Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseListener Questions 48: Vacations, Destruction and Anti-matter Black Holes
Daniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners and try to avoid giving marriage advice.
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Hey or Hey, you have a good holiday break.
I did. You were hiking near volcanoes, swimming under huge waterfalls, scuba diving as a whole adventure.
It sounds like you'd agree with the rest of my family. They prefer adventures to vacations, where sometimes I think could be more exhausting than our regular schedule at work.
Would you prefer physics adventures?
Not really? I mean they'd like to go skiing, which seems like a highly dangerous physics adventure. You ski, I don't ski. They ski, and I stay in the cabin and bake treats.
Oh, I say, you prefer to do chemistry while they do physics. That's your vacation.
That is the one part of chemistry I do like, yes, kitchen chemistry.
Well, if you could take a physics adventure anywhere in the universe, where would you go? Do you visit a black hole? Dive into a neutron star?
You know? I think the best place to visit the universe is right here on the surface of the Earth, where the fewest things are trying to kill you, and we have the highest chocolate concentration in the universe.
I get the sense you're not much of an adventurer, are you.
You and my family have finally figured that out.
I think we've done this for a while now. Daniel Guilty is charged. Hi, I'm Jorham cartoonists 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 the kind of adventures I like are mental adventures?
Mental like radical like whoa dude, that's mental? Or like trips to the mental institution.
No, nothing that's going to drive you mentally insane. I mean adventures into our understanding of the nature of the universe, or frankly, just fantasy is about orbiting black holes without actually going there.
You prefer ecotourism, not ecotourism.
A fantastical exploration of the universe rather than a real one.
Wouldn't you rather have both? Though? Woun those both be fun, Like if you go if you could go to a black hole, if you be there enjoying it, and it would also be stimulating your mind, stretching your mind as.
Men, if you go to the black hole and send me back the data, then I can have the mind stretching without the body stretching.
Yeah, that'd be a bit of a stretch, Like I'm not sure you'd be the first person I would tell.
I know you have a whole contry physicists, you collaborate.
But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we try to stretch your mind with the grandest mental adventure of all time. We want to take the entire universe and squeeze it into your brain. We hope that everything that's out there in the universe, from the tiniest particles to the biggest stuff out there, can be made sense of, can be explained, and can be folded into a short audio stream and explained to you.
That's right. You want to be the vacation from your every day living up the universe too, thinking about the universe, taking your mind on giant journeys across the cosmos and into the deepest secrets of the universe.
If you desperately want to understand how the universe works, how it all comes together, what rules it follows, without reading a whole textbook filled with mathematics, then this is the right podcast for you.
Or unless you're a mathematician, in which case that sounds like a vacation to them, probably.
This podcast is a vacation from pages of equations, or.
I guess if you want to spend your vacation sleeping, you could pick up a pretty good, uh math physics book.
Some of those are riveting, like, oh my god, what derivative are they going to take next? I can't even predict.
Yeah, so I'll a big cliffhanger. But yeah, even in your vacations or your holiday breaks, you're probably one what's out there? What's out there in the nurse? What's going on? How does it all work?
Because part of being human is wanting to understand everything you see, whether you're on the ski slopes or hiking up the side of a volcano, or in your kitchen cooking up a treat. There are rules that the universe follows, and we want to understand them. So everybody out there asks questions about how things works and wants to know the answer. And we'd love if you shared your questions with us. Any questions you have about the physical universe, or volcanoes or baking, send them to us. Two questions at Danielandjorge dot com.
Oh man, that just just turned into a baking podcast.
You're the one who brought up baking, man, I never want to talk about chemistry.
You're the one who brought up baking. Oh no, that's baked it into the intro.
You're right, that's true. No, I'm guilty. You're the one who made it about chemistry, but I did bring up baking.
Yes, Now do you think about chemistry when you bake? That's my question?
Yeah, you know, that's the part of baking I actually don't like because it seems like, oh, the temperature just has to be right and then has to go up and then down and some magic happens and the texture changes completely and the whole thing can be very frustrating.
Yeah, tasty.
If it works out, it can be delicious.
Well, the part I get hung up in is just following the recipe. Whenever I see like ounces, I'm like ounces, Is that weight or volume or teaspoons?
What is that?
It's the units, man, the units.
Yeah.
But anyways, everyone does have questions. We all have questions since we were little kids. As we grow older, and the question just seems to get bigger and bigger as we think about the universe and everything in it.
So on this podcast we tackle lots of different questions, but our favorites are your questions, the questions that bubble up in your mind. As you live in this universe and think about your next vacation.
So to On the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions forty eight. Now, Daniel, is there a theme to these questions today? Are they about baking or scuba diving? There's a lot of physics in scuba diving. Actually, it's part of this certification process.
Yeah, today's questions are all but vacations and cosmic destinations.
Wait, did you say bacations or vacations?
I said vacations. But I'm never going to go on a vacation again without thinking about it as a vacation.
Yeah, you go. You can bake it into the name and the baking.
To bake my way through that vacation.
But yeah, so these questions are all about traveling to distant and interesting places across the universe. Do you think people are cooped up and during the holidays and we're wondering about where they can go in the universe.
I think people just like to imagine themselves in various parts of the universe. Would it be like to be near a neutron star or to go visit a black hole or to see an anti matter black hole? What would the actual experience. Be like I think if people are frustrated by being trapped on the surface of the Earth and want to actually go and experience the rest of the universe.
M Well, we have three awesome questions here about white dwarfs, about destroying a whole planet. I'm not sure what kind of occasion that would be, and also one about antimatter and whether it matters in the universe. And so let's jump right in. Our first question comes from Trey from Tribuco Canyon, California.
Hello, Daniel and Jorge, This is Trey in Tribuco Canyon, California. I was hoping you could help me and my wife resolve a little disagreement about our packing for vacation next year. You see, we really want to go to the system Serious B, which I believe is a white dwarf, and I'm trying to tell my wife how the rocket equation basically means we have to pack as light as possible. She's determined that you can't go on vacation without bringing sunblock, and I'm trying to explain that, you know, Serious B is a white dwarf. There's no nuclear fusion happening anymore. I think that means there's no UV radiation the kind that causes sunburn. So I think we can save some of our suitcase space by leaving that at home. So please help us solve that question. And if we do have to bring to some block, what SPF would you recommend?
Thank you so much?
All right, great question, Trey. And just to let you know, we're not qualified marriage counselors, right, I'm not.
I mean, we can help inform the decisions you make in your marriage, but.
Do you think we're qualified even for that? What would our wives do? Would our wise degree?
I'm terrified to ask them that question. But you know, in the same way that like science can inform policy, right, we can help people just understand the nature of the situations they're getting themselves involved in, without actually recommending a course of action.
Well, I wonder if you would decide with his wife just you know, in his best interest.
Here you think that's always the best advice. I would.
Always wrong. Your spouse is always right. That is the key to a happy marriage.
All right. Well, we just got to listen and they follow too.
If they follow too, then it it'll be a happy marriage.
Yes, everybody compromises more than fifty percent, So that's a good situation. Everyone gives in one hundred percent of the time. That's love, man, that's love, all right. But then you have to actually decide are you bringing the sun block to visit Serious B?
Right?
Decisions actually have to be made, all.
Right, all right, let's get back to the question here. Trey seems to be planning a vacation with his wife and he wants to go to a white dwarf system and he wants to know if he should bring sunblock. That's the basic question.
Right, Yeah, that's right. He wants to know basically, how bright would it be near there? Is it safe to be near a white dwarf because there is infusion happening inside of it? Basically, what's it like to be near a white dwarf? And what gear do you have to bring?
Well, he mentions the system Serious B, which he believes is a white dwarf. Now is it a white dwarf?
Daniel Series B is a white dwarf and it's the closest one to Earth, so it's a good choice if you want to go visit a white dwarf.
So he is pretty serious about it. He seems to be serious. He seems to be serious, then he wants to go as serious b. But yeah, so it's the closest one I'll close, is it you said it's the closest one.
Yeah. It's just under nine light years away from here, which is not really a practical trip for Americans at least who only get two weeks of vacation. But if you want to see a white dwarf, it is the most accessible.
All right, Well, let's dig into the question, Daniel, And let's start maybe with the basics. What is this white dwarf? And do you need sunblock if you're under it or above it?
Yeah, white dwarf is a really fascinating object. It's basically the end point of stars, right. Stars we think of as huge burning balls of gas, fusion happening inside them, converting lighter elements into heavier elements. But like anything that uses fuel, eventually it will run out. It will fuse all of the available materials and no longer be able to do that fusion and sputter out. And the endpoint of a star depends on how much mass it started with. Smaller stars end up as white dwarfs, Bigger stars become neutron stars. Even bigger stars become black holes.
So this would be a star that's not being enough to turn into an utron star or a black hole when it runs out of fuel. So what happens when it runs out of fuel? Does it collapse or does it just like proof or it just stops burning?
Sort of all of those. I mean, the star when it's burning is a delicate balance between gravity that's trying to collapse it into a black hole and fusion which is pushing out, creating radiation and preventing it from collapsing into a black hole. But then the fusion runs out right and so no longer is it able to sustain it, so it does collapse into a much denser object. A typical white dwarf has about the mass of the Sun but the volume of the Earth. So it's really a very, very incredibly dense kind of matter.
Is it like a big collapse, like a supernova collapse, or is it just like a let it just crumbles into a denser.
It's not like a supernova collapse. It's more like the core of the star is left over. Like when a star is burning, the fusion initiates at the core, but then as heavier elements gather at the core, the fusion tends to move to the outer layers. In the later periods of the star, the outer layers where the fusion is happening, and those get puffy and the star gets really big. It eventually just blows out all the outer layers and leaves behind sort of the core of the star, which is this hot blob of super dense matter, like the ash from all the fusion that's left behind m and.
So it's super dense, super hot, but not as dense as a neutron star, like things are still an atom form or are they broken up.
So yes, it's not as dense as a neutron star, and it doesn't have enough gravity yet to collapse into a black hole because there are still some forces there pushing back. What exactly is the nature of the matter, We call it electron degenerate matter. It's still atomic matter in the sense that there are like protons and neutrons and electrons there, but it's all merged together really tightly, so it's not like they're really individual atoms. The electrons occupy these sort of like energy levels that are spread out across the star and it's actually the electrons that are keeping the star from collapsing further into a neutron star.
So it's a giant like rock, or is it like a giant soup of electrons and protons.
It's a giant, very dense soup of protons and electrons, and the electrons because the poly exclusion principle are trying to avoid ending up in the same quantum state because remember, electrons are fermions, and fermions can't occupy the same state as other fermions, So the electrons don't want to be squeezed down to like lower energy states because then they would overlap with each other, and that results in a kind of pressure because electrons are forced to stay at higher energy levels, like further up the ladder in order to avoid colliding with electrons at the lower energy states. That means that they're whizzing around and basically pushing on the star and keeping it from collapsing. If you had more mass, you would squeeze those down. Those electron would be captured by the protons, turning them into neutrons, and you get a neutron star. But there isn't quite enough gravity to make that happen.
So it's a giant, dense soup of super hot stuff. Right, it's super hot.
Right, it's super hot.
Yeah, Like how hot is it?
Well, there's actually a big range from like four thousand kelvin up to like one hundred and fifty thousand kelvin.
You mean, like if you look at all the white dwards in the universe, they have a range of temperatures.
They do have a big range of temperatures.
Exactly what does that range depend on? Like how old they are or how big they were, or how hot the star was, how many TikTok followers they have.
So what we're talking about here is the surface temperature, and that depends, yeah, basically on the mass. So there's a bit of a range of the masses of these things, and the bigger they are, the hotter the surface temperature. Because there's no longer fusion going on at the heart of these stars. Right, This is like when fusion is done, these protons are not squeezing together to make heavier elements. That's already happened. You already have like carb or helium or whatever has been fused. You don't have the temperatures needed to fuse the heavy elements that you've gathered, so fusion is sort of done.
It's not actually burning.
It's just sort of like after a fire has gone out, you still have embers and they're still sitting there hot and glowing. That's essentially what a white dwarf is. And eventually it will cool down, it will radiate away all of its heat out into the universe, and it will become a black dwarf.
Wait what eventually?
Eventually we think every white dwarf will become a black dwarf. We think it takes a very very long time.
Is there a range for like it turns into a gray dwarf? And is this sort of like Gandalf and the Wizards where they had different powers.
We don't know, because we've never seen what happened, and we don't think there's been enough time in the universe for this to happen. It's sort of counterintuitive, but it takes a long time for things in space to cool off. You think of space as like cold, and if you go out there, you're freeze to death. Right, It's actually harder to lose your heat in space because there's no air out there to rob you of your heat. There's no wind. The only way to lose heat is to radiate it away, to glow away your heat. So, for example, satellites and the space station have to worry a lot about cooling. It's complicated anyway. It's going to take like trillions of years for white dwarfs to turn into black dwarfs. So we think the universe eventually will have lots of black dwarfs in it because like ninety something percent of all stars in our galaxy will become a white dwarf, but there hasn't been enough time for any of them to form.
Wait ninety seven, pertend that's almost all the stars in the universe. All of them will become white dwarfs and eventually black dwarfs.
Yeah, because it depends on the mass of the star. Smaller stars become white dwarfs. Bigger stars, neutron stars, even bigger stars black holes, and most of the stars in the universe are actually less massive than our sun. Our sun is on the heavier side. Most of the stars that are out there in the universe right now are red dwarfs. They're smaller, they're colder, they're redder than our sun, which is yellower. So most of the stars in the universe have the right amount of mass to end up as white dwarfs.
Now why do they call them white dwarfs, I guess, and not red or black or fusia or ciam.
Yeah, it's a good question. You know, white isn't really a color. It refers to like a broad spectrum of colors. And so you can ask, like, well, what kind of light gets emitted from a hot blob of rocks sitting out there in the universe that's like four to one hundred and fifty thousand degrees calfin And it's very broad, right, These things glow not because fusion is generating photons, but just because they're hot, and hot things in the universe glow. It's called black body radiation. Everything out there where the temperature of the dark matter does glow and generate radiation. And that radiation depends on its temperature. So the higher the temperature, the higher the frequency of the light that you generate. And so white dwarfs happen to be in a temperature range where they generate mostly white light, at least the part of it that we can see.
All right, Well, then let's answer. Now Trey's question was, if you to this solar system Series B, which has a white dwarf in the middle, and they're their vacationing, do they need to wear sun block or are they safe without?
Well, no surprise, Trey's wife is correct, you need to bring some sunscreen because even though there's no fusion happening. Serious B is a hot blob of rock and it is radiating in the ultra violet and it will give you cancer if you get too close.
I feel like eventually, but like, how bright is a white dwarf? Like if our sun collapsed and was replaced with a white dwarf, how bright would it be? Would it be like as bright as it is now our sun, or would it be would it be sort of really dim, like you know, maybe the sun at sunset or sundown, or as bright as the moon.
So the typical white dwarf is hot and dim and very dense. So mostly they're not as bright as our sun. Some of them are like one ten thousands as bright as our sun. But some of them are like one hundred times bright better than our sun. It depends on the mass.
Oh, what but what is serious be? Then? Because that that's the question. Try wants to know his marriage depends on it.
So Series B is just about the same mass as our Sun, but it's like a twentieth of the luminosity of our sun, so it's not as bright as our sun. So it depends on how close he wants to get. I mean, that's still pretty bright. A twentieth of the brightness of our sun is not a very dim object.
Hmm.
I see. So if it's about the same mass as our Sun, then you probably want to be orbiting it, maybe at around the same place where the Earth is, which means that they were vacationing there, it would be pretty dip, like they should bring some some headlamps or something.
It'd be like twilight all the time exactly.
Then would they still need sunblock?
They still would need sunblock because these things are pretty hot and they actually do emit significantly in the ultraviolet. Some of these, including Series B, also generate X rays, So if they have no atmosphere to protect themselves and they can just be exposed to the UV.
It sounds like there's a lot of variables here that we're adding. But like if they were on Earth, similar to ours orbiting Series B, it's almost like they have an automatic SPF of twenty because the Sun is twenty times dimmer than the Sun. But even in the X ray and UV range, it's'd be a one twentieth or it'd be less maybe because it's it's mostly black body radiation, but.
The Sun is also mostly black body radiation, and so it'd be pretty similar spectrum.
But just one twentieth.
Yeah, just one twentieth. So if they magically transport the Earth to that system and orbit series be at the same distance, yeah, then yeah, they don't have to worry about sunblock. But if they're out in space orbiting series B, then yes, please bring some sunblock.
So well, I guess maybe the answer is that the tray's wife is right. You do need some block, But maybe you don't need like a thirty SPF or fifty. You just need like a five SPF.
I mean, it just always brings sundlock.
You were some block and when you sit in your couch eating chocolate, yes day, every day?
Absolutely, man, I live in southern California.
Nice, is that why you look so young and beautiful?
Young at least at least young and as beautiful as I ever was.
All right, Well, I think we answered the question right. I think you do need some block because there is still radiation, X rays and UV light there, but maybe not as much. You don't need as much sun some block or as thick of a sun block SPF.
If you're going to bring your planet and its atmosphere with you, then yeah.
Yeah, I think the bigger question is why would you want to go there for a vacation. It sounds kind of dim, kind of far.
I mean, that's kind of personal. That's between Trey and.
His wife too. Maybe they like dim places.
Yeah, who knows, man, people like all sorts of stuff.
I guess, I guess. Yeah. All right, Well, good luck Tray on your vacation and your marriage as well.
If you're coming to us for advice, we already.
Have conces that's right, you're already in trouble. It is just turned into like a marriage legal advice podcast.
More stuff we're not qualified to talk.
Yeah, all right, Well let's get to our other questions about destroying planets and about antimatter. But first let's take a quick break.
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All right, we're answering listener questions here today and also fixing people's marriage or making them worse. I'm not sure it's all about physics experiment.
We're well intentioned, even if it's clumsy.
That's what we're here to inform, not to reform your marriage.
I have performed some marriages though I have married people.
Oh nice, and it's valid. Does it work if it's a physicist, be a man of the universe.
I am an official shaman of the Universal Liife Church dot com. Thank you very much.
Oh is that your title? Shaman shaman?
I got to pick any title I wanted.
Isn't it shaman shaman?
If I think if I'm a shaman, I get to decide how I pronounce it.
I see, I see. There's no requirement. There's no class on how to pronounce the title as part of the qualification process.
The only qualification is can you click this button online? And I passed that with flying colors and then makes it qualified to marry people? Yes?
Absolutely, well you should add that to your title physics professor slash efficient efficient Yeah shaman.
No, I did a few weddings and then I retired permanently.
Oh I see, and how are those marriages going? Still going wrong?
No divorces yet? Yeah?
Oh good? Yeah, you got a perfect record, I do, yes, so far. Maybe the keys that they've never asked you for marriage.
Advice, that's probably crucial.
Yeah, all right, well let's get to our next question. You have a question here concerningly about how to destroy a planet.
Hello, Daniel and Jorge. This is David from Menlo Park, California. I'd like some professional advice. Say I want to destroy a planet from a distance with a single particle. What particles should I use? It needs to have at least ten to thirty two jewels of energy and be stable long enough to travel say one light year. Please consider as well what method I will need to employ to increase the particle's energy to that level. Not asking for a friend here, This one is totally for me to advance my nefarious plans. Thanks and have a great.
Day, all right.
At least he's straightforward. He's not claiming to be asking for a friend or anything.
I like how you said. I like some professional advice. Your job to destroy the universe, or to think of way to destroy the universe, or think of way to prevent the dis direction of the planet. I'm not quite sure what his profession is.
I think his boss is Darth Vader and he works on the Death Star.
Right.
Oh, or maybe he's Darth Vader's boss, or Darth Vader commissioned him as an architect to design a death star.
Oh.
Interesting, I see he's designer of the future Death Star.
Yeah, we can work our way into the cannon.
Man, Are we gonna get credit? Is there gonna be a little plaque in the Death Star? Made with information obtained from Daniel and Hora explain the universe.
I don't want any kind of credit there, no, thank you very much.
But it gets destroyed anyways twice in according to the or three times if you count the latter movies, in which case our plaque is gone. I think, all right, But this is an interesting question, an interesting professional question, I should say. And David wants to know if you want to destroy a planet, like, say, for example, the Earth. I imagine, and you had to do with a single particle, which particle would you use? And I guess how would you use it?
Mm hmm.
Yeah, this is a really interesting question because first you have to think about what it means to destroy a planet, Like do you want to annihilate the planet purely into energy or do you just want to like break it up and send all of its bits flying out into space in different directions with enough speed that they like don't gather back together into a new planet, Like what are the technical requirements for your planetary destruction, please, sir.
I see, yeah, start from the beginning, like, what do you mean by destroying a planet? Because you're like, I can help you with all the whole range.
We got a whole menu here for.
Destroy a little. I can help you if you want to destroy a lot.
He came to the right place, So I was assuming that what he wanted to do is make it not a planet anymore, basically break it up into chunks and send those chunks out to infinity with enough speed that they don't come back together as a planet. Didn't want to actually like convert the mass into energy.
I see, because I guess I would be disappointing if you like destroy the planet and then a few hundred years later it gathers back up into planet again.
Yeah, it doesn't really feel like this drawing it. If the explosion just like recollapses back into a planet, I mean, probably you've still killed everybody on the surface. Maybe that has your goal, but there's still a planet there, right.
I feel like that's usually what people are supervillains mean when they meet when they talk about destroying a planet.
I mean, it depends, right, if you're like building a galactic super highway through a solar system and you have to demolish a planet because it's in the way, then you really want to break it up into debris.
Oh, I see.
Maybe you're building like a galactic particle collider and you just need that space.
Or maybe you just need to make space for like a new vacation resort and or a bakery, and you've got a pesky planet in your way.
Yeah, exactly. Trey has commissioned you to build something for him to visit.
Exactly, and this is interesting, interesting, and will he need some block.
So this is something we can actually calculate. You can think about like how much energy do you need to add to the bits of a planet to send them out fast enough that they overcome the power of gravity? Right, Like we talked about escape velocity. You throw a ball from the surface of the Earth fast enough it will overcome the gravitational energy and fly out to infinity and never come back. Well, how much energy you need to do to pick up pieces of Earth and throw them all out to infinity so they all have escape velocity? That's actually a number we can calculate.
Interesting, but that's just sending it off. Don't you need extra energy to also break up all the rocks and stuff holding the Earth together.
Yeah, you do, but most of the energy is gravitational.
What do you mean? How do you know? Like if I try to break a rock with my hands, it's pretty hard, but so so throwing that out into space fast and though two? I guess is that kind of what you mean? Like, the energy takes to launch a rock away from Earth so that it never comes back is way more than the energy might take to break it into.
Two exactly because most of the reason that the Earth is stuck together is gravitational energy. Right, It's not actually like bonded together. It's just so squeezed together by gravity. It's also too complicated problem if you think about all those details, there's like too many ways to break up the Earth, Like do you break into two halves and send them in different directions? Do you break them into ten to the forty seven pieces? That energy is smaller, I think than all of the gravitation of binding energy.
I see you're assuming. I guess that it's smaller.
I've done some calculations. They're very hand wavy and approximate, But most of the energy you need is the gravitation of binding energy, and that's already a huge number. We're talking like two times ten to the thirty two jewels. It's an enormous amount of energy we take to send chunks of the earth out to infinity.
That sounds like a lot, but maybe give us some context, Like a stick of dynamite. How many jewels can that release?
So a single stick of dynamite is like two million jewels, right, that's like ten to the six jewel and we're talking about ten to the thirty two jewels.
M what about like an an atomic bomb?
You know, if you blew up all of the nuclear weapons that all humans have ever built and even deployed, then it's like ten to the twenty jewels. It's still a quadrillion times too low, Like ten to the twelve too low?
WHOA, So you need a quadrillion times all the nukes on Earth to really obliterate the Earth Exactly.
When they say that we have enough nukes to like destroy the planet, they don't literally mean blow the planet into smithereens. They just need to create enough destruction on the surface that everybody dies. Right, we don't literally have the power to blow up the planet, even like massive collisions that have obliterated all life on Earth have not destroyed the planet, right, like the collision that extincted the dinosaurs. Obviously, the Earth is still here after that, even though that had like ten to the twenty three jewels.
WHOA, what about like the collision that made the moon.
That's a great question, because it almost did obliterate the pre Earth. We think that the Moon was formed by a collision of a Mars like object called Fea with a proto Earth called Gaia, which is maybe a little bit smaller than the current Earth, and that resulted in like a huge blob of like molten lava which eventually formed into the Moon and then the Earth. And we think that had about ten to the thirty jewels in that collision. So of course, not enough to obliterate the previous planet that was here, because we're all still here, but close right, like within a factor of one hundred.
Although that's kind of a philosophical question, right, Like if you take a planet and you break it up to Brazilian pieces and it comes back together, is it still the same planet?
Oh, it's the planet Theseus, that's.
Right, planet of Thesius.
The old conundrum, So it would take really an extraordinary amount of energy in order to actually blow up a planet.
All right, Well, then David's question was, if you could do it, or had to do it with just one particle, which particle would you pick in how would you do it with one particle? I guess he wants to release the amount of work possible or the most elegant way possible. I'm not sure what the motivation or constraints are.
This sounds like a really hard way to blow a planet. To put that much energy into a single particle, I mean, put energy into particles all the time, and it sounds very dramatic. We have a large Hadron collider and we have particles from space that are hitting us with a lot of energy. But you know, we don't typically measure those in jewels because there's not a lot of jewels in those collisions. We're talking about really tiny little particles. They don't have a lot of mass, they don't carry a whole lot of energy. Like the most energetic particle we've ever seen hit the planet has a very large amount of electron volts, but just a few hundred jewels like it's called the oh my God particle, and it's three times ten to twenty electron volts. But that just translates to a couple hundred jewels.
How much is that like in terms of like a baseball.
So a baseball traveling at like one hundred kilometers an hour has a few hundred jewels. So like you throw a baseball and one hundredkilometers an hour, it's not going to destroy the planet, even if you're like Nolan Ryan and.
You're saying that's the biggest one we see coming from outer space.
Yeah, so like cosmic colliders, which are pretty impressive, accelerate particles to very high energies, but nowhere near the amount of energy needed to destroy a planet. Now that doesn't mean it's impossible, right, It's possible, David, to accelerate particles to an arbitrary energy. There's no limit on how much you could accelerate a particle. So if you build a really enormous particle collider out there, a galactic collider, you could in principle accelerate like a proton up to ten to the thirty two jewels, enough energy to demolish a planet.
Right, there's no limit because just the faster it goes, the more energy it has.
Yeah, there's a limit on the speed, right, you can't exceed the speed of light, but you can always pour more energy into the particle. It's just that as you approach the speed of light, the relationship between speed and energy becomes nonlinear. But there's no limit on energy. Protons can have an infinite amount of energy. They'll never go fast than the speed of light. They'll always as symtotically approach it, but there's no limit on the energy. So you got more magnets and you've got more little electric fields to accelerate that proton. You can just keep pushing it until it has an earth destroying amount of energy.
Now, I guess there's several questions here. I think that David is asking. The first one is like what kind of particle would you use as a particle physicist, like if you were doing this? And I guess the second question would be how fast you need to accelerate it?
Yeah, I guess I would use a proton because you need something that has a charge in order to accelerate it. We tend to accelerate particles by putting them in electric field which pull on them.
But why a proton? Why not? Like, are muons.
Super heavy muons are heavy, but they don't last very long. They're not stable, So you want something stable because it's going to take a while to accelerate this thing. So then your options are like a proton or an electron, and I'd choose a proton because the proton feels the strong force and so when it smashes into your planet, it's going to have a bigger impact. It's going to like collide and interact with the particles the atmosphere more dramatically. Like, what you want is for that proton to deliver the energy onto the planet, not to just like pass through it and create a tiny little hole in your planet that nobody's going to notice. You want it to deposit all of its energy in the planet, and so for that to happen, you have the most interactions possible. So proton's a nice choice because as an electric charge, you can accelerate it, and it's bits inside of it that the quarks feel a strong force. So proton smashing into the Earth is just going to deliver that energy.
Interesting, Okay, so you wouldn't just pick a quark, you'd pick a proton, which just made it out of quarks.
Well, you can't accelerate just quarks. Quarks can't be on their own. So yeah, a minimum serving of quarks is like a proton.
All right, So proton would be your bullet choice. Here, how fast you have to accelerate this proton? And what would it take to accelerate something a proton that fast?
It would just take a lot of money. I mean, the only thing that limits us from doing it right now is enough money to build a big enough accelerator. And like, we have the technology, we know how to do it. You just need to build a lot of pieces of your accelerator. The way an accelerator works is you just have a lot of little segments. Each one has an electric field to give it a little push. You want more energy, you just build more segments. So the only thing that limits you is having enough money to build those things and then enough space.
Well, like paints the picture, how big of an accelerator would you need to accelerate a proton to planet killing speed?
So I actually did this calculation, and I thought, well, what.
If you It sounds like you thought about it a lot. Are you sure you're not? David from Menlo Park, California.
I have thought about solar system science accelerators. Not because I wanted to destroy a planet, but because I wanted to create collisions that could help us like see what's inside the smallest bits of matter and maybe like reveal the plank scale or whatever.
And if you happen to get a planet destroyed gun out of it, hey, you know, I.
Think that would be a bad outcome. You know, look sciences for people. I don't want to kill everybody. And who's going to read my paper about the great discoveries we make with this collider If there are no people to read it?
Oh, that sounds like a movie idea. Maybe, like we're getting invaded by aliens and our only hope are particle physicists. We can build a big enough gun.
If your only hope is partarticle physicists, you're screwed. Let me say that nobody's gonna believe that particle physicist saved the world. Like maybe in fifty years some spin off from one of our ideas could actually be useful. But we can't deliver anything on schedule.
All right, So are you thought about this? How big of a collider do we need to build to make a planet gun?
So a collider with the radius of the orbit of Jupiter would not be big enough with current acceleration technologies, which means basically you'd need something like around the scale of the Oort cloud or bigger in order to get these energies.
Well, I think you're thinking about a circular collider, which is when you build like a circular track and then you accelerate the particle going around the loop. Right, You need something that big over radius because the faster it goes, the harder it is to keep it going in a loop.
Yeah, exactly, And the loop is an advantage because then you got to push it lots of times. You can also build a linear accelerator just a straight shot, but then you only get one push of the particle which each of your little segments.
But more like a rifle, right, Yeah, more like a rifle.
So then it has to be much much.
Longer if you had to do it that way. How big would it have to be given current technology? Because this all depends on current technology, right.
It all depends on the space you need to accelerate particles. As we talked about in a recent episode about like plasma wakefield accelerators, there are some ideas out there that you can accelerate particles much more quickly, so accelerators could be much much smaller. But those technologies don't really exist currently, don't really work on large scales.
All right, So it's possible, and you're saying you would pick a proton as your particle of choice.
Yeah, but you'd have to build a collider basically on galactic scales, you know, or interstellar scales at least. And so we're talking about like, you know, well more than quadrillions of dollars in order to build this thing.
What sounds like, David is a professional planet killer. Somebody's got money for this.
Yeah, David, you're going to need more paper for the budget on this thing. Really tiny fought to get all those.
Well, my question is like, let's say you built this gun and you accelerate a particle to ten to the thirty two jewels and you shoot it at a planet, like, is it going to destroy the planet or is it just going to make a pinpoint hole through it?
You know what happens when a particle hits the atmosphere is it's just like when a meteor hits the atmosphere, it interacts with the atmosphere, It deposits its energy, creates a fireball, and so enough energy, then yeah, it's going to deposit all that energy on the planet. It's not just going to create a pin prick. In the same way that like the collision that extincted the dinosaurs didn't just like make a hole through the planet right created an explosion, It deposited its kinetic energy on the surface. Same thing would happen here.
Well, I'm thinking like a bullet can sometimes just fly through you, or like if I shoot a bullet through a piece of paper, it doesn't like obliterate the paper, it just makes a hole in it. Would maybe like a planet, even though it's all rock and love and all that stuff. To a particle going that fast, would it just be like a piece of paper.
It's a good question because a particle going that fast would also see the planet sort of length contracted due to special relativity. But still I think because of the hadronic interactions in the atmosphere, it would create a big shower and that energy would tend to spread out, and if it spreads out like that, it's not going to create a pin prick. It's going to create like a very wide shower of energy. Which is going to destabilize the planet.
Right, so maybe not a pin prick, but a big hole through the planet maybe, right, Like, it may not even obliterate as we are planning the whole planet. It might just kind of punch a big hole through it and not necessarily send every particle in it, every rock in it, flying with escape velocity.
Yeah, that's fair. The energy we calculated to obliterate the planet assumes that you're going to use all that energy and just the right way to like push every rock in the right direction. So you need to budget extra energy just in.
Case you might need to shoot it twice, what I mean. Or you might want to invest in two particles, David, That might be a better idea than one part or maybe even lots more particles.
Yeah, or make the particle accelerator even bigger.
Oh there you go. All right, Well, hopefully this doesn't help David. I guess do we want to help David with this question?
I feel kind of conflicted about even answering this question. It might lead to enormous funding for a new particle collider, So you know, win, lose, lose win. I don't know.
I see, it's all a giant ethical mess for you.
It's a big conflict of interest.
Yes, yeah, satisfy my curiosity or destroy the planet.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I kind of do know, though I kind of do.
It's not a mess. There is still clear for you.
We all know what I would do in that scenario.
All right, Well, let's get to our last question. Hopefully it's not as ethically sticky as this question, and it's an interesting question about antime matter. So let's get to that. But first, let's take another quick break.
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Hi everyone, it's me Katie Couric. If you follow me on social media, you know I love to cook, or at least try especially alongside some of my favorite chefs and foodies like Benny Blanco, Jake Cohen, Lighty Hoyke, Alison Roman and of course Ininagarten and Martha Stewart. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste that comes out every Thursday, and it's serving up recipes that will make your mouth water. Thank a candied bacon, bloody mary, tacos with cabbage slaw, curry cauliflower with almonds and met and cherry slab pie with vanilla ice cream to top it all off. I mean young, I'm getting hungry. But if you're not sold yet, we also have kitchen tips like a full proof way to grill the perfect burger and must have products like the best cast iron skillet. To feel like a chef in your own kitchen. All you need to do is sign up at Katiecuric dot com slash good Taste. That's k A T I E c o u ric dot com slash good Taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did.
Hi.
I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I mean neuroscientists at Stanford and I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe.
In our heads.
We're looking at a whole new.
Series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? Should you not trust your intuition? Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories. I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm doctor Laurie Sandos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast. As the US elections approach, you can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever. But in a new hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share with the Science Really shows that were surprisingly more united than most people think.
We all know something is wrong in our culture and our politics, and that we need to do and.
That we can do it.
With the help of Stanford psychologist Jimmiel Zaki.
It's really tragic.
If cynicism were appeal, it'd be a poison.
We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume.
My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in relationship.
With each other.
All that on the Happiness Lab, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
All right, we are plotting to destroy the earth and or leave it to go on vacation. Answering listener questions here that listeners like you send in Daniel, how can people send in their questions?
You can write to us two questions at Daniel Orge dot com or go look at our website Daniel Andhorge dot com, where there's a form you can fill out. We answer all of our questions. You can also tag us on Twitter at Daniel and Jorge and we'll respond and.
You take anonymous questions right from professional planet killers.
Yeah, absolutely, we do not require any ID, although the FBI might follow up with you.
I see or the NSA and or NASA, depending on how good your question is.
And we do answer every question from listeners. And I say that on the podcast all the time, and I mean it. And still when people write to me, they seem surprised when I respond, we really do answer your questions. Don't be shy.
All right? Well, our last question comes from Nikolai, and here's a question about antimatter.
Could a large amount of antimata get together and form an antimatta black hole? What were to happen if this antimata black hole were to collide with a normal black hole of a similar size. Do you have a theory or a model that would predict what happens? Thanks a lot, yours, Nikolai.
So, Nikolai wants to destroy a black hole? What do you think about that in conflicts of interest?
Well, he wants to destroy a black hole. He wants to make an anti matter black hole, but.
Then he wants to smash it into a normal black hole. And I think he's hoping to use that to destroy the black hole.
Oh, I see, I see. It's a two step question. Can you make an antimatter black hole? That would an antimatter black hole be? An ant would be would it be anti black or would it be an anti hole?
Yeah, exactly, I think that's what he's asking about.
Would it be like a white hole or a black lump? All right, well, let's dig into it, Daniel. What is antimatter? Yeah?
So Niicola obviously was thinking about antimatter, and lots of people are fascinated with anti matter because it seems mysterious, and it kind of is right. Anti matter is just like another kind of matter, but it has the opposite charge as our matter. Really, the way they think about it is not that there's matter and antimatter, but that all matter comes in this sort of symmetric set. For electrons, there's another version of that particle, the positron, which is exactly the same but has a positive charge. And for every quark there's an antiquark, and for the muons is an anti muon. Really, these things are like two sides of the same coin. It turns out matter can come in two flavors, and in our universe we think things were created and balanced an equal amount of matter and antimatter. But for some reason we don't quite understand the universe prefers matter, and while most of the matter and antimatter annihilated away into energy, a little bit of matter was left over. And that's why we call electrons and muons and quarks matter and the other stuff anti matter. It's a little bit of an arbitrary distinction.
So like, for example, like an antimatter electron, an anti electron is really just an electron with a positive charge. Everything else about it is the same. It has mass, it's like a particle floating out there in the universe. It just has a positive charge instead of a negative charge, exactly. And like an anti quark is the same, but instead of electrical charge, it's the opposite in a different kind of.
Charge, exactly. And you and I are made of matter, and the Earth is made of matter, or the star is made of matter, and we think that all of the universe is made of matter. We're not exactly sure. We can't tell because if there's an antimatter star out there, we think it would operate under the same rules and they would emit photons in exactly the same way as star would. So it's not always easy to tell whether, like distant galaxies out there are made of matter or antimatter. But everything in our neighborhood at least is made of matter.
Now, Nikola's first part of the question is can you make a black hole out of antimatter if you gather enough antimatter and it all has to be antimatter, right, Like, if you make matter and antimatter, something special happens.
So in manner and antimatter meet each other, they can annihilate, like an electron and a positron meet each other, they can turn into a photon. Like all the energy that was stored in the motion and the mass of those particles gets converted into that photon. So that's annihilation, and that can happen when matter and antimatter meat, which is why antimatter is like a great fuel because one hundred percent of the energy stored in the antimatter is converted directly into like photons make a great battery or a great like fuel source for a rocket ship, much more efficient than like chemical fuels or even fusion or stuff like that. But what he's talking about is making a black hole, Like does antimatter follow the same rules of gravity and make a black hole? The answer is yes. Gravity doesn't care about your electric charge. Anything that has mass, anything that has energy, can be condensed into a black hole. So, yeah, you take a big enough blob of antimatter, collapse it down, and it will become a black hole, an anti black hole, actually just a black hole. Right, What can you know about a black hole. You can know its mass, you can know it's spin, and you can know it's electrical charge. So if you take, for example, a bunch of positrons, positively charged electrons, you collapse them down new black hole, then yes, you will get a positively charged black hole. It's not really an anti black hole. It's just a black hole made of positively charged particles. There's nothing really anti about it.
Well, it's inside would be made out of antimatter, you think, right, Like nobody really knows what's going on inside of a black hole, Like maybe the stuff inside of it is still you know, quote unquote anti.
Well, we don't know anything about this state of matter inside of black hole. As you say, maybe it's all singularity, in which case the state of matter is something completely new, Right, it's no longer really positrons. And it depends on what theory of black holes you're talking about, but in general relativity, there's no room to remember that the black hole was made of positrons, like a black hole made of positively charged positrons is no different than a black hole made of positively charged muons or protons or anything else.
It's no different to us from the outside of a black hole. But it's still possible, maybe if you're inside of the above black hole, to tell the difference.
If general relativity is correct, then no. General relativity says there's absolutely no difference. They are identical. There as identical as two particles that have all the same properties.
From the outside of the event horizon.
Even from within, even from within though you can't see it, but you don't know that did We don't know that. That's assuming general relativity is correct. On the other hand, we're pretty sure general relativity not correct about what's going on inside a black hole, which is what I'm sure is motivating your question. Probably there's something else more complicated going on inside a black hole, because we don't think singularities are real. We think there's something more complex happening, and quantum mechanics tells us that you can't just like delete that information from the universe, that there must be some record of the fact that antimatter was used to create this black hole and not matter because you can't destroy information in the universe, says quantum mechanics. But we don't know how to bring the quantum mechanics ideas and the general relativity the ideas and merge them together into an idea that makes sense at the heart of a black hole. So nobody really knows what's going on behind the event horizon. General relativity says it doesn't matter what was used to make the black hole. Energy is energy is energy. Quantum mechanics says it does matter, but nobody knows who's right about which bits.
All right, well, I think that answer is the first part of Nikolai's question, which is that you can make a black hole out of antimatter, and you're saying it just becomes a regular black hole. It just has a giant different charge to it. Okay, Now, the second part of the question is if you take a black hole that was made using antimatter and a black hole made with regular matter and you put them together, would they annihilate?
I wish they would. That would be super awesome. I would love to build a positive and negative black hole collider and do that experiment. General relativity says it doesn't matter what went in's your black hole, and a black hole madive matter is the same as black hole made of antimatter, and so this would be the same as any other black hole collision, and what we would get is just a bigger black hole. Remember, you can't destroy a black hole with energy, and antimatter is just more energy. Everything is more energy and fuel for a black hole.
First of all, I feel like it wouldn't be quite the same, right, because if you had like a giant positively charged black hole and a giant negatively charged black hole, they would be extra attracted to each other more than like most black hole collisions out there in the universe.
That's true, although remember anti matter doesn't have to be positively charged and matter doesn't have to be negatively charged. You could have black holes made of matter that's like electrons, so it's negatively charged, or black hole made of matter that's protons, so it's positively charged. Or you could have an anti matter black hole made of anti protons so that it's negatively charged. So just because it's antimatter doesn't mean you know something about the charge. They could both be neutral, right. You could have a black hole made of anti electrons and anti protons and be totally in neutral. But you're right, if you have two black holes and have opposite charges, they will be extra attracted to each other.
Hmm. I see, all right, So it sort of depends on how you make the black holes.
Yeah, there's a lot of It depends.
Unfortunately, as you renamed that the name of the podcast. It depends what danyle is it good? I don't know.
It depends what's gonna happen. It depends. That's almost always the answer.
Yes, that's the answer to the universe.
It depends.
Brought to you by it depends adult diapers.
But if you collide two black holes, you get a bigger black hole. And that's what's going to happen. If you collide a black hole made of anti matter with the black hole made of matter, I get according to general relativity, which we think is probably wrong about some of the crucial details here. And we don't really know how to do gravity for particles and really matter and anti matter is a question about particles. So we're sort of tiptoeing around like the fact that we don't understand quantum gravity and how to do gravity for particles at all. But assuming general relativity is correct, which probably isn't, then two black holes will just make bigger black hole. Regardless of whether they're made of matter or antimatter. You don't get like a white hole. You don't get an annihilation or anything fun like that.
You just get a double black hole. Well, I think it's interesting that to think about, Like, maybe there is some interesting things going on inside of these two black holes when they merge, Like maybe you know, the antimatter in the antimatter black hole is annihilating with the matter and the matter black hole, but maybe we just wouldn't see it because it's all happening inside of like a double black hole, so nothing would ever come out of it, Right, is that possible that, like they do get annihilated, but they stay within the hole.
Yeah. Imagine a black hole made of electrons and another black hole made of positrons, and the two black holes merge, so now the electrons and positrons can sort of see each other and interact. Then what happens. They annihilate to a bunch of photons which are trapped inside the black hole, and the black hole doesn't care at all about the state of matter photons electrons, positrons. It's all just energy, and it's really energy that bends space time, remember not Matt. So in order to create a black hole, you need energy density, and photons can do it just as well as electrons or positrons. The state of matter is kind of irrelevant when you're outside the event horizon, right.
Right, Like maybe they do. It does get annihilated, but it's like annihilating something instead of a black hole. It stays in the black hole.
It stays in the black hole. All those photons are just trapped inside anyway, they just move towards the singularity.
Yeah, so I guess that answers Nikolai's question, but.
I don't want to discourage you. Nikolai. If you have access to an anti matter black hole factory, then hey, build one and shoot it at a black hole. Let's see what happens.
Yeah, far away from here, potentially, do not collaborate with our previous question.
Ask her please, but maybe ask Trey. He can bring it along on his trip to Series B, which is probably far enough away for everybody.
To be safe. Yes, but what they need sunblock to witness this collision?
No, because it'd be trapped inside the black hole. They'd be perfectly safe. Oh, if finds time is right and if find stime was wrong, they'll be fried. So hey, either way we find out the end.
Either way, their marriage is over.
Probably they were doomed to us for advice.
It's right, it was over long before it was featured in this podcast. All right, Well, awesome questions here today. Lots of curiosity about what happens in these extreme situations in the universe. I feel like, what happens if you accelerate something really fast a single particle, or what if you collide these different black holes? Or what you need sun block to go to a distant start.
Yeah, it's these extreme situations that really teach you about what the rules mean when you stretch them, when you push them, when you try to overlap them, when you ask what happens when they conflict with each other. Those are the edge cases when you really learn about the supreme rules of the universe.
And that's what we love here in the podcast Extreme Curiosity and Extreme Adventures mental or physical ones.
Yeah, we're gonna be the official podcast or the X Games next year.
He yeah, but do you buy mountain ded.
Black Hole?
Do we probably cover a lot more physicscase we were both hot Top and red Bull or a mountain do all right? Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks to all of our listeners for sending in their questions, and thanks to our question ask ourself today, although not thank you if you do succeed in destroying the plan.
But thanks for your curiosity. Is your curiosity that drives this podcast and all of science forward. So keep asking questions and keep sending them to us. To questions at Danielandjorge dot com. You really will get an answer.
You hope you enjoyed that. See you next time.
For more science and curiosity. Come find us on social media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, This, Org, Instant and now TikTok. 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 asdairy dot COM's last Sustainability to learn more.
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We Think of Franklin is the doddling dude flying a kite and the rain.
Benjamin Franklin is our subject for a new season with Walter Isaacson.
He's the most successful self made business person in America.
A printer, a scientist, founding father.
But maybe not the guy we think we know, Franklin casts his lot on the side of revolution, and it's another thing that splits the family apart.
Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
