Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Could quantum clocks detect dark matter?

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

Daniel and Jorge talk about new ways to find dark matter, using space microwave ovens.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

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

Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the Psychology Podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, you're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier.

Ignoring is easier. Denials is easier. Complex problem solving takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people, an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show. And we had a blast.

take a listen. Sue and I were like riding the lime bikes the other day and we're like, we're like, people ride bikes because it's fun. We got more incredible guests like Megan in store, plus news of the day and more. So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain 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. Hey, Daniel, if you were Dark Matter, where would you hide? I wouldn't hide if I was Dark Matter. I would totally parade myself in front of all the scientists in the galaxy.

Ooh, a parade. You mean like a pageant queen? Yeah, something like that. You know, just don't be so shy. Well, if it turns out you are Dark Matter, we'll definitely throw you a parade. But so far, it seems like Dark Matter is kind of reclusive, right? It's kind of shy. So maybe it is hiding?

What would be some good spots for it to hide it? Well, if Dark Matter doesn't want a tiara and it's hiding somewhere, then I don't know where it would hide. I mean, if I knew, I would go and look for it there. What if it's somewhere kind of obvious? Like what? Like right behind me? Yeah, or right in front of you? Or right on TV in the Matter Universe contest.

That would be a great twist ending for the M-night Shamanalan version of this story. Oh man, do you think he knows? I see dark matter Hi, I'm Jorge, a cartoonist, and author of Aller's great big universe. Hi, I'm Dana. I'm a particle physicist, and I wish I had a dark matter tiara. Ooh, but it wouldn't be very shiny or bright. It would be dark. So what's the point? Also, wouldn't it just fall through your head?

It would be hard to wear, but it would be like the greatest, most amazing piece of jewelry ever. How would you even keep it in your house? These are just like engineering details. You know, once I've solved the physics of a dark matter tiara, I'll just pass that off to the engineers. This is just all part of your dream to be the universe's doctor universe? I would like a little bit of bling. Yeah, you know, physics spling would be nice. I'm not going to win a Nobel Prize anytime soon,

so dark matter tiara sounds good. I see, I see. You could just say you have a dark matter tiara. And then nobody would be able to see it or feel it or detect it. They would just have to believe you. I need evidence, man. That's what science is all about. You've got to have data.

I don't think the beauty contest depend on data very much. But I'm trying to win a science contest. But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I-Hard Radio. In which we enter you in the greatest science contest of all time, the quest to understand the nature of the universe. What is it? What's in it? What's it made out of?

How does it all work? We think these questions are deep and fundamental parts of being a human being in this cosmos. And unraveling these questions is a joy that everybody should share. So on this podcast, we take those questions apart and try to share our answers and our ignorance with you. That's right, because science is the greatest. beauty contest in the universe where the goal is to discover the beauty of how this universe is put together, how it works, and what is our place in it? Over the last 50 or 100 years, we've developed a pretty good sense for what's in the universe. We know about stars and galaxies and all the bright and

shiny stuff that's out there in the universe. And we've also figured out that there's a lot of the universe that we can't see directly using our senses or any of the forces that we've discovered except for gravity. We know that a huge chunk of the stuff that's out there in the universe is invisible. It's intangible, which makes it very hard to discover and to figure out how to make it into a tiara. Yeah, because it turns out that a pretty good understanding of the universe only covers about 5% of what we know is out there. The rest, the 95% of the universe that we know it's there, we have no idea what it is or how it works. That sounds like a good title for a book.

Yeah, I think we wrote one, Daniel, which is available for sale everywhere. That's right. The kind of stuff that you and I are made out of atoms specifically, or what this is called Barion's, only makes up 5% of the energy budget in the universe. There's another 25, 27% that's dark matter. Some kind of stuff that we know is matter. We know it's out there, but we don't know what it is, and we only have a very rough sense of even where it is around us.

The rest of the universe is something we call dark energy, which is contributing to the accelerating expansion of the universe, and we have even less clue about what makes that up. Yeah, there's a lot we don't know. And it seems like these are maybe the defining mysteries of our times. It's to figure out what the universe is actually made out of, given that what we're made out of counts as so little of it. Yeah, you're right. And in the last few decades, there's been a huge program of people looking for dark matter. We've talked on the podcast about trying to make dark matter in the laboratory by smashing particles together or searching for the dark matter wind we might be floating through with very sensitive underground facilities

looking for an individual piece of dark matter to bump into liquid xenon, for example. Or maybe evidence of dark matter annihilating itself in the center of the galaxy. But so far, none of these experiments have found dark matter, which means we've got to get creative about other ways to maybe detect this most important. important or at least most common kind of matter in the universe. So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question. Could quantum clocks detect dark matter? And how many jargon words can we fit into one podcast title?

I know it does sound like buzzword salad, you know? Like could we use AI generated crypto Bitcoin to detect dark matter? You mean quantum nanomatters? Yes, exactly. Quantum nanomatter tiaras. Wow, I like quantum nanomatter. I'm going to use that in a proposal. That's good.

That's good. I said it first. I said it first, Daniel. Also, it's probably already on sale on Amazon. There's probably some product out there with that name. Yeah, but you didn't say Ching TM after it so I can use it. No, you don't have to. What?

I've got to brush up on my podcast property law. Yeah, you better or else I'm going to sue you. For nanodollars? for nanobitcoins. There you go. You know what, Jorge, you can have all of my nanobitcoins. What's the price of Bitcoin these days? Nano bitcoins, zero, yeah.

Doesn't exist. But anyways, it's kind of an intriguing title. Could quantum clocks detect dark matter? And quantum clocks sounds like, it does sound like something you could buy off of Amazon. Did you check to see if it's something you can just get next day? Oh, yeah. It turns out Amazon will sell you something. calls a quantum clock, like a quantum entanglement LED wall clock, but none of these things

are actually quantum clocks the way that we understand them. Well, technically, isn't everything a quantum something? Well, I mean, not everything, but, you know, the 5% that we know about in the universe isn't it all quantum, technically? Like, this is a quantum podcast. I mean, that's a really interesting philosophical question and not one that we really have an answer to because on one hand, you're right that everything is made out of quantum particles, so isn't the whole universe quantum? On the other hand, we know that when you zoom out,

things behave by different rules. We call that classical. We don't really understand why there is that transition, but there definitely is a transition. So to call everything quantum is either to say that, look, classical is just big zoomed out quantum, or is to say that classical doesn't really matter, which doesn't really sit well with me. What if I have no class? then you probably have a lot of Bitcoin then I'm not I'm not going to win any beauty contours I have poise but just no class

yeah exactly but you know for example a clock that just works on mechanical parts would also work in the universe where quantum mechanics didn't rule the microscopic because it's not sensitive to those microscopic details and so that wouldn't be a quantum clock for example

like a pendulum clock or an old-fashioned swift gear based clock. Discussion about nomenclosure. That's my favorite. Hey, you brought it up. But anyways, it's kind of an interesting question, and so we'll dig into it. But as usual, we're wondering how many people out there have thought about putting the concepts

of dark matter and quantum and clocks all together in one sentence. So thanks very much to everybody who participates in this segment of the podcast. We love that you volunteer. We love hearing your thoughts and we love sharing your voice with all of the other listeners. Please chime in. if you'd like, write to me to questions at danielanhorpe.com, and you can participate. So think about it for a second. Do you think quantum clocks can be used to detect dark matter? Here's what people had to say.

I've never heard of a quantum clock, but I'm not sure how it would be able to detect dark matter any more than a regular clock could. I guess maybe even with a regular clock, you could send it out into space, and if it hits a huge clump of dark matter and therefore gravity, maybe we could learn that there's a big well of gravity. out in some location that we otherwise couldn't detect? Not so sure. I suppose it's possible, but I have no clue how it would. Maybe something to do with entanglement? Since you're asking, the answer is probably yes, but maybe still theoretical. I would think you'd have to use the idea of measuring light passing through an area of more density, thus possibly dark matter, that causes curvature of space and also time dilation. How to do that, I'm not sure.

Since we don't possess a quantum clock, it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that a non-existent clock cannot detect dark matter. All right. Some pretty intense answers here. I feel like it's something that some of the listeners had heard about before. Did you poll your professor colleagues this time? No, these are our listeners online. You know, there's some good answers here about entanglement and light passing through areas

with dark matter density in them and just in general sense that this is a hard problem. Maybe you should ask a bunch of beauty queens next time or make it one of the standard questions in a beauty pageant. Forget how do you help would you save the world or how would you make things better. What do you think about quantum plugs? Well, where is the dark matter? Yeah, I'd love to hear that answer in a beauty pageant. Not that it couldn't happen, of course. No, absolutely. All right, well, let's dig into this intriguing question of whether dark matter can be detected by quantum clocks. And let's start with the basics.

Daniel, what do we know about dark matter? So there's a lot that we do and do not know about dark matter. So let's start with what we do know. We know that it's out there and we know that it's here as well. We know that dark matter is something that exists in the universe and then it's matter. We know that because we see it's gravity. We see it holding galaxies together as they spin. There isn't enough gravity from the stars and the gas.

dust that make up those galaxies to keep the stars in place as they swirl around the center of the galaxy at very high speeds. And yet they do stay in place. Galaxies are mostly not throwing stars out into intergalactic space. And so we infer that there must be some matter there to hold that galaxy together. But it's more than just that one inference, that one fudge factor to make that particular equation work. We see evidence for dark matter all over the history of the universe from the very first few moments when the early universe plasma is sloshing around and you have dark matter and normal matter and photons all acting very differently in creating different sloshing patterns from looking at that sloshing in the cosmic

microwave background radiation we can figure out that there was dark matter and even measure how much of it there is and we can trace the history of dark matter's gravity as it shapes the structure formation of the whole universe why we have galaxies at all this early in the history of the universe. And so dark matter is definitely out there as a kind of matter, but we don't know really what it is or very specifically where it is

because it's so hard to see since it only feels gravity, it doesn't feel any of the other forces that we've discovered. And we can also sort of see dark matter, right? Like we can see it in the same way that you can see a lens, a glass lens, for example.

You can see how it distorts the light behind it, right? Yeah, exactly. We can see dark matter through gravity. And so that means we can see stuff bending around dark matter. We can see it holding galaxies together, and that even impacts how light moves in the vicinity of dark matter. If you have a big blob of dark matter between you and some distant galaxy, for example, the photons from that distant galaxy will bend as they move through that dark matter, creating apparent distortions in your image. You can even sometimes

see the same galaxy twice in the sky because of this gravitational lensing. And so we know that it's out there and we can use some techniques like that to sometimes tell roughly where it is. But because dark matter is so weak, it's particles only feel gravity, we think. It's very difficult to figure out what exactly is made out of to isolate one piece of dark matter because gravity is so weak that essentially a particle's gravity is almost impossible to measure. Yeah. And dark matter is also something that's not just out there in space. It's sort of like all around us, right? Like it's floating through us right now. Sort of like the force. You know, it flows through us, binds this all together.

It's made out of midi-chlorians, perhaps. Perhaps, yeah, exactly. You'll only really understand it after 900 years of study. That's a really good question, and that's sort of the central question of this episode, is exactly where is the dark matter, and can we find, like, concentrations of it? Can we map it out?

Because dark matter is so weakly interacting, like only gravity, it takes huge amounts of it to feel anything. And so that makes it very, hard to tell exactly where the dark matter is. It might be that it's mostly spread out evenly through the galaxy. It might be more clumpy than that. It depends a lot on your particular theory of dark matter where it exactly is. So it could be that we are in a dark matter wind as the earth orbits the sun and the sun moves through the galaxy. We could also

be in a dark matter-less bubble, a bubble of space in which there's comparatively little dark matter. Or it could be that dark matter is fairly dense in our area. You know, I have to say every time you say dark matter win, it makes me think of dark farts. Elevating the discourse every week. That's my job. That's why I'm here. Keep us all grounded. Or grounded or, you know, flat as in flatulant.

But anyways, so it's sort of all around this. And I guess I'm wondering, like, if it is all around us, would we be able to tell? Like, you know, if let's say dark matter is floating through the earth right now or let's said wasn't, would you be able to tell the difference? That's exactly what these experiments are trying to measure. And to give you a sense of the difficulty, the challenge of this, think about like why we didn't discover dark matter earlier just in studying how our solar system moves.

We have now very precise measurements of the orbit of Jupiter and Mars and all the planets and all the little pieces of the solar system as they orbit the sun. You might think, hey, if dark matter's here in our solar system and it has gravity, wouldn't it change the way those things orbit? it, shouldn't we be able to detect it? But because we think dark matter might be spread very thin, probably there isn't that much dark matter in the vicinity of our solar system. So even those very, very precise measurements, you know, like knowing the motion of Jupiter

to meters or centimeters can't detect dark matter because it would be very thin and very spread out. And mostly we think homogenous, which in the end doesn't give much gravitational pull on the objects in the solar system. So it takes a very specialized, highly sensitive device. to be able to detect this dark matter. Yeah, and didn't we say once, like, if you take all the dark matter that is potentially floating through the earth right now, it would only weigh about as much as a squirrel or something

like that? Yeah, exactly, though. That's very speculative, right? That assumes that dark matter is essentially equally spread out in our galaxy, which we don't believe is true. But if you assume that there is, then we know our galaxy, for example, is 95% dark matter. That means for every kilogram of matter made out of matter made out. out of atoms like hydrogen and helium or whatever, there's 19 kilograms of matter made out of

whatever dark matter is made out of. And so it's like 19 to one in our galaxy. Which sounds like a lot, but I guess also our galaxy is kind of very empty mostly, right? Like it's probably like 99% empty. Yeah, exactly. Now normal matter clumps up a lot, right? Like the sun is an extraordinarily dense collection of normal matter. Normal matter is not spread evenly through the galaxy. But if you take dark matter, and spread it evenly through the galaxy, you get a pretty small density. It's like 10 to the 26 kilograms per cubic light year,

which is a huge volume, which means it's like 10 to the negative 22 kilograms per cubic meter. So then if you add up all the cubic meters in the Earth, that adds up to about 2 thirds of a kilogram of dark matter inside the volume of the Earth. Again, assuming that dark matters evenly spread throughout the galaxy,

which it probably isn't. isn't, but it might be roughly. Which is about the size or mass of a squirrel. Yeah, exactly. So one squirrel of dark matter inside the volume of the earth, compared to, you know, the many, many millions and billions of kilograms of normal matter inside the volume of the earth. That tells you the importance of clumping, right?

Because normal matter clumps together, its gravity is much more powerful in our local neighborhood than dark matter, even though dark matter outweighs normal matter by 19 to 1. If it's much more thinly spread out, the local effects of its gravity are much harder. to detect. I think maybe what you're saying is that dark matter in terms of the universe scale, it mostly hangs out in galaxies. Like, you don't see a lot of dark matter floating out there on its own between galaxies. Yeah, we can do really precise measurements of where dark matter is on the galaxy scale because galaxies are really, really big. And we can tell how galaxies are orbiting around each other, just the way we can tell how stars are moving through the galaxy. So

enormous clumps of dark matter, absolutely we can measure their gravity. But when you zoom in in a really fine-grained way and want to say, hey, is there a moon-sized blob of dark matter anywhere in our solar system? That's a tough question to answer. So then within the galaxy, you're saying like there's a lot of dark matter within our galaxy. 95% of the mass of our galaxy is dark matter. And what does it look like? Does it look like, you know, an intense, dense ball of dark matter in the middle? Is it evenly distributed? And also like our galaxy looks like a disk, sort of like a flat disk. Is dark matter also shaped like a flat disk? So we have the best answers, the more we zoom out, and then as we zoom in, things get literally fuzzy. But on the scale of the galaxy,

we have some ideas. We think that dark matter is like a big halo. So imagine the visible galaxy or at the edge of the stars. Dark matter is a big halo that goes out beyond the visible stars, and it's bigger and fuzzier. It hasn't collapsed the way normal matter has because it just doesn't clump. In order to clump things need other kinds of interaction other than gravity. Like if you have two dark matter particles, they attract each other gravitationally and then just pass right through each other, they're just going to zig and zag back and forth oscillate forever. They're not going to clump together. To do that, you need like electromagnetism or the strong force or something that wants to grab

onto each other. So dark matter stays a big, puffy halo, and the galaxy is sort of embedded in that halo. And that's not a coincidence, right? The reason the galaxy exists is because of a big dark matter blob there that's gathered together all the hydrogen and helium gravitationally and made it into a galaxy. It's the reason we have stars, et cetera. Now, when you say like a halo, you don't actually mean like an angel's halo that looks like a ring. You actually mean just like a blob, right?

Yeah, exactly, like a big fuzzy blob that extends out further along the disc and then further above and below the disc. But even that we know already is not evenly distributed. Is it like football shaped? Is it kind of flat or is it a perfect sphere? It's more like a hockey puck, right? It's flat, but not as flat as the galaxy itself. What made it flat? Yeah, maybe a hockey puck.

is the wrong analogy. It's not quite that flat. It's more like a big ellipsoid. Meaning like a slightly squished ball. Yeah, exactly. It's like a big basketball that somebody's sitting on or something. All right. Well, let's get a little bit more into the details of what we know about dark matter. How much of it can we see? How much can we discern about what it's doing in our universe? And we'll answer the question of whether you can use a quantum clock from Amazon.com to detect it. So we'll get to those questions. But first, let's take a quick break.

December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA. terminal. Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two,

we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight that's harder to predict and even harder to Stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend'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 O.K. Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Brandtford, 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 hyperfixation. 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

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 2 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 athletes? 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. The OGs of Uncensored Motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the host of the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened.

And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your trial. with guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else want to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem.

My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was going. She was like, oh, dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs

when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast Every Wednesday On the Black Effect Podcast Network The IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast.

All right, we're asking the question, Can you use quantum clocks to detect dark matter? We've been recapping a little bit about what we know about dark matter. Daniel, how much of the details of the details of it can we see? Not really very much. We have this sense of a big fuzzy halo that surrounds the galaxy and we can also measure the density as a function of distance from the center. So if you're a star, for example, orbiting the center of the galaxy, the speed at which you orbit depends on the force that's holding you in that orbit. So the stronger the force, the faster you can go

or the fast you can go the stronger the force that's needed to hold you in that orbit. So by measuring the speed of a given star, we can essentially measure the mass of all the stuff that's holding on to that star. So then if you look at stars at different distances from the center, you can basically map out the density of stuff in the galaxy as you go further and closer to the center of the galaxy. Like if dark matter was super condensed in the middle of the galaxy, then the stars in the galaxy would be rotating a certain way. Or if the dark matter was more spread out, then the stars in the galaxy would be rotating in a different way. Yeah, exactly. If all the dark matter in the galaxy was at the center, then everything would act

in a certain way, would just go like one over R squared. It's sort of like the way the solar system orbits the sun. But if you take some of that mass and you spread it out through the galaxy instead, then the dark matter that's further out than a given star doesn't affect its orbit because its gravity all cancels out. So that changes the rotation speed of those stars. And that's, in fact, How we first discover dark matter was by looking at these rotation speeds of stars around the center of the galaxy and seeing that we couldn't explain it by mapping all the mass from the stars and the gas and the dust. And that's exactly how you can tell where you need to add more mass to explain these rotation speeds. It's not just like, hey, add a big blob at the center.

You need to add some of the center and also some further out and some further out. And so precise measurements of those velocities give you a fairly accurate picture of where the dark matter is in the galaxy. And it's not evenly spread out. It's more densely clumped at the center, which is something you'd expect. Because it is affected by gravity, right? It is in the end affected by gravity. And so it's pulled itself together. And the whole reason that this exists is because of some like early universe perturbation

where you had a denser blob of dark matter that created this whole well, gathered together the other dark matter and created this overdensity, which then pulled in hydrogen, helium, and whatever was around to make a galaxy. So it's a little bit denser in the center, though it's not very well understood. Like if we do calculations, simulations to describe what we think should happen if you have a bunch of dark matter and you give it a few billion years to fall together and to form some structure, it describes what astronomers call a cusp, which means like a point of high density of the center and then very steeply falling should like drop off quickly. But if you go out and measure the actual distributions of stars velocities, you see something that looks like a bigger core. It's not like as pointing near the center. It's more spread out in the inner galaxy.

It's like flatter. And so this is not something we understand very well. And it also gives you a sense of like the scale of which we can figure this stuff out. We're talking about over light years distances, right? We're not resolving dark matter in meters or even in AUs, with very, very coarse ways to measure where the dark matter is. Again, because its gravity is so weak. Are you saying like at the beginning of the universe, dark matter was more evenly spread out? Like, you know, all those light years of empty space between us and Andromeda and other galaxies was all filled with dark matter.

And then it all collapsed into certain clusters. Yeah, it definitely gathered itself together. The early universe had initial density fluctuations. And that's a whole big question about where exactly that came from. And then those seeded gravity to pull things together. So gravity does form structure, but it takes time. And so, yeah, dark matter was more spread out and now it's less spread out. Why would dark matter stay stuck together?

Well, it's not the dark matter is sticking together. It's not like it's bonded to itself. And again, we don't really know because we don't have a microscopic picture of the dark matter. But I think you're asking like, why does dark matter form even gravitational structures? Like, why does it get more dense in some places and then in others? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, like I'm imagining at the beginning of the universe, there's a bit of dark matter that was, you know, let's say 10 light years away. And then it got attracted to our galaxy.

And so it flew over here. But then why didn't it just keep flying to the other side? Yeah. So as that distant piece of dark matter approaches the galaxy, it gains velocity, right? It's exchanging gravitational potential energy for kinetic energy. And then you're imagining like the way a ball rolls down a valley. Why doesn't it roll back up the other side? And it will, yes, but then it comes back, right? And so gravity in the end is organizing something. There's the second piece to that, which is that it doesn't completely roll back up the other side. You know, anything that's accelerating is emitting gravitational radiation, for example. So the reason, for example, two black holes orbiting each other will eventually spiral in and collapse is that they're emitting gravitational energy. So none of these things are really stable. So over long periods of time, even without inelastic interactions like electromagnetism or whatever, these things will form very large structures and they will gradually collapse due to gravitational radiation.

All right. So we kind of have a fuzzy picture of where it is in the universe. So now the question of the episode is, can we use quantum clock? to detect dark matter how do quantum clocks fit into this so quantum clocks might give us a sense for where the dark matter is if we can find a place where it's like clumpy if we can find a place in our solar system where it's like gather together for some reason and that would be really cool because not only would it help us detect what dark matter is but it would help us understand where it is it's a really deep mystery i think not just because we want to understand dark matter

but because we want like a map. You know, humans are visual creatures. We want to know like where the stuff is and just not knowing where dark matter is in the universe really bugs me. So I would love to know where it is and understanding its map on a finer scale would be really helpful.

And quantum clocks might be able to help us map where dark matter is if we can send them out into space and if they're sensitive to dark matter, if their operation changes as they pass through dark matter. Okay, I think you're saying that, you know, at the galaxy level, we know that it looks like a big blob. It's sort of like a squish ball.

It's sort of more intense or more dense in the center of the galaxy. But I think maybe you're saying, can we know in finer detail what it looks like between stars within the galaxy? Like is it clumpy? Is it chunky? Or is it like peanut butter smooth? Exactly. And people have tackled this problem in the past.

Like people use the technique. You mentioned gravitational lensing to look for blobs of dark matter. And that works. and it's powerful, but only if you have like a really nice galaxy behind the blob of dark matter that can show you that it's there. So that tells us a little bit about the dark matter density, but there aren't like galaxies in all the right places to like x-ray the whole solar system and figure out where it is. And that technique isn't always powerful enough. You need like a really big blob of dark matter. Another technique people have used is to look for dwarf galaxies.

Essentially our galaxy is formed by the combination of lots of galaxies, right? We think galaxies these formed kind of small and then grew together with all sorts of absorptions and collisions. That means that our galaxy has other like mini galaxies embedded within it. Some of these we call dwarf galaxies because they're small and we think they're like very high dark matter density. They're very few stars. And so we can look at the motion of the stars inside those little galaxies to get senses for like where those blobs are.

But we don't have a great way to like x-ray the solar system and figure out like where is the dark matter in our solar system? Is it hanging out by Jupiter? Is it spread evenly like peanut butter? What's going on? You want to know its distribution at the solar system scale? Exactly. That's what I want to do.

And I read a recent paper, which is very clever, which was looking at asteroids and trying to track asteroid trajectories and see if like tiny little deviations in the trajectory of asteroids or comets as they move to the solar system could reveal the presence of dark matter. It's very difficult to do because if dark matter is evenly spread out or only a little bit clumpy, there'd be basically no effect on those asteroids. But it's the kind of thing that we're just on the verge of being able to potentially do

now that we have better measurements and better computational tools to try to infer this information from really specific measurements. All right. So then how would you use a quantum clock to the tag dark matter? So when we talk about a quantum clock, really what we mean is something which is based on fundamental quantum mechanical principles. And, you know, it sounds fancy, but even just like an atomic clock is a quantum clock. An atomic clock is something that looks at like the oscillation of electron between two energy levels

and a cesium atom, which is a very precise, very, very regular process that we can use essentially to tell how time has passed. And so on Earth, we have extraordinarily precise atomic clocks, which now set the standard, and in fact define what we mean by a second. A second used to have a different definition, but now a second is defined as like a certain number of cycles of a specific kind of atom. That's literally how we measure time now. And so it's the standard. It's like the minute. Like it used to be like a minute with 60 seconds,

but not people say, oh, it's been a minute to really mean something totally different. Yes, it's just like that. Exactly. And we call it a quantum clock because this really is a quantum process. We're talking about quantum particles. There's an electron. There's an atom. The electron is moving in the potential well of the atom.

so it's interacting electromagnetically with the nucleus, and the way that it's moving, the way it oscillates between energy levels, is completely controlled by quantum processes. This is not a clock that you could have in a perfectly classical universe. And if we lived in a universe where electrons really were tiny little balls that went through orbits and had smooth classical paths, the way planets do, then this clock could not exist.

And so that's when we meet by quantum clock. But I guess if it's a quantum clock, doesn't it have a certain amount of uncertainty to it or unknowability? How can it be precise if there's the Heisenberg uncertainty principle? Yeah, you're right. There's no absolutely precise quantum clock, but this is about as regular as it gets. And amazingly, these quantum clocks are more precise than mechanical clocks, which of course also have uncertainty in them because no mechanical device is perfectly created, right?

And so this is as accurate as they've been able to make them. And recently they've been even able to make them small and transportable. You might think of an atomic clock as like some huge device in the, basement of a laboratory in Colorado that weighs like 10 tons and fills a room, but actually these things can be made quite small. So a quantum clock is really just an atomic clock, or is there another kind that doesn't use atoms? There's no atomic clock that's not a quantum clock.

So quantum clock is just a fancier sounding name for atomic clock, yes. Can you have a quantum clock that maybe doesn't use an atom that maybe just relies on electrons or quarks or something? Yeah, sure. You're not limited to atoms. You can imagine quantum clocks made out of like photons interact. or splitting or bouncing or something like that. In some sense, LIGO is a clock

because it's measuring the time for photons to travel along its legs, right? It's just converting that to a distance measurement. And so you could have other quantum clocks that are not based on atoms, yes. And one day, when we discover dark matter, maybe we could build a clock out of dark matter.

Which may or may not tell you the time. And may or may not smell like flatulence. Well, I guess maybe give us an example of like what's a typical or popular or a commonly used quantum clock, and how does it work? Well, the most precise quantum clock is based on the cesium 133 atom. That's the one that's actually used to define what a second is. And so here we have two states of electrons.

There's a small splitting in an energy state. Here it's called a hyperfine splitting because the difference is very, very small. And when the electron sits in there, it sort of goes back and forth between the two different states. Meaning, like, this is an electron that's orbiting around the cesium atom. Yeah, I wouldn't say orbiting if we want to be really, really technical, but it's captured by the cesium atom. And you're saying it's switching energy levels? Why would it switch energy levels? So you have this cesium atom and you embed the whole thing in some microwave radiation that can lift those electrons up from the lower state to the higher state. Meaning you put it in a microwave or you shoot it with like a light gun?

There's not a difference, right? That's what a microwave is. A microwave is shooting microwave radiation at your food. And microwaves are light. So basically a microwave is a light gun. Sounds hot. So then you have this atom and you stick it in the microwave. Yeah, so you stick it in the microwave and you measure how often it jumps up and then down and then up and then down. Because as the light passes through it, it knocks the electron up and down or what? Yeah, the light is tuned to exactly the frequency for the electron to jump up into the higher energy level. Remember, electrons can go from a lower to a higher energy level if a photon of the right energy comes along. So they've tuned this microwave to exactly that energy level.

So electrons in the lower level can absorb these photons, jump up to the higher level, but then they'll naturally decay down because the universe likes to spread energy out. And so the time of these oscillations turns out to be very, very regular. Like an electron will do this 9.192 billion times per second. And it doesn't depend on the frequency of the light, or it does? It definitely depends on the frequency of the light. If the frequency of the light is not correct, then it won't even absorb it, right? It won't happen.

Oh, but then don't you need to make that? frequency super precise? Yeah, exactly. And this is one source of uncertainty in these clocks, making those accurate. And you can measure these things like you build two independent ones. You can see how their counts drift relative to each other. And that's how you measure the accuracy of clocks in general. There's no absolute standard by which you can tell like, oh, this clock is off or that clock is off. You just build a few of them and you measure them relative to each other. And this is something that we know well enough. We know how to design the physics and the engineering that you can build these things so that atomic clocks in independent locations agree to like 0.3 nanoseconds

per day. It's really very incredibly precise. Wow. So what are you measuring? How are you measuring whether these electrons are going up and down? When the electron goes back down, it emits radiation, right? And so you can gather that as well. Like it shoots off light? Like a blink, basically. Yeah, exactly. It'll flash. All right. So then, and you're saying you can build these things now to be the size of a toaster or a microwave oven. a quantum toaster. They have them now, and they've deployed them out in space. They actually built the deep space atomic clock mission,

and they sent an atomic clock out into space to see, like, hey, can we operate one of these things out in space? And you might wonder, like, is this just a bunch of nerds trying to do something that seems cool? Yes, is always the answer. Like, can we shoot a microwave into space? And will it still heat up my burrito? My cesium burrito?

Is that the challenge? That's the challenge. But also, if we want to do things like, navigate in space, navigation needs timing. You need to know like how long you're going in one direction. If you want to do dead reckoning, you want to know where you are. Timing is absolutely crucial. Or if you want to use like nearby pulsars to triangulate your position, we have a whole episode about how that works. You also need very accurate timing so you can measure the time between the pulses. So this was like a technological challenge that's going to lay the groundwork

for all sorts of cool innovations. And this was totally successful, this deep space atomic clock mission. Well, let's get into how you would actually use these and how the timing might tell you where dark matter is within our solar system and maybe even within the Earth. So let's dig into that. But first, let's take another 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. 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 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. The OGs of Uncensored Motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the host of the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black

Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much, and women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribes, with guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem.

My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was going. She was like, oh, dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it?

Listen to the Good Mom's Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. The IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. All right, we're talking about using a microcontract. stuck inside of a microwave to the tank dark matter so you can win a tiara for being the prettiest scientist yeah exactly does it take longer to heat up your burrito when there's dark matter around so the idea is that you take these atomic or basically an atomic clock which is a quantum clock but uh it seems like the most popular ones that use atoms and so you shrink them down to the size of a toaster or microwave and then you shoot them in space and then how does that help you measure dark matter well there were a bunch of physicists who thought okay this is cool because now we not only have awesome super precise atomic clocks but now we have them spread out through the solar system like in principle the way we like sent devices near the sun with a Parker solar probe people look what if we built a bunch of these things and we spread them out in the solar system could they give us a picture of where the dark matter is in the solar

system if they operate differently when there's dark matter around like if they're sensitive to the dark matter density like if your atomic clock gets off if it drifts when there's more or less dark matter around, that having a bunch of these atomic clocks spread out through the solar system could give you a picture for where in the solar system the dark matter is. But I guess what's the mechanism by which dark matter would affect the timing of these clocks? Yeah, so mostly it wouldn't. For many theories of dark matter, dark matter is just some wimp. It's a massive particle that only interacts gravitationally, and so it has essentially no

effect on these clocks except for gravitational time dilation. We know the areas with greater mass have more curvature, and the curvature causes time dilation. But that would be very, very difficult to measure, even with these quantum clocks. But wait, wait, why would it be difficult? You can measure gravitational time dilation with quantum clocks, and we've done that. You can do it on the surface of the Earth, for example, and you can put a quantum clock one meter above another one, and you can see the difference between them, because one of them is deeper in the curvature than the other, super duper awesome.

But that's because the Earth has a huge amount of gravity, and this significant, curvature here. Dark matter doesn't contribute significantly to the curvature because it's pretty spread out. And we would already know if dark matter wasn't pretty spread out because we would have seen deviations in like Jupiter's orbit and whatever. So in principle, you can, but we don't think it's going to be very sensitive. If you had a lot of quantum clocks and they were much more sensitive than you could probably detect dark matter local density variations using that principle. Meaning these clocks would tick at a different frequency depending on how close it was to big sources of mass or even light sources of mass because that's just how relativity works yeah that's

how relativity works remember in relativity there's two kinds of time dilation one is based on speed if you see a clock moving quickly then you see it ticking slowly and that's very confusing because it's relative and so it depends on two observers but there's another kind of time dilation gravitational which is absolute it just says anybody in curvature their clock is going to tick slowly no matter who's looking at it and everybody's going to agree about whose clock is ticking slowly So that's very powerful and that's something you can use to measure just like how much stuff is there in general because clocks tick slower near stuff. It really kind of an awesome feature of the universe. Meaning like if I had two of these atomic clocks and one of them is out there in the middle of empty space and the other one is near a big blob of dark matter.

The one near the blob of dark matter would take slower, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. And so you might like start him out in the same spot but then after being for a while and two different spots one near the dark matter and you brought them back you would see that one of them take more ticks than the other yeah so now imagine like a grid you have a quantum clock every 10 meters in the solar system right you start them all out at the same time and then you monitor it and by measuring the difference in that number of ticks after a year on your reference clock the one that's hanging out with you you can tell where stuff is in the solar system like which spots in the solar

system have slower time yes exactly because slower time means more matter more curvature, more energy density, really. I guess on top of what you already know about the solar system, right? Like right now, even if we didn't have dark matter, a clock near the sun would take slower than a clock here. Exactly. And we've done some basic version of this, as I said earlier, you have a few clocks on Earth at different altitudes.

Those are different distances from the matter of the Earth and the ones closer do ticks more slowly. And satellites up in space, their clocks tick faster than atomic clocks here on the surface of the earth and you've got to take that new account famously when you're doing GPS, etc. But you're saying we're not going to be using this effect, this time dilation from relativity, to measure dark matter. Dark matter is just too weak. Dark matter is too weak and we think it's not clubby enough to really detect that, though

it would be super awesome. There's a special kind of dark matter which might give much larger effects, which would be much easier to discover. And this is a theory called fuzzy dark matter. Sounds fuzzy. but wait so you're saying like this idea of using atomic clocks to measure dark matter and would only work for a certain theoretical meaning guessy type of dark matter which we don't know whether it's true or not or exists or not so this is a huge solar system-wide scheme that

you don't really know if it's going to work you know you were talking about nomenclature and now you're using the words guess and scheme you know really kind of undermine the credibility of science but you know this is good faith stuff. This is like, hey, what if dark matter is this other weird particular thing? How could we see that? And yet it'd be best if we had experiments which could detect any kind of dark matter. But, you know, there might be kinds of dark matter which we could only detect in certain ways or easier to spot in some ways. And so it's good to be creative and think about how we could detect specific kinds of dark matter as well, even though we don't

know what dark matter is and if this theory is at all correct. Well, I'm just trying to understand the scheme. So you're saying there's a theory. theoretical kind of dark matter called fuzzy dark matter. So what is it? So fuzzy dark matter suggests that maybe dark matter isn't very massive. Like some people suggest that dark matter could be like a hundred GEV, like the mass of a W or a Z boson, like a hundred times the mass of a proton, a pretty hefty particle, almost as massive as a Higgs. That's sort of the classic strategy. And there's reasons for that. There's something called the Wimp Miracle. Check on our podcast about that, which argues strongly that dark matter should be around 100 gv based on how much of it

there is in the universe. But people are like, well, maybe that's all wrong and there's an assumption there that's wrong. What if dark matter is super duper light, like a trillionth the mass of an electron? So now there's an enormous number of these dark matter particles, so many more than you could even imagine because you have to somehow make like a big fraction of the mass of the universe out of particles that are a tiny fraction of the mass of the electron, which is already very, very light. Well, first of all, I think this whole podcast is a wimp miracle, Daniel. But I think you're saying like this version of dark matter instead of being maybe marble-sized particles, they're like super tiny BB-sized particles. And somehow that makes it fuzzier?

Yeah, it makes it fuzzier because if they're very, very low mass, then their wavelengths are more spread out. Some of these things could have a wavelength like the size of the galaxy. What do you mean a wavelength? The wavelength of a particle is like the distance on which these quantum interference effects appear. And so you can calculate this quantity. It's called the DeBrogly wavelength. You'll see wave-like effects for a particle when you interact over these kinds of distances, and that's the wavelength of a particle.

Meaning sort of like the size of it kind of, right? Sort of, yeah. When it stops acting like a blob like a particle, and it starts acting more like a wave, things that have wave-like behaviors. Really, it's always acting like a wave. It's just that when you zoom out, you can approximate it as a particle. Because they have low mass. what's the relationship between having low mass and being big, having big wavelengths?

Well, the wavelength depends on your momentum and your mass. So lower mass just means a larger wavelength. Because it's really like a ratio between the momentum and the mass. When things have a lot of kinetic energy relative to their mass, they act more like light, because light is pure kinetic energy. When things have very small amounts of energy relative to their mass, they're stationary, so they act more like bits of sand, like particles. And so it's just sort of a rough way to understand where that's,

transition happens. Okay, so then if dark matter is this kind of fuzzy kind of dark matter, you're saying each particle would be super duper light and it would also have huge variations in their size. That's what you mean by fuzzy? It's like they might be, some of them might be super big and some of it might be super small. Yeah, well, the wavelengths could be very, very large, which means they can interact over long distances. The fascinating thing is that in simulations of this dark matter, it predicts like a mini halo of dark matter in our solar system. Essentially, that this stuff would be clumped up in and near the sun, that most of the dark matter in the solar system might be like clumped up near the sun.

It might be like hiding in the sun. And if it wasn't this kind of fuzzy dark matter, it wouldn't? No, this kind of fuzzy dark matter is the kind we think would clump up like a halo near the sun. And the other kinds wouldn't. Yeah, the other kinds wouldn't necessarily. I mean, I've heard of other theories of dark matter clumping in the sun. There's all sorts of theories. But this particular one tends to make a halo near the sun.

and would affect the operation of quantum clocks. Because of its special fuzziness, it can also slightly interact with electrons through sort of like a back door in quantum mechanics, which would change the way a quantum clock operates. It's like it changes the electron's mass and how it responds to photons because of oscillations in this fuzzy dark matter field.

And so effectively it changes the frequency of these clocks. And so you can detect, in principle, whether you're near a dense blob of this ultra-light dark matter, matter by looking at a quantum clock and counting its ticks very carefully. And this would be a bigger effect than the effect we talked about earlier, the gravitational curvature. But I thought that dark matter couldn't interact with regular matter. It could only do it through gravity.

Yeah, it could only do it through gravity in general. But this one takes the back door through the Higgs field. It interacts with the Higgs field and it changes how the Higgs field works. And so near the presence of this ultralight dark matter, electrons effectively have a different mass. But I guess if that was true, wouldn't we see it affect regular matter on a larger scale? You would see it happen, but it's a subtle effect, and so you need to be near a dense clump of it. So the idea is take something that's very, very sensitive to the electron mass, like a quantum clock,

and try to put it near a dense clump of this special ultra-light dark matter, maybe near the sun. So that's the idea, is like launch a bunch of quantum clocks, have them orbit near the sun, and look for deviations in their timekeeping, and see if that's evidence for. or ultra-light dark matter interfering with the masses of the electrons in these quantum clocks. Meaning that you would maybe throw a bunch at the sun, have them kind of form a halvering around the sun to see if time changes there. Sort of like a giant tiara. Like a giant tiara, a quantum cosmic tiara.

All right, but I guess which one would you be proving? Would you be proving that dark matter is fuzzy, or would you be proving that it's there? Or are they both related? They're both related, though, you know, if we saw this thing, there would instantly be like 50 other theories to explain it as well. It probably wouldn't be a unique prediction of this kind of dark matter. Theories are very, very clever people and they'll always come up with another way to explain the data that we were seeing. But it's cool because it's a prediction that this theory makes and we go out and we see it.

That's really fascinating. And then we can think about ways to distinguish all the different ideas that might also explain this kind of observation. It would just be cool to see something different. Currently, all of our dark matter experiments basically seen Nothing. It would be cool to have a signal somewhere. So you're thinking, hey, let's put a bunch of microwaves in space and see if it sticks. Exactly.

Let's see if one burrito is a little bit colder than another. All right. Well, an interesting idea for how we could maybe possibly crack sort of a theoretical version of one of the biggest mysteries in the universe. That's right. Physicists are being very creative in trying to come up with new theories of dark matter and new ways to discover them, including using super-duper sensitive quantum clocks distributed through the solar system, which also would just be fun to do. You just want to parade, Daniel.

I just want a tiara. Is that too much to ask? How about we just buy you a tiara? Is it made of dark matter? Are you using your Bitcoin? It can be bought in any way that you want. But if it saves tax dollars, billions of dollars, you know, it'd be a pretty good investment. Yeah, there we go.

That was my scheme the whole time. Yeah, to get us to buy you a tiara. Without actually having to run in a beauty contest. I'm busted. Well, you are the most beautiful podcaster with a show called Daniel Jorge, Explained the Universe. So whose name is Daniel. I'll take very highly qualified compliments.

Thank you. It's a very specific tiara based on a very theoretical model of the universe. Fuzzy compliments from Jorge. 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. Ah, come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.

Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity, with Intel core ultra-processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance. It keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Lenovo, Lenovo.

Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkP X-1 carbon powered by Intel Core Alter processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush,

parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

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

find out how it ends by listening to the okay storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast. Here's a clip from an upcoming

conversation about how to be a better you. When you think about emotion regulation, You're not going to choose an adaptive strategy, which is more effortful to use, unless you think there's a good outcome. Avoidance is easier. Ignoring is easier. Denials easier. Complex problem solving takes effort. Listen to the psychology podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.