Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Are there particles that don't have anti-particles?

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

Daniel and Jorge discuss whether Majorana particles are real, and crack a real life mystery about the fate of Ettore Majorana. 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.

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. Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance brof trying to tell us how to spend our own money? No thank you. Instead, check out Brown Ambition. Each week, I, your host, Mandy Money, gives you real talk, real advice with a heavy dose of eye. feel uses, like on Fridays when I take your questions for the BAQA. Whether you're trying to invest for your future,

navigate a toxic workplace, I got you. Listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, it's Honey German, and I'm back with season two of my podcast. Grazias, come again. We got you when it comes to the latest in music and entertainment with interviews with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We'll talk about all that's viral and trending with a little bit of cheesement and a whole lot of laughs. And of course, the great bevras you've come to expect.

Listen to the new season of Dacias Come Again on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Jorge, I have a cartoon physics question for you. Ooh, go for it. I have a PhD in cartoon physics, you know. All right, I'm just glad to hear that there is some physics and cartoons, but my question is, if you were a superhero in a cartoon, who would be your corresponding villain?

Oh, like the anti-Horhe? You know, working to spoil all my plans? Yeah, exactly. Paint us a picture of who this character would be. Uh, there probably wouldn't be an anti-Horges, you know? No, why not? Because I think, you know, my plans are usually pretty simple. You know, draw cartoons and take naps.

Who would want to foil that? I guess maybe the anti-Horhe would just like want to join you for a nap and a snack. I guess that means you are the anti-Horhe. I am my worst enemy. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I can read a comic without criticizing the physics of it. You cannot or you can?

I can. Yeah, I can totally suspend my physics disbelief when I see the green goblin floating above the streets of New York City. What do I mean? He could be on a drone. They have those now, like personal drones. Yeah, I don't see any spinning blades. on the green goblins platform, though. There's some weird anti-gravity device. They're green on green.

That's why you can't see them. What about Marvel movies? Can you watch those and suspend your physics disbelief? That's a little harder, especially when the plot revolves explicitly around bending the laws of physics and ways that make no sense. Or when they go into the quantum universe? That's all right. It's when they try to time travel and tie their plot into nonsensical knots that it drives me bonkers. Makes you want to be a villain in the Marvel universe.

Well, you know, all the villains in the Marvel universe seem to have a PhD. They do. Hey, and you could be Dr. Stranger, maybe. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, Explain the Universe, a production of IHeartRadio. In which we critique the physics of the real universe. Does everything out there make sense? Is it possible to take the entire physical universe with all of its black holes and supernovas and strange bendings and ripples of space and squeeze it all down into a human brain?

Is it possible to build a mental mathematical model of the universe that actually describes what's going on out there? Can we ever wrap our minds around this crazy bonkers physical reality? We're not sure, but we can have a lot of fun trying. Yeah, because it is a pretty amazing universe. It's really big and really old, and there's a lot to explore in it, a lot of interesting stories and lots of interesting characters to give us fascinating insights into how everything works. And we explored at so many different levels. We think about the physics of hurricanes, we think about solar systems, we think about galaxies, we also think about tiny little particles.

And I am constantly amazed that, frankly, any of this works. Since we don't understand the universe at the tiniest level of vibrating strings or little space pixels, it's incredible to me that we can understand the way things emerge, that there's this sort of simplicity that arises. It's not always chaotic. And that lets us tell nice little mathematical stories about what's going on around us. Yeah, because that is one of the goals of human existence, I think, is to understand our context and to understand how and why we're here and how we can make it better. Yeah, and to make better and faster iPhones,

we need to understand how the world works so that we can bend it to our will. But there's another deeper pleasure there in just knowing, in just understanding, in just unraveling the mysteries of the universe and having some mastery of it. To me, there's a deep, deep satisfaction in feeling like we have grasped something true about the universe. Daniel, you made it sound like we're here to critique the universe. Are we physics critics?

Is that what this podcast is about? A little bit we are. You know, we are trying to say, hey, this doesn't make any sense. And because it seems like the arc of the scientific universe bends towards understanding, when something doesn't make sense or when something is ugly, that's sort of a clue. It's a clue that says maybe there's a simpler explanation. Maybe there's a beauty here that we haven't yet unwrapped.

It sort of like points us in the right direction. Right, right. Or when they use the same old tired plot or it's a physical law. And so therefore, it's not as novel. Yeah. And sometimes we hear just to critique how physicists name things, right? Which isn't exactly a critique of the universe as much as a critique of scientists. Right, right.

Hey, we need some kind of like grading system. You know how some people use stars and so some people use thumbs up or thumbs down. What would use? Bananas. Bananas, exactly. But would five bananas be the worst or the best? Like, wow, that's bananas? Is that a positive review or a negative review?

I think it's just kind of like a self-explanatory review, you know? Like, this thing is five bananas. Yeah, it's one banana. You know, how bonkers is it? That's the rating system. Yeah. Oh, I like that, yes, as representing the bonkersness of the universe. Well, I'm pro-banana in that context, at least.

I want the universe to be many bananas so that when we finally understand the true nature of reality, our little minds are blown. Wow. What's the most bananas you would give something? Like the theory of the universe. I don't think we should limit ourselves. I think there should be the possibility of infinite bananas. The R-radi system goes from zero to infinity. Yes, there's always something that's more bananas than anything we've ever seen before.

Maybe it should be five bananas maximum, but then each banana can have bananas inside of it or be made up of other bananas. It's a continuous banana spectrum or like recursive bananas. It's bananas all the way down. But it is, we like to talk about this universe and everything in it, not just kind of the big, amazing things like black holes and galaxies and quasars and incredible stars, but also the little tiny particles that make up everything, including you and I. Exactly, because we have this hunch that one key to understanding the true nature of reality is to pull it apart, is to figure out what the smallest bits are and how they relate to each other.

What are the rules that these smallest bits have to follow? Those should be the deepest rules of the universe. And if you could somehow write down the list of the basic elements of the universe and how they interact, you would be looking at like the source code of the universe. And you could finally give a definitive answer to how bananas is the universe. Yeah, you'd be like a neo, you know, when he's finally sees the matrix, sees what everything is made out of behind the scenes. That's the goal.

But we know that we aren't there yet, that the things that we are looking at are now the basic constituents of the universe because there are things about them that don't make sense yet that suggests that there must be some deeper layers, some smaller bits that follow even more fundamental rules. When we look at the particles that we have understood, there are things about them that sort of jump out at us. Yeah, I mean, you like to sort of talk about the sort of the story arc of humanity

and our understanding of what things are made of and how it's sort of like each time we get closer and smaller and we sort of get down to the smaller and smaller bits of Lego. Like you talk about how the universe is sort of put together like a Lego set. Yeah, that's right. It's incredible to me that all of the complexity that we see in the universe, you know, the bananas, the black holes, the boogie boards, all of that stuff. None of that is fundamental to the universe.

And the way that that complexity arises is not in like the nature of the boogie board or the banana, but how its little bits are put together, as you were saying, like Lego people. You can use the same little bits to make buggy boards or bananas or banana bread. It's all made out of the same fundamental ingredients. And so the key is understanding how those things come together. What are the rules that let you arrange things into different configurations? Why are some things allowed and other things not allowed? Those are the deepest rules of the universe, the ones that we want to uncover.

Right, right. And why do they hurt so much when you step on them? It's another big question. I think there's a whole branch of philosophy devoted just to that question. To Lego or to let him go. To the existential pain of Legos. Of having to pick them up all the time. Is there a universe in which Legos feel good on your feet, right?

Is there a universe in which they pick themselves up by themselves? That one I would give more bananas too. Is there a universe in which Lego step on us and then the Legos scream? Yeah, but we made a lot of progress in the last few thousand years. You know, we went from thinking that the universe was made out of four elements, wind, fire, error, and another one. And down to like the periodic table of elements and now to like the fundamental particles. So we're gotten smaller and more precise. I think it's fire, air, water, and bananas.

Those are the fundamental elements of the universe. Yes, I agree. From my reading of Greek philosophy. Forget the standard model. Let's switch to the Horhe banana model. That's right. Exactly. But yeah, we have peeled back lots of layers of reality and we have a really nice description of how particles interact.

But you know, we look at this description. And we ask questions about it, questions that just sort of jump out at you when you look at the patterns of the particles. Yeah, and one of those interesting patterns is this idea of antiparticles. It seems that every particle out there that we know about has an antiparticle. Yeah, when you look at a picture of the particles of the standard model, they show you like up quarks and down quarks, electrons and neutrinos. But what they don't show you is that every particle that's there has a partner particle. They like shadow twin. Electrons exist, but so do anti-electrons.

Quarks exist, but so do anti-quarks. Every single kind of matter particle out there, the things that make up stuff that me and you and all the things in the cosmos, they can exist, but also their anti-particles can exist. Yeah, and these fundamental particles are not the only kind of particles there are in the universe. Physicists have found sort of other kinds of particles

that don't necessarily make up matter, but kind of exist both mathematically and possibly in the real world. Exactly. This is one of those kinds of patterns where we say, hmm, it's interesting that all the particles we've seen so far have antiparticles. And it's possible mathematically for there to be particles without antiparticles, where they are their own anti-particles.

And so because it's possible mathematically, physicists wonder, is it real physically? Yeah, and these kinds of, special particles have a name. They're called Mayurana particles, named after the physicist Etore Maurana. And they might be important clues to how everything works, including neutrinas and maybe even making quantum computers. That's right.

And they might also be clues to a real true crime mystery in physics, which is what happened to Itorei Maerana himself. Wait, what? There's a murder mystery in this podcast, too? They just suddenly turn into one of those murder shows. That's right. We are now a true crime podcast. Oh, man.

For real, Etona Myerana, a genius Italian physicist, came up with this idea for the Myerana particle in the 30s. And one year after he came up with this proposal, he mysteriously disappeared. Whoa. Man, I can't wait for our ratings to go up now that we're a crime podcast. Are we going to interview like everyone in you and the neighbors and stuff? We're going to take field trips to Venezuela and Argentina to track down potential sightings. No, we're not.

I mean, if we have the budget, I'll go. This is real stuff. He bought a boat ticket from Palermo to Naples and sent a really cryptic telegram, and then he was never seen again. But there are pictures of people who look a little bit like him, which surfaced later in Venezuela and in Argentina. So there are all these theories. Was he killed by a rival physicist?

Did he actually escape to Venezuela because he knew he was going to be killed? Or did he just get on the wrong boat and got confused? Oh, man, Daniel, I am totally serious. Let's do a crime on the podcast episode about this man. It's a crossover podcast. But anyways, his theory is that there are these things called Mahirana particles, and they're kind of interesting because they're sort of not like real particles, maybe, and also they are their own antiparticles,

or at least they don't have antiparticles. Exactly. They are a fascinating new idea in how the universe can exist. And so maybe part of the future of understanding the nature of the universe and also potentially a path to building more robust quantum computers. So to the end of the podcast, we'll be tackling the question. Are there particles that don't have antiparticles? I feel like that's a double negative question, Daniel. They don't have antipart.

Does that mean they're pro particles or they're anti-antiparticles? Aren't they're not antiparticles? that don't not have their own anti-particles? No. Never say never. No, it's an interesting question. You know, are there matter particles that sort of are their own anti-particles

that can like annihilate with themselves? Maybe that's what happened to Eitori Mayurana. He realized he was his own anti-Mayurana and then that the knowledge immediately annihilated him. Wow, you may have just cracked this mystery. Podcast over. You just spoiled our trip to Venezuela, man. Now we don't have to go.

Well, this won't air for a while, right? Yeah, we can still squeeze that trip in. But yeah, he sort of invented this idea of the Mayurana particles. And it's sort of an interesting concept that maybe a lot of people don't know about. So usually we were wondering how many out there had heard of this and what they think it might be. So thank you very much to everybody on the internet who continues to participate and give answers to these random questions. They're very helpful in guiding our. podcast. If you would like to participate and hear your own voice on the podcast, please don't

be shy. Everybody's welcome. Just write to questions at Danielanhorpe.com. So think about it for a second. What do you think is a majorana particle? Here's what people have to say. Um, I've read about them on Wikipedia, but I think they're a weird combination of quarks. So majorana particles, I think are probably some kind of ultrospin. Firm. where it's has like three half spin or five half spin and it has just a very large excessive charge to it that brings about very specific and unique properties that is kind of only synthetically made and has never been discovered naturally so this is a pure guess but by the looks of the name i think it's a collection of particles which are very common. or very large a number around us. Major Anna particles are a big part of history.

They are the remnants of the fall of Berlin, produced in May, 1945, when Major Anna, Nucalina of the Red Army hoisted a Russian flag over the Reichstag. The Marjorana particles, I have no idea. Sounds like somebody might put in a pipe and smoke or something. I've no clue about that. I'm guessing they're bigger and more major than the major major than the minor anna particles? Sorry, best guess. Yeah, not a whole lot of people really knew anything about myrona particles. It did feel a little bit technical. And so I thought, well, let's try

something new. Instead of asking random people to answer a particle physicist question, I thought, how well will a particle physicist answer a question without any preparation? So you asked your postdoc who is from Scotland. That's right. So here's Mike, my Scottish postdoc, trying to answer this question without any chance to prepare my name is Mike I postdoc with Daniel at UCI and I research particle physics and machine learning specifically top quarks a myerana particle so you have different extensions to the standard model can give you different kinds of interactions so you have Dirac and myirana neutrinos and I forget exactly

what. One is what, but they obey different statistics. And I should know which one's which and I don't. So I hope that makes you feel better, folks out there who didn't know what a myrana particle is. Even professional particle physicists, people with PhDs don't always have these things at their fingertips. So are you going to fire him then, Daniel? Are we announcing that here in the podcast? No, I'm giving him karma points for participating. Carma points. Oh, Oh, that sounds like you're going to collect later on. I might have to make a withdrawal at some point, yeah. He owes you a favor.

Well, good luck to him in the future with that favor. But it is an interesting question, this idea of Mayurina particles, Daniel, so maybe step us through it first. What are they and what do we know about them? So myirona particles would be like a different kind of matter particle from all the ones that we are familiar with. And to understand where this comes from, you sort of have to go back to the, early days of quantum mechanics and understand how our current theory of matter arose and what your anti-matter comes from. And it goes back to Paul Dirac. He was trying to do something

very difficult, which is to bring together the new field of quantum mechanics, which was describing how electrons and photons operated with the new field of special relativity, which was trying to describe how things operated at very, very high speeds. Quantum mechanics at that point had only really been able to solve problems of sort of slow-moving quantum objects. And Dirac was wondering what happens when things get going really fast. You have electrons at very high speed or photons moving at the speed of light. Can we describe things which are both quantum and relativistic? So you found a bunch of particles that sort of follow this mathematical framework or equations

that Dirac made up, right? Yeah, so Dirac made up a mathematical framework. It's called the Dirac equation. and it's basically like the super fast version of the Schrodinger equation. But when he was putting that equation together, he noticed something. He was trying to just describe electrons and matter particles. But what he noticed was that his equation had a symmetry to it, that he could also at the same time describe another kind of particle,

a particle with like a positive charge. So he called this an antiparticle. He sort of discovered the antiparticle on the page. Right. it's sort of like you invented the multiplying things by itself and you find out that not only there's one times one equals one, but also like minus one times minus one is also equals one. Exactly. So he found that the math that described the universe and the particles that we saw also described things that we hadn't yet seen. And then he made this incredible sort of philosophical

leap. He was like, well, if the math describes it, it must also be real. So he proposed that these things might be real, that they might actually be out there. And then pretty soon afterwards, in experiments, people found them. They saw evidence of antiparticles. And, you know, I think you can't really overstate the sort of philosophical bravura there. Like, if the math describes it, it is real, is really a huge step to take. Yeah, because he was trying to come up with equations that described something that he had seen.

And then he found these equations also work for, like, the inverse of the particles. And so he said, hey, maybe those exist too. Maybe those exist too, right? And he was right. This guy, Dirac, was sort of famous for not being short on sort of intellectual self-confidence. As he was giving his Nobel Prize acceptance speech for basically predicting the existence of the positron, the anti-electron. He made more predictions for more antiparticles, which were then borne out a few years later. Wait, what?

In his acceptance speech? Yeah, exactly. It's like he embedded some bananas inside the bananas. Yeah, and he was right about all of it. Wow, what do he do when he accepted the Nobel Prize for those? He predicted the anti-Nobel Prize. He invented a whole new kind of prize. But he wasn't the only one out there playing with the mathematics of quantum mechanics and special relativity.

And the formulation that he came up with, it does seem like it describes the matter that we see in our universe. But there was another physicist, Et Torre Maerana. He came up with another equation, another equation, which also used. Unified quantum mechanics and special relativity, but the symmetry of his equation was different. It didn't require the existence of these antiparticles. It didn't have this like other shadow side to the universe that it's suggested. In Maerana's equation, every particle sort of was its own antiparticle.

Wait, wait, what do you mean? Like he, did he know about Dirac's work or was he working independently? He knew about Dirac's work. It was famous, but he was just like, well, let's see what else we can do. Also, you know, the communication between folks back then and the 30s wasn't nearly as tight as it is today. People don't just like post their papers in the internet and the next day you read about it. So I'm sure it's the kind of thing he'd been thinking about and playing with for several years, even if he was aware of Daraq's work. And so you can probably treat it as an independent line of study, though I'm sure he was aware of what Daraq was doing.

But he came up with this other equation. And this equation, unlike Daraq's equation, didn't sort of like look different in the mirror. Dirac's equation, if you flip the signs, you get equations to describe a different kind of matter, anti-matter. Myerana's equation has a symmetry in it so that if you flip the signs, everything just looks the same. But what was he trying to do, I guess, is the question. Was he trying to describe regular particles like electrons and protons and things like that in quarks? Or was he just playing around with the equations?

That's sort of a good question for all of theoretical physics. What are you guys trying to do? Are you trying to describe the universe? Are you just playing around with the equations? Are you doing carton physics or real physics? Sometimes just playing around with the equations is discovering the nature of the universe, right? Like what is possible mathematically might be what is real physically? That's sort of the amazing thing about Dirac's discovery, right?

That just because antimatter particles were possible mathematically, he predicted they existed physically. And so Maerano was sort of exploring like what other ways can we follow? the rules of quantum mechanics and follow the rules of special relativity and be mathematically coherent, maybe that kind of matter also exists out there in the universe. Was he thinking it was a different kind of matter or did he think like, hey, maybe this will eventually describe the regular matter? His kind of equation can't describe electrons, for example, because myerana particles, if they exist, have to have zero charge so that they are their own antiparticle. You can't be a plus one charged particle and be a myerana particle because

because then your antiparticle would be minus one charge. So his equation can only describe uncharged particles. So that rules out most matter particles, right? Because most matter particles have some sort of charge. If it's not electromagnetic, it's, you know, the strong force or the weak force, right? That's right. But there are some particles that don't have electric charge and might be their own antiparticle. And those are neutrinos.

Neutrinos are still very mysterious. And we still don't know today if neutrino, are Dirac particles as described by Dirac's equation or if they are myerana particles as described by myerana's equation. Sounds like another mystery podcast. Who killed the neutrino? Why is it so neutral?

All right, well, let's get into more about this interesting new kind of particle and what other particles might fit into that category. 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 2, 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 podcast. 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. 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.

Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grazacus, come again, is back. This season we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there.

Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start. We talk all about what's viral and trending With a little bit of chisement A lot of laughs And those amazing Vibras you've come to expect

And of course we'll explore deeper topics Dealing with identity, struggles And all the issues affecting our Latin community You feel like you get a little whitewash Because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash Because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me But the whole pretending and coat

You know, it takes a toll on you Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again As part of My Cultura podcast network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards,

you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan. starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it and in fact it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice,

to Brown Ambition on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're talking about particles and maybe don't have antiparticles. I guess they're pro-particles, Daniel? They're not antiparticles, so they must be pro-particle. Yeah, and you know, there are some particles in nature we know of that are their own antiparticles. For example, the photon. The photon doesn't have an anti-photon to it. And the Higgs doesn't have an anti-Higgs. That doesn't make it a myerona particle because myrana particles describe fermions, matter particles like quarks and electrons or maybe neutrinos. Whereas photons are

bosons. They're a different kind of particle and aren't described by myerana's equations. But in that sense, we do have examples of particles that don't have antiparticles. interesting. I guess what's the difference between fermions and bosons? Like, where do you draw the line? Yeah, well, we draw the line in how they spin. So remember we talked about how particles have this weird property called quantum spin, which is sort of related to real spin, but it's not really the same because you can't think of them as like actually spinning. You can think of it's sort of like a label that particles have, though it's deeply connected to angular momentum. So it's more than just a label. Anyway, go check out our whole episode about quantum spin. It's at least one hour. of material right there. But fermions have half spin, which means it can be spin up or spin down. And bosons have integer spin. So the Higgs boson just doesn't spin at all. It's spin

zero. The photon is spin one, which means that it can spin up or it can spin down and it can do another weird thing, have like circular polarization. And so it just depends on what kind of spin states these particles can have. bosons are integers and fermions are half integers. Wait, are you saying the only difference between being a matter particle and not being matter is the half spin? The half spin. I think usually what we call matter is like stuff that feels substantial, right? That sort of like makes stuff up in the universe. And usually that's the stuff that feels gravity in force, right?

Like dark matter, we say it's matter because it feels gravity. Yeah, that's true. But remember, gravity actually couples to everything with energy. So gravity is influenced by photons and by Higgs bosons. You know, some people think that the Higgs field is the thing that's driving the accelerated expansion of the universe because it's a large potential value. So actually, even though matter is the thing that makes up stuff, all the energy inside your body is some of it's contained in bosons, like gluons inside your protons, contribute to your mass. So I think the confusion is that we call these things matter particles, but really what you are made out of is both a combination of fermions and bosons, all of which contributes. to your gravitational effect on the universe.

I see. You're saying we're all just energy at the end. The word matter doesn't really matter, I guess. It's just really, from a physics point of view, the word matter just means that it has a half spin, half quantum spin. As usual, we've taken a word that has a common sense meaning and used it in a slightly different way to be very confusing. Yeah, and it seems in an arbitrary way.

A little bit arbitrary. But yeah, we call matter fields, everything that's a fermion, and radiation fields. everything that's a boson. And there are other differences, right? Bosons can all be in the same state, and fermions can't be in the same state. So they really are different kinds of fields. Okay, so Dirac's equations apply to both matter and non-matter particles, but you're saying myurana's equations only apply to matter particles or non-matter particles. Dirac and Myerana both just described fermions. So these equations only describe fermions, but Dirac's equation

described fermions that have anti-fermions, whereas Myerana's equations describe fermions that are their own anti-fermion, which is not a particle we've seen before. Like in all the list of particles we have in the universe, we have all different kinds of fermions, but we haven't ever seen one that is its own antiparticle. But we know that anthra particles exist. So I guess what makes us think that myurana's equations are a good way to describe the universe. You're right. Antiparticles exist. And that's exactly what makes us think that maybe Mayerana was on the right. track. The mantra is sort of like the universe does everything that's allowed. In particle physics, if something isn't prohibited, it just happens. Like those are the rules. Particles will do everything

that's not like explicitly prohibited. They're sort of like children in that way. You know, if you don't say that you can't put chocolate chip cookies up your nose, eventually your kids will try it. That's a whole different mystery right there. That's right. Now this is switched into being a parenting podcast. Oh man, those are also super popular. Let's just make like the one podcast that unified, the grand unifying podcast of everything. Exactly. But the philosophy here is, look, if the mathematics says it's okay, quantum mechanics says it has no problem with it, relativity says it has no problem with it, then maybe the universe is doing it, right? If there's no reason not to do it, then what we've seen in the past is that the universe does it, just like with

antiparticles. We hadn't ever seen one before. but the mathematics said it's possible. And it turns out, yeah, the universe has a lot of antiparticles in it also. So the idea is just like, if it's allowed, then probably the universe is doing it. I see. And so you're saying that there are particles that don't have an antiparticle, like they're their own antiparticle. And so does that mean that they can't be described in the Rax equations or they still can,

but they also could be described by Mayurana's equations? So there are bosons like photons that are their own antiparticle. They are not myerrana particles because they're bosons. Myerana only describes fermions. So what we're looking for is whether there are fermions that are their own antiparticle. And so we know that electrons are not myerana particles. They're definitely Dirac because we've seen their antiparticles. We know that quarks are direct particles because we've seen anti-quarks.

One question is, what about neutrinos? Are neutrinos direct particles? Are there anti-nutrinos? Or are they actually myerrana particles? like a neutrino is its own antiparticle. Oh, I see. Like maybe a neutrino shouldn't be grouped in with the other particles. Maybe it's like its own whole other category of mathematical particles.

Yeah, because neutrinos are very, very weird. Not only do they have no electric charge, which means that they could theoretically be their own antiparticle, they're also just different in so many other ways, right? For example, neutrinos have very, very, very tiny little masses. Particles, as we talked about, get their masses from the Higgs boson, but that doesn't explain, like, why particles have certain masses. And there's a huge range of these masses, like top quarks are billions of electron volts, and leptons are millions of electron volts. And then really far down on the other edge of the scale are neutrinos, which have masses of, like, single electron volts or even less.

So they're like one millionth the mass of everything else. And that makes people wonder like, hmm, do they really talk to the Higgs? This is the way the other particles do? It seems sort of like a different kind of thing. But they do have some mass, even if it's super little. That means it does interact with the Higgs. Well, there are other ways to get mass. Remember, the Higgs is one way to get particles mass.

It's a mechanism that can give mass to particles. But it's not the only way that particles can get mass. and we suspect that there are other things out there in the universe that are not getting mass from the Higgs. For example, dark matter. Dark matter, we're pretty sure, is out there. We think it might be a particle. And if so, it's almost certainly not getting mass from the Higgs. In order to be a particle and get your mass from the Higgs, you have to satisfy a couple of requirements.

One is, you have to be a direct particle. You have to have an antiparticle. And the other is that you have to feel the weak force because the Higgs boson is all time. up with the weak force. So dark matter might have anti-particles. There might be anti-dark matter. We don't know. But it doesn't feel the weak force. And so it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs. Whoa. The neutrino definitely feels the weak force. It's definitely part of that. So that's possible. But we don't know if it has an antiparticle. And that's necessary in order to get your mass

from the Higgs boson. Because remember the way the Higgs boson gives a particle its mass is that you have like this particle sort of swimming through space and it can sort of emit a Higgs boson. But in order for that to happen, you have to be able to have a Higgs boson talk to a particle and an antiparticle at the same time. It means, for example, like a Higgs boson needs to be able to decay into that particle and its antiparticle. There's just no way for a Higgs particle to talk to particles that don't have their own antiparticles.

Well, I feel like that's a really big change from how people usually talk about things because Because, you know, when they describe the Higgs boson, even like here on the podcast, we usually say it's the particle that gives other particles mass. But really, we should be saying it's the particle that gives some particles mass. Like maybe other particles don't get their mass from the Higgs. Like maybe the Higgs is not the last word on giving things mass. Yeah, we're pretty sure it's not the only way to give mass to particles. We haven't ever seen other particles get mass in other ways. So it's like we know for sure it's not the only way.

for particles to get mass, but we've never seen anything else do it. And so it's sort of like the possibility is there theoretically, but until we've seen another example, the Higgs is sort of the only one on the playing field. I see. So I guess the question or the story is that you're saying that maybe some particles like neutrinos or maybe even dark matter could be a whole different kind of particle,

like maybe a Mariana particle, that doesn't interact with the Higgs. It gets mass in a totally different way. Exactly. And for neutrinos, really the only clue we have is that their masses are weird, right? The way the particles get masses from the Higgs field is that they interact with the Higgs field. And different particles get different masses because they interact with the Higgs field at different strengths. The top cork interacts a lot with the Higgs field. So it gets a big mass. The electron interacts less with the Higgs field, so it gets less mass. So it's possible the neutrinos just like very, barely, hardly interact with the Higgs field and so get tiny, tiny masses. But that would be really weird. Why are those numbers so, so tiny a million times smaller than the other particles? Maybe instead it's a more natural, simpler explanation if they're getting their mass another way, if they have myerana masses instead of dirac masses from Higgs field. Whoa. And you're saying they could also explain maybe dark matter. Like maybe dark matter could also be a meurana particle that would also kind of explain why we can't see it.

Dark matter could be a myerona particle. Exactly. We know that dark matter, if it has And it's a particle. It has to get its mass in some other way from the Higgs field. Because we don't think that it feels the weak force. So exactly, it's possible that dark matter also gets its mass through a myerana mechanism. We cracked the mystery. Or at least how to ask about it. Maybe dark matter killed myeronic because it didn't want it to like spill its secrets.

Oh. Cosmic conspiracy. All right. Well, let's get into whether or not we've actually seen myurana particles and what we can claim we've seen about them. But first, let's take another quick break. December 29th, 1979, 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 okay story time 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 to are 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.

Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition.

I haven't auditioned in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start.

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching?

I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasasas Come Again as part of my culture, a podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable.

These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're talking about murder mystery. Welcome back to what happened to Atori Maggiurano. Only particles in the building. It was a dark and stormy night. It probably was a dark and stormy night. He might have gone to Argentina, he might have gone to Venezuela, he might have also sadly killed himself. There are also some theories that he gave up physics and his entire life and just became a beggar, wandering the streets of Naples forever. Does that happen often with physicists?

I think there's sometimes this dream of a simpler life, you know, you're not struggling with funding agencies and intellectual rivals. I don't know. Not something that I've been tempted by. Interesting. All right. Well, so we talked about how there's, It might be this whole new class of particles called majorina particles. There's totally different than the other particles we know about, the quarks and the electrons, because they're described by totally different mathematical equations. But the only reason we think they might exist is because there is a mathematical equation that might describe them, which is kind of a loop in thinking there.

But we haven't actually seen any, have we? We have not seen any myrona particles in the universe, but there's sort of two ways that we could see them. We could see like fundamental myerrana particles, like things we think are fundamental elements of the universe, like electrons and quarks, whatever. And a neutrino would be in that category. If a neutrino was a myerana particle instead of a Dirac particle, that would be mind-blowing. That would be a huge discovery. Another way is to see like quasi-particles that follow the same mathematics of the myron equation, but they aren't really particles in the exact same sense of the word. Right.

Like they're not fundamental to the universe. they just kind of like come up, kind of like sometimes atoms get together and they form a little ball and you can treat that as a particle. Sort of goes to a deeper question, which is like, what is a particle anyway? And quasi-particles, we have a whole fun podcast episode about what they are. They're like persistent, quantized, discrete, excitations of solids instead of like persistent, quantized, discrete excitations of fundamental fields of the universe. So instead of like, you know, an excitation in the electron field, you have an excitation in some like weird semiconductor or in some crystal or in some fluid. But mathematically, they follow the same rules. And so we call them quasi-particle.

Right. It's sort of like an ocean wave, like a wave in the ocean or a lake. It's actually a wave in water. It's not a wave in the sort of fundamental field of the universe, but it's still described by a wave equation. Yeah, exactly. It's the same mathematics. And so, you know, you could say, hey, quasi-particles are particles, too. And that's a reasonable point, you know, philosophically, really what's the difference?

It's just the underlying thing that is oscillating. Like an ocean wave is still a wave. Ocean waves are definitely still waves, especially when they slam down upon you. Even if they're not waves in the fundamental fabric of space time, they're still powerful. It'd be funny if people could serve abstract concepts. It'd be cool to be a gravity wave surfer. That sounds like a cool superhero. Right.

Yeah, I think that has already been invented actually by Marvel. He's called the Silver Surfer. What is he surfing on anyway? I don't know. Maybe gravitational waves. But it's still possible that we could discover fundamental myron of particles. Like the jury is still out on whether the neutrino is its own antiparticle or not. And if it is its own antiparticle, it can do something really interesting.

It can annihilate itself. So like when a neutrino hits another neutrino, they could just like poof, turn in. into a little blob of energy. The same thing that happens when an electron, it's a positron. They annihilate and turn into like a photon. So if neutrinos are myerana particles, they can annihilate into each other. Whoa. But I guess the question is, would the neutrino, if it is a myurana particle,

does that mean that it's like it's writing some other type of quantum field, like a maurana quantum field, or would it still be writing the same kind of field as the other particles? Or maybe not even a field at all. Yeah, great question. it still would be a quantum field and it still would be an oscillation in that quantum field.

But yeah, it would be sort of a different field that follows a slightly different equation. What? But these rules for what happens to fields are all following quantum mechanics and relativity. Right. But you're saying like maybe there are many fields in the universe, some of them follow one set of equations

and others follow another different set of equations? Absolutely. And we know that's true already because we see like Fermion fields and boson fields and fields with mass and fields without mass. right you can unify these all into like one grand equation perhaps but there are different equations that describe the motions of different fields and again hear what we're talking about are like how oscillations move through the fundamental fields of the universe and we're developing mathematics

wave equations for example to describe that that are also consistent with the underlying quantum mechanics and rules of special relativity and so we're saying hey if the fields can do this kind of wiggle and some other fields can do that other kind of wiggle oh interesting All right. So then, but you're saying that we've sort of seen myeranoparticles, but maybe at like the water wave level, but not at the like the fundamental level. There are really cool experiments trying to see fundamental myerana particles, neutrinos.

And if you're interested in that, you should check out our episode on neutrino masses and neutrino-less double beta decay, which is a crazy set of experiments that are basically trying to smash neutrinos into each other to see if they annihilate. But there are other ways to look for myerana particles. And those are myrona quasi particle, sort of, as you say, like the wave level version. And here people are trying to create myerona fermions, not as like neutrinos, but as like

emergent properties of semiconductors. But they wouldn't be fundamental, right? Like they wouldn't, they would just be sort of like a thermodynamics law or something, something that describes things at a much sort of higher level than fundamental particle. Yeah, not individual fundamental particles. But if you can get fundamental particles to act together. together so that together they do something which follows the rules of the myron equation, then you can say, oh, look, we've seen an emergent myron of Fermion.

The same way like, yeah, if you're talking about waves, they're following the wave equation. What are the individual particles of the wave doing? Who knows they're not following the wave equation, but together, all those particles acting in concert are following the wave equation. So now you get a bunch of electrons together and put them under very strange conditions, nanowires and very strong magnetic fields and get them to do a funny dance, a dance which is described by the myerana equation, then you can say, I've seen a myerana quasi-particle. But I guess that would just validate that the equation works, but it wouldn't, would it tell

you something fundamental about the universe? Oh, that's a really good question and a huge argument between different fields of physics. You know, people say like, well, if you discover myerona fermions in solid state physics as quasi-particles, Does that tell you that they're allowed in the universe? I don't really know. It tells you that the physics of the equation is valid. The same way, like, seeing waves tells you, yeah, the wave equation works. And that helps you have confidence that you can use the wave equation to talk about fluctuations of quantum fields also.

It doesn't mean that there are quantum fields following that same equation necessarily. So there's a deep argument there about what it really tells you about the universe. Yeah, just because you see an ocean wave doesn't mean wouldn't necessarily mean that fundamental particles act like waves, right? That's right. But, you know, there's a lesson there. Like, it says that the mathematics is correct, that the mathematics really does describe something

that physical universe does. And so that suggests that there might also be parts of the universe that behave the same way, that this might be sort of a universal phenomena. In the wave equation, we see it everywhere, right? And so there is some reason to think that if you found a mathematically valid description of what the universe does, that maybe it also does at other places.

Oh, I see. We're sort of at the point where we have worked out the myurana equations, or myurana did and people like it, but we haven't actually seen them even in a sort of ocean wave level. I thought that we had because we talked about sort of seeing holes in materials that act like myurana particles. So there's been a controversy because there was a group in 2018 that claimed to have seen myeran fermions in matter. They created these nanowires that were like 100 nanometers wide and one micrometer long. They put them at very, very cold temperatures and very strong magnetic fields. They actually made them into a topological superconductor that we talked about on the podcast recently.

And they claimed in 2018 that these were myron a fermions, that they had arranged the electrons in this fancy way that they followed the rules of myrona's equation. Then people couldn't reproduce their results. Then people dug into the details of their paper and found some mistakes. So they actually had to retract this paper and this claim that they were myronafermions. Wow. Seems like there's a lot of ever going into confirming this theory. Like, is this theory that interesting or beautiful?

Or, like, we've only ever found two theories that describe maybe things at the fundamental level? It's not easy to bring quantum mechanics and relativity together. They're sort of famously difficult to get to play together in the same field. It's not something we've achieved in general. Like, general relativity and quantum mechanics just do not cooperate. The special case of quantum mechanics and special relativity is easier task, but still difficult. So the fact that there are two solutions to it is really intriguing.

It makes people really want to dig into it. There are also possible applications. If you could develop myronophirmeons in sort of solid state physics and these like excitations of electrons, there are applications to quantum computing. They can make quantum computing much, much more powerful and much more robust to errors. Oh, why is that? Because they're bigger? It has to do with building a very different kind of quantum computer than the one we're used

to thinking about. Normal quantum computers are like individual ions in a certain quantum state. Maybe it's been up, maybe it's been down, and the power of the quantum computer comes from not knowing exactly. And it's key that for those qubits, those quantum bits, they stay isolated, but they don't get, like, bothered by the environment because then they decoher and they lose all of their quantum fuzziness. They're, like, forced to choose. Are you spit up or you spin down? That's the typical quantum computer that we've been talking about. But there's a new idea for a quantum computer called a topological quantum computer where the

information isn't stored in like the state of an individual particle, but rather in the relationships between particles. Like I have these two particles over here and they're sort of entangled with each other. And myerona fermions can do that because myerona fermions don't come from an individual particle. They come from like the connection of two electrons into this sort of emergent state of a myerona particle. And if you put them under these very special conditions, then it's much easier for those particles to retain that quantum information

because the information isn't stored in like the details of where the electron is, but how these two electrons are sort of connected to each other. So they're sort of protected by some of the symmetries of the myer on a behavior from decohering. Yeah, and that's good for like error protection, right? Like if you have a quantum computer that uses these things, because the cubits are sort of tied together, they're less likely to get kind of a, story. Exactly. And that's the problem with quantum computing is that it's very hard to keep your

quantum bits isolated from the environment. But a topological quantum computer sort of doesn't care as much if it gets bothered by the environment because the interesting parts, the parts that you care about aren't in the details of where the particles are, but how those particles are related to each other. Sort of connected to this idea of topology. You know, there's this famous example. Like a topologist says that like a coffee cup is the same thing as a donut because fundamentally they're the same shape they both have like one hole in them there's this property of having one hole which doesn't change as you like slowly deform a coffee cup into a donut or back i mean obviously there are different things you wouldn't want to dunk your coffee cup in your coffee cup but topologically

those are similar you don't want to my urinal latte and the idea is that a topological quantum computer the information in it is invariant to the kind of transformations that the universe typically applies to quantum computers, which is that it pokes them, it bumps them, it's hard to keep them separate. So the information there is sort of invariant to the kinds of things that the universe typically does to objects.

And so it's easier to keep the information preserved and to not have a deco here. And that's the kind of thing you can do with my iron a fermions if you can build them. But nobody's successfully done it so far. Yeah, speaking of cartoon physics, I actually made a video about this. I don't know if you know that,

like seven years ago about this idea of using my urina particles and quantum not to like do error protection in quantum computers. Oh, very cool. Well, I know that there's a big group at Caltech that are experts in this, John Preskill and Jason Alessia. They work on this kind of stuff. It's mind-boggling and amazing. Yeah, yeah. I know I work with them to make the video. So if you're interested, you can, on YouTube, you can search for quantum knots and maybe also PhD comics and you'll see the video that might help you. Yeah, awesome because a lot of this stuff is very tricky to visualize. And so I'm sure your awesome cartoons would be helpful to the listener.

So go check that out if you want a better visual for what's going on. But I guess the main point is that, you know, we have these equations, the Mayurana equations that also maybe potentially describe particles, and they might describe fundamental particles like the neutrino or dark matter. And they might describe things that we can use pretty usefully for quantum computers. Exactly. And it's a sort of fun question to explore, like the math says that this can exist, so does it exist. And some physicists are totally convinced. Professor Sarma from University of Maryland has this

quote in one article I read. He says, I guarantee you the Maerana will be seen because the theory is pristine. This is an engineering problem. This is not a physics problem. That's a direct quote. So wait, are you saying, Daniel, that physicists are really just here to confirm the math for mathematicians? Are you saying mathematicians are really at the top here? You know, mathematicians explore universes that might not exist also. They don't have to follow the rules of quantum mechanics and special relativity. But mathematics that follows the rules of the universe, you know, that's likely to be physics. Yeah.

I feel like you're saying that physics are really just the middleman between mathematicians and engineers. Exactly. As long as we get our cut and we're happy to be the middleman. I put my 15% on top. Well, maybe that explains what happened to Maerana, right? Maybe the mathematicians and the engineers got together to cut out the middleman. Oh, man. dun dun dun dun dun the plot thickens it was his closest collaborator the engineer you got to watch out for those engineers

yeah they'll stab you in the back but it's interesting to think that you know how we this process of discovering how the universe works you know it's a sort of a combination of poking around but also kind of thinking about these equations and seeing what's possible from a mathematical sense because sometimes that means that it is true yeah we can do exploration in different ways. We can go out and see what the universe is actually doing and we can follow the bread crumbs of the mathematics to think what else the universe might be doing. And sometimes that's right. Often that's right. You know, the Higgs boson is another great example. The mathematics says this is the simplest way for particles to get mass and then we went out and found it. So there really

are two different arms of exploration that are working hand in hand. Well, we hope you enjoyed that and then made you think a little bit about what we know and don't know about the universe. It seems like maybe we don't know how all of the quantum fields in the universe could work. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. 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. 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 her 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. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone and there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast season two

takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.