Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseDaniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners like you! Send in your questions to questions@danielandjorge.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.
Here's a little secret. Most smartphone deals aren't that exciting. To be honest, they're barely worth mentioning. But then there's AT and T and their best deals. Those are quite exciting. They're the kind of deals that are really worth talking about, like their deal in the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six. With this deal, you can trade in your eligible smartphone, any year, any condition for a new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six.
It's so good, in fact, it will have.
You shouting from the rooftops. So get yourself down a street level and learn how to snag the new Samsung Galaxy Z flip six on AT and T and maybe grab a ladder on the way home. AT and T connecting changes everything requires trade in a Galaxy s Note or Z series smartphone. Limited time offer two hundred and fifty six gigabytes for zero dollars. Additional fees, terms and restrictions apply. See att dot com, slash Samsung or visit an AT and T store for details.
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 offers subject to change. Terms apply.
Hey ho, Hey, In this current heat wave, is South pasadying a feeling hot or not?
You mean the temperature, the housing market or the people.
Oh, I'm endlessly curious. I want to know about all of it.
It's hot in all accounts, house produces are through the roof, temperature is really hot, and the people I think are pretty hot.
Are you guys like in danger of melting into a puddle of hotness?
Yeah, it's like a big volcano out here.
So where is the epicenter? From? Where is all this hotness flowing?
I'm not giving you my home address, man, it's too hot.
Hi.
I'm Jorham and cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I totally dig the heat.
You like the heat?
Oh? Absolutely, I'm a desert person. Heat and dry air is my jam. You and lizards, Me and lizards exactly. Lizards know what's up, man, You don't see lizards in Chicago in the winter for a reason, it's miserable.
Well, maybe they just don't like deep dish pizza.
I'm pretty sure there were no lizards in Chicago, like five hundred years ago, before pizza was even invented.
I'm pretty sure there were dinosaurs in Chicago. That's five hundred million years ago.
But you know, it's not miserable for people who love the snow, and I'm just not one of those people.
Your snow snowfan.
It's a slippery subject.
Ooh, an icy reception there from Daniel Whitson. But anyways, welcome for our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we treat the universe with a warm heart and an open mind. We try to soak up all of the information that's coming to us from the distant cosmos and from our nearby star to get an understanding of how everything works, to tell ourselves a mathematical story about how the universe clicks together and operates to make this incredible cosmos that we live in.
That's right, because it is a pretty hot universe full of things going on. Things moving about, and a lot of attractive forces going on and repulsive I guess at the same time.
I guess hot is pretty relative though, I mean, compared to the history of the universe, we're basically at its coldest moment. Ever.
Isn't the universe going to get colder?
Well, it's the coldest moment so far. Absolutely. The universe just keeps cooling and cooling as it expands, So every moment is the coldest moment we've ever had.
But it also means it's hot, the hottest, or as pretty hot compared to how cold it's gonna get.
That's right, We're all getting less and less hot as time goes on.
I don't know about all of us. I think I'm aging pretty well.
You and Harrison Forward are violating thermodynamics.
That's right, that's right, Unlike I guess Keanu Reeves, who's not aging at all.
I thought you were about to say he's aging badly. I was holding my breast there.
No, No, I think the whole universe agrees Kenna Reeves is not aging.
He's frozen in time.
Somehow, that's true, somehow valiating the loss of this may he's a lizard too.
Let's get him on the podcast and ask his opinion of deep dish pizza.
Yeah, well, place a call, especially after we call the belizard. But it is a pretty interesting universe, full of all kinds of things going on and all kinds of questions to ask about it, which is the job of scientists and also the public and everyday people.
It's just part of being human to be curious about the nature of the world we live in. You can't help but ask yourself questions when you see something, how does that work? How does that connect with this other idea I have? If the universe is microscopically, all these tiny wizzing particles, how does that all come together to make this rock feel hot to me? Right now? There's so many questions we can ask about the nature of the universe, and we want you to ask them because it's a deep part of the joy of being human and also it literally fuels all of our science. If humanity stop being curious about science, we wouldn't get to do it anymore. So please keep asking questions, or.
At least keep funding scientists to ask questions professionally. But yeah, everyone can ask questions.
Though everyone can, everyone should, and everyone does ask questions, and on this podcast we encourage you to send us your questions. If you're curious about something you don't understand, please write to us two questions at Danielandjorge dot com. We write back to everybody. We answer everybody's questions, even if it takes one reply or a whole series of emails.
That's right. The questions you stand in, we'll get an answer, and sometimes we pick them to be on the podcast because they're so interesting that we think that everyone would be interesting knowing the answered.
That's right, and so from the daily on slot of emails from listeners, I've picked a new batch of questions for us to answer.
So to on the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions number forty three. Light Vision and Heat. That sounds like the like an album title. Daniel and Jorra explains the universe, the sound and the fury, Light Vision and Heat.
It sounds like our eighties electronica album. Yeah, there you go, pull out that synthesizer, man well, or.
We can just beatbox it. I guess, how's your singing voice?
I got a baritone. It's out of tune, but I got a baritone.
I'll just do the do Do Do Do Do doo. But yeah, we got some awesome questions here today about light, vision and heat, about what kinds of particles humans can and might be able to see in the future, about how to vaporize liquid water, and about the spectrum of light. So let's dig into it. Our first question comes from Milo, who's six years old.
Hey, guys, I have a question. Could people evolve to see other particles besides photons? Like neutrons, protons, and a whole bunch more.
Awesome question from a six year old. That's amazing. There's like so many science concepts in that one question. I feel like there's a whole high school curriculum there.
Milo is amazing. Wow. I don't think I knew about neutrons, protons, and a whole bunch more when I was six years old.
I don't think I was pondering the evolution of human sensory organs at six years old.
I felt like neutrons, protons, and a whole bunch more should be like a breakfast cereal that Milo invents.
Neutrino's already sounds like a breakfast cereal.
Name neutrinos, Like, do you take your neutrinos with milk.
Yeah. Yeah, well I'm kind of neutral to it. Oat mill, soy milk, you all charge to say.
It seems like something you need. It's just a tiny little sip of right. Nobody has a big bowl of neutrinos, just like a little espressove shot of neutrinos to start your day.
It depends on your diet, I guess. But yeah, it's an interesting question, and let's break it down here. So Milo wants to know could people evolve to see other particles besides photons? Other particles like neutrons, protons, and a bunch more.
Yeah, it's a really cool question. And he starts with seeing, right, can we see other particles besides photons? And he's right that technically what we're seeing are photons. Like when you look out at the view in front of you, you're getting light bounced off of the rocks and the trees and the grass and the water. Different wavelengths are coming and hitting your eyes and making up that vision that you see. So when you see, it's the photons around you that you are most directly seeing.
Yeah, and how does that work? I guess the photon enters your eye and it hits the H receptor cones in the back of your eye, and then that creates a brain signal.
Yeah, there are the amazing proteins inside the rods and cones of your eyeball which respond to various frequencies of light. Like flip a switch, they change their configuration and that generates a signal which goes down the optic nerve, and then your brain interprets it as a certain color or brightness or darkness. And we did a fun podcast episode about like the amazing ability of the human eye to see a single individual photon. There are these incredible experiments they did which verified that the human eye can detect a single photon at a time.
Yeah, it's pretty amazing, But I guess those only respond to photons, right, which is light, Like if you shoot it with another kind of particle, would it create Is it possible that it can create a signal that you might detect.
So probably not. If one of those proteins got hit by a proton or a neutron or something, it wouldn't react the same way and give you that signal. But remember that those rods and cones are embedded kind of deep in your eye. You have to get all the way through, like the lens and the fluid and all that stuff to the back of the eyeball. So if a proton hit those rods and cones directly, you probably wouldn't see it. But another question is what would happen if you shot a single proton or neutron into your eyeball, would you then see it? And the answer to that is probably yes. What what do you mean, Well, a proton and a neutron will not just pass through your eyeball. It will interact when the material in your eyeball. Protons and neutrons are made out of quarks. The stuff in your eyeball is made out of quarks, So protons and neutrons will not just pass through your eyeball. It's like throwing a tennis ball at a rock wall, right, It's either going to bounce off or it's going to smash through. And when it smashes through, it's going to break open those particles and it's going to create all sorts of showers of particles, including photons.
So you might see like a flash of light as a proton enters your eye, maybe hit some of the water inside of your eyeball and then it creates like a little light spark exactly.
And so you can argue about whether you're technically seeing the proton because the rods and cones themselves are not interacting with the proton, but the proton is causing a shower of particles, some of which are photons. And that's actually how we see protons. Like at the large hadron collider, you create a proton and the collision, you don't see the proton directly. It smashes into these layers of steel or depleted uranium and then creates showers of particles which we then can see mostly the photons that are created.
Mm, so you have like a little particle collider in your eye, large eye collider.
I'm not recommending anybody shoot protons at their eyeball, but I'm saying if it did happen, you probably would see a flash if there's high enough energy. If you just like very gently throw a proton at your eyeball, it'll just bounce off the same way like a tennis ball will bounce off of a wall. But a bullet shooting really hard will penetrate in And so it just depends on the energy of the proton, you.
Mean, like the speed of it, Like it has to be going fast enough for you to maybe be able to see a proton or neutron exactly.
If it's going really slow, it's just going to bounce off. And the same is true of a neutron. A neutron is also a little bag of quarks. If you shoot in a very high energy at your eyeball, it'll create little flashes of light inside your eyeball and you'll see them.
But it's also I think not good. Right, if you shoot a bunch of protons into your eye, it's gonna kill your eyes, isn't it.
Yeah, these are mini bullets, right, You're shooting tiny bullets at eyeballs. Not something we recommend. I mean, I'm answering the question, would you see it? The answer is yes. Not should you do it? That answer is definitely no. Do not do this experiment.
Or like, for example, when astronauts are out there in space in your orbit, I mean, they need a lot of shielding in the space station just because of things like protons and neutrons raining down on them, right, Like those are not good to be hit with.
Yeah, exactly. Cosmic rays are nothing but high energy particles in space, usually produced by the Sun or from other stars, et cetera. Those are high energy electrons or protons, et cetera. And yeah, you don't want to get hit by those. Those are tiny bullets, and they can pass through your body and cause all sorts of damage. They can wreck your DNA, they can deposit energy, all sorts of stuff. And that's true any particle that has the strong force, meaning it's made of quarks, or any particle that has electromagnetism. Right, you're shoot an electron at your eyeball, the same kind of stuff is going to happen. It's going to generate photons as it interacts with your eyeball. And that's true of basically any particle we know about except neutrinos.
Well, wait, electrons. Electrons might possibly activate one of your eye sensors, right, eyerods or cones, couldn't it because they sort of work electrically.
Yeah, it's going to be one step removed because the way an electron would interact with it is by emitting a photon and so to the photon more directly that you're seeing. And when an electron enters a medium like that, it slows down or changes direction, and to do so, it emits photons. So electrons will also create showers of photons when they hit something, and that again happens at particle colliders. We produce very high energy electrons and they create these showers of photons, which then produce more electrons, which produce more photons. And you start out with like one high energy particle, you end up with like a billion lower energy photons.
But could an electron maybe make it all the way to the back of your eye and hit one of your eye sensors and then flip the switch.
An electron could make get all the way back to your eye and hit one of those proteins. But those proteins are very sensitive, right, They're designed to respond only to certain frequencies of light, which is how you can tell the difference between green and red and blue because some sensors have flipped and other sensors have not flipped. So a random electron banging into it, I don't know what's going to happen. It's sort of like asking, like what poem would you type if you randomly mashed on the keyboard, Like, I don't know.
So you're saying we can see electron poetry. That's what I got from. No, I'm just kidding. You're saying you might see an occasional electron directly, but it's not likely. Maybe.
Yeah, mostly you would see an electron if it creates photons in your eyeball, which it would if it's moving at high speed through the medium of your eyeball. It will be creating photons as it interacts with atomic electrons and atomic nuclei.
All right, now, what about mylost question? A second part of the question which asked about a bunch of more particles, but about all the other particles.
Yeah, so the other particles are ones that don't have electromagnetic or strong interactions, and so far that list is just neutrinos, so it might also include dark matter eventually. Right, So, like you could ask, could we evolve to detect neutrinos? Well, in principle, it is possible to detect neutrinos. It's just that neutrinos are very very hard to detect. There's lots of them all over the place, but they interact very very rarely. So, for example, in order to detect the existence of neutrinos in the first place, they had to set up these instruments that have like one hundred thousand gallons of special fluid just to detect a few neutrinos a week when there's like trillions and trillions of them passing through. That means that the physics is there for materials to interact with neutrinos, which means you could evolve a body part to do it, but it would have to be enormous.
Well, what happens when I feel like your eyeball is sort of like one of these water detectors, right, like liquid detectors, right, it's I mean, it is technically possible for a neutrino because we're getting showered with them by the billions trillions, it is possible for one of them to interact with the maybe a water molecule inside your eye and generate some photons, right, But.
Yeah, it's totally possible in that sense. Yes, your eyeball can see neutrinos indirectly the same way you can see electrons. Like a neutrino passing through your eyeball could give an electron a little kick, and that electron could then generate some photons or give an atomic nucleus a kick and break it apart, or that nucleus could vibrate and rotate and then emit a photon. So yeah, indirectly, neutrinos can deposit their energy inside the stuff in your eyeball and then you could see it. It's just that it's much less likely. Like you shoot an electron at your eyeball, you're almost definitely going to see every individual single electron. You shoot a neutrino at your eyeball, you have like a one in a gazillion chance of seeing it.
So you can take neutrinos, just not all of them, I guess, or it's very unlikely for you to detect the neutrino.
Yeah, if you wanted to, like use neutrino vision, if you wanted to have a reliable neutrino sense, you'd have to evolve some kind of eyeball that was either very very very large, you know, we're talking like swimming pool size tanks of liquid, or very very very dense, so the neutrinos had a harder time getting through. It seems pretty impractical unless you know you're enormous.
Or maybe you just don't need to detect all of them, right, like night vision.
Well, I think in the case of night vision, you are detecting those photons. You're super sensitive to individual ones because they're so rare. But you're right, we don't need to necessarily detect all of them. I guess it depends on what you want to do, Like what are neutrinos useful for? What can you know about the universe if you could see neutrinos.
That's an interesting question. What would happen if you could, would you have like X ray vision kind.
Of Well, you know, if you could see neutrinos, then you could see the Sun during the nighttime because you could look through the Earth and see the neutrinos because they pass almost entirely unscathed through the Earth. And people have done this. They've built neutrino telescopes and point to them at the Earth at nighttime and you can see the Sun, so you can like verify the sun is still there during nighttime if that's the kind of thing you worry about.
Like the sun would be underneath your feet.
Yeah, so I guess in principle, you could prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. If you had neutrino eyebolves.
You could predict when the sun will rise.
Well.
I feel like that's a big part of Milo's question, which is, like, could people evolve to see these particles? To evolve something, it has to be kind of useful to evolution, right to the species. Otherwise life wouldn't bother getting that.
Ability exactly, and developing new bits costs energy, and so it has to have some sort of benefit. It's interesting to think about that, though, because I think that life on Earth existed for hundreds of millions of years before any of it was photosensitive, Right, we'd be like bathed in photons and totally blind to them, or I'm talking about our microbial ancestors before anybody evolved it. In the same way that like, there was no ability to hear sounds for hundreds of millions of years before hearing evolved. So it could take a long time, even for things that seem obvious and have huge benefits. In the case of neutrinos, like PRIA can't hardly even think of a benefit, Like it's not going to help you find food or evade hunters. Maybe you could help you, like see through a mountain to see if there are caves in there where you could like build a home. I'm really reaching for the application of neutrino eye balls.
Well, it sounds like having X ray vision would be useful, right, Like if there's a predator hiding behind a tree or something.
Yeah, but you're going to see right through the predator and through the tree.
But you would see maybe a hint of the predator behind the tree, couldn't you sort of how X rays.
Work if the predator and the tree had like different sensitivities to neutrinos, But both of them are going to be like totally invisible to neutrinos, so you're not gonna be able to see it. I mean, you could see a predator if they were like generating neutrinos. Oh you know what you could do is you could detect nuclear reactors all over the world, right because those generating neutrinos.
Oh well, there you go.
You could detect atomic bombs going off that kind of stuff.
I'm not sure seeing it before it happens is going to really help you once see if you're that close to an atomic bomb.
Yeah, an atomic bombs not famously subtle anyway, So.
Yeah, yeah, could you would see it and feel it in other ways.
But it would be super cool and It's fascinating that there is all this stuff going on in the universe right around us that we don't have senses to it. I feel like that's sort of what Milo is reaching for. It's like he wants to know more about what's out there in the universe. He wants to see more, he wants to experience more of these things about the universe. And I totally get that, Like I feel the same way. I want to know what's out there. I feel like we can only see this tiny slipper of what's really happening in the universe.
Hmmm, that's like you need to evolve, Daniel.
It's either that or get frozen in time like Keanu reeves that can't decide.
Yeah, how do you know, kenneries can't see the treats. Maybe lizards can see the treats.
His career is sort of like an atomic bomb, that's true.
Yeah, he keeps blowing up. All right. Well, I think that answers Mila's question. Could people evolve to see other particles besides photons? The answer is yes, technically you could, and you have sort of in a way you can sense with your eyes. You can send particles like high speed per potons and neutrons and electrons. You can see those with your eyeballs right now if they shoot into your eyes. Again, not recommend it, but you can't do it, and you can maybe even imagine evolving your eye in some way that you are more sensitive to those.
Things, right, yeah, absolutely, all right.
Well, thanks for the question, Mila. Let's get to some of these other questions about vaporizing water and also the spectrum of light. 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 to fifteen bucks a month. At mintmobile dot com slash universe. Forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars per month new customers on first three month plan only speeds slower about forty gigabytes On unlimited plan. Additional taxi, 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 Apple Card. It's the credit card designed for iPhone. It gives you unlimited daily cash back that can earn four point four zero percent annual percentage yield. When you open a high yield savings account through Applecard, apply for Applecard in the wallet app, subject to credit approval. Savings is available to 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 into your mouth or enjoy a rich spoonful of Greek yogurt, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact of each and every bite, But the people in the dairy industry are US Dairy has set themselves some ambitious sustainability goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by twenty to fifty. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. Take water, for example, most dairy farms reuse water up to four times the same water cools the milk, cleans equipment, washes the barn, and irrigates the crops. How is US Dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors that turn the methane from maneuver 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 us dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
All right, we're answering listener questions here today, and we have some awesome questions. By light, vision and heat it's getting pretty hard in here.
It's funny. I usually try to group these questions by topic, but these just came in right one after another. There's sort of people are just naturally thinking about these things at the same time around the world or something.
It's a hard topic. All right, Well, let's get to our next question, which comes from Mark from the UK.
Hi, Daniel and Jorge. My name is Mark and I'm calling from London, UK. I have a hypothetical question for you. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to melt my one kilogram block of ice in the fastest time possible. You can use any existing tools or technology, but I'd like one kilogram of liquid water as a result of your efforts. So how will you do it? How long will it take you? And why can't it be done any faster? Many thanks? Love the podcast.
All right, awesome question from Mark. I feel like he's challenging us.
He is, exactly. It sounds like more of a question for engineers and physicists.
Hmmm, you mean people who can actually do it.
People who like have useful skills to solve the real world problems.
Yeah, I'm with you. I'm not arguing at all. We'll have to ask that question at my other podcast, or it fixes the universe with engineering.
Or he melts your ice there you go.
All right, Well, so the challenge for Mark is to take a one kilogram block of ice and melt it into liquid water, but just liquid I guess, not a liquid water vapor in the fastest way possible. It's like a race.
Yeah, it's a really interesting challenge. You know. The physics or I guess the chemistry underlying it, of course, is that you need to get some energy into this ice, right, You need to heat it up. You need to get those molecules moving so they break those bonds and they relax and change phases from solid into liquid. So it's all about getting energy into this object as fast as possible.
Yeah, and the tricky thing is you want to lucify it, not vaporize.
Yeah.
He started out saying melt, and then I was thinking, hmm, interesting, we could just like zap that thing with energy. But then he was very specific. He wants to cure hem of liquid water, not steam. So you can't just like blow up a nuclear bomb next to it, because that's going to vaporize it.
So he's thirsty. He doesn't want to son it.
Yeah, I don't know if he has an actual situation where this will improve his life or if he's just challenging us.
Usually people want to freeze water right where Right now? The problem is that the ice caps are melting, which is the opposite problem. Yeah, exactly, all right, So you're saying a bomb would not work, Like if I explode a bomb, a grenade, a nuclear bomb next to a block of ice, that would definitely take it away from being solid, but it would maybe take it too far and with the vaporize.
Yeah, essentially it would overshoot. Right. It would deposit an incredible amount of energy, vaporize it into fraction of a second. But it wouldn't be something we could then pass to Mark and say, here's your kilogram of liquid water. It would not only be vaporized, it would be dispersed.
Wouldn't it just get blown away? Like pushed out of the way.
Oh?
Would the block of ice survive.
Or parts of it? I don't know. I guess it depends on how big of the bomb it is.
It depends on how big the bomb is and how close you are to it. But it's definitely going to be a fireball, and it's going to be a huge amount of energy right dumped into it.
M it's uncontrolled.
Yeah, you're dumping an incredible amount of energy into the air, and then that creates this shock wave which travels outwards. So it probably would shatter the ice also and dump energy into it.
All Right, so a bomb or something explodes. If wouldn't work, can we use technology? Can we just take it in a microwave?
Yeah. A microwave is a cool idea because it deposits energy. Right, you take the energy, you create this radiation. That radiation then gets absorbed by the material and then it heats up. And it's actually especially good at heating up water. And molecules like water have these partial electric dipoles, meaning that they're like more positively charged in one direction, more negatively charge in the other direction, and these get like spun around by the waves. The ways go back and forth and the molecules spin back and forth. So it's actually a very efficient way to heat up liquid water. You have a tough liquid water, you put in the microwave, it's very very efficient dump that energy into the motion. The wiggling of those molecules heat it up. Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well for frozen water, which is what we're starting with. Because the frozen water, the molecules can't wiggle, so you can't really like get them moving. And you might have noticed that you put something frozen in the microwave, it takes a long time to defrost it.
Well, they do sort of wiggle, but they maybe wiggle in place, or maybe they don't wiggle as much.
Yeah, exactly, they don't wiggle as effectively, which is why it's more efficient to put energy into liquid water than frozen water using a microwave. So if your goal is to take water from frozen to liquid, a microwave is not a very efficient way to do it, but it would work.
It's also kind of uncontrolled, right, Like you might be turning some of those water molecules into vapor right because you're just shooting microwa into it. You're not controlling which water molecules get the energy.
Yeah, you're gonna get hot spots and cold spots, right, and so some of it's going to vaporize and other pieces are still going to be frozen exactly. Mark is not going to be a happy customer.
All right, So what else can we do to liquefy this block of ice?
So Mark says, we can use any existing technology. So I was thinking, let's go basic. Let's like chop this thing up, because our goal is to dump a bunch of energy into it, and a challenge with the block of ice is getting to the core of it. How do you heat up the center of it? So I thought, well, let's like take this block of ice and chop it into a lot of tiny, littled pieces, and then we can just melt those individual pieces by like pouring hot water over them.
Wait what, you can pour hot water into it?
Yeah, if you have an ice cube, you can just pour hot water onto it and that will melt the ice cube.
Mm.
So your strategy would be chop it up and then dump it all into a not steaming but still hot tub.
Of water exactly. And if you wanted to melt even faster, you can even pour salt water on it, because salt water melts at a lower temperature than distilled water. I don't know that Mark really wants to drink a kilogram of salt water, but that would melt faster.
Well, I don't know if he wants to drink a whole tup flul of salt water. That's your plan. I feel like you've just multiplied as water, sort of like a certain character from the Bible.
Another option is to sort of take advantage of the weird chemistry of water. Water has this weird property that ice takes up more volume than liquid water. Right when you freeze it, it gets bigger instead of getting smaller, and so the opposite effect is cool. When you apply pressure to ice, it tends to melt because you're squeezing it down to prefer to change phase down to water, which takes less volume.
So you're saying, like, if I just put pressure on my block of ice, it will melt.
The phase diagram of water has this weird angle on it, and for some temperatures of ice, if you do increase the pressure, it will turn into water.
So like a regular ice temperature like zero C, that would work.
Yeah, zero C. If you increase the pressure, it will turn into water. It won't increase the temperature, right, just if you just increase the pressure and keep the temperature the same, then technically it will be water. Now, you can't really like serve that to mark because as soon as you take away the pressure, it's gonna turn back into an ice cube. But you could deliver it to hind a high pressure kilogram of water in some intense container.
Well, what if you just kind of like squeeze it between in a vice or something, you know, like a press. Wouldn't that just instantly increase the pressure inside the block of ice and melt it.
If you increase it in a press, it's gonna crush it, right, You're gonna get crushed ice.
How much would you have to squeeze it without breaking it to increase the pressure to the melting point.
It depends a little bit on the temperature. But I think the key thing here is you need to maintain that pressure to keep it liquid. In an advice, you crush it and then it like what falls it down and it's no longer like contained. So I'm talking about like putting it in some like hyper pressure chamber.
Oh, I see. So you're saying putting it inside of a tank and then rapidly pour a bunch of air into the tank to increase the pressure inside the tank. Would that just instantly melt the whole block or what would happen?
I don't think it would melt the whole block instantly. I think it would work from the outside in, as the outer layers are applying pressure to the inner layers. So I don't know exactly how fast it would be, but it is another way to melt ice.
So then I guess Mark's question was which is the fastest way.
I think the fastest way is to chop it up and grind it and then pour water over it. But those are just my impractical physicist ideas. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as an actual problem solving engineer.
I think he asked the question of you, Daniel, not me.
Okay, well, then my answer is I'll consult with my mechanical engineering friend.
Oh well, then my answer would be, let's try a whole bunch of time. Let's see which one is faster. Okay, that's an engineer with techer.
Screw first principles. Let's just try all of them.
Yeah. Basically, well, you know, guided by first principles, you'd come up with a bunch of different solutions, try them out and see which one works faster. So I guess the answers for Mark is give us some money and we'll we'll give you an answer. This is going to take a lab and some resources here, Mark, because our physicist has no clear answer here.
Or maybe we should crowdsource it. Maybe somebody out there has a lab that can do these things and enjoys melting ice cubes and has done these experiments. If so, get in touch.
Oh, there you go. It could be the latest TikTok trend. What's the fastest you can melt the block of ice? How big is a kilogram of water of ice?
A kilogram of water is not very much, right, it's a thousand millimeters. It's just a leader of water.
Mm.
Actually, I have figured out the fastest way to turn this leader of ice into water.
For Mark, what's that?
I would just swap it out, take his block of ice, hand him a leader of water. Done. That's an engineer. What's solved this problem?
We have no shortage of liquid water. Let's just serve him up some it.
That's right. Yeah, it's instant. It's an instant solution.
Yeah, I like it.
There you go. All right, Well, I think that answers Mark's question. Let's get to our last question, which is about the spectrum of light and heat from the human body. But 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, 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 manure 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 us dairy dot com slash sustainability to learn more.
There are children, friends, and families walking, riding on paths and roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too.
Go safely.
California From the California Office of Traffic Safety and caltrans It is.
Ryan here, and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win lake? Are you at fist pumper, a woohoo, a handclapper, a high fiver. If you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumbuck Casino. Choose some hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly, plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait. Start having the most fun ever at Chumbuck Casino dot com.
Sponsored by chumpb Casino. No purchase necessary.
Vgwgroup fordware prohibited by Law eighteen plus.
Terms and conditions apply.
With the United Explorer Card, earn fifty thousand bonus miles, then head for places unseen and destinations unknown. Wherever your journey takes you, you'll enjoy remarkable rewards, including a free checked bag and two times the miles on every United purchase. You'll also receive two times the miles on dining and at hotels, so every experience is even more rewarding. Plus, when you fly United, you can look forward to United Club Access with two United Club one time passes per year. Become a United Explorer Card member today and take off on more trips so you can take in once in a lifetime experiences everywhere you travel. Visit the Explorer Card dot com to apply today. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank NA Member FDIC subject to credit approval, offer subject to change. Terms apply.
All right, we're getting to your last question of the day and this one is pretty interesting. It's about body heat, so things may get a little hot. It comes from Elden from Australia.
Hello.
My question is about infrared light and heat and how they relate to each other.
I was taught that.
Light comes into the planet as visible light hits the surface of the Earth, is absorbed and then reflected as a lower energy infrared, which is what causes the greenhouse effect. Now, what happens to the excess energy when visible light is absorbed by the Earth and then re emitted as the lower energy infrared. What happens to the infrared that is directly radiated from the Sun. Does it hit the Earth and get reflected as a lower energy microwave. Also, if you stand in front of a fire, it is giving off visible and infrared light. Is it giving off any other frequencies of light? And what is infrared's relationship with the thermal heating of particles from the fire. Does the fire's heat come from infrared or the oscillation of air particles or maybe both? Why do we infrared as hate? That's my mind question is hate? Just how the human body sensors infrared. What I'm asking is essentially, how does hate relate to infrared? And how does infrared relate to hate? I've wondered about this phenomenon since i was a little boy.
Cheer all right, awesome question or questions from Elden from Australia. I feel like he's not like seven questions in there.
Yeah, I know Eldon is very curious about about how hot he is feeling and whether it's due to infrared light or what.
Yeah, and I've been to Australia and it is pretty hot there, and also the people are pretty hot as well.
And the housing market I hear also yeah.
Yeah, and the lizards are pretty big as well, So yeah, yeah, I guess that's just maybe a kind of a general question about how heat or what we interpret this heat is related to infrared and the spectrum.
Of light exactly. He talks about a lot of different context there where infrared light is bouncing around and being absorbed and emitted. So maybe we should start with, like, what is infrared light anyway? What are we talking about? And remember that infrared light is just a kind of light. Light comes in lots of different wavelengths, from very very long wavelengths to very very short wavelengths, and a tiny fraction of that spectrum we can see. We call it visible light, and there's a lot of wavelengths of light we just can't see. Infrared light, for example, has wavelengths that are too long for us to see. Ultraviolet light has wavelengths that are too short for us to see. So infrared light in the end is just light with long wavelengths too long for us to see with our eyeballs.
Okay, that's infrared light. How would you define heat?
So heat is a very tricky topic because it's used in so many ways in so many different contexts. It's too hot to handle, it's too hot to handle. You know. There's like the colloquial sense of heat, where like you are feeling warm, right, you feel like there's energy being transferred to you, you're warming up. And then there's like the thorodynamic definition of heat, which is maybe not so useful because it's physicists using normal sounding words to find something very very technical. And in thermodynamics, heat is energy transfer, thermal energy transfer between systems that doesn't count as work, not something that's like spinning a turbine or lifting something up, all that other kind of energy transfer they call heat.
But I think maybe you're getting a little too technical. I think maybe you can just replace the word hot, Like what does it mean for something to be hot? Is maybe kind of more of what Eldon is asking.
Yeah, I don't think Eldon is asking about the details of thermodynamics, right, but we do.
Think he is, But I think he wants to translate into everyday terms.
Yeah, and so you know what we feel as heat is energy flowing from like hot objects to cold objects.
So something that's hot is something that has kind of energy as stored in it and how the molecules are moving.
Heat and temperature are not exactly the same thing, right. Temperature is like a measure of how much energy is inside something, like particles are whizzing around microscopically. If they're wizzing around really really fast, that thing is hot. If they're whizzing around slowly than that thing is cold. So that's temperature. It's like a property of an object. Heat is the flow of energy from one thing to another. So you have something that's hot and something that's cold. Heat is the flow of energy from the hot thing to the cold thing.
Okay, so you're saying something can be hot but not give off a lot of heat, and something can be hot and give off a lot of heat.
Well, it depends a little on the context. Right, you have something at one hundred degrees it's either going to absorb energy or give off energy based on what it's next to. It's next to something colder, it's going to lose energy to If it's next to something hotter, it's going to gain energy from it. But I think what Eldin is talking about is like things glowing like you're standing next to a fire, or you're getting energy from the sun, right, And so what he's talking about is like things essentially emitting light, because everything out there does emit. Like you stand next to a rock, it's emitting light. You can't see that light with your eye, but it is emitting light. Everything emits light based on its temperature. The sun emits light at certain frequencies because it's super duperor hot. Those frequencies of light happen to be visible. But everything, your body, the earth, rocks, even tiny dust particles in space give off light, just usually at much lower frequencies than we can see.
So I guess you're saying that when something is hot, it naturally gives off light. But if it's sort of warm and not super duper hot, then most of the lights it gives off is in the infrared. That's why we kind of associate, at least in our human experience, hot things with infrared.
Yeah, everything glows in infrared. But there's another aspect to this, right, which is like how your body responds to these different frequencies. I mean, you can see some of them with your eyeballs and you can't see other ones, but also they impact your body differently, Like if you have a whole spectrum of light hitting you, then your body responds differently to infrared light and visible light and ultraviolet light, and like super duper or high energy photons, and infrared light actually will make you feel warmer more than those other frequencies because it's very good at being absorbed by your body. We're just talking about with microwaves. Your body is good at absorbing infrared radiation because it's well matched to like the vibrational frequencies of your molecules.
And so that's I think the connection that Elvin was asking about between heat and infrared, which is that what we call infrared, which is really just like another frequency of light, but it just happens to be the frequency of light that's just beyond our visible spectrum that we can see. That range of frequencies is somehow tuned to our molecules, just like the microwavease kind of exactly.
It can penetrate into your body and heat up stuff, and you might think, we'll hold on a second. And the other frequencies of light actually have higher energy, like ultraviolet light and blue light has a shorter wavelength and a higher energy, right, And it does have more energy, that's true, but you don't feel it as heat because of how it penetrates your body. UV light is mostly absorbed in a very thin outer layer of your skin. That's why, for example, UV light will give you a sunburn, and as you go even higher energy like X rays, your body's mostly transparent to X ray. X rays will pass through your body without interacting. So even though X rays do have more energy, they don't deposit it in your body. And even though the ultraviolet light does have more energy than infrared, you don't feel warm when you're bathed in it because it's mostly just like toasting your skin.
But then if it's toasting your skin, you would feel it as heat, wouldn't you.
Well, you do feel it as heat, sort of indirectly, in the way that you're like feel a sunburn. Right. You can sit out in the sun and get sunburned, but you don't feel it immediately. Your skin is absorbing that energy and it is getting damaged, but it's not increasing in temperature the same way, right, Whereas like if you are bathed in infrared light, then it's actually shaking those molecules and making them wiggle. Temperature of your flesh goes up, whereas if you're bathed in UV light, it's mostly just like doing damage to those cells, and eventually you'll feel warm because you'll feel sunburned, and that always feels like uncomfortably glowy, but sort of in a different way.
But in either case, they're depositing energy into your body, right, Like, both the UV ray and the infrared are both depositing energy. Is just that somehow we feel the infrared energy light more or it's just your body's more efficient at absorbing infrared light.
And your body is so efficient at absorbing ultraviolet that it doesn't even penetrate very far beyond your skin. It all gets deposited into your skin. You don't feel it immediately as temperature, because mostly it's like breaking bonds inside your cells and doing all sorts of damage. Whereas infrared light will penetrate more deeply, but also has a different effect on the particles the objects. It makes them rotate and spin and vibrate. It does, in nessially break them down, but it heats it up.
I think you're saying, like Ao, kinds of light are depositing energy on your body, but the UVI light it's being destructive when it does that, which you don't feel like your temperature receptors in your skin are not designed to feel your cells being destroyed. But the infrared light sort of like the microwave, it does kind of shake the molecules in your skin, which translates more directly to heat, which your heat sensors are tuned to detect exactly.
And so if you had the option, for example, to stand in front of a hundred wat uv bulb or one hundred wat infrared bulb and you wanted to feel warm, you should stand in front of the infrared bulb because it's going to more efficiently transfer that energy into like the temperature of your flesh. Now, of course, you do it too long and it's going to cook you, and you know that's not something we recommend here on the podcast.
That's a little too hot.
He also was asking about, like, if you stand in front of a fire, what's happening there, And a fire is definitely emitting in the infrared, but it's also releasing a lot of chemical energy, which is just like heating up the molecules of the air, and then those molecules of the air are depositing energy in you, and that's just like thermodynamic transfer. It's just like if you stand next to something warm. In this case, the air near you is warm from the fire. Then that warm air is depositing energy on your body, not by radiating light, just by like molecules bouncing off of each other.
But the fire is also generating visible light, right Like, that's why you can see the fire and it's bright.
That's right. So the fire is heating you in lots of ways. It's like directly heating the air, which is heating you up, and it's also emitting light and infrared. Also, everything is glowing in the infrared, and the infrared light does heat you up as well, all.
Right, So then I think to answer the question is like if you have a fire gone in front of you, is generating light in the almost the full spectrum of light. Some of that and light being given off is in the UUV, which is heating you up technically destroying the cells in your body, but you're not feeling as heat. Some of that light is in the infrared, which you do feel as heat because your cells are sort of tuned to receive that kind of energy, and some of it is being transmitted to the air molecules, which you then feel as hot wind.
And then if you have a very nice fire in your backyard, increases the resale value of your house, which makes the housing market hotter.
That's right. Unless it gets out of control and it burns your house, then you're in hot water, which marked in the UK might enjoy it.
Yeah, Or if your house is worth nothing, you might actually be underwater with your mortgage, which will put out the housing market.
There you go, at least for your own personal finances.
But again, do not take real estate or financial advice from this podcast, please.
That's right, or engineering advice apparently from at least half of the podcast. All right, well, those are three really interesting questions about light, vision and heat. Thanks to all of our listeners who send in their questions and share their curiosity with us.
And thanks to everybody out there who is powering signs with their curiosity and text dollars and tax dollars. The combined force of everybody's curiosity is what moves everything forward. So keep thinking, keep asking questions, keep wondering about the universe. We'll figure it out eventually, or.
At least we'll try a bunch of stuff and see which one works.
We'll send us our requirements technically, even if not spiritually.
Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Hey. It's hour Hey from the podcast, and I'm super excited to announce that my new book, Oliver's Great Big Universe, is available to order now.
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 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.
There are children, friends and families walking, riding on passing the roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too, Go safely, California From the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans.
Wait the Lucky Land sluts. You can get lucky just about anywhere.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and groom?
Sorry?
Sorry, we're here.
We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time.
No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess registry.
In that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Thank for free at Lucky landslots dot com.
No purchase necessary.
BGW grow void.
We're prohibited by LACK eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply
