Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseListener Questions 57: Philosophy, Quantum Mechanics and Beta Decay!
Daniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners like you!
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Terms and conditions apply. Hey Daniel, how old do you think our listeners are.
You know, I think this is a really wide range. I've heard from parents who listen with their little kids, and there are some very elderly retired engineers out there.
Interesting. I guess everyone is curious about the universe. But who do you think asks the hardest questions?
That's tricky, you know. I think grown ups ask more technical questions, but the kids ask the hardest philosophical questions.
So are you saying we're all born philosophers, but then we grow up to become elderly engineers.
Yeah, I'm not sure if that's a good outcome or a cautionary tale.
And definitely a good one. Definitely a good one. So if you're still a philosopher, does that mean you still need to grow up?
Yeah? Or maybe it means all engineers are cynical.
What if you have a doctorate in philosophy, does that mean you'll never grow up?
You're Peter Pan of Academia.
I guess I have a PhD in engineering, So where does that leave me? Like an old baby? Hi am hooorhand made cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe.
Hi, I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist and a professor at u C Irvine, and I love getting questions from our youngest listeners and then sometimes even meeting them.
Mmm, you don't love getting the questions from the older listeners.
I didn't say that.
You were very selective there in your preference.
I love getting questions from everybody, but I feel a little bit more responsibility when I hear from the younger listeners, because I might end up influencing the path of their lives in some way.
Well, that is a big responsibility. I would feel the same if I knew that kids remember things beyond what they did last week.
Well. I recently heard from a listener who is coming to UC Irvine next year to be a physics major, and she's been listening to our podcast since she was in the seventh grade.
WHOA, she's a super fan. Is she going to major in physics?
Oh? Yeah?
Wow? Are you gonna have her in your class?
Maybe set her up for some real disappointment.
Yeah, if you have to give her a bad grade.
That's what I mean. I feel a real sense of responsibility with these young folks.
Or is she gonna pull the I'm a big fan card? And then you're gonna give her all a pluses.
Yeah, I'm a softy. Anyway, I give her pretty good grades.
I'm sure she's gonna do great and get all a pluses on her own. But anyways, welcome for our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio, in.
Which we try to guide the young and the old alike to an understanding of the mysteries of the universe. We encourage everybody out there to put their brain into the difficult task of trying to wrangle the universe. Who make it make sense to you as much as that is possible. We want to help guide you along the journey. That's the goal of this podcast.
That's right, as the universe gets older and older, so those are understanding of how things work and why things are the way they are, and what we know about the universe from its early days as a baby universe to its now rebellious teenage years. I think.
Fortunately I had no hand in guiding the infant universe along its path, so I can't be held responsible for its cold and old state today.
I think. But other are parts of the universe that are are warm and young, still.
Warm, maybe not so young. Everything's pretty old out there. But everything we have learned about the universe comes from people asking questions. People out there on the street, people looking at the night sky, people in laboratories trying to understand the way the universe works. It all begins with curiosity and asking questions, trying to make it all make sense in your mind.
Yeah, our understanding of the universe is also growing and getting wiser hopefully. And as you said, it all starts with asking questions. Everybody ask questions.
Everybody certainly does, and we encourage you to send those questions to us. We answer questions from everybody all across the world, the young people, old people, engineers, non engineers, even philosophers. Just write to us to questions at Danielandjorge dot com. You'll get a response.
Yeah, and sometimes we like to take those questions and answer them on the podcast.
That's right. Pretty often I'll get a question and think, ooh, I bet a lot of people have this question, or this one's pretty tricky. I need extra time to dig into it, so we'll talk about it right here on the podcast.
So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling listener questions number fifty seven and These are real questions from listeners.
These are real questions from real listeners. I mean, I assume they're not AI generated. I haven't actually checked.
That would be pretty interesting. But wouldn't the AI already know the answer?
How do I know? The answer? Doesn't know anything we don't know. It's just like a distillation of human knowledge.
Well, or I guess why would it ask you a question if it knows everything you know?
Well, AIS don't really think and Louison right, So they might be able to generate simulations of questions, but they aren't actually curious. They're not actually asking questions.
Not yet, Daniel, not yet, not yet.
Absolutely, yeah, but.
Yeah, we do like to answer questions here on the podcast, and so today we have three great questions about why the universe is the way it is, about quantum fields and quantum particles, and about particle decay. A lot of great.
Questions, some tough questions too.
Ooh do we get to grade you then? If you fail to answer them?
You do that every time. Sometimes you're like, that's not an explanation, that's just a description.
Yeah, well, you know, we gotta have our BS detectors up on high here.
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's on every time. That's what I'm saying.
Well, let's dig into our first question, and this one comes from a nine year old Peter. Why is the universe the way it is?
And could it be any different?
All right, a short but powerful question here from Peter.
Yes, and I think we might just have to give a short and not very powerful answer.
No, no, No, Peter's nine years old might be influencing his entire future life.
Well, that's exactly what I mean. Nine year olds ask sometimes the hardest questions because they're philosophical. Peter is asking us not just to look out in the universe and try to make sense of it, but to understand what that means about the universe. When we figure out the laws and the rules that run the universe, we then also need to explain why they are that way and not some other way. That's not a simple question.
Well, this is a pretty deep question from a nine year old. So the question is why is the universe the way it is? And could it be any different? So it seems like a two part question here, like do physicists know why the universe is the way it is?
The short answer is we do not. I mean, it might be that there's only one way to make a universe, that universes like have to be mathematically consistent and follow mathematical laws, and that there's only just one way to do it, even if we don't yet understand what that way is. It might be that there's that kind of requirement, but we don't know.
Wait, what do you mean? It depends on the math, Like maybe at the fundamental level of the universe, the deepest level, it's all math and logic.
I mean that the current program is basically try to write down a bunch of equations that explain everything that's happening, and then make those equations as simple as possible, right, Like, it's not hard to write down a bunch of stuff that explains everything that's happening. You could just write down everything you see. The goal of physics is to take a long list of observations and describe it with a simple, compact explanation. That's really what an explanation is. That's what makes it an explanation and not just a description. Right that it carries the like predictive power, and it's compact and more economical than just saying everything you're seeing. So we try to do that mathematically, and we try to make that as simple as possible. And imagine sometime far in the future when we figured that all out and we've been able to explain everything we see. Now we're looking at the math of the universe. We can still ask, and this is basically what Peter's asking, why this math and not some other math. There are sometimes that we can argue why some kinds of math are not allowed, you know, like we require this symmetry, or we require to base this property or something. Some kinds of math just wouldn't work, you know, they would give nonsense answers. And so I think one possible outcome of that eventual journey is that we get to a single equation and we understand why it has to be that equation. It's the only equation it could possibly be, because no other equations work. But another possible outcome is, oh, well, we get to an explanation and you know what, it could have been something else, like we have no reason to think that there couldn't have been another set of laws that create a universe. So one, we're not close to figuring out what the laws of the universe are, and number two, we don't really know yet how to interpret what it means when we do.
Are you saying maybe the only way we'll ever know why the universe is the way it is is through math.
That's currently the only way we're getting in the understanding. But you know, to make this even more complicated and fuzzy, we're also not guaranteed that math, or that our math is sufficient to explain the universe. We could also run into an obstacle where we were like, hmm, well we can't use our math to explain the universe. That doesn't mean that the universe can't be explained. It might just be that our math is not sufficient. Maybe there's kinds of math we haven't invented yet, or there's some fundamental assumption and the way we're doing math that prevents us from describing the universe. Or maybe we're just not smart enough. There could be math that's beyond our mental capability that's required to explain the universe. Or maybe the universe just isn't mathematical, you know, maybe math is just like a language in our minds, not something that's fundamental to the universe. There are lots of philosophical rabbit holes there.
Do you think maybe the universe has to be mathematically consistent. Like, can you imagine a scenario where the universe, like we dig it deep into the nature of the universe and we find that the universe is not mathematically consistent? What would that mean?
That certainly is possible. You know, a lot of the universe is very difficult for us to describe mathematically, you know tay for example, something that's simple, You drop a ball and you describe how it falls. We can do that. Cool. Now take that ball and make it a leaf. Well, that's more complicated because the leaf depends on the air and the currents now. Make it like a thousand leaves and add a bunch of fans. It's way too complicated for us to describe using our mathematics, And it might also be that it can't be described with our mathematics. There are philosophers out there that say that these complex regions that are very challenging for us to describe might not even be governed by physical laws. There could be no mathematical explanation for it. It's kind of a fringe view in philosophy, but it's definitely a possibility.
Meaning like you might get to a place down into the deep levels of the universe where there's not even math, like the idea of logic doesn't make any logical sense.
Yeah, it could certainly be. I think a lot of people have in their minds the idea that the universe follows a very basic, simple set of laws, and that everything we experience emerges from that, the way that molecules emerge from how protons and neutrons and electrons come together. But it could also be that the universe is quite different from that. That we have like islands of simplicity that we can understand with our mathematical laws, but that the rest is chaotic and undescribable, because fundamentally we don't understand why anything is understandable, why simplicity ever emerges, why there are scenarios that you can describe with pretty simple mathematical laws, even though there's a lot of stuff going on underneath. So we're not guaranteed to be able to understand the universe, or that the universe even is understandable or sensible.
I wonder if you could also maybe get to a point where we figure out that math doesn't work the way we think it does. For example, I'm thinking like we learned in school that all the angles inside of a triangle have to add up to a one hundred and eighty degrees, and you just take that as a rule that that's just the way geometry in math works. But that rule doesn't work if you draw a triangle like on the surface of a ball, for example, like the angles add up to more than one eighty degrees. I wonder if what we think of as math is really just like one version of math, or it doesn't always work, and one plus one maybe is not always two.
Yeah, exactly. We might need some new creative generalizations of our kind of math in order to describe the universe. And we've already seen that several times. You're absolutely right, Like going from just real numbers two complex numbers was a huge mental step and allowed us crucially to develop the tools that explain quantum mechanics. We talked in the podcast once about developing quaternions, which are like complex numbers with one real and three imaginary numbers, and octonians with seven numbers, and we haven't even figured out what they're useful for. So there could certainly be kinds of math we haven't invented yet that we need to explain the universe.
M Well, the other part of Peter's question was could the universe be any different? Like could we maybe have the same rules but then have a totally different universe.
Yeah, that depends a little bit on what you mean by rules. You know, you can mean, for example, the values of all the physical constants, like what is the mass of the electron and what is the mass of the proton and all this kind of stuff that we think could be different because that just depends on the energy in the Higgs field, which is set as the universe cools very very early on, and that could be different. Or you could be talking about more fundamentally, like the actual laws of quantum fields. Could those be different? And that's also possible. There's some theories of our early universe that say that, like, our entire universe is just one bubble in a huge multiverse filled with universe bubbles, and in each of them the physical laws could be different. We don't understand how the universe started or where the first hot, dense state initiated, and so it could be that each of those came into being from some previous state, and as they cool and create these bubble universes that some random physical laws are created, and so there could be different laws.
Well, I think that brings up maybe the real question about Peter's question, which is is it even possible to know why the universe is the way it is or whether it could be any different. Like, as you said, there might be other universes out there with different rules, but maybe by definition we can never get to them or communicate with them, or actually figure out if they exist.
Yeah, I think we'll never experience those other universes if they do exist. This idea is called eternal inflation. And in that model, these bubble universes are expanding away from each other much much faster than the speed of life forever, and so it essentially impossible for us to ever experience them or communicate with them. But you know, we can think about the multiverse, even if we're only in our universe. We can think about other universe versus and whether they could possibly exist. We might get some clues from the structure of our universe and the laws that define it that give us an idea for how you might change those things. Like if we look at the fundamental laws of physics, and there's a couple of arbitrary numbers in them, like a seven or a three or one point two four. Then you can make arguments of like, well, that could have been anything else, That could have been some other number, and so you could imagine another universe where that number is just different, or it could be we get to the fundamental law of the universe and there are no numbers and in no arbitrary choices, there's only one that makes mathematical sense. Then you might argue that any universe that's created has to be the same because there's only one choice for those set of laws.
Right, we can always maybe imagine a different universe with different numbers, or maybe a universe where the laws where differently, or where math doesn't work at all. I guess what I'm trying to say is, since we can never experience or even tap into these other universes, does that mean we'll never get confirmation of these theories or these ideas that we have.
We definitely can't do it by experiencing those other universes. One way we could try to get maybe a hint about it is to talk to aliens about science. Imagine if aliens come and we talk to them about science and they have a completely different theory of the universe, one that works just as well as ours. Then what we thought was the way the universe is isn't actually the way the universe is. It's just like our description of it. That tells you that the whole philosophical question is really more about us than about the universe.
Yeah, but these other aliens would also be trapped in the same universe we're in, so they would never also maybe be able to actually know for sure or get experimental evidence that the universe could have been some other way, or even why the universe is the way it is exactly.
That's a scenario where nobody would know how the universe actually is, because it suggests that all of our physical theories ours the aliens, anybody's peters are just descriptions. They're not revealing the truth about the universe. On the other hand, if those aliens do have the same theories of physics, then we meet like five hundred other alien races and they all have exactly the same theories of physics. That suggests that maybe there is something about these maybe we have uncovered some truth, and maybe we can learn something about the way the universe actually is. And whether it could be different.
I don't know. It seems like we're all stuck in the same universe, so we all have the same limited view.
Yes, absolutely, this is just one way to measure like whether we're actually learning something about the universe or for all, just reflecting the way our minds work. But it's definitely not a way to see other universes or to really understand. There are some other hints in current theories of modern physics, Like one of the leading candidates for a fundamental theory of the universe is string theory. And one issue in string theory is that there's like ten to the five hundred different string theories, all of which lead to different universes. And among those theories, one of them corresponds to our universe, And people wonder, like, are all those other universes also possible? Are they out there? People are working on this problem trying to figure out, like, are those other universes really possible or is it just something we haven't learned about them yet. But that's an example of a clue of looking at the fundamental theory and seeing like, oh, there's lots of different options here, could have been very different hmmm.
All right, Well, I guess the answer for Peter is grow up to be an engineer.
Yeah, Peter, it's a good question, it's a deep question. The answer is, we don't know. We might never know.
All right, thank you, Peter. Now let's get to our other questions. We have questions here about quantum fields and quantum particles and about how particles decay. So let's get to those. But first let's take a quick break.
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All right, we're answering listener questions here today, and our next question comes from Ann.
Hi Daniel and Horse. Hey, my name is Anne. My question is this does looking at the rules and the unanswered questions of physics from the perspective of quantum fields rather than particles, yield any new insights. I'm wondering about this, particularly with regard to how the various quantum fields interact with one another. For example, does thinking about entropy and the rules of particle decay from the perspective of the interaction of quantum fields give us any new insights into why of those phenomena?
Thank you?
Oh boy, I feel like we're getting a lot of philosophical questions and a lot of particle physics questions, Daniel. I wonder how we came to pick these questions.
Maybe because we have a podcast about particle physics and I often digress into philosophy.
Yeah, could be maybe maybe, Yeah, I sense a little bias, perhaps.
Oh, I see you think I'm not randomly sampling the questions that we get. I'm definitely not randomly sampling the questions that we get. Oh, no, I thought you answered all the questions. Oh I answered them all, I just don't put them all on the podcast. Retired engineers who send me their theories of everything, those don't make it on the podcast.
Oh, maybe we should let's have an episode where we where we tackle all these theories that people send you.
All right, let's do it. Everybody out there with your personal theory of the universe, send it to me. I'll pick the best three and we will go through them on the podcast.
All right, challenge issue, let's hear from you. All right, Well, this question, I'm not quite sure I understand it, but it's sort of about the different ways to look at the universe from a quantum perspective. One of them is thinking about the universe as quantum fields, and the other one is is quantum particles.
Right, yeah, exactly. There are sort of two ways to think about the universe in terms of fields or in terms of particles. I think most people intuitively think about the universe in terms of particles, little bits of stuff flying through space, bouncing into each other and interacting. But on the podcast we're often talking about things in terms of fields, and I think and is wondering how to think about the universe in terms of fields and whether that makes things easier.
Easier than thinking about them as particles.
Right, yeah, exactly.
Okay, so then what's the difference between looking at the universe as fields versus looking at it as particles.
Well, particles are the things we see. When you see a flash of light on your retina, you're seeing a photon. When you have a screen and you're shooting electrons and stuff, those little dots electrons leave, those are particles you're seeing. So particles are like things we observe. And when people talk about like particles versus waves, what they really mean there By particles are observations. Our measurements are things we're directly seeing, and so in that sense, particles are like immediate there are experience of the universe. Fields are kind of something we imagine. They're part of our description of why things happen. Like when you have two particles flying through space, how do they interact with each other? Well, we imagine that each of them has a field, Like two electrons both have electric fields, and that's what they're using the push and pull on each other. And then we can go even further and imagine, well, those particles are also just part of a field. Like instead of thinking about particles as little dots of stuff, think about them as little ripples, special kinds of waves in a special field and an electron field. And in that picture, you have like an electron field, which also creates an electromagnetic field, different thing which then can push on other bits of the electron field. So there's sort of two different ways of thinking about the universe, like start with the observations that think about the particles, or think about the fields.
Right, But I guess the question is like, what is exactly a field? Is it actually like a physical thing that exists in the universe, or is it just like a mathematical description of a physical effect between two things in the universe?
Boom, You are officially a philosopher, Jorge.
I know, I have a doctor in the philosophy, Daniel.
That is a great question nobody knows the answer to, right. We do not know if fields are physical things that exist when physicists are not thinking about them, or if they're just calculational tools in our minds. That's the essence of the question of philosophy, of science, of physicalism, you know, essentially, are all these ideas real or are they just our descriptions. And the thing is that we can ever see fields directly. We only ever see fields impact on particles. How do you measure an electric field? You put an electron in it and you see the effect on the electron. Same with magnetic fields. So we don't know if fields are real. There's even a guy who suggested that fields are made up and we don't need them, and he invented a whole new kind of science that didn't even require mathematics. It's called science without numbers. He's a philosopher, and ironically his last name is Fields.
Maybe he should study irony instead.
Professor Fields proves there are no.
Fields, But I guess maybe I wonder if you can make an argument that fields are tangible or not that they're not tangible, Like do fields have energy inherent in them or mass? Or does this energy that particles and the massive particles have does it come into existence when the particles are created.
Fields themselves definitely have energy. They can have potential energy, and that can have kinetic energy, and they can oscillate, So if they are real, then they're out there, you know, swoshing and slashing around and doing things, and some kinds of oscillations we observe as particles even when we're not observing them. They can have energy, like the Higgs field has a bunch of potential energy stored in it. And that potential energy affects how other fields oscillate, and so those fields definitely have energy.
But where is that energy? I guess, like, is it floating out there in space? Is it in between my particles? Or does that energy come into existence when that field gets activated, you know, I mean, does it come from somewhere or does it just get magically created when you need it?
It doesn't just get magically created, though I would love that while I'm going to create a power plant that relies on magical creation of energy. That sounds awesome.
Well, that is what's happening in the universe, though, isn't it. As the universe expands, energy is coming out of nothing.
No, you're absolutely right. As space is expanding, energy is increases and it's not coming from anywhere. It's not coming out of nothing. It just increases. And that tells you that energy is not actually a fundamental quantity in the universe. That's sort of a complication. You can imagine flat space that's not expanding, and in that situation energy is served and we can talk about how energy flows between fields. And I think that's something and was sort of asking about, like to get a picture of how energy is flowing. If you have the picture of the universes all fields, you know, you're asking like, where's that energy come from? And so start with the photon. For example, a photon is a pulse in the electromagnetic fields. It's a traveling wave. It's a ripple in that field, and that's energy it's flying through the universe. Now, imagine that photon then converts into an electron and a positron, so two particles that actually have mass. Right, You've gone from a massless photon, which is a special kind of ripple in the electromagnetic field, into two matter particles. While that energy flows from the electromagnetic field into the electron field and creates two special ripples in the electron field. That energy has flowed into the electron.
Field, does it technically flow from one field to the other or does it get you know, annihilated and then and it somehow gets created in the other field.
I guess I'm not sure what the distinction is there. Mathematically, we talk about these fields interacting. They couple together, so energy is transferred from one field to the other. It never exists in some sort of in between state, not in any fields. Either in this field or in that field.
All right, Well, maybe a part of the question that Ann is asking, or at least that I have about Ann's question, is like, why do we have to pick between a field's view and a particle view of the universe. Aren't they all part of the same view, Like, aren't particles just ripples in the field, And aren't fields just what ripples to make a particle?
Yeah, it's a great question. They are fundamentally different views of what's the basic stuff in the universe. The particle of view is saying particles are the fundamental building blocks of everything. Everything is a particle. And in that description, when two electrons are flying along and they're pushing on each other, there's no field between them. They're shooting virtual particles back and forth, and so there just are no fields in that picture, all particles. And in the field's picture, the fields are the fundamental building block of the universe. They are at the root of everything, and particles are just ripples in those fields, including photons and including electrons and including everything. Now, both of these theories work. They give exactly the same predictions for all experiments. They're mathematically equivalent. An infinite number of virtual particles is the same as a field that has exactly the same effect, You get exactly the same answer.
Wait, did you say an infinite number of particles? What do you mean?
The version of the story where you have virtual particles instead of fields requires an infinite number of virtual particles to give the same explanation as you get from fields.
Like an infinite number in the universe, or like in my hand.
An infinite number for every interaction. Every electron pushing against another electron technically involves an infinite number of possible virtual particles because they're not observed, and so like that virtual photon could have had this momentum or that momentum or slightly different momentum. It's the sort of path integral version of quantum mechanics. We integrate over every unobserved possibility.
But I guess could the answer be just like it's both.
Well, that sort of goes to your question, like what's really happening out there in the universe. Fundamentally, it's a philosophy question because the physics works either way. But we want to know, right, We want to know the truth about the universe, like what's really happening out there? And only one of those at most is true. It could be that they're both wrong. It's neither particles nor fields. It's something else squiggly knows, or something right, or some other idea. But I like to believe that there is a truth that something is happening out there in the universe and it could be described, and I'd like to know which it is. So if particles or fields, if one of those makes more sense somehow is more compact, then maybe it's more likely to be what's really happening out there in the universe. But it's a great example of what we were talking about a minute ago, about how you can have multiple explanations for the universe and not know what's really.
Happening right right, Like, I wonder if you can ask, uh, does the universe actually care I'm part of the universe? Like maybe the universe doesn't care. Maybe there isn't a need in the universe for things to make one thing to make more sense than the other.
In this little corner of the universe that I call Daniel Whitson, there's a strong need for the universe to make sense.
Well, I guess that makes sense because you are a physicist.
We're all philosophists out there, right, and philosophers, we all want to know how the universe works and what it means, right, Peter, Right? Right?
We all need to grow up polutle or not. All right, Well, thank you Anne for that awesome question. Now let's get to our last question of the day, and this one is about how particles decay. So let's get to that, But first, let's take another quick break.
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All right, we're tackling listener questions and so our next question comes from Alchilan, a twelfth grade student in India.
Hello, I'm a twelfth grade student in India. So here's my question. In negative beta decay, a neutron is converted into a proton, an electron, and an anti neeutrino. We know that a neutron is made of quirks, So where did the anti neutrino and the electron come from?
Really?
All right, pretty basic question, Daniel. How does it work? How does anything work?
How does the universe all work? Anyway? Yeah, that's a cool question, and it's a fun question because it gives you a little bit of a window into the history of physics because what we thought about beta decay changed over the last hundred years as our understanding of fundamental physics changed. Like we've seen beta d K for a long time. These days we have an explanation of it in terms of quarks, but we've been studying and thinking about beta decay long before we even knew about quarks.
Well, me, let's take a step back and tell what exactly is beta decay.
Yeah, So betak's when you have a neutron and it turns into a proton. Not because charge is conserved in the universe. You can't just turn a neutral neutron into a positively charged proton, you have to also create something else to balance the charge. So a neutron decays, it produces a proton plus an electron. And then, because the universe doesn't allow you to just make electrons, it keeps track of the number of electrons in the universe, you have to also make something to balance the number of electrons. Fortunately, electron neutrinos also count as electrons, so if you make an an anti electron neutrino, then you balance all the accounting. So neutron turns into a proton, an electron, and an anti electron neutrino.
Wow, this is a very specific event. Why do they call it a decay in the first place.
They call it a decay because a neutron is turning into something else, and decay is just what we mean when particles transform. Really we call it decay. It sounds like they're breaking up out of old age or something, but it's really just an interaction of transformation.
Yeah, it sounds like they're you know, like rotten.
Yeah, exactly, Like I bought this thing.
Well, I'm trying to say, is doesn't the proton, the electron, and the anti neutrino feel offended that they're the product of a decay.
What's offensive about being a decay product? You know, that's great. I'm a product of my parents and then my parents decay, right, I don't know. It's just the way of the universe.
No, But what if I say, like, you're the product of your parents decaying.
I don't know how to feel about that.
Yeah, I don't.
Protons don't have any feelings. I don't think they care unless you believe in panpsychism.
Well, so is this beta decay an important interaction or transformation that happens in particle physics? Does it happen a lot? Is it significant? Is it important for any sort of big process?
I think it's really important because it reveals a lot about the way the universe works, and historically it's been the source of a lot of discoveries. So neutrons are actually unstable in general, Like you have a neutron out there in the universe, it'll lasts for like about eleven minutes on its own before it beta decays into a proton electron and an anti neutrino, and it reveals something about the universe, Like the reason we discovered neutrinos was because of beta decay. People were looking at neutrons and they saw them break up into protons and electrons, but the neutrino was invisible. Neutrinos hardly ever interact, and so nobody saw the neutrino. And it's only because they noticed that the momentum didn't add up like you had the momentum of the experiment before and after the decay, and they didn't equal each other. People were wondering, hm, is momentum not served in the universe or is there some little invisible particle carrying off that momentum? And that's how the neutrino was first postulated.
Interesting now, I guess maybe a question I have is how do you even get a neutron on its own to see it decay?
I think you can just order them on Amazon, right.
Can you really? Next day? Is it free shipping because technically it's neutral.
No, you cannot just order neutrons because they're unstable. So unless Amazon can deliver them to you in less than eleven minutes, you're going to get a box of protons, electrons, and neutrino.
Well they have. They just put them in a cooler. Isn't that how it works?
Yeah? Right exactly, or you can accelerate them near the speed of light so their time is dilated or I guess.
I mean like in those early days, in those experiments, how did they isolate a neutron to see what it decayed into?
Yeah, good question. We actually have a whole episode about the discovery of the neutron. It's a little bit subtle because the neutron is neutral, but there's some really fascinating early experiments to prove that the neutron exists and has a different mass of the proton. But basically the neutron is produced in radioactive decay. So in big heavy nuclei I break apart, they often produce neutrons in the process because you start out with like a huge pile of protons and neutrons, sometimes more than one hundred, and you make lighter atoms and you don't need always all those neutrons, and so some of them fly out. So if you have like uranium or other radioactive substances, they will just produce neutrons and you can use them to study.
Well, I see, they just like emanate neutrons, like they just shoot off neutrons in all directions.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, so they're sources of neutrons.
All right. Then Alhilean's question was how does it work? Like, how does I guess, how does any decay work, or how does any of these particle transformations work. I feel like that's what he's trying to get at, you know, is like what's actually happening. Does it actually transform or does it annihilate into pure energy or does it go into the void of the universe and then come back. It's a different thing. What's going on?
Yeah, I think something alone is trying to get at, is like, were the neutrino in the electron inside the neutron? Like if a neutron breaks up into a proton, electron and neutrino, does that mean it was made of those things? That's sort of what we expect in chemistry. For example, when you take water and you make it into hydrogen and oxygen, that tells you water was made of hydrogen and oxygen. But that's not true. In particle physics. It's something very very different going on. As you say, new particles can be created from the energy of the other particles, sexually related to what we were talking about a minute ago. The energy can slide from one kind of field into another kind of field. So he's asking where did the neutrino and the electron come from. They weren't inside the neutron. They were made from the energy that was stored inside.
The neutron, meaning like the neutron became pure energy and then that energy manifested itself as other particles close.
And that's actually what Fermi's theory was. Fermi didn't know what was going on inside the neutron, so he had this idea that maybe neutrons of protons are fundamental particles, and the neutron is disappearing and then that energy is turning into a proton, electron and anti neutrino. These days, we know that's not actually true. We have a more detailed understanding what's happening. As Achidon says, these particles are made of quarks. So the proton is three quarks up, up, and down. So a neutron is three quarks and up and two down quarks. And beta decay is when one of those two down quarks flips to being an upquark. So you go from up down down to up up down. That's going from neutron to proton.
Wait, what do you mean it flips like just randomly or does it read something on the internet and then decided to switch sides.
Well, this is particle decay. Neutrons are unstable. Sometimes randomly they will convert into a proton, electron, and antineutrino because that's what the universe likes to do. It likes to spread its energy out. The neutron is sort of like a high energy combination of these particles, and the universe likes to decay down to lower energy states because there are more possibilities there. It's essentially entropy at the particle level. We have a whole podcast about why particles decay at all.
So then these new arrangement of particles that are created are less energy than the neutron.
Yeah, exactly. The proton is lower energy than the neutron, and that's why the proton is stable and doesn't decay into a neutron, because the neutron is a higher energy combination of these particles, and that energy gets turned temporarily into a w boson. A w boson then turns into the electron and anti neutrino, So that energy.
Wait, why do you need this intermediate step?
Why do you need that intermediate step is a great question. This is a description of what's happening in the universe. This is only mathematically consistent and accurate description of what we see. Could you invent a universe without a w boson where this happens directly, maybe that would be a different universe. We definitely know that there is a w boson made.
Like, how do you know there is an intermediate step? How do you know it isn't just converting directly.
Yeah, it's a great question. And when people came up with this theory, they predicted that the w boson was a thing, and if it was, we should be able to see it in high energy colliders. And we built a large electron positron collider at Cerne and Carlo Rubia discovered the w boson there. He made it and show that it is a real thing and got the Nobel Prize for it. It was a very nice description and it made a prediction which was then proven correct.
So then what would be your answer for alan that things just sort of convert into pure energy, or that these energies are slashing between fields.
I would say that what's really happening is a down cork is decaying into an upcork, and this extra energy left over, and that's where the electron and neutrino come from. That energy then ends up in the electron and neutrino fields if you like the field picture. The electron and neutrino were never inside the neutron. They're made from the extra energy as it decays.
But I guess you sound very confident about this, But isn't it also the possibility that maybe all of these things that we call fundamental particles like quarks and electrons, maybe they're made out of even smaller lego blocks or smaller tiny particles, in which case maybe these interactions are sort of like chemistry, where you know, things are not transforming into energy, they're just breaking up into their smaller pieces, and those smaller pieces are rearranging themselves into these other particles.
Yes, you're absolutely right, and my description is just what we currently think is happening, which of course is limited because we don't know fundamentally what's really happening and what's inside these particles, if anything, and even in just the last seventy years or so, that's changed. Right, Fermi describe this in terms of a neutron proton as fundamental particles. And now, as you say, we have a deeper picture of what's going on inside those particles, and that might change. It might be that our theory only works up to a certain energy, and beyond that we need to describe it in terms of even smaller particles. But this is our current.
Picture because we don't know if those tiny building blocks exist.
But they could, right, they certainly could. Yes, they very likely do, because it would explain a lot of weird stuff. We see patterns that are unexplained in the current particles that probably are due to the way heinier things inside the electron and neutrino and quarks are clicking together to make the particles that we see and study.
Wait, so then if these tiny smaller particles exist, does that mean that the electron field doesn't really exist?
I mean, the proton definitely exists as a thing, even if it's not a fundamental particle. It's made of quarks, but it's a bound state of those quarks. If the electron is not a fundamental particle, it means that the electron field is a useful mathematical description of something that's not fundamental but instead is a bound state of other fields interacting in a way that looks just like an electron field when you sort of zoom out right right, it wouldn't exist for real. It's not fundamental, But like you exist. You're not fundamental, you're made of smaller things. But I still think you exist.
Yeah, I exist in as an arrangement of things.
Yes, Jorge exists, but the Joge field it doesn't. I guess it's what you're saying.
That's what I mean. Unless my last name.
Is Fields, then you'd really be a philosopher.
All right, Well, I think then, answers Ahinan's question, I think for the third time today, the answer is nobody knows, not even philosophers or elderly engineers, which I think now technically I fall into that category.
I think we have a pretty good picture of what's going on in terms of our current understanding of the universe. But of course we expect and hope and look forward to the day that understanding is upended for a deeper understanding.
Well, and in the meantime, let's keep asking questions. Don't forget to be curious about the universe, to think of questions, and to share those questions with others. We hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, 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, Discord, 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 as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
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