Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Can element 115 be used for anti-gravity?

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Daniel and Jorge talk about real science of element 115 and whether it aligns with the spectacular story of anti-gravity alien ships at Area 51.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. And here's Heather with the weather. Well, it's beautiful out there, sunny and 75, almost a little chilly in the shade. Now, let's get a read on the inside of your car. It is hot. You've only been parked a short time, and it's already 99 degrees in there.

Let's not leave children in the back seat while running errands. It only takes a few minutes for their body temperatures to rise, and that could be fatal. Cars get hot, fast. and can be deadly. Never leave a child in a car. A message from Nitsa and the Ad Council. The U.S. Open is here and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with deep blue sports and entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get.

Podcast. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of I Heart Women's Sports Network. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer-free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Death World Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, We get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest's personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show. There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years.

New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Daniel, what do you think of all those videos of UFOs? You know, those flying things, doing things we can't quite explain? I love those videos I can't get in this. Enough of them. What do you mean? You watch them on repeat all the time?

I've seen those hundreds of times, absolutely. Hundreds? That's a lot of time. Do you think there are videos of aliens? Oh man, I really want to believe. I really hope they are aliens. That doesn't answer the question. Do you think they are aliens?

I think the truth is out there, I guess. Well, definitely, it's not in here. Not yet. At least, that's what I want people to believe. believe this is all a big gaslighting operation by us aliens isn't working I believe all right i'll take that as a yes hi i'm Jorge made cartoonist 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'm not sure if I'm Mulder or Scully in this conversation. Ooh, tough choice. Let's see. Are you handsome and happy-go-lucky like Molder or are you a stickler for the small details like Scully?

Can't I be handsome and a stickler? No. Because no those two. Yeah, I mean, you both these two options. I'm the quantum superposition of Mulder and Scully. I see. You're a molly. Or Sculder.

I'm neither a stickler nor handsome. Wait, so you're neither then. You're nully. I can't figure it out. Well, I'll take either one. I think they're both great. Were you a big fan of the X-Files? I love the way they capture that mystery and the enthusiasm to understand the unknown.

Yeah, it was well-written stuff. You know they're doing a reboot, right? Yes. And I'm a superposition. of excited and terrified. Hey, yeah, the word reboot almost never goes well. Unless, well, although recently, Dune, that movies, just came out by the time this comes out,

and that's a pretty good reboot. Yeah, Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a great reboot. Enjoyed that. Hmm, I haven't seen that. Which myth are you? Mr. or Mrs. I think that's too personal question. But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge,

explained the universe, a production of our Heart Radio. In which we want to believe that the truth is out there, that there exists an explanation for everything that happens in the universe, that we live in a cosmos that follows rules, that makes sense that is governed by order and principles, and that we can reveal those. By doing experiments and thinking deeply and peering out into the far reaches of space, it is possible to understand everything out there in the universe. And our goal on this podcast is to bring all of that knowledge and all of those questions to you. That's right, because we're all special investigative. We're all scully and molder, both excited about what could be out there, but also we need to be a little skeptical about what we see or think that we see. That's right. We need to restrain our burgeoning enthusiasm for talking to aliens about the mysteries of the universe

with a healthy note of skepticism so that we don't fool ourselves into believing something that isn't real. But, Daniel, do you think if aliens do exist and they come here, are they going to be offended by our skepticism? I think they'll respect it. Absolutely. That's a no, then. I don't think they'd be offended. I mean, if I landed on an alien planet, I would expect them to ask a few questions before they accepted my story.

Oh, that's an interesting phenomenon. You could be the alien in another plan, but you would never leave your couch. You've stayed with that before. Yes, but I know that you have a kidnapping scheme ready to launch me into space, so I'm mentally preparing for it. Yeah, I'm not sure I would pick you as our ambassador

or humanity. You seem too eager to sell us out. I think that's great news for everybody. But anyways, it is an interesting and amazing, universe out there full of mysteries and unknowns and potentially interesting technologies that we have yet to discover that could be used maybe for things like making us aliens on another planet. There are so many mysteries we'd like answers to, so many tools we'd love to develop, and it's very tempting to imagine that the aliens might already be here and might be sharing it,

that there could be secretive labs in which our government is right now reverse engineering alien technology. I noticed that could be, you're not sold yet. You didn't say there are secret labs. I didn't say there are because I don't know. I'm pretty sure there are secret labs, whether they have aliens or not. I think that's the bigger question. Oh, there are definitely secret labs.

I mean, I grew up in a town where most of the labs were behind this big fence with guns. So, yes, I can testify to the fact that there are secret labs. Whether they are reverse engineering alien technology is a much bigger question. Well, that's an interesting concept, the idea of reverse engineering, alien technology. I guess the scenario is that maybe the U.S. discovered or found some alien technology in the past. Maybe it's hiding in Area 51 or Area 52. And the question is, could we ever do something with that technology? Or would it be maybe too alien for us to figure out how it works?

And more than just speculating generally, there are specific claims that folks have made about the precise technology that the U.S. government is right now reverse engineering. So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question. Can element 115 be used for anti-gravity propulsion? Well, there's a lot of words in this question, which could be the basis of an X-File episode. Like, you don't need all of it. You can just have an episode on anti-gravity propulsion or an element called Element 115.

That's right. And this question sounds kind of out there like an X-Files episode, but this is a specific question has been sent to me by many listeners who've heard the stories floating around about Bob Lazar and his claims about Area 51 and Element 115. Do you think those people are part of the cult there or people on the fringe of the cold or just people looking from the outside into this kind of alien cult? I don't know. They could be Area 51 security agents trying to figure out if we've cracked their codes.

Oh my goodness. It could be like a double agent kind of. They're trying to catch you. This whole episode is us walking into a trap. Yeah, it's a trap. But I have to say I've never heard of this element 115. It sounds very science fictiony. It's fascinating because at the time Lazar first talked about it, it was science fictiony.

And now it's just science. It sounds like adamantium or bivranium. Yeah, except that element 115 is now very real. Is it more real than 114? I think they're both maximally real and a lot more real than unumptenium. All right, I guess we'll dig into what this all means and who is Bob Lazar. But first, we were wondering how many people out there had heard of Element 115 and whether it could be used for anti-gravity.

Thanks very much to everybody who answers my tough questions about physics and my weird questions about alien technology. Really appreciate your time and enthusiasm. If you have time and enthusiasm, please, don't hesitate to write to me to questions at Danielanhorpe.com. So think about it for a second. Do you think element 115 can be used for anti-gravity

propulsion? Here's what people had to say. So I don't know what element 115 is off the top of my head, but it is ringing a bell from the time when I went down some rabbit holes of Bob Lazar supposedly finding this while working for the government in the area 51. And

given that I'm pretty skeptical of him, I would have to say it can't, but I have no idea. Yes, I believe that element 115 can be used for anti-gravity propulsion if it can be found and it's not just a story. There is a specific element that can be used to defy gravity to provide propulsion. Assuming I knew what element 115 was offhand, yeah, sure, obviously, we're just not working hard enough. I want my anti-grave unit. I don't know what element 115 is, but I will throw out a guess that it could be if we could make enough of it and keep it stable

for long enough to disperse it slowly as a fuel or as a propulsion. I mean, I feel like there's other elements. I mean, there's 100 other 14 elements. You have to use 115. I'll let you do it this one time, Daniel. You guys can just do it this one time or an anti-gravity propulsion. But I feel like there's a lot of radiation and bananas. We should use the potassium in the bananas.

There's a lot of bananas, a lot of potassium, probably a lot of anti-gravity propulsion in that thing. I took Kemp in college, and I don't remember learning anything about element 115. or even what it's called. And I'm pretty sure if it was useful for anti-gravity, the professor would have mentioned it in lecture, and I would have remembered.

At least I think I paid attention to most of the lectures. I think that fully encapsulates the complete spectrum of answers. Yes, some people here have never heard of it. And some people are like, yes, I believe. Let's do it. Let's go to space. I know. There's some real enthusiasm out there, right?

Well, I guess I've never heard of this. Daniel, so let's start with the basics. What is element 115? Yeah, element 115 is just an atom with 115 protons in the nucleus. If you look at the periodic table, it's arranged by the number of protons in each nucleus. Hydrogen means you have one proton, helium means you have two protons, lithium means you have three protons. As you add protons, you change the nature of the element and you can just keep adding protons until you get to 115. And beyond, right, or not? We've gone up to 1.18 by now. That's Oganeson, the heaviest element we've ever made.

We don't know how far it goes. We think it might go on for a long time and that there could be really new, fascinating, even stable elements up at very high atomic number with very large numbers of protons. Meaning, like, you can just keep adding protons to the nucleus of an atom and you would get a different atom

and you can just keep going. I guess to your imagination, but at some point there's a limit to which. which one we've been able to make in a lab. Exactly. And there's two questions here, like how to actually make it and the other is how long it sticks around, whether it's stable. So maybe as a reference, like I think most people know that uranium is pretty heavy.

What's the atomic number of uranium? Yeah, uranium is actually the heaviest element we find in nature. It has 92 protons in it. So uranium is made in natural processes. The universe started with almost all just hydrogen, made a little bit of helium during the big, bang, but mostly it's been stars that have been fusing those protons together to make heavier and heavier stuff.

You can make like up to iron in the hearts of stars and then you need to like collide neutron stars together or wait for supernova to make heavier stuff up to like uranium. The heaviest thing that will stick around forever is lead that has 82 protons in it. But you know, natural processes make heavier stuff that that decays away like uranium, which turns into lighter stuff like lead. Now uranium is the heaviest one we've found. Is that because nature can't make anything higher or it just gets too rare? Well, we don't know.

It's definitely rare and everything else above uranium is also unstable, everything that we've discovered at least. So it might be that that stuff is made out there in nature when neutron stars collide. It just doesn't last long enough for us to find it. Wait, what do you mean? We've discovered heavier elements than uranium. We have manufactured heavier elements than uranium in the lab. Absolutely.

We can collide lighter elements together and see them, form atoms of heavier elements. That's how we got up to like 118. But somehow nature has not made heavier ones. Is it because maybe it made them, but they decayed and broke apart? Or is it just like there's some sort of energy barrier there? It's more likely that they were made and then just broke apart. The half-life of these really heavy elements can be like tenths of a second or half of a second.

And so if these things were made in collisions far, far away, then they're not going to last long enough to get here and to like sit around in the earth for us to dig up. Okay. So then that's kind of how the atom works. You can just keep piling on protons to the nucleus. But then how do neutrons figure it? Yeah, the neutrons are actually what helps us make them and keep it stable because it's a little tricky.

Like it's not that easy to put two protons together. They're both electrically charged. They like to repel each other. You got to get them close enough that the strong force within them helps attract them. Remember, protons are bound states of course. inside each proton are up quarks and down quarks stuck together with gluons. Technically it's all neutral, the color charges inside the proton all balance each other out. But if you're really close to one side of the proton,

then you're like closer to one of the corks than some of the other quarks. So you're feeling a little bit of residual color charge. And so there's like a little bit of strong force there enough to bind them together. But the neutrons help out by keeping the protons from getting too close together so they don't repel. It's a whole theory for how you build a state. a stable atomic nucleus involves like building shells of protons and neutrons. It's not just like a big pile of them all sloshing around.

There's an arrangement. Sort of similar to the way electrons are arranged in shells around the atom. We think protons and neutrons are arranged in shells within the atom. I see because I guess protons, they're positively charged, right? Like they're the opposite of electrons. And so you get two positive protons together. They repel each other. sort of like two magnets might repel each other

and I think you're saying that the neutrons they're neutral but they are sticky in the strong force and so they somehow they're like a sticky filler so that you can pile on more protons in one place exactly they have the stickiness you need of the strong force and they help reduce the repulsion among the protons by keeping them further apart that's why you need more neutrons than protons especially as these things get heavier and heavier

So above lead, everything is unstable, but that's only as far as we've gotten. We've like made up to 118 by gently tossing together a lighter nuclei. This is also really tricky because if you smash two nuclei together really fast, they just explode and you got shrapnel from two nuclei. If you toss them together too slowly, they bounce off of each other like two baseballs. You're going to find just the right sweet spot where they like stick together, they're like mush together and become one new atom. It's very, very finicky work. And how do you do it? Do you just can, like, shoot them from a cannon at each other or what?

I never thought of particle accelerators as canons, but yeah, they kind of are particle cannons. Yeah, you just use an accelerator. So you have ions at these things. You strip off the electrons so they're positively charged and you put them in an electric field that accelerates them. You point them at each other and you have collisions. Just like we do at the Large Hadron Collider, where we're colliding basically hydrogen ions, protons and protons against each other.

except they're colliding like calcium into amyricium. I see. You can't just maybe smash two uranium nuclei together, can you? You can try that if you want to make the atom with 184 protons in it. Nobody's successfully done that yet. The highest we've gone up to is 118. I see. And then when did that happen?

So that was like in the last 20 years. This facility near Moscow, which has like all the expertise in the machinery to do this, they've made all of the heaviest stuff. It takes a long time for people to officially recognize this and pour through the data and convince themselves that it really is real. So element 118 was only recognized in 2015, some like 12 years after the experiments were done. So it's pretty recent stuff. Yeah. So then you make them, but then they quickly break down.

Is that what happens to these elements? You said maybe they only last a few seconds? Yeah, exactly. They can last a few seconds or tenths of a second. These really heavy elements are really unstable. They think, though, that as you add more protons and more neutrons and you get to heavier and heavier elements, something weird might happen. That instead of getting more and more unstable, you might reach some island of stability where you've like completed some internal shell inside the nucleus. You have like enough protons to all click together to form like, you know, a Roman arch of stability effectively.

And you might get really heavy stable atoms. We have a whole podcast about the possibility of super duper heavy stable atoms. that might exist out there in the universe or even be buried in the crust of the earth. Nobody's ever found one and it's still theoretical. But some of these heavy atoms are starting to show slightly longer lifetimes, which suggest we might be like on the shore of the island of stability. And now if they last for so little of a time, how do we know they were there? Yeah, that's one of the tricky parts.

They have to display behavior that's consistent with our predictions. So they have to interact in a certain way or emit photons. etc. And because they don't last very long and we can't make very many of them, you can make only a few kinds of measurements. So that's why these things are sort of subtle. It's not like you've made an ingot of it and you can now sit around and play with it for five years. And you're like, yeah, this is the stuff. Of 115, for example, we've only made a hundred atoms of this element ever. Yes, so 115 is the one that's tied to these alien conspiracies. And so let's talk about 115, where it came from when it was made and why do people think it has

something to do with anti-gravity and aliens. So let's dig into that. But first, let's take a quick break. Hola, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grasasas 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-T. 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 white one? 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.

Yeah? But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, 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 in 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. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Ophia and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstyles play in our community, the pressure to always look put

together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon,

Megan Rapino to the show, and we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final.

And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got. more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A. Z. Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.

So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. All right, we're exploring the X files here on the podcast, or at least the Y or Z files. Which letter of the alphabet, Arby. Some alien alphabet. Alpha. Alpha. Alpha, gamma.

Blurb. Blurk. Exactly. The blurk files. That's what they watch in the alien planet. somewhere out there some alien parent is yelling at their kids

to practice their blurk bet there you go well we're talking about this idea that maybe element 115 can be used for anti-gravity propulsion and somehow tied to alien conspiracies

and so we'll dig into that but first Daniel I guess we talked about what element 115 is which is just an atom maybe with 115 protons in the nucleus does it have neutrons in it

does it matter if it has neutrons also in the nucleus? It does also, of course, have neutrons in it. Like every other atom, it needs neutrons in order to make it more stable. You need those neutrons to, like, buffer the protons together. And so Element 115 protons and a total number of 172 protons plus neutrons, which means it has 57 neutrons in it. Wait, so it doesn't have 115 protons in it. It has 115 protons or neutrons? Yeah, so like every other heavy element, it has to have neutrons in it to buffer those protons to help make it stable. In this case, it needs a lot of neutrons.

So there are 115 protons in that nucleus. That's what makes it Element 115, Muscovium. But they're also 172 neutrons. So in total, there are 289 protons plus neutrons in this fat blob of a nucleus. That seems like an odd number. So there's more neutrons than protons. That's just the only formula they've been able to make. because you maybe could make this element

with a different number of neutrons. Yeah, exactly. That's what comes out when you smash calcium 48 together with Emercium 243, which are two things that they also know how to make and shoot at each other. And so you called it Moscovium. What was that named after?

Moscow? Yes, named after Moscow. The guy who pioneers this, who developed this special technology and really has like the finesse to do this is a Russian scientist named Yuri Ogun, And so element 118, Oganesan is named after him. And 115, Muscovium is named after Moscow because his facility is in Dubna, which is near Moscow.

Oh, interesting. That feels very Russian or socialist. Like, the first element you discover has been named after the state, the government. And then if you find three more, we'll let you name one after yourself. I think there must have been a lot of high-level arguments about the naming of these elements. notice there's like a merissium, there's a Berklium, you know, there's a lot of politics about who gets to name these things. Oh, there's a trend of naming them after the city in which you discovered them.

Oh, yeah, I don't even know the politics behind all of this. Whoa. I guess as you get going, if we're ever going to discover Pasadenaum. Or I should say, South Pasadenaum. When was this Muscovovium discovered? So it was made in 2003 in the same facility as Oganeson, the Element 118 and recognized in 2015. It took 12 years.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is subtle stuff. You know, they've made 100 atoms of this stuff. They think it only lasts for like 0.65 seconds. At the time that they were running, they could make like one of these atoms every day. It's like very, very finicky. Whoa. And then what happens?

They just split up into smaller atoms? Yeah, exactly. This one decays down into 113, which then decays down into other stuff. There's nothing. heavier than lead that's stable. So eventually everything decays down into something stable. Like it just kicks out a proton or something or two. Yeah, it kicks out a proton or you get beta decay where a neutron turns into a proton. They split or something or inverse beta decay. There's all sorts of stuff that can happen for radioactive decay down into lighter stuff.

And what can we say about this muscovium? Is it super hard? Is it super special? Can it absorb vibrations like brimbranium? Can you make a shield out of it to the American flagging it? I don't think you could build an entire like African economy based on this thing, especially since we have only made 100 atoms ever. But based on where it sits in the periodic table, we can speculate or predict its chemical properties. So we think it's probably similar to like nitrogen and phosphorus and arsenic and thallium.

That's the group of elements that they put it in. All right. So then this is part of a pretty serious scientific endeavor, which is like what's the heaviest element we can make in a lab and to study? Maybe the limits of these atoms and what is stable or not stable. But then somehow this got mixed up into alien conspiracies. What's the story? So the story started in 1989.

When a guy named Bob Lazar came forward claiming to have top secret information about Element 115. Who's Bob Lazar? That's a really deep question. And there's a huge internet rabbit hole about who is Bob Lazar? Where does he come from? Where did he actually work? What is his background? Is he really an alien or not?

Wait, he could be an alien. He could be an alien. That's a theory floating out there? Anybody could be a lizard person, man. You never know. Well, suspicious. His last name is Lazar. That's right.

He was saying he could be a lizard person. Exactly. I see him blink. How many eyelids does he have, you know? Okay, so this person just came out of nowhere? Or he started publishing? Or how did he come into prominence? He approached a local news reporter with a really compelling story.

He claimed to be an Area 51 employee. This was in Nevada. a near area 51 and he said that his job at area 51 was to reverse engineer crashed alien flying saucers he said that he had seen these craft that there were nine of them in the facility and that he had personally worked with element 115 the crucial element to piloting alien spacecraft which relied on anti-gravity technology wow yeah i thought he was just someone with like a conspiracy theory but he's saying he was a person in area 51 were working on these alien spaceships.

And the thing I'll say about Bob Lazar is that his story is compelling. It's like he's a good storyteller. It's like one of those stories you hear where it's almost immediate. You know, my friend saw this or I heard from my sister. It's always one step away from you being able to verify it yourself. He says he worked with this stuff. And he's a good storyteller. It sounds very compelling.

Can he draw it? Like, you know, can he just like sketch out what he saw? Yeah, he's provided a bunch of details. The more details he provides, provides, the less the story seemed to hang together scientifically. You know, that's sort of the question of the episode like, does Element 115 actually have anything to do with anti-gravity technology now that we've actually synthesized it and made it and created it? At the time, Element 115 was sort of a fantasy. Nobody had ever made it before and knew if it was even possible.

But, you know, Bob Lazar claimed in his drawings that the U.S. government had 500 pounds of element 115 to date we made 100 atoms of it but he claims that in area 51 they're sitting on a pile of this stuff that's 500 pounds wait wait so what's his background i guess is he is lazar an engineer himself or you know or was he like the janitor working there or does he have a diploma from somewhere you can track down that's a really good question and because his story is so compelling and has received a lot of attention a bunch of people have dug into the background of bob lazar and he claimed to have gone to MIT and he has his pedigree

but then there's this long argument about whether he graduated from MIT whether he was actually there he claims to have worked at Los Alamos which would also like add to his scientific credibility well I feel like this could be easily settled if you just sit him down with a real engineer

like you know like if you sit him down with a real engineer the real engineer will be very quickly be able to tell if this person is trained if they've actually seen what they see if they can describe accurately what they saw Nobody started to do that.

He came out initially with this story, which was reported by a local reporter, George Knapp. And then he sort of retreated from a lot of the attention. And he sort of emerged periodically to answer questions and then retreat back into isolation again. Recently, there was a detailed documentary put out by Jeremy Corbell interviewing him and asking him a bunch of questions. But, you know, I think that the scientific community feels like there are still a lot of unanswered scientific questions about his claims. Yeah, it sounds like it's like it's. All questions. All right, but I think what you're trying to get to is that he claims that the U.S.

government had a lot of element 115, and he claimed that it was somehow tied to the spaceship's abilities to fly. Exactly. And the positive thing about Bob Lazar is he tells a really, really good story. It sounds really good. I mean, you start digging into the details and you have questions that aren't answered, but it's a well-told story. It also lines up with other reports of, like, flashing light.

saw over the desert, dot, dot, dot. The difficult part about Bob Lazar is that that's all there is. There's just this story. He doesn't have a piece of Element 115. He doesn't have a piece of the alien craft. He can't lead us to it. You know, there's nothing physical, nothing hard, no concrete evidence he can point to or produce

to show us that his story is more than just a story. Yeah, I mean, you could just, he could describe his coworkers. He could describe, you know, all these things that could be verified. It seems pretty crazy anyone would believe. I think a lot of people want to believe. I mean, I want to believe also. It's a great story. Wouldn't that be awesome? Yeah, I'm noticing a lot of empathy here. Yeah, we're for Bob Lazar. I do. I do because it's exactly the fantasy that I wish we're true. Aliens come and have this technology and we're busy reverse engineering it. Oh my gosh, how exciting. But you've got to engage your skepticism and be like,

all right, how do we know it's not just some dude with a story? Because there's lots of dudes out there with stories. They're usually called science fiction authors. So his claim is that element 115 is somehow tied to anti-gravity. So what's the connection there? So basically there is no connection as far as I'm aware of. Now element 115 is something that's real, something we've made, something we've studied. Antigravity is a real area of research. It's like something people are actually trying to do. You and I had a whole podcast episode about whether anti-gravity is a real technology, whether we ever achieve it. There are people who have claimed to achieve anti-gravity and that's been debunked. So anti-gravity as a research area is real and there are some potentially some avenues you could

explore. But I'm not aware of any connection between anti-gravity and element 115. When we've made element 115, it doesn't display any anti-gravity properties or any connection to any of the possible directions for anti-gravity. A foot washed up. 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. 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. Hello, 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 audition 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. The new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin 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, believe. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how

our hair is styled. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show.

And we had a blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiance Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire. and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen. What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back. Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A.Z.

Fudd. I mean, seriously, y'all, the guest list is absolutely stacked for season two. And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Well, I can't make a connection, but since we're down the rabbit hole, Daniel, if you were writing the science, story here. What sort of connection would you make? What kind of excuse would you make to tie element

115 to anti-gravity? Like, does the number of protons somehow reach a special state where somehow anti-gravity particles are generated, you know? I like that sound you just made. That was fantastic.

Yada, yada, yada. Antigravity. Yeah, that's the mental, yada, yada, yada. Okay, well, let's do the exercise, right? How might anti-gravity be possible in our understanding of it. Yeah, I can tell you've thought about this and you've already have an answer. Yeah. So, you know, how can you achieve anti-gravity? Well, there's one idea that antimatter might have anti-gravity. Anti-matter is like matter, but with the opposite charges. So we have protons. We also have antiprotons. Anti-protons have opposite electric charge.

Anti-electrons have the opposite electric charge of an electron. Anti-matter is a real thing. But because anti-matter is so rare, we haven't really verified that antimatter feels gravity the way that matter does. Like, it might be that antimatter falls up and matter falls down. Anti-matter might have an anti-gravity effect. Wait, wait, is the idea that maybe an anti-electron has anti-gravity or is the idea that maybe there's an electron out there that has anti-gravity? No, the idea is that anti-electrons might have anti-gravity. Antiprotons might have. Antiprotons might have anti-gravity because an anti-electron has the opposite charge of an electron and it also has the opposite of other things than an electron right like quantum properties too yeah it has the opposite

weak and electric charges it doesn't have any strong force charges so those are just zero but it has all of its quantum charges flipped and since we don't really understand gravity we don't know like hmm is gravity a quantum thing anyway is the mass like the quantum charge is that flipped Does an anti-electron have negative mass or negative gravity? This is sort of like big open questions. There's actually an experiment at CERN to probe exactly this question. They've been playing with antimatter and trying to see like, does it fall up or does it fall down? It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer because antimatter is hard to make and gravity is super duper weak.

Particles have almost no mass. It's affected by everything else out there that might be tugging on it. Initial indications suggest that it's more likely that antimatter has normal gravity. couldn't build anti-gravity out of antimatter but it's you know not totally ruled out so it's a basis for you know plausible speculation but even if you go there if you say anti-matter might provide anti-gravity i still don't even know how to yada yada yada yada that to element 115 because element 115 is matter unless then i'm just thinking about this now they have like anti-matter element 115 and that's what they've got at area 51 oh i knew you had an answer for this daniel

Okay, so now the Daniel theory here is that you can have like anti-carbon in anti-oxygen, meaning like if you take a bunch of antiprotons, put them in a nucleus with some anti-neutrons, I guess, too, and anti-electrons, you can make a stable anti-adam. Probably a lot of that is speculative because we haven't made big anti-atoms before. You know, there aren't that many protons and doing fusion with antiprotons is tricky. But in principle, we think that the rules are the same for antimatter and matter in terms of those bonds. So, yeah, in principle, you could put together anti-lead and anti-uranium and anti-moscovium. Because we've made anti-hydrogen, haven't we? Yeah, we have. Hmm.

And so the theory is that it wouldn't be element 115, that's anti-gravity, but maybe anti-Element 115. Yeah, maybe Bob Lazar just got the sign wrong, you know. Yeah, there you go, because he's not a real engineer, apparently. Ooh, that's tough, man. That's tough. But somehow, this anti-Elelement 115, it gives you anti-gravity. but not anti-carbon. Or would anti-carbon also be anti-gravity?

It's used that somehow Element 115 is, what would you say special about it? Yeah, that's a good question. In this theory, anti-carbon would also give you anti-gravity. Even anti-hydrogen would give you anti-gravity, because they would all have the same relationship with gravity. Why would the aliens choose antimatter versions of Element 115? I don't know.

And even in this speculation, Element 115, the anti-matter version should be just as unstable. as the matter version of element 115. So if they did have a 500 pounds of it, very quickly they wouldn't. They would decay down to lower atomic elements. Well, the government has apparently 500 pounds of element 115 and there must be a way to make it stable

in this fantasy world. There probably is a way to make it stable. You know, for example, neutrons are not stable if you just have a bunch of them floating around in space, but squeeze them down together into a neutron star, they become stable. It's like a new state of matter. So if you have like pure element 115,

115 as individual atoms, they're not stable. The aliens are able to like squeeze them down into some like crystal of element 115. It could have different properties and that could create stability. That's possible. Yeah. And maybe that would make sense because, you know, if you're trying to be anti-gravity as much as possible, you want the heaviest element that you can, right?

It will make you float more. Yeah. So maybe element 114 would work as well. But element 115 is like 1% better. So might as well go for it. because those aliens, they're really efficient. I guess maybe a question is how would you control the anti-gravity force, right? Like if you have anti-gravity and you're trying to land on the planet, that's a problem

because the anti-gravity element wouldn't let you land. Yeah, if you have 500 pounds of this stuff on your ship, then it's not going to be easy to turn on and off. But maybe if you could control how it decays, you can like rapidly let it decay down into something else and maybe even convert into normal matter. You could flip its gravitational behavior. and then if you could somehow make it again,

you could imagine developing some control mechanism if you could fabricate and dematerialize this stuff pretty rapidly, I suppose. Oh, you'll be like making it and breaking it down to throttle how much you float. We are so far out on a speculative limb here. I'll let the engineers develop that one. We're already inside the rabbit hole, so. So Bob Lazar, after this episode,

he started a scientific supply company. And in 2017, the FBI raided, his company. Wait, wait, wait. This actually happened or are you just making stuff up now? No, this actually happened. So what I mean after this episode? After he became famous in 1989 for all of these claims, then later on, he founded

this scientific supply company. And at some point, he got in trouble with the feds and the FBI raided his company in 2017. The FBI won't say what they were looking for, but there's a lot of speculation online that they were looking for stolen bits of element 115. Or something he stole from the lab that maybe he was a janitor in. And so somebody actually got to ask Bob Lazar, this reporter Tim McMillan asked Bob Lizard directly whether he actually had a piece of Element 115.

And Lazar's response is, and I quote, If I had some, would I reveal it to confirm my accounts? Absolutely not. Why not? Because it's more valuable than his credibility, apparently. I thought you were going to say that he said that if you had it I'll be floating around

not stuck down here on Earth talking to you I'll float that suggestion to Bob Lazar Well I think there's an even bigger problem which is that if you have 500 pounds of an antimatter element That is incredibly dangerous right

Because if it touches 500 pounds of real matter You would have an explosion Probably bigger than a supernova maybe Oh yeah that would be catastrophic Even one gram of antimatter like a raisin's worth when colliding with a gram of matter would release as much energy as a nuclear weapon. So 500 pounds of the stuff would be devastating.

Would be how much list to the math? Like a million nuclear bombs? More, right? A billion nuclear bombs? A quarter million nuclear weapons. Whoa. So yeah, that would be pretty dramatic. Let's just hope nobody like trips and drops the stuff.

Yeah. Let's not give it to a random dude. Because even if it has a little bit of this anti-matter element 115, it would be extremely dangerous. It would be very dangerous. If the government actually has this stuff, I hope to have more responsible people dealing with it than Bob Lazar. All right. So maybe it's not made out of antimatter. That seems too dangerous.

What other ideas do you have? So in a sort of related way, there's a concept of exotic matter. This is not anti-matter. This is some new kind of matter we've never seen before. but it would also have negative mass. And this comes out of the idea actually for wormholes. Ormholes are a theoretical way to get across the galaxy. Like maybe aliens have developed technology to avoid the light speed limit that's so frustrating

that keeps us from getting from here to Alpha Centauri or across the galaxy by shortening those paths, by creating connections between points in our space and in their space so you can go from here to there very quickly. You don't actually have to travel all the way through that. space. That's what a wormhole is, just a connection between two points in space. But if you do the math and general relativity for wormholes, it says, yeah, no problem. They can actually exist. It's not against the rules of physics as we know them, but if they do exist, they collapse very, very quickly and like they're not stable.

The only way to keep them around is to have some sort of exotic matter with negative mass and a constant beam of that stuff traveling through the wormhole that would provide some sort of like pressure to keep the wormhole open. So that's not an evidence that negative mass exists, but it is an idea in physics generated by the need to keep wormholes open. Wait, so to keep a wormhole open, you would have to keep shooting exotic matter with negative mass through it. That would somehow keep it open. And then somehow you would sneak into that stream and to get to the other side or what's the idea here? Yeah. Or maybe you could have stable exotic matter that lives inside the wormhole or you have a stream of it

and then you can jump into that stream. Whether you could keep it open large enough to like pass a ship through or whether these would always be microscopic is a whole other question. We did an episode about whether macroscopic wormholes could even be kept open long enough for a ship to pass through them and whether the tidal effects of the wormhole would any way shred your ship as you went near it. These things are like far from being even theoretically practical. But it does involve this concept of negative mass, exotic matter, that has this like negative gravitational effect relative to real matter.

Okay, so then what's the connection to element 115? This is the idea that element 115 would somehow turn into exotic matter and have negative mass or that you would have to build element 115 out of exotic matter. There is no real connection with element 115, though, I mean, we could be creative and come up with one. Like you just tried to scaffold between these two ideas, but there is no real connection between the two. But, you know, for example, potentially element 115 isn't element 115. what Bob Lazar thought was Element 115 is actually something else. And it's exotic matter that has properties similar to Element 115 in some ways.

And so he was confused by it or some other scientists mistook it for it. Interesting. What he thought was Element 115 was really made of particles that we don't even know about. Like it's not made out of protons and neutrons. And electrons, maybe it's made out of, you know, urvanium. Yeah, or something else, right, Lazarium. You know, our tendency in physics is to explain everything we don't understand. in terms of what we do understand.

So you're presented with some new kind of stuff. You want to say, well, what element is it? What is it made out of? And everything we've experienced is made out of some kind of element. And so that's the first natural question. And so you might interpret it incorrectly as Element 115. You know, those government scientists sometimes make mistakes. All right.

So it seems like we don't really have an answer here to the main question. Can Element 115 be used for anti-gravity propulsion? It sounds like no physicist maybe has a way to link those two concepts. Yeah, exactly. I think the takeaway is that at the time Lazar was telling his story, Element 115 was exotic. It was something we hadn't made before. And so nobody could really verify his claims, much like most of his claims about what went on in secret that nobody can verify because it was all in secret. Nobody could counter his claims about 115 because we didn't know if it could be created.

We didn't know what it would be like. So it seems sort of exotic and unreachable. Now that we have made Element 115, it doesn't really line up with any elements of Lazar's story at all. And so while it's still potentially possible that aliens have like weird crystals of antimatter element 115 or something that his story is all true. That's certainly possible. There's nothing about our actual element 115 that we've created that lines up with his story or lends any credence to it. So you're saying basically signs killed his buzz. I'm saying we want to believe, but we need some proof, man.

You actually went and discovered this element and there's nothing. special about it. Yeah, exactly. Science ruining everything since 1542. And maybe he's going to come out and say, oh, actually, I meant element negative 115. I forgot about the negative sign. Or 215, like trying to make that guys.

Just keep going up. All right. Well, I guess another interesting example of how there are still big unknowns. But as we make progress in science, we get to figure out what's real and what's not. what deserves an episode of the X-Files and what maybe deserves an episode of the ABC files.

Exactly. We should rename this podcast. We should call the Y files. Why are we even talking about this? Because we're always wondering why. That's right. Because our listeners wrote in and sincerely wanted to know what Element 115 had to do with anti-gravity.

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. I always had to be so good no one could ignore me. Carve my path with data and drive. But some people only see who I am on paper. The paper ceiling. The limitations from degree screens to stereotypes

that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at tailorpapersealing.org. Brought to you by opportunity at work. and the Ad Council.

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, impact, and the intersections of culture and leadership. I am a free black woman.

From the Obama White House to Google, to the Grammys, Valicia's journey is a masterclass in shifting culture and using your voice to spark change. Listen to Culture Raises us on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're you get your podcasts. The U.S. Open is here, and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and, of course, the honey deuses,

the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner. of IHeart Women's Sports Network. This is an IHeart podcast.