect that there are other things out there in the universe that are not getting mass from the Higgs. For example, dark matter. Dark matter we're pretty sure is out there. We think it might be a particle, and if so, it's almost certainly not getting mass from the Higgs. In order to be a particle and get your mass from the Higgs, you have to satisfy a couple of requirements. One is you have to be a direct particle. You have to have an anti particle. The other is that you have to feel the weak force, because the Higgs boson is all tied up with the weak force. So dark matter might have an anti particle. So there might be anti dark matter, we don't know, but it doesn't feel the weak force, and so it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs.
WHOA.
The ntrino definitely feels the weak force, it's definitely part of that, so that's possible, but we don't know if it has an anti particle, and that's necessary in order to get your mass from the Higgs boson, because remember, the way the Higgs boson gives a particle its mass is that you have like this particle sort of swimming through space and it can sort of emit a Higgs boson. But in order for that to happen, you have to be able to have a Higgs boson talk to a particle and an anti particle at the same time. It means, for example, like a Higgs boson needs to be able to decay into that particle and its anti particle. There's just no way for a Higgs particle to talk to particles that don't have their own anti particles.
WHOA.
I feel like that's a really big change from how people usually talk about things, because you know, when they describe the Higgs boson, even like here on the podcast, we usually say it's the particle that gives other particles mass, but really we should be saying it's the particle that gives some particles mass, Like, maybe other particles don't get their mass from the Higgs, Like maybe the Higgs is not the last word on giving things mass.
Yeah, we're pretty sure it's not the only way to give mass to particles. We haven't ever seen other particles get mass in other ways. So it's like, we know for sure it's not the only way for particles to get mass, but we've never seen anything else do it, and so it's sort of like the possibility is there theoretically, but you know, until we see another example, the Higgs is sort of the only one on the playing field. I see.
So I guess the question or the story is that you're saying that maybe some particles like neutrinos or maybe even dark matter, could be a whole different kind of particle, like maybe a Agurana particle that doesn't interact with the Higgs. It gets mass in a totally different way exactly.
And for neutrino's really the only clue we have is that their masses are weird. Right. The way the particles get masses from the Higgs field is that they interact with the Higgs field, and different particles get different masses because they interact with the Higgs field at different strengths. The top quark interacts a lot with the Higgs field, so it gets a big mass. The electron interacts less with the Higgs field, so it gets less mass. So it's possible the neutrino's just like very barely hardly interact with the Higgs field and so get tiny, tiny masses. But that would be really weird, like why are those numbers so so tiny a million times smaller than the other particles. Maybe instead it's a more natural, simpler explanation if they're getting their mass another way, if they have Mayorana masses instead of direct masses from the Higgs field.
WHOA, and you're saying they could also explain maybe dark matter, like maybe dark matter is good to also be a Mayorana particle. That would also kind of explain why we can't see it.
Dark matter could be a Maoroni particle. Exactly, we know that dark matter, if it has mass and it's a particle, it has to get its mass in some other way from the Higgs field, so we don't think that it feels the weak force, So exactly, it's possible that dark matter also gets its mass through a myrona mechanism.
We crack the mystery releasa how to ask about?
Maybe dark matter killed myronic because it didn't want it to spill its secrets. Ooh, cosmic conspiracy.
All right, Well, let's get into whether or not we've actually seen mayorana particles and what we can claim we've seen about them. First, let's take another 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, Moosset 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 country 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.
Imagine relying on a dozen different software programs to run your business, none of which are connected, and each one more expensive and.
More complicated than the last. It can be pretty stressful.
Now imagine odo Odo has all the programs you'll ever need, and they're all connected on one platform. Doesn'n odo sound amazing? Let odo harmonize your business with simple, efficient software that can handle everything for a fraction of the Sign up today at odu dot com. That's odoo dot com.
Whether you're a newborn baby with delicate, dry skin or a fully grown adult whose skin is a little parched, everyone loves the feeling of being hydrated. That's why the makers of the world's purest baby wipes created They're all new hydrating Clean whites.
Waterwipes.
Hydrating Clean wipes are made with over ninety nine percent water and beneficial botanicals proven to clean, protect, and hydrate sensitive skin, so your skin gets to enjoy that feeling. Pick up a pack of water wipes Hydrating Clean Wipes today at Walmart.
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, worry less tomorrow. Does it strengthen your house?
Dot com? All right, we're talking about murder mystery. Welcome back to what happened to Tori Madrona.
Only particles in the building.
It was a dark and stormy night.
It probably was a dark and stormy night. Yeah, he might have gone to Argentina. He might have gone to Venezuela. He might have also sadly killed himself there are also some theories that he gave up physics and his entire life and just became a beggar wandering the streets of Naples forever.
Does that happen often with physicists.
I think there's sometimes this dream of a simpler life, you know, you're not struggling with funding agencies and intellectual rivals. I don't know, not something that I've been tempted by.
Interesting, all right, Well, so we talked about how there might be this whole new class of particles called me Yourana party. There's totally different than the other particles we know about, the quarks and the electrons, because they're described by totally different mathematical equations. But the only reason we think they might exist is because there is a mathematical equation that might describe them, which is kind of a loop and thinking there. But we haven't actually seen any, have we.
We have not seen any maroona particles in the universe. But there's sort of two ways that we could see them. We could see like fundamental myrona particles like things we think are fundamental elements of the universe, like electrons and quarks whatever, And then thetrino would be in that category. If neutrino was a maroana particle instead of a direct particle, that would be mind blowing. That would be a huge discovery. Another way is to see like quasi particles that follow the same mathematics of the Maron equation, but they aren't really particles in the exact same sense of the word.
Right, Like they're not fundamental to the universe. They're just they just kind of like come up kind of like sometimes atoms get together and they form a little ball, and you can treat that as a particle.
Sort of goes to a deeper question, which is like what is a particle anyway? You know, in quasi particles, we have a whole fun podcast episode about what they are. They're like persistent quantized discrete you know, excitations of solids instead of like persistent quantized discrete excitations of fundamental fields of the universe. So instead of like, you know, an excitation in the electron field, you have an excitation in some like weird semiconductor or in some crystal or in some fluid. But mathematically they follow the same rules, and so we call them quasi particle, right.
It's sort of like an ocean wave like a wave in the ocean or a lake. It's actually a wave in water. It's not a wave in the sort of fundamental field of the universe, but it's still described by a wave equation.
Yeah, exactly, it's the same mathematics. And so you know, you could say, hey, quasi particles are particles two, and that's this reasonable point, you know, philosophically, Really, what's the difference. It's just the underlying thing that is oscillating.
Like an ocean wave is still a wave.
Ocean waves are definitely still waves, especially when they slam down upon you. Even if they're not waves in the fundamental fabric of space time.
It's still powerful. Be funny, if you people could serve abstract concepts.
It'd be cool to be a gravity wave surfer. That sounds like a cool superhero.
Right, Yeah, I think that has already been invented actually by mar He's called the Silver Surfer.
What is he surfing on anyway?
I don't know, maybe gravitational waves.
But it's still possible that we could discover fundamental myron of particles, like the jury is still out on whether the neutrino is its own anti particle or not. And if it is its own antiparticle, it can do something really interesting. It can annihilate itself. So like when a neutrino hits another neutrino, they could just like poof, turn into a little blob of energy. The same thing that happens when an electron hits a positron, they annihilate and turn into like a photon. So if neutrinos are myrona particles, they can annihilate into each other. WHOA.
But I guess the question is with the neutrino, if it is a Majorana particle, does that mean that it's it's like it's writing some other type of quantum field, like a majorana quantum field, or would it still be right in the same kind of field as the other particles, or maybe not even a field at all.
Yeah, great question. It still would be a quantum field, and it still would be an oscillation in that quantum field. But yeah, it would be sort of a different field that follows a slightly different equation. But these rules for what happens to fields are all following quantum mechanics and relativity, right.
But you're saying, like, maybe there are many fields in the universe, some of them follow one set of equations and others follow another different set of equations.
Absolutely, and we know that's true already because we see like Fermion fields and Boson fields and fields with mass and fields without mass. Right, you can unify these all into like one grand equation perhaps, but there are different equations that describe the emotions of different fields. And again here what we're talking about are like how oscillations move through the fundamental fields of the universe, And we're developing mathematics wave equations, for example, to describe that that are also consistent with the underlying quantum mechanics and rules of special relativity. And so we're saying, hey, if the fields can do this kind of wiggle and some other fields can do that other kind of wiggle.
Whoah interesting. All right. So then but you're saying that we've seen we sort of seen mairana particles, but maybe at like the water wave level, but not at the fundamental level.
There are really cool experiments trying to see fundamental mairana particles neutrinos, and if you're interested in that, you should check out our episode on neutrino masses and neutrino lists. Double beta decay, just crazy set of experiments that are basically trying to smash neutrinos into each other to see if they annihilate. But there are other ways to look for mayorana particles, and those are mairna quasi particles sort of as you say, like the wave level version, And here people are trying to create Marona fermions, not as like neutrinos, but as like emergent properties of semiconductors.
But they wouldn't be fundamental, right, Like they wouldn't. They would just be sort of like a thermodynamics law or something something that describes things at a much sort of higher level than fundamental particle.
Yeah, not individual fundamental particles. But if you can get fundamental particles to act together so that together they do something which follows the rules of the Myron equation, then you can say, oh, look we've seen an emergent Myron affirmion. The same way like, yeah, if you're talking about waves, they're following the wave equation. What are the individual particles of the wave of doing. Who knows, they're not following the wave equation, but together all those particles acting in concert are following the wave equation. So now you get a bunch of electrons together and put them under very strange conditions nano wires and very strong magnetic fields, and get them to do a funny dance, a dance which is described by the Marona equation. Then you can say I've seen a mairan a quasi particle. WHOA.
But I guess that would just validate that the equation works. But it would it tell you something fundamental about the universe.
Oh, that's a really good question and a huge argument between different fields of physics. You know, people say, like, well, if you discover myron affermions in solid state physics as quasi particles, does that tell you that they're allowed in the universe. I don't really know. It tells you that the physics of the equation is valid, the same way like seeing waves tells you. Yeah, the wave equation works, and that helps you have confidence that you can use the wave equation to talk about fluctuations of quantum fields. Also, it doesn't mean that there are quantum fields following that same equation necessarily, So there's a deep argument there about what it really tells you about the universe.
Yeah, just because you see an ocean wave doesn't mean wouldn't necessarily mean that fundamental particles act like waves.
Right, that's right, But you know there's a lesson there, Like it says that the mathematics is correct, that the mathematics really does describe something the physical universe does, and so that suggests that there might also be parts of the universe that behave the same way, that this might be sort of a universal phenomena in the wave equation. We see it everywhere, right, and so there is some reason to think that if you found a mathematically valid description of what the universe does, that maybe it also does at other places.
Oh, I see, we're sort of at the point where we have worked out the Maurano equations, or Maurana did and people like it, but we haven't actually seen them, even in a sort of ocean wave level. I thought that we had because we talked about sort of seeing holes in materials that act like Maurana particles.
So there's been a controversy because there's a group in twenty eighteen that claimed to have seen Maroan affirmions in matter. They created these nanowires that were like one hundred nanometers wide and one micrometer long. They put them at very very cold temperatures and very strong mechnetic fields. They actually made them into a topological superconductor that we talked about on the podcast recently. And they claimed in twenty eighteen that these were Marona fermions, that they had arranged the electro in this fancy way, that they followed the rules of myron It's equation. Then people couldn't reproduce their results. Then people dug into the details of their paper and found some mistakes, so they actually had to retract this paper and this claim that they were Myron affermions.
Wow, it seems like there's a lot of ever going into confirming this theory, Like is this theory that interesting or beautiful, or like we've only ever found two theories that describe maybe things at the fundamental level.
It's not easy to bring quant mechanics and relativity together. They're sort of famously difficult to get to play together in the same field. It's not something we've achieved in general, like general relativity and quantum mechanics just do not cooperate. This special case of quantum mechanics and special relativity is easier task, but still difficult. So the fact that there are two solutions to it is really intriguing. It makes people really want to dig into it. There are also possible applications if you could develop myron affermions in sort of solid state physics. In these excitations of electrons their application to quantum computing, they can make quantum computing much much more powerful and much more robust to errors.
Oh why is that? Because they're they're bigger.
It has to do with building a very different kind of quantum computer than the one we're used to thinking about. Normal quantum computers are like individual ions in a certain quantum state. Maybe it's spin up, maybe it's beIN down. And the power the quantum computer comes from not knowing exactly. And it's key that for those cube bits, those quantum bits, that they stay isolated, that they don't get like bothered by the environment, because then they decohere and they lose all of their quantum fuzziness. They're like forced to choose, are you spin up already spin down? That's the typical quantum computer that we've been talking about. But there's a new idea for a quantum computer called a topological quantum computer, where the information isn't stored in like the state of an individual particle, but rather in the relationships between particles. Like I have these two particles over here, and they're sort of entangled with each other, and marona fermions can do that because marona fermions don't come from an individual particle. They come from like the connection of two electrons into this sort of emergent state of a Mayorana particle. And if you put them under these very special conditions, then it's much easier for those particles to retain that quantum information because the information isn't stored in like the details of where the electron is, but how these two electrons are sort of connected to each other, so they're sort of protected by some of the symmetries of the Mayorana behavior from decohering.
Yeah, and that's good for like error protection, right, Like if you have a quantum computer that uses these things, because the cubits are sort of tied together, they they're less likely to get kind of destroyed exactly.
And that's the problem with colin and computing is that it's very hard to keep your quantum bits isolated from the environment. But a topological quantum computer sort of doesn't care as much if it gets bothered by the environment, because the interesting parts, the parts that you care about, aren't in the details of where the particles are, but how those particles are related to each other, sort of connected to this idea of toology, you know, there's this famous example, like a topologist says that, like, a coffee cup is the same thing as a donut, because fundamentally they're the same shape. They both have like one hole in them. There's this property of having one hole which doesn't change as you like slowly deform a coffee cup into a donut or back. I mean, obviously there are different things you wouldn't want to dunk your coffee cup in your coffee cup, but topologically those are similar.
You don't want to mind yourn alato.
And the idea is that a topological quantum computer, the information in it is invariant to the kind of transformations that the universe typically applies to quantum computers, which is that it pokes them, it bumps them, and it's hard to keep them separate. So the information there is sort of invariant to the kinds of things that the universe typically does. Two objects, and so it's easier to keep the information preserved and to not have a deco here. And that's the kind of thing you can do with Meyron affirmions if you can build them, but nobody's successfully done it so far.
Yeah, speaking of a Carton physics, they actually made a video about this, you know that like seven years ago, about this idea of using my urina particles and quantum knots to like do error protection in quantum computers.
Oh, very cool. Well, I know that there's a big group of Caltech that are experts in this, John Preskill and Jason Alicia that work on this kind of stuff. It's mind boggling and amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I work with them to make the video. So if you're interested, you can on YouTube. You can search for quantum knots and maybe also PhD comics and you'll see the video that might help you.
Yeah, awesome, because a lot of this stuff is very tricky to visualize, and so I'm sure you're awesome. Cartoons would be helpful to the cener So go check that out if you want a better visual for what's going on.
But I guess the main point is that you know, we have these equations and Maurana equations that also maybe potentially describe particles, and they might describe fundamental particles like thentrino or dark matter, and they might describe things that we can use pretty usefully for quantum computers exactly.
And it's a sort of fun question to explore, Like, the math says that this can exist, so does it exist? And some physicists are totally convinced. Professor Sarma from University of Maryland has this quote in one article I read. He says, I guarantee you the marana will be seen because the theory is pristine. This is an engineering problem, this is not a physics problem. That's a direct quote.
So wait, are you saying, Daniel, that physicists are really just here to confirm the math for mathematicians. Are you saying mathematicians are really at the top here?
You know, mathematicians explore universes that might not exist. Also, they don't have to follow the rules of quantum mechanics and special relativity. But mathematics that follows the rules of the universe, you know, that's likely to be physics.
Yeah, I feel like you're saying that physicis are really just the middleman between mathematicians and engineers exactly.
As long as we get our cut, we're happy to be the middleman. I put my fifteen percent on top. Well maybe that explains what happened to Marana, right, Maybe the mathematicians and the engineers got together to cut out the middleman.
Oh Man, dun dun dum. The plot thickens. It was his closest collaborator, the engineer.
You got to watch out for those engineers.
Yeah, they'll stap you in the back. But it's interesting to think that, you know, how we this process of discovering how the universe works. You know, it's a sort of a combination of poking around but also kind of thinking about these equations and seeing what's possible from a mathematical sense, because sometimes that means that it is true.
Yeah, we can do exploration in different ways. We can go out and see what the universe is actually doing, and we can follow the breadcrumbs off the mathematics to think what else the universe might be doing. And sometimes that's right. Often that's right, you know. The Higgs boson is another great example. The mathematics says, this is the simplest way for particles to get masked and then we went out and found it. So there really are two different arms of exploration that are working hand in hand.
Well, we hope you enjoyed that and then make you think a little bit about what we know and don't know about the universe. It seems like maybe we don't know how all of the quantum fields in the universe could work. Thanks for joining us US see you next time.
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. 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 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.
Traveling to see your fave sports team is cool, but traveling with AMEX Platinum for the big game is even better. Right this way, With access to dedicated card member entrances that select events, you can skip the line one.
And with access to the Centurion.
Rounge, you can catch the next game on the way home. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms apply. Learn more at AmericanExpress dot com. Slash with AMX card member entrance access not limited to AMEX Platinum card
