Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Frequently Asked Listener Questions About the Universe!

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Daniel and Jorge's new book "Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe" is out today! Order your copy at universefaq.com Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's right. Like usual, we tackle the deepest, darkest, biggest, craziest questions about this incredible cosmos. If you want to support the podcast, please get the book and get a copy not just for yourself, but, you know, for your nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, parents, dogs, hamsters. And for the aliens. So get your copy of Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. It's available for Pre-Order Now, coming out in November. 2nd, you can find more details at the book's website, universef aq.com. Thanks for your support.

And if you have a hamster that can read, please let us know. We'd love to have them on the podcast. Hey, Daniel, do you ever get questions from listeners that aren't about physics? Oh, yeah, sure. Sometimes I get questions asking for life advice. or books to recommend, that kind of stuff. Really? People ask you for life advice?

An overworked academic? Like, how do I avoid making the same mistakes, I mean? Yeah, exactly. Well, my life advice is actually mostly like my book advice. What do you mean? Well, my life advice and generally read more books. Oh, there you go. That's good advice.

What kinds of books do you usually recommend? Well, it just so happens that there's a great new book coming out today that I highly recommend. Is it about banana recipes? No, I got plenty of those. I mean our book, Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. Oh, right. Yeah, I should get a copy or maybe three for my friends too. And I think it has banana recipes too, right?

That was a frequently asked question. Nobody asks for banana recipes. Well, they should. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I'm the proud co-author of the book Frequently Asked Questions about all the incredible things that we want to understand about the universe. That's right. Daniel and I wrote another book. Follow up to our first book, We Have No Idea. And this one is kind of about you, the listener.

That's right. This one is literally inspired by. listeners, it's about all the big questions that people ask over and over again. It's about those topics that resonate with everybody that everybody wants to know the answer to. Yeah, big questions like, will time ever stop? And why haven't aliens visited us? Yeah, or where is the center of the universe? And can I get Google map to give me directions there? Yeah, we even tackle kind of philosophical questions, right, Daniel? Like, is there an afterlife or is there free will in our brains? Yeah, we talk about those things from a physics point of view, like what do we know about the universe and what can that tell us about these deep questions about life, happiness, and everything. Yeah, and I think

it came out pretty good. I really like this book. I feel like it's fun. It has short chapters. It tackles really interesting kind of existential questions. And I think we do a pretty good job of answering each question, you know, like from a physics perspective and what people know, when people don't know. It certainly was fun to work on and fun to write. And I hope that means that it's fun to read. And some of these topics in here are near and dear to my heart and some of them were a little far afield for me. So I had to go off and do some research, talk to experts, but that was always a lot of fun. There's a lot of Wikipedia reading, I think is what you're saying. But not all, it's not all straight from Wikipedia. We do talk to experts. Like we have a chapter

about meteors coming to Earth and we talked to people at NASA. Like we went to NASA and talked to somebody there. Yeah, we talked to the folks at NASA whose job it is to protect us from huge rocks from space. There are people out there whose job actually is planetary protection officer. And we went and talked to them so you don't have to. Yeah, because I think another big question we usually get is people ask, how can we support the podcast or how can we help you guys? And so this is kind of a pretty good way to do it to get the book and not just maybe get a copy for yourself, but get one for your friends, for your family members. You know, that person you always wanted to convince them to listen to our podcast, but maybe hasn't yet. I think this book is a really

sort of nice introduction to these topics, to the universe, to, you know, asking fun questions and getting fun answers about these great mysteries. Yeah, we hope that it strikes a balance. There are really interesting deep nuggets of physics in there for those heavy-duty nerds that really want to understand the details about something, but also a lot of just general, approachable stuff about the universe that I'm pretty sure everybody wants to know. I mean, I feel tested it on my kids who are definitely not fans of science. Are they heavy-duty or light-duty nerds? Neither. They're like, oh man, dad is talking about science again. My daughter's favorite phrase is, I didn't ask for a physics lecture, okay?

Oh, my goodness. That is some high-level SaaS there. Exactly. That's what's going to make her a TikTok star one day. It sounds like you need to buy her book. Well, my favorite thing is sometimes they ask me questions which come up in the book. And I'm like, oh, you should read my book. I answered that question. And then they're like, read my book. But yeah, if you want to support us, please check out the book and pre-order it now. Daniel, it comes out in November, what? It comes out November 2nd, and you can pre-order it now, which we'd be very grateful for your support. You can find it everywhere. Good books and bad books are sold, and you can also find it online at UniversefaQ.com. Yeah, and if we timed it's right, actually today is the day that it comes out, right?

Today is November 2nd. That's right. We're recording this in September, but we are timing this episode to release on the day of our book launch. So today should be the day that the book is physically existing in store. you can drive to your local bookstore and buy one. Yeah, we promise it has a ton of cartoons. I had to draw hundreds of cartoons for this one, which was a ton of fun,

but also it was a sprint at the end there to finish it. Isn't every project you do is sprint to finish at the end? I like sprint, you know? I feel like that's when you're really living. No, but I got to say the cartoons really add another voice to the book. You know, just like on our podcast, you have like the voice of a scientist and then you have the voice of our cartoonist. In the book, we also try to capture that.

You have the text which tells you about the physics. And then you have the cartoons, which are sort of an interplay and liven it up. And also really help clarify. You know, sometimes you really need a visual. And on the podcast, we can't communicate with you in visual medium, but in the book, we can. And in addition, you also get to see Jorge's great art, which is really lively and clever. Yeah, so the book comes out today. Please check it out.

And to celebrate, we are having a special edition of our podcast today. We are doing kind of a dedicated ode to listener questions. That's right. We love questions from listeners. It inspired our book. It powers the podcast and it inspires me every day because every day that I get emails from listeners asking questions, I'm reminded that everybody out there wants to understand the universe. That it's not just me sitting in my office trying to puzzle away the deep secrets of the universe, but it's something that touches everybody in a really human way, that we have this desire to understand the world and the universe around us. It's an it that will never be scratched, but we have to keep picking at it.

Yeah, and that's why we ask questions. I mean, you do it professionally kind of for a living, Daniel. I guess. You get paid, right? I haven't checked recently. I'm not getting any money, but I hope somebody's paid in me. I think what you're saying is that all humans really ask these questions, right? You know, everyone, you can't help but wonder. It's kind of part of human nature to kind of ask questions and wonder what the answers are.

Absolutely. It is part of human nature. And something I'm curious about is whether it's part of intelligence or whether it's just human. You know, if we meet aliens, I wonder, will they be curious about the universe or will they be bored by that question and focused on something else, which we find totally dull. Interesting. Like, could you be an intelligent being, but not curious? Who knows if science is a human endeavor or not?

Maybe you need to be curious to develop intelligence from an evolutionary perspective. Yeah, it could go hand in hand. So lots of things will learn about the universe and the human perspective on it when we finally do meet those aliens. Or maybe aliens will order our book and then write to us and tell us we got it all wrong. Well, we do have a chapter on why haven't we heard from aliens? So maybe they'll reply.

It'll be like, we just don't like you, maybe. We were waiting for this book to come out. Now it's the right moment. Now that we read it in a book, we'll contact you. So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling. Listener questions, frequently asked questions about the universe release edition. That was a lot of questions in the title of the episode. Well, that's the theme of the whole podcast.

Yeah, so we've got to underscore it with questions. Yeah, and so we're not going to be answering questions from the book because, you know, we don't want to give away any spoilers. But we do have some questions from actual listeners who are pretty good, too. They're pretty interesting. There are questions here about gravity, about the relative velocity of stars, and also about the sound of the universe. That's right. The music of the early universe. Can't wait to talk about that one.

The wailing cry of a newborn baby universe. Who doesn't want to hear that? If the universe screams alone in the forest, does anybody listen? And where is that forest anyway? All right, well, our first question today comes from Lily, and she has a question about what would happen if gravity suddenly took a vacation. Hi, I'm Lily. What would happen if gravity just stopped?

What would happen to the oceans, the trees, the houses, the Earth, the solar system, the universe? And what would happen if gravity never existed? I need to know. Thanks. Lily needs to know. That should have been the title of our podcast. This sounds like a good kid's show, perhaps. Eleanor wonders why. Lily needs to know.

But great question, Lily. Thank you so much for sending this question. It's a great question. Like, what if gravity suddenly, like, turned off or, like, quit? Yeah, do you think this is in the vein of supervillains planning takeover the world kind of questions? You know, like, do you think Lily is building a gravity destroyer and wondering if it's going to have enough impact? Oh, man, you just turned Lily into a supervillain. Boy, I thought she was really sweet.

intelligent and but now you just put a dark spin on it. She's using that sweet intelligence just to fool you, man. I'm sure a lady just needs to know because she's curious, right? I hope. Yes, absolutely. But yeah, I guess, you know, let's not maybe talk about how you would do that. Like, you know, let's avoid that. But I think it's more of a hypothetical question.

What would happen if gravity just stop one day? Yeah, that is a really fascinating question because gravity is so important to shaping the structure of our universe and the very environment that we, we live in. So if it went away, we would definitely notice pretty quickly. Yeah, it's also important because it keeps us grounded, you know? It's important not to keep your head in the clouds. It allows for some pretty massive puns. Yeah, some heavy duty in Earth, though. But yeah, so Daniel, what would happen if there was a switch in front of you that says gravity on off and you flipped it to off? How bad would it be? It would be pretty bad, pretty fast. And the reason,

at least locally like here on Earth, is that the Earth is spinning, which means that you need something to pull you down. You need gravity to keep you on the surface of the earth. Like if you're on a rock and gravity is holding you on the surface, but the rock is not spinning and then gravity turns off, then you don't necessarily go anywhere, right? You can just stay in the same place. You only move if there's a force on you. But if the rock is spinning, if you're on the earth and it's spinning and gravity goes away, well, you were relying on gravity to keep you on the earth as it was spinning. Otherwise, you would fly off pretty quickly. And so without gravity to hold you on the Earth, pretty soon you're going to be floating up into the sky.

You know, I never really thought about it this way, but I guess the Earth is spinning, right? It's spinning in space, but I'm not necessarily spinning in space, right? Like, I'm only spinning in space because I'm stuck to the Earth. That's right. Well, you are a part of the Earth, and so every element of the Earth is spinning in the same way the Earth is. But you're right, the Earth can spin without you. And in order to spin with the Earth, you need gravity or something to pull you down.

Like, for example, if you had a satellite going around the Earth in orbit, right, and then the Earth disappeared, its gravity disappeared, what would happen to the satellite? It wouldn't keep moving in a circle, right? It would just fly off in a straight line in the direction it was going. The only reason the satellite moves around the Earth in a circle is because of the gravity of the Earth. And the same thing applies to you. The only thing that keeps you moving with the surface of the Earth is the gravity that bends your path down. Yeah, because I guess, you know, like you just said, if you turn off gravity, the earth would still keep on spinning.

It has this angular momentum, so we'd just keep on spinning. But the thing is that you would sort of quit the earth, and so you would no longer be sort of attached to it, and so you would fly off. Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, a pitcher does a big wind up, spins his arm around, and then let's go of the ball. And when he lets go with the ball,

it's not moving in a circle like his arm is anymore. It moves in a straight line, right? And so that's sort of like what the earth was doing. The earth is spinning, and it's holding onto you, so you're the ball. And then if gravity turns off, it's no longer holding onto you, boom, you fly out into space at the speed of a fastball.

Whoa, you just threw me a curve ball there. But that's a different episode, I guess. Physics is a bit of a knuckleball to the brain sometimes. It's a hit or miss. So that's kind of what would happen if you turn up gravity. Like everything would just fly off. Everything that wasn't bolted down to the Earth. Do you think the Earth would break apart, though?

Like, would Earth crust also detach from the Earth and fly off into space? Well, that's a great question. You know, the Earth is held together by forces much stronger than gravity, right? you know, like electromagnetic forces and all those bonds that hold matter together. But the earth sort of like the sun, et cetera, is a balance somewhat between pressure and gravity. Like the earth is the size that it is because that's where gravity and the pressure from those bonds balance, right? If gravity was stronger, it would compact the earth even farther. If the material the earth was made of was tougher, it was harder to compress, the earth would be bigger, right?

Gravity wouldn't have been able to squeeze it as far. So if gravity goes away, then the earth will eventually just sort of, like fluff up a little bit like bits of the earth will fall off also because gravity isn't there sort of like compressing it and keeping things down. It would sort of like turn into loose gravel kind of floating in space. Yeah. I guess so because like mountains would just float off into space. Everything that isn't tied down would break off and even things that are tied down now would effectively feel a force throwing them off the earth. You know, there's no actual force there. It's sort of a product of having a rotating frame of motion, but the effect is the same. It's like if you're on a merry-goer

around and somebody spins it, if you're not holding on, then you're going to feel this force trying to throw you off. And so if the earth keeps spinning with no gravity, then it's going to be testing all the bonds between things. And anything that gets a little bit weakened is eventually going to fly off into space. Right. And I'm also thinking, like, isn't the center of the earth sort of liquid, right? It's molten. It's liquid. Wouldn't that also just kind of blob away? Or would like surface tension and liquid tension keep it all held in? Yeah, that's a great question. I think gravity is essentially one of the reasons why the center of the earth is liquid. All that pressure creates all this heat, which keeps it liquid.

And so it would hasten the cooling of the earth also. We once talked about how long it would take the Earth's core to cool under normal conditions. And it was something like 90 billion years. But if gravity is no longer around compressing the Earth, keeping the center hot, then the center will cool much faster. And it's not just the Earth that would sort of cool and unravel. It's also the solar system and the galaxy too, right? like our galaxy would fall apart too.

Yeah, our solar system almost immediately, right? Because the only thing keeping the Earth in orbit around the sun is the gravity. And so the Earth would just become like a fastball shooting out into the galaxy. And the same thing with the sun. The sun is orbiting the center of the galaxy. It's not just like happens to be here in space near other stars. It's moving in a coordinated swirl with a bunch of other stars orbiting this incredible mass at the center of the galaxy. And that's because of gravity.

No other force is capable of doing that. And so if that disappeared, then the sun would just continue moving in the direction. It was moving when Lily turned off the universe's gravity and would just go in that direction wherever it was. But it certainly wouldn't be a curve around the center of the galaxy. It would just fly off, you know, like ping pong balls on a merry-go-round. The other stars in the galaxy would do the same thing, right? Like everything would just fly off into space. Yeah, so these galaxies are almost all spinning.

And so they would all break apart. The stars would spread out into the universe. And even more than that, galaxies feel gravity. on each other. Like we feel the gravity of Andromeda, even though it's millions of light years away, all the galaxies in our local cluster are sort of orbiting each other. They're orbiting the common center of mass. So there's something not just keeping our galaxy together, but keeping our galaxy cluster together.

And that's gravity. So without that, the galaxies themselves, even as they explode and their stars go everywhere, the galaxies themselves would spread out further rather than being clustered together into a cluster. The universe would decluster. But even more interesting, I think, is to think about what would happen to black holes? Like, would they no longer be black holes? Would they no longer be holes if you turned off gravity? Yeah, that's incredible to think about.

We just don't know because we don't know what's inside the black holes. If you take general relativity to be the truth, then there's a singularity in there. But the singularity is overcoming incredible pressure, right? Like matter does not like to be squeezed down to a singularity. It takes incredible gravity to do that. If you then just turn that gravity off, then, you know, the quantum. to mechanical pressure and the electron degeneracy pressure and all that stuff, those things are going to explode rapidly. So every black hole basically turns into a massive bomb, including the huge supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy.

That doesn't sound good. What do you mean? It would explode, like just because it has so much pressure? Yeah, it would explode because like stars, black holes are in an equilibrium between gravity and pressure. And in the case of black holes, what's happened is gravity has won, is overcome all of that pressure. But if you release gravity, you know, it's like you took a bunch of, of springs and you squeeze them down to a tiny, tiny point and you're holding them really, really tight, and then all of a sudden you just let go. Like, what happens? Well, you know, it's like a bunch of snakes jumping out of a can. Like, it's going to be crazy. Oh, no. Snakes on a black hole. That's the next movie for Marvel. Yeah. And, you know, the same thing will happen

to stars, right? Why is the sun not just a huge explosion? Because it has fusion going on at its heart, right? Fusion is what powers nuclear bomb. So why isn't the sun just exploding? It's because of gravity. It's a delicate balance of gravity keeping everything in and fusion pressure keeping it from collapsing further. But you take gravity away and the sun just becomes an enormous hydrogen bomb. Oh my God. Would it even matter what happens here on Earth if we're just going to, the sun's going to explode and we'll be fried in eight minutes? We'll be fried in a little less than eight minutes because the Earth will be free from its orbit. So we'll be flying out into interstellar space with this incredible explosion behind us. It'll be a great scene for the next Jerry Brookhomer movie.

Yeah, we're floating away slow motion with our shirts open and our hair tossing in the wind. And somehow we have to survive that explosion though I don't think our odds are very good. Wow, so basically the whole universe, everything would explode and fall apart is what you're saying at the same time.

Exactly. Bad idea, not recommended. Yeah, but Lily had another part of her questions which was really interesting too is what would happen if gravity never even existed in the first place. And so let's get into that part of her question. But first, let's stick a quick A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it.

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In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, your assail. 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 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 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 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

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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 Podcast, or wherever you go to find your podcast. All right, we're celebrating questions from listeners. and like the kinds of questions that inspired our new book.

Freakingly asked questions about the universe, which is out now, today even. So please go check out the website, universefaq.com, and maybe get a copy. Or 10 copies. Or 10. Well, geez, boy. I feel like that's a little greedy, Daniel.

I was going to say like two or three. All right, five copies. That's my final offer. I guess if you had 10 nieces and nephews and cousins and uncles, that could add up to 10. No, if you're curious about this kind of stuff and you would enjoy a bunch of jokes and a bunch of physics, please check out the book.

So today we're answering questions from listeners to celebrate, and we have this great question from Lily who asked, what would happen if gravity stopped? And she also asked, what would happen if gravity never existed? Like if we had a universe from the beginning with the gravity setting set to off. What a crazy question, not something I've ever thought about. And all the weird hypotheticals I've considered,

and all the questions people have asked, nobody's ever asked the question, what would happen if we never had gravity in our universe? Awesome question, Lily. Yeah, kudos, Lily. I'm guessing also the answer is not good. It depends on the kind of universe you like, but it would definitely be very, very different from our universe

because gravity played a really, really critical role in shaping the universe that we see today. You know, after the Big Bang and everything happened, which we, of course, don't understand. And we don't even know if gravity was essential for all that to happen. But assume that the Big Bang and the inflation and the beginning of the universe happened the same way because that wasn't really dominated by,

gravity as we understand it. Then, you know, what happened was that we have a bunch of hydrogen gas. You know, the universe creates particles and those particles cool and then eventually you get hydrogen to form. And then the universe is basically this huge floating cloud of gas. And it's very dark then because hydrogen, when it's just like hanging out and cold, doesn't glow very much. So we call this the universe dark ages when there was basically just a big blob of gas. And the next thing that happened was that stars were formed. As stars were only formed, though, because of gravity, like it's gravity that pulled over dense clumps of hydrogen together to get enough together to spark fusion and to create light. So without gravity, the universe would still be

in those dark ages. Oh, wow. I guess nothing would have ever come together, kind of. Yeah, exactly. Things would just sort of like be happy to hang out in a big cloud. And, you know, it would be like overwhelmingly all hydrogen. There was like a tiny bit of helium and the tiniest bits of heavier stuff created in the Big Bang, but almost all hydrogen. Everything else that you and I are of, you know, the heavier metals, those were all born in stars, but stars don't form without gravity. And so the universe is just a big, boring cloud without gravity. Wow. So things would be gassy without gravity there from the beginning. Gassy and not in an exciting way. I guess maybe one question is, what would happen to the Big Bang? Like, would the Big Bang happen the same

way? Would you still had had a Big Bang without gravity? Is it just that the outcome would be different? We really just don't know the answer to that question because we don't understand the mechanism of inflation or the big bang. We don't know what caused it and what made it happen in a certain way. It might be that the reason inflation happened a certain way is a necessary product of the structure of space and time. Like, you know, it's negative pressure from quantum zero point energy or the cosmological constant as we've talked about. And that that has to happen and it just comes from the structure of space and time. You know, gravity is the same way. Gravity comes from the structure of space and time, how it bends around mass and energy.

So it might be that if you don't have gravity, it means that you can't, like, bend space and time. And it might also mean that you couldn't have inflation, that you couldn't have the Big Bang, that the universe might have never gotten started. But we just don't really know because we don't understand how inflation and gravity work together or if they're really two sides of the same coin. Interesting. Yeah, I guess it depends on whether you can have bending of space without gravity or whether gravity is the bending of space. Yeah, in some sense, inflation is just like an expansion of space. which is very similar to gravity. It's sort of like repulsive gravity. Of a new theory, Daniel,

maybe this universe was born because the previous universe is lily to turn off, flip the switch on gravity and blew everything up. Lily Prime. The first lily. All right, well, it sounds like gravity is kind of important. If you turn it off now,

everything would blow up and fall apart. And if we never had it, then nothing would have ever happened in the universe. Yeah, although, you know, maybe after trillions of years some other weird phenomena would emerge, everything that happens in our universe is a strange emergent phenomena from all the crazy balance of all the forces and the objects in it. If you have a different mix of stuff, you might end up with a different

weird complex universe. It might have just taken trillions of years or quadrillions of years. Who knows? Oh, I see. You're saying like maybe Gravity's evil twin would have come up. Gravity. But thank you, Lily. That's such a great question. Thanks for sending your question. And thanks for asking questions in general. It's great to see you and other people out there being curious. Yeah, Lily had to know, and I hope now she knows. And I hope she needs to know more in the future. All right, well, let's get to our next question. This one is from Peter, and he has a question about visiting other stars.

Hello, Daniel and Jorge. This is Peter from Colorado Springs, Colorado. My question is that we always say that to travel to a distant star efficiently, we need to accelerate to a high fraction of the speed of light. Why do we assume that we're starting from a velocity of zero? Aren't we moving relative to the distant stars already based on the speed of our solar system as it circles around the galaxy or based on the speed of our galaxy as it moves around the universe, couldn't we just pick a star that we're already aimed

towards at a high relative velocity and let our existing momentum do most of the work? Anyway, thank you. Love the show. Listen to it every day when it comes out. Awesome. Great question. Thank you, Peter. I think Daniel, Peter, is asking, why do we have to go to other stars?

Why can other stars come to us? Why are we doing all the work, right? How come somebody else never drives? If Muhammad can't go to the stars, maybe the stars can come to Muhammad. I wonder if Peter is always doing the driving when he visits his friends or if he's like, why don't you ever come to my house? He's like, why do I have to take my kids to school every morning? Why can't the school come to my house? And then the pandemic happens and everyone regrets that question.

Nobody is a great question. And he's tackling a really important topic, right? Which is how do we efficiently get to visit other solar systems? Because that's what we want to do. We want to see other planets. We want to see if there are aliens there. We want to learn if other solar systems are really different from ours. We would learn so much about the universe if we could just visit other solar systems.

But they are frustratingly hard to get to. Yeah, they're super duper far away. Like how close is the near star? I think it's like four light years away, right? Yeah, Proxima Centauri is almost four light years away. Four sounds like a small number, but that's just because the unit of light year is just like ridiculously long. So four light years would take a long time to visit. It's like millions and millions of miles.

It's a lot of zeros if you do it in terms of miles, even if you do it in terms of kilometers. Or centimeters. But I think Peter's question is like, you know, we're used to thinking of this problem as like we're here and that the other star is there. But actually, everything is kind of moving around in the universe. You know, why can we pick a star that's maybe moving towards us really fast or at least, you know, is going to be flying by really fast at some point in the future and aim for that star because it's sort of coming our way anyways. Yeah, that's what he's asking. and it's a great idea. And if there was a star headed our way,

it would be cool to check it out before it totally disrupts our solar system and throws the earth into interstellar space. I see. Let's hope there's no star coming our ways, what you're saying. Yeah, it's a great idea, but it would be quite dangerous

because another star would totally gravitationally perturb our solar system and make a big miss. Really? I guess. Like, even if it goes, like, if it passes, you know, not through our solar system, but, you know, like adjacent to our solar system, it would still disrupt us. It would still disrupt us, yeah.

We might lose things in the outer part of the solar system. It's a balance. The closer it gets, the easier it would be to visit, but also the more dangerous it would be for our solar system. Interesting. But you know, we would only lose, like, you know, Pluto and Neptune. Like, wouldn't that be worth it to visit another star? Not just that.

You know, we have the Ord Cloud, which is like a huge group of potential comets. And if another star comes too close, it can perturb those things. And then they can all fall towards the inner solar system. We could have, like, you know, a rain of comets on the inner solar system, which would be bad. That doesn't sound good. It does not sound good. Let's not hope for a star to come near us,

but I think let's maybe think about the less dangerous case that he might be asking about, which is like whether there's a star, you know, not coming near us, but, you know, at least sort of towards us a little bit or, you know, in our neighborhood, can we aim for that star? Yeah, it's a good idea. The issue is that most of the stars are sort of moving together. Like we were just talking about the galaxy is a big swirl of stars,

but they are rotating around the same. center of the galaxy and mostly together. You know, it's like a huge crowd all running in the same direction. So their velocity relative to the center of the galaxy is really high, like the sun is moving really fast relative to the center of the galaxy. But it's sort of moving together with all the other stars, not in parallel because it's moving in a circle, but you know there's all sort of moving with very small velocity relative to each other.

I see. It's like we're all in a lazy river. So we're all kind of in the same flow of stars. We're all in the same flow, exactly. And astronomers talk about this. They measure like the local standard of rest where they take all the stars nearby and they take their average velocity. And they say, all right, let's define that to be like the rest frame of the neighborhood. And then they measure the velocity of stars relative to that.

So you know, you can ask the question like, you know, not relative to the center of the galaxy, but relative to the other stars in the lazy river near me, how fast am I going? And so they actually do that and they measure the relative velocity of all the stars nearby. but it's pretty small. Like, stars are mostly in a stable configuration. Isn't that weird? Like, you were saying there's no cross-traffic of stars, kind of. Like, why aren't stars kind of flying all over the place? Well, they're moving in the same direction for the same reason, right?

They're all rotating around the center of the galaxy because of its gravity. And the galaxy formed because you have this big blob of stuff, which compactified to form stars, but originally it was sort of spinning. And so that spinning motion is still there. So it's sort of angular momentum that started. things spinning and is keeping things spinning. And so, you know, if you think about the lazy river analogy, it's like, why do

a bunch of intertubes in a lazy river mostly go at the same speed? Because they're in the same river, right? Interesting. But I guess maybe a question is sort of like in our solar system, you know, we're all in the same mini lazy river around the sun. But there are planets to sort of spin around the sun faster than others and, you know,

you can play all these games like, you know, to get to Mars, if you time the orbit right, it's a shorter or longer trip. You know, why aren't the stars moving at different speeds. Yeah, you're right that the planets are moving at different speeds, but that's because they are at very different distances from the sun. The closer planets move faster and the further ones move more slowly. The same thing is true for stars in the galaxy. Stars much closer into the center are moving faster, but they are very, very far away from us.

Stars much farther out from the center are moving more slowly, but they're also much further away than we are. All the stars in our neighborhood are basically the same distance from the center, and so they are moving at roughly the same speed. You notice the speed difference is more in the solar system because things here are closer together. So the Milky Way is sort of like a lazy river. I mean, it's not a rapids thrill, right? It's a, you know, it's a chill galaxy.

Well, we're actually all moving pretty fast relative to the center of the galaxy, but relative to each other, we're not moving that fast. Like our sun is only moving at like 20 kilometers per second through the local standard rest. So our sun is actually a bit zippier than the other stars in our lazy river, but not by that much. You know, 20 kilometers per second is nothing on the scale of the galaxy. Right. It's super fast, 20 kilometers in one second, but in the scale of a giant sun, it's like, it's just crawling along.

And if you look at all the stars in our neighborhood, most of them have like a relative velocity to the sun of less than 30 kilometers per second, which is really pretty small and not really enough to use Peter's idea. and none of them are really going fast enough to make it easier to get to them. So it is sort of like that, you know, kindergarten group of kids that everyone's staying together. Yeah, there is one star, Bernard's star, which is six light years away. This is the one that has the highest velocity relative to the sun that coming closer to us. It's moving at us at about 110 kilometers per second. That's the fastest one. Right, but it's like millions of kilometers away.

So it's not coming near us anytime soon. Even if it was going 1,000 kilometers per second, that's still one 300, of the speed of light. So, you know, I think Peter was hoping that some stars are approaching us at like half the speed of light so that it wouldn't take that long to get there. So even if you pick a star moving towards us at a thousand kilometers per second and there aren't any nearby, you wouldn't automatically have a fast speed relative to the star. It's still a tiny fraction of the speed of light.

So things are sort of moving relative to each other, but not in any, you know, way that it can help us really because the distances are so big. But there are some crazy stars in the Milky Way. There are these stars called hypervelocity stars that are moving really, really fast, more than a thousand kilometers per second relative to their neighborhood. So there are some sort of like out of control stars, but not very many. There's like a thousand of them spread out through the whole Milky Way of its hundreds of billions of stars. Wow, only a thousand. Interesting.

Astronomers think that they probably had like a close encounter with a black hole at the center of the Milky Way and then just got like thrown out from the craziness of the action there and are now like on their way to escape the galaxy. Or I think they've measured the contents of the star and there's just a lot of sugar in it. That's a myth, man. It's a myth. So maybe they got close to the center and then got spewed out or something. Yeah, but for the most part,

the galaxy is a pretty calm place and we're not moving very fast relative to any of our nearby stars. And so unfortunately, while that's a great idea, Peter, it doesn't actually work in our case. Sorry, Peter. But it is, I guess, a good thing

that the universe is kind of a chill place. Otherwise, who knows, we could have stars kind of zipping by and killing our orbits or causing comet storms. So it's kind of a good thing, right? That things are chill. Absolutely. It's a good thing. It's necessary for life to form and for civilizations to prosper.

But great question. Thank you, Peter, for writing in. And so let's get to our last question of today. And that has to do with the sound of the universe. But first, let's take another quick break. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones. in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good

from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small

lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally

solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden-Brandford. And in session 421, of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Athea 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. We talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying,

don't miss Session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon,

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

And the locker room. I really, really, like, you just. 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 AZ 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 tribes. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happen. And then everybody else want to get pissed. stuff 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 Podcasts network the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you go to find your podcast all right we are celebrating the release of our new book frequently asked questions about the universe which is out now you can get it at universe a q.com it's a pretty good book right daniel i think it's more than just pretty good i think it's hilarious it's insightful it's clever It's a really fun tour of all the big questions about the universe

answered in a way that makes sense to you. Yeah, we got some good reviews and publishers weekly and Kirkus. People seem to like this book. Even my kids enjoyed reading it. Oh, my goodness. That is the ultimate compliment. My kids don't even know what I do, to be honest. I wonder what your kids would say if I ask them.

He wears pajamas for a living. He takes nabs in the couch. They pay him for that, right? I think they've lost track of all the things that I did my hands in. But we are celebrating today, and we're celebrating by answering listener questions. And so we've answered questions about gravity and about visiting other stars. And now we have a great question from Addison about whether the universe has a sound. Hey, Daniel and Jorge.

I've got a question for you about the early universe and sound. It sounds like the early universe was dense enough. It had enough stuff close enough together to have sound, to have sound waves propagate through it. Is there a reason why we don't see the rippling effects of sound waves from the early universe when we look at it today? Did some sort of force erase that signature or were acoustic waves just not as impactful or powerful as you would think? Thank you. All right. Sounds like a great question.

Sounds like it's time to talk about it. I like the sound of that. Thank you, Addison. It's an interesting question. I think he's asking whether in the early universe, when it was really compact, whether things were so dense that you could have, sound waves traveling through that dense, you know, primordial stuff. And he's asking if we can see those ripples or why can't we see those ripples today? I guess maybe, you know, when most people think of sound, they think of sound through air,

which is what we use to talk to each other and listen to music. But sound can travel through anything, right? Water, even solid materials can have sound waves traveling through them. Yeah, it can travel through almost anything. It's any material that has pressure. Any material with like the particles bump into each other and push against, each other. For example, we don't think that dark matter can feel sound because dark matter if it's made of particles, we don't think they feel each other. They pass right through each other.

So you can't have sound waves in dark matter. But in any other kind of matter, yeah, you can have sound waves. They're just like these compression waves. You push on a surface, for example, and it pushes on the next one. It pushes on the next one. It pushes on the next one. And that's the sound wave just traveling through. But the way it gets from one layer to the next is having some interaction between the particles. It's kind of like a crowded room. If people are crowded together, then you can have, you know, kind of ways where people push each other. But if it's a bad party and everyone's really far away from each other, you can't really kind of have that, right?

Or you can see this in traffic also. Like when somebody slams on the brakes, then the car behind them slams on the brakes. And then the sort of brake slamming passes down the road all the way down. Right. You can see it in like the brake lights. Yeah. So that's the same sort of deal because a person is reacting to the car in front of them. And so that's the sort of the interaction.

And so the universe right now is pretty empty and things are fairly far apart. So you just don't see these kinds of sound waves going through the universe. But I think Edison is saying maybe in the early universe, when things really crunched together, you could have sound waves. And maybe you could still see them today or the effects of them. Yeah, you actually can still see them today. Like there are sound waves in the universe right now, like big clouds of gas running to each other and you can see shock waves.

And so that's really equivalent to sound waves. You know, we have pressure waves in these mammoth clouds of gas. Some of them probably are the reasons why star. form, you know, a cloud of gas and what triggers the collapse into a star, it might be a shock wave from a nearby supernova. So that's also a sound wave. But yeah, the sound waves were definitely stronger in the early universe. You're right, because the universe was much denser. We think in the very beginning, everything was sort of like it is today in the center of the sun. You know, it's hot, it's dense, it's crazy. And so there definitely were sound waves back then. Yeah. So I guess in the

early universe before or during the Big Bang? Things were compact enough for there to be sound. But how does that even work? Like things, it's like sounds through ions, through quarks. What does that mean? Yeah. So imagine this is after the Big Bang now. And what you have in the universe is a bunch of like protons and electrons and photons and then a bunch of dark matter. So you have this big soup and it's very, very dense. Right. And so sometimes you'll get like a bunch of dark matter clumped together, an over density, and its incredible gravity will pull things together, you know, like pull everything together. But then those molecules will resist. Like the protons don't like to be squeezed together and all the photons bouncing around have a lot of energy.

And so it's sort of like bounce back and it'll make these waves. And so because dark matter creates something of higher pressure, that higher pressure then propagates out. So you get this like sound wave, this like ringing through the plasma of the early universe in response to these momentary over densities. Wait, what? You were saying that in the early universe, it was dark matter that was making sounds. Absolutely.

Dark matter triggers it, right? You know, imagine you have this big plasma and it's just sort of like hanging out and it's quiet. Well, how do you make like a ripple in it? You know, you need to like flick it. Just like if you have a surface of water, how do you make waves through it? You know, you tap the surface.

And so dark matter is still the overwhelming source of gravity in the universe even back then. If you have a clump of overdense dark matter, it like pulls together. gather the other stuff nearby effectively like tapping on the surface of the plasma and it creates this pressure wave in response that rings out from those dark matter centers but what clumped dark matter in the first place well that's just random fluctuations like we think that the early universe was not totally smooth you think that there were just like a random quantum fluctuations from

the very very beginning of the universe that got blown up by inflation to be macroscopic so you have this dark matter that's like a little bit clumpy in some places due to quantum fluctuations, then those seeded these pressure centers, which led to sound wave propagating through this early universe plasma. Interesting. So like a little bit of dark matter clumped here, that brought in a little bit of the plasma, and then that pulled some of the plasma around it, and that creates kind of a wave. And then this wave travels out through the early universe and travels really, really fast because the universe was very, very dense. And dense materials have a very high speed of sound, right? You know that sound travels faster through water or through

steel than it does through air because you have like more tightly packed particles, they transmit the information faster from one to the other. And so the speed of sound back then was like half of the speed of light. What? Like sound and light were almost, you know, the same magnitude of speed? Yeah, exactly. Light traveled faster. Obviously, nothing can travel faster than light. But these sound waves were so fast because the early universe was so dense. But then what happens to these waves? Do they just keep propagating forever or did the universe when it finished expanding kind of killed these waves? Yeah, that's exactly

what happened. The universe kept expanding and then it cooled down, right? And then these protons and these electrons weren't flying free anymore. They lost some energy. They were cooler, so they fell into atoms and the universe neutralized and it became these dark ages like we talked about. And so they're

no longer like a lot of photons interacting with stuff and things got a lot less dense. And so the speed of sound dropped a whole lot, right? All of a the speed of sound went from like half the speed of light to much, much, much, much smaller. And it's sort of like froze these ripples, these ripples, which were moving really, really fast, screaming out from these dark matter centers. All of a sudden, they couldn't move very fast anymore.

So they got kind of frozen there. Because I guess they didn't have anything to push against, right? Yeah, exactly. There's no more pressure coming out because these photons are no longer coupled to the matter, and the photons were something that was really driving this. And then you have all these neutral atoms, which aren't interacting as much as protons and electrons do. And so the speed of sound is much, much lower. And so all of a sudden that sound wave just sort of like, boom, it hits the brakes and it's sort of stuck there. And the really

cool thing is that we can still see those in the universe today. What? The frozen sounds from the big bang caused by dark matter? You can see that? Absolutely. Because what you see out there in the universe are patterns in where galaxies are. See, at the very center of these pressure centers, there was a lot of dark matter. And so you expect a lot of matter to fall in. in and form galaxies. And then also sort of on the edge of this frozen bubble where this wave was when it got frozen, you expect that to be denser than everything else. And so if you just look around the universe and you calculate like the average distance

between galaxies, you find a lot of clumps. And then you also find these big bubbles of galaxies around the clumps in exactly the place you'd expect to see from these frozen sound waves. Wow. So are you saying that the structure of the universe? because I know we're like organized in clusters of galaxies, super clusters, and then sheets and bubbles,

those bowls are because of the initial shockwave of the universe? Absolutely. It's called Berion Acoustic Oscillation. And so you can see these bubbles in the universe today like galaxies are organized more likely on the surface or on the centers of these bubbles than sort of in the middle of the bubbles. And there's all these overlapping bubbles.

You get places where like the sheets cross each other and you get an over-density. It's really pretty incredible. It's also a super cool way to measure the expansion of the universe because we can calculate how big those bubbles should have been when they were formed because it's just like calculations about plasma and we know how to do those calculations.

And then we can measure how big they are today and that gives us a completely independent measurement of how much the universe has expanded. It's like a standard ruler. Oh, interesting. You can see like how big the bubbles are and that tells you how much the universe grew. Yeah.

And so we have all these pieces. of evidence that the universe expanded. This is a completely separate one from like looking at the stars and the supernova and all the other ways. And the cool thing is that it tells the same story, right? It tells us the same story about the expansion of the universe that all the other ones do. And I love when that happens when you have completely different methods with totally different ways to make mistakes and they all tell you the same story.

That's when you know you've really solved the detective mystery. You found the murderer. You kind of red-handed. Got the universe with its dark matter hand in the honey jar. Yeah, it's also cool to see these things in real life. You know, we have this picture in our minds of this thing happening in the early universe. And it feels kind of abstract because it's something that happened a long time ago when the rules of the universe seemed really, really different.

But if you look out there in the night sky, they are still there. Those bubbles are there to see. It's really incredible to see it imprinted on the sky itself. Well, you can't need a special telescope, right? You can't see it with the naked eye, but it's there for us to see it somehow. Yeah, that's right. You need telescopes. You need to look at a lot of galaxies and do some calculations, but it's definitely there.

It's pretty cool that, you know, like the universe, you know, kind of rang out or cried as it was born and that got frozen in its structure. Yeah, but we could also make it positive. You could say it's like a singing of the universe, you know. It's a moment of joy at its creation. Because that's how all babies come out. They come out singing such pleasant sounds. Yeah, or you could consider it this screaming, crying of the painful birth of the universe. Either way.

It depends on your personality. That's a personality test for you right there. I guess if you have a certain personality, yeah, you would find music in that. It would ring sweetly in your ears. All right. Well, that was our last question for today. Thank you, Addison. It sounds like the universe did have sound early in the universe, and we can still see it today.

We can still see it today. And the universe continues to make music. It's very dilute and it's very thin. And the speed of sound is now very, very slow. But things still do bump into each other and still do make noise. What do you think is the genre of the music of the universe? Cosmic, chill. Scream rock, I think.

Dark matters. Dark rock. There are a lot of rocks. There are a lot of rocks, yeah. All right. Well, thanks for joining us in this podcast celebration of the release of our new book. If you're not tired of us plugging it, please check it out. It's the universe FAQ.com.

It has how many questions that we answer in the book, Daniel? I don't know. That's a great question. I think it's something like 16, 16, 17 questions. And we try to make them as good questions. questions is possible. Yeah. So thank you everybody for your support for this project and for all of our projects. And

we'd love if you checked out this book. And if it strikes your fancy, buy a copy. Thanks for supporting us. And because we do all this for you, for our listeners, for our readers. This is all about connecting with you and having our sound sort of ripple out into the universe. Creating, hopefully, pressure

ways of knowledge and understanding. Do you think when our collaboration was born that started with the scream? If we didn't scream then, it's screaming now. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks again for your support. See you next time. 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. 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, whee! People write 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. I'm Simone Boyce, host of the Brightside podcast, and on this week's episode, I'm talking to Olympian, World Cup champion, and podcast host, Ashlyn Harris. My worth is not wrapped up in how many things I've won because what I came to realize is I valued winning so much that once it was over, I got the blues and I was like, this is it. For me, it's the pursuit of greatness.

It's the journey. It's the people. It's the failures. It's the heartache. Listen to The Bright Side on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.