Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseQuestions From The Zeitgeist (ft The Daily Zeitgeist hosts)
Jack and Miles, hosts of The Daily Zeitgeist, ask Daniel and Jorge their most pressing questions about the universe; Why is the sky blue? Whats a quantum machine gun? How do planets form?
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Hi, I'm Orhey and I'm Daniel. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we take the entire universe, slice it up in the little pieces, and explain every single one to you, one at a time.
We answer all of your deep and amazing questions about this incredible universe.
And we try to make sure that you come away understanding something so you can sound smart at the next cocktail party you go to with a bunch of physicists.
Today, we have a special episode. We're going to be once again answering listener questions.
But not your normal listeners, not your everyday listeners.
That's right, there's a twist today.
Today we have special listener guests.
That's our Today we have the host of the podcast The Daily zeit guys Miles and Jack here and we're going to be answering their questions about the universe, about planets, about to machine guns.
That's right. Usually these guys are talking about the daily events of what's going on in the world when you should care about. But they also think deeply about the universe. So they are here to talk to us about deep questions about the universe.
Very deeply.
Record scratch, it's wowsersopped in.
This is Jack, sound like, oh sorry, and this is Miles. This is what this is my voice much nicer. So welcome Jack and Miles, thank you, thanks for having us.
Yeah, so tell us a little bit about your podcast, where can people find you know, It's like it's like a woke morning show, you know what I mean. You wake up, We'll give you the best news. We have a it's Jack and I and a comedian and we just.
Run down the top stories.
Uh.
I have a background in politics, so I'll, you know, talk like I know what I'm talking about. Uh, And then Jack does the funny stuff.
So every other every other morning show is a sleeping morning wide awake.
That is the only our only excuse.
For pople expresso more.
Yeah.
But I started the website cracked dot com and I've been doing this for the past year and a half with Miles.
Wow, it's a good time. Yeah, pretty cool. So do you guys cover science topics as well when you talk about the daily We.
Do if there's something like I think that's important to humanity or funny, so we'll talk about, like, you know, the biomass, like insect biomass just decreasing at an alarming rate.
But we don't.
Typically get into superheady stuff because like, if it's like gravitational waves territory, I'm like.
The waves bro.
As long as Miles can see it, he believes it exists.
Exactly, So I don't believes or dinosaurs.
So do you believe in scientology? Because I can see that building.
You know, I believe you're talking to a OT six operating right now.
I believe it exists, right.
Yeah, and then you're gonna have to explain the universe of scientology to me someday.
Oh yeah, do you have a moment because I just feeling clear?
Actually yeah, great, great, I mean I feel like, uh, I guess XENU does have a lot to offer us, but I think this maybe for another show.
Yeah, that's a different universe exactly right.
But there are aliens involved, right, aren't there aliens?
And sound yes, don't be patronizing speaking there are many aliens in many different volcanoes. We talked about Ama, right, Oh yeah we did because I think and the that Navy footage where they said they found like an unidentified yeah, that flying object, unidentified flying tic tac.
Did you see that?
Interest in aliens is never pigeonizing. It's totally one hundred percent great.
Do you sound? Yeah?
So yeah, claims about not being sarcastic are one hundred percent sincere.
Okay, got it, But what do you think did you see that video of that tic tac what did you What do you.
Think that was?
I think it's something crazy we don't understand.
But so it is something.
It's something that was something something Okay, definitely not nothing. I figured it's just something like a technology we're not familiar with.
Yeah, it could be.
It doesn't have to be like extraterrestrial though, right, be weird or not understood.
From a well, well, you know the Navy pilot, like the fighter pilot footage of how they saw that thing just like rotating and then like inexplicably.
Accelerating in different directions. It was different.
Yeah, And the Pentagon released it like at the end of last year or the year before.
That wasn't just special effects.
No, the Pentagon was like, all right, we'll declassify this video if you guys want to see it.
Yeah, and wow, Yeah, Pentagon is crowdsourcing its intelligence Internet.
They need guess yeah, Tom DeLong from help us figure this out.
They're like, this is why we invented the Internet, right, Alex, our.
Intelligence exactly to capture the intelligence of the genius of the crowds.
Cool. Well, as you guys talk about the daily culture and the dailyly ziguis of the humanity on a daily basis, and I imagine sometimes you must have questions about the universe, about space, about the role that humans and and and our have it it and so do they? You guys have three questions. I try to run through them in the episode today, and they're about planned information and quantum machines, guns, machines, guns and machine guns.
Yeah.
I wasn't sure if it was a quantum machine gun or a quantum machine right.
Gun that shoots understand quantum mechanics into your brain right quarts.
Yeah, I think I have the more simple questions. And then Jack is the one about quantum leap or whatever. Yeah's the show about after all?
Yes?
Almost definitely, all right, where should we start?
Oh, let's just let's go nice and easy.
Yeah.
I get most of my scientific questions from the Jizza and Uh. There's a song called Fourth Chamber that asks the question why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? The second question doesn't make any sense to me, but the first one I have always been curious, why is the sky blue?
I love that question? Why is water wet? Actually it's like a really interesting deep tail.
Yeah, is just too much for my brain to hold.
You know that song particle many particle man. Yeah, when he's underwater, does he get wet or does the water get him instead?
Deep stuff? Yeah, mind that I guess like as a child, I'm just curious.
Is the version that I understand the sky to be blue true, which is like, because the ocean.
Is that?
It almost it's kind of like a wet wet and water. The ocean is blue sort of because the sky is blue, isn't it, Daniel, I'm not the scientist.
Oh there are those. So short answer is the sky is blue, but not because the ocean is blue. Okay, but you're not You're not alone in that thought. I walked around campus that you see Irvine yesterday and I asked a bunch of people, why is the sky blue?
Is that how scientists figure things?
Crowds walk around? Internet was down?
So you got.
Professor three out of four people, I mean I ask more than four people, but three fource of them said because the ocean.
Right, that's I think the misinformation we're given, like when your parents are like, gives it the ocean?
So what was your thinking that the ocean is blue? And so somehow that's making this guy, I don't know, and it's just like if it's just something.
I never really bothered to think through that because half the time when I look at the ocean'm like that ain't blue or whatever.
If you're in the desert, like a thousand miles of sands around you, the sky is still blue exactly.
You see, like a jealousy thing like this guy was like, oh I like that color, right, I'll put on my blue. They're always fighting, so drop some science.
All right, So why is the sky blue? Well, to answer the question why is anything any color, you have to think for a moment about what that means to have color, right, And I think there's a basic misperception, like you know, light has lots of colors in it, right, And if something is painted blue, for example, that doesn't mean that it absorbs blue lights. It's not like sucking in the blueness and is blue, it's reflecting blue light.
Right.
So if something like this Kleenex blocks in front of me is blue, it means that the paint on it reflects blue.
Light and it's absorbing all the other colors.
Yeah, it sucks in all the other colors.
That's why black things get really hot and white things don't right, because they're bouncing all the light back.
And I know this because the interior of my ninety nine prelude was jet black, and in the hot La heat, I would burn myself on the inside.
Of the car.
And that's why jet eyes and whatever on Tatooine, we're all white to reflect the sunlight. Yeah there, all right, So the sky must be blue because it's reflecting blue light, right, And in fact that's true. The atmosphere when the light comes from the sun, the light from the sun is mostly is white. Is a big mix of colors. Actually it's a tiny big green, but it's mostly white. Like you look at the sun in space, it would be white.
Don't look at the sun though, directly.
Don't true sun directly.
Wait, when astronauts are out there, do they have to avert their eyes or do they have like sunglasses.
A sun visor?
Yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. I imagine that NASA sends them up there with sunglasses. That's because a blinded astronaut would.
Be a bad or.
The astronauts are just smart enough to not look at the sun, and that's how they got to be an astronaut.
The Sun's big, hard, and this is why you didn't get into an assete right day?
Yeah, how long do I get to look at the sun from space?
Is that why you have an eye patch right now? Is that?
Yeah?
That was from the eclipse? Dolt them don't use those binoculars, all right.
So we got white light hitting the atmosphere, right, and when when the light hits the atmosphere, you got the different colors. And the blue light is the one that wiggles the most. It's got the highest energy. And so you know, light is a wave and it wiggles. So the red light wiggles really slowly and the blue light wiggles really fast. And the blue light bounces off the atmosphere more than the red light does. Like little particles in the atmosphere when the blue light hits them, they get bounced.
Got It's kind of like it's a scattering, right, It doesn't like bounce off back into space. It's sort of like because the atmosphere and then it makes basically glows, right, It makes the atmosphere glow blue. Is that kind of the idea?
Yeah, I think of it more like it gets reflected, like so you're looking up at the sky. You're not looking at the sun, right, Why is there light coming from that part at all? It's because it got reflected. So light from the sun hit that part of the atmosphere and then comes to your eyes. What part of that light hits your eyes the part that got reflected, which is.
The blue light.
Just like if you're looking at a blue wall, it's not glowing right, so it doesn't produce light. It's only reflecting light. It's reflecting the blue light only right. Atmosphere is the same way. So the atmosphere reflects the blue light, which is why it looks blue.
So why does it only reflect the blue and not the other colors?
Yeah, because the blue light wiggles more, and the atmosphere is made of these little tiny particles, and these little tiny particles are better at reflecting things that wiggle moore because the wiggles are shorter. And so imagine, for example, you're like walking across the field filled with rocks, right, If the rocks are really really big, then gonna get bounced around. It's gonna be a big obstacle. The rocks are really really tiny, Like you're walking across the beach, you don't even really notice. So the blue light sees like really big rocks because it wiggles more it's tiny, and so it gets bounced off of them. The red light just like skips over them, like walking over the surface over the yeah, atmosphere.
Yeah exactly.
So red light mostly goes through straight through air, while blue light gets bounced, which is why you see the blue light in your eyes when you're looking up at the sky.
So it's about the size of the atoms up in the atmosphere. It's not like a quantum electron level kind of thing.
No, it's basically about the relative sizes of the wiggles of the light and the atmosphere. But you know, bigger stuff reflects all light, like, which is why most powders are white, right, because the particles of the powder are pretty big, so they reflect everything. But atmospheric particles are much much smaller than the powder you might have in your ninety three pre luge, right, for example, sugar and salt, Right, the powdered sugar in the seat of the back seat of your old car. Yeah exactly. And so that's why the sky is blue, right, because it reflects blue light. And also explains why, for example, sunsets are not blue.
Right, how does that clean it? It's the same atmosphere, right.
And I understand it.
But when we were smart but.
I'm just trying to.
See if you know so, yeah, why is the sky so?
So?
If you so, if you look at the atmosphere, you're seeing reflected light. If you look directly at the sun, don't do that. But if you were to, you'd be seeing light directly from the sun, where all the blue is removed, right, because the blue light that comes to you directly from the sun gets bounced away, so you're seeing the red or the yellower side of the spectrum, right, So the blue is removed, send somewhere else and you see the yellows, the reds, the oranges. That's why the sun looks yellow in the sky.
Right.
The sun isn't yellow, it's white. Right, It looks yellow in the sky.
Through the filter of the atmosphere.
Exactly fill the atmosphere. Now at sunset, you're looking through a lot more atmosphere because the sun is low in the sky, so it doesn't just come through a little bit of atmosphere, it's skims along through a lot of atmosphere, so it gets like yellower so yellow, it looks orange and red and darker and darker.
Oh, so as like a sphere like versus just hitting it straight on, because it's like that, you're getting this curvature, this slice that gets way more atmosphere, so you get more.
Wow, more and more blue light gets filtered out, and then you get just the red light left.
But the whole sky turns pink, or at least half of the sky turns pink.
Yeah, that's mostly because of smog. That's because we live in la Oh. If the sky was perfectly clear, right, then a sunset would look more yellow and mostly just around the sun. But then that light, that yellowy red light whatever bounces off of particles in the atmosphere or smog or whatever, and that in clouds, and that's.
What gives you the beautiful sunset.
But the color comes from all the blue getting filtered out by the atmosphere.
Does being closer to the equator effect the beauty of the sunset. I don't know, because I think of like like tropical places that have amazing suns there really isn't that much pollution where I feel like this smog is influencing the color of the sunset.
So I'm curious if that just in a better mood. If you're yeah, and you're like, oh my god, that's the best sunset ever, and the locals are like, what cocktails make the sunset better? That's a physics physical effect.
It wuld also be the haze, like water vapor will do that.
Also, Oh, gotcha, there's probably more the equation at the equation.
Wow, you've embarrassed yourself.
To let's talk quantum machine guns.
Wow.
Sorry, I'm used to hosting a podcast.
But first, let's take a quick break.
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All right, moving on, Jack, what is your question today?
My question is I would love to hear from like your how your brain works in explaining the quantum machine gun theory, because it's hard for me to get my simple brain.
Yes, Jack tried when we were talking about this. He tried to explain it, and I actually just walked away because I did not understand this simple thing.
He was trying to say.
I have a question about your question though, Why are you so fascinated by quantum machine guns? Are you looking to build one, threatening one? You thinking about purchasing one in eBay? And you want to know if it's real or what's the situation?
I mean, it's very so I was a philosophy major, and it's like a very philosophical I don't know what like it's worth.
You can't say I was a philosophy.
I became a philosophy major.
That's a philosophical question, the question in itself.
And it's like that it gets into you know, multiverse and all those different things which it would seem to me would affect just the entire metaphysical reality of of the world.
So that's why it interests me.
Like if if it is real and not just a thought experiment, it would seem to be like a a existence of.
Shaping thing.
I guess, all right, well you can explain what it is, and then what is he talking about? What is it? What is a quantum machine gun?
Quantum machine gun is like a variation on the Schrodinger's catech experiment.
I know that from Silicon Valley.
OKAYO is entertaining and educated.
Awesome.
So the idea there is put something like a particle that's decaying. We don't know how long it's going to take to decay, put in a box. And then when the particle decays, it kills the cat somehow release is poison or something. And then you can ask the question is the cat dead or is the cat alive? It's inside the box. You can't see it, right, It's just determined by what that quantum random particle does. And so the idea is you put the particle in the box and you don't know whether or not it has decayed, which you know has consequences for the cat. And so because you don't know, then you say things like it's both dead and alive because as a probability to be both. Okay, So that's the shirtener sat right.
Because the particle is both doing both things at the same time, and so if the cat's life depends on the particle, then the cats must be also dead and alive at the same time.
That's right, And that's actually the heart of the question, which the machine gun example probes also, is what's going on with quantum mechanics, Like if a particle can do A or B, has probability to do A and B. Is it both A and B before you've looked, or has it chosen one? Or has a universe split into one universe where the particle's done A and one universe where the particle is done B.
That seems like this explanation obviously right, Let's just create a whole new universe every time.
So Max Tegmark took this to the next level and he said, let's not put cats at risk, let's put ourselves at risk. So he said, let's put let's build a machine gun where the machine gun fires based on what a particle does. So a particle can be spin up or spin down with equal probability. It's like a coin flip, right, And if every time you press the trigger on the machine gun, it asks the particle you spin up or you spin down its spin up, it shoots If it's spin down. It doesn't.
It's like the particles in charge of the safety switch. You have a gun, so you pull it, you pull the trigger, put the particle. If it's doing one thing, it will let you shoot. If it's doing the other thing, it won't let you shood.
Yeah, it's a little like Russian roulette, right, Russian roulette. You you know, put three bullets in a six chamber gun or whatever, you spin it, you have a fifty percent of dying. Right. The problem with the Russian roulette is it's determined once you put them in there and you spin it, it's either going to be a bullet or an envy chamber. It's fixed.
Right.
With a quantum machine gun, it's supposed to be truly random, like the universe is really random. So when you press the button, Max Tegmart says, the universe splits into two one where it shoots a bullet and one where it doesn't shoot a bullet. And that's the crazy thing is imagining, like the universe splitting into two universes.
So the thought experiment is like you go into the short Inger's box. Yeah, you take out the cat, you put yourself in, and you see what happens.
Yeah, but it's more than that, he says, Now, build the gun, point it at yourself, and keep pressing the button.
What will you hear?
Okay?
And his point is you will only hear click click, click click. You will never hear the gun go off, which you.
Would think would be a one in a billion probability, right, because if you're multiplying fifty fifty percent and gets more and more unlike that, you are not going to hear the gun go off.
But why does it have to be life or death though it can just be a light and sad happy. I guess you take, Yeah, that's true, I guess.
So we also have to do with I mean, if it was just a light, it wouldn't you wouldn't cease to exist, right, And the idea is that in there there are nine hundred and ninety nine other like if it's a one in a thousand thing, there are nine hundred and ninety nine other branches of reality and probability where you did die. But because you're you only exist, because you are your experience, then you are only in the one branch that where it didn't go off.
Essentially, right, there's always one one version of the universe and which it doesn't go off no matter how many times you click. You click a million times, there's some probability for it to never kill you. And there's somebody who pressed it a million times and had that experience. There's some version of the universe in which that happened.
So that guy is the only one who's still awake.
And he says, you know, you only ever hear clicks. I think you hear a bunch of clicks and then eventually you hear a boom. Right, But there's some version of you that can do as many clicks as you want.
Right.
They seem they both both Schroederger's Cat and quantum machine gun theory seem like really good ways for you to make physicists who believe in the multiverse like realize that they don't actually believe in the Oh, okay, you believe that, then here do this thing and if you truly believe in it, then you'll never die, right because and I think that was what Schroedeger's cat was originally designed to like illustrate the absurdity of quantum theory.
Like how can a cat be alive and it?
Right?
Yeah, exactly do you think is that true? Was that example? Did Max tech Mark come up with this example to, like, you know, kind of puts physicists on the spot.
I think he probably came up with his example to sell his book, which I think went pretty well for him.
And didn't sell at this time.
In some universe it's the best seller. Another universe is a warehouse full of it. But you're the philosopher. Tell me, do you think there's another universe out there where you you know? It's something else? This morning a different kind of cereal.
I think it's as good as anything I've come up with on my under or anything I've read.
Is that a high bar or a low bar?
Not very good?
Yeah, very very low bar.
No.
I think it's just a really interesting way to think about things. I don't think you necessarily want to think about it if it's think about it that way, if it's going to make you behave recklessly, if you're gonna be like.
I'm invincible, like driving down version where I don't die ever.
But well, basically right, that's the That's the conclusion of the experiment, is that if you're still healing hearing the clique, you must be in the one universe, however improbable, where it's.
It's like running back and forth across way, right, version of you survived that for an hour, sure, and you survive it for a day as a version gets splait immediately.
Right, Yeah, but you don't do any of these things.
Because I mean, the reason that they design it where the gun goes off based on a quantum coin flip is because that's really the only truly.
Like random thing.
So I mean, you're still on a chain of probability where something is or isn't going to happen unless your existence is being determined by a quantum coin.
Flip, right, which still blows my mind. I mean, I think I understand quantum mechanics as well as I'm ever going to, but I still don't understand how something can be truly random, Like there has to be some mechanism in the universe that's producing random numbers. There's like some But what.
Does it mean to be truly random and not truly random? What's the difference?
Well, truly random means not predictable, right, not repeatable. It doesn't anything doesn't. Well, it can depend on something, it can be influenced by it. But you have a distribution where the random draw is not repeatable, not determined by the initial conditions.
Right, it's not a true magical box.
Not magical. It's physics.
Man, it seems like magic. Physics.
Physics is indistinguishable from.
I mean, that's what you're saying. Like if we have by magic, I mean like violating the loss of physics is impossible, that would be like Lord of the Rinks magic. But if you were to call that quantum nugget there that can give you anything at any given time, you might you might use the word magic. I think you might use the word magic. Yeah, yes, physics.
Yeah, I think there's a show physics we understand and physics we don't yet understand. Right, Right, you can call that magic if you like, or you can call it, you know, science fiction or whatever.
But wait, so what's the other form of randomness?
If if because you said truly random, there's there's really only truly random is pseudorandom.
Like your computer can generate random numbers, these are not actually random. Like you ask computer, give me a series of random numbers, it will give you the same series every time, So it's not really random.
Right, Or you're going thro an algorithm that someone's created.
And yeah, it's an algorithm for choosing things, which you know, spread the numbers out basically, but it's not actually random. You give you the same you ask the same computer the same question, it will give you the same string of random numbers.
Right, Or even throwing a die is not truly random, right, because you can trace the result back to some something you did way back.
That's right, Like.
Whether you decided to put a rabbit foot in your pocket or not?
Right, Right, magic physics.
You skipped your scientology meeting or not.
I don't skip. I don't skip the record. It's going to get downgraded.
No, you're right, it's not random. It's chaotic, right, difficult to predict. So it's a good proxy for randomness. Right, But it is totally determined by how you roll the die. You roll the die the same way every time, you're going to get exactly this answer. It's impossible to do, which is why it's a good proxy for randomness. But yeah, quantum mechanics is the only true randomness in the universe that we know of.
Right, And it seems random because we just can't explain it yet.
Right, Although there are experiments they've done that basically prove that it's random. That it's completely right, it's completely random. Yeah, there are these crazy experiments that are really subtle. They're called It's about bills inequality, these correlations between particles where they prove that it can't be determined by the initial conditions, it has to be actually random, which is pretty mind blowing.
So did we answer your question, Jack?
Do we?
Yeah?
That was really that actually was a much better explanation. I don't know, it's it's so interesting, like multiverse theory just in general. So like to even think that there are other questions dolving into that is just like another it's splitting my brain in nine directions.
Again.
Well, I think the multiverse is bonkers. I mean that's not a scientific point of it. That's philosophical.
Boyay. So you can say bonkers and crazy, but you can't see magic.
Oh no, magic's not allowed.
They're gonna believe that.
And I don't mean bunkers in a negative way, like the universe is bonkers. Yeah, I mean like the crazy stuff we talk about on our show, like you.
Know, how do you wrap your head around it?
Huge spinning stars and black holes and not all that stuff is bonkers even if it's real. Right, Yeah, but the multiverse is like extra bonkers because imagining like extra universe is being created all this stuff. I just don't, I can't. I don't know where to put that in my head.
A version where you are on our show, Jack and Miles explaining.
That's right, I really want to hear that show actually be a very different kind of universe. Well, we we do have a whole episode about the multiverse, and a whole episode about quantum randomness, magic non magic, right, bonkers, quantum bonkers. I've never heard of a game called physics the gathering that sounds like there's nothing on all the cards? WHOA, How do I know I'm winning? All right, So let's get to your last question about it. But first let's take our lass break of the episode.
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Alright, Miles, you have one last question for you. Yes, and it's a it's and it's an epic and scale. It's a planetary and scale. It's planetary. Yes, it's gigantic.
It's probably the probably the best question you've ever been asked.
Yeah, this is some real magic stuff. I'm going to hit you with miles of Yeah.
I can do some stretches.
Here's Yeah, it was incredible.
He just put his leg behind his head.
Hanging from the ceiling. You wish this was the TV show?
Oh, I do you know?
I I love space and I like uh the Solis like crowds.
Yeah, I love space. I'm still on my Space.
Actually, I don't use Facebook anything us Space that even on my keyboard A gigantic space bar it overtakes the rest.
Of the keys.
But you know, just planetary formation is just another not necessarily philosophical thing because that's a physical, uh phenomenon. I'm just curious because once I started reading about the Juno probe that's going around Jupiter, there were some people I spoke with who worked at JPO who were sort of saying, like, Jupiter has a lot of secrets or it will give us a better understanding of planetary formation in this solar system.
And I'm sort of like, well, why do we need why can't we look at like Earth or whatever.
So I'm just sort of like that got me thinking, like, wow, it's interesting to think they say, if we look at planetary planetary formation is like a cookbook, We're only seeing the finished product, right of everything being cooked or baked or whatever. The end thing is is like, but with understanding Jupiter, we'll begin to understand the.
Recipe and that system, yeah or whatever.
But I just but it's interesting to even think, you know, because we live on this physical earth.
What what you know? What went down? Really?
Was it magic?
Can You said you were a JPL when you got interested in Yeah?
Yeah, because I at the time, I just knew that this was like a very novel, like just a very important experiment. This probe was going out and it was like months before the first sets of data we're going to be sent back, and everyone was just so like this is man, like, we really this is the thing, Like Jupiter really is going to help us understand so much, so many other things like weather and all these other things. So it was just so interesting to me that there was this this planet out there that if we can study a bit more like it's gonna it could potentially help us understand many other things that we experienced. So that's why I'm like, Okay, yeah, I guess planetary formation is is a lot more in depth than merely saying, hey, we're here on Earth. You know, some stuff started swirling around each other, got dense, and then boom.
Yeah, that's basically answers the question. Great boom in density, swirling, boom, we got a planet.
Here's the recipe.
Yeah. I think that's a really interesting question. I think it touches on something which is like deep in everybody, which is we want to understand our history. Sure, what went down? How did this come about?
And is this.
Unusual, Like, are there other solar systems out there that have earths or is it all jupiters? Is there a solar system that it's just like all Uranus right, for example, or all Saturns or something. Yeah, So it's pretty interesting stuff, and you know the planets. I think one of the interesting things about that is that the planets are formed about the same time as the star. Right. The whole thing is basically like a big mix. You start with a big cloud of like gas and dust and other stuff that comes from you know, other stars that blew up, so you got like rubble out there in space, and then gravity gradually pulls it together and most of the gas gets sucked towards the center. So you get this huge star in the middle right, and then the left dover is just sort of swirling around it.
Right, Well, why does the gas come in first?
Why does the gas come in first? It all sort of happens at once, but the gas is light, and so it gets pulled in towards the center and.
It rushes in faster. I guess because it's it's gas.
Well, I think it's equally distributed, but the gas gets sucked in towards the center faster than like the rocks and stuff. So you end up with like a lot of gas at the center, which becomes a star, and then you get like you know, where the gas was pulled away, You get rocks which turned into like rocky planets, and then the outer part you have still have gas and ice and stuff left over, which is why you get like big gas giants.
Oh god, Okay, yeah, So.
Jupiter is like mostly hydrogen and water and that kind of stuff, whereas Earth is is not it's mostly rock, right, But basically it's just gravity, right. Gravity. It takes you a long time, but gravity sucks this stuff together. You get a big star and the stuff that's orbiting around it gradually gathers together, right, so it bounces into each other and and you know, gravity sticks them together and just sort of gradually pulls everything together, as you said, like density boom boom.
Right. I guess the question is why doesn't why do we have planets at all? Why isn't why isn't the Solar System just a star? Why doesn't everything just get sucked into the middle? Or why aren't planets just asteroid belts? Yeah?
Okay, so there's two different answers are why do we have planets at all? Right, Why isn't everything just get sucked into like one black hole or one star?
Right?
Well, some things keeping things from falling into the center, right, And that's just enough spinning. Right, So the whole blob when it started was spinning already, and that spinning can't go away, right, It's angular momentum. It can't have to be conserved. It can't just you can't just stop spinning.
It's not rubbing against anything to slow it down. It's just it's in space, so it just keeps on spinning.
Somehow, you made that sound inappropriate.
I mean, I would have preferred frictionless environment.
It was just weird that you are waggling your eyebrows.
Shirt.
Yeah, the sun does have a history of rubbing inappropriately against things. Yes, No, it's yeah. It's out there in space and there's nothing to slow down. There's no friction, nothing to to grab onto it. So it's going to keep spinning forever. And so the stuff is moving and it ends up in orbit.
Right.
It's like asking why doesn't the Moon fall to the Earth because it's moving so fast that it doesn't fall, like, keeps going around the Earth instead of falling same way the Earth is. And the stuff that made the Earth is not going to fall into the Sun because it's moving fast enough and it comes from that initial rotation.
Oh I see, So even though we get the Sun, there's still stuff out there spinning around that doesn't want to fall into the Sun.
Yeah, exactly, it's moving too fast fall into the center.
So it's too good to be the Sun. It doesn't want to rope against the Sun. But why does it formed the planets? Like Jack said, some of some of it just stays as asteroid belt like debris, but some of it formed into planets.
Eventually it'll all gather together, Like you fast forward the Solar System of a billion years or so, and you'll have a smaller number of bigger asteroids. Eventually these all.
Come together, so that story belt will be a planet.
I don't know about one planet, but like we'll.
Really billions of years, we could have a new new place of visits.
And the same way rings turn into moons, right, rings are not a stable situation for a planet's really gathered together and turn it into moons. Yeah, Like the Earth probably had rings for a while after it got hit by some other plurio planet and created all this debris that surrounded it, which formed the moon. We probably had some awesome set of rings which then gathered together into a moon.
So Saturn's on its way to having a moon. Yeah.
We don't know how old the rings of Saturn are, but we think they're not very old. I mean they're millions of years sure, but on the Solar System times scale, they're pretty young. And so that stuff eventually is going to gather together and form larger objects.
Yeah wow, okay, but each.
But also each planet got different stuff based on where it was in the Solar System. Right, The closer stuff got the rocks that were left over not much gas because they got sucked up by the Sun. Stuff on the outside is like mostly gas. Like if you look at what's inside Jupiter r it's crazy right yeah, yeah, super compressed like metallic hydrogen.
Right, it's like hydrogen. Yeah, it sounds like a color for a new iPhone or something, right, we just call it silver. Yeah, but the marketing geniuses over in Guertina.
I mean you often hear Jupiter described as a gas giants. People think, oh, it's just a big ball of gas. Yeah, it's a gas and then it's hydrogen, but it's not in gaseous state, right, some of it's like solid. So you could land on Jupiter because it's like it's metallic hydrogen covered by like an ocean of liquid hydrogen and then gas on top of it. So it has an atmosphere, but there's an ocean of liquid hydrogen. I mean, I wouldn't recommend going there without some like pretty nice equipment, but yeah.
There's pretty radiation, yeah.
But there's something solid there to land on.
Well, I read that like these gas plant gas planets out there, they represent ninety nine percent of the mass of the Solar system. So it's it's like it's most of the Solar system except for the Sun. Yeah, yeah, the Sun are are in these gas giants way out there.
Yeah, exactly most of the mass and the Solar systems the Sun that's like ninety percent. Then of that one percent, most of it's the gas giant planets, right, because remember the Earth is about one tenth of the radius of Jupiter, which is about one tenth the radius of the Sun.
Right, all right, right, right.
Yeah remember that.
I just remember as a kid, they're like there could be I don't remember the number, but it's like so many earths could fit in the Sun. And I was like, yeah, right, miss Holton, I'm out of here third grade.
But you always forget that.
Yeah, volume goes by like the radius cube, so you could fit It's only ten times wider, but you could fit a thousand earths into Sure, you could fit a thousand jupiters into the Sun. Right, so it's a.
Millionah, yes, Oh so that's a number million or a million. Yeah, it's a million, A cool mill exactly.
Yeah, so you're right, Jupiter is huge and most of the stuff that's not in the Sun is in Jupiter. It gobbled up all this stuff. But we should be grateful, right, Actually, Jupiter being really big could have saved our.
Lives because, uh, asteroids that would destroy Earth get sucked into Jupiter.
Yeah, exactly, it's acting like a linebacker out there, like cleaning out the Solar system, gathering all that stuff. I don't know if you guys remember, but like twenty years ago or so, there was a huge comet that entered the Solar system and then like slammed right into Jupiter. Oh really, yeah, comment shoemaker Levey was really awesome, it got broken shoemaker, I remember that. Yeah, yeah, it's slanted Jupiter, and each piece that hit it, we got broken into like twenty pieces made a huge fireball, like bigger than the Earth.
But if that had hit us, it would have caused a big wave.
We probably recorded a very different podcast.
Recording on Jupiter.
Yeah.
So yeah, a shout out to Jupiter. Thank you so much. Yeah, I didn't realize how much of a debt weel to Jupiter. Yeah, now have a new appreciation for it.
Cool.
So that's the answer to planet formation is is just gravity and stuff just that doesn't want to fall into the sun out there, it starts to clump together. We get the leftovers and we get a beautiful Earth with beautiful sunsets exactly exactly, and some call that magic. All right, Well, thank you guys for joining us day, and be sure for those of you listening to check out their podcast, Daily Zeitgeist. Yeah Monday through Friday, Monday through you want to give them the twitters and the Facebook.
Oh yeah, you can find our show at daily Zeitgeist on Twitter, at the daily Zeitgeist on Instagram.
I'm at miles of grade g R A Y on Twitter and Instagram and I am at Jack Underscore O'Brien on Twitter. Awesome. Well, thank you guys. Any if you guys have any questions out there, anyone listening has any questions.
Send us an email at feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Send us your philosophy questions, send us your physics questions, send us your dating questions. We'll get physics answers to all of.
Those, not not your magic questions.
There are no magic questions.
Only magic answers.
Yeah, all right, all right, see you next time.
Thanks for tuning in. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at feedback at Danielandhorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. As dairy dot COM's Last sustainability to learn more.
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