Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseDaniel and Jorge welcome Ethan, host of the Podcast Bad Science, and answer his questions about the universe.
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Hey Daniel, what's your favorite science fiction movie?
I think my favorite one is probably Primer.
Primer, what do you like about it?
I like that it tells a counterintuitive taiale of time travel, but it actually really tries to hold true to the rules like they set up some rules and they follow them and the results are not what you expect. But then you think about you like, actually that makes perfect sense. So it's like clever, it's insightful. That's the best science fiction. It's like new idea, insightful comments about how it impacts reality in human life.
Right. But they don't even try to explain how they achieve a time travel right, like at all.
There's a little bit of YadA YadA YadA there. You know, they're like trying to do this and YadA YadA YadA. Oops, look what happens?
We can travel with the time Yeah exactly.
But you know it's science fiction. It's not technology fiction or engineering fiction. Right, It's like, imagine we had this new thing of science, what would it would be like in our world?
Yeah? And can you make a consistent story out of.
The time travel? Yeah exactly, which is really a challenge. And as you know, because I've complained about it bitterly most times, job movies that are horribly inconsistent untially implausible.
If only you could go back in time and fix fix.
Those plots, yeah, I would just cancel all those projects.
But then you wouldn't have seen them, and you wouldn't be inspired to.
Oh, you're right, and they would be made again, and then I would cancel them and would be stuck in a loop forever. Yeah, but I'd be watching a lot of movies, so I guess that's not too bad. Yeah. Yeah, you'd be creating a paradox, and the entertainment paradox exactly.
Hi. I'm Horam a cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics.
Hi I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I am not the creator of any online comic website yet.
Yet, And welcome to our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe production of iHeartRadio.
In which we try to take the universe apart, piece by piece and shove them down your ear hole, I guess, your wormhole.
Brain exactly.
We try to transmit them from our brain to your brain in a way that actually makes sense, so you can impress your mom or boyfriend or kids when you talk to them about it.
Today, we have an extra special kind of question episode in which we're taking questions from a friend. So today on the program we have Ethan Edinburgh, the host of the podcast Bad Science. Welcome Ethan, Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm very delighted to be here.
I also have no comic series on the internet so yet. But I will say that no one would enjoy it because my drawing abilities.
Are very bad, so bad, the worst.
Yeah, have you have you seen the internet stick figures? Really? I wasted a lot of time trying to learn how to draw. Apparently I just had to use stick figures.
So maybe I'm good. Here you go.
Maybe after this episode you'll give it a shot.
Yeah, well, well, we're really happy you're here, dan Ethan. So tell us a little bit about the podcast Bad Science and where people can find it, and a little bitout about yourself for sure.
Promoting bad science? Is that what happens in your podcast? All about Gwyneth Paltrow?
Yeah, pretty much, that's all. We talk about her little gene shorts and the Avengers. No Bad Science. I sit down with a comedian and a scientist every week and we discuss the inaccuracies of films, so anything from Alien to Star Wars to.
Whatever we go through.
And we have a different scientist and we talk about their expertise and try to get down to what's going on there, and I, you know, butt in with my stupid questions as I'm sure I'm going to ask you guys today. And the comedian also, you know, most comedians I feel, are like really curious about the world, so they, you know, also.
Think it's necessary to be curious to be a comedian.
Oh that's a good one, probably, Yeah, I think so, or at least nit.
This this way? How do people think that's reasonable?
I don't know.
If I was just having this argument with a friend where you know, they were like, is it bad that we've complained a lot?
And I've said, like, I don't know, if it might be a.
Show.
It might show that we're able to dissect the world instead of just accept what's going on. And so I think for comedy that that might be. You know, that's like Jerry Seinfeld's whole career.
That's observational comedy. Yeah, it's like why is this this way? That's science basically, right.
Yeah, So it's a show where you make sort of a comedian and a scientist on different topics, and so you should have that sort of accessibility of the science, but also funny. So it's a very kind of show. It's a show that's very kind of in the same spirit as our show.
Yes, yeah, yeah, you'd like our.
Show that you should definitely check out Bad Science.
I think you're saying on our show one of us is smart, one of us is funny.
I'm saying neither of us are smart or funny. That road down into the bottom there.
No.
I think it's great to educate people in an entertaining way, which I think you guys do expertly. I've do mediocre now. But the podcast I think is a great way too. It's a great medium for that where it's like, oh, I want to learn a bunch of stuff, but I don't want to be bored by it, you know, I also want to know about you know, the Secret Men in Black Trivia at the same time, So that's kind of the basis there.
Cool and so Daniel and I were just guess on your podcast, yes, and so that will be that should probably already be out now, so you can definitely check that out Bad Science.
Yes, so fun. Thank you guys again for doing that. Great time.
Yeah, I know it's great. We sat around and talked for an hour about the Avengers, yeah, and the science behind the Avengers and the stretches of the imagination in Avengers and and so you should definitely check that out.
Yes, yes, the greely is the bad science, the engineering, all of it. It was a lot of fun.
Yeah, there was a very there was a vicious engineering versus science debate that happened that I just kind of I was in the front row hating popcorn for you.
Like watching your parents are you?
It's like, I loved it.
You like to create a little bit of tension on the podcast.
I mean not on purpose, but if it's there, I'm highlighting it. I want to see that play out.
Cool. Well, today, Ethan, we're answering your science questions. Yes, and so tell us what's your kind of relationship to science? Have you been interested in it?
I'm a very curious man.
I have these questions all the time. I've used my podcast as a way to like as a self serving way to learn, but i still have just endless questions.
So I'm happy to be here and ask you guys.
But my relationship with science is probably somewhat typical.
I was in classes in school.
I've had anatomy and chemistry and these types of things, and I was always fascinated by it.
Not very good at it. Just so you guys, know, don't have a PhD like you guys.
So I've I love science, love to learn about it, and still somehow, after a year of doing the Podcas cast, feel like I know nothing.
But it does.
Make me really happy to learn that there's so much there's so many areas of science that scientists don't know anything about. So that makes me feel like, Okay, we're kind of in the same boat here when it comes to like you said, like dark matter, dark energy.
I don't know if I'm even saying that right, what a.
Schmuck, But no, definitely, I think it's definitely impossible for anyone human being to know everything that all humans know, you know, like anymore. Yeah, we're all expert. You're expert in something and you know in things that we have no idea about.
Great, So yeah, I mean I'll teach you guys some jazz chords after this we can hang out in.
The show where big believers in the idea that you don't need a degree or a PhD to participate in science, to ask interesting questions about science. Yeah, to you know, to learn from it and even contribute to the search for it.
Yeah, science is a part of being human, you see, especially in kids, right, kids ask the best questions because they're curious about the world. We all all want to understand the world. And something else else really exciting about it is that there are big questions. You don't need a science to be to understand the question right, And so what you're saying, what is dark energy? How the universe begins? These are fun questions everybody wants to know the answer to.
Well, today you have four really interesting and tough questions, I think for Daniel here, for us. Here today you have questions about the recent black hole picture. Yes, the photo of the black hole. Yes, you have questions about Jupiter and what's the core of it? And questions about the big band and the future of humanity. So not small questions here even.
No, Yes, I'm going big today. I'm here to light a fire.
Questions about secret jelly belly flavors or anything. We're going big.
No, we're going big.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know which one you guys want to start with. I know, I feel like the future of Earth one. It might be like grim So I don't know.
Like sometimes we get into that zone on bad science.
And I feel like, oh no, we got to like get away from this because it's like it's dark.
You know where we're at right now a little bit.
But you're assuming the future of humanity is grim?
Is that? I just think that we could go there, That's all I'm saying.
So I don't know if you want to leave that one for a last I'm just throwing it out there.
I feel like there's a good one to end on.
End on the downer that sounds good.
Well, end with the band, well, I mean, assuming people are still listening.
By them by the end of the podcast.
Maybe you'll then, in which case it's all movie.
I mean, you never know somebody in a missile silo is going to press the button just before they listen to that part of.
The buck that we just need Tony Stark to go after it and catch it, throw it into a portal, our.
Wormhole, defense plot hole, a plot hole, or a wormhole.
I don't know, the same thing.
Maybe Avengers movie. Maybe with that, let's take a break, we'll be back in just a shortening.
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Yeah.
The recent discovery or advancement I guess is this picture is the black hole picture, which which I thought did look like the Interstellar like rendering of a.
Black hole a little bit, pretty pretty close.
Yeah, so cool.
I thought it looked more like a fuzzy donut, actually a fuzzy oh yeah, a little bit. It looks like a Krispy Kreme donut.
Yeah, well that's my impression of the whole movie Interstellar.
It's a bit of a fuzzy.
Stales, mushy sale.
But there were people online who thought it was all faked. It wasn't a real picture of a black hole, and it was actually a picture of a donut, like literally donut.
That would have been a great hope. Really yeah, I kind of want that to be true.
Now that would assume a sense of humor in scientists.
Which you have never found, which does not exist, can knock off you.
Risk could be disproved by the existence of really funny science podcasts, which a year right, I've heard there are some.
There's a few of them out there that are good.
So I was reading very briefly, very brief research on this. But they needed and I can't it was like, what was the name of it was like the name of the hard drives were ridiculous.
I can't remember what it was called.
But they needed these like extra huge hard drive you know, tarra flops or some I don't.
Know what it was called.
He has eleven blops of data.
Yeah, but jiga blop, thank you. It's not like a Rick and Morty of alien.
But yeah, no, they needed, like, I don't know, a bunch of data to and I saw a picture of it. There's like a lady with a like rows of these hard drives, which I thought was really cool. I didn't know if you guys knew about that, But it was like was years in the making to get this picture. So a why was it years in the making? What were they doing for these years? Why is it so much data? And what are we looking at here? Yeah, these are great questions, thank again. I think it's really sort of two fascinating aspects there. One is like how did they do it? Like the technology of it?
Is it hard?
Why did it take so many years? And number two like what does it mean?
Right?
So how did they do it?
Yeah? Maybe step us through like the just the problem of taking a picture of a black hole in the center of the universe, center of the galaxy, Like you know, what does that even mean? Like how far away is it? What's preventing us from just looking at it?
Yeah, and falling into it and.
Daring also a good question.
Right, right, So folks will probably remember black holes like really really dense, right, so dense that the gravity inside the black hole is strong enough to bend space so that nothing can escape, right, So it's black because tons even can't escape it. So if you would just like saw a black hole in the middle of nowhere with nothing around it, it would be invisible. So like you can't really see a black hole directly, yeah, unless something passes behind it, right then you could see like its shadow. And we did a whole podcast episode about what is it like to see a black hole? How can you see them? And The short answer is you can't see the black hole directly, but you can see this stuff around it. So, for example, you have a black hole, it's gobbling gas, right, it's like sucking stuff up from somewhere, and the stuff that hasn't yet gone into the black hole, it's like swirling around it. It's called the accretion disk. That stuff is getting hot and confused and upset and banging into itself and emitting like gamma rays and radio waves and all sorts of radiation. And you can see that. That's the part you can actually see.
Oh, but they took pictures of two black holes or just one black hole?
I think they took pictures of two. They've only released one that I've seen so.
Far, Okay, and where is that black hole in?
So one that they looked at is in the center of our galaxy, right in the center of the Milky Way. They haven't released that one yet. The other one is in another galaxy. And the difficulty of seeing black holes I think you're leading too, is that black holes are at the center of galaxies and they're surrounded by huge blobs of stuff. So you just like look in the center of the galaxy. You're going to see the stuff around the black hole, like the dust and the gas and all that stuff. It's hard to see through that. And these galaxies are really far away, So this galaxy that they're looking at is really far away, and that makes the black hole like super duper tiny.
It seems almost impossible to me. I mean, you can't even see galaxies when you look at the night sky, or if you see one, they're not that big, right, It's just like a little fuzzy oval. And so you're saying that we actually took a picture of a black hole inside of that little tiny blob that's bright.
Yeah, exactly. It's amazing because if you use the hubble, like the telescope, the best telescope we have in space, to zoom in on those galaxies, you can get pretty nice pictures. But if you take like a single pixel from the hubble, the black hole is like a tiny, tiny, tiny tiny thing inside a single pixel of the most powerful telescope. So one problem is they're basically invisible. The other one is small and really really far away. So this is a hard thing to look at.
Wow, Okay, I mean I'm confused by a few things. Number One, conspiracy corner here. Why not release.
The other.
Why the other picture?
You said they have two, and one's released and one's not. So what's the government hiding?
Good question.
Aliens and chocolate, that's usually the answer.
That was the picture of it's like the black hole, but there's like an alien doing a selfie. Yeah, chocolate.
I want to see that.
They found the tests act No, I think they're just not done processing that one yet. So it's coming out. Yeah, Oh, okay, good, it's coming out.
They're staggering them like Game of Thrones episode. It's not a binge worthy.
They're waiting for the ad campaign, you know, they get the right sponsors and all that kind of Stuffah.
Sure.
And the reason it took so long is that it's really far away and it's tiny, and the wavelength of light that we used to see it radio waves are really really large, and so in order to see something really really far away you need a really really big telescope. You got to gather enough light. And also because the length of the light waves is so large compared to the size of the thing and the distance, you need basically an earth size telescope.
Jesus.
Yeah, so we don't have that we don't really have that. We don't have a single telescope that's the size of the Earth, right, Okay. But what they did is they said, let's take a bunch of telescopes all around the Earth, oh okay, and take pictures from each of those little ones and then pretend that they're all part of a bigger telescope. Okay, And you're thinking, okay, but you're missing most of the telescope and that's true. But you know, the Earth spins and it rotates, so you can sort of like fill in the gaps. So you're never taking one earth size picture. But if you wait a few years and then you collect eleven jiggle blocks of data and analyze it, you can reconstruct the black hole. Because it's not like an action shot, right, It's not like in motion. This is like integrated over years a single picture.
And as the Earth rotates around the Sun too, right, did that give us an actually a little bit of like coverage.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. As the Earth spins and it rotates, and you know, our galaxy is moving compared to that galaxy, and so we get all these different angles and you have to add them all up to get one picture.
So it's not a picture.
It's not a snapshot of a moment of this black hole's life. It's a combination of a bunch of cameras taking a bunch of pictures and then for a long time.
Yeah. It's like, say you had a statue in a town square and you had a picture from somebody's tourist photo of the back of it, and then a year later, somebody took a picture of the front of it. A year later, somebody took a picture of the side, and you put together like a three dvconstruction of what that statue looked like. Because that's not moving, it's pretty cool you can do that.
Okay, But the stuff around the black hole is moving, right, I mean, can we do we know how fast that stuff's moved, Like the speed at which it's getting sucked into the abyss.
Yeah, it's moving really fast. It's getting sucked in there.
And I was glowing, right, It's like it's falling and being shredded so fast that it just explodes.
Right, Yeah, And the environment around a black hole is not a nice place to be, right. Gravity is a really powerful force, but the strength of the force varies with distance, Like the further you are away from the black hole, the weaker it is, and the closer you are, the stronger it is, right, right, But because the gravity is so strong near the black hole that if you were near the black hole, the force of gravity on your legs, for example, would be different than the force of gravity on your head. There are different distances, and that means there is effectively a force tearing you apart. So black hole, if you got near it would literally pull you in pieces because the differential gravity on the different parts of you, that would recommend it. Okay, And that's what's happening in the gas, That's what Jge was saying. So that gas is getting squeezed and pulled and torn apart, and that makes it glow. And that's what we're seeing, is the glow of the gas around the black hole.
Interest that's the donut.
That's the donut.
That's the donut.
Yeah okay, that's the thing that looks like a donut, not actually a donut.
Hoax.
Yeah, okay.
So it's like space is black and then you got the glowing stuff around the center, the edges, but then the center is black again, right, because that's what the black hole that's right.
That's the event horizon. That's the place after it, inside which no light can ever leave. And so what you see in the picture is gas around the black hole, right, which is glowing, and then in the center is blackness, right, and that's where the black hole is.
Well, it just looks like blackness, but actually it's like a wormhole to the other side of the universe.
To the DC universe.
Okay, I just wanted to make.
Sure exactly, And the size of that hole is not really the size of the black hole itself, right, Like the black hole, we don't know what's happening inside the event horizon, like huge mystery of science, like what's in there? Is it a tiny little dot that's super duper heavy, is it some quantum fuzziness? Is there something else going on? We don't know, But there's a sphere we call the event horizon that says nothing from inside here can ever leave. Okay, but the picture you see of the black hole is actually bigger than that event horizon. Whoa, yeah, because it's really complicated the space around a black hole. Like you look at something, you imagine that you're seeing the photons sort of in the same order that they were sent to you, Like I see the photons from your head above the photons from your foot, So imagine your heads above your foot. Right. But if there's some like complicated lens or mirror between us, that can get all mixed up, right, sure, well, a black hole is a huge complicated lens. It bends space, So part of the blackness you're seeing is like the backside of the event horizon because light from that comes around and gets bent towards your eyes. So it's it's a really complicated mix of all.
The matrix here. What you're describing broken part of reality.
It's no, it's a reveals the matrix, right, It shows us how the matrix actually works. It tells us like what's going on in science? This is the best the most extreme uh areas of the universe are the place to learn, like where things break down and where we don't understand them. And so that's why it's pretty awesome.
But he's sort of right in that it does break our models of the universe, right, like things like we don't have a good model for what's happening inside about black hole, right, like everything just breaks down.
We have two models for what's happening inside of a black hole. They don't agree. Both of them are wrong. Wow, and so yeah, we don't know.
They both write about everything else in the Yeah, did you just disagree about what's inside exactly?
And the black hole is the place where they disagree most and also a place where we can't look inside. So that's like frustrating and tantalizing and amazing.
Yeah, do you prescribe to you know that this could be an interdimensional thing, like there's some other I don't know dimension or universe, multiverse like, and black hole is the I don't know what entry point for something.
Does that make sense?
That would be pretty awesome if they were true. There are a lot of theories of wormholes, like how black holes could be connected to white holes and they could be and these are really big black holes. So you know it, honestly, it could be true, Like all that crazy stuff you just said honestly could be reality. That's the thing I love about it, Like, great, you know.
We get credit for it though, if to be true.
Oh yeah, I'm not sure. He's the first person to speak credited to Maybe that's a unique set of science where it's nobody's ever said before. Right in that order.
Hey, I'll take it.
I'll give it to you. Get an honorary degree from Daniel and Jorge.
Finally, our mom is gonna be so proud.
But I think also there's a larger context, Like I think some people think, oh, we saw a picture of black hole, so now we know they're real. We sort of already knew they were real. We could tell the black holes were there indirectly from their gravity, the way the stars move around them. A lot of black holes are not that hard to see, Like the gas around them is super bright. It's actually one of the brightest things in the universe. We call them quasars. They emit a huge amount of radiation. These ones that they took a picture of are the more common ones that are not very bright, that are hard to see. That's why it's so impressive.
But wait, wait, if quasars are the brightest.
Thing, it's easy to see and it's around the black hole, why haven't we seen pictures of that?
We have, We've seen quasars, quasis are all over the place.
Well, we've seen them as stars. Basically, we haven't. We've never had this kind of detailed picture of an actual black circle. Right, this is the first time we see like an actual black circle.
Right. The cool thing about this is it's the first time we've seen them in this way. This directly and resolved the shape of the event horizon. That's the thing we hadn't seen. It's like, what does the event horizon look like? We think it's a circle? What if it was something else? When it was a hexagon or like a big middle finger, right.
The cube?
Yeah, or the agent agents of shield symbol or something.
So that's what you're looking at in the picture. Then, right, that's you're looking at the glowy stuff. The donut is the gas around the black hole. But then what you're seeing the black spot in the middle. That is like the event horizon of a black hole. That's like the spot where no not even light can escape.
It's the first time that we can put it as our wallpaper.
Yeah, first selfie.
Very cool. And wait, what about white holes?
Then?
That is also real? Have we seen those? Do we have pictures?
A white hole could be real? We don't know, theoretically possible, never been observed, but yeah, could be a thing in the universe for sure, could be a thing.
Okay, stay tuned and I Remember, black.
Holes used to be in the could be a thing in the universe category, but nobody really believed it because it sounds too crazy. Now actually a thing, we have picture them. Yeah, so there's a good, long, rich history of stuff going from crazy idea nobody really believes, but we can't rule it out to Look, there's one hundred of them over there.
Yeah, so that's pretty awesome. Wake up, you doubters.
Yeah, the universe is filled with crazy, nasty, hot stuff, weirder than we could ever imagine. So let's say it's a great source of entertainment for me.
Cool. Well, that's that's your first question. Even we'll get to your other questions, but first, let's take a quick break.
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All right, we have Ethan Edinburgh here from the podcast Bad Science, a podcast which deconstructs science fiction movies. We're real sciences and comedians.
Yeah, yeah, doesn't even have to be science fiction movies. Just anything that there's a science spin on science. Well attack its sciencey movies.
And you ever like take a movie and you're like, actually, this is all good science, So we should rename our podcasts or cancel this episode?
Has that never happened accurate science.
Sometimes there are like Apollo thirteen was one of them that science was all pretty you know, accurate.
If they were watching documentary by accident and be like, oh wait, we can't Oh no, it's not true.
No, I mean, when you ever dismantled documentary claimed the bogus then discovered it.
Was real that normally what we do, no we I mean, honestly, we will just use it as like a launching pad to talk about science so I'm not in the field. You know, I'm not trying to attack these movies or say like, oh this is wrong and this isn't good, you know, I mean normally because I don't know anything, but also just to uh, you know, say, the.
Movie is great, here's what I love about it. Here's what didn't really make sense to me.
But let's dive into how snakes reproduce because that's interesting.
Yeah, I see is interesting.
Yeah.
We just did ant Conda so it's on my mind.
Wow. Yeah, wow, it was a going So they just like butt off a little mini and aconda off the back or how does that work?
It's honestly, and they have how snakes. I had no idea. Well they so first of all, the I'm not going to get super into so we don't have a ton of time.
We can look up your podcast, right.
Yeah, yeah, goes to the anaconda episode. I'll just tease you with the fact that males, and this is across a lot of species apparently, you know, multiple males will like smell the pheromones from a female and all want to mate with the same female and they'll create this anaconda ball. So like there's like seven snakes all wrapped in one and they'll just stay that way for like weeks at a time. I'm fighting and trying to mate, and it's it's a disaster.
You just gave all our listeners nightmares.
I know.
I'm sorry. It's a ball of snakes.
Guys, this is real. It's out there. It's probably not in your backyard.
It's scarier than the film and a conda, so imagine that.
Yeah, finally, well to they were answering your science questions about physics and the universe, and so your next question is about Jupiter.
Right.
So I've always been fascinated with Jupiter because it's the largest planet and it's like a gas giant and that huge red spot is super weird. And I remember learning as a kid that we just don't know what's in the middle because we just can't send anything out there, we can't measure what's there. And so I want to know if that's still true, And what do you guys think you know, theoretically is in the middle?
You know? And why can't we tell We.
Can see a picture of a fuzzy donut in the middle of the galaxy, and you don't know about Jupiter?
Yeah, why is that, Daniel, Well, we.
Actually have learned the core of Jupiter is actually a huge ball of snakes.
They're all fighting.
It's amazing. It's a fascinating question, and you know, it's really interesting, like we see these things in the sky, can we understand them? What's in there? Are they like our planet or not? When I was a kid, I always wondered, like, why can't you land on Jupiter? You just like sink forever through gas and pass through the other side or something. But Jupiter is really interesting. It's got a lot of layers. It's like an onion, you know, you cut through it and you get to different stuff. And we can actually probe it a little bit two different ways. One is we can study the density of Jupiter, okay, because we fly satellites around it, and those satellites can measure the gravity of Jupiter, and the gravity of Jupiter depends on how much stuff there is, right, more stuff, more gravity, So we can measure sort of in the same way that we can measure like what's inside the Earth, we can measure the density of different regions inside Jupiter just by measuring how the gravity changes as you move around, which is pretty cool.
Okay, so this is sounding like we do kind of know what's in.
There, so that gives us a picture. And then once we actually dropped something into Jupiter and we're like, oh, let's see what's in there. They build this thing, they try to make it really really tough. I guess they use you know, adomandum or vibranium or whatever, and they dropped it in there and it lasted like, you know, tens of seconds before it was just like crushed into a tiny pulp. So, because Jupiter is really big, and so it has a lot of gravity, and so it's squeezing things really really hard, and so it's really dense and so mostly Jupiter is a huge ball of hydrogen. But that ball of hydrogen gets compressed by all that gravity, and crazy stuff starts to happen.
Well, it changes a mad As state of matter, right, Like it most of the baldy that you see in Jupiter is like hydrogen, right, but it's in different forms of hydrogen.
Right, So as hydrogen gets hotter or more compressed, it changes.
Right.
Hydrogen here on Earth is just a gas. We can breathe it or you know, put it in a balloon or whatever, or inside of individuals ill fated airship for example, you know the humanity, the humanity, But on Jupiter it gets compressed and so the outer layer is gaseous hydrogen. Then you sink down further and you get liquid hydrogen. Right, so you can press a gas and it turns into a liquid, and then below that it turns into this crazy stuff. It's helium rain, helium rain rain. It's like drops of helium that are like going up and down like clouds of helium then raining down and like helium is crazy stuff, and like you got to be really really dense or really really cold to get it liquid. So it's it's under a lot of pressure.
So it's raining inside these other layers of and it's raining helium.
You're telling me, yeah, it's raining helium, and that you're trying to I'm trying to actually deliver some real science exactly. And then it just gets crazier, Like as you go down, you get crazier and crazier stuff. A huge blob of it is this thing we call metallic hydrogen. It's like hydrogen that acts like a metal, like a conduct electricity that likes.
Heavy metal musical.
I think, so, yeah, exactly, and it can conduct electricity. It can be a solid or it can be a liquid. Right, So if you went down far enough, you would like pass through the rain of helium, assuming you were in some like incredibly powerful ship that could withstand all this pressure, and then you would either get to the surface of the you get like an ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen, and then you get to like a surface of like metallic hydrogen, which I don't.
Know what that would be. Like, we don't have that here.
We can do not have that here now exactly.
Okay, Okay, So that's the answer. That's it's metallic possibly liquid.
There's one more layer though, because Jupiter is not just hydrogen hydrogen plus is a bunch of like rocks and other stuff in there, and that stuff all sunk to the bottom. So the very very core of Jupiter is actually basically a big rock. You know, it's like a big rocky icy ball. Oh okay, you know, like the kind of stuff that made the Earth. And so when the Solar System formed, different planets got different amounts of stuff. Jupiter got a huge serving of hydrogen and a big blob of rock. Earth got mostly rock, right, So you could sort of think of like Jupiter as a much smaller planet with a really really really big and really really dense atmophe that's like liquid hydrogen. It's pretty crazy over there on Jupiter.
Well, and again, it's not like we have a picture of this or if we send the probe down or we've taken X rays of Jupiter. It's more like we have models of what's going on in there, and those match what we're seeing from satellites that go around Jupiter.
That's right, And we can probe it gravitationally. You can also probe it electromagnetically, like we can look at the magnetic field of Jupiter, and in order to have a magnetic field, you have to have certain stuff going on inside, and so we can compare like is the magnetic field the way you would expect if this model works. So it's indirect, like we haven't sent probes deep into Jupiter that survived, but we have a pretty good picture. But yeah, it's indirect.
Okay. I do think taking an X ray is a smart idea.
There, Yeah, get on it.
Okay.
So I was also wondering about the Big Bang and if something happened before the Big Bang.
Yeah, that's a wonderful question. Tell me, why do you want to know? Like if I told you the answer, If I knew the answer and I told you, how would that change your life?
It probably wouldn't, because even just the Big Bang is a huge mystery to me. And the how the universe came to be and how it's all evolving all the time, expanding all the time, that's just mind numbing. But I just I'm very you know, it's like that what comes after the end or what comes before the beginning?
You know?
So I just was curious if there's any because we can measure, which I already find fascinating, that the Big Bang even happened. What of thirteen point eight million years ago or nice? So just that is crazy to me that we even know that that happened. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, why, if there's any information at all out there, how could that a have happened? And what could have possibly been before that?
It's a great question. I think it's a really deep question. I think we knew the answer, it would change the way we felt about like our whole existence. You know, like if you knew like how the universe came to be and what beforehand that made it happen. That's a pretty deep question.
I mean, I think it.
Would change the human the human condition that much like you know, people suddenly abandoned Instagram and devote themselves knowing more about do you know what I mean? Like, do you think really think people would change their everyday life?
I think so. I think it's a delicate territory. But I think a lot of people believe in a creator and also accept the the you know, old universe hypothesis. The universe is fourteen billion years old almost, and they imagine the universe had a creator because there was this moment when it started. But what if there wasn't. What if we knew that moment was instead the end of the previous universe, just part of some infinite cycle and there was no moment of creation. I think that argument play is a big role in a lot of people's context for the universe, and they're belief in God, So I think it would inform people's decisions. Just says, the more we learn about our origin and where we are in the universe and how big and old it is, we learn about our context and it changes people's views about how important we are or aren't so yeah, answer, so what is the answer the question? Though, The answer is we have no idea what came before the Big Bang? Okay, and also we might never wow, like it might be impossible to learn.
You know, it might be that you're still in the Big Bang, right, Daniel.
Yeah, this is that. Also, like what does the Big Bang even mean? Right? Some people think of the Big Bang as this moment very very early on in the universe when the universe expanded really really fast, and the numbers I'm about to tell you are crazy. It's really hard to imagine. But like the universe expanded by a factor of ten to the twenty five. It's like ten to twenty five zeros in ten to the minus thirty seconds, So like whoa, Yeah, they went from really really small to enormously massive really really quickly.
And it's not moving at that rate anymore. It like slowed down.
Yeah, it did that really really briefly, okay, and then it's just sort of puttered along for about ten billion years okay, and then five billion years ago it started expanding again. Wow, And we don't know why, but we call that dark energy. So, you know, loop back to the podcast. We talk to you about that's the testa act man, and you know, the Infinity Stones were created in the moment of creation and responsible.
I mean, I just feel like I'm equally insignificant no matter how the Big Bang happened or what happened.
You're a musical man, so you're definitely significant of those records.
Yeah, for billions of years.
But I think the point is that, you know, fourteen billion years ago sounds like a long time, but if you imagine maybe the universe is trillions of years, it's going to be around for trillions of years. And you know, technically we're sort of like at the beginning of the universe, right, we could be still in the kind of like the echoes of the Big Bang.
I mean, it makes still makes me feel like I'm totally meaningless.
But I hear you, yeah, and that's.
Nicely special, extra special dames.
I mean, yeah, no, it's both. That's true.
That's true.
It is both.
And so we look backwards, we try to understand, like what happened to those first few moments. We have some ideas for like how do you get this crazy expansion and what would you need to make that happen? We have like a few sort of ideas for how to put that together that are really pretty fuzzy. But we don't know is how do you create those conditions in order to make the universe explode in the first few moments, you need this stuff called inflationary matter? All right, how do you make inflationary matter? We literally have zero ideas. Okay, but you know that's how science works. We're like, okay, explain this. We need you know something before it. How do we explain that? Okay, now, how do we explain that? It's an iterative process? But if the universe started from this like really really dense state, it might be that all information from what happened before it is destroyed, right, that it's just gone. The records were swe yes, and you could never know.
Nobody will ever know, nobody like humans and billions of years.
Yeah, it's possible. Or it could be that there's like dregs of information and super duper smart scientists will be able to figure it out. Yeah, that could be Also, we don't know, but it could be that the universe is in a cycle, you know, it expands and then we don't know what dark energy is doing, or if it could turn around and make a crunch. So it could be that our universe started at the end of the last universe when there was a crunch. There's also a lot of really crazy philosophical questions, like was there time before the Big Bang? Like what is the word before the Big Bang?
Even?
Mean?
Right? Right?
Sure?
And you might think, but maybe there's no before the big bang? Yeah, like big bang? Is it?
That's when time started?
Right?
And you might think, well, that's crazy, that's just like a bunch of words. It don't mean anything but me. But like imagine, for example, I think this is Stephen Hawkins analogy. Imagine you're at the north pole, right, which direction is north? From the north pole? There's no more north. Yeah, that's the.
North, the northeast.
Yeah, exactly, sure, And so it might be the time is like that, it sort of started there, and you can't if you go back to zero, you can't really ask what's before because there is no more before. Hiness. Yeah, we don't know.
I would like that.
Actually, that seems like a nice organized you know, like this is when it started.
That's it's well with you.
Yeah, that's nice, all right.
That's pretty that's definitive.
Yes, I appreciate that.
Cool, all right, so you have one less question for us, even a big one.
Yes, it is a bit going because I worry about this all the time, and I'm talking to you know, marine biologists and environmentalists of different expertises, and sometimes we get into this place of sheer frustration because of what's happening with the climate, and to me, it's hard to be optimistic about it. And it seems like we are messing up huge and have been for a while. And you know, you can look up these like little documentaries even from the sixties and like they knew that what we're doing is bad and we need to stop, and like we just keep on, keep on trucking. So, yeah, my question is how do you guys view that? How do you deal with it? How do you know, do you think that we're headed in a good direction or a bad direction or both?
Are the things to be optimistic about? And please tell me about them? No, all right, I'll see you next time, guys.
We'll end it there.
That's our uplifting podcast.
That when when you ask questions are we going to save the earth or destroy? You? Talking about the climate and the our ability to live on the planet, not like if we're accidentally going to open a wormhole.
Or no, I mean I think that possibility.
Look at me when you say that I'm not opening any worm.
But I didn't. I didn't, like, I didn't look at the scientists working to create black holes in the earth.
Yeah, blinding, weirdly tapping his fingers. I mean, I think that whole thing is possible. Nuclear bombs, Like, Okay, that's a threat that you know, at any moment we could all just end. Sure, but it seems like we're in this slow decline that we know about with the climate, man made climate change, global warming, all this, you know, melting ice caps and so yeah, that that's really what I'm referring to. It's like, can we reverse this process? Can we save the earth? How will we do it? Or in your guys opinion, if are we screwed?
You know, I think we're screwed. But I think the answer is different from what you might expect, because the thing I worry most about is actually the nuclear bombs. Oh, because I group in Los Alamos, I know a lot about like the nuclear infrastructure and all this kind of stuff, And you know, we have a lot of nuclear weapons yeah, and they have a lot of nuclear weapons and they're all pointed at us and where ours appointed at them? Right, and they're on a hair trigger like that. You have to be able to launch nuclear weapons within like a minute of hearing that somebody else has attacked you. Otherwise all your nukes are destroyed. So dumb, So you need like to be able to launch nukes within a minute, No congressional approval, nothing else, just whoever is the president.
It's like shocking that it hasn't happened.
Yes, exactly. So now I ask yourself this question, how long can we go on for with people having this their finger on this button and never press it?
Never ever, ever, ever, ever, I don't know, billion years.
I don't think so. I think I think it's inevitable. I think as long as.
We think going to present at some point, no, I.
Think there's going to be a miscommunication, right, a mistake or a technical glitch. And you know, even close to that several times, it's really terrifying. If you look up the history of that, there's been times when like one guy has just said that no, we're not launching and has like save literally saved humanity. So it's pretty dangerous. We're living with huge guns pointed at our heads at a hair trigger all the time, and that will eventually go off unless climate change destroys human civilization and then we lose we lose the capability to maintain a fire nuclear weapons, so.
Hopefully we ruin the planet and you know, then the few survivors, you know, living in the swamp will not.
Dive of radiation poisoning.
Sweet okay, But you know, I think I have a more positive view, which is I feel like I think I think things are not going to get better anytime soon, right, And I think part of the problem is just that a lot of it is just kind of a communication problem. You know, like our forecast for the future is based on models and you know, our current understanding of things, and they're projecting far into the future, and so right now, I think it's it's harder for scientists to communicate and for people to really absorb the idea that we're heading in a bad direction. But you know, I think eventually things will become more obvious and people population, hopefully through podcasts like Yours and Hours, She's kind of become more familiar with science and are able to absorb the message and hopefully it won't be too late.
Yeah, that would be nice.
And maybe in the process we could also make some sort of nuclear arms treaty where we just all agree to blast them all into the black hole, or at.
Least make it like a two step button, you know. I feel like that that would help a lot.
Yeah, just a clever proposal from an ex defense secretary of Defense to get rid of all of our stationary nuclear weapons, the ones that are like vulgionary, Yeah, the ones like in underground silos, those are the ones that can be destroyed by their nukes. Right, So if your nukes are on submarines, you know, or in the instead that you don't have to launch within a minute. You can like wait and really make sure it's happening, and you have thirty minutes or so, because your nukes are not necessarily going to be destroyed by their nukes, so you don't have to be on a hair trigger.
Shouldn't we just not allowed nukes? I mean, is that a crazy thought? Why do we need huge bombs? Right?
Yeah? Why don't we all just get along you talk it out?
Yeah, I think guns are even unnecessary. Can't we just use a like paintball. Why a nuke replaced nukes with paintballs?
That's why is there war in human Yeah, I think we can answer that today.
Okay, great, well.
I feel ethan. I feel like maybe the answer to all of your questions today has been we have no idea. No. By the way, it's the title of our book, Daniel book Plug.
Oh there it is. Yeah true? But yeah, do you feel like we I very informed? I think there was a lot of answers today. I mean the Core of Jupiter was a big one for me. I mean Helium Rain was shocking.
Titled your next album?
Yeah, I mean that does sound I'm.
Sure people would be like before us, come on, what does helum Rein sound.
Like Helium Rain? It sounds like almost like a love song. It's actually a cover. It's a weird al parody.
Actually, No, I think, well, first of all, that's a really intriguing title. I think anything helium Rain I'm gonna check out just based on the title is like, what the hell is that? But no, I think the whole like the black whole stuff, and if there was a lot there.
Yeah, I feel I feel what's the word looking for? Educated? I got I got schooled today.
Right, here's your degree.
Oh, thank you, Yes, it's so gorgeous.
Put up on you all show it to all your friends.
I will, I will.
But I think that's a big part of what we like to talk about is that there are still big mysteries out there, and even the scientists and the experts are still asking questions. Yeah, and everyone out there, people listening, people uh, studying this and kids in the future. It can all anticipated in answering these questions.
Yeah, and some of these questions that we're asking, people will know the answer to them in fifty years, right, and they'll look back and be like, ha ha ha, those guys didn't know anything, you know, how silly were they?
Hey listen, if people are listening to this in fifty years, we did something, right, boys, that's obviously.
Dig this out of the rubble of human civilization.
Our climate.
But I mean imagine, like what people used to think about one hundred years ago, the questions they had two hundred years ago. Right now children know the answers to those questions. Yeah, So in years yeah, six year olds will like casually know the answer to questions we are struggling with today. And I love that progression of human knowledge. It's just wonderful to think about.
Yeah. Cool.
Well, I hope people enjoyed that, And thank you Ethan for being on the show too, thing and having us in your show.
A bad science anytime, anytime? Yeah, absolute delight.
That's right, bad science, some good answers.
Yeah, and you can find bad science at.
Anywhere listen to the podcast. Yeah.
And also, if you're curious, have a very stupid fake financial podcast called success Express. They're like fifteen minute episodes and they're just basically a bunch of fake advertisements. So if you want to laugh and not think about anything, that's probably.
The way to Goo founder Jill thanks for being on and thanks to all of you guys for listening to this discussion.
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 that's one word, 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. 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. House 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.
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