Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - 4 ways physics could end the world

Episode Date: January 28, 2020

What would happen if.... Gravity turned off for 3 seconds The earth started rotating the other way All electrons within 1 light year suddenly disappeared Our sun shut off for 2 weeks Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone.

Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind someone. of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, Daniel, do you enjoy watching disaster movies? You mean, do I like watching billions of people perish on screen? Now you're making me feel bad about enjoying Titanic. But I guess, I mean, do you like the physics of those disaster movies, or do you feel like it's always implausible or impossible? Well, I feel like the solution in those movies is always either nuke it or send Bruce Willis. What's wrong with sending Bruce Willis? Is that physically impossible? He's basically the human nuke.

What about if a cosmic space banana suddenly Kareenstores Earth and crashes into our planet? Well, I think then we have to send Bruce Willis with a nuke to blow that thing up to make a cosmic smoothie. Well, okay, so if you were in Hollywood and you were pitching a physics-based disaster movie, what would you pitch? Oh, man, we have so many good ways to end the world with physics. That doesn't make me feel good. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of Ph.D. Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I think about how the world might end. He's an optimist, folks. I'm a planner.

Is there such a thing as an optimist physicist, or are they all pretty down on the end of the universe? No, we are all optimistic because, you know, we're relying on. on society to fund our abstract thinking about the nature of reality of the universe and stuff. So you got to believe in a sort of educated, optimistic forward-thinking society for physics to even be a thing. Always believe in other people's money. Yes, your optimistic motto. If the world ends or society crumbles, there's not going to be a lot of openings for physics professors in the end days. All right. Well, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I-Hard Radio. In which we talk about

all the amazing and crazy and silly and bonkers things, space Cheetos and giant space bananas, and talk about it in a way that we hope you understand and enjoy. And Bruce Willis. Let's not forget Bruce Willis. He's in the category of giant space bananas, right? He's a kind of banana. Yeah, we talk about all the amazing things we know and all the amazing things we don't know about the universe, including some of the things we covered in our book. We have no idea, a guide to the unknown universe. Yeah, in which we talk about all the crazy open questions of the universe. Basic stuff that we should know about our cosmic neighborhood and our place in the universe, but physics still hasn't figured out. Yeah, it's a book that too, I think up until recently

has now been translated to over 20 languages. So those of you out there listening across the world, I'm sure there is a book version of this book in your language. Have you read it in any of the other languages? I've read them all in all the different languages. I don't understand any of it. But I think I have a pretty good idea of what we wrote. I just wonder how all of our bad puns were translated, like to Korean. It seems to me like an impossible task. Yeah. Those graphical puns, I think, is what you mean.

No, it's a fun book, and it talks about all the things that we don't know about the universe and the ways we might figure them out. One thing we didn't talk about in the book, though, is how humanity might end. That's right. We talked a bit about how the universe might end, but there's a lot that can happen before the universe ends. You're thinking they're not the same thing. You don't think humans are going to make it all the way?

I'm thinking that when we end, the universe ends for us. Because we're going to cause the end of the universe? Or nothing else matters. That's right. I wouldn't put it past physicist to sort of converge with those two things. I knew you were going to pin it on physicists. You know, if somebody's going to cause the end of the universe, I'm going to blame politicians, not a physicist.

Really? Not physicists. It's not going to be a physicist pressing that big red button, you know, that launches the death device, the doomed day device that creates the cosmic instability that, you know, ruins the structure of space time or whatever. Yeah, you're right. I'll give you that. It's probably going to be the physicist grad student pressing the button. Accidentally putting their coffee down on the button. Oops, what was that? But yeah, today's podcast, we'll be getting into a topic that's a little bit dark about the outlook for humanity.

Yeah, we pay attention to our listeners and we read everything you guys write to us on email and on Twitter so if you have a question about the universe or how humanity might end or something you heard about you didn't understand, please send it to us. But this episode is in response to a very specific question

that came in from listeners about different ways that physics might kill you. And not just from boredom, right? Not just from... Just kidding. Now, physics is very exciting and Jason had a very interesting question here, because he envisions four ways in which physics could possibly end the world as we know it, and possibly the universe, do you think, or just the earth? I think probably just

the earth or just humanity. I think in all these four scenarios, the universe will truck on, even if humanity is extinguished. And what do you think Jason is thinking here? Do you think he's worried about these things happening? Do you think he is trying to cause these things to happen, perhaps, hopefully not? Yeah, this is a similar Kwanji. I'm not sure if in answering his question, we are enabling a supervillain who's making plans to sort of ruin humanity or maybe somebody who's like planning to protect humanity against the coming of potential supervillains. This is a classic question in philosophy, you know, by creating technology and spreading knowledge, are you enabling war or preventing it? You think Jason might be the Bruce Willis

of Twitter? Or he might be the Lex Luthor, right? One of us too. Either way, we're going to answer your question, Jason, and hope for the best. And so today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question, What are four ways in which physics could end the world? And we've got more than four ways. We only have time to cover four ways, right? We're only explaining four of them today. That's right.

This is the top four of a very, very long list of ways to kill everybody on Earth using physics. These are the top just because these are the ones Jason picked, or do you think Jason nailed the four most concerning ways that physics could end the world? Oh, I think it's like a thousand-way tie for first place, but these are the four that Jason thought about. I guess if it ends the world, they're all equally bad, right? That's right.

Or equally good for somebody, not us. No, but these are four very creative ways to potentially kill off humanity, and they probe sort of an understanding of the nature of matter and gravity and electrons and all that stuff. So I thought it would be a lot of fun to go through them and really think about the physics of what would happen in each scenario. So this is what Jason wrote in his tweet.

He wrote, rate these events from most catastrophic to least. Number one, gravity turns off for three seconds and then back on. Number two, the Earth suddenly starts spinning backwards. Number three, every electron within one light year of Earth suddenly disappears. Number four, the sun shuts down for two weeks.

And then he later clarified that it's still there, but it just sort of turned off and went dark. Oh, it winks for two weeks. That's a long wink, man. It's very specific, too, two weeks. It's like, you know, not, you know, three weeks, not, you know, 16 days. He's like, it sounds like he's planning for this. Yeah, he's making some specific plans.

These are not just arbitrary numbers, you know. I think he's really tuned. these catastrophic events, makes me wonder about how much planning he's done. Well, I think it's pretty cool that one of our listeners sort of sat around, you know, and thought of all the things that could happen in the universe and wondered what, how these things were plausible and how they would affect us. Yeah, and I think a lot of these have sort of physics implications that you might not think of when you first hear it.

There's an initial idea, and then there's some subtlety to each one. So they're awesome, not just because they might cause the death of billions of people, but they might, along the way, teach those billions of people something about physics. They all sound pretty, hmm, I'm not sure how to say this. Were you going to say plausible? It sort of sounds like the plot of a spy movie or a disaster movie, you know? Yeah, a lot of these movies start off with some catastrophic event or some dramatic event that makes you wonder like, ooh, how did that happen? Or how did the aliens get control of gravity or, you know, who's deleting all these electrons from the universe or something?

But most of these movies end up unsatisfying. They're like, oh, it's the infinitely folding proton. They can do anything or something. Oh, I see. Or dark matter. Always go with dark matter or quantum realm. That solves everything. Oh, man.

Don't get me started on the science fiction novels that lean on dark matter. You go to a dark place. I do. I recently read Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, and it basically has nothing to do with dark matter. You think he just meant like matters that are dark? I don't know what he meant. It's really more about the quantum multiverse. It's like the many worlds theory, so dark matter.

I think it was just like random clickbait physics title. Maybe we should, this is not fair, though, for me to criticize him. Blake Crouch, if you're a listener, please come on the podcast and argue with me about the science in your novel. Invitation extended. Today, it's going to be a little bit of a different episode. So we're going to tackle each of these possible scenarios that Jason came up with. And we're going to ask people on the street what they think of it. And we're going to try to explain what would happen if these things actually happen.

That's right. So I had the hilarious and enjoyable task of walking around campus at UC Irvine and asking people what they thought would happen in these catastrophic scenarios. And did people look at you with fear in their eyes or were they amuse? Do they run away? They didn't look at me the way we sort of mentally looked at Jason for posing these questions. They weren't worried that I was planning to enact any of these scenarios. I think they enjoyed thinking about them, yeah.

All right, well, let's tackle these one at a time. And so we'll start with Jason's number one on the list, which is what would happen if gravity turns off for three seconds and then it turns back on? Here's what people had to say. What do you think would happen if a gravity just shut off for like three seconds? People, I think, would be flying up. The buildings, I think, like if their foundations were strong enough,

they would stay here on the earth. But the people would, like, fly up for a little bit. And then when the gravity comes back on, they'll fall down. If there's no gravity, that means the Earth cannot hold us. Everyone maybe will just fly to the sky in three seconds. And after three seconds, the grabs his back. And we will just fail off. What do you think?

Is it pretty realistic what people envision? Yeah, mostly. I think people think about the immediate thing that they are being held to the Earth, and that that would stop if gravity was turned off. And then they're worried about, you know, like how high up are you going to get and how catastrophic would it be if gravity turned back on? Well, this is an interesting scenario, I guess. I guess we all sort of wonder what would happen if gravity didn't exist.

But I think he's asking what would happen if it's suddenly turned off? You know, like one second we have gravity and the next millisecond we don't have gravity. Yeah, because we wouldn't even be here without gravity, right? Gravity is the reason why we have the Earth. It's the reason why we have any sort of structure or anything going on. Without gravity, stuff would just still be floating out there dilute in space. So you need gravity to make the Earth, the people, and the sun and all that stuff. And this question is about what happens if somebody, like, bumped against the gravity light switch accidentally in the universe control room.

That's right. God, she accidentally, you know, lean against the wall, hit the switch. Yeah, you put her coffee down in the wrong spot or something. Right. A lot of people said that you would fly. up, right? And, you know, gravity is holding us down. That's certainly true.

But if gravity disappeared, you wouldn't immediately fly up. Oh, interesting. Well, I guess my first question before we get into the effects is, is this even possible? Could gravity just turn off for three seconds and then back on? Not that I'm aware of. I mean, we have no way to manipulate gravity or understand the structure of space time. We don't even really know what gravity is. You know, is it just like the way that space is bent by having mass and energy around?

Is it a force like the other ones? But of course, we don't have an understanding of the quantum nature of it. So we don't really understand what gravity is and how it works. So we definitely don't know how to turn it on and off. We even talked on a podcast about like anti-gravity devices. Yeah, I guess I mean, do you know of any situation in physics in the universe in which gravity doesn't work? You know, like we talked once about like anti-gravity particles maybe? could we somehow suddenly be washed over by anti-gravity particles

or, you know, is it even plausible for gravity to suddenly not work? I don't think you could turn off gravity. The thing you might be able to do is counteract it. Like if you cranked up dark energy right here at the earth, dark energy is basically doing the opposite of gravity, right? It's stretching space and moving things further apart. So if you somehow were able to manipulate dark energy in a way to like expand space

to change its curvature locally then you could effectively have the opposite effect of gravity canceling it out so you might be able to balance gravity I mean this is really a stretch we don't even know what dark energy is but if I had to go somewhere I would instead of turning off gravity

I would try to balance it with dark energy but that's a maybe with a maybe with a maybe on top of it so if I was writing the Tom Hanks Down Brown novel I would have the evil zealid create a dark energy bomb. A dark energy bomb?

Yeah, that somehow... I'm just spitballing here. And this is not a suggestion for anyone out there. But in the movie, you might create a bomb that suddenly, you know, gives off a lot of dark energy, which cancels gravity for three seconds here on Earth. What do you think would have the most sort of first weekend ticket sales? A dark energy bomb or a dark energy laser or a dark energy gun?

As long as it's called dark energy, I think. The name will totally just sell it. The title of Blake Crouch's next novel that has nothing to do with dark energy. All right. Well, it sounds like, you know, it's not impossible. There's, you know, that you could envision a movie using this plot device. I like the way you call it not impossible, which makes it sort of suggest that maybe it's possible. But like, in the same way, like, it's not impossible that we could be the number one podcast in the world.

Wait, we're not. Could happen. We need the dark podcast bomb to go off for that to happen. That's right. And boost our ratings. At least in my universe, we're number one, Daniel. We're the number one podcast that I listen to. All right.

So let's get into what would happen if you actually turned off gravity for three seconds and then turn it back on. But first, let's take a quick break. LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged. and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy?

That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together,

and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

All right, Daniel, walk us through this scenario. So paint us the picture. If I turned off gravity for three seconds, what would happen? Well, the first thing would happen is that you would fly off the Earth, but not straight up. Well, I can't fly down. I'm guessing you mean like I would fly in the direction that the Earth is rotating? Yeah, you can think of yourself as sort of orbiting the Earth just above the surface. Think about what would happen to the moon if gravity turns.

off. The moon would not fly straight away from the Earth. It would keep going the direction it's going. It would shoot off in a line tangent to the circle it's moving in. Right? Because what gravity is doing is it sort of bending it in a circle. So gravity disappears. The moon shoots off sort of sideways. So if you're like a little moon of the Earth, everybody's their own little tiny moon, then what happens is that you shoot off sort of at an angle to the surface. Oh, I see. Like it's tangent to the circle too, right? Yeah, precisely. It's tandem. We just keep going. It would no longer be reined into an orbital circle. It's like you cut the string that is tying it to the Earth.

Yeah, and remember, when gravity turns off, there's nothing like pushing you away from the Earth. It's not like you're getting forced away. I've seen a lot of science fiction movies, you know, that when gravity, when you get into space or whatever, things sort of automatically float away from you. They don't necessarily unless you give them a push. But in this case, you're already moving away from the Earth,

and it's gravity that keeps you on the earth. So when you turn that off, then you just sort of keep going in the direction you were going. So everybody would float up. Yeah, I guess you wouldn't float technically away from the earth, but to us here on Earth,

where I'm standing, it would seem like I'm floating up. Because the Earth is rotating under you. Right, yeah. Like the house will keep moving around the Earth, but I am sort of now going tangent to the Earth, but it's also moving with me, so it'll seem like I'm floating up.

Yeah, it will. But eventually, if it's for long enough, then the Earth will curve away from you and you no longer be directly above your house or your garden or wherever you stood. Like if you painted an X under you and then gravity turned off, the X would seem to be under you for a little while, but then it would no longer be right under you because of the curve of the earth. And so would this happen suddenly or slowly? You know, like let's say boom, I turn off gravity. Am I now like falling up or am I, you know, be like, wait, what's going on?

Would it be slow or fast? It wouldn't be too fast. You'd be floating up. because the curvature of the Earth is pretty small. And so you're mostly already going in the right direction. Oh, I see. It wouldn't be like I was falling up. It would be more like detaching from Earth. Yeah. And the Earth would continue to curve sort of away under you,

and you keep going in the same direction. And so the distance would increase sort of a nonlinear rate, but the very first few seconds, you wouldn't get that high. How high would you actually get? If gravity turned off for three seconds, I start floating up, how high do you think would I get? It's a great question. I actually had to sit down and do this calculation because I wasn't sure.

And the way to think about it is that the Earth is sort of rotating out from under you. Remember, you're still moving in a straight line, and the Earth is rotating out from under you. I am now heading straight to the Moon or something. Yeah, you're being shot out into space. It's a massive slingshot. Or like, think about the Earth as a big merry-go-round and you suddenly let go, and then you're getting flung out into space. But the earth is really big and really round. And the curvature, as you know, is not that easy to spot.

So the only reason you're leaving the surface of the earth is because of that curvature. And so in three seconds, you would actually only float up about 14 centimeters. So if gravity turned off for three seconds, I would, me, elephants, giraffes, cars out there would float for about 14 centimeters and then come back down. Yeah. So it's like you take a little hop, right? It's big enough for you to notice, but not big enough to really be dangerous. But I would feel it, right? Like, probably a lot of people would throw up from that feeling of free fall for three seconds.

If you suddenly floated a foot into the air, yes, I'm pretty sure you would notice that. And if it continued, you know, if like the person who turned off gravity was sort of like fumbling for the switch and it took longer, then it gets more dramatic pretty quickly. After 30 seconds, you'd be like 14 meters above the ground. Oh, that's not good. That's not good. That one you don't recover from easily. No, unless you're wearing a lot of protective gear. All right, so I would fly.

That doesn't sound too bad. It sounds, at least before the world ends, I would get to fulfill my dream of flying and floating in space. And so what else would happen besides me floating? Well, he talked about gravity turning off, and he didn't limit it to Earth's gravity. He was just like gravity, period. Oh, in the universe? The whole universe. The universe.

Yeah. Oh, and most importantly, that means that, like, all the Earth's gravity is gone and the Sun's gravity is gone. And that has some consequences. We would shoot off into space. Yeah, just like we would float off of the Earth's orbit. The Earth would fall out of its orbit and keep going for three seconds out of its orbit. Oh, and then when it turns back on, we would be in a totally different orbit. Yeah, and we might have the wrong trajectory.

We might not any longer be in a stable orbit, and so we might sort of get kicked. out of the solar system. That doesn't sound good. That does not sound good. There's lots of ways to move around the sun, and only a few of them are a stable orbit. And so if you just sort of all of a sudden drift out to a large radius, but you haven't picked up any speed, then you're not in a stable orbit anymore. Would the Earth crack or anything like that? Like, would our atmosphere suddenly poof away? What are some of the things physically that would happen to our planet? Yeah, the atmosphere also is held to the Earth by gravity. And so the atmosphere would

float away from the Earth the same way because it's spinning. just dissipate. Yeah, it would just dissipate out into space. But, you know, three seconds is not that long, so you wouldn't lose a whole lot of atmosphere. Oh, I see, three seconds. Okay, got it. It would dissipate a little, but then it might come back down. But by then, we'll

be in a different orbit. We'll be in the wrong orbit. And then the Earth, you know, it'll get sucked back by the Earth's sun's gravity when it turns back on, but it might then get sucked into something that's not a stable orbit. It could, like, whizz around closer to the sun and then get thrown into interstellar space. But that's not even the worst

part. Okay. What's the worst? What's the worst that could happen? The biggest deal, the cataclysmic end to your Michael Bay movie, is that remember that gravity plays a really important role in holding the sun together. It's the only reason it's a ball of fire, right? Otherwise, I mean, it's a constant explosion being held by gravity. Yes, it's being pinned down by gravity. And so if you turn gravity off, then it like unleashes the sun's fury for three seconds. And the sun would basically explode. I mean, It's a huge nuclear bomb being held together by gravity. In three seconds, that would be enough to explode the sun? It would definitely explode.

What would happen when you turned it back on? I don't know. Like, could he gather it back together? It would definitely change the dynamics of the sun. And so it might be a very different star when you turn it back on. It might be burning at a different temperature or have a different radius or a different opacity, you know? Oh, I see.

It's like in a stable little cycle and you would be totally disrupting. Yeah, you'd like kick the fire, you know, and then you've got to try to get it going again, and it might, you know, sputter out or flame up or do something totally crazy. So for three seconds, we would see the sun suddenly get bigger for three seconds, and then gravity turns back on, and then something else will happen. Something else will happen, and it's not easy to figure out what, you know, we don't understand the way a lot of these stars work anyway, so, you know, nobody's done this kind of simulation to figure out, like, in detail what would happen, you'd need to run a massive

simulation of the sort of hydrodynamics of inside the star. And nobody has done that calculation. It's not something you can sit down and do with a pencil and paper. And in those three seconds, is it possible where the sun grows, is it possible that it'll fry us, or, you know, like if it sort of explodes for three seconds, is that, you know, a shower of energy going to fry the planet? Probably not. Remember that the sun is light minutes from the Earth, so we're really far away from

the sun. And so three seconds is a tiny fraction of that. and you know there might be like a pulse of energy which gets shot out but then remember gravity turns back on and so any of that plasma is going to get slowed down and dragged back into the sun i bet you'd get like an enhanced solar wind but we'd still have a magnetic field to protect us from that solar wind all right so i think that paints uh not a great picture which is that you know we might get kicked out of the solar system we might ruin the sun but here on earth we'll we'll we'll full float for three seconds and then come back down. So a lot of cars maybe, you know, might float and then crash back down. That wouldn't be too bad. But the worst is that we might get kicked out or the sun would explode. Yeah, overall, pretty bad. I rate this on the, on the badness scale as pretty bad scenario. Pretty bad. I'm curious to know the range of your scale here. Does it go from pretty bad to utterly terrible or from don't worry about it to. Keep listening because some of these scenarios get pretty nasty. All right, let's get into the second one here. Jason writes, what would happen if the earth suddenly starts spinning backwards? So I walked around campus again, and I asked people this insane question.

What do you think it would be like on Earth if the Earth suddenly started rotating the other direction? I think everything would go insane. Like, probably seas would just in the ways to go the opposite direction, tsunamis would happen, and probably storms? I've never thought about it, because I've just haven't really. come up with I mean you just hear how it goes and you're like okay well it does what it does but I've never thought what happens when

it does the opposite so I'm not sure okay all right bad stuff bad stuff none of this was supposed to be sort of cozy scenarios it's not supposed to make anybody smile and cuddle up with a book and a cup of tea or anything do you think he means like if you you know the earth is spinning right now

and we're all very comfortable but suddenly the spinning invert or do you think he It's like it stops and then it starts spinning the other way. Yeah, it's a critical difference because if you could sort of snap your fingers and all of a sudden everything is going the other direction, that's not actually that big a deal. I mean, in that scenario like, yeah, the sun is going. Or like everything, like the oceans, you, me, you know, suddenly we're spinning moving the other way.

Not much would happen. Not much would happen, yeah. The sun would rise and set on the other side, right? But a lot of things about the Earth are pretty symmetric. Would it change like the magnetic poles? It certainly might. It might flip the magnetic field, you know, because the magnetic field is generated by what's going on inside the Earth,

the rotation of like that hot magnetic liquid inside the Earth. And so if you're flipping that, then you're flipping the magnetic field. But that just makes north into south, right? Things still work. You still have a magnetic field to protect you from solar flares and cosmic radiation. and everything still sort of holds together. It doesn't really break everything. It just sort of puts a minus one in front of a lot of stuff.

Oh, okay. I think I get it. I think if you define the Earth as the rock and everything on it, including us and the satellites, then not much would happen. And the atmosphere. Yeah, and the atmosphere, not much would happen. But if you maybe define the Earth as just the ball of rock, then things might get bad, right?

Oh, man, if just the Earth started going the other direction and we were still going this way, yeah, that would be very bad. Because how fast am I technically going sitting here on Earth? Yeah, you're going pretty fast. I mean, the Earth's circumference is, what, 24,000 miles, and it does that in a day, and so it's 1,000 miles per hour,

is the Earth's surface is moving. So if all of a sudden it's moving the other way, basically 2,000 miles per hour, that would be pretty bad. That's like going in a car at 2,000 miles per hour. hour and then suddenly the car stopped or crashing to a wall right yeah yeah not not recommended not we would all just get smushed mm-hmm or we would get you know if you were outside you would just suddenly be flung at 2,000 miles per hour yeah and also it would be crazy winds right because the

atmosphere is also rotating with the earth so just the earth started going the other direction basically all the air and earth would have a wind speed of 2,000 miles per hour that's like much stronger than any hurricane. So it would basically flatten every city. Right. But me included would also be going at 2,000 miles per hour. So I would I guess I would get thrown. If I was outside, this is the best case in area. I'm outside. The earth changes direction. You're wearing a lot of protective gear, I hope. I'm wearing a lot of and insulated. A lab coating goggles. I get flung off into the sky at 2,000 miles per hour. But the wind is also going with me at

2,000 miles per hour. So I think for a few short seconds, I would be flying again. Until you hit something. Until I hit something, right, like the earth. Yeah, or your house or something. Oh, I see. All right. But there's another scenario.

When I read this, I thought of something else. I thought, what does it take to flip the earth to go the other way? I thought, you know, maybe you're like stop that you slow down the earth and get it going the other way. And you do that in a very short amount of time. You're like actually apply the brakes and then give it a push. the other direction. Because in physics, nothing gets accomplished instantaneously. You can't be going 100 miles an hour in one direction and then instantly the other direction, right? That's an

acceleration. That's a change of velocity. And that only happens with a huge force. Can it happen with a giant dark energy bomb? I think it'd be more a dark energy laser. You know, you fire at the surface. I'll make a note. But that's an even worse scenario because if you apply an enormous this acceleration to the whole earth, that would break a lot of stuff. Well, it's kind of like the opposite. It's just a milder version of the instantaneous flip of the rock, right?

The instantaneous flip is actually easier because you don't have to go through the transition. You don't have to feel the acceleration. Acceleration is what's really bad. It's like if you're in a fighter jet, going at zero miles per hour is no big deal. Going at 5,000 miles per hour, also not that big a deal because velocity is not an issue,

but the acceleration from zero to 5,000, those Gs, you would feel them. It would, like, pulverize your insides. Humans can't survive more than a few Gs without liquefying our organs. So it sort of depends on a lot of things. It depends on whether Jason meant the ball of rock or everything on it. And also, in how quickly this operation happens. Yeah, because if you actually do it physically correctly and accelerate the earth the other direction to get it spinning that way,

then you have to be really careful. If you don't include the oceans, for example, then you're going to get, like, ridiculous tsunamis, like miles high waves sloshing around. I see. You got to do it carefully because you've got to get everything on board with your change of direction. Otherwise, it's chaos.

You ever feel just like a pan of water and try to walk it across your kitchen? It's almost impossible to not have that water like slosh around and splash on your toes. Now imagine you have, like, oceans on the earth and you're spinning it the other way. You are going to drown Tokyo and everything else. Oh, man.

All right. So then how would you rate this potential physics disaster? Is it too dependent on the specifics, or do you think we should, it's clearly bad in any case? I'd say it's less catastrophic than turning off gravity. I'm pretty worried about the sun being unleashed for three seconds and being kicked out into a different orbit. So if I had to pick, I would say gravity turning off is more catastrophic. That's the champion so far. Okay, so what's below pretty bad?

Pretty bad, but not as bad. A bad idea. A bad idea. Not recommended. Is there a physics rating system? Like, you know, G, good to go, PG, physics good. This one's PG-13, yeah. Not recommended.

Not recommended. Without the supervision of a physicist. Especially with the supervision of physicists. Don't offer this option any physists you know. They can't resist pushing the button, can they? Whenever I'm in front of a big red button, my fingers just crawl on it and I'm going to touch it. And like, what does it feel like to press it? What would happen?

I'm going to create a button, Daniel, that transfers all your money to my bank account. And I'm going to leave it in your front door to see what happens. No. That's my personal twilight zone episode. It's like your nightmare is a house full of red buttons. Is that what it is? That's your Twilight Zone episode. And one of them kills everybody on Earth.

Oh, that is a good plot idea. Oh, man. We are pitching so many good movies today. I know. It's like Saw, but for physics. There we go. All right, let's get into the last two scenarios that Jason imagined that the Libby came up with.

But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic. chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism.

Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend. friend's former professor and they're the same age.

And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford. And in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Othia and Billy to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right? In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a real.

It's how our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our communities, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Daniel, we have two more potentially catastrophic scenarios for Earth and humanity and potentially the universe that one of our listeners here, Jason, came up with. And so we need to rate them. We need to explain them and see how bad they are. So the third idea that Jason had was... Yeah, he asked what would happen if every electron within one light ear of Earth disappeared. Is it for three seconds, you think, or forever? It just says gone, yeah.

We're not getting these electrons back, you know? They have just been deleted from the universe. Could we survive? But only within one light year. He's very specific. He's like 1.0 light year. I think he's trying to include like our entire cosmic neighborhood. You know, the sun, all the planets, that maybe even the or cloud, but not the whole universe.

He's not building to spec here. He's just curious, right? I hope not. I know, geez. All right, so the scenario is that every electron that we know that's inside of my body, the Earth, the sun, the planets, all the near, I guess nearby solar system, right? No, the nearest star is three light years away, three or four light years away. So there are no other stars involved.

So basically just our solar system. Every electron suddenly disappear. In the solar system. And so let's preface this by reminding people sort of how important and ubiquitous electrons are. They're not just something in batteries, right? They're not just a thing that you juice up your iPhone with everything you know, everything you see, everything you have ever eaten, everything you are made of has electrons in it and needs those electrons. Right. And in a way, it's almost, they're almost, it's like one third of all matter, isn't it?

Technically, kind of? Yeah, like you take an atom and it has protons and neutrons and electrons. Now, the electrons are very, very light, right? They don't have a lot of mass. but they are responsible for balancing the electric charge of the atom. You know, there's the positive proton, and then there's the negative electron. And so it's pretty key. I'm thinking this is not good, but let's see what people had to say on the street.

Yeah, so I walked around and I asked people what they thought. Here's what they had to say. What do you think would happen if all of the electrons, like within a light year, just suddenly disappeared? I don't think that'd be good or bad. It was simply destroyed the atom itself, like kind of. considering I'm an electrical engineer that'd be that'd be probably pretty bad

I like this last one that last one where the engineer is worried about his career that's his main preoccupation I know I was like dude you're going to have to become a proton engineer instead of electron engineer that's what I was thinking

how would you go what would that new career be called protonical engineer protonical engineer yeah I suppose so although you know if this happens, we're not going to be around to be hiring anybody. Okay, so you think it's pretty catastrophic if all electrons suddenly disappear?

Yeah, every atom all of a sudden gets a positive charge. You have a hydrogen atom, you delete its electron, you got a proton. And if you had a gas of hydrogen atoms, which we do in lots of places like the sun, then you deleted all those electrons, all of a sudden you have all these positive protons. And they're not going to be happy just hanging out. They're going to push against each other. Oh, I see. If I have a canister of hydrogen and I take away the electrons, suddenly I just have protons.

Yeah, and those protons feel a very powerful force against each other. Are they, is it my canister going to explode or is it just going to feel pressured? It's going to explode. Your canister also used to have electrons in it doesn't anymore. You used to have electrons in it, doesn't anymore. That's what I'm talking about. Like, electrons are everywhere. We are electrons.

We are made of electrons. The sun is made of electrons. The Earth is made of electrons. So you delete electrons, all of a sudden, every atom within a light year hates every other atom and wants to be really far away from it. You think maybe Jason was just thinking like, hey, what if we didn't have electricity for a little while? I don't know what he was thinking, but Jason, please do not do this. Everything would explode. The earth would explode.

The sun would explode. You would explode. My brain would explode. Your career would explode. I sense real fear in your voice here, Daniel. I feel like we actually touch in something that makes sense. you afraid at a very core level. Yeah, also, I take this one a bit personally.

I mean, I'm a particle physicist. I feel something for particles. You can't just delete electrons, man. I mean, it's so cruel. Like, they've been doing so much for you for years without any thanks. And then you're just going to erase them, literally erase them from the universe. It's not cool. Don't cancel the electron.

Exactly. This cancel culture has gone too far, people. If we're canceling particles now. People want to cancel the electron. And how come nobody ever wants to cancel protons, huh? It's always the electrons, right? Right. It sounds like you're pretty afraid of this scenario.

Like, it would be bad. There's no recovering from it, right? If you have no electrons, then there's no way to balance the charges. I mean, there are other particles in the universe that have negative charges, like the W minus, and some quarks have fractional negative charges. So you might be able to assemble some other hadrons to give you negative charges and make really weird chemistry. You know, you can make like an omega-minus particle

to balance a proton and make a whole new kind of atom. But who knows what kind of thing you could build out of that? Certainly not me or you or anything you're familiar with. So it's like you're rewriting the laws of the universe. It'd be totally catastrophic. One second we'd be sitting here talking. On the next second, we're just exploding, flying through space and this massive protons floating out there in the universe.

Yeah, exactly. We'd be a plasma of protein. and pushing away from each other really, really hard. Because remember, electromagnetism is a powerful force, and it has an infinite extent. And so everything within our light ear would become a dilute gas of protons eventually. All right, so I think you would rate this

as not just pretty bad, but maybe ultimately bad. This is up there. This is up there. This sort of, like, saturate the scale, you know? This, like, red lines it as maximally catastrophic. Like, this one terrifies me. I see. This is the stuff physicists nightmares are.

that and red button rooms with red buttons one of these buttons will delete electrons no and the other might transfer all your funds to Jorge

no all right so I'm impressed that Jason saturated your disaster scale like you don't you wouldn't even want

to see this movie no I mean what's going to happen everything blows up in the first moment boom movie over like there's no drama there

it doesn't build anything All right, well, let's get into his fourth scenario here. Maybe that will have a little bit more drama. So Jason writes, what would happen if the sun shuts down for two weeks? But the mass is still there. He's very cautious about that. It's just, he's saying, like, what if it stops giving off light for two weeks, right?

Yeah, the sun basically goes dark or winks at us in, you know, technical terms. But it's still there. It's still making the planets go around. but it's just not giving off any light or particles. Like imagine if the sun became a black hole. It's effectively what would happen. Oh, for two weeks. For two weeks, but then it came back.

And then it comes back from vacation. Yeah, so I walked around and I asked folks, were they worried about the sun shutting down and what did they think would happen in that scenario? What do you think it would be like on Earth if the sun shut down for like two weeks? I don't think there would be life, but they're? Do you think we'd all die within two weeks?

I think so. Plus, like, then there'd be, like, no gravity. I don't know. Like, I don't think there would be life at all. So what happened then? Only one person was willing to talk to you at this point. Everyone else ran away. After you ask people about electrons disappearing and all sorts of stuff,

yeah, they sort of like had somewhere else to be. You made them rethink their lives and what they're doing with their precious time that we have here. Yeah, I hope they ran off and to tell all their loved ones how important they are to them. He's envisioning what happens if the sun suddenly turned off. But I guess physically we wouldn't feel it, right? Things would just go dark.

Yeah, first of all, the sun would keep burning for eight minutes, apparently in the sky. Because remember, it takes time for light to get here from the sun. So in the first eight minutes or so of this two-week hiatus, things would seem normal. And then all of a sudden, boom, the sun would go black. And it's basically like nighttime for two weeks. Astronomers would be very excited. They can actually work for two weeks, two weeks. straight without sleeping? Do you think they would be excited?

They've ruined a big pot of coffee in anticipation. Astronomers basically lose half of their observing time because of the sun. It just blots out everything in the sky. So we would get great views of the stars. Right. And it sort of blocks telescopes also just from light pollution too, right? It's not just the direct sunlight. It's also just like light in our solar system. Yep. And it heats up the atmosphere and makes it wiggly. And so it makes it hard. to see that starlight that's sort of limped across the universe for billions of years and finally

gotten here, has to go through a wiggly atmosphere, gets all smeared out. And so the sun is sort of the enemy of astronomy. It's not particle physicists. It's the sun. Particle physicists always beat astronomy, so we don't even think about ourselves as an enemy. I think we need to bring an astronomer here to have an arm wrestling fight with you here, an intellectual arm wrestling fight. No, we love astronomers, and we feel kinship, of course, with all of physics, but especially with astronomers and cosmologists, because we're all wondering about the big questions of the universe. All right, well, it doesn't sound too catastrophic. It sounds like we just get a two-night, a two-week night, which sounds great to me because I can sleep the whole catch-up of my sleep.

Your sleep, you mostly work a night. I get emails from you like three in the morning, so you would get so much done if the sun disappears for two weeks. Me and the astronomers would die from exhaustion. Assuming your kids sleep for two weeks, right? Yeah, it'd be pretty hard, though. I don't think it's very fun to endure two weeks of night. But, you know, there are parts of the Earth that don't see the sun for weeks and months at a time. Right, yeah.

People are like near the North Pole. The sun sets, you know, in whatever, October, November, depending where you are, and then just doesn't come up again until February or March. So they have a long night. that when it happens, some people might not even notice. In the wintertime, folks would be like, what are you talking about? The sun turned off? What?

There's no sun anyway. Yeah, and it would be more than just two weeks of night because we rely on sort of the reheating of daytime. And so eventually the earth will get pretty chilly. And the thing I wonder about is like plants, you know, could plants go for two weeks without any sun and then just sort of like snap back into health two weeks later? Right, yeah. Can plants, would plants just kind of go into hibernation or something?

Yeah, it might like kill off agriculture for a whole cycle. So we might all be hungry for a year. But, you know, that's a question sort of for biologists. Like if you shut down sunlight to plants for two weeks, would they die or would they come back? I'm guessing they wouldn't all die, but you'd get definitely reduced yield. So you'd have less food for that next winter. Oh, boy. So our culture, our society might collapse.

Yeah. You know, I like reading science fiction novels that highlight the sensitivity of our entire civilization. You know, like we are all three days away from total riots. Like if the truck stopped driving and the supermarket's shelved, we're no longer filled with food, we're like three days away from total chaos. Better stock up on those lentils. That's right. Lentals, exactly.

Everybody should have lentils in their basement. Yeah. All right. But then you're saying that the earth might get colder, like how much colder would we suddenly be thrown into like a two-week winter or would it just, would we see it sort of slowly get chillier? It would be sort of like a two-week winter because you'd get the dips for nighttime and then you wouldn't come back up again during the day. And so you'd just keep cooling off and getting colder and colder and colder. And eventually, if the sun was out for months or weeks or

years, then you'd get a new ice age and the earth would really frost over. On the plus side, we would solve global warming. On the negative side, society might collapse. You forgot to add more astronomy and cartoons to the plus side. That's right. More creativity for nighttime artists. That's another, I think that justifies the rest, to be honest. Maybe we should think about actually doing this, yeah. It's kind of a good idea.

Maybe Jason already thought about it. And that's why he's asking. Jason's like using the other scenarios to make this one sound reasonable. Right. He's worked it all out. He just wants to make sure. I was thinking it was more of the Calvin and Hobbit. strategy. You know, they're like, hey, mom, can I have a

flamethrower? No, well, can I have a cookie? Sure. He's like, can I turn off all the electrons? No, don't do that. Can I just turn off the sun for two weeks? All right, that seems reasonable. Well, I guess he has my permission. If his options are disappear electrons or turn off the sun for two weeks, I would say turn off the sun. Yeah, so my vote for most catastrophic would be turn off the electrons, then probably

turning off gravity, then the earth spinning backwards, and then shutting off the sun for two weeks. That would be the least catastrophic in my book. All right. And that covers the range from not so bad to ultimately bad. To please, please, please don't even think about this. Don't start doing research on it. Don't imagine what it would be like or how much fun it would be. Let's just avoid the topic. Wow. You don't even want to talk about it, Danny. Let's wrap up the podcast. I'm uncomfortable. This is triggering you, I feel, in ways that are making you uncomfortable. Well, you know, every time somebody has a crazy sounding idea that seems impossible, somebody out there starts thinking about it and like, hmm, maybe that isn't impossible.

I have a few ideas and that's how research gets started, man. Oh, man. All right, let's end the podcast then before we go too far. It might already be too late. All right. Well, I think thinking about these scenarios is pretty interesting because, first of all, makes you think about how precious life is and here on Earth. And also it kind of makes you think about how at the whim of these physical laws we're at, you know, if things change, we might not

be here. Yeah, we are in a delicate balance. And the universe is this way, which allows for our life and our and our loves and everything we enjoy about the universe. But if it was slightly different, then we wouldn't be able to survive. And one of the deepest questions in physics is could it be slightly different? Why is it this way? Is this the only way that the universe could be? So we are a natural consequence? Or are there billions of ways to have universes and we just happen to be in this one? We don't know the answer to that really basic question about our own existence.

And I like these questions because they sort of make you think about all of those issues. Yeah, the big question, like, what would happen if we didn't have Bruce Willis? Who would go and nuke that cosmic banana if we couldn't call Bruce? All right. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed that. And if you have a question you'd like to hear us talk about in a silly manner, please send it to us at questions at danielanhorpe.com. See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line we'd 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. Daniel and Jorge.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. LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam.

Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate.

Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast. and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. This is an IHeart podcast.