Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - How did exotic particles change the Universe?

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

Daniel and Jorge talk about why all those weird heavy particles might actually be critical to the Universe Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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One Tribe's mission. One Tribe, save my life twice. Welcome to season two of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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 his 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. Hey, it's Horhe and Daniel here, and we want to tell you about our new book. It's called Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. Because you have questions about the universe, and so we decided to write a book all about them. We talk about your questions, we give some answers, we make a bunch of silly jokes. As usual. And we, We tackle all kinds of questions, including what happens if I fall into a black hole, or is there another version of you out there?

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 November 6th. Second, you can find more details at the book's website, universefaq.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 wish the universe was a bit simpler? You mean like easier to understand? Yeah, you know, it seems so complex, filled with crazy. particles and weird phenomena that's hard to understand. I don't know.

I guess I'm glad that the universe is weird and mysterious. Well, I see. Because then otherwise, you'd be out of a job. Yeah, and we'd be out of a podcast. But also, because a universe without mystery, I don't know, it sounds boring. You make it sound like understanding the universe would be boring. Yeah, you know, sort of like you're watching a horror movie and it shows you the monster a little too early.

Yeah, and you're like, hey, physicist, watch out. The truth is right behind you. Physicists don't want to jump scare. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine and I'm not scared by anything the universe might offer us. Really? Not even, I don't know, anything your kids might say to you one day. I'm definitely terrified of whether this world will be livable for my kids.

But when we do uncover secrets of the universe, I feel like I'm prepared for the craziest most bonkersest ideas out there. Whatever it tells you that the universe is a horror movie in some sort of alien simulation or alien Netflix. Wow, if my life is scaring people. I don't know what to say to that. It's pretty terrifying. Oh, I see. It's more of a tragedy than a horror movie. It's a disaster movie. Are you saying your universe is a disaster movie? Well, if it's an American version, it's going to have a happy ending.

So let's hope for that. We're like the shark nato of the alien Netflix, maybe. Let's just hope they got enough budget to make realistic special effects. And welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeard Radio. In which we talk about everything that is special and everything that is mundane and everything that is boring and amazing about the universe. We take it all in stride. We want to understand all of it. We think the deepest thoughts about the universe and we ask why, is it this way?

Why is it not some other way? Why doesn't it make sense to us? We try to digest all of the deepest questions of the universe from black holes to tiny particles to everything in between and explain all of it to you. Because it is a pretty exciting universe out there full of interesting plots and conflict and drama and sometimes a surprise twist ending. That's right. in this journey to uncover the nature of the universe, we have had lots of surprising moments where we found things we didn't think we needed or things we certainly didn't expect and later wondered like, hmm, do we really need those bits? Were you scared? That startled physicists? There are

lots of moments like that, but you know, but they say like a particle discovered in Act 1 has to kill somebody in Act 3. With the wrench in the hall in the particle physics lab. Yeah, and it makes you ask a deeper question like, is there a reason for everything? If you discover something about the universe doesn't mean it had to be that way or could it had just been accidental. Are you uncovering some grand plan or just some like random collection of numbers that quantum mechanically fell into place? Yeah, like is there a sort of a structure or sort of some sort of a goal to the universe or is it all just kind of random, right? Because that's one theory of the origin of the universe is that we're just kind of like a random occurrence or a random fluctuation in existence. Yeah, a lot of people

ask why questions about physics, right? Physics is mostly focused on how. How does this work? How does this fit together? How does this talk to the other thing? But in the end, the reason we're interested in these questions is because of the why questions. Why is it this way and not some other way? And I hope that when we do have the full picture of how everything works, we can look at it and see and say, hmm, well, it couldn't be any other way, so it had to be this way. But you're right, it might just be that there are lots of universes and they're all just different and there's no rhyme or reason why anyone is any certain way.

It's randomly generated by the Netflix algorithm. Is that random? I thought it was supposed to be intelligent. Seems kind of random sometimes. There are a lot of random shows in Netflix. Sometimes it seems random at least. But physicists are asking pretty interesting questions out there about the universe, the cosmos, what's out there, what's at the edge of the universe?

But one of the more interesting questions that physicists ask is kind of about us. Like, what are we made out of? That's right, because we want to bring this question home. In the end, this question is about our lives and our experiences. and understanding our world. And that, of course, includes us and the things we eat and the things around us. And when you look around yourself in the universe, you wonder, like, what is the pattern here? Am I similar to that rock?

Do I have something in common with that squirrel or that bit of lava or that piece of ice cream over there? And we all made out of the same bits. And we've made a lot of progress in that direction. Yeah, me and the rock have a lot in common. You both eat a lot of ice cream, right? Yeah, we both eat a lot. And also, I think we're made out of the same things, carbon and nitrogen, I think. That's right.

And pure determination. That's right. And awesomeness, of course. I hear he gets up at 5 a.m. and has a workout. Is that also your schedule? I go to sleep at 5 a.m. after I work out my brain cells. Yeah, it's a big question. Why are we made of?

And as scientists, physicists have made a lot of progress answering that question. Like we sort of have it down up to a pretty good level of, you know, kind of the fundamental elements of the universe. We know that most of the things around us are made of a few basic building blocks that you're familiar with, you know, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, all that kind of stuff, the elements of the periodic table. And it's sort of incredible, right, that you can describe so many different complicated things in terms of a few basic building blocks. It's like we talk about sometimes, it's like the Lego principle of the universe that with a small number of things arranged. in complex ways, you can make incredible complexity. But of course, we've dug even deeper than that, right? Inside the

atom we know there is the nucleus, which has protons and neutrons inside of it, which are made out of quarks. And those corks are just two particular flavors. There's the upcork and the down quark. Combine them in one way you get protons, combine them another way you get neutrons, sprinkle

in some electrons, and you get everything any human has ever eaten or slept on or thrown at their little sister. Yeah, it's sort of like finding out that Legos are actually made out of Lincoln logs. Super tiny little Lincoln logs. Super tiny Lincoln logs. But yeah, it seems like everything, not just us and this planet, but like everything you

kind of see out there in the universe of stars, the asteroids, all those billions and trillions of planets out there, they're all made out of just three particles, the up and down quarks and the electron. That's right. And not just only those three particles, but those three particles in basically the same ratios, right? Like the number of electrons and up corks and down corks that are in ice cream are the same as the number that are in lava. So like a kilogram of ice cream and a kilogram of lava have basically the same number of each kind of particles. It's just how you put them together that makes one

different from the other. Yeah, we're all pretty hot. Yeah. Have you ever had lava flavored ice cream, by the way? I have loved ice cream. I have lava ice cream, but I have not had lava ice cream. All right. We are breaking your ground here today. And it's sort of amazing. right, that you can get so much complexity out of just these three particles. It blows my mind every time I think about it. Yeah, it's pretty amazing that we're all just made out of three particles. But the weird thing about the universe is that those are not the only particles in the universe. There are other, there's a whole bunch of other particles out there that can possibly exist.

And also a lot of them are kind of flying around and raining down upon us. Yeah, it's sort of like in the pantry of the universe, there are a bunch of other spices, but your cook only ever uses three of them, right? and only uses those three to cook every single meal. And then you discover, hmm, wow, what about some basil or maybe a little bit of oregano, you know, or some time? There are other things out there in the universe, not just the upcork, the down quark, and the electron. Which spices do you think humans are made out of? Saltiness?

I think a little cayenne pepper in there for sure. Little spice there. So we have not just the upcork and the down cork, but we have four other corks that we have discovered. And the electron has five more partners, other particles we call leptons. So in total, there are 12 of these matter particles out there, only three of which we need to make me and you and kittens and lava and all sorts of crazy things like kitten flavored ice cream. So that's a very big mystery in the universe that physicists are still pondering about.

Like why are those other particles there? Why does the universe need them? And I guess, what would the universe be like if we didn't have them? Yeah, what role do they play? like imagine a universe without them, how would it work? They're really important or they're just sort of extraneous. This is actually a question that came from one of our listeners asking me about it on Twitter. So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question.

What if the exotic particles didn't exist? And thanks a lot to Paolo Avocado for asking us about this on Twitter. It was a really cool question and inspired this episode. So, Daniel, why are they called exotic particles? That sounds like, I don't know, it sounds almost non-PC. Well, I think we call them exotic. I don't know. I call them exotic.

I don't know if that's like the official title. You know, the High Council on Physics Naming hasn't met since you started disparaging us on the podcast. Yeah, we're blackballed now. We'll never get a particle called Daniel and Jorge explained the universe, Eno. That's for sure. We're not top of the list anymore. But we call them exotic because they don't appear in normal everyday matter because you need exotic unusual situations in order to create them and they don't last for very long.

I guess you call them exotic because you like you rarely see them or like they rarely happen. Yeah, both. I mean, they do occur outside of our laboratory, but again, rarely under special circumstances. And so there's sort of like, you know, that strange bird that you don't see very often in the park. You know, it's like compared to pigeons, that really weird strange bird is you might call it exotic if you don't see it very often landing on a tree nearby. So the big question is, what would happen if that exotic bird didn't exist?

Like, would the ecosystem be the same? Would your experience of going to the park be the same? Or would you even notice if they didn't exist? What if they were only pigeons, right? We should ask Rosemary Moscow that question. It's pigeons all the way down. But we were wondering, as usual, how many people out there had thought about this question or thought they had an answer?

So Daniel went out there into the wilds of the internet to ask, what if the exotic particles didn't exist? And I love the symmetry here because this question came. from the internet, and I'm sending it back out into the internet to get people's responses. And so if you'd like to participate in future questions for future episodes, please don't be shy. Write to me to questions at danielanhorpe.com. It's fun. It's easy. You'll be semi-famous. It sounds like that's a typical strategy for physicists, Daniel. Like someone asks you a question, you just ask the question back. Why do you say that's a typical strategy? I don't know. Why do you

think? Anyways, here's what people had to say. So I'm going to say, yes, we would notice if the particle that don't make up normal manner disappeared, like neutrinos and tau. Because we can observe them, albeit not often, so all of a sudden we wouldn't be able to observe them anymore. But I assume there would be some other effects that we hadn't considered, or maybe someone's considered, that would have profound changes to our existence. That is a very good question.

And yes, I think we would notice. I know that these particles don't interact with, us or anything around us. And I know that neutrinos are usually something that come from supernova's or outer space. But I think we would notice because maybe there would be a difference in the supernova's or maybe there is something that these particles interact with that we are yet to discover. I think we would notice, but I don't know how. I think we will notice. I don't know how much it will affect us I don't know how much

but I'm sure we can notice it well I think all matter is supposed to be interconnected and affecting each other so even if we can't see it or sense it

something's got to happen to normal matter if that non-normal matter disappeared I imagine if the moon suddenly disappeared we would certainly notice it not just by what we saw but by the change in the motion of the earth. I don't know enough about neutrinos and tau's

to know if they have mass or anything like that, but they have to have something that we're interacting with that we would no longer be interacting with all of a sudden and that's got to be weird. I think we definitely would notice if particles like neutrinos that don't make up normal matter disappeared all of a sudden because I know there's experiments around the world that detect those particles.

I don't know what the consequences of that happening would be, though. I'm assuming that the particles that don't make up normal matter have an effect on normal matter. I'm not entirely sure what. I know that neutrinas pass straight through stuff without affecting it. So I would hesitate to say that we wouldn't notice it at all. Seems to me like that's unlikely, because there's quite a lot of them. If particles that don't make up normal matter disappeared, we would notice because the energy of the universe would decrease.

All right. People had opinions here. Nobody said, I have no idea. Yeah, exactly. This is their universe we're talking about, man. You know, they're really getting into it. It's important to them. It's almost like they haven't read the book. We have no idea. A guide to the underlying. known universe or our new book frequently asked questions about the universe which is out right now yeah check out your copy at universe f aq.com but no it seems like a lot of people I sort of had opinions about this right some people said we wouldn't notice some people said we wouldn't notice yeah nobody was on the fence and a lot of people felt like you know these do make up an important part of our universe even if you don't necessarily see them or detect them every single day all right well let's dig into

Daniel, what are the exotic particles, like specifically, can you name them? I can name them, though I'm not responsible for having chosen their names, of course. And, you know, the first sort of exotic particle is the neutrino. We talk about the particles that make up matter, and there are two quarks and one lepton. This electron is a particle we call a lepton. But the electron actually has a partner, which is pretty weird and doesn't exist as part of matter. And that's the neutrino. It's this very strange particle.

and it's not strange because it's rare. It's actually very, very common. It's just not part of the atom. The sun makes lots and lots of neutrinos when it produces nuclear fusion and it's like a hundred billion of them raining down on every square centimeter of the earth every second.

So the universe is filled with neutrinos, but they're mostly invisible to us and they don't play a role in the atom. Yeah, I guess it's kind of weird to think about that, you know, the sun, like the hydrogen in it and the fuel that's making it burn, is made out of the same things. that we know that you and I are, you know, up and down quarks and electrons, and it's burning.

But in doing so, it creates other particles like the neutrino and then shoots a whole bunch of them out into space. Absolutely. And that's because involved in fusion is the weak force. And the neutrino is a product of the weak force. Like every time you have a W boson created by the weak force, it decays into, for example, an electron and a neutrino. So every time you get like a neutron that decays into a proton.

The way that happens is one cork changes into a. another one by giving off a W, which then turns into an electron and a neutrino. So you go from neutron into proton, electron, and a neutrino. Yeah. It's almost like the universe just kind of makes these particles out of nothingness, right? Like there's some sort of collision or reaction in the center of the sun, and there's like pure energy for a brief second. And then that energy, you know, kind of solidifies or becomes particles that can exist and including stuff like the neutrino. Yeah, you can think of it that way, you know, that we are like converting one kind of matter into another kind of matter. It's not like we're rearranging the pieces inside these

particles to make something else out of the same bits, like a jigsaw puzzle or a chemistry experiment. We really are converting one kind of matter into another. But another way to think about it is in terms of fields. If you like to think about particles as like little energy bubbles inside a field, then you can just think about these fields as like connected to each other. And the energy can slosh from one kind of field, you know, like a field that has a W boson in it, to another kind of field, like one that has neutrinos. And the way the forces work is that they are the things that connect those fields together that allow energy to slosh from one kind of field into another.

Yeah, but the neutrina is not the only exotic particle. There's a whole bunch of other ones. That's right. So we talk about those three particles that make up the atom and then the neutrino. So together we have four particles we've talked about so far. And the amazing thing is that those four particles each have a copy out there. So those four particles, we call them the first generation of particles. They're like the core group of particles.

And then each of them has a copy in the second generation of particles. So, for example, the up quark has a copy, which is called the charm quark. And the down quark has a copy, which is called the strange quark. And the electron is a copy, which is called the muon. And by copy, I mean that there's another particle out there that has almost exactly the same properties, the same electric charges, the same interaction, the same spins, et cetera, except it's different because it has more mass. So it's definitely a different particle.

Right. Like all the ones in the first generation, the up and down quarks, the electron, the neutrino, they're all very different, right? They all have different electrical charges and the material has zero electrical charge. They're like very different in terms of their properties. But there are sort of copies of them that are just heavier. Like that, but heavier. Precisely.

And it's a big mystery. Like why do these particles exist? If you're going to have more particles, why just have like reruns of the particles you already had? Why not have like brand new particles? new weird kinds of particles. But for whatever reason, there's this mirror image. This is like symmetry. This is the kind of thing we see in particle physics all the time. You know, like every particle you know, the electron has lots of different kinds of symmetries. You know, there's also the symmetry that says every particle has an antiparticle. That's like another reflection of this

first generation of particles. We don't think about them usually as like a whole other set of particles. We think about the electron and its antiparticle like grouped together into one idea. And so here we have like a different way to reflect this first generation. We say this first generation has a copy, which we call the second generation. And the incredible thing is that there are two copies actually. So this is the second generation of particles and then another four particles, the top and the bottom and the tau particle, which is a copy of the electron of the muon, and then another neutrino. So in total there are 12 of these particles and eight of them are just copies of the first four. Yeah, that is super weird. And you know that

you call them different particles, not just because they're heavier, but because they sort of act a little bit different as well. I mean, like the fact that they're heavier makes them act different. They certainly do act differently. And because they are heavier and more specifically because there is a lighter version of them, they don't last very long because they can decay. Like the top cork lasts for like 10 to the minus 23 seconds and very quickly decays into a bottom cork and a couple of other things. And then the bottom quark lasts for a very short amount of time before it decays into other things like muons or charm corks or other stuff. And so things don't like to stick around in very massive particles.

They tend to fall down the ladder to the lowest mass particles and those get stuck. Like an upcork and a down cork, they can't decay into anything else because there's nothing below them on the ladder. I guess what I mean is like there's no continuum of mass with particles. You know what I mean? Like there's not like an electron and then a slight and then you can have a slightly heavier electron and a slightly slightly heavier electron all the way up to like, you know, super heavy, there's like discrete kind of slots for the mass of an electron. Regular electron, a little bit heavier electron, and XL electron. That's right. It's not like ordering shoes on Amazon where they have every single size.

You know, there's like the very, very small ones, the heavy ones, and then the super massive ones. And the incredible thing is that there's no like pattern to these masses. It's not like the second generation are all twice as heavy or three times as heavy as the first generation. They all have different ratios to the first generation. And the third generation has even weirder ratio. It's like the top cork is ridiculously heavy. It's like much heavier than everything else put together and then times 50. So we don't understand the pattern of those masses at all.

As you say, it's not regular. It's not like something at every location. It's not something at every like possible mass. And there's nothing to explain why we have some masses and not others. All right. So then we have eight or nine. I guess nine if you count the neutrino exotic particles, which are, you know, rare particles that don't make up,

usual matter. And so the big question is, why do we need them? And what would happen to the universe if we didn't have them? So we'll get to those questions. But first, let's take a quick break. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness, the way it has echoed and reverberated throughout your life, impacting your very legacy. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests

and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost don't. always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I had this overwhelming sensation that I had to call her right then. And I just hit call. I said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation. And I just

want to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling and there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice.

There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. Don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up. up on a React mission, I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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

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And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards,

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months, you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And who needs them? Why do we care, Daniel?

They don't make me up. Like, I'm not made out of any exotic particles. None of the things around me are made out of exotic particles. It seems like they're sort of extraneous, at least to the human experience, but it seems like to most of the experience of the universe, they're a little bit extraneous. So I guess the big question is, do we actually need them? Like, did the universe need to make them or create them or invent them?

Well, I need them. I mean, they're not extraneous to my experience. They're pretty big job of my everyday life. You know, without them, I wouldn't be a particle. is studying them. So, you know, for some tiny sliver of humanity, they are actually a central part of the human existence. You mean an essential part of your job? Like, if they didn't exist, you would just have a different job. Yeah, I guess so I would have a different job. What job Daniel have in that universe, you'd be inventing terrible ice cream flavors in a factory somewhere,

like lava flavor and kitten flavor. Yeah, or Lego flavored. Levered ice cream. And you're right. You know, we don't necessarily see them in our everyday lives, But I think that probably we do need them. I think that these particles are clues. I mean, I think that they exist because there's something deeper going on. You know, I think that they come about because fundamentally they're like a different way to organize little bits that are inside all of these particles. You know, sort of like the way the periodic table has structure, right? It has metal here and this kind of stuff there and various atoms act in certain ways.

And there are patterns there. and those patterns come from the structure of the atom, how many electrons you have in orbitals or whatever. So now we look at this table of the fundamental particles and we see that there are patterns and I'm pretty sure though I have no proof that those patterns come from something smaller that makes up all of these particles,

some way to rearrange littleer bits that give you all of these things. And so in that sense, we do need them because they're like an expression of what's going on underneath. And we certainly need them because they're clues that will help us figure out what's going on underneath. I see. You're saying like maybe the universe doesn't really need them, but they're sort of useful or great for us that they're there because they might help us sort of understand the secrets of how the rest of the universe, like the stuff we are made out of how and why it's built. Yeah. So for example, if quarks and electrons are not like the smallest things, and we're pretty sure they're not, if they're made out of smaller things inside them, tiny or little particles, then I suspect these other things, muons and top corks and bottom. quarks are just natural byproducts of other ways those things can come together.

And so I think that they're vital clues towards pointing us to those secrets. Right. And I vote that we name those smaller particles Lincoln Loggitos or something similar. Ligitos. But I guess maybe, you know, in asking like, why do we need them? Do we know of anything that's made out of these particles? Is there anything out there in a universe that kind of uses these for like building anything or, you know, at least momentarily? in some extreme cases?

So these particles are not stable, so they can't hang out. You can't like take a bunch of top quarks and build it together into some structure that's just made out of top quarks. You can't do the same thing with muons or with tau's. These particles, if they are in the universe, they last very briefly and then they turn into lighter stuff. So you can't like build anything out of them. But that doesn't mean that they don't play a role. Just because you can't stick around for a long time doesn't mean that you can't influence what happens. You know, sort of like a guest.

appearance on a TV show. You don't have to be in all the seasons, but you still like totally steal a scene when you come in and change the way things happen. So you're saying they sort of have a presence about them. Yeah, they certainly do. They have some charisma. And there's actually lots of ways in which these particles really strongly influence not just the structure of the universe and the way it's organized, but our everyday lives. I think we're going to get into that later. But I guess maybe a question I have is about the neutrinos. I mean, the neutrinos are pretty stable. They hang out for a while. It doesn't seem like they're used for anything because they're so neutral. Yeah, that's true. Neutrinos are stable. They can last for a long time. They do actually

slide into each other. Like if you produce an electron neutrino and you shoot it through the universe, it might end up as a muon neutrino or a tau neutrino. These particles sort of mix into each other, which is sort of cool. And we have a whole fun podcast episode about neutrino mixing. It's this crazy quantum mechanical effect. You can learn about it if you check out that episode. But you're right that even though neutrinos are mostly stable, if you make a neutrino, you're going to have a neutrino. You can't build anything out of them. And the reason is that they don't really interact. They're not like sticky. The neutrinos have only one way to interact with each other or with other stuff. And that's through the weak interaction, which is super duper weak. Like you can shoot a

neutrino through a block of lead that's a light year thick and you only have a 50% chance of it interacting with anything in there. So mostly the universe is just totally transparent to neutrino, which makes it hard to like, you know, make something like atoms or elements or anything more complex out of neutrinos. So that's why complexity doesn't arise out of just like pure boxes of neutrinos. But then would you say they're needed for anything in the universe? Well, their mass definitely contributes to things. You know, the fact that their neutrinos are out there changes the overall mass, the energy density of the universe. So it contributes, you know, to like the curvature of the universe. Like if you deleted all the neutrinos in the universe,

it would change a little bit the gravitational shape of space. I also remember talking in another episode about how, you know, some of these heavier exotic particles, they disappear very quickly, but that's only because right now things are pretty calm in the universe. But back at the beginning of the universe, when things were like super hot and crazy, like these particles were more normal, kind of.

They were less exotic. Yeah, precisely. And that's what we're doing at particle accelerators is we are trying to recreate those conditions. these things require a certain temperature. It's sort of like having a puff of steam, you know, out there on a cold night. It's not going to stay steam very long, but you inject a puff of steam into a sauna, then, yeah, it can hang out and stay a puff of steam.

And so back in the early universe, when everything was hot and dense and very compressed, if you had one of these particles, it could hang around a lot longer because it was surrounded by a lot of energy. So that energy didn't have to spread out into lower mass particles. You could just hang out like that, like the average energy density, the temperature of the universe was higher so we could make these heavier particles and have them stick around. But these days the universe is very, very cold and dilute. So if you get that much energy concentrated into one spot, entropy likes to spread it out and it very quickly decays into the lower mass stable particles. But I guess maybe back then when the universe was hot and

crazy, could you have made an atom out of like a tau particle, you know, like a heavier version of what we would normally call hydrogen now? Yeah, people are thinking about that kind of stuff. You know, can you make things like toponium, which would be like a bound state of a top cork and an anti-top cork or charmonium or stuff like this? Can you have those things? We've actually seen charmonium like two charm corks that get together and make a stable particle. It doesn't last for that long, but it hangs out for a little while. And so people experiment with that kind of stuff. Those calculations are very, very difficult to do because they involve the strong force.

And you're talking about a lot of particles in a really small place. And so the calculations get sort of out of control. It's not something we can very accurately simulate. But yes, we do think that there were other different weird states of matter in the very early universe that might have involved some of these heavier particles, yes. Like maybe the early universe was a universe dominated by these exotic things made out of these exotic particles. Though it wouldn't be as like separated, you know, you wouldn't have like these things floating around and separated and distinct the way we think about atoms now.

It's more like a big plasma, like a big gumosh where things are like interacting constantly with lots of other things. So things were more exotic and also smushier. Yeah, exactly. It was like a crazy party packed full of weird people. And nowadays we're less exotic and I guess less squishy. Definitely not lower mass though. Yeah, that only seems to go up. Well, and also I like this analogy you were telling me that it's sort of like

wondering what iron or at least what some of these like super heavy elements that you see like plutonium or, you know, even those crazy Einsteinium. Like, what are those for? You can ask. And you might say, well, they're not really good for anything, but they're sort of, you know, evidence or a result of the universe having these kinds of rules about how to put things together, which is useful for us to know. Exactly. If you're going to have like protons and neutrons and electrons, then they're going to come together and make weird stuff. And that stuff includes, of course, hydrogen and helium basic stuff, but also more complex stuff. And that's great because when you see that complex stuff, you can look at the patterns. You can look at the clues and you can figure out what's going. on underneath. Now, in that case, you know, they form stable things. Like iron is pretty stable. It'll last for a very, very long time. In the case of the fundamental particles, like none of those other ones, we think are stable. So they don't last for a very, very long time. But we do hope

their clues about what they might be made out of at a smaller scale, what those tiny little particles that make all of matter might be it. So that's why I think there's sort of like a natural byproduct of the deeper pattern of the universe. So you just can't like get rid of them. Like If you're going to have protons and neutrons, electrons, you can't just remove iron from the universe. It's going to happen. I guess you could almost say, Daniel, that these exotic particles exist for you, kind of, like, for you to understand the universe. Yeah, well, you know, they're just sort of like the consequences of the universe. And I think about this a lot, like what in the universe is fundamental, like what is written into the basic laws of the universe

and what just sort of like arises from how those fundamental elements interact, you know, like me and you, humanity and biology. none of that is fundamental as to say in the source code of the university you have to have it. It comes out of, you know, the interactions of particles in a very complex way. Something that's very difficult to foresee. And the same thing is true of iron and platinum and all these complex elements. You take basic particles and you let them run free and they do these crazy things. And we think about the particles we know now, the electron, the upcork, the downcork.

You think about those as if they're fundamental particles, but likely they are also just like emergent phenomena that arises out of something much, much smaller that's interacting in a weird way and creating those things. So I think we haven't even seen the deep truth of the universe. All we've ever seen are the things that sort of happen to come together. I guess in general, asking the question, like, do we need these exotic particles? It's really kind of a philosophical question, you know. And like maybe the better way to approach this question is like, what would the universe be like if we didn't have these exotic particles? Like, what would be the consequences if they somehow didn't exist? I think it's asking like a hypothetical question.

how different would that universe be if you could some sort of like edit these out of the simulation? Right. And so let's talk about that. Like what are some of the things that would change about our universe if we didn't have these exotic particles? Well, one thing that would happen is we would all feel less radiation. When particles from space hit our atmosphere like really high energy protons or electrons or whatever, they create tiny little meteor showers. Like what happens when a rock hits the atmosphere? It doesn't just hit the ground with the same energy as when it hit the atmosphere, it loses a lot of energy on re-entry, right? Or like a spacecraft also heats up when it enters the atmosphere. The same is true on a tiny scale when a particle hits the atmosphere. It bangs into all the other particles in the

atmosphere and gives up some of its energy. And it creates weird matter because it's created like extra energy density. So like a proton like smashes into an atom in the top of the atmosphere, it might create momentarily like a pion or a kion or some other weird combination. that requires one of these exotic particles and then decay and produce muons. And those muons then come down and hit the earth. And that's radiation. That's radiation that hits your brain or hits your finger or hits the ground. But it's definitely radiation created from exotic particles.

Yeah. And it's not harmless radiation, right? Like it can actually kind of mutate your DNA. Like if those muons or those little bits of stuff that are falling down, you know, hit a DNA molecule, it's going to create a mutation. And so that could be trouble. Yeah, or it could be necessary, right? We don't know how much radiation is like the exact best amount of radiation to cause mutations in your DNA because evolution needs some mutations.

If every creature is just a copy of its parent, then you're not like exploring the possible ways creatures can be. You need variation and mutation to get randomness for natural selection to work. And so we sort of rely on some of those mistakes caused by cosmic rays. Well, I guess, you know, when you're out in the sun, people worry about UV rays, which are photons. but you were saying that there's other particles raining down on me that could, you know, harm me or burn my skin. Yeah, like muons. So muons don't last very long. They last just a few microseconds.

But when they are created in the upper atmosphere, they're going really, really fast, like some fraction of the speed of light. And so actually their clocks are slowed down. So even though they only last a few microseconds in their reference frame, from our point of view, they actually last a long time, long enough to hit the ground. And the same is not true, for example, for electrons. Electrons can't penetrate all the way down to the ground. So it's only because these muons are heavier, they can make it all the way through the atmosphere down to the ground to cause a mutation in your DNA.

If we didn't have muons, then what would happen when a proton hit the upper atmosphere is it would just create a shower of electrons. And those electrons wouldn't make it down to the surface and it wouldn't cause mutations in that primordial soup that were necessary for you to evolve. So I think what you're saying is that without exotic particles, the sunblock industry would go out of business, first of all. And second of all, we might not even be here.

Like humans may not have evolved at all, or life on Earth. Yeah, actually, if you want to protect yourself against muons, you need like several meters of lead or rock or something. No sunblock is going to do it. How about unlocked the sunblock? Several vets. You've got to live underground, folks. That's why we do these experiments, these dark matter searches.

We do them deep, deep underground so that we can protect ourselves from the rain of muons coming from the atmosphere. All right. Well, that's one way in which the universe would be different. Let's get into other ways in which the universe would be different without exotic particles. But first, let's take another quick break. Hola, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition. I haven't audition. in like over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there.

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

and those amazing vivas you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me. Yeah.

But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards.

If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets.

I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt and it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I had this like overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call, said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick.

I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just want to call on and let her know there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff podcast, Season 2, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One tribe, save my life twice. There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission.

I don't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and a traumatic brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was.

Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are painting the picture of a less exotic universe.

I guess a more bland universe, Daniel. Is that the opposite of exotic? A more boring universe, a less surprising universe. A more typical or I guess less diverse universe. Right, yeah, exactly. All right, and so we talked about how the universe would not have cosmic rays here raining down on Earth and maybe even kick-starting evolution for us that led to humans evolving, what are some of the other ways in which the universe would change

without exotic particles? Well, exotic particles actually play a really big role in the reason the universe even exists at all in the way that it does. You know, one of the deep mysteries of the universe is why it's made out of matter and not antimatter. Like, we know that every particle out there has an antimatter equivalent. Electrons have positrons and protons have antiprotons and quarks have anti-quarks and there seems to be this deep symmetry, right? This is a cool reflection and you wonder like, well, why is a universe made out of matter and not antimatter? Because in the Big Bang, we think that like the same amount of matter and antimatter was made out of that primordial goo. So why didn't it just like find each other smash up and then annihilate and give us a universe filled with photons and energy with

no matter left over whatsoever? So if the two were perfectly symmetric, then that would have happened. and we would have no stuff left in the universe. But you look around you and obviously there's lots of stuff in the universe. There's like tons and tons and stuff in the universe. There's billions of stars and galaxies and all sorts of crazy stuff made out of matter and not antimatter. And for that to happen, you need some kind of process, some weird physics interaction that prefers to create matter or that turns anti-matter into matter. Yeah, that is weird that most of the universe or almost all of the universe is matter and not anti-matter. And so you're saying that maybe exotic particles are the reason that is so?

Yeah, we know of only a few ways that the universe prefers matter to antimatter, that it likes to produce more matter than antimatter. Mostly, it's totally symmetric. Like in almost every way, it's symmetric. It's sort of amazing. Like at CERN, we have made anti-hydrogen, for example. We took an antiproton, and we put an anti-electron around it, and the two things formed anti-hydrogen.

And it acts just like hydrogen. You know, it's like emits light, and it has energy, levels. So matter and antimatter are almost totally symmetric, but there are a couple of ways in which the universe prefers matter to antimatter. And those involve these exotic particles. So for example, if you have a weird interaction that involves a bottom quark or a strange quark that's more likely to give you matter than antimatter. And so we think that maybe in the early universe this is what happened, that those exotic particles like steered the balance a tiny little bit towards matter. so that most of the stuff annihilated and turned into light,

but what was left over is the matter that ended up being me and you. Wow, that's some heavy matters here. I think what you're saying is that, you know, when you smash particles together or there's, you know, explosion or something, there's kind of a 50 chance of making matter or antimatter, usually out of these kind of collisions or reactions, but you're saying that if it involves one of these exotic particles,

then maybe it's not 50-50. Yeah, this is like 50.1% chance of making. matter rather than antimatter. And that's enough. You know, it adds up. And we haven't actually identified all the ways that it happens. We found a few ways that the universe prefers matter to antimatter. And those are solid and they're real, but they can't explain the imbalance. Like, the imbalance is actually bigger than we can understand. And so we suspect that these exotic particles are doing even more than we think to tip the balance towards matter than antimatter. We haven't figured it out yet. It's still an open mystery. So like if you have a bottom quark

in that reaction, then it'll create a little bit more matter than antimatter. matter, but what if you have like an anti-bottom cord? Wouldn't that create more anti-matter? Yeah, actually these things are bound states of matter and anti-matter. So you have things like it's called a bee maizeum, which is like a b quark and an anti-de quark. And those things oscillate back and forth between matter and antimatter, but they are more likely to stick around and stay as matter than anti-matter. All right. So that's another kind of reason the universe seems to have these exotic particles, or at least, you know, one big thing that would change. didn't have these exotic particles. Maybe we wouldn't be here, right? Like maybe everything would

just annihilated itself and there wouldn't be any room for us. Yeah, if they were just up quarks, down quarks and electrons made in the Big Bang, then they might have all annihilated and there wouldn't be anything left for us to be built out of. All right. Well, what are some of the other ways in which the universe would change without exotic particles? Well, we think that the really heavy particles play a really big role in the Higgs boson, in a giving mass to the other particles. You know, that the Higgs boson is the way that other particles have mass and that it does that because it has this field that fills the universe called the Higgs field. And the key to the Higgs field is that even when it's most relaxed, even when it's like lowest energy, it's not at zero energy. So everywhere in

space has this weird thing and it called the Higgs field, which has some energy stored in it. And when particles fly through the Higgs field, they interact with it in different ways. And that's what gives them mass. So a particle that interacts with Higgs field a lot and gets a lot. It's a lot. of mass and particles that don't interact with the Higgs field really at all get a very small amount of mass. And so that's key that the Higgs field has this energy stored in it. It's vital for making all the particles we know and love have the masses that they do. Right. Like if the Higgs field didn't have this kind of basic energy to it, like everything would just fly through the universe like it didn't have mass, like a photon kind of. Yeah, exactly. If the Higgs field had cooled and

relaxed down to zero energy inside of it or much, much smaller energy, then most of the particles would have almost no mass. The W and the Z would have no mass. The electron might not have any mass. And the whole nature of the universe, the whole like way things come together, all those emergent phenomena we talked about earlier, the complexity that arises when you collide these particles and make them into soup, then it would be totally different. And the universe would look very, very different. And the Higgs field only has the value that it does because of the heavy particles that are there. Whoa, wait a minute. You're saying that the Higgs field has some energy and without it, we wouldn't have any mass. Nothing would stick together because

everything would be flying around like light, basically. You were saying that it has this energy because of the exotic particles, or it has this energy, or it keeps this energy because of the heavy particles? It keeps the energy because of the heavy particles. Like the Higgs field in the early universe had a lot of energy in it, like everything else. And then the universe started to cool and everything got more spread out and calmer. Everything started to relax down to smaller and smaller energies. But the Higgs field at some point got stuck.

It's sort of like water that was flowing downhill, but instead of making it all the way to the ocean, it got stuck in some sort of mountain lake, right? A really high energy. Like it's holding some energy. It's holding some energy, exactly. If it didn't have that energy, we wouldn't have the mass that we do. And the only reason it got stuck in that lake is because, you know,

there's like another side of the lake, the thing that's like blocking it from flowing downhill. And that blocking comes from the heavier particles. Like if you didn't have the top cork, then the Higgs field would not have gotten stuck in that mountain lake. It would have flowed all the way down to the ocean. I guess that's kind of a hard picture to understand. And you're saying not because the top cord exists, but because it sort of can exist almost in a way, right? Like the top quark is something that could happen.

And so because it can happen, the Higgs field doesn't just dump all of its energy. Yeah, because the top cork can exist, because its field is out there. And because its field interact with the Higgs boson so much, right? Because the top cork is super massive. Then it creates this weird shelf that the Higgs field gets stuck on. I guess what do you mean? Like if you didn't have the top quark field, then the Higgs field would, relax down to zero energy.

What does it mean to not relax or relax? Well, the Higgs field has energy stored in it, right? Because it's sort of stuck. Like, think about a ball that's trying to get down to the lowest energy state. It's like rolling down a hill, but it gets trapped along the way. You know, it can't relax down to the lowest height. And so the Higgs field is sort of like that. It got stuck while he was relaxing.

While the rest of the universe was cooling down, the Hicksfield got stuck at a certain energy level. And it's the top cork that's keeping it from getting all the way down to zero. energy. Even though you don't see a lot of top quarks out there in the universe, they're sort of fleeting and they don't exist for very long. Just the fact that they can exist somehow prevents the Higgs field from collapsing. Yeah, it changes the potential energy for the Higgs field to create this weird little local minimum that the Higgs field gets trapped in. And we don't really understand that shape of that minimum. We know that it's due to the top quark. We also don't know how stable it is like

it could collapse. We have a whole fun podcast episode about whether the Higgs boson will destroy the universe if that local minimum falls apart. So right now the top cork is protecting it and making it strong, but we don't know how long that's going to go on for. Well, thank goodness it's there because I know that without the Higgs field or with the Higgs field collapsed,

like the whole universe would kind of like turn over, right? Invert itself. Yeah, the universe would be totally different. If the Higgs field ever collapsed, we still would have a universe, but the effective laws of physics would change dramatically because all of a sudden like electrons and up quarks and down quarks

would have much, much less mass, if any at all. And that would change the way everything worked. Yeah, my son learned about this recently and it's been keeping him up at night. It's kind of a scary picture. Hopefully it won't happen. And thank goodness it's not happening

because of one of these exotic particles. Exactly. Just tell your son that the top quirk is out there saving the universe. Hmm. The unsung hero. All right, we have one more way in which the universe would be different

without exotic particles and it has to do with the weak force. That's right. We talked about neutrinos And neutrinos don't play a role in the atom, but they do play an important role in the weak force. Like when you have beta decay, like when a neutron decays, it can't just decay into a proton and an electron. It also has to make a neutrino, right, because something has to carry away that extra hypercharge. And so every time you have a process that involves the weak force, which turns out to be pretty important in basic fusion and all sorts of stuff in the universe, then you have to have a neutrino.

For example, you were taking the universe and redesigning it and stripping stuff out. If you took away the neutrino, you'd have to get rid of the W boson. If you get rid of the W boson, then the whole weak force doesn't work because the weak force is this complicated dance of the W and the Z and the photon. So now you've got to get rid of all of that. So neutrino is sort of like at the foundation of the house. And once you start pulling it out, then things start to collapse. And specifically, you get rid of the weak force, you get rid of electromagnetism. And you also got to get rid of the Higgs boson.

I guess what do you mean? Like if I take out the neutrino, you have to take out the W boson and everything falls apart. Like what would happen? Like there wouldn't be like the same reactions wouldn't be able to happen or like the reactions would happen but they would be different. Or do you need them to have some sort of like exhaust or byproduct that kind of makes the reactions work? Yeah. Well, the way I think about them, you know, there are just like different elements of the same Rubik's cube. You know, the weak force is the W particles and the Z particles, but also.

of the particles that interact with them. And so that's the neutrino. Like the neutrino is the thing that interacts via the weak force. And so, you know, what does the W particle do, for example? Well, it turns electrons into neutrinos, right? If you have an electron and emits a W, that W carries electric charge. And so it carries away the charge of the electron and leaves you with a neutrino. And so you just can't do that anymore if you don't have neutrinos. Like if an electron emits a W, then what does it turn into. It's not nowhere to go without a neutrino. And so that means you basically can't have W bosons in the universe. And the whole symmetry, this beautiful picture of the electro-week force, this combination of electromagnetism and the weak force as one nice machine that all fits together

perfectly and respects certain symmetries, it all just falls apart. You can't just like pick and choose. It's like a game of Jenga. You know, you pull out the wrong piece and the whole thing falls apart. But I guess that's kind of a weak excuse, pardon the pun, for motivating the existence of a particle, like, you know, why can I just be extra careful when I take out the jenga piece and still have the thing hold up? You know what I mean? Like, unless it's like the one piece holding everything up, you know, you can usually, you know, patch it up somehow or have it balanced on something else. Like, couldn't you have the weak force without the neutrino? Like, couldn't it do the same things, just not output a neutrino? The way particle does this think about the

weak force is that you have these states where you have the electron and the neutrino together. And what the weak force does is it sort of like rotates those states. We had an episode recently about gauge symmetry that showed you that every force that's out there is really just there to respect and protect some sort of weird internal symmetry of the universe. And in the case of the weak force, that's a symmetry between electrons and neutrinos, which is why the W boson, for example, turns electrons into neutrinos. So to have this symmetry at all between electrons and neutrinos, you need the neutrinos. So the weak force exists sort of to protect. this symmetry between electrons and neutrinos.

Without the neutrinos, you don't need the weak force. And so, I mean, would it exist without it? It wouldn't be active. It wouldn't be part of the universe, even if it potentially could be, if you didn't have neutrinos. I see. It's such an integral part of the weak force that you wouldn't have an excuse to have the weak force without a new force.

Exactly. Who ordered that? Well, you could still maybe order it if it would just be an exotic part of the menu. All right. Well, then the weak force is pretty important because without the weak force, you would have no Higgs effect, right? And so, again, things wouldn't have mass. Yeah, because the Higgs field, again, is also just around to solve this puzzle of the

weak force, of why the weak force is connected to electromagnetism, but also so different. You see Higgs boson, which breaks that symmetry. It's called Electro-Weak symmetry breaking for anybody who wants to read further on it. So that's why we have Higgs boson. So without the neutrinos, we don't have the weak force. Without the weak force, we don't have the Higgs boson. and then we don't have me and you and kitten-flavored ice cream. Sounds like the main reason we have these particles are just to save you a lot of anxiety, Daniel.

I feel like it would really stress you out if we took away these particles. I don't know. I imagine what would Daniel be like in a universe where there were a lot more exotic particles where we found like 12,000 of them? That seems like much more of a headache. Well, that's another big mystery, right? Like, why do we only have eight exotic particles and not more? Like, technically we could have more.

We certainly could have more. and we don't know if we don't have more. These are just the ones that we have seen. It could be that if we build bigger colliders and smash more energy together, that we could create even heavier particles. There might be more out there that are just not yet discovered.

All right. Well, I guess the overall picture is that, you know, we don't need these exotic particles to make you, me, ice cream, things that are, you know, affect us in a daily life, sort of, at least at first glance. But if you actually took them away, they might have some pretty cosmic consequences.

Like none of us would be here. when none of us would have evolved or none of us would be here, none of us would have mass. The whole universe might just collapse without them. That's right. Nothing in the universe seems to be optional. Nothing in the universe seems to be extraneous.

If you pull apart one piece of this jenga puzzle, the whole thing collapses. Well, I think lava ice cream is optional. I don't think that's a requirement in any diet. Let's see what happens if we delete lava ice cream from the universe. I'll do it right now. Nothing happened. All right, well, just another great reminder of how exotic

and flavorful and mysterious and kind of scary the universe can be. Hopefully the collapse of the Higgs field won't scare us like a horror movie Jump Scare.

And also kind of beautiful. You know, the way all these particles and fields fit together to make this incredible universe, it's gorgeous. It's sort of like figuring it out

and unraveling this mystery is really beautiful. It really feels like we're revealing some deep mechanism, which is kind of gorgeous when you see all of its working parts. Are you saying these exotic

particles are like the bling of the universe? They just make everything sparkle a little more. That's right. You might not need them, but they make you look special. All right.

Well, we hope that expanded your idea of what the universe can do and why it is the way it is. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio.

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