Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Is space filled with infinite energy?

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Daniel and Jorge tackle the confusing conundrum of the Casimir Effect and quantum zero-point energy Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You know, Jorge, sometimes I wish that particle physics was more useful. More useful than creating black holes in particle colliders to threaten the earth? Yeah, sometimes I wish that we could unlock the power of physics to do something good for humanity. And you could work on like renewable energies and stuff like that. Actually, I do have some crazy ideas about that. Oh, yeah? How crazy are we talking about? Very crazy. Maybe infinitely crazy? Well, I'm infinitely interested in infinite energy.

Fortunately, we only have a finite time. I'm on today's podcast. I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and I've technically made of an infinite number of particles. What do you mean? There's an infinite amount of you? How much did you have over Thanksgiving? dinner. Is that too much, Daniel, for you to take? That's infinity too much for anyone. No, in this sense that we're all made out of potentially infinite number of fluctuating

particles popping in and out of the vacuum. We're mathematically infinite. The vacuum of space. Always full of surprises. I feel like, yeah, like, do you never know what it's going to pop out or give you or hand you for Christmas? It's infinitely surprising. So welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeard radio. In which we examine the infinite with a cold eye. We don't look away. We try to understand it. We think about the infinity of space. We think about the infinities in space. We think about everything there is out there in the universe and we talk about it in a way that we hope makes sense to you. That's right. We stare down the universe until it tells us what infinite secrets

it has hiding inside of its very own fabric. That's right because there is an infinite amount of joy in revealing the truth of the universe. Science is an amazing project. We just find ourselves as conscious beings in this universe trying slowly to chip away at the truth and figure out how does it all work. What does it all mean? Does it make sense?

Is it possible for humans to make sense of it? Yeah, because it is a big universe and it is full of strange phenomena, phenomenon that feels really strange to our everyday experience. Like, for example, the idea of infinite things. We're not used to infinite things. Earth, where you do finite things, things with a limit. At least that's what our parents tell us.

That's right. I still have not yet eaten an infinite number of cookies, though it's an ongoing project. That's right. You can't say you haven't or you won't. That's right. Give me enough time. But you're right, infinity is a hard thing to grapple with. It's both like impossible to hold in your head and also like every day.

It's weird to think about the universe being infinite in extent. But it's not weird to realize that there are an infinite number of numbers between zero and one, for example. So it's a pretty weird thing. Yeah. And not only could the universe be infinite, you could have infinities inside of it. There might be an infinity of infinities, right?

It might be that everywhere around us, there are infinite particles popping in and out of the vacuum. And when you dig down deeper into what that means about space, it might tell you something very strange. So today on the podcast, we'll be asking the question.

His space filled with infinite energy. And can I use that to charge my iPhone? That would be pretty useful, like a phone that just charges if you just hold it up in the air. That would be useful, Daniel. Stop writing papers about the fabric of reality and just get us that air charger. All right. I'm going to move from papers to patents. That's my plan for the week.

Yeah, I mean, I know Apple has like the iPod Air or IMac Air. It just makes like the air. The IMac vacuum. But I think this touches on something which is really at the heart of what we're doing with the whole physics project, which is trying to make sense of the universe and then wondering, is our understanding real? Like we talk about space being filled with a vacuum, which is filled with these quantum frothing particles, but are they really there or is that just something in our minds? Could we do experiments to figure out if they really are there or if these are just calculations we're doing in our head? Yeah. So the idea is that there's a, there's a concept.

right, in physics, that the universe is not empty. It's filled with fields like quantum fields, and these fields are not just sitting there, or they're not empty of energy. Yeah, exactly. Because these fields are quantum, they have a special property that they can never actually have zero energy in them.

And so according to quantum physics, all of space should be filled with an infinite number of particles, which should correspond to a real energy, which technically means an infinite amount of energy in every piece of space. Yeah, like they can't just chill. Like, they can't just bottom out. They always have to have like a little bit of like a buzz to them, right?

Yeah, that's kind of the idea. And that's sort of hard to grapple with. But it turns out there's a really interesting experiment that studies something called the Casimir effect, which might be sensitive to whether these particles really are out there. And this experiment tells us something amazing. Yeah, the Casimir effect is a really interesting, well, just the name. And I have to say, at first I thought it was sort of a reference. to the reigns of Casimir.

And I thought, oh, that's not going to end well for this podcast. Are we going to end up at the red wedding at the end of this? I hope not. I wouldn't be good from Game of Thrones. But not everything it turns out is a Game of Thrones reference. This is actually a physics effect predicted a long time ago and recently observed. Yeah, it's an idea that's been around for a long time, like over 50 years, 70 years, the Casimir effect. Yeah, and these are beautiful ideas.

the idea to test a crazy theory of physics by coming up with an experiment that could actually pin it down that could corner nature and force it to reveal to us what's really going on out there in space. Yeah, so this effect is a little obscure, I think, but it might sort of reveal that the universe is

or is not filled with infinite energy. So as usual, we were wondering how many people had even heard of this experiment or effect. And so Daniel went out there into the wilds of the internet to ask people, What is the Casimir effect? So thanks to everybody who participated with so much evident joy and enthusiasm. If you would like to speculate baselessly and without reference materials on future questions for the podcast,

please write to us to questions at Danielanhorpe.com. So before you listen to these answers, think about it for a second. If someone asks you, what is the Casimir effect, not the reigns of Casimir, what would you say? Here's what people had to say. It makes me think of something to do with Sons. so maybe sun flares or something of the sort. I have no idea what that could be. I'm going to guess that Casimir was a scientist

and he was either casually or actively observing something and noticed an effect that perhaps had not been noticed before. To see the Casimir effect, you put two metallic plates close together. Then they move even closer together because the number of particle antiparticle or virtual particle antiparticle pairs outside the plates is greater than those between the plates. So the particles outside exert a non-zero net force on the plates and they move closer together.

It was named after a guy named Casimir. Well, do you think that means we have no Game of Thrones fans because nobody else thought this was the reins of Castamere? Maybe our fantasy fan and physics-loving, audience doesn't overlap. But there were some pretty good guesses here. I like the, it was named after a guy named Casimir. Interesting.

That would be normally a good guess in physics. Yeah, exactly. But also, a lot of people just didn't know what it is or had heard of it before. It doesn't seem to have good PR. Yeah, exactly. I think Casimir and his PR team definitely need some like social media tips. Well, step us through this, Daniel. First of all, what is this idea that space is filled with?

energy. It's a really sort of bonkers idea, but it's also totally realistic, which is my favorite thing about physics. And to get into this, you have to really understand how quantum physics looks at space. Like, what is space? And if you're the kind of person that thinks, well, space is nothing, right? Space is emptiness. Space is the gap between stuff. Then remember that modern physics is a different view of space. There's this sort of general relativity view of space. It tells us how space can bend and twist and ripple. That's awesome. But we're going to put that aside today and we're going to look at the quantum physics view of space. The quantum physics view of space says that space is not emptiness. Space is like a parking lot. It has all these fields in it,

which can be filled with particles or they can be empty. So you can imagine, for example, all of the universe being filled with an electron field and where there are electrons, that just means that field has a little bit of energy in it. It's vibrating and that corresponds to an electron. And where there aren't electrons, then those fields are empty. They're not vibrating as much. Yeah, this idea of space is maybe a little bit closer to what most people think of space before they learn about relativity. It is sort of like a big empty warehouse, like a big empty space, but it's filled with something, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think the mental shift you need to make to understand it from the field point of view is that you don't have, for example, an electron moving through empty space

as a particle just like floating through nothing. Instead, you can think of that electron moving through space is like a wiggle on a string. That wiggle moves along the string, but it's really the string that's doing the wiggling. So in this case, an electron moving through space is a vibration in the electron field, and that vibration is passing through the field. I always kind of think about it as like having a giant room and then like having a giant blanket over it. That would be the quantum field. An electron is like a little bump in the blanket that, you know, kind of moves around. That sounds pretty cozy. Your theory of the universe doesn't sound like cold and empty. It sounds like snuggily on a cold rainy day. It's called the cozy effect. The quantum cozy effect.

Yeah, exactly. And so you can imagine that blanket, you know, gets pushed up when you have a particle under it. And the cool thing about this way to think about it is that it's very easy to then have two particles because then your quantum field in that spot is now excited a little bit more. And three particles is just another excitation in the field. So this actually technically is very powerful because it allows you to think about the creation and destruction of individual quantum particles. Whereas the earlier, the old school quantum mechanics followed the path of an individual particle and so it was very difficult to calculate like what happened when it was destroyed or how do you

follow two or three particles. So the quantum field approach is the more modern approach partially, because it's just technically easier to actually calculate things. Yeah, and there's not just one field. There's like a bunch of fields in the universe, right? Like it's not just one blanket covering my warehouse. It's like a whole bunch of blankets stacked together. Yeah, every place in space has a field for every possible particle.

So every point in space has an electron field, a muon field, a quark field, you know, electromagnetic fields for the photons, all of these different fields in the same place. And sometimes these fields don't interact with each other. at all. Some of these particles don't interact with each other. And so these fields don't interact with each other, but sometimes they do. For example, the electron and the photon do interact with each other. Electrons give off photons. So those fields are coupled together. So it's a bunch of different fields, but some of them interact with each other. They're tied together by these forces. Some blankets are just sewn a little bit with other blankets. Yeah, exactly. If you make a wiggle

in one, it'll spread that energy out into others. And some of them slosh back and forth. It's pretty cool. And, you know, one of the projects of particle physics is to take this big stack of 19 blankets we have and understand them all as like part of one big blanket that's just sort of like wiggling together according to one set of rules. We're trying to unify the whole system of these different fields and understand them in the context of like one field that unifies them all. But that's the subject for a whole different podcast. For today, the thing we need to think about is what it means when these fields are emptiest. Yeah. Now, I guess the question is, Do quantum physicists think of space as separate from these fields?

Do you know what I mean? Like is space the empty warehouse and then you put fields in it? Or do you think of it that you can't have space without quantum fields? You can't have space without quantum fields. Yeah, exactly. These fields fill the whole universe. There's no place in space where you don't have these fields. And you could ask like, does that mean that's what space is?

I'm not sure. I mean, quantum mechanics usually considers space to be sort of like firm. and absolute. It prefers to deal with sort of flat space rather than like the curved space or weirdly connected space of general relativity. It is possible in some context to connect the two, but we've never achieved like a full connection to understand quantum mechanics and curved space altogether in all sorts of contexts. That would be quantum gravity. So quantum mechanics view space is sort of like flat and absolute and then you have the fields in space, but you can't have any part of space without those fields. Right, right. But you can't have places where,

the field is not excited as usual, right? That's what you call it like empty or vacuum. Yeah, you can have a vacuum. And vacuum sort of calls to mind the idea of emptiness, of nothingness, right? Or maybe lowest energy state. And in classical physics, like before quantum mechanics, that meant zero. Like if you had an electromagnetic field, classically like 150 years ago, back when Maxwell was doing this stuff, you could turn it on and you could turn it off.

And when it was off, it was at zero. But quantum fields can't actually do that. Quantum fields can't settle down to zero energy. Wow, that's weird. What does that mean? Like, even though nothing is there or exciting it or, you know, happening there, it still has some kind of potential or some kind of like motion. What does that mean that it doesn't have zero energy?

That's really the heart of the question. What does it mean? And you said, for example, nothing is there. We don't really know if nothing is there. What it means is that quantum. fields in their lowest possible state are in a state with non-zero energy. This is called the zero point energy. And if you solve the math for how quantum systems work, they always have a minimum non-zero energy. It's just not possible to get the quantum field down to zero energy. And so we don't

know what that means. That's the heart of the question. Does it mean that there are like little virtual particles actually there with real energy? Is it a weird mathematical artifact that we're just not understanding? Is it a clue into something else? Like, what does this actually mean? Is the heart of the question? I guess what do you mean it can't have zero energy? Like, it's not likely or it's just like theoretically impossible would break some kind of math equation? What does that mean? Like, how do you know it can't have zero energy? Like, couldn't it fluctuate and sometimes dip below zero? So that's a great question. Remember the quantum mechanics gives us probability. So it allows fluctuations, but it allows fluctuations between physically possible solutions. Like you might

solve an equation that says, here's nine different things an electron can do. I don't know exactly which one it's going to do, and I can tell you the probabilities of various ones, and it might fluctuate between them, but it has to do one of these things. It doesn't mean the rules are off and anything can happen. And when you solve the quantum mechanics of a system in empty space, these fields in empty space, you get a bunch of solutions, and those solutions are quantized. And the solutions are like one particle, two particles, three particles, four particles. But the zero particle solution doesn't have zero and

It has a minimum amount of energy. When you solve the mathematics, you get a state with no particles, but with energy. Right. So, and somehow this kind of leads to the idea that space has infinite energy. So let's get into connecting those dots. And let's talk about this interesting Casimir effect. But first, let's take a quick break. 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back.

In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.

He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor. and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Your entire identity has been fabricated.

Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depth. 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 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. All right, we're asking the question, Daniel, does space have an infinite amount of energy? And I feel like you're telling me the answer is yes. The math suggests the answer is yes.

And if you think about the quantum mechanics of it, it sort of makes sense. Like, we know that quantum mechanically things are always wiggling and struggling and can never really be pinned down. And so if you take a quantum field, it makes some sense for it to always have some uncertainty. And if you had it have exactly zero energy, then you'd have exactly zero energy, then you'd know exactly the value of the quantum field. And that seems sort of unquantum. You know, just the same way, like, you can't have a particle exactly zero energy. You can't have anything at absolute zero in quantum mechanics, because then you would know its location and its position. So quantum mechanics says absolute zero is impossible to reach. And this is sort of the same idea that there's a minimum amount

of energy that everything has to have. And so space is filled with fields, then those fields have to have some energy. It's kind of related. You were telling me to the idea that the electron can't fall into the nucleus, for example.

It can't just collapse into that center. Yeah, if you solve the quantum mechanics of the hydrogen atom, you have a proton and around it is an electron, you get a bunch of solutions.

You get energy levels for the electron. And the minimum energy level is not at zero. It's not, oh, the electron falls into the nucleus and is captured.

Now, that can actually happen in some other weird states, for example, in the center of a neutron star, the electron can be forced into the nucleus and then it turns the proton into a neutron. But for a normal hydrogen atom, the electron's lowest energy level is not at zero. And it's for the same reason, right? It can't collapse into the nucleus because of the uncertainty principle, because of this zero point energy in its field.

Right. So space is filled with quantum fields and quantum fields when they don't have particles are in a vacuum. And you're telling me that that vacuum has to have a little bit of energy. so then how do we connect from that to space having infinite energy? Yeah, so the amazing thing is just take one field, for example, take the photon field, the electromagnetic field. This can have photons of all different frequency, right? Frequency in the visible spectrum, frequency in the x-ray spectrum, frequency in the infrared spectrum.

It can do all sorts of oscillations. Well, the calculation tells us that the minimum energy in this field is planks constant times the frequency over two, this H-Omega over 2, that's the amount of energy for electromagnetic field of that frequency. So that's a certain amount of energy, but there's an infinite number of these frequencies. And so you can have H-O-Megro over 2 for every value of omega, from zero all the way up to infinity. So you add up all these little zero-point energies and you get an infinite amount of energy. Not an infinite amount of energy in the whole universe, an infinite amount of energy in every piece of space.

I see you're telling me like any little piece of space has a minimum amount of photon energy at one kilohertz and it has a little bit of photon energy at 1.1 kilohertz and it has a little bit of energy at 1.3 kilohertz so if you add it all up you're saying that little bit of space has an infinite amount of energy yeah because there's an infinite number of frequencies and each one has finite energy and so an infinite sum over finite numbers is infinity All right. Well, this sounds almost too good to be true. I feel like there's some sort of quantum uncertainty, virtual particle kind of fakery going on here.

Well, I'll tell you what physicists usually do is they go, hmm, that's weird. Let's just subtract infinity from everything and they ignore it. We've got an infinity. Let's tamp it down. Yeah, because for most purposes, you're only really interested in relative energy. You're like, can we go up an energy level and absorb a photon? Can we go down an energy level and give off a photon? Most of physics only cares about relative energy, about gaining energy, losing energy, transferring energy. We don't usually care about the actual absolute value of the energy.

So in practice, we can mostly just ignore this. We can ignore an infinite amount of energy in every little bit of space. Yeah, and you can convince yourself like, well, maybe it's some weird quantum thing and we can mostly ignore it and not worry about it. But, you know, if you're looking to do something useful with physics and you want to understand the universe at his deepest level, then you can't just ignore it. You've got to dig into it. You've got to ask yourself, is there a way we could detect this? If it were real, could we do an experiment to figure out if those infinite number of photons are actually there?

I guess maybe my question is, is it real or is it one of these things where there's a little bit of energy at one kilohertz here? but the probability of it is, you know, one over infinity or something like that. And so it all sort of cancels out to some finite number. You're looking to divide infinity by infinity to make it reasonable? Yeah, it sounds better than putting my thumb over. It's the same thing mathematically. But no, each of these frequencies should be there. Like, at minimum, each of these photon frequencies should exist at H-Omega over 2.

And so that's the minimum, right? Right, but what's the probability that they're actually, like a real photon will pop out at that frequency? The field has that energy. According to quantum mechanics, it's there. That's the minimum. So the probability for it to have at least that energy is 100% because that's the minimum energy. Wow. But nobody knows, is that real?

And we have, on one hand, a fascinating experiment that suggests it might be real. And on the other hand, calculations that suggest that's totally impossible for it to be real. So it's a real deep controversy in physics right now. All right. So that's what this Casimir effect is. It's an experiment that test this idea. Yeah, that this too good to be true, infinite energy everywhere idea. Yeah, this was an idea that was bubbling up after quantum mechanics was invented and developed

and people were grappling with the consequences of it. And people first had these kinds of questions, like, hold on a second. Are you suggesting the universe is filled with infinite energy? That can't be true. And so Casimir thought, well, let's try to figure it out. Could I conduct an experiment? Could I devise away a physical system which would reveal if those photons were actually there? So he came up with a really clever idea for a crazy effect, which he called the Casimir effect.

Wait, so it is a real person? Casimir is a real person. It sort of sounded like a Greek deity or something, you know, or like a Greek nymph. May also be, but no, a real physicist. But I like that you have in your mind, you know, physicists, nymph. It's basically the same category of people. Yeah, they're all magical beings. All right, so Casimir proposed the Casimir effect.

And how do I build one of these things? It's really hard to build, which is why it was predicted in 1948 and then not actually observed for 50 years. But the basic idea is to take two mirrors and have them really, really close to each other. You know, we're talking like micron distances. And why does it need to be microns? It needs to be micron distances

because what you're trying to do is build a resonant cavity that blocks out most of the photons from the vacuum. So the idea is two mirrors back to back will build something which will enhance photons that have a wavelength that fits right between those mirrors. It's just the way it's sort of like a laser works or any other sort of resonant cavity. Photons are a wave and they like to bounce back and forth between these mirrors. And so photons that fit very nicely between these mirrors, they'll be enhanced between these mirrors.

And every other kind of photon, the ones that don't fit nicely between the mirrors. So like the gap between the mirrors is like one and a half or one point. seven wavelengths, they will be suppressed. So that's what a resonant cavity does. And the idea here is, if those photons in the vacuum are real, then what you'll do is you'll enhance a specific set of frequencies, key to this really small distance, and you'll suppress everything else. I see.

It's like a resonant cavity, right? Like if there was sound and noise everywhere and you stuck a little, like, flute in the middle, it would sort of make a particular sound more prominent. Exactly. And it will exclude the others. That's the key. He was trying to suppress some of these vacuum modes. He was trying to make a situation where those vacuum modes would disappear. Because what we talked about earlier, the minimum energy of the vacuum being HMega over 2, that's if you have nothing around you. That's the vacuum solution. But as soon as you put material in space, then you get different solutions. And this actually suppresses a lot of those modes so they can't exist between these mirrors. So what you get is some energy between the the mirrors, but more energy outside the mirrors. And the difference in that energy, like the fact that you have more photons and more frequencies outside the mirrors than between the mirrors creates effectively a pressure pushing these mirrors together. I see. You create like a little spot in space that only likes one kind of frequency and pushes out all the other frequencies, which then

kind of creates pressure inwards. Like it wants to collapse. Yeah, exactly. And so that's the idea you could build these two mirrors and if the vacuum was real, you're creating a situation where it would actually have a physical effect that you could measure. You could put two mirrors near each other and you could actually measure the force between them. You could see them getting pulled together. It's almost like you have a lake and you like try to separate some water out like carve a space in the lake by separating out the water but then now you have all this water trying to come in which creates pressure on the walls of your little chamber. Yeah, only if there's really is water in the lake, right? If you're trying to tell whether there's like invisible water

in the lake, this is the way to do it, right? Figure out some way to keep the invisible water out of some portion of the lake and measure, is there a force now on my chamber? And so that's the idea behind the Casimir effect, like block the vacuum photons from this little sliver of the universe and see if all the other photons out there try to squeeze it back in. All right, so you build these two mirrors, you put them in front of each other and then you, what, do you measure the forces on them? You measure the forces on them. And this is obviously a very difficult experiment.

Like, first of all, making two mirrors that are super duper flat so you can bring them in parallel to each other with very, very small distances, even that is hard. Then you have to isolate it to make sure there are no like residual electrostatic charges because the force of those charges would overwhelm the force of the Casimir effect or gravity or anything else. So you have to do a lot of really just careful experimental work. So people try for a long time to build this and to make it work. And nobody could get it to work.

Like, it's just too difficult to see this force. It's expected to be a very, very small effect. Yeah, like what kind of forces are we talking about? Like pico-newtons? Yeah. If you had two mirrors with area of a centimeter squared and you brought them within a micron of each other, the prediction is that it would have an attractive Casimir force.

It would pull together like 10 to the minus 7 newtons, which is about the weight of a water droplet that's, you know, like half a millimeter in diameter. So it's a very small effect. It sounds small, but it sounds dual for you. Doesn't it? I mean, you have measured crazy, small differences in gravitational waves. You've taken a picture of a black hole really far away. What makes this especially hard?

It's keeping those two plates parallel because as soon as they're not parallel anymore, it's not a great resident cavity. And so people actually tried that for a while and didn't work. And then there was an innovation. Some guy at Los Alamos, Steve Lemurro, came up with this idea. He said, let's not try it with two plates. Let's use one plate and a sphere. And it turns out that a plate and a sphere also has a casimir effect.

The calculation is a little bit different, but still is dependent on the sort of the gap between the sphere and the plate. But a sphere and a plate are just much easier to control. You can bring this little sphere very, very close to a very flat surface much more easily than you can keep two plates exactly parallel. I see, you build a sphere out of something, and then you hold it close to a mirror again? Or are these mirrors too?

These are mirrors. So you have like a mirrored sphere. It's a nanosphere and you bring it really close to a surface. And this guy was able to get it within like 10 nanometers. That's like, you know, a hundred times the width of a hydrogen atom. So this is pretty close. And he had this technique where he had it sort of on the end of a stick and then he's shown a laser on the back of a mirror. And then he could see very small changes in the location of the sphere based on how the

laser bounced off of it. So if the sphere moves a little bit, the laser bounces off at a different angle. Wow. Sounds pretty tough. But I guess my question is, how do you know it worked or didn't work? Like, if I was trying to build something and measure some invisible water somewhere that I thought was everywhere, how would I know I measured it or didn't measure it? It's a difficult experiment. And you have to do a lot of work to sort of rule out alternative explanations, right? You have to rule out, is this just an effect of gravity? And so you can calculate, like, how big would the gravitational effect B and see, well, we see something which can't be explained by gravity because the dependence on the distance is different and the overall strength of it is different. And you ensure that it's

isolated from electrostatics and you have all sorts of controls to verify that. So you rule out all other explanations and essentially what you're seeing is a force that you don't have another explanation for. And you can do calculations that say, how strong should this force be? How strong should the Casimir effect be? And when you do those calculations, you predict a force exactly of the strength that these guys measured. Wait, so this has actually been done and they have measured this effect? This has been done and in 1997

they measured the Casimir effect. It is real. Whoa. They did measure this invisible water trying to push in. Yes, exactly. So your faith and physicists was well founded. They figured this out. It only took 50 years but they did it and this guy measured

this thing and he's gone on to do all sorts of elaborate extensions on it, making it smaller and closer. It's really pretty impressive. It's just like really cool, experimental, you know, virtuosity. Wow. All right. So that means a Casimir effect is real. You can measure it, which would imply that space is filled with infinite energy. But there is a hitch. That makes absolutely no sense. That's the hitch. All right. Let's get into whether or not that makes sense and whether or not it is infinitely possible to have infinite energy.

in space. But first, let's take a quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.

Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't. don't trust her now he's insisting we get to know each other but i just want her gone now hold up isn't that against school policy that sounds totally inappropriate well according to this person this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age it's even more likely that they're cheating he insists there's nothing between them i mean do you believe him well he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet so do we find out

if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not to hear the explosive finale listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hola, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment, with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?

No, I didn't audition. I haven't audition in, like, over 25 years. Oh, wow. That's a real G-talk right there. Oh, yeah. We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters sharing their real stories of failure and success. You were destined to be a start.

We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs, and those amazing Vibras you've come to expect. And of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles, and all the issues affecting our Latin community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know what I'm me? but the whole pretending and, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network

on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're talking about the Casimir Effect and whether space has an infinite amount of energy, which experiments say that it should, that everywhere you look, everywhere you are, there is an infinite amount of energy right there underneath the surface there

which is boiling there, bubbling there, but there's an other big theory in physics that says this is impossible. That's right. And this is one of my favorite parts of physics when you find something in the mathematics

that's weird, that seems nonsensical, when you're like, well, that just can't be true. And then experimental physicists go out and say, actually, that's exactly what happens. And so you've got to revise your sense of like what can make sense.

What could be true about the universe? I love when like the experiments tell us that the universe is just different from the way we could possibly hold in our heads. That's like an invitation to revise your whole context for how the universe works. Those are the best moments. When you're wrong is what you're saying. Yes, that's when you learn things when you're wrong. And then the experimentals come back with this idea. And other theorists, the gravitational folks are like, hold on a second.

you should have checked with us because we could have told you before you discovered this thing that it was impossible. You should not have looked for it because now you've proven that our theories are wrong. Yeah. And here's the problem. We've been talking about space from the quantum mechanical point of view, right? These fields fluctuating and how much energy they have. But as we talked about earlier, there's another view of space and that comes from gravity.

And Einstein's theory of general relativity, this beautiful, elegant theory that tells us that gravity is not an attractive force between particles, but instead an effect of motion through curved space, is this beautiful theory because it tells us that space is not just a flat backdrop. It is a dance between energy and space, that the stuff in space tells space how to curve, and that curvature space tells stuff how to move. So it's this awesome, wonderful theory. But that's the key bit. The key bit is that stuff in space, energy or mass, tells space how to move.

to curve. Just like if you have a really dense collection of stuff like the sun, it will bend the space around it, changing the path of things that move near it, such as the Earth. So a lot of energy will bend space. Right. It's kind of like, you know, if energy is the same as mass and mass and energy create gravity or distort space or, you know, pull other masses and other energies, then that means if there's infinite energy everywhere, it should just be all be pulling, you know, using space everywhere an infinite amount. Yeah, exactly. There's a problem with having infinite energy in all of space

is that it should make everything be basically a singularity. You should have infinite curvature everywhere in space. The whole universe is basically a singularity inside a black hole. And that's not what we see. We don't see space being infinitely curved. It doesn't really make any sense. One guy, just after the Casimir effect came out, sat down to do this calculation and say,

people like, is it possible? Is there a way to like actually solve general relativity and have an infinite amount of energy? You know, maybe everything's just like tightly balanced. But he did the calculation and he found that if this were true, if there was this much energy, then the whole universe would be so curled up, it would be smaller than the moon. Well, isn't that a theory also that we are sort of living in a singularity inside of a black hole, that maybe our universe is inside some other universes black hole? Isn't that like a plausible thing?

There are some theories that, you know, perhaps our universe, is a connection to other universes and that at the core of black holes, there are singularities which can connect us to them, or perhaps even our entire universe is inside another universe. But, you know, we don't see locally crazy infinite curvature. If that were true, if we were inside a singularity itself, not just like inside the event horizon of a huge black hole, if we were actually inside a singularity, space would have infinite curvature, and that would have real consequences for how things moved, right? we can measure their local curvature of space

because we see how things move and curve and we do not see infinite curvature. So we're pretty confident that we're not living in a singularity. Right. But I feel like this tells you that there's infinite energy in an infinite amount of places everywhere.

So wouldn't all those effects kind of cancel out? You know, like everywhere is a singularity wouldn't that flatten out in a way? Yeah. And it's a little bit more complicated because the way that general relativity works is it's not just like mass curve space. And it's not exactly just that like any energy density curves space, including mass.

There's this thing called the stress energy tensor, which tells space how to curve. And so it's sensitive not just to the amount of energy and the amount of mass, but sort of like the arrangement of it. So you can have, for example, angular momentum contributes to it and all sorts of complicated effects. And we don't need to go through the calculation here, but it does lead to infinite curvature rather than an equal balance all through space. there is a difference it's not just relative energy

the absolute energy is actually important for general relativity All right so it seems that we have kind of a big problem because a real experiment like an actual thing we can measure

tells us or suggests that there is infinite energy everywhere but our theory of the universe says that's not possible so like who do you believe what you can see with your eyes or what the theory tells you we just really don't know

this is like a big open question in physics, you know, and remember that quantum mechanics and general relativity are sort of the two pillars of physics and don't really agree on a lot of stuff. You know, they don't agree about what does a singularity look like inside a black hole. But most of the places they disagree are really hard to get to, really hard to explore, like the heart of a black hole. So this is an opportunity to help try to resolve this question. Is quantum mechanics view of the universe correct? or is general relativity correct? It's an opportunity to resolve this question in a place where we can actually do experiments in our lab. We can see these two things conflict.

Quantum mechanics says, no, the universe is filled with energy in every space. And look, I'm right. Here's an experiment that proves it. General relativity says, that's nuts and it can't possibly be right. Otherwise, things would be crazy. And so what do we do? We try to come up with another theory, a theory that unifies these two that explains what we see and make sense of it. We don't have that theory today.

But this is like a great clue that tells us if you're going to build that theory, you have to somehow explain the Casimir effect. You can't just subtract away that infinity. And also you have to subtract away that infinity so you don't curve space too much. I see. So like, you know, we measure this effect. It's real. It's real.

But it may not mean that space is filled with infinite energy. It might be that our theory, which, you know, ties that experiment to this. idea of infinite energy could be wrong. Yeah, exactly. Now, it's interesting because the predictions for the Casimir effect, when you start from that quantum theory, they predict the effect at the level that you see it. So that's pretty convincing. Now, there are some other attempts to explain these Casimir effect experiments without using quantum zero point energy. For example, people say, maybe it's just a misunderstanding of the VanderWals force. And people have done some calculations to suggest that, you know, relativistic corrections, small corrections to the way we think about

the Vanderwals force might account for the Casimir effect. It's like an attempt to describe it using other physics that doesn't break general relativity. I see. So far, those calculations, though they're cool and they do suggest an effect is there, don't agree with what we've measured so far. So they can't really explain the experiments. So it doesn't really solve the problem yet. But, you know, this is like active research.

to somebody out there right now, like improving those calculations, trying to describe what we see out there without including quantum infinite photons. Oh, I see. Like what we measure may not be an effect of quantum physics, but just something else. Yeah, it could be something else, exactly. And that's the struggle. Like, do you come up with another theory to explain this real experimental effect that doesn't break general relativity?

Or you try to figure out like, hey, maybe general relativity is wrong. And, you know, we need another theory that includes quantum effects, and somehow doesn't bend space in the universe. Right. Well, it seems to me like the consequences of this question are huge, right? Like, this could determine whether quantum physics is right or relativity is right. And it seems really important, almost like, you know, how we talk about the center of black holes being really important because they would settle this question.

But it doesn't seem like physics is very focused on this little effect here. You know, I feel like there's more attention paid to black holes than there is to the Casimir effect. Well, black holes are sexy. than like tiny microspheres next to tiny microplates, you know. But this is a really active area of research and you're totally right. It's a huge opportunity. It's much more exciting than black holes because it's real and we can test it and we can explore it.

But it's also very, very difficult sort of in the way the black holes are. Like these Casimir effect calculations, they are hard. We don't know how to do them for lots of configurations. Like it's an open question right now, if you built a mirror that was a sphere and you had photons bouncing around inside that sphere, would that have a Casimir effect? Would it implode the sphere or would explode the sphere? Like, theorists do calculations and get different numbers. So it's a really sort of technically very difficult area to make progress in, both experimentally and theoretically. But I think inside physics, it's widely recognized as an amazing opportunity to

maybe clear up this question of quantum mechanics versus general relativity. Yeah, and their press folks should definitely get on social media. Yeah, because, you know, as we heard from our listeners, almost nobody had heard of it. Yeah, and you know what? They should have gotten in touch with the Game of Thrones folks and made it the reins of Casimir instead.

That would have been a great cross-marketing opportunity. Yes, you can picture it. It's a wedding and relativity walks in, thinking that, you know, it's a happy event, and then quantum mechanics pulls a knife. No, I was thinking that the jester could do some trick with a Casimir effect in two thin plates or something, you know,

after dinner and entertainment. But yeah, you know, go down that road of throat's being slits, or... Well, that is Game of Thrones. I mean, somebody has to meet their demise. It's either going to be general relativity or quantum mechanics. Somebody will perish. When you play the game of physics, you're either right or you're wrong.

Yeah, or you're quantum mechanicalized. All right. Well, I hear the reins of Casimir playing. I feel like I think we are near the end of our episode, where we learned that the space might have an infinite amount of energy, and there's an experiment to prove it. Absolutely. And this Casimir effect is super fast.

It could also, since it's real, help us build super tiny electronics with actual moving little parts at the nanoscale. Some people have suggested that we might be able to use the Casimir effect and in a repulsive way to keep wormholes open, to keep them from collapsing if it's real. So not only is it a fascinating question which might reveal the ultimate nature of reality, it also could help us travel the universe. Wow. That is definitely more interesting than Black Hole. and less deadly. All right, well, once again, we learned that there is more to the universe than we realize that there might be energy

kind of in the air, in the space between us, between our particles, and this might even be an infinite amount of energy, which means there's potential for anything in this universe. That's right, but don't let your iPhone batteries go to zero just yet. We haven't perfected vacuum charging. Yeah, just wave it around in the air,

see if that works. Do your own Casimir experiment at home. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that. 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.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit.

And push your gameplay beyond limits with Intel Core Ultra processors. That's the power of Lenovo with Intel inside. Maximize your edge by shopping at Lenovo.com during their back-to-school sale. That's Lenovo.com. Le novo, Lenovo. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot.

He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want or gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.