Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Are there charm quarks in the proton?

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Daniel and Jorge talk about whether the cozy story of the proton might need to be updated to describe all of its true charm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network Tune in on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, Jorge, if we found a new quark, what would you call it? Pedro? Or Zven? Well, what are the current ones called? Well, there's up, down, turn. Charm, strange, top and bottom.

Oh, man. I feel like you can only go up from there. You're pretty down on these names. I mean, they're pretty strange. I personally find them kind of charming. I guess you do like things that are off color. You might think this whole scheme needs a rewrite from the top. All right, well, let's dive in.

Bottoms up. Hi, I'm Jorge McCartunist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I hope to one day be involved in a big argument about how to name a new particle. Oh, you're not involved yet? I mean, don't you guys name things before you discover them? Yeah, that's true. We do name hypothetical particles that might not even be part of the universe. Can I lay a stake to that? Like, hey, if anyone ever discovers a cork in the future, I'm naming it the Jorge.

I think you can call it whatever you like. Yeah, whether it catches on is another question. No, but I said it first. Doesn't that count? Did you have dibs in physics? There is no dibs. And in physics, we even have disagreements about what a name thing. which go on for decades.

What if I name the quark, the dibs? The dibs. The dibs both thought. But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of Our Heart Radio. Where we want to be the first to explain everything about the universe to you, from how all the tiny little particles work, from their interactions to their little bits of matter,

to their quantum fields and the way they work together to make everything that's glorious and delicious and badly named in the universe. That's right, because it is a strange and charming universe out there full of mysteries that we are still discovering. New discoveries are still being made even today about how the universe works and what are all the things in it. One way to answer the question, how does the universe work, is to figure out what its tiniest bits are and what rules they follow. In some sense, that would be an explanation because it's sort of the most fundamental

description. In another sense, it's sort of lacking a lot of a connection to reality. Even if you understand the tiny little bits, you don't necessarily understand why blackberry ice cream is so delicious. Yeah, and it's pretty amazing that we've discovered so much about what matter is made out of, given that we have these kind of soft, squishy eyeballs and really don't work all that well all the time. We have augmented our bare senses with all sorts of amazing technological eyeballs, things that can gather ancient photo. photons while orbiting the Earth and devices that poke and probe little bits of matter to reveal their structure. Or even as simple as reading glasses, which I forgot today to bring.

So that's why I'm only about 80% sure of what we're talking about today. Is that up from your usual 75% or down? I guess I mean 80% sure what's on this page in front of me. I see. Well, you know, I think we've been working together for more than a decade before I even learned that you wore glasses. Oh, well, I only just started wearing meeting glasses maybe a year or two ago. It came pretty fast. I see.

So you're saying after 10 years of working with Daniel, you're incurring actual physical damage. That's right. I was talking about tiny microscopic particles. I mean, that would ruin anyone's eyesight. All right. There you have it, folks. A health warning for this podcast. We're five years in, which means you're all five years away from ruining your eyesight.

Well, I did wear glasses for a long time. then I got Lasic surgery, which is amazing. But now, as I'm getting older, I need reading glasses, which totally stinks. You haven't hit that wall yet? I've been wearing glasses since I was a teenager. And I'm definitely not getting my eyeballs lasered. Oh, no. But aren't you a physicist?

Don't you trust the lasers? I'm a physicist, so I definitely don't trust the lasers. What have they made a lasic operation that let you see subatomic particles? Oh, boy. Yeah. Well, I would definitely volunteer other people. it and ask them all sorts of questions about it. Really, you don't want to see particles with your naked eye?

No, I prefer augmented technological eyeballs and to keep my eyeballs unaltered. You're like, take a picture. Exactly. Build me a device, put the picture on a screen. I'm happy with that. But anyways, it would be amazing to see at that microscopic level because we would discover maybe what matter is actually made out of. And we have made a lot of progress over the year in figuring out of.

the tiny little bits are that click together to explain our world and what the tiny bits inside those bits are and how they work together. But there are still lots and lots of questions, not just questions about the crazy weird particles we may or may not discover at colliders, but questions about what you and I are actually made out of. That's right. It's been a long road to discover the building blocks of stuff around us. We started with tiny hypothetical particles made out of earth, wind, and fire, right? That's how the Greek started. And then we moved on to atoms.

I don't know if the Greeks thought about like wind particles and fire particles. They had lots of different crazy ideas about how the universe works. But yeah, you can dot, dot, dot from there to quantum field theory. Yeah, isn't that what Zeus is? Isn't Zeus basically like a particle? Lightning particle?

The Zeus particle. I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. That sounds like a really awesome young adult thriller. That sounds like, well, we should name the next particle I discover or that I propose we discover. Well, some people do call the Higgs boson the god particle, so maybe

we should just broaden that, you know? We should have the Jehovah particle and... That's right, be more inclusive about all religions, really. Yeah, exactly. But it has been a pretty amazing road to discover what things are made of, and at some point, I guess people discover that we're made out of atoms, right?

Yeah, that's right. That's the first step. And it's in some ways the most amazing, the most incredible, the biggest sort of intellectual leap to say that all the craziness in the universe, the almost infinite variety of stuff out there can be explained with a small set of basic building blocks, the atoms, the about 100 elements of the periodic table, can be put together in all sorts of ways to explain everything that we've ever seen. Like philosophically, it's not obvious that we would have to live in a universe that works that way where the arrangements of the smallest bits explain the complexity that we experience. Yeah, I mean, it could have been that we lived in a universe where everything was made out of earth, wind, and fire, right? Yeah, or everything could have been made out of its own different kind of stuff. Everything out there in the universe could have had its own elemental particle that explains it. But instead, it seems like as you dig deeper and deeper into the firmament of the universe, universe, things weirdly get simpler.

And so we cracked open matter to discover it's made out of atoms, and then at some point we cracked open the atom to find out that it's made out of smaller particles. Yeah, the nucleus has protons and neutrons, and then surrounding those are electrons. And those protons and neutrons themselves, we discovered, are also not fundamental bits of the universe. They are made of even smaller particles bound together with an incredibly powerful force. Yeah, and so we have a name for those particles. are called quarks and we think we know maybe what all the quarks are we think we know maybe that's

definitely a good summary of the physics of basically anything we think we know that's basic science isn't it or really that's just human reality and anything that's out there we just think we know it's there yeah and add a comma maybe at the end and you're golden or a dot dot or a question mark but the story isn't over tune in next season it out of quarks maybe And so you've probably been told a familiar story about how the proton is made out of two different quarks, the up quark, and the down. But that's not the end of the story, comma, maybe. It never is. Yeah, there might be only two kinds of quarks inside of the proton, but is that really the case?

And so today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question. Are there charm quarks inside the proton? Are we basically asking if the proton is charming? We're asking about its chat, yeah. Is it good at having conversations or is it kind of dull? Does it have Rizz? Is a proton Rizzy? Should you take a proton out with you on Friday night to be your wingman or wing woman?

That's right. Or would it be too charming? You don't want that as your wingman or wing particle. Your wing particle. We are in our. desperate efforts to be relevant to modern culture here. Yeah, or to pretend we're young and still go out on Friday nights. I mean, come on, let's face it.

My Friday nights are, and do not involve putting on anything besides pajamas. Let me just squint through my reading glasses to read the latest slang the youth are saying these days. Yeah, there you go. What is that word, Riz, Razz, Ruz? Riz, like charisma. Oh, is that what Riz is short for? I was wondering. Oh, man, you're even worth than me.

I guess you are older than me. Am I? Yeah, I'm rounding up to 50 for sure. Well, I guess it's charm the same as charisma. Sort of. How would you shorten charm, harm, arm, arm? Jam, obviously. I mean, I think we all associate cham with charm.

You've heard that word before. Cham, Jam, that rings about, what is that? I can't place it. Yeah, yeah. Pretty soon not like kids would say, like, oh, man, that kid really has champ. Yeah, he's so. chaming. He's a champion.

That's right. Yes. With the cham pion, there you go. You are a particle already. Oh, man. Yeah. Gosh, you brought it back around to particle physics. Yes.

The champ pyon. Yeah, exactly. There's already a particle named after you. And I hear it's the best one. It's like it beat out all the other particles. All right. Well, this is an interesting question. Are there charmed corks inside the proton?

Well, first of all, I feel like maybe not a lot of people know the conventional wisdom, which is that there are only two of the other kinds of quarks in the proton. Yeah, the story you're usually told is that the proton is made of just two kinds of quarks, the up quark and the down quark. These are the lightest quarks that exist out there, the ones that are stable and usually seen as the basic building blocks of matter. Yeah, and so the question is, is there a third kind of cork inside the proton and is it charming? Or is it kind of an annoying cork. Is the whole thing kind of strange?

All right. Well, as usually, we were wondering how many people out there had thought about this question or wondered what exactly is inside the proton. Thanks very much to everybody who participates in this segment. We'd love to hear your voice on the podcast. So please write to me get over that barrier that's been preventing you from participating and send me an email to questions at danielanhorpe.com. So think about it for a second. Do you think the proton is charming?

Here's what people had to say. A proton is positively charged, I think. If something's charming, it's positive. So, yes. I believe that a proton is made up of up quarks and down quarks. So I'm going to say no to the charm quark. I like the sound of charm quarks. I'm picturing that character from Star Trek now, as he's trying to do a deal.

That's a charm quark. I'm not sure what a charm quark is but if there were quarks there are up quarks and down quarks inside a proton right so I would say that if there are quarks they're inside a proton so yes

there are charm quarks inside a proton and I look forward to learning exactly what a charm quark is all right some interesting ideas here a little Star Trek reference here that was a Star Trek TNG reference right Yeah, I'm pretty sure quark only appears in the next generation. And he is kind of charming.

All right. Well, most people seem positive that the proton is charming, although there was one person who said, no. Yeah, some people have heard the story that protons are just made of up corks and down corks. All right, well, let's dig into it. Daniel, maybe start with the basics. What is a quark? And what is a charming one and what is it not charming cork? So quarks are the particles that we see inside the proton and in the,

inside the neutron and also inside a bunch of other particles that we've seen in collisions and in cosmic rays like caons and pyons and other particles that are not stable. But when you smash these particles together, you discover that there really are smaller bits inside of them. And those are the particles we call quarks. How are quarks named, by the way? How are the individual corks named or how is the word quark invented? Yeah, like how did they come up with the word quark?

Like, it sounds kind of quirky? Was that a real word before that they discovered the particle? Or did they invent any word? Yeah, so it's a really interesting story. Quark actually is a thing out there in the world. It's like a yogurty thing that is eaten in Germany and other parts of Europe. But in English, corks were named by Murray Gelman. And he actually took the word from a James Joyce poem, Finnegan's Wake, where it says three corks from Master Mark.

What did James Joyce mean by it? Well, there's some debate, of course, because James Joyce is a poet, and so they never, like, use words in the ways that people expect. Meaning it was a typo. Maybe a genius typo, who knows. But the word quark here is, like, a variation of the word croak. And so the line in the poem is about, like, cheering the king. Three quarks for Mr. Mark is, like, three croaks or three cheers. And so the person who discovered these particles picked that because he thought there were three particles.

or why did they pick that word out of that poem? He's got a long story for why he picked this, but essentially it comes down to the fact that there were three of them at the time. At the time that he was coming up with a name for it, we thought that there were three different kinds of quarks, the up, the down, and the strange. And so he was looking for something connected to three.

And by three, you mean like, you know, the more you do these collisions and you explore what matter is made out of, you find three different flavors of these particles, right? Yeah, there's three different kinds of these particles. that were initially identified. And it comes out of this era in particle physics called the particle zoo

when we turned on collider, smashed protons into stuff and saw all sorts of weird particles come out. When we saw pyons, we saw kaons, we saw omega particles, we saw row particles. Basically every time you turn on the collider and added a bit more energy,

you saw new stuff come out. And so it was a very confusing time in particle physics. Like, what are all these particles? Are they all made from the same thing? Are they all their own different things? kind of thing. And corks was an effort to unify that to explain it. Murray Gelman and other folks realized that with just three basic particles, the up quark, the down quark, and the strange cork, you could explain all the particles do is just being different combinations of these three

basic building blocks. The same way you can explain like everything we experience in terms of 100 elements. They were able to explain all of the elements of the particle zoo in terms of these just three basic building blocks. Like maybe you could say like an iron is not like a totally different particle than oxygen or carbon. It's just like they're just made of different arrangements of the same particles. Yeah, exactly. You can make any element with a certain number of protons and neutrons and electrons, right?

There's really only three building blocks there that explain all of that complexity. In the same way, you can make pyons out of an upcork and an anti-upcork. You can make caons if you mix in some strange corks. You can make protons out of three quarks. You can make neutrons out of three quarks. And so they were able to explain all of this complexity using three basic building blocks. And they were even able to predict the existence of particles we hadn't seen yet. They said, if you mix all these particles together, there's one way to mix them that nobody's seen yet.

And they predicted that that particle existed and then they saw it. And so that's what really convinced everybody that it was real. What was it called? So it was the omega minus particle, which was made out of three strange quarks. And it was actually, Gailman predicted it. He stood up at a conference and made this prediction, which is sort of balzy. And then it was observed. And people believed that they were real.

Now, the quarks were hypothetical or do we eventually see them individually, like at a collider? Yeah, great question. For a long time, people believe the math of these quarks. And they said, all right, well, the math works, but they're kind of hypothetical. But then there was sort of a philosophical debate about whether they're real or hypothetical, because you can't actually see them by themselves. You cannot. But you cannot ever see a cork by itself.

Yeah. The quarks field is strong force, which is much stronger than electromagnetism, for example. And they're so tightly bound together. There's so much energy in their interaction. If you pull them apart, that energy creates more quarks, basically to shield it. It's such a powerful force that it always neutralizes itself. The same way, like, lightning is neutralizing any charge difference between the ground and clouds because electromagnetism is so powerful.

The strong force does that as well. very, very rapidly. So quarks can never be seen on their own. You can only ever see them put together in these various combinations. Whoa. So then what makes you think that's an individual particle? Like if you never see it alone, how do you know it's like a thing? Yeah, that's a great philosophical question.

You can actually ask the same question of basically anything. You can even ask that question of the electron. Like we never see the electron by itself. An electron is actually surrounded by a cloud of virtual particles, including lots of photons. You never actually probe the pure individual electron. So everything is just sort of like part of the fabric of reality. It's a bit of a philosophical question when you declare that it's real.

We have these models. We do these calculations. They're accurate. They predict the results of experiments. And so we think that probably they're real. But, you know, we could be totally wrong. The whole story we're telling about the nature of the universe and how particles work could also just be totally wrong.

The whole thing could just be an elaborate mathematical tool. that mostly works. So it's actually a pretty subtle philosophical question, like what's real out there and what's just sort of part of the story we're telling. Whoa. You mean we only actually think the quark exists? Dot, dot, dot, maybe?

Yeah, dot, dot, dot, maybe. But there are some very powerful arguments that at least it's the right way to think about the universe. Whether it's like philosophically true and out there is sort of another question. I see. It could be maybe like a non-particle or some sort of weird thing

that we can grasp our heads. around. It could be that there's another way to think of what's inside these particles that works better. Because one problem we have is that the strong force is so powerful, it's very difficult to make calculations with. You get things a little bit wrong and the power of the force makes things very, very wrong. So it's very difficult to make predictions with, unlike electromagnetism where we can make very, very precise predictions about exactly what happens when two electrons bounce off each other. When two quarks collide, it's a huge mess and we don't know how they do those calculations very well.

So that might be a sign that we have it like the wrong idea. Maybe when aliens come, they'll have a better theory for what's going on inside all these particles. And it's just much simpler and crisper. And the mathematics of it makes sense. All right. Well, let's get into which corks, if they do exist, are in the proton and why we think the proton may or may not be charming.

So let's dig into that. But first, let's take a quick break. 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 hyperfixation. and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel

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Listen to these women and more on She Pivots now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or I were talking about whether there are charm quarks inside the proton. That's the, I guess, the question on everyone's minds these days. You know, you joke, but it's actually a hot topic that's been debated in particle physics for literally decades, whether the proton has charm in it or whether it's just made of ups and downs. That's what I mean.

It's like it's on everyone's mind, right? And it's been a question basically since the charm quark was discovered. I mean, you ask about like, why do we think that quark? are real. I think the moment that the whole community went from, these are cute, but we don't know, to, yeah, these are real, was this day in November in 1974 when the charm cork was discovered. What happened? It's called the November Revolution because it's so dramatic. And this is the moment when the charm quark was shown to be real. Experiments declared the discovery of the charm cork because the picture of having only three corks, the up, the down, and the strange was a little weird. Like,

The up and the down are sort of paired together. The strange cork is a lot like the down quark. It has the same electric charge or whatever. Sort of like a cousin of the down cork. And people were wondering, like, is there a cousin of the upcork? Shouldn't the upcork also have a cousin? Shouldn't there be like patterns and symmetries and balance on all that stuff? So people predicted, okay, this cork should exist out there.

If these are real, there should be another one. And so people were looking for this cork and there were actually two competing groups, One at MIT, led by Sam Ting, and another one at Stanford, led by Bert Richter, both looking for the charm cork. And they declared discovery of the charm cork on the same day in dueling press conferences across the country from each other. And they gave the particle the charm cork makes different names. What? What did they name them? So the charm cork combines with an anti-charm cork to make this particle.

Sam Ting called it the J particle. Apparently, Jay is sort of similar to the character for his name in Chinese. Bert Richter called it the Psi particle because you like Greek names for particles. And so the same day, we had a new particle given two different names, the J and the Psi. Like at the exact same minute, don't they? Doesn't it count like which minute you make the announcement? In the internet era, it does kind of matter. People like time their papers to try to get them on the archive at the top of the list on the first day or whatever to avoid being scooped.

But I think back then the resolution of this stuff is more like dependent on like sending. letters and mail. So if you made your announcements on the same day, it counts as two independent discoveries that are basically simultaneous. But there is a lot of drama about how they happen to make these discoveries on the same day because Sam Ting's experiment was very slow. He was going to take like a year to figure this stuff out. But he didn't have to know where to look. It was like a very general kind of experiment. Bert Richter could discover this thing in like a few hours if somebody told him exactly where to look. And Richter did an initial scan and didn't see it. He sort of like accidentally skipped over it. And the story is like maybe

somebody on Sam Ting's team tipped off Bert Richter and told him exactly where to look so that he could do the experiment and coming with a discovery at exactly the same moment as the MIT team. Nobody knows for sure what happened. Like academic espionage. Yeah, or something. There's a lot of crazy stories, some of which are not safe for podcasting, which you can Google and hear about. But to this day, we have not settled this. Not safe for podcasting. How salacious is this story? There are stories about scatological sabotage of various experiments.

What? You mean involving bodily fluids? Yes, exactly. I think that's safe for podcasting, but maybe not desirable to talk about in a podcast. It just goes to show you that there's sort of high drama and, you know, Nobel Prizes were on the line. In the end, both of these guys won the Nobel Prize. They shared it for the discovery of this particle, two charm corks bound together. And we still call the particle J.Sai.

We give it both names because we couldn't figure out how to settle this dispute. And so this is the moment you're saying that the charm cork was discovered because this particle is made out of two charm corks. What made them think it was made out of two charm corks? It has all the properties that they predicted. If the charm quark exists, they predicted that it would form this particle, which has, as about twice the mass of an individual charm cork and it would decay in certain ways and the angles of those decays. So it basically looked exactly like what they expected and there's no other way to explain this particle. They can't explain this particle with just up quarks, down

corks and strange quarks. So that told them, ah, there must be this new cork out there. And that made people feel like, okay, corks are real because we predicted a cork and then seen it. It's not just descriptive. It's not like we're just using it to tell a story about what we've already seen. It's helping us understand future experiments. All right. So that's how we discovered the charm quark. Now, I guess the question is, is there one inside the proton? So the simple story is no.

I mean, this initial description of quarks is the building blocks of all these weird particles tell us that the proton is made of two up quarks and one down quark. And that works because the math is really weird for these particles. Like an upcork has charged two thirds. Like an electron is charged minus one. an upcork has charged two-thirds. It's like fractionally charged. And the down-cork has charged minus one-third.

So you add up two upcorks, you get four-thirds of a charge, you add a down-cork, and it brings it back down-to-plus-one. So the proton is explained in terms of two up-corks and a down-cork. And that's a nice, simple story, but like everything else in physics, there's always more to it. Now, is that the only difference between an up-cork and a down-cork? Is there an electrical charge? They're also a difference in mass. The upcork is lower mass than the down quark.

And they have differences in their other charges. Remember, the electrical charge is how we talk about the electromagnetic interaction. Things that have electrical charge interact electromagnetically, things that don't interact electromagnetically. Like a neutrino, no electric charge, no electromagnetic interaction. It ignores electric fields. But particles have other kinds of charges. Like if you feel the weak force, you have weak charges.

The weak force is very complicated. it has two different kinds of charge. So the up cork and the down cork are different also in their weak charges, how they interact with the weak field. And so then the charm cork is just like an upcork, just heavier or what do you call it a cousin of the upcourt? Yeah, because it has all the same charges as the upcork. It's charged two-thirds electromagnically.

It has the same spin as the upcork. It has the same weak charges as the up quark. So if you make like a periodic table of the fundamental particles, it just makes it. sense to put the charm there next to the up quark the way the strange is next to the down quark because the down and the strange they have all the same electrical charges and the weak charges and so these particles are very similar to each other except they're different in mass meaning that it just has more mass it's like an up quark but just heavier yeah it's an upcork but just heavier and that's explained of course because of its interactions with the higgs boson

the charm interacts more with the higgs field and so it has more mass than the upcork and not by a little bit that has like 600 times the mass of the upcork. It's actually more massive than the proton. Okay, so then you're saying that the question of whether there are charm corks inside the proton, the answer is no, maybe, dot, dot, dot, question mark. So why the no? So the simplest story is just like, you've got three corks, you're done. But think about how those corks are actually stuck together.

How do corks come together to make a proton? They don't like physically click together like pieces of a puzzle. they're bound together. There's a force that holds them together. The same way they're like a proton and an electron together make a hydrogen atom because of the electromagnetic force. The quarks are bound together with the strong force, which means that there's a bunch of gluons there also inside the proton.

So the proton is like two up corks and a down cork and a zillion gluons in between them. So already we know there's a little bit more to the proton than just the corks. I guess maybe I'm getting a little confused because a proton, you said, is two up quarks and a down cork. And a neutron, for example, is two down quarks and one up quark. Yes.

So it's sort of like the same, but you just switch one of the quarts. Exactly. And that's why beta decay requires just switching one down or up or back and forth. Okay. So now we're asking if the proton has a different kind of cork in it. But if we change the corks in a proton, it wouldn't be a proton anymore, would it? A proton is a proton is a proton. That's just the thing we find in nature.

The question is, what's in it? It might be that the protons innerds are different from what we've been describing for a while. Our story might have been a little bit wrong. So if there are charm corks also inside a proton, then that's what a proton is. We're not talking about replacing one of the upcork for the charm cork. We're asking if there are more quarks in there. If it's not just up, up and down, if there's extra other little bits in there. Oh, I see.

Like a proton, it's still a proton. With two up quarks and a down cork, but like maybe is there a charm quark jammed in there somehow that we haven't seen before? Exactly. Are there like little bits quantum mechanically of charm cork hanging out in there? Okay. And this is the burning question in particle physics. Now, why do you even have this question? Why do you think there might be charm corks inside the proton?

Well, we're always just curious, like, what is stuff made out of? We want to know definitively like, what is a proton? because the protons is the basic building block of everything out there in the universe. When the universe cooled and stuff slowed down, this is what it decided to make, mostly protons. So like you want to know the answer to the question, how does our universe work? What's it made out of? You've got to understand the proton. And so we're always happy with the first answer, but then we want to dig deeper and say, is that the total stories?

They're more going on to the proton. And then there are hints. They're hints that maybe there is something else. And one of the hints is that we know that the glue between those parts of the, particles has the capacity to make more corks. Like those gluons we talked about that stick the up corks and down corks together, they don't just hang out and stay gluons. Sometimes they turn into corks and then back.

So you could have a glue on in the proton that's flying around. All of a sudden it turns into a bottom cork and an anti-bottom cork and then back into a glue on. So if you shoot a probe at a proton, sometimes you hit the main corks, the up corks and the down corks. Sometimes you hit a glue on, sometimes you hit a bottom cork. hit a bottom cork. Sometimes you hit a charm cork. Sometimes you hit a top cork. It's a big frothing mess. It sounds like it's sort of like quantum mechanical magic where there's like an infinite number of particles popping into existence probabilistically. But we still say that the proton is made out

of three quarks, right? And those are more real than the other imaginary quarks? Yeah, those are the intrinsic quarks. We say the two upcorks and the down cork are like the building block of the proton because they're there all the time, right? They're just always part of the proton. They sort of define what the proton is. And we know that the gluons are there sloshing around and that, as you say, quantum mechanically, sometimes if you poke into them, they can be turning into something else and you caught them in the act and maybe you can interact with that particle. But we think about those as like extrinsic particles. We don't think of those as necessarily part of the proton itself because the energies to create those and to make that interaction

happen comes from the collision like you want to smash two protons together to see what's inside and to interact with those gluons then the energy to make like the bottom cork or whatever else other weird quarks you're talking about comes from the energy you've put in and so we're interested in more deeply the question like what's the proton itself made out of and so this is the question people have been asking like when a proton is just sitting there by itself does it also still have some charm cork in it. So wait, are you asking whether the proton has, in addition to the up, up and down, as intrinsic corks, does it also have an intrinsic charm cork to it?

Or are you asking whether it has a lot of extrinsic charm corks in it? We already know it has a lot of extrinsic charm corks. Like it has extrinsic everything because the gluons have so much energy and if you interact with them, they can basically make anything. We're asking whether it has intrinsic charm cork. like when a proton is just sitting there, does it also actually have some charm cork in it? And that's conceptually a little hard to get your mind around because like, what does that mean?

We're talking about these three particles make up the cork, right? Remember that everything we're talking about is quantum mechanical. And so really we're talking about making the picture of the proton a little bit more complicated, not just like there are three particles, but like there are more options here. Sometimes it has two upcorks and a down. Sometimes one of those is a charm quark. Sometimes one of those is an up quark. Sometimes one of those is a down quark.

It's a little bit more of a complicated mixture of these particles if there is intrinsic charm in the proton. Okay. So you're sort of saying like if we have the picture that it's made out of two up quarks and one down quark, but maybe the picture is more like it's changing all the time. Maybe the proton is transforming inside of itself into different combinations of corks.

Yes, exactly. And so people have been trying to answer this question for a long time. They've been doing it the only way that we know how, which is to try to break open the proton, throw other protons at it, or throw electrons at it, smash something into it. It's tricky, though, because you want to distinguish between the scenario where, like, the proton has intrinsic charm quarks in it, you know, like the internals of it are like changing back and forth from up quarks to charm quarks, or you're creating charm corks when you collide, you're manufacturing these extrinsic charm quarks in the process of probing it. It's been a very

difficult set of experiments to do to distinguish between the charm corks we see in the proton are the intrinsic or are they extrinsic? It's not an easy experiment. All right, well, let's dig into the details of this experiment and what it tells us about what's really inside a proton or what a proton really is actually mean at it. Let's dig into that. But first, let's take another quick break. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brand-Brandt. 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

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I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about exploring human potential. I was going to schools to try to teach kids these skills, and I get eye rolling from teachers or I get students who would be like, it's easier to punch someone in the face. When you think about emotion regulation, like you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome as a result of it, if it's going to be beneficial to you. Because it's easy to say, like, go you, go blank yourself, right?

It's easy. It's easy to just drink the extra beer. It's easy to ignore, to suppress, seeing a colleague who's bothering you and just, like, walk the other way. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials is easier. Drinking is easier.

Yelling, screaming is easy. Complex problem solving, meditating, you know, takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When your car is making a strange noise, no matter what it is, you can't just pretend it's not happening. That's an interesting sound.

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Are there people who say that it was rigged? Yeah, ever since I was first on, people are like. They gave you the answers, right? And then there's the other ones which are like. They gave you the answers, and you still blew it. Don't miss Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings on our special game show week of the Puzzler podcast. The Puzzler is the best place to get your daily word puzzle fix. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

All right, we're asking what's really inside the proton. Is it just to up quarks and a down quark, as we've been told, or as you and I have been telling people for every years now, Daniel. I feel like maybe you're now calling as liars. Because it turns out that maybe there's a question of whether there's more to the proton than just these corks. Like maybe its insides are changing all the time from two upcorks and down cork to something else

which involves another kind of cork, the Trump cork. I think everything we've been telling people for years has an implicit comma, maybe dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, at the end of it. I feel like if you wanted to make that explicit, maybe we should make it more explicit, Daniel. We should rename the podcast, Daniel and Jorge, explain the universe, dot, dot, dot, dot, maybe. You know, it's just part of our scientific storytelling.

We're always trying to come up with a way to describe the universe and then figuring out, oh, that doesn't actually capture all the details. Let's add some bells and whistles or let's simplify it. Let's throw the whole thing out and explain it in another way. It's just part of the journey. I mean, I feel like maybe all this time, you could have just added like, we think that this is what it's made out of. Not like, I feel like for years we've been saying,

oh, yes, the proton is made out of two upcorks and a down quark. Like, that's a fact, but maybe it's not. Well, you know, when you're introducing people to really weird, complex topics, you have to do it bit by bit. And if you start with all the qualifiers, all the reasons why we don't understand it, they're never going to get to the things we think we may do understand. I think people can handle scientists think. Or we think it's made out of this.

I guess I feel like that's implied with everything that comes out of my mouth. Anyway, for now on listeners, insert a scientist think in front of everything. you hear me say. That's right. Maybe we should have like one of those quick read disclaimers at the end of each episode. Like Daniel Horry explained the universe has not been verified by the FDA or a valid international physics organization. Even valid international physics organizations, they just think stuff, man. They can be wrong. Well, some things are more verified by experiments than others, right? Yes. Yes, that's true. And that's what we're trying to capture here on the podcast, the current mainstream thinking for how the universe works.

All right. Well, I guess we'll tell Corey or engineer to just add that disclaimer at the end of every episode from now and retroactively maybe also. Can you do that? Because I feel like, you know, maybe we've been deceiving people for five years, Daniel. Well, you know, they got to stick around for the twist. The twist where we reveal that we lied to them. These are approximations.

They're not lies. I see. The betrayal. Good faith explanations. All right. So the idea is that the proton is mostly limited to upcorks and a down quark, but maybe you think there's a possibility that that changes sometimes. Yeah.

And so you're saying, first you said the simple answer is that no, there's no charm quark in the proton. Why was that no again? That's just the sort of simplest answer. And it's also sort of common sense. The charm cork has more mass than the proton. So it's sort of like saying that the proton is less than the sum of its part. if it has like a little bit of charm cork in it. Meaning like it's mostly two ups and quarks and the down quark, right?

Yeah. That's why the basic answer is no. But then you're saying maybe there's more going on. Maybe it does change into some charminess sometimes. Is that what's going on? Yeah, exactly. Because in quantum mechanics, anything that can happen will happen. And we don't see a reason why you can't sometimes have charm quarks hanging out inside the proton.

But these calculations are really hard to do. You know, quantum chromodynamics, the theory that explains how the strong interactions work and how quarks come together to make particles is a bear to work with. We can't even do things like calculate from first principles what the mass of the proton should be or the mass of these other particles. It's like very, very difficult to do anything with. So it's dominated by experiments. We have to go out and actually measure this stuff and see what's in the universe and then

try to figure out how to explain it with our calculations because we're really limited in the calculations we can do here. And so people have been doing experiments to see like what's inside the proton for a few decades now. And there were some hints. Oh, look, this experiment says there actually is some charm inside the proton,

some intrinsic charm. Not charm that's created when we collide stuff together out of that energy, but charm that was already there. And then another experiment that came along and said, nope, we don't see any charm. And these things were limited because we didn't have enough data,

we didn't have enough energy, we didn't have enough power. But recently, because the large Hadron Collider, We have more data. We have more energy. We can get more definitive measurements for what's inside the proton. I feel like you're talking about charm. Like it's a property, like Riz, you know, or like actual charm.

Is it like a property? I thought we were talking about the charm quark. Saying whether it has charm is just shorthand for saying whether there's a probability to find charm quarks in the proton. But we are changing a little bit what we mean by it's made out of, right? We think of the atom is made out of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Like you have those things as ingredients, you put them together, and now you call it an atom. Here it's a little bit different.

It's a little fuzzy, it's a little bit more quantum mechanical. We're saying, like, the wave function of the proton has components of the up quark and the down quark, and maybe there's a component there for the charm quark. Not like the charm cork is always there, but there's always a probability for it. So it changes a little bit what we mean by, like, this proton is made. of something. But I guess then you get into the question of like where do you draw the line? Quantum mechanically, it is technically possible for my body to suddenly turn into the body of Brad Pitt, right? Like that's a quantum mechanical probability. It's very small. But it is technically a

possibility, right? In this universe. Yeah, I mean, I think you're both equally chamming. So you're already there. Yeah, Brad Pitt is very chaming. But just because I can turn into Brad Pitt at any moment doesn't mean that I am Brad Pitt. But you can ask the question, if I call Jorge a thousand times, what fraction of the time does Brad answer? Right. And well, even if it's like one in a trillion, at one point, what number of phone calls should I change my name to Brad Pitt?

Yeah. Well, if you've always called Jorge and Brad has never answered, then you can't say that there's a Brad contribution to Jorge. But as soon as it happens, then boom, you've measured the Brad fraction of Jorge champ. And then at what point do you say that I am made out of Brad Pitt? When you can measure some Brad in Jorge. The time that Brad answers, that's when we'll declare you are partially Brad Pitt. Like is there a percentage that you would do that just like in the proton, like is there a percentage of charm quarkness that you would then say yes,

the proton does have a charm cork in it? Because technically it does right now, right? There's a very small probability, as you said, that things in it can turn into a charm fork. I don't think there's any minimum quantities. As long as you can measure it, as long as it's large enough for us to detect it, then we'll say we found charm in the proton. We know that it's there. Otherwise, it's just sort of theoretical. It's like saying, you know, is there a teapot a zillion light years away? I mean, maybe there is, but we'll never detect it. So it's just theoretical. But as long as we measure some charm cork in the proton, then we can say it's there. Otherwise, it's just like a possibility. And again, we can't really even do the calculations or we can predict

theoretically and to say how much charm there should be in the proton. So it really has to be led by measurements. But I guess maybe the question is like, are you saying that it's possible that the proton has a charm fork in it or is there maybe something in the theory that says it's impossible or is that what you're trying to get at?

Like, we need to probe it to make sure that it is possible. Yeah, the theory says that it's possible, but the theory is very fuzzy and very hard to work with. So the best thing to do is to go out there and measure the charm fraction of the proton, and that might help us come back and improve our theories and get a better grip on what we think is going on.

I see. So you think that maybe it is possible for the insides of a proton to turn into a charm quark, but you're not sure yet because you haven't seen it or confirmed it exactly in experiments. Some people have,

some people haven't. And that was the scenario until a couple of years ago. And then using data at the Large Hadron Collider, we were able to confirm that there really is charm cork inside the proton. So this is a paper that came out in 2022 that had very powerful statistical

evidence for charm quarks inside protons, which means we're pretty sure we can say the proton is charming. But you know, dot, dot, dot may be question mark. Well, I feel like the language you're using is maybe confusing. Like, you're not saying it has charm inside of it. You're saying it sometimes turns into a charm cork what's inside of the proton. I think the most precise way to say it is that the wave function for the proton has probabilities for us. up corks, down corks, and charm corks. Sometimes when you look inside the proton, you will find a charm corkorn. Oh, all right.

So then it has been experimentally verified. You think? Dot, dot, dot, maybe. The latest evidence from about a year ago is pretty persuasive. It's more than three statistical sigmas of significance. Now what's the difference there? Like, what's the thing that makes you more sure rather than not? That it's not like coming from the energy when you collide these particles, for example.

that it's actually there if you don't look at it. It comes from the patterns of how the particles emerge from the collisions. Like if it's coming from actually inside the proton, then you'll see these particles come out in the path that the protons were taking because then the charm quarks are moving with the protons as they come into the collision. If the charm quark wasn't there the whole time, it's just made during the collision, you tend to see these charm quarks fly out more like at the center or just where the collision happens.

So there's some subtle patterns there that people have been looking for about the spray of particles. You get a different prediction if the charm quark was there all the time than if the charm quark is only created in the moments of the collision. But it's a subtle effect, which is why this experiment was very difficult to do and needed a lot of data and was only wrapped up a couple years ago. Okay, so now does that mean

that the international physics community has to issue a giant apology for all those textbooks and posters that say that the proton is made out of two up quarks and a down quark because all this time you've been wrong. Well, I think we're working on stickers on our web store that say dot, dot, dot, maybe to be added to every textbook ever. Well, no, but I mean it. Like, you know, you walk down the physics department,

you see a poster with the fundamental theory of particle physics, and it says that a proton is made out of two upcorks and down quark, but now you have to change the story, it sounds like. Yeah, it's an update to the story. It's part of science evolving and becoming more charming as we learn more about how the universe works. So are you going to change those posters? Do you think, or maybe the question is, do you think those posters need to be updated? Yeah, it's a tough question of sort of pedagogy, like how do you teach this stuff?

You know, the story is mostly the same, but there are nuances. And so it might be worth introducing those at the very start or it might be worth explaining those as you dig deeper into the story. I understand what you mean because I do a lot of science. communication, but there is sort of a fine line between not saying something that's not true and saying something that's more complicated. Yeah, no, it's a difficult line to walk. I agree. So which one do you think it is?

Do you think it needs to be updated at some point? If I say right now that the proton is made out to up quarks and down quarks, you technically would have to say that's not true or we think that's not true. So if I see it on a poster, does that need to be corrected? I think that basically everything we say in quantum mechanics and in particle physics is an approximation. So from that perspective, like, nothing is exactly true. There's always qualifications.

Take down the posters. Exactly. Don't say anything at all. But it's still worth saying. It's still worth introducing people to these ideas. Even if the story we tell it's first is only approximately true. In the end, all of our understanding is probably only approximately true. Well, I mean, I feel like some things are stronger than others.

Like, you can say an atom is made out of protons and electrons. There's no caveat to that, is there? Well, there's other stuff in there. right? The photons can turn into other particles. And so when you interact with an atom, sometimes you find W bosons and Z bosons inside there. In addition to the electrons and protons, but do the electrons of protons are still there? No? The electrons and protons are still there.

All right. Well, another interesting insight into how we're still figuring things out. The universe is vast and mysterious and our current theories may change tomorrow or today. Or maybe they should have changed a while ago. We're here trying to explain our constantly evolving understanding. to you. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us.

See you next time. For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter, Discord, Insta, and now TikTok. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. When your car is making a strange noise, no matter what it is, you can't just pretend it's not happening. That's an interesting sound.

It's like your mental health. If you're struggling and feeling overwhelmed, it's important to do something about it. It can be as simple as talking to someone, or just taking a deep, calming breath to ground yourself. Because once you start to address the problem, You can go so much further. The Huntsman Mental Health Institute and the Ad Council

have resources available for you at love your mind today.org. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Valicia Butterfield, media founder, political strategist, and tech powerhouse for a powerful conversation on storytelling,

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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 podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. This is an IHeart podcast.