Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Could dark matter be made of quarks?

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

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Hey, Daniel, do you know what dark matter is made of? Oh, man, I wish I did. Are you sure it's not something simple? Like what? You know, like a bunch of rocks painted black, maybe. Yeah, okay, it's not that. Or, you know, just a huge, ginormous black hole. That would be awesome, but it's not that either.

Or maybe it could be a... Don't. Don't go there. Space banana. I knew you were going to go there. I have to. I mean, how do you know it's not a space banana, Daniel? I am Horham, a cartoonist, and the creator of Ph.D. Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I don't believe in space bananas.

What do you mean you don't believe in space? You don't believe bananas can be in space, or you don't believe that space can't be in space? or you don't believe that space can have bananas? I don't believe that particles randomly bouncing around in space will spontaneously form bananas. That's sort of like the Olsman bananas hypothesis. Not even in an infinite universe where anything that's probable happens? Well, you know, in an infinite universe,

there actually must be a space banana out there. And I do think the universe is probably infinite. So you know what? I'm a convert now. I am now a believer in space bananas. Welcome to my cult. And welcome to all of you to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHard Radio. In which we talk about all the amazing things that are out there and all the amazing things that are in here and how it all connects and how it all fits together and explain it to you in a way that you can understand and hopefully makes you chuckle.

Yeah, we talk about all of the things that are out there that we know about and all the things out there that we don't know about it and not just space bananas. Maybe space bananas made out of dark matter. That's right, because one of the most exciting things about science is not just getting answers and figuring stuff out, but asking questions. So our goal is to take you to the forefront of those questions to show you what scientists are thinking about. What are the possibilities for some of the answers to those biggest questions and explain them to you? Yeah, because I think for scientists, it's not just enough to know that something is out there and to classify it and to kind of catalog it. But it seems you guys really want to know what things are made of. You know, you want to keep drilling down until you get to, what, like mathematics?

Well, that's my goal. I mean, I don't want to just know that something is there. I want to know is it made out of the same stuff as you and I are. Can we explain all of the crazy, beautiful, amazing, tasty, weird stuff in the universe in terms of the same basic building blocks or do we need to add another building block? So to me, it's really interesting just to know, like, what is it? made out of. Right. Like, what would a space banana be made out of? Benininos or Barnarchs? Banana tons. Whatever they're made out of, you will get to name them. Oh, good. And taste them, hopefully. But the question is, if we find space bananas, are they made out of the same particles

that normal bananas are made out of or they made out of something new and weird and different, which might mean you can't eat them. Oh, I see. Hmm. It wouldn't taste the same. Not if they're made out of some new weird kind of particle, right? Exotic space bananas, they might not even be digestible by your system. They might pass right through you. That would be weird. Oh, man. But then it begs the question, are they still bananas?

And then we have to go through the Department of Banana Philosophy to answer that question. But yeah, we often talk about what things are made of. And one of the biggest questions, not just for us and humans, but in all of human history, maybe, is what is this 25, 27% of the universe made out of that scientists have discovered. That's right. We spent a lot of time understanding the kind of matter that's around us, bananas and people and toes and ferrets and lava and discovered that all of it's made out of these tiny little particles, quarks and electrons mostly.

But then we found that a huge chunk of the universe, 25% of all the energy budget of the universe, is this other kind of matter, this dark matter. And so, of course, as particle physicists, we want to know. What is it made out of? Is it made out of particles? If so, is it one particle? Is it a familiar particle that we've seen before or something totally new and weird and different? And I'm used to sort of hyperbolizing this problem as saying it's not just the biggest question in physics.

It's the biggest question in science. But you just went even further. You were like, this is the biggest question in human history. Regarding physics, I think. That's what I meant. Oh, you're qualifying it now, all right? It's too late, man. It's too late.

We're already number one question ever. isn't dark what is dark energy bigger okay number two question ever still pretty good and so yeah so it's it's pretty big i mean it's it's 25% of the universe and like we the regular matter is only 5% so this is not like a small question it's it's it's like what is most of the stuff in the universe made out of yeah we're kind of the little detail right we thought for a long time that we It figured out mostly what matter was made out of. And then we tried to generalize. You said, well, must be that the rest of the universe is also made out of similar kinds of stuff.

But if the rest of the universe is more, then we're sort of the rest of the universe. And that's the normal stuff. And so it's really important that we figure out what that dark matter is made out of. Is it made out of our kind of particles or is it made out of something else? Yeah. And so we have, I think, a couple of episodes about dark matter. Maybe even go back to some of our first podcast episodes, so it's, you know, back when we were younger before the virus, where we talked about what dark matter is,

what scientists think it is, what scientists, how scientists know that it's there. And so if you're curious or catching up about what dark matter, please go through our archive and check those episodes out. But the big question about dark matter is what is it made out of? So we, it's this weird matter out there in the universe, right, Daniel, that is pulling on stars and keeping galaxies together, but nobody knows what it's made. made out of because it's not made out of stuff that you can see or touch yeah and for a long time we thought that dark matter couldn't be made out of quarks that it couldn't be made out of the kinds of

stuff that's around us that it had to be some new weird exotic kind of particle and so we've had lots of ideas for what kind of particle dark matter could be made of and maybe you've heard of them there's the weekly interacting massive particle the wimp then there's the macho massive astronomical compact halo objects and then there's other weird stuff like axions but the sort of the scientific mainstream is to think that dark matter's probably made out of something new and weird and that's fascinating that's an amazing opportunity because if you discover this new kind particle that gives you like a whole new Lego block a whole you know it opens up this a whole new place to play this new area of physics that we can explore yeah it's like that time you figure out

you can combine Lincoln logs and Legos, and it's like, whoa, what can I build now? Or it turns out, most of the world is not built out of Lincoln logs or Legos, right? And you learned how to use actual concrete to make buildings. This just took an engineering return, you know. But so that was the sort of the thinking about dark matter. But recently, in the news, there is a lot of attention being paid to a new paper that just came out that maybe answers this question, whether or not dark matter is made out of quarks. Yeah, it's really sort of a fun question to just ask, hold on a second,

maybe dark matter is actually just made out of something simple, something familiar in a new arrangement. Maybe it's found a way to hide from us. And so it's worth examining like, why don't we think dark matter is made out of quarks? And could those assumptions be wrong? Okay, so there's a new paper, right? You were telling me that has a new idea for how you can maybe use quarks

old regular quarks and use them in a new way to make dark matter. Now, is this a theoretical paper or is this an experimental where they saw something? Well, the paper is theoretical, but it touches on experimental work. It's from the University of York, and it's by a couple of guys who came up with a new way to fit quarks together that could explain dark matter. And so it's a theoretical paper, but it references experimental work. Like it talks about this thing called a hexacork, which combines six quark. quarks into a weird particle.

And they talk about how maybe if you put those quarks together, it could look like dark matter and it could like evade all the arguments against why quarks can't be dark matter. And so it's sort of like theoretical, like can we make this work? And then they rounded up, I think, in a cool way by suggesting some ways to check their idea. Oh, interesting. It's a pretty cool idea. And so today on the program, we'll be asking the question. Could Dark Matter be made out of hexacorx?

And several listeners had a question about this paper, so they sent it to us. Jeff Sagar and Gilles Turner both sent us this paper and said, Could this be right? Could Dark Matter just be made out of quarks? So we thought it would be fun to talk about. I feel like I like how people sometimes treat you like the, you know how you have a medical doctor relative sometimes. They're like, I got this itch here in the back of my neck.

Can you check it out and tell me if this is something I should be concerned? concerned about. I feel like you're sort of like the internet's now, a physicist's uncle. I'm happy to be your on-called physicist. If your dark matter has a rash, then please don't take it to the ER. You just need it to rest at home. That's right. Do not apply dark energy to it or antimatter. It might be, might have a secondary consequences. That's right. But if you do have a question about something you see online that you think is probably bunk or you don't understand it, send it to us. We'll have to dive into it, maybe give you a short answer over email, or devote an entire episode to it like this one. Yeah. And so as usual, we were curious to

see how many people had heard of these hexacquarks and how far has the news about them spread into the public. So as usual, Daniel went out there and asked people this question, have you heard of hexacorps? Now, Daniel, because of the situation we're in with the virus, coronavirus, How did you, did you approach people this time? Or did you approach it from 20 feet away? How did you record these answers? I have a massive bubble that has six foot diameter, and I just walk around inside that bubble.

Oh, you normally have that just to avoid people. But now it comes in handy. It's usually a natural effect of my odor and my hairstyle. Oh, I see. It's a virtual bubble, I see. But just naturally stay away from it. It's an effective bubble. Now, these recordings were done last week in advance,

And so this was pre-pandemic when people were still walking around in the world and talking to strangers. And I was letting strangers breathe on my phone, which is maybe not a great idea. I have since disinfected it. But in the future, we may have to go to internet person on the street questions. So if you're interested in participating in future person on the street interview questions, send me a line. And I'll send you our questions. Because everyone always dreams about being a person on the internet. Well, it's sort of inverting it, right?

Instead of people on the internet asking me physics questions, I'm asking random people on the internet physics questions. So it's only fair. I see. So you would ask maybe online, hey, have you heard of hexacorics? And you just get a bunch of recordings with people saying, nope. Perhaps. Never heard of it. We've done this a couple of times, though, with remote listeners who wanted to participate.

And I would send them the questions in advance and tell them to record their answers with no Googling. All right. Well, here's what people have to say. So before you listen to these answers, just think about it. Have you heard of hexacorgs or have an inkling as to what they might be? Here's what people had to say. No? Or would you guess they might be?

You had to guess. Some kind of star. Nope. No, I have not. I heard it come up, but I don't know anything about it. No. No. All right.

Not a lot of positive recognition there out there about hexacorx. Almost exactly zero. No, my favorite answer was hexa what? Hexah what? Is it like a witchcraft thing? Like, do you hex people? Well, what do you think? Do you think it's poorly named or you think it just hasn't penetrated the public out there?

I mean, if I ask you about hexacorcs, wouldn't you have thought, oh, it's a particle with six quarks in it? It seems very natural to me. Well, I guess it depends on what it is. And currently, I don't have a good sense of what it is. But if I had to bet whether physicists name something not in the best way possible, that's where my money would be. So you're like, hexacorx, mm, it's probably a new kind of fruit. Yeah, I think hexacorx, it's like, it sounded like a good idea, but actually it doesn't help you.

All right. Well, we'll explain what hexacorcs are and how they might possibly, but probably not, could explain what dark matter is. 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 podcasts.

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

That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her. boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet.

So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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-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 untrending 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 Grasasas Come Again as part of my Cultura podcast network on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, Dinah, we're talking about hexacorics, and it's a new idea that maybe physicists think that it could tell us what dark matter is made out of. So I guess maybe step us through here first. We know sort of what dark matter is, and the question was before you thought that dark matter couldn't be made out of course.

quarks. So maybe tell us a little bit about why we thought it couldn't be made out of quarks. Yeah, this is an unusual idea to explain dark matter using quarks because we thought that we had ruled that out. Most of mainstream science said dark matter has to be some new weird kind of particle. So if we're going to understand this new idea for how hexacorx could be dark matter, it's really worth revisiting and understanding like why did we rule out quarks and how does this new idea maybe sort of evade those arguments. So number one, is that corks have electric charge and quarks interact with light. You know, if you shoot photons, it's something made out of quarks, it will react.

You know, you shoot light at protons. You shoot light at atoms. It reacts. It shines. It absorbs. It emits. All the stuff out there in the universe does interact with photons. And so that's why, that's kind of why we thought maybe dark matter couldn't be made

out of corks because regular corks you can see, but dark matter you can't see. Yeah, it's dark. Right. It doesn't give off light. It doesn't reflect light. It doesn't interact in any way with light. Right. It's invisible. It's invisible. Yeah. Invisible matter would have been such a better name. Dark matter makes it sound like it black, right? Yeah. But it's not. And you might think, well, there's ways to evade that, you know, what about neutral objects? And it's true that, like, you know, photons don't interact with neutral objects. So we thought maybe dark matter was made of neutrinos or something else like that. Or maybe neutral atoms. I guess maybe initially when you guys found dark matter, it's not that you knew it was invisible, and you just knew that it didn't emit light and you couldn't see it, right? So at that point when you found it and you named it, it could have just been dark or like painted black, right? Well, but then it would have obscured. Like if it was just black and absorbed light but didn't emit it, then it would have obscured stuff.

Like there's so much of it out there. If you could see the dark matter, then the night sky would be a lot darker because we'd be shrouded in it. Like, our galaxy is in the middle of a huge dark matter halo. If it wasn't invisible, most of the universe would be invisible to us. We would just see darkness in the sky. Right. Well, it could be like really small, dense pellets of something, right? And we wouldn't see it, but it wouldn't be invisible.

But we can see the effects of like gas and dust in the universe. Like most of the stuff in the universe is gas and dust. And we can definitely see that. It absorbs light. It blocks our view of the center of the galaxy, for example. is mostly obscured because of all the gas and dust. So even tiny pellets, if you've got zillions and zillions of them, they obscure your view.

It's like a fog. Okay, so we didn't think it could be quarks because it's dark and it doesn't interact with the light. And we know quarks interact with light. And so is that the main reason we didn't think that dark matter or we don't think dark matter could be made out of quarks? It's not because it's not that convincing an argument. There are ways to evade it, right?

There is normal matter that's invisible to photons like neutrinos. and there are ways or space bananas or space bananas are invisible to photons invisible space bananas yeah as Lawrence were making up the things I feel like I just entered the second level of this cult now I've been informed and you read into the invisible space bananas

he made it to theta level three so I'm so honored I can close more things and then you know people wondered like could you possibly have neutral atoms that don't interact with photons et cetera so it turns out we have a much stronger argument for why dark matter can't be made out of quarks.

It actually comes from calculations about the Big Bang. So we study the Big Bang and we sort of see the remnants of it, the debris from the Big Bang, and that actually tells you that dark matter can't be made out of quarks? Yeah, what it does is it tells you how much stuff in the universe is made out of corks because it turns out that the density of quarks in the very early moments of the universe

controls how cork matter is formed. quark matter being like hydrogen and helium and light elements, me and you and all that stuff, the density of the quarks determines how much heavy elements you get. So if you have a huge density of quarks in the early universe, you get more heavy elements like lithium and carbon and oxygen. If you have fewer corks or the corks aren't as dense, then they don't combine to form as many heavy elements. And so we measure how much hydrogen is there, how much helium is there. And we can tell from that, sort of the density of quarks in the early universe. And that tells us just

like how many quarks were there. But I guess it's not just about quantities because I mean you could imagine that maybe there were a ton more quarks than we think there were. And some of them just went on to make dark matter instead of hydrogen and helium. Well, that's sort of this idea.

That's sort of the idea from this paper. Yeah. Oh, okay. Sorry. Maybe I should get credit there in the Nobel Prize. So it turns out to be true. Okay, so I see. So before we didn't think that the big man made enough quarks to make dark matter because it didn't make sense.

But maybe there is a way for this to make sense. Yeah. And it's sort of a, it's a subtle argument. It's a subtraction, right? It's saying here's how much matter is out there in the universe. And we know that by looking at how galaxy swore. And we can just see the gravitational effects of it. That's how much dark matter there is.

and we know how much quark matter there is based on this Big Bang nucleosynthesis argument how much helium and lithium was made and so they don't add up so that leaves a gap so we can't explain all the matter in the universe using quarks but again that's assuming that corks turn into the kind of familiar matter

we're familiar with you know hydrogen and atoms and protons and neutrons and stuff like it couldn't be that it turned into hydrogen and helium and then some of that stuff turned into dark matter that wouldn't that wouldn't work no that doesn't work but if you could somehow siphon off a bunch of quarks into a new invisible kind of matter that then wouldn't interact with those hydrogen helium and stuff then maybe that dark matter could be explained by those quarks and not mess up this early universe big bang nucleosynthesis stuff but we're getting ahead of ourselves oh no i think we're here i think we're here right i mean that's that's what this idea of a hexacork is is that maybe It's something that happened to all those quarks at the Big Bang. Yeah, and there's a few steps you need there. You need to understand what a hexa quark is.

And then the hexacquarks have to sort of siphon themselves off into some state that wouldn't want to interact with the hydrogen and helium that was happening around then. Because remember, it was a hot and nasty place, the early universe. It's not like you made something and just got to hang out for 14 billion years. It was really dense and there were photons everywhere. And so you need to somehow create this stuff and then also protect it. from the rest of the universe. I see. Take it, like, take it out of the craziness. Yeah.

So that it can account for dark matter now. Yeah. Oh. Well, so step us through then. What is a hectocork? And is it a different kind of cork or is it like a poorly named concept in physics? I'm feeling a little bit of judgment here, but I'm just going to keep going because now I'm at a level three.

Is it a curse cork, you know, like. I see. Oh, I get it. It's like a like a like a, um, like a, like a, um, like a, like a, um, like a, I'm just going to which is quark. Yeah, yeah, yes. Boil, boil, toil, and trouble, throw an eye of Newton, hexacork.

That sounds good. No, a hexacork is not a new kind of cork. It's a new combination of existing quarks. Oh, I see. Huh. And so corks are very familiar particles. They make up protons and neutrons and other exotic particles.

And so there are up corks and down quarks inside me and you. Non-exotic, you mean particles, right? They make up non-exotic particles, but also, you know, weird particles like pyons and other kinds of mazons. You can rearrange these Legos to make all sorts of different kinds of things. We had a whole episode about that and how that works. Quarks are amazing little Legos. Right.

And usually they're in pairs or in threes, right? That's right. And so there are a lot of rules for how you put these Legos together. You can't just say, I'm going to put these seven quarks together, or those nine corks together, because they feel the strong nuclear. force, the most powerful force in the universe, which is very particular about how you put them together. And the strong nuclear force has a different kind of way of arranging itself than any other kind of force, like electromagnicism has plus and minus.

So if you want something that's neutral, you put a plus and a minus together. Right. That one's simple to think about, because like two pluses can't go together because they repel each other and two negatives can't go together, but a plus and a minus, they're happy together. That's right. And they form a neutral atom. and or a neutral system. In the case of the strong nuclear force, though,

there are three kinds of charges, and so we can't call them plus and minus because they don't sit nicely along one axis. So we give them the names, red, green, and blue, because if you add them all up together, then you get a neutral atom, what we call it colorless atom.

Right, like if you take a red cork, green cork, and a blue quark, you get sort of like a happy trio. Yeah, they're a happy trio. So they're balanced out together. And that's sort of similar to electromatic. Magnetism, you take one of each of the kinds of charges, a plus and a minus, you add it together, you get neutral, right? In this way, you get one of each of the kinds of colors, you add them together, you get white or colorless.

So you can make triplets. You can also make pairs. Like you take a red cork and pair it with an anti-red cork. That's also neutral. What color is anti-red? Like orange or like a cyan? If only I knew a visual artist who was really well versed in science. Who knew the core wheel?

While you're talking to a comics per parties, I only do black and white. Okay. I'll ask the Sunday cartoonist that question. I don't know what the anti-red is, but whatever it is, when you add it to red, you get white. Oh, I see. And so a red and an anti-red can sit happily together and be something. Yes. What do you call that, like a bicarque or a two-sum cork?

That's called a mazon. A mazon. A mazon. All right. Got it. Yeah. So you can start with two. quarks, a cork and it's anti-color quark. You can do three quarks if you have like RGB and that's called a baryon. And examples are protons and neutrons, right? Very familiar.

And then you can get more complicated. Now those are the most common particles in the universe, mesons and barons. That's what we're made out of, right? We're like our protons and neutrons and your atoms are made out of threesomes of corks. That's right, these cork triplets. But you can combine them in other ways. Like you can take four corks. If you have a red and a green and an anti-red and an anti-green, right, that also is color neutral. Because the anti's cancel out, the red and the green, and then they can all sit happily together. And can you want to guess what that's called? A quarter quark.

A tetra quark. A tetra. Oh, right. Yeah, tetra. Tetras. That's right. And you can fit them together, just like Tetra's pieces. So that's the four-cork version.

And so that's stable. because, you know, like a color and an anti-quark were happy by them as a two-sum, but you're saying you can get two couples and they're also happy together. They form a colorless object. Not all of these things are stable, right? Like the proton is stable.

The proton will sit around, a proton by itself will sit around for billions of years and do nothing. A neutron is not stable, right? A neutron will turn into a proton and an electron. And similarly, the pairs, the mesons, they're also not stable. So some of these things,

are colorless, like they're neutral, but they're not necessarily stable. All right. But you're saying that they can fit together, they just won't fit together for very long. Yeah. And you can keep going, and you can make a combination of five quarks. So here you would need like an R, a B, a G, that's color neutral, plus maybe like an R and an anti-R. So that gives you an overall particle that's neutral.

And that's called a pentacork. Right. Not a sunk quark. And then finally we get to hexacquarks. But wait, tell me about these weird particles with lots of quarks in it. Like, do they act like regular particles or, you know what I mean? Like, do they just bounce around with the rest of us here? Or do they suddenly change or do something different?

They're very short-lived. We can make them only in special situations in particle colliders. You smash into quarks together for a very short amount of time these particles can form. but they last like 10 to the minus 23 seconds, and then they fall apart, and they turn into lighter, more stable particles. I see, but while they're alive, they're just like regular particles. They're just like regular particles, but you know, that's a whole other question. Like, well, what is a particle anyway?

But they are the bound states, right? They move together, and if you touch them with anything that has less energy than those bonds, then they react all as one. And so, yeah, they act as a particle, though it's very, very short-lived. All right. So then, but then you can get six quarks together. You can get six quarks together.

And this is just sort of like a dye baryon. It's like a red, green, and blue, and then another red, green, blue. Or an anti-red, an anti-green, anti-blue. But isn't that the same as like a quark and an anti-we? Like a proton and an antiproton. Yeah, like a proton and a neutron. Yeah, it's similar. But it's, you know, they're compressed together.

A proton and a neutron has the same cork content as a hexacork, but it's a different arrangement. You know, the same way that I have the same cork content as you, but I'm a different arrangement. It's all about the arrangement. It's all about the bonds and how you fit them together. Like, I could make a really ugly thing out of my Legos, and you could make something beautiful, and I could say, well, they're made of the same Legos, but that doesn't take away from the beauty of your creation, right? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So you're saying these are six quarks, not just in like, you know, three pairs or two, three, or they're actually like six of them or they're all interacting with each other. They're all sort of connected to each other. Yeah. And there's one in particular. It's called the D star. And it has a certain mass. It's just under two and a half times the mass of the proton.

And it was found in 2011 and then confirmed in 2013. Again, in particle collisions. And it lasts for 10 to the minus 23 seconds. and we think it's made out of three up quarks and three down quarks all put together. Oh, so you found this. This is something that you've seen in the particle collider. Like, hey, this came out. Yeah, so hexacorks are real.

But we don't think they last very long. We think you can make a hexacorc, but then it's gone after 10 to the minus 23 seconds. Wow, which is like, like, you know, 70 electron years. But it's much smaller than the amount of time we think dark matter has been around. We think dark matter lasts for billions of years, right? So for D-Star hexacquarks to explain dark matter, you have to explain how, for some reason, it's been lasting for billions of years. Oh, I see. All right.

So this is the candidate for what dark matter might be made out of. Might be made out of these interesting and funny hexacquarks. And so let's get into whether or not that's actually true and what this paper says about dark matter and what it's made out of. But first, let's take a quick. break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass.

The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of the 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 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, podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German.

And my podcast, Grasias 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. 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. Yeah? But the whole pretending and code, 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 IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. That's it, man. Just six quarks held together. Like anybody could have done this at any time. Uh-huh. Yeah.

You seem kind of underwhelmed. A little bit. I mean, you're expecting witches quarks and like spell quarks and magic quarks. I feel like you're using the word quark for two things. You're using it for the particle that are quarks, the fundamental particles that are quarks, and you're using it also for arrangements of quarks. Do you know what I mean? I see, like, charm quarks, strange quark, hexac quark.

That's confusing. Well, I feel like strange quarks is like, okay, that's a different kind of cork. But this is not a different kind of corks. this is just an arrangement, of course. It's like saying a banana is a banana and a bundle of bananas is a hexa banana. Actually, that sounds like a great idea to me. What would you like today, sir? I'll have a hexa banana.

But I guess the idea is that it acts like a particle, just like a bunch of bananas. You can throw a bunch of bananas together because they're held together. But they're made out of individual bananas. Yes, they're made out of individual bananas. And so in this case, we're interested in this D-star hexacquark. Not so much because we're interested in, like, how can you put quarks together? That's a whole field of quantum chromodynamics that people are interested in. But here we're interested in, like, maybe could this possibly explain the dark matter?

And so because maybe when you put these six quarks together, they suddenly have special powers. Yeah, and so to get D-star hexacquarks to look like dark matter, you have to do a couple of things. first thing is you have to make it last longer than 10 to the minus 23 seconds because we think dark matter exists on sort of cosmological time scales that it was created in the early universe and it's still around it's not like decaying into normal matter it doesn't just evaporate it doesn't just evaporate it sticks around right it's otherwise here it's there it's still around yeah it's been here for 14 billion years no reason to think it's going to disappear tomorrow right so you you you would have to find a way for these hexacorchs to be stable, to hang around.

Yeah. And the idea is that maybe these D-Star hexacorcs form some weird state of matter, a Bose-Einstein condensate, where they all sort of grouped together and act like one big megaparticle. Oh, man. And let me guess how you call that one, a megacork. No, that's the name of a transformer. God. Yeah.

I think you're thinking of a megatron. And a Bose-Einstein condensate is a weird quantum mechanical state of matter where you get a lot of particles together that are bosons, things like photons or other particles that can sit on top of each other. They can be in the same quantum state. There are some particles, fermions, that don't like to be in the same quantum state, like electrons. If you put two electrons around an atom, they don't want to be in the same energy level. But bosons, they're happy to sit in the same place. You can have 10 million photons all in the same state with the same energy. But if you get enough of these particles, enough of these bosons together, they have like a macroscopic quantity, like a droplet, then it forms a state called a Bose-Einstein condensate, where it's macroscopically sized, but it behaves like a quantum object.

Like one, like they share the quantum uncertainty kind of in a way. It's a quantum wave function with like visible sizes. Usually all the quantum effects are hidden away at the tiny scales where you can't see them and they're averaged out to zero. But here's an object that actually you can see quantum mechanical effects. And we should do a whole podcast episode on Bose-Einstein condensates. All right. So we think that maybe this hexacorde lives in a Bose-Ein-Styne condensate, and that's how it becomes dark matter? Yeah, they did this calculation,

and they showed that maybe if you could get enough of these together, they could form a boz-Ein-stein condensate, in which case maybe it would be stable. Like, they wouldn't evaporate. They would just, they would like being in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Einstein condensate and then they wouldn't disappear. And there's, you know, a good history here for this kind of idea of saying you have a particle which on itself is unstable like the neutron, but you put it in a special situation

like neutron stars and it's stable. So like a huge pile of neutrons altogether, they stick around. Neutron star sticks around. A single neutron will decay pretty quickly into other stuff. So maybe the same thing happens with these D star hexacquarks and they did some calculations in the paper that showed it that was plausible. It's not just like, let's throw this banana against the wall and see if it sticks. So what do you think?

Is the math right? Can these things sit in and both Einstein condes it? Well, it's pretty complicated stuff, and it might be right, but, you know, I don't see a flaw in it in that part of the calculation, but, you know, there are a lot of ideas that could be possible, but that aren't real. You know, you have to not just say this might work. You have to see that it actually does work because we're interested in doing in this case is saying like, is it actually the dark matter, not just could it maybe be?

Because we have a long list already of maybes for dark matter. I see. So it can exist, but there's a question of does it happen in nature? And the second question, which is, is it that what dark matter is made out of? Yeah. And there is one question I have about this paper that makes me very skeptical that these things could be produced and live long enough to become dark matter. Physics drama.

Physics drama. And that's it. You remember that in the early universe, there was a lot of radiation. Like, most of the energy of the early universe were as photons and other things, just like energy radiating around. It was a crazy time. A tiny fraction of the energy of the universe was matter back then. And, you know, and since then, things have cooled out a little bit and we have more matter,

et cetera. But back then, it was really hard for anything to stay together. You formed an atom five seconds after the universe was born. It immediately was blasted apart by a photon. And so it's hard to imagine how these D-Star hexacquarks all survived that crazy photonic time with all this energy bouncing around. And in the paper, I don't see them doing a calculation to show that these things somehow will not interact with photons.

Because remember, they're still made of quarks. A photon hits one of these D-star hexacorcs. It should break it up. Right. Well, I guess that breaks me to my question, which is, Why do they think this might be dark matter? Like when you put six quarks together, does it become invisible suddenly and not react to light the way we know dark matter doesn't either? Well, that's a good question.

I mean, these things are electrically neutral, right? And so in that way, they could be. But a high enough energy photon will penetrate them. I think the core idea is that maybe this dark matter is made out of these quarks, right, in this special configuration that allow them to evade the sort of creation of light matter. in the early universe. Remember we talked about how in the early universe, most of the corks got together to make helium and hydrogen and all that kind of stuff.

And so we know how many corks were used to make all that stuff and it can't explain the dark matter. So this is the way to like siphon off some of those corks into another kind of matter, which could still exist in the universe. And so we've always assumed that dark matter couldn't be made of corks for this reason. And the other arguments against dark matter being corks

So a little looser, they're like, as you're saying, like, what happens if you shoot a photon at it? And so if it's possible to have more quarks in the early universe and siphon them off into this special kind of matter, then, you know, that gives you the license to add more quarks into the universe, which could then explain the dark matter. Oh, I see. And it could be that that forms his boson sand condensate. And then we don't really know, like, it might be that that's sensitive to photons, like you smash into it hard enough with a photon, it can break it up, but that it's still transparent. So it could be like hanging out there in great ribbons and sheets and fogs made out of corks, but mostly invisible. I feel like you're sort of a little bit skeptical about this idea because you're saying that in something like that wouldn't survive the big, the craziness of the Big Bang. Yeah, and they don't explain in the paper how it would survive the very intense photonic atmosphere just after the Big Bang.

Like, why does this thing last so long? Like they explain how you could make it stable, meaning if you left it by itself, it would last long enough. But if you bombard it with photons, it should break up in the universe. Right. But what if it's invisible to photons, then wouldn't it sort of sit outside of that crazy big band explosion? But it's not invisible to photons. I mean, most low energy photons would pass through it.

But if you bombard it with very high energy photons and there are quarks inside of it, then the bonds between the corks are no longer relevant. If you shoot a photon is something that's made out of quarks and the energy the photon is greater than the energy of the bonds between the quarks, And the bonds between the quarks don't matter. It doesn't matter anymore, whether it's inside a proton or a neutron or some other kind of quark matter. Both Einstein, quantum wave, unity, doesn't matter either. It doesn't matter if you have high enough energy photons.

And back in the Big Bang, it was crazy high energy photons all the time. I feel like you're almost saying like the Big Bang photons would poke a hole in this theory. They would shine a light on the flaws of this theory. Yeah, there you go. all right well that's but that's pretty interesting and so this is a paper that and an idea that made a lot of the news because they're like hey maybe this is what dark matter is made out of but you know it sounds like it's a wait and see kind of thing like there is not it doesn't answer all the questions it is something that possibly exists out there but it's a bit of a stretch yeah and as usual in science journalism it was very it was hyped it's like maybe this explains dark matter but really it's just like another idea and it's great to have a breadth of ideas we need a lot of ideas because we haven't found dark matter we've been looking for a while and so we got to be creative and think oh maybe it's this other thing we forgot or maybe it could still be this thing we ruled out

that's very healthy and so it's great that these guys are thinking about these new ideas but right now it's just sort of like one more thing on the list of what dark matter could be and it's got some question marks around it do you think it would be better if journalists just ignore signs and not treated things as if they were more run-of-the-mill? I think it would be better if they didn't act like every minor step forward was a incredible discovery that answered a big open question because then the day we actually do answer those open questions, people would be like, whatever, you found dark matter 50 times in the last 10 years, what do I care?

So this should have been covered as like, physicists have new idea for dark matter, not like dark matter riddle may have been solved what have you put in like really for real this time guys at the end of that news article wouldn't we'll save that code for when we actually discover it but the thing one thing i really like and respect about this paper is that they also came up with a new way to look for this they're like okay if these things are real how would we prove it we can't just have this theoretical idea they were wondering like how would we prove it and so they thought about like if these d-star hexacquarks were real maybe there's some of them here on Earth and maybe occasionally they sort of collapse and they create these big, crazy showers

of cosmic rays, but they look different because they're going sort of up instead of down. Anyway, it's a fascinating idea and kudos to them for coming up for a new theoretical idea that sort of breaks some of the existing rules and for coming up with an experimental way to look for their idea. Right, because you're an experimentalist and so you reacted to that. You're like, hey, I like that part. Yeah, well, anytime you have a new theoretical idea, you have to figure. out how to test it, you know? Ideas are just ideas until they're proven to be reality. That's

what experiments are for. All right. Well, I guess we'll see. Do you think they'll do these experiments and figure out if it could be dark matter? Or do you think this will sort of sit in a shelf for a while until there's more of a consensus or more of a appealing theoretical argument here? I think that it will generate some more work in the theoretical community to figure out how to answer some of these other questions and to see, like, can it really be dark matter? This is sort of like the first bite of the apple. There's a lot of details still left to figure out that we talked about. But also, it's not that hard to do these experiments.

It's just sort of like looking in the data of existing experimental facilities to see if you can see evidence for these things that we just hadn't looked for before. So that's kind of exciting. Oh, you don't have to run any experiment. You can just look at the data from old experiments. Yes, precisely. All right. Well, my last question is, Daniel, if you take six space bananas and tie them together,

does that make them a hexa space banana? It makes them a heck of a tasty banana. A heck of a... There you go. I'll give you points for naming that one. All right, thank you. All right. Well, I hope that answered the question that a lot of you sent in as to what a hexacork

is and whether or not it can't actually explain what dark matter is. I think as usual, with science and physics in the universe, the question is, let's wait and see. Thanks for sending your questions, and thanks for tuning in. See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word,

or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.

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

That seems inappropriate. Maybe. find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime Podcasts and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 audition 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.