Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseDaniel and Jorge talk about the hottest state of matter ever created, and make up silly names for it.
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Terms apply. Hey, jorgey, you're a fan of oatmeal, aren't you.
Uh yeah, I've been done to eatable every once in a while.
So how hot do you like your oatmeal?
Well, you know, not too hot, not the cold, you know, maybe in the Goldilock zone.
So then, in physics terms, does that mean like hotter than the surface of Pluto, maybe colder than the surface of the Sun.
Yeah, somewhere in there. That's kind of a big range.
All right, let's narrow it down. Maybe hotter than room temperature on Earth, colder than room temperature on Venus.
Yeah, I'm not sure which ones hotter or colder, but that sounds about right.
Well, maybe we should use chemistry instead, like hotter than a frozen cube of oatmeal, colder than oatmeal plasma.
I'm not sure I should leave you in charge of my breakfast.
I'm just trying to come up with creative menus for the Daniel and Jorge restaurant.
I'm not sure I should leave you in charge of by lunch either. I am Horeham Made cartoonists and the co author of Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe.
Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I'm not a fan of menu writing.
Oh have you had to do it several times?
No? I mean that I'm a critic of menu writing, and I'm not often impressed. You know, those menus to have things like wild Mountain raspberry sauce or you know, they just keep adding adjectives to everything to make it sound more impressive.
You just want like what food?
Like?
You know, many options food and desert.
That sounds pretty good. Yeah, make it direct, You're like, surprise me, none of this flower language. Yes, I'll order dinner please.
Why you even have a menu, Daniel, Just go to a restaurant and just have it bring you food that sounds great.
Actually, I would love to be at the chef's whim.
Yeah, you don't have to make any decisions. If I could just put a tube dan your throat and then you'd be out of there in five minutes.
Eating is a hassle anyway.
But anyways, welcome to a podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
In which we serve up the entire menu of all of the mysteries of modern physics and the questions about the nature of reality and our universe. We serve up the delicious dish of all of our curiosity about the way things work, how everything came together to form the universe that we know and love, and how it may all fall apart in the future.
Yeah, because we try to nourish you with amazing facts about the universe and fill you up nutritious and sometimes hot tidbits about are amazing cosmos.
The universe is quite a meal, after all. It's more than an appetizer, that's for sure.
It's more like a litter or brunch. What do you think.
I think it's an all you can eat buffet. I mean, I could just keep going back and back and back until I blow up with physics knowledge.
Doesn't that violate the law of energy conservation? An endless buffet?
Well, as long as the universe keeps expanding and my waistline keeps expanding, then we're all in harmony.
Oh man, Wait, wouldn't you turn into a black hole? Eventually my plan is to just red shift my way down to weight loss. I see red. It's a slimming color. Is that what you're saying?
If I'm moving away at high speeds, then technically I have less energy. Absolutely.
Oh yeah, And there's also like length contraction. Right as you're moving faster, you seem smaller, but only in one direction. So just make sure they get your good side.
I'll rely on that when I whiz by the photographer.
Wait, how do they take your picture of your going faster than the speed of light? And do you actually post before the picture is taken? You know, the whole sequence of events here gets all you know, relativity confusing.
Yeah, I think we're confusing ourselves with physics and pr I don't think they're a good combination.
But it is a pretty wonderful universe, full of many options for us to dive into and explore and taste. I guess it's sort of like there's a tasting menu, and this is what this podcast is.
And the universe offers so many mysteries at so many different temperatures. You can study the frozen interior of crazy ice planets. You can study the hot, intense environment at the center of our sun. There are mysteries at all temperatures.
Oh, that's an interesting question. What is the range of possible temperatures in the universe? Right? Like, you could have zero degrees kelvin, that's one extreme. Could you have infinite temperature?
On the other side, We did a whole podcast episode about the hottest things in the universe and another one about the coldest things in the universe, so check those out if you're interested. But briefly, we know that things can't actually get down to zero degrees kelvin because quantum uncertainty requires things to always be vibrating a tiny little bit. Quantum fields can never relax to actual zero, but you can get pretty close. On the other side, there is a temperature above which we don't think temperature really makes any sense. It's called absolute hot, and it's sort of the maximum temperature you can have in which things sort of stay. Things above that quantum gravity has to take over, and we don't even really know how to describe the universe at that crazy high energy density.
Whoa sounds like a vodka brand. Absolute hot, so what does that mean? It's like when the matter particles are moving, it close to the speed of light.
It's more than just the particles moving near the speed of light because velocity is relative. It's about energy density. It's about having things being really compact and also having high speeds. I mean, things get really really crazy compact, then gravity takes over. But if you have really small distances, then quantum mechanics is important. And so it's sort of like asking the question, what is the state of matter at the heart of a black hole? We just don't really know, and extrapolating to those conditions from our knowledg edge of the universe doesn't really even make sense. So absolute hot is sort of like a statement about we can't really say anything above this temperature because we're pretty sure our theory would be wrong.
Well, that's absolutely interesting.
It is, and sermodynamics is very complicated. These connections between density and temperature. Some of them break down our ideas of like what temperature is. And if you're interested in those questions and the subtle connections between energy and density and velocity, check out our episode on what is the hottest thing in the universe.
Yeah, so there's how hot things can get in the universe, and then there's how hot are the things that we've seen in this universe, and things can get pretty hot as far as we've seen in this universe, right.
That's right.
The buffet of our universe offers a lot of different things to explore, from the temperature that we're used to sort of like between zero and one hundred degrees celsius, to hotter things inside stars or inside neutron stars, or sometimes even hotter temperatures.
Whoa hotter than a star? Isn't a star? Sort of like the hottest anything can get right the center of the Sun or the center of a neutron star.
No, it Actually it turns out that some of the plasma in between galaxies and in between stars can be even hotter because the particles are moving very very high speeds. But again, those guys are not very dense, so if you put yourself in the interstellar plasma or in the intergalactic medium, then you would freeze really quickly because there isn't a lot of heat there. But the particles are moving really really fast. So technically there are super high temperatures. But the hottest things in the universe are actually things created here on Earth by particle.
Physicists whoa they are pretty hot.
We are the hottest people in the universe, creating the hottest things in the universe. We are too hot to handle.
Yeah, I think that's what I mean. It's like, if you have a particle out there in space and it's moving it close to the speed of light, wouldn't technically the space around it be super duper hot, right, because temperature is sort of like about the average like per particle kinetic energy.
Yeah, well, we talked about it in that episode. The definition temperature is a statistical property, so it's something you can talk about for a set of particles. And most theorists say that temperature isn't defined for a single particle, like it just doesn't have a meaning. It's something, as you say, it's about the average motion of these particles, not the specific velocity of one. So what's the temperature of a single particle flying through the universe. It's not defined. Temperature is something you can only really talk about for a set of particles.
What about the temperature for one hundred particles moving at the speed of light.
I feel like we're going to have this negotiation and you're going to ask me, what's the smallest number of particles for which you can talk.
About at one point, can you say something is hot, Daniel.
So this is thermal physics, and temperature is a macroscopic quantity. It's something which emerges from the motion of microscopic quantities. It's sort of like the concept of value in economics. You know what, it's the value of a certain painting. If there's only one person in the world, they can say the value is whatever they want. They have to be able to sell it, they have to be able to transfer to somebody else. So value in a market depends on there being like a bunch of people buying and selling something, so you can get a sense for the value. It's sort of the same with temperature. You can't have the temperature of an individual particle. You have to the temperature of a set of objects. So there's no like fixed threshold where you can define temperature, and the concept of temperature sort of loses meaning as the number of particles gets smaller and smaller. So what's a threshold. I don't know. One hundred is probably safe, but you're on the edge.
Sounds like we need to write a new best selling book called physics economics.
Sounds pretty freaky.
But Anyways, we are talking today hear about something that is maybe even hotter than the inside of stars, something that is actually made here on Earth by physicists. So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question what is a quark gluon plasma. Well, that's kind of a worth a mouthful to say.
It is, but it's super fascinating because it lets as explore how the universe looks different at different temperatures. You know, the universe at a smaller scale is made of something we don't know. But as you crank up the temperature, all sorts of really fascinating and interesting properties emerge. You know, normal matter or gases or plasmas. All these properties sort of arise from how these lower level bits come together. It's really cool to make the universe show you like a new thing that it can do.
I think you guys just sit around and pair up different interesting words together and then then then that sets your research agenda. You just like quark gluon plasma, Sure, let's go with that.
Yeah, next we're going to look for like the quark tiger plasma. That sounds pretty cool.
Yeah, and maybe a hit Netflix show as well. But is this an interesting state of matter, something that's maybe hotter than the insights of neutron stars, which is a little mind blowing. But as usual, we were wondering how many people out there had heard of these three words put together, ork, gluon plasma. So Daniel went out there into the internet to ask people what it's a quark gluon plasma.
So thank you very much to those who volunteered to speculate on this question without a chance to google it. We're very happy to know your thoughts and if you out there listening right now would like to hear your voice on the podcast or everyone else to appreciate. Please don't be shy write to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com.
So think about it for a second. What do you think a quark gluon plasma is? Here's what to be glad to say.
I don't know.
I would guess that it has something to do with, for example, pressure or temperature, being at such an extreme point that matter with the state of matter changes drastically and becomes something similar to well plasma or both Einstein condensate.
Well plasma is probably obtained when you have really high temperatures so I guess this probably existed in the early state of the universe. I don't know, just to guess.
A quark gluon plasma is they small unit of blood glued onto an organ to increase the absorption of oxygen.
Well, I know the quarks are what make up the neutron and proton, and the gluons are buying them together using the strong nuclear force.
Since they can't exist on their own without being closely bound.
I would assume it's the high energy state that the gluons are in that.
Kind of bind them together, almost like a liquid adhesive.
I'm going to guess that a quark gluon plasma is when you have a high enough energy state so that the quarks can actually break out of their groups of three and roam around freely, with gluons passing back and forth between these quarks. I don't know if this level of energy is possible in our current universe, but maybe it could have been in the very early stages of the Big Bang.
This is something that I hardly might be inside a neutral star.
As far as I know. That's when you have a lot of energy and matter. Basically, the separation between protons breaks down and all these quirks just sort of mingle in like a soup of quirky goodness.
Oh, I know that it's a plasma of quarks and gluons really.
Hot, all right. It sounds like someone confused blood plasma with physics plasma. Right, that's something in your blood, right.
Yeah, plasma is something in your blood, but that's totally different. That's just the same letters that mean something completely different than sort of physics plasma. So don't get a physics plasma injection next time you go to the doctor.
And that's for the vampire physicists to do research.
Rut exactly quark gluon vampires. That's the next crossover event.
But some pretty good answers here. I think most people sort of associate plasma with something really hot, I guess, and then they did a lot of people here seem to know it's a state of matter, and so I as you just kind of put two and two together, and so it's a plasma of quarks and gluons.
They're on the right track in thinking that it's a new state of matter, like another thing that matter can do, another way the universe can operate. It's one that really lets us explore deep and fundamental questions about the nature of the universe and the early universe and why we are all here.
Yeah, but most people seem to also know that it's associated with temperature and so that it's something really hot, and so let's dive into it. Daniel, Let's maybe take it back to the basics. What is the basic definition of a quark gluon plasma?
So quark gluon plasma is an extension of our idea of states of matter. So you're probably familiar with solids and liquids and gases as different states of matter. You take the same basic objects in this case atoms, right, helium, hydrogen, neon, whatever, and it's just a question of how hot they are, and the temperature they are determines how they move. So that's where the states of matter are. In a solid, the atoms are bound together in a lattice. Right, It's like a Chris where they're like not moving and they're squeezed together. As that meltz, it becomes a liquid and the particles are free to slide around, but you have sort of constant volume. And then if he heats up even more, the particles loosen up even more and they fly around freely and they're going everywhere. Beyond that, there's another state of matter, plasma that people have probably heard of, where you break things up even further. So you take the atom and now you crack it open. Instead of just having atoms flying around, you have the constituents of the atom separating from each other. So the electrons leave the nucleus and go off on their own because there's enough temperature for them to like escape from the energy bonds of the nucleus. So now you have charged particles. So plasma is like a gas, but with charged particles instead of neutral particles, which makes it much more complex and intense.
Right. I think you sort of hit when you said that it's something escapes the bonds of something, and so I think that's a big thing in this idea of states of matter, right because you know, at the end of it, atologist particles put together in different ways, but there seems to be some sort of like transcision points where things that either like stuck together in a certain way or not stuck together or not stuck together at all.
Yeah, exactly. Sort of the whole universe is just like particles put together in different ways, and in the end you should be able to describe any configuration using like the most fundamental rules of how those particles work. We don't have those most fundamental rules. We don't really understand the basic rules of the universe. But what we do have are these effective rules. Like we say, in this configuration, when things are stuck together, the most important thing are these bonds between the atoms, and they can be described roughly using this kind of mathematics. Fascinating things as you say that there are these transitions when like things get loosened up, and now you can use a different kind of mathematics to describe it, Like the math of crystals is totally different from the math of fluids from the math of gases, right, And it's fascinating that there are these transitions. So that's why we even say that we have states of matter instead of just saying, hey, look we got particles and here the rules. It's because these phenomena emerge, just like we were saying earlier that temperature is an emergent phenomena to property of many objects. The whole idea of states of matter, of solids and liquids and gases emerges from what's going on underneath.
Right, I guess what I mean. It's like it's not something we're imagining, right, It's not like the universe is actually sort of like a continuous grade in between things that are packed really close together and things that are just out there loose. It's like the universe really does sort of like click into certain ways of arranging matter.
Ooh, that's a really subtle philosophical point. Whether this is our interpretation or whether this is inherent to the universe, it really depends on what you think about like the primacy of mathematics, whether it's part of the universe or just part of our thought. You know, we might, for example, meet alien physicists who think that, like our definition of phases are a nonsense, and they have a different way of looking at it because different quantities are important to them. And so I think it's not clear whether this is like part of the universe or just our description of it. But either way, it's something that's very you for us, right, because it's a way for us to simplify things and have like simple mathematical stories that work without having to every time go down to string theory and do calculations from there.
Right, It's not like the universe like actually changes or like the rules of the universe change, Like the universe is continuous, you know, things don't like suddenly change, but there does seem to be sort of this interesting thing where like when atoms are sort of close enough to each other, then certain forces become more dominant, and so then things, for example, click into place as a crystal. But if you sort of exceed some sort of energy level, then other forces are more important, and then the particles, the items don't arrange in crystals, they sort of arrange as a liquid.
You're exactly right, and that's the most important thing. That the universe is following the same basic laws the whole time, whatever those basic laws are, and we notice these patterns. It's sort of like if you wanted to categorize books in the library. You know, all the books in the library follow the same rules. They're like sequences of words that follow each other. And you're like, oh, these are dramas, these are comedies, this one on the edge, I'm not really even sure or somebody into a whole new genre, right, what is a genre? After all? It's just a way for us to like categorize things that we see, patterns that emerge in writing, things that work, and so in the same way, like phases of matter, are ways for us to simplify a whole set of phenomena in terms of simplistic mathematical descriptions. And you might think, well, why can't we just use the most fundamental theory every time? And you know the answer is that we just can't do those calculations. It's really complicated, for the same reason that you can't like predict hurricanes even if you understand how drops work, because chaos prevents you from extrapolating from the very small scale to the very high scale. And also we don't even know if there is a fundamental theory, like maybe all of our theories, even like the ones about quarks and leptons and the standard model, maybe that's just an effective theory, the same way like fluid dynamics is and the ideal gas law. It could all just be like ignoring what's going on underneath because we can't see those details.
Right. So, so far we have sort of four basic states of matter. You said, Solid one, which is when the atoms are stuck together kind of in a grid. Liquid, when the atoms are moving about but sliding around with each other. And then there's gas, which is when the atoms are flying around freely. But then there's the fourth type of matter, which is when the atoms start to break apart, right, and then you sort of have a gas of free flying protons and electrons.
Yeah, protons and neutrons and electrons, so you have atomic nuclei, you know. For example, if you have hydrogen plasma, then it's just protons and electrons. There are no atoms there. There isn't really hydrogen anymore. Instead of every proton having an electron pair, now the protons electrons are just all flying around on their own, so they're not like confined to each other anymore. They can move freely throughout. And so that's what a plasma is relative to a gas. Plasma is sort of like a gas of charged particles.
Right, But the nucleus still stays together, or the nucleus breaks apart. In these atoms that are in the plasma.
The nucleus still stays together. Like the protons and neutrons are still bad together to each other.
I see. It's just that in the regular plasma, the electrons separate from the nucleus, and so you have nuclei and electrons flying around like a.
Gas m exactly, and that is a gas of charged particles. That's what a plasma is. And it makes sense that a plasma is hotter because in order for that to happen, you have to hump a lot of energy into those electrons so they can climb all the way up that energy ladder and eventually basically be free. It's like you've given the electrons enough energy to reach their escape velocity from the nuclei.
Right. It's like when you give too much sugar to a kid, they start to, you know, separate from their family at the park exactly.
They go into really fast orbits and then they're gone. But we see plasma in everyday life. It's not just like a weird idea. You know, the Sun, of course, is a huge ball of plasma, so you see it every day. But there's also plasma down here on Earth, like lightning has plasma in it, light bulbs have plasma in them. We create plasma all the time to do fusion research like atocamax and stuff like that. So plasma is weird. It's not some you can touch, but it is a part of our everyday life.
Yeah, it's what makes up fluorescent lights. Right, Like if you work in an office or anytime you go to any kind of commercial space, there are fluorescent lights. And that's plasma, right, that's plasma.
And plasma is a different kind of state of matter because it doesn't follow the rules of gases. You need different kinds of mathematics to describe plasma. It's called magneto hydrodynamics, and it combines electrodynamics, you know, the laws of how electrically charged objects feel each other and push on each other, with fluid dynamics hydrodynamics. So it's massively complicated, and it's one of the reasons that fusion research is really complicated because charge gases are very unstable and very hard to confine and very hard to do any calculations with as well.
Yeah, they're very nasty. They even sound like a marble supervillain with those names together. And so then that's when the atom starts to break apart. But you can go even further maybe and break apart the nucleus if you keep I guess, pushing the temperature, pushing the energy of the system.
And so you can get to the next stage of matter by cranking up the energy even hotter, so you break even more bonds. As you're saying, states of matter are sort of defined by the transitions where you're breaking bonds and different things become dominant. So the next frontier, then, beyond plasma, is to break open the nucleus and break open the protons and neutrons inside of it.
All right, well, let's get to the next frontier of the states of matter, quark glue on plasmas. We'll dive into that, but first let's take a quick break.
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Or right we're talking about Marvel supervillains, right, Daniel.
We're always talking about marvel.
Yeah, it seems Marvels should be paying us, or at least funding a good part of our podcast. I guess they pay us in movies somehow, entertainment.
I suppose so. But everybody else out there who's not making a podcast is also getting those movies.
But I guess we get to talk about it hopefully.
Fair use man, fair use, we get to make good jokes about it.
Well.
But the latest superhero here we're talking about is called the Core guon plasma, and we talked a little bit about states of matter and how you can go from solid to liquid to gas to plasma. This kind of plasma is sort of like the next level of a state of matter. Like if you take plasma and what you heat it up even more?
Yeah, if you take gas and you heat it up even more, then you can break up the next level of confinement. The next thing that's sort of me making this up. And so if you take the simplest sort of thing like protons and electrons, then you take those protons and you heat them up, then you can break them open into what's inside them. Right, Remember that protons are not fundamental objects. They're not point particles. They're actually made of smaller pieces that are inside them. The same way an atom is made of a nucleus and electrons. A proton is made of smaller bits, and those bits are quarks held together by gluons.
But I feel like you skip the step though, right, Like we were at plasma and that was nuclei and electrons flying around, and if you hat it up, at some point, the nuclei break up into protons and neutrons. Is that called anything or do we just totally ignore that? Or is that also just a regular plasma.
That would also be a regular plasma. That's sort of like fission. Right, You take a big nucleus and break it up into smaller pieces, that's fission. That's something we can do. Breaking open the proton and breaking open the nucleus are related because breaking open a proton means cracking the bonds between the quarks inside the proton. Well, what's holding the nucleus together anyway? Like, why does a nucleus stick together. It's a bunch of protons and a bunch of neutrons, that's only just charged particles plus charges and zero charges. Why does that anyways stick together. It sticks together because of the bonds between the quarks inside them, and so anyway, you can sort of think of a nucleus as sort of like a really big quirky particle where all the quarks are held together, not just into protons and neutrons, but also those quarks are holding onto the other quarks inside the other protons and neutrons to keep it together. So really, what you want to do to get to a quark google and plasma is just crack open all those quirky.
Bonds, right, But I guess there is sort of an intermediate step, is what I mean. It's like, you know, you have plasma with nuclei and electrons, and at some point you break open the nuclei into protons and neutrons. Is there a state of matter where it's like protons still held together, neutrons and electrons flying around.
Yeah, that would just be a plasma there. You've taken heavier nuclei and you've broken it down into hydrogen because hydrogen is protons.
Okay, So then at some point you heat it up so much that the protons start to break apart.
Yeah, then you can break open those protons and So protons have three quarks inside held together by gluons, but these are held together really tightly. The energy of the bonds holding the proton together is much greater than the energy of the bonds holding the electron to the proton, So it takes much higher temperatures to crack open that proton.
Yeah, it's a lot of energy, I mean even just to break up the nucleus. It's a lot, right, Like an atomic bomb is basically what happens when you start breaking up nuclei in atoms exactly.
And so in order to break up the proton into its bits, you need to get up to trillions of degrees kelvin. So five and a half trillion kelman is an estimate for the temperature of the next stage of matter. And that's what a quark gluon plasma is is to break open the proton so the quarks and the gluons inside can now run free. So just in the same way that a plasma is breaking open an atom, so the electron and then proton can fly free. Now you're breaking open what's inside the proton so that it can run free.
Wow, you're saying, like, do you heat things up and things are moving and crashing into each other so crazily that it actually like breaks open the protons.
Yeah, that's basically like the melting point of a proton. You heat it up to five and a half trilli in kelvin, and there's enough energy for the quarks to break the bonds of those gluons and to fly around free. You have a bunch of them all together, and you basically get a soup. You get a soup of particles that are not neutral in the strong force. Right, plasma is interesting because it's like a gas, but it's not neutral electrically. A quark gluon plasma is like a gas, but it's not neutral in the strong force what we call color charge. So you have a gas of colored particles.
Whoa interesting, Well, you got a soup before, but now you're saying, like the bits of the soup are now they're charged not just with electromagnetism but also the strong force color charge.
Yeah, exactly, they're charged in every possible way. They're charged in the weak forest, they're charged in electromagnetism because they have electric charge and they have color, so they can now move freely. You know, quarks are usually confined. They're like stuck inside a particle. Nobody's ever seen an individual quark usually just like trapped inside a proton or a neutron or some other kind of particle like a pion or you know, other masons. But here now the quarks can like fly free in the same way like electrons and a plasma are now flying freely. They're not trapped to an individual nucleus. The quarks and a cork glu on plasma can now move freely all the way around anywhere inside the plasma.
Like all by themselves. Right, that's the idea that they're not stuck to anything else.
They're not stuck to anything else, but they're also not all by themselves. A cork by itself in space wouldn't be a quark glu on plasma. It would just be a quark, and quarks can't really be by themselves in space. It would have so much energy you would just pop all these other particles out of the vacuum. A quark glu in plasma is when you have all huge density of particles, also all at high temperatures, and so they're sort of like happily living in this frothy vacuum.
Hmmm, I see, well, I guess maybe before we go further, just a naming question, like why still call it a plasma. It seems like, you know, this should maybe get its own category of state of matter.
What would you call it, like a quirklu and banana?
Yeah? Why not? I mean, if you're giving me the naming rights, for sure, let's go with the bananas state of matter because it is pretty bananas, right, like the trillions of degrees celsus. That's pretty crazy.
It is pretty crazy. I like the name plasma because it borrows the concept of the plasma we're familiar with that you're breaking things open and now you have charged objects, but they're just charged in another way. So it sort of like generalizes the concept of plasma in the plasma we're familiar with should be called like electric plasma, and so this could be called like a color plasma or something like that. But you know, there's a relationship between the plasma we're familiar with and this kind of plasma. So I think it works. But you know, whatever, I have a name.
How about calling it coasma because you know it's a quantum quark plasma quasma?
Yeah, what do you think chasma. That sounds like something that leaks from your wounds when they haven't been treated. Well.
But that's good, right, brings up interesting associations. I mean, it's better than coming up with a blood association.
That's true. That's true. That is pretty weird. But this stuff is also super weird and super fascinating to study. You know, not only would it be really really hot, it also is super duper dense. Like a cubic centimeter of this stuff like a tea spoon, you know, would weigh about forty billion tons here on Earth. It's incredibly strange stuff.
Wait, I guess you're confusing me here bringing in density. Now, I guess I think what you're saying is that this weird state of plasma, which we're gonna call quasma now, maybe only happens if you have that much density, right, Like you, the only way to break open a proton is if things are like super dense, right, because, as you said, if you just have a protonot in space, it's not going to split open, or if it is split open into quarks, the quarts is just gonna you know, explode or disappear. So you sort of need this super dense state in order to have a coasma.
Yeah, and remember that there's a tight connection between temperature and density. Tegn object to a certain temperature and you squeeze it, it gets hotter, right, And so increasing the density also increases the temperature. And so the conditions under which we have created quirk blown plasmas are this temperature and this density. And also think in your mind of like that phase diagram maybe you learned about in school. The transitions between phases are not just temperature dependent, they're also density dependent, right there depend on the pressure. So for example, where water freezes or where it turns into gas, it doesn't just depend on the temperature, it also depends on the pressure, effectively the density of the material.
I see. So when you're saying like this is a state of matter that happens when things get really hot, that's not quite the whole, right, Like you have to get it both hot and dance in order to get a couasma.
Exactly, a single proton flying through the universe at very high speeds, or even one hundred of them flying at very high speeds don't get you a quasma.
Yeah, Yeah, that keeps saying it. If you keep saying it. It's gonna happen.
It's gonna happen. It's kind of growing on. It's fun to say quasma. Yeah, it doesn't make you queasy. And you're right. You need density and temperature, and so all of these phase transitions are temperature and density dependent. Mostly we think about them as temperature because that's the dominant effect. But there really is a two dimensional diagram you have to keep in mind.
Right, or just one dial, which is the bananas dial, right, Like if things get more bananas, you know, if you take a solid and put it under bananas conditions, it's gonna melt right, right.
Well, then the question is, because there's a maximum temperature absolute hot, is there a maximum bananas? Can you get to absolute bananas in the universe?
I don't know, you tell me?
Is that basically what this podcast is about the search for absolute bananas.
The absolute state of bananas. That's the you know, most major religions are after that state of enlightenment.
We'll get there one day, another one hundred episodes or so.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a journey. But yeah. So a couasma, then is when things get so bananas that even protons break apart. And so you have this soup and you're saying that it's so intense that actually, if you try to like grow this or have like a whole sun full of quasma, it would be crazy. It would be like super duper you basically maybe even get a black hole.
Yeah. I haven't done the calculations, but it would be incredibly intense, and the amount of energy to make a sun sized blob of quasma would be astronomical. Absolutely, we've only ever made super tiny amounts of it here on our colliders on Earth.
Hmm, all right, we'll get into whether we've seen it and what it all means, but I guess, but the main picture you're trying to paint is that it's sort of like a quantum It's not so much as super like a quantum mechanical soup, right, Like, because quarks can really be by themselves, so they need to sort of be around gluons kind of for them to stick around, right, And so it's very sort of quantum mechanical dependent. I guess what I mean. It's a quantum mechanical thing.
It is definitely a quantum mechanical thing. And one of the reasons it's super fascinating is that we're forcing the universe to reveal a different kind of thing that it can do. You know, solids and liquids and gases. These are all just like the dances of lots of tiny particles operating together, and it's incredible what emerges, you know. And so here we have forced the universe to show us another trick that it can pull off. How many phases are there? We don't know, right this is like an idea that came about a few decades ago, and we achieved it and proved it and are studying it. We don't know how many different phases of matter there might be and what each of them might tell us about the most fundamental picture in the early universe.
Yeah, and I guess what I mean is in a coasma, you can't really keep track of one quark, can you. It's like it's all sort of like bound together, and we're quantum mechanical ways, but not as bound as the inside of a proton, but it's still sort of like, you know, it's all sort of entangled, I guess, is what I mean.
They're all bound together and sloshing about, and there's a huge amount of energy, so you're constantly creating new quarks and anti quarks and then destroying them as well. So in that sense, he has like a frothing pile of these particles.
Yeah, and it's hotter than anything that we've seen, right, even like the inside of a neutron star is not as hot.
That's right. It was the champion in our what is the Hottest Thing in the Universe episode? The neutron star interior might get up to like one hundred billion degrees Calvin, But quarklow on plasmas, we think, reach into the trillions, and so it might actually be the hottest thing in the universe, unless, of course, alien particle physicists are even hotter than we are and they've reached absolute banana.
Maybe they are bananas, which automatically makes them hot, I guess, depending on how hungry you are hold on.
If aliens are bananas, then what's their favorite snack? Is it? Podcasters?
That's home not? Maybe they have a whole podcast where they joke around about eating or what cartoonists, yeah, or physicists? All right, well, I guess then the question is, can you have a quasma a quark gluon plasma naturally out in nature, like can you imagine anything having that like or would you have to like maybe go inside of a black hole for that.
Oh, we don't know what's going on inside a black hole. It's possible that you get that kind of thing there. We also don't know what's going on at the heart of neutron stars. It's also very hot and very dense. Probably not hot and dense enough to make cork gluon plasmas, but still uncertain. However, we do think that there was a moment in the history of the universe when everything was a quark gluon plasma, when that's all there was. The whole universe was nothing but quasma.
You mean I get the Big Bang?
Yes, very early on, before there were particles, before there were protons, before there were bananas, there was quasma.
All right, Well, let's get into more of the Big Bang and whether or not we've recreated this coasma or quarn glue on plasma here on Earth. But first let's take another quick break.
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All right, we're talking about Coasma, the latest Marvel super villain that we just made up all rights reserve. I think I think it was one of the Infinity Stones, maybe the Coasmama Stone.
You know. We got a question on Twitter yesterday about how I laugh at your jokes and whether I'm actually laughing every time or if I have a button I press over here to just like generate the same chuckle over again.
Because my jokes are so bad.
Is that the idea?
Oh I don't know, or maybe I just laughed the same exact way every time and it sounds suspicious like a laughter.
I see, Well, I have a button right here. It's my whoa button. Whenever you say something mind blowing, I just go whoa the same.
Somebody should sample out to make a song just based on my laughing and.
Your what Yeah, yeah, I will not be listening to that. It makes me very queasyasmic. All right, we're talking about quark gluon plasma, which is I guess sort of like a fifth state of matter or would you say it's still part of the fourth state of matter.
It's definitely its own state of matter. How many states of matter there are is another question, you know, like does a Bose Einstein condensate count as a state of matter. Some people would say yes, So the number of states of matter is a little bit fuzzy. But this is definitely its own thing.
Right, And you said that it doesn't happen or maybe it probably doesn't happen at the center of neutron stars, which get up to you know, hundreds of billions of Calvin, which is kind of crazy to me because that neutron star is basically like the hottest thing in the universe right now, and it's like one step removed from a black hole. So you're saying, like a quark gluon plasma basically sort of can't really happen naturally in the universe.
Yeah, if you think humans aren't natural, then it can't really happen naturally. We think that at the heart of neutron stars there are still neutrons, right, that the protons and electrons have been squeezed together, so electron is forced inside the proton and basically converts it into a neutron, and that what you have is a very powerful soup of neutrons with very strong forces that we struggle to calculate and to understand the pressure and the density and all that stuff. We did an episode recently about Nicer, which is a telescope trying to study the interior of neutron stars specifically to answer that question what's going on, And it's so hard because the strong force is really tricky to do calculations with. But we don't think that the pressure and temperature inside a neutron star are hot enough to actually break those neutrons up, so you have like essentially one big object. You can think of a quark lowan plasma sort of like a super particle, where all the quarks are all bound together, you know, into one big object because they're all feeling each other. Or conversely, you could think of like a proton as like a tiny little serving of quarkluw on plasma.
Hmmm, like a little teaspoon of it. What about like in a supernova, like if a star explodes, could you have a little bit of a coasma moment momentarily, at.
Least potentially, you could get collisions? Right, The way to make a quarkluwin plasma is to recreate super high energy collisions, and we do that here on Earth, and so it's possible that there are quark gluon plasmas produced in supernovia's. It's also possible that there's tiny amounts of quark glu and plasma produced when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. Remember, super high energy protons or iron nuclei are hitting the atmosphere all the time, so you strike it just right and you might get flashes of quark gluon plasma.
Whoa, we could be like being rained down upon by.
Quasma exactly Quasma rain. I think that was a song by Prince right.
Yeah, well the artist formerly known yes me. Yeah, just like quasma is the stata matter formerly known as the quark gluon plasma exactly.
Well we sound so hip.
Yeah, So I guess you're saying it happens in collisions, and so you make it basically at the particle collider there in Geneva.
We do make it, but you can't make it by just smashing protons together. There aren't like enough quarks and gluons in there, which you need. Is really much more like a soup. So we make it when we collide heavier stuff. Our collider is capable not just of accelerating protons, but also of accelerating things like lead or gold nuclei. You strip away all the electrons again just by heating it up. You have like a gold or lead plasma. You take all the positively charged stuff, you put it into the accelerator. You zip that around at really high speed, and you smash it together, and you make this crazy soup of quarks and gluons all smashed together. And so if people have been doing that for decades and trying to see if we can make a cork luon plasma very briefly in the collider.
I guess if you just smash protons together, like if a proton smashes another proton, you will get sort of a soup of quarks and gluons. Right. It just maybe won't last very long, or it'll just fly off.
Yeah, there's not really enough there to make the density you need. You can't break protons open by smashing them against each other. That's what we do. When you get cork quark interactions directly, you don't really get this new state of matter the same way. Like you know, two particles don't make a gas. To define this state of matter, you need the temperature, and you also need the density, and then it has to follow these new rules of this state of matter. There are like equations that define what happens in this state of matter. So quarks can sort of like float around freely. That doesn't happen when you just have two protons smashing into each other, and maybe even like trading quarks. The quarks don't have a chance to like muck around and do all sorts of interesting things that they couldn't otherwise do.
I see, because when you're smashing I guess, as you smash two protons, you really only have six quarks to play with. And I think what you're saying is that you know, six quarts still make aquasma.
It's sort of like if you have two cars, people can swap cars, and that's what happens when two protons collide, Like two quarks go over here, two quarks go over there. What we're talking about is more like you got two buses and everybody gets off the bus and has a party. And that's pretty different than people just like swapping cars. And so it's the physics of that party between the quarks. When the quarks can really fly around free, that makes it a quark blow on plasma.
Right, And you're saying that you can do that in the collider by smashing gold nuclei together, and so what's going on Like this nuclei smash into each other and all the protons and neutrons inside of those nuclei break apart, and then you have that quark party for a little bit.
That's what we think happens, But it's really tricky to figure out if that's what's actually happening, because even if you don't get a quark glu on plasma. When you smash two nuclei together, you get a big mess. Right, you destroy both nuclei, you get protons and neutrons and all sorts of other things happening. It's sort of like you have, you know, eighty proton collisions on top of each other. All sorts of crazy stuff is made. So to figure out whether a quarklow on plasma is made or another big kind of mess was a big challenge and required a lot of subtle sort of statistical analysis and thinking about like what that quarklu on plasma does for the brief nanoseconds that it exists, and how you can tell that it was there.
Right, that's the other thing about it, because it's a little weird that you would call it a state of matter because it basically doesn't last. Right, It's not actually a state. It's more like a like an explosion maybe, or like a crash that you you know, pause in the middle kind of because you know, you form you smash these gold nuclei together, everything smuches together. Then quarks are sort of like floating around briefly. But it's so crazy and bananas that it just all flies off and explodes immediately.
Right, almost not quite immediately. We think it lasts for long enough to do some sort of quark law on plasma ey kind of stuff, and that's why we concluded that it's there, that's a real thing, that it actually is a state of matter, because it lasts long enough to produce effects that you can't otherwise get. You're right, that doesn't last very long, and unless it's surrounded by other quarklow on plasma, it will definitely just expand and cool and then just turn into a bunch of particles. Right, So it doesn't last for very long, but it does last long enough to do unique things things you can't see without a quark lu on plasma, and that time is short but not zero.
Right, like maybe for a brief, you know, nanosecond. It follows the rules of a coasma exactly.
And one of the things that a quasma can do that a plasma cannot is that it seems to have, for example, very very low viscosity, like these things act like sort of super flaws. Quorks can like move from one side to the other without facing sort of any resistance at all, which is very confusing because quarks have very strong interactions with each other. So this is like property that just sort of like emerges when you have all these quarks in this crazy condition m to.
A party, like everyone becomes more uninhibited. They do exactly you're saying. It lasts like a nanoseconds. How long does it last? And when you do it in the collider.
It doesn't last for very long. We're definitely talking about times less than a pico second. The precise lifetime depends a little bit on the energy and on what went in, but we're talking about super duper tiny amounts of time, less than ten of the minus twelve or ten of the minus fifteen seconds.
But I guess you could still claim that for that brief amount of time, you created a quark gluon plasma.
Yeah, exactly, because we've seen evidence of it. Like they can do calculations and they predict what a quarklow on plasma can do, like this low viscosity condition, or the kind of particles that shoot out of a quarkluw on plasma. Corkoln plasma has its own special density and so tends to like stifle particles from flying out. If you didn't have a quarkalm plasma, you tend to see like more particles flying out at weird angles. And if you don't see that, it suggests that you probably did see a quarklo on plasma. It like quenches the emissions of some of these particles, and that's one of the signatures that led them to conclude that they really had created this thing at the Large Hadron Collider m.
I see, it's like if if you didn't have the coasma, things would just fly off, like they would just kind of bounce off each other all this stuff. But if you sort of do click into this new state of matter, at least briefly, it's going to change how the things the thing actually explodes.
Exactly, and it does other really weird stuff like changing into a new kind of matter changes also the temperature of the thing in a really weird way, because remember, temperature depends not just on the velocity of the objects inside you, but also in the number of ways that they can wiggle. If you've done any statistical physics, you know the temperatures related to the number of degrees of which means like can you have vibrations, can you have rotations? And a quarklow on plasma has more ways to wiggle because you've broken the particles up into their constituents. And so actually what happens when you create a quark GluN plasma is that the temperature goes up briefly because now you have more degrees of freedom, more ways to wiggle. So the temperatures like has a new definition and it goes up, and then of course it very rapidly cools, and so there are these very strange thermal effects of a quark luon plasma.
Whoa, it gets like even more banima.
Exactly, it approaches maximum banana. And in the end, it's something that we want to understand because we do think that our whole universe came from a quark gluon plasma that in the very early days, the energy density was so great that before protons and neutrons were made, everything was just this big soup of quarks and gluons, and you know, how they came together to make particles really determines how the universe is shaped. Like, the reason we have protons and neutrons, the reason the protons and neutrons have the mass that they do is because the power of the strong force to bind them into these particles. So it's something we'd really like to understand, something which will really reveal the whole structure of the matter of the universe that we enjoy.
Right, Like I think if you sort of like hit the rewind button on the universe, you start with now, which is like things are solid and liquid and gas and some plasma here and there. But as you turn back time towards a big Bang, closer to the Big Bang, things sort of were all plasma and even closer to the origin of the Big Bang than things were quasma. Right, that's I think what you're saying. It's like before there was plasma and stuff and planets and things like that, everything was just a big cord blue on soup.
Yeah, and who knows what's beyond that, Like what's beyond quasma? Maybe banasma?
There you go, Can we can we get credit for coining it banagma.
I don't know.
It's going to create a coin asthma, big banasma, bigasthma. That's the new theory the origin of the universe. But jokes aside, Yes, exactly as you crank back time, you go up in temperature, and so you reveal that the universe went through these phase transitions, and we think that there are even more beyond quasma, where the rules of the universe are effectively different. Right, In every different temperature regime, the rules of how things work tend to change, right, you know, the same way that like the rules of solids and gases and liquids are different from plasmas and quasmas and banasmas. The effective laws of the universe are different. We don't know what the fundamental laws are, if there's like the highest temperature, there's a deepest level, or if it's just like an infinite stack of effective laws. But we'd like to learn what those laws are and understand them as far back as we can.
Right, because I think you do have sort of ideas for this banasma, right, Like closer to the Big Bang is kind of when like even the quantum fields start to melt together, right.
Yeah, exactly, the very rules of quantum theory change, and for example, the weak force is no longer weak, like aquasma exists when there's already a Higgs field that tells the quarks how much mass they have. At some time the very early universe, at very very high temperatures, the Higgs field hasn't even relaxed to its low level, and so particle masses aren't even well defined. At some point, all particles have zero mass in the very very early universe, so the effective laws of how things work are completely different. That's not something we can achieve in our collider today, of course.
Well, but it's interesting to think that maybe you know, right now you're smashing these things together and you get into this quarkluwon quasma. Is it possible you think that one day you'll smash things together so much that you'll actually like get to that panasma level where even the quantum fields are getting melted together.
It's possible because quark could be made of even smaller particles and they could be bound together by something else. So if one day we can smash open quarks and see what's inside them, then eventually maybe we could smash quarks together at such high speeds that we could make up plasma of whatever's inside quarks. We have no idea if those particles exist, and what energy would be required to make that sort of next level plasma, we don't know, but in theory it's probably possible, and you know the structure of the universe, it seems to be hierarchical. It seems like as you get down to the smaller and smaller pieces, it's always made of something smaller, which is made of something smaller, very unlikely. We are now at the smallest level, so it's very likely that quarks are made of some smaller things. So in principle, that state of matter can exist and probably did exist in the very early universe. Well it must have, right, Yeah, we don't know, but we don't understand, and at some point our whole theory of quantum mechanics breaks down because the gravitational effects start to be important because the energy density is so high. And at that point you need a theory of quantum gravity, which we just don't have. And so that's when you get to like absolute hot and beyond that, we just can't even predict what matter or you know, the universe itself would.
Be like right, right, you need panessthma theory to peel away of the secrets of the universe.
To slice it up into your very hot oatmeal.
Slip it through that you know, moment of truth.
And it's really the forefront of particle physics because it's the thing that we understand the least. The strong force is the strongest force, but it's also the hardest to p oh because it's so powerful that almost everything around us is already tightly bound by the strong force. For example, electrodynamics has been tested like one part in a billion, the weak force has been tested like one part in a few thousand. A strong force has only been tested to like one or two parts in one hundred. So it's the thing that we understand the least, but it's maybe the most important part of the universe. So corklawn plasma is super awesome because it lets us test our understanding of the strong.
Force, right, Yeah, it's pretty amazing that like, as humans who are the product of the universe, we've been able to reglo at least you have been able to recreate, you know, conditions in the universe that are closer to the Big Bang than anything existing out there. Basically in the universe, like the universe itself hasn't been able to go back to that state, probably, but like humans playing around with them, so magnets that can.
Yeah, we think that the corkoln plaster probably existed like ten to the minus ten seconds after the Big Bang, and very briefly only for like maybe ten to the minus six seconds, So it's been a long time since the universe has been making this stuff. So yeah, maybe it's sort of like nostalgic. It's like, oh, I remember that that.
Was cool, or a maze going what are you doing? You're gonna kill us all one of the.
Two maybe, but we'll learn something along the way.
All right, Well, that's quark gluon plasma, which we are calling in this episode cosma. Again, we totally made that up. And don't go to a physics conference with a paper titled cosma unless you, I guess give us credit.
Right, Yeah, good luck with that.
But it is interesting to think about kind of all the different states of matter that matter and energy in the universe can take, right, It's almost like it likes to play around in a different levels.
Yeah, and it's sort of another way to explore the universe. Instead of taking one particle apart and looking inside of it and then looking inside of that one, It's like, let's make the universe reveal the different kind of dances that it can do. What happens when you take a lot of particles and squeeze them together. What mathematics emerges that can describe that in a symbol way. It's mind blowing to me that it's even possible. You know, why are there simple mathematical rules to describe how gases work? It should be incredibly complicated. It should be like chaos that emerges from string theory. It should be impossible. But for some reason, our universe is describable in terms of simple mathematical rules at lots of different levels. And here we have found another one.
Right, Well, it's because these forces have sort of different ranges, right, Like, some forces are important at the microscopic level and some forces are more important at the grander level, And so you can have these sort of rules that describe it.
Right, you can, But it's not always possible. You know why are hurricanes hard to describe? Because it's a chaotic combination of lots of smaller things. Even if there is just one rule describing how drops interact, it's not trivial to describe the motion of billions and trillions of drops altogether. It's chaotic. It's hard to model, But sometimes it's not. Sometimes you can find a simple mathematical story that summarizes the important bits and ignores all the details why that happens is a mystery to me, but I'm glad that it does.
Yeah, we'll leave it to the hurricane plasma or horasma physicists to figure out.
I think we've coined enough terms for today, so we better wrap up.
We reached out our allowance. Our heart is going to be like, all right, guys, wrap it up, all right. Well, the next time you look up at the sky or the night sky, or even today's guy, think about all the quasma that's being maybe formed out there and raining down upon you, showering you with little bits of matter that hasn't existed since the beginning of the universe.
And think about all the amazing and crazy things that our universe can do, and all those things that you can taste on the buffet of the universe's physics.
Thanks for joining us, See you next time.
Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio ap Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digestors to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's Last Sustainability to learn more.
There are children, friends, and families walking riding on paths and roads every day. Remember they're real people with loved ones who need them to get home safely. Protect our cyclists and pedestrians because they're people too. Go safely California from the California Office of Traffic Safety and Caltrans.
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