Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions 12: Higgs Bosons, Black holes and earthquakes!

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Does dark matter feel the Higgs? Can particles be black holes? What would happen if the Earth froze? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman and on She Pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweetie. Monica Patton. Elaine Welteroth. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full of them. Listen to these women and more on She Pivots. Now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Daniel, people often ask me, what is the target range for our podcast? In terms of age, I like to think of it like nine years to 99 years old. Oh, wow, that's a big range.

Do we really have nine-year-old listeners? Oh, we do. We even get questions from 60 years. year olds. You know, kids are masters of curiosity. Oh, wow. They have actual masters in curiosity? They're born with it. But it only goes up to 99. What happens if you turn 100? Does the audio automatically cut off? I think if you live to be 100, we should be asking you questions. Maybe we should make it 9 to 99, just in case, you know, aliens might live longer than us. That's true. I look forward to meeting a thousand-year-old, and I'll let the marketing team know to find some ads

suited for 900-year-old listeners. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I wish I had the wisdom of a 900-year-old. But not the bod of a 900-year-old? Well, maybe the, you know, cybernetically enhanced body. That would be pretty awesome. Oh, yeah. Or maybe the wisdom of living inside of a computer for 900 years.

That would probably seem like 9 million years. But welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of IHeart Radio. In which we take you on a tour of all the incredible and crazy and bonkers stuff in our universe. We drill down to the tiny particles to reveal the truth about the universe and we zoom out to the entire universe to share with you the scope, the scale, the wonder, the drama, the violence, all the incredible things that are out there, the things that we understand and the things that scientists are still trying to figure out and the things that you are curious about. That's right. We take you to the forefront of science and human knowledge and talk about questions a lot. We talk about questions that scientists are asking right now and also questions that regular people like, those of you listening might be asking yourselves.

And sometimes those questions are one and the same. Exactly. And I think a lot of people don't realize that science is pushed forward by scientists asking their own personal questions. Like the reason one scientist ends up in biology or in physics is because those are the questions they personally want answered. And so science really is all about personal questions. What do you want to know about the universe? Wait, are you saying scientists are people too? Scientists by people, for people, and of people.

It's all about people wanting to know the answer to some one individual burning question. And you know as well as I do that by the time you get to your PhD, you're so narrowly focused on one tiny little sliver of human knowledge that it has to be really your driving curiosity. The thing that you want to figure out. That's right. It's your inalienable right to ask if there are aliens out there. And to spend your life trying to figure it out. But of course, it's not just scientists who are. curious. Everybody out there is curious about the universe, especially people listening to this

podcast. And so we don't want to just talk about the questions that scientists are asking of the universe. We want to answer your questions as well. Yeah, so today on the program, we'll be tackling listener questions. Number 12, the dirty dozen, the dark matter doesn't. We have a child's question on the program today. So let's try to keep. keep you clean. I think that I read through the questions, Daniel, and I feel like the nine-year-old's question is the most sophisticated one here. I told you children ask amazing questions.

You know, just last week, we got a letter from a six-year-old, and he asked a long list of really hard particle physics questions that I thought were sophisticated for an adult. Wow. Well, I feel so good knowing that we're helping to educate six-year-olds in bad puns and dad jokes. I feel like, you know, that kid is getting an early start. His hardest question was, how does Jorge manage to eat so many bananas? They're gross. No, I made that one up.

Well, we have a lot of amazing questions here from listeners of our program, questions related to dark matter and the Higgs boson and black holes and also questions about tectonic plates in our planet, which tectonics, that's not a rock group. It's like an actual science thing. No, I think isn't it a transformer? Oh, and or a transformer, yeah, could be. Maybe, hold on, maybe it's a rock group of transformers.

Oh, man. Do they have bands and transformers? Let me think. They had construction vehicles. They had dinosaur transformers. Maybe, yeah, maybe they need a rock band. Yeah, or. Maybe this can be one transformer that transforms into an electric guitar, right?

Oh, man. Somebody out there, Mattel is screwling down these ideas, I hope. And also a banana. we haven't had fruit transformers either. All right, well, let's jump right into our awesome questions from listeners. And our first question comes from a nine-year-old Dylan wrote to us with an awesome question about dark matter and the Higgs boson. Hey, guys, I'm Dylan from London.

And my question is, could the Higgs boson interact with dark matter? Thanks. Wow, that's amazing. That is such a simple question. And yet I feel like it blows my mind at the same time. It is. It's a great question. Yeah. And he's got a wonderful accent, of course. And it's a really deep question. And we're going to have to talk about a lot of really interesting facets of both dark matter and the Higgs boson to unravel this particular one. All right. So, Devin's question was, does dark matter interact with the Higgs field and the Higgs boson? I guess it's one and the same thing. Yeah, remember that interacting with the Higgs field means essentially exchanging Higgs bosons with stuff. And so you can think about them together. But broadly remember the Higgs field.

Higgs field is the thing that fills the universe and you can create a Higgs boson if you put enough energy into the Higgs field. That's how we discovered it at CERN by smashing particles together and making enough energy in the Higgs field to create a Higgs boson. But you can interact with the Higgs field even if you don't have that much energy around because you can just exchange virtual Higgs bosons. Right. And so just to recap for people who might not know or are new to the program, the Higgs field is

one of the quantum fields that fill the universe and it's the one that specifically gives us mass gives the other particles mass. That's exactly right. It's everywhere. Every piece of space we think has a bunch of different quantum fields in it. There are fields for every particle. There's the electron field. There are fields for the photon. There's fields for the quarks.

There's this whole big set of fields. And the Higgs field is the most recently discovered one. And it interacts with the other fields. And it interacts in a way that makes particles move differently. It makes particles move as if they had mass. Right. Like if you push in a particle, it might take you a little bit of time

before it can accelerate. That's kind of the definition of mass almost. Yeah, and we have two ideas of mass, but here we're talking about inertial mass. Just as you said, it means you have to push a particle to get it going and you have to pull on it essentially to slow it down. And what he's doing with this question is really interesting because I feel like he's mashing

together these two huge concepts that were in separate parts of my brain. And his question is like, are these two things related? Do they interact with each other? And so he asks if the Higgs boson interacts with dark matter. And so just Recap again for folks, dark matter is this big part of the universe that's out there, that nobody knows what it is.

Yeah, we discovered in the last few decades that most of the stuff that's in the universe, the matter, is not the kind of matter that we're familiar with that makes up me and you and gas and stars and hamsters and bananas. It's this other weird, invisible kind of matter that we can see only because of its gravitational effects. It makes galaxies spin faster. It changes the whole structure of the universe. We're really pretty sure it's there.

But the thing that's tough about dark matter is that it's really hard to see because it doesn't interact in any way we've detected so far except through gravity. So we're looking for dark matter and we're trying to figure out if there's any way to interact with it. And that's what makes this such a great question. It's like, well, could we use the Higgs boson or the Higgs field somehow to interact with dark matter? Because dark matter doesn't interact with light or electromagnetic forces so you can't see it and touch it. but it does interact through gravity which makes you think like does dark matter have mass i guess i never i've never thought about that question daniel is that true does dark matter have mass dark matter definitely has mass because it creates gravity like that's why we call it matter

it's not dark energy it's dark matter it's dark matter because it's some stuff we know that it's there because of the gravity that it generates and so it has some sort of energy density some sort of mass that creates that and our best model currently of dark matter is some slow-moving massive particle. So absolutely, it makes perfect sense for dark matter to have mass so that it creates gravity. I guess if dark matter didn't have mass,

it would be zipping around at the speed of light, right? That's right. All massless things move at the speed of light, and we know that dark matter is slow, but also if dark matter didn't have mass, it wouldn't create the kind of effects that we see. That is that we see gravitational effects that are out there,

these things that hold galaxies together even though they're spinning and change the whole shape and structure of the universe, that means that there's some gravity out there and we can't see the mass that's creating that gravity. And so that's what dark matter is. It's really a description of the missing mass, the mass necessary to create the gravity that we do see. So it's perfectly natural to think that dark matter does have mass. And that's why it's such a great idea to think, ooh, maybe we could talk to dark matter through the Higgs boson because that gives some particles mass. Right. And again, I guess interacting with gravity is different that interacting

with the Higgs field. Yes. It's not necessarily the same thing. It's not necessarily. It's not necessarily. Inertial mass is not the same thing as gravitational mass. That's right. And there are different ways to get inertial mass. So there's a few things to disentangle there. Gravitational mass means you're creating gravity. Like I have mass and you have mass and the Earth has mass and the sun has mass. So we each have our own gravitational field or we bend space. which changes the way the things move around us. So that's the force of gravity. It means you have gravitas.

It means you're so important, you have an impact on the universe, right? You're not insignificant. So that's one concept. That's like, you know, mass as a sort of the charge of gravity. How strong is your gravitational force? Well, it depends on your mass. Then there's this other concept of mass that we just talked about recently, which is this inertial mass, which is how much force does it take to get you moving?

that's the mass that appears in f equals m a relates force and acceleration you have a really big mass that takes a big force to accelerate you that's why for example even though you have the same gravitational force on the earth as the earth does on you you feel the earth's gravity much more strongly because your mass is smaller so you have a larger acceleration for the same force right so inertial mass is this separate concept from gravitational mass although numerically everything seems to have exactly the same gravitational and inertial masses. Like we've never measured any discrepancy. Right.

Yeah, we've talked about that kind of mystery in an early episode about, you know, you have inertial mass and you have gravitational mass and they seem to be exactly the same, but theoretically and mathematically, they don't have to be the same. That's right. The mass that appears in the gravitation formula, M, doesn't have to be the same mass as the one that appears in F equals M.A. But we measure them and they are exactly the same. And that's a whole other fascinating puzzle.

We actually talked about that in our fun book, which came out a few years ago, that amazing puzzle. Oh, really? I'm just kidding. I have no idea what we wrote, Daniel, in our book. We have no idea. Yeah, well, you should read it sometime. It's pretty funny. It's partially resolved by general relativity, but it's still a really deep, interesting question in physics.

But it's also relevant to today's question about whether or not dark matter talks to the Higgs boson, whether you can interact with dark matter using the Higgs boson. are using the Higgs boson. Right. Because I guess is it possible for something to have gravitational mass but not inertial mass? Is that even possible? We've never seen that happen. And general relativity suggests that it's probably not possible. There's some weird little threads there to think about like photons have energy but no

mass. And general relativity tells us that space curves in response to energy density, not necessarily mass. But usually those two things are identical. Like for every particle, for every object, the inertial mass and the gravitational mass are one and the same. So we just think of it as the mass. I see. But I guess maybe the point is that we know dark matter has gravitational mass because that's how we see it.

And we also know it has inertial mass because otherwise it would be zipping around. That's right. We think we know something about the speed of dark matter. We talked on the program before about how if dark matter was really, really low mass, if it was very, very light, then it would move really fast. And that would change the structure of the universe. The universe would be smoother. We think dark matter is slow moving and cold. And that's why we got the structure that we have today

that amplified all sorts of little quantum fluctuations in the early universe to be the weird, amazing, beautiful structures in today's universe. So I guess the point is that we know for sure then that dark matter interacts with the Higgs because it has inertial mass. Not quite. We know that it has inertial mass, but there are other ways to get inertial mass. What? Not through the Higgs?

Not through the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is a special trick that we use to get massed to all the particles that we know, quarks and leptons, et cetera. And we had to use that trick because all these particles interact with the weak force. Quarks and leptons and even neutrinos, all these particles interact with the weak force. And the weak force is really weird. It doesn't let particles just have a mass that breaks like a special symmetry, a property of the weak force that it likes to protect.

And so that's why the Higgs boson is such a clever idea. It's not just like, hey, here's a field. It's a special mathematical trick that lets you interact with these particles in a way so that they move like they had mass without actually giving them any mass like deep down. So the Higgs is this way you can give particles mass if they have weak interactions. Oh, what? Because every other particle that we know about has weak interactions? Every matter particle that we know about has weak interactions.

That's right. So it falls under this weak symmetry. And so the Higgs was created to break this symmetry. We call it the particle that breaks electro-weak symmetry. So every particle that feels the weak force, this weakest of forces that we know about that's mediated by those W and Z particles, needs the Higgs boson in order to give it mass. Because without the Higgs boson, they wouldn't have mass?

If there was no Higgs boson, they wouldn't have mass. And if the Higgs boson field collapsed, all those particles, their masses would go to zero. We talked about how the Higgs boson could destroy the universe if the field collapsed to some lower value. So, yeah, they get mass because of the energy in the Higgs boson field. Okay. But then I guess the caveat is then if something doesn't feel the weak force, it doesn't need the Higgs field. That's right. If something doesn't feel the weak force, it can't talk to the Higgs boson.

And it doesn't even need the Higgs boson. It could just have a mass. You could just put it in there. It can just have inertial mass? You can just have inherent inertial mass. That's right. And you remember one time we talked about like, what is the real mass of the electron? We talked about it in the context of renormalization, that the electron itself has no mass,

but we add up mass to the electron through these interactions from the Higgs boson. It's not like a core property of the electron itself. It's like the electron when you consider it with all of its like quantum fluctuations and interactions with the Higgs boson. But these other particles, dark matter particles, could just have a mass inherent to them. What? I feel like you just took the Higgs field down a notch. Like I thought it was like super fundamental to the universe. But really, when we say that the Higgs field gives particles mass, you really just have to say...

All the particles that we've know about so far. Yeah, yeah. Like you have to count yet, right? It gives mass to all the particles that feel the weak force. But there might be particles that don't. That's right. And we think that dark matter doesn't feel the weak force. because if it did, we would have seen it already.

We have really sensitive detectors looking for dark matter interacting with normal matter. And if dark matter could feel the Z, for example, if you could use the Z boson to talk to protons, then we think we would have seen that already. We've been running those experiments for decades. So we think that dark matter does not feel the weak force or we would have seen it. And so very likely it gets its mass in some way other than the Higgs boson. Now, there's always some crazy theory out there. There are variations of storage.

super symmetry that have loopholes that allow the dark matter to talk to the Higgs boson. Or sometimes these theories have a special extra Higgs boson, a dark Higgs boson that gives mass to the dark matter particles. Yeah. The dark Higgs boson. Wow.

That is a plot twist for a telenovel I've ever heard one. Or the name of the band in the Transformers movie. We're dark Higgs bosons. We're to rock you out. and give you mass if you don't feel the weak force. That's right. So we don't know.

We don't think that the Higgs boson gives mass to dark matter particles because otherwise it probably would mean that dark matter particles feel the weak force and we're pretty sure that's not true. But, you know, we're not 100% sure about anything when it comes to dark matter. Oh, man. I feel like 9-year-old Dylan just took down the Higgs field. Good job, Dylan. Yeah, good job, Dylan.

What an awesome question. You just destroyed the Higgs field. field and made it seem inadequate for our universe. Yeah, it's a great question. Unfortunately, you know, asking whether or not you could discover dark matter through the Higgs boson is really just the same thing as asking whether dark matter feels the weak force. And the answer to that is probably not. Probably not, but we don't know.

So stay tuned. That's right. And hey, build an awesome dark matter detector out of your Legos, Dylan, and prove us wrong. Yeah. Or wait a few years and actually make the discovery, build your own particle collider. I foresee great things for Dylan. Keep out of Dylan. All right.

Well, that's an awesome question and a mind-blowing answer. And so let's get to some of these other great questions about black holes and tectonic plates. But first, let's take a quick break. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it 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 wanted 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 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. 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 Podcasts, 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,

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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, Daniel, you and a nine-year-old just blubes. my mind about the Higgs field in the first 20 minutes of this. So let's get to some of these other amazing questions. The next question is from John from Norway, and he has a question about particles and black holes. Hi, guys, John from Porchkyn, Norway here.

Listening to one of your episodes about black holes, you talked about how when the density of energy is high enough in a volume of space, a black hole is formed. Then why is it that a point particle that has some energy to it, like an electron does not turn into a black hole. It has energy that is concentrated into a point, so it should have infinitely dense energy concentration. What am I missing here?

Please explain. All right, thank you, John. Awesome question. The question is, can you make a black hole with a single particle? Because I guess particles are point masses, so technically they have infinite density. So does that mean that every particle is a black hole? I'm as confused as John here.

yeah it's a great question it's basically like why isn't every electron a black hole we're all black holes is that what you're saying everything's a black hole everything that feels a weak force me i feel like we have to add caveats now all over the place no i love this question and it's this sort of a genre of questions here we get which is like why isn't x a black hole you know like why didn't the big bang just turn into a black hole why wasn't the early universe filled with black holes or how do we know there aren't black holes out there in the atmosphere. Somebody asked me, what's the smallest possible black hole

that could be hiding in my basement? Did you answer? Because there probably is a minimum hidden black hole in their basement. I did answer. I did answer, yeah. You could have a black hole the size of a grain of sand and you wouldn't even really notice it. Oh, wow.

And it wouldn't grow or would it just evaporate right away? Yeah, it would grow. And so then you would eventually notice it. But, you know, until then, while it's small and tiny, you wouldn't notice it. So there's fodder for a horror movie right there. For a few milliseconds, you could be unaware of a black hole before you get sucked into it and die. That's right.

Your life and fantasy could continue unaltered for a few more moments before it comes crashing down. All right. So the question is, if particles are point masses, don't they have infinite density? And if they do, shouldn't they be sort of a black hole in and of themselves? What's the answer, Daniel? The answer is that John has poked a really, really good hole in two of our really important. theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Mostly quantum mechanics, though. And he's right that if you applied what we said before on the podcast, that we treat particles as point masses, and you turn

around and use general relativity on that and says, well, a point mass has infinite density. And so it shouldn't be a black hole. Then yes, all particles would be black holes, but they aren't. And so what that tells us is that there's a problem in those theories. And you know, you can't just always take these theories and apply them to crazy extreme situations because we don't think they hold up in every single circumstance. He's poked a hole into our theories. He's shined a light on a part of the theory that we know already we don't understand very well, which is what happens in really strong gravity situations for quantum objects. Because we just don't have a theory that describes gravity on a quantum scale. We know how to describe gravity for really big stuff, even for really heavy

stuff, even for really massive stuff, but for really small stuff on the quantum scale, we don't know how to combine gravity with quantum mechanics and answer these questions. We just don't even really have a theory that makes predictions. Right. And it's mostly about scale, right? Like when you get down to the quantum levels scales, like of a single particle, then, you know, our theories about gravity that work on like a galactic scale don't necessarily work at those small scales.

That's right. And because gravity is so weak, it's very, hard to test. Like, how do you do experiments that test the gravitational pull between two protons, right? The gravity between two protons is really tiny because protons weigh almost nothing. They have almost zero mass. And they have all these other forces that are always getting in the way. So it's very difficult to probe gravity on the quantum scale. I guess the question is more like, you know, if you have a particle and it's a point particle and I get really, really close to it, at some point do I get sucked into it, kind of? Like, is there a black hole at the center?

of every single particle out there? I don't think that there's a black hole at the center of every single particle out there. It would really change the behavior of those particles. But I think it is interesting to think about the extreme of these theories. Like, when we talk about these particles as point particles, do we really mean physically that there's a dot there of infinite density? Of course not, right?

It's an approximation we make in our theories because it's convenient. We don't think that there's an actual dot of infinite density there. We've talked about on the podcast before, like how small is a particle? What does the size of a particle even mean? And we don't even really have a good answer for that. Like, what do you mean the size of the particle? Is it the width of the quantum wave that describes where it is? Is it where it pushes back on things? You know, where it's forcing your probe back? And so there isn't really even like philosophically speaking a great definition for the size of a particle. So you can't actually talk about the density of it.

I see, because you need volume to talk about density. Yeah, exactly. But I guess, you know, from a distance, like if you're talking on a large scale, you do treat them as point particles in the math and in just practically speaking. But once you get down to that small level, then it gets fuzzy. Yeah, we treat them as point particles because it doesn't really matter. It doesn't change any of the calculations. It's just sort of convenient. But that's because we're not doing calculations where it makes a difference. And then when it does make a difference, when you're getting really, really close, then we can't treat them as point particles anymore.

And then it gets really fuzzy. And it depends exactly on the question. and you're asking, like, are you poking at this electron with a photon or with the W boson or with the Z boson or with the Higgs boson? You'll get a different sort of response from it based on how you're poking it. So there's not like a concept of the electrons size itself. Right. So that's one thing.

It's like the limitation of our understanding of these things as point particles or not. So unfortunately, we talk about them as point particles, even though, you know, physically that doesn't make any sense, but we also don't have a better way to think about it. Well, maybe a good way to approach this question is to, like, let's ignore quantum mechanics for a second. You know, like, let's assume quantum mechanics doesn't exist, and we still lived in a classical world, and there are point particles. Like, an electron is really is a point with a certain mass to it. Wouldn't there be a black hole sort of at some point as you get closer to that point? Yes, if you could isolate mass in a very, very small region and we remove quantum mechanics from the universe,

then general relativity tells us that that would be a black hole. Like, in general relativity, there is no minimum mass for a black hole. A black hole can have any arbitrary mass down to like really infinitesimal values. There's no minimum in general relativity. Yeah, like if you could take the mass of a single electron or a proton or a quark and put it in a point, then it would form a black hole. It would be a black hole, yes. And if your universe was nothing but point particles with masses, then it would be nothing but black hole. Man, all black holes all the time.

Yeah, or think about it the other way. That means quantum mechanics is saving us when just being the universe of black holes, right? All right, so then if quantum mechanics didn't exist, every particle, every point mass would be a black hole. Like, you know, an electron, if you get close enough down next to it, at some point you would see a little like event horizon. Exactly, yeah.

Wow. But then now let's put back in quantum mechanics. and the problem is that... I like how you're just like, you know, you're flipping the quantum mechanics knob on the universe here. You're just like,

you're just like willy-nilly, like turning things on and off and expecting us to make sense of it. What happens if I do this? What happens if I do that? Don't do anything, Jorge. Am I rocking your brain here? You're going to break things, man.

Did I just walk into the control room with the universe and start flipping switches? And you're like, well, exactly. What if our universe really is a simulation and you got to visit it one day? Would you just be flipping these switches?

just to see what happened? Let's see what happens. Let's answer Yon's question from Norway. And we'll find out. We'll just see what happens. Oops, destroyed the universe. I guess that's the answer. I guess what I mean is like,

if you suddenly turn on quantum mechanics, then you wouldn't be able to see that event horizon around that electron because that event horizon would be sort of within the fuzziness that quantum mechanics introduces. Exactly. So you turn quantum mechanics back on, and then you can't allow the electron to be a point particle anymore, because quantum mechanic says you can't like know the location of a bunch of energy that precisely.

There's an inherent fuzziness there. So if you replace the point particle with the quantum mechanical blob that has some like uncertainty in its location. And we take sort of the size of that distribution to be the Compton wavelength of the object, right? Which is sort of like proportional to the width of its wave function, the thing that tells you where to find it. It's not a great definition for the size of the object, but it's, it's, it's, one that we can use. And a lot of times in physics, we don't have great answers. We just use the best one that we can find. And we just remember that there's like a lot of asterisks associated with it. Like, this is probably, you know, not correct, but it's also less wrong than anything else we can

imagine. That's what we aim for in this podcast. Let's be less wrong than all the other podcasts. Well, you know, John is asking his personal curiosity question about the universe. And when you're the first human to like venture into intellectual territory, you don't always have. have the tools you need to really get an answer. So you just, like, do the best you can. You say, well, let's see what happens if we bang on it with this and try to answer it with this. Do we get a reasonable answer?

And if not, does it inspire something better? And so this is the way you push forward on human knowledge, right? You give the least wrong answer you can. Yeah. So I guess the answer then is that there would be a mini black hole around every particle, but quantum mechanic, like the blobiness, the fuzziness of quantum mechanics kind of mushes that out. Like the fuzziness is bigger than where you would.

find the black hole around every particle. Yeah, and they actually converge in a really interesting way because the size of the black hole is dependent on the mass of the particle. So it gets bigger as a particle gets more massive. But then this wavelength of the particle gets smaller as it gets more massive. So you can set them equal to find the minimum mass of a black hole generated by a quantum object. So we said earlier, if no quantum mechanics, there is no minimum.

Once you turn quantum mechanics on, you get a minimum mass for a black hole. Interesting. Meaning, like, if I have a massive enough particle, it would. Are you saying it would make a black hole? A massive enough particle, yes. But this minimum mass is 21 micrograms, which is like much, much heavier than any particle we've ever seen. Electrons, for example, are like 10 to the minus 24 kilograms.

But here we're talking micrograms, like the mass of a grain of salt. Oh, I see. So if there was a particle with the mass of a grain of salt, it would be a black hole. Yes, saltons are all black holes. You heard it here first. As in, don't put salt on your food, you'll turn into a black hole. That's right. Every time you shake that salt canister, you're pouring black holes into your food.

Maybe that's why. Salt is salty. Yeah, that's what black holes taste like. Yeah, exactly. We've answered the ancient philosophical question, what does a black hole? taste like. And why does salt taste salty? Also, I'll all at one question.

That's right. That's right. That's the black hole flavor theorem invented by Jorge Cham in 2020. And John from Norway, we're going to share the credit. That's right. All right. So I guess the answer then is a particle can be a black hole, but it would have to be super heavy. That's right.

And all of this is probably wrong because we just don't have a quantum theory of gravity. Here, what we're doing is we're using two theories, general relativity, and quantum mechanics, both of which we know fail in this regime. And we're trying to like combine them in an awkward way and use both of them to kind of agree on a black hole particle mass. So this is probably wrong, but it's the best answer we can give today. Right. We need to throw some salt over our shoulder just to wish his luck. Yes.

And that's actually the other caveat, which is it might be possible to make black holes out of electrons or protons. The key thing there is not just to increase the mass up to like, a grain of salt, but to increase the energy, because remember, gravity is in response to energy density, not just mass. And so that's what we do with the Large Hajon Collider, for example. We smash protons together at very high energy. And that's why we think there's a possibility that we could one day create a mini black hole out of particles because we've used the energy of the proton to like ramp it up to black hole. Oh, wow. Did you just admit that you're trying to make black holes at the Large Hadron Collider?

I'm 100% hoping we make black holes to a large Hajon flyer, yes. 100%. They would be fascinating. We would get to study them. They're also 100% safe. Wow. All right. Well, I guess that answers John's question.

The answer is, yes, you can make a particle be a black hole, but it's almost unrealistically heavy. Or unrealistically fast? Or what are we saying? Or you have to elbow your way into the universe control room and turn off quantum mechanics. Start flipping switch. Not recommended, by the way. Well, if it ever happens, I'll bring you along, Daniel, and you can restrain me. No, I'm the one who likes to press big red buttons.

Like, every time I'm in the control room with the LHC, it is that big red button, and I'm just like desperate to touch it and push it and feel the click. All right. Well, let's get into our last question, which is about tectonic plates. But first, let's take a quick break. Hello, it's Honey German. And my podcast, Grasasas Come Again, is back. This season, we're going even deeper into the world of music and entertainment,

with raw and honest conversations with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition? No, I didn't audition. I haven't 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, I'm me. But the whole pretending and coat, 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 I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. 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 always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests

for this new season of Family Secrets. 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 it 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 wanted 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, 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.

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, 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 podcasts.

All right, Daniel, I'm not sure my mind can handle any more mind-blowing here. We've discovered that the Higgs boson may not interact with dark matter and that particles can't be black holes. What else do we have? have here today. Well, let's bring it back down to Earth. Here's a question from Canada. Hello, Daniel and Jorge. My name is Harjot. I'm from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And my question for you is, what would happen to life on Earth and the landscape of the Earth if the Earth was no longer tectonically active? I look forward to your answer. Thank you. Awesome question. Thank you, Herdrat.

It's a tricky question. She's saying, what would happen to the Earth and to us and to life on it if suddenly we didn't have tectonic activity in our mantle, in the earth's crust. Do you think she's worried about an earthquake and hoping tectonic stop, or she's like writing a science fiction novel in which the earth freezes? No, but it's a fun question. And I like these what-if questions because they make us think about how fragile our existence is. We're dependent on so many different processes happening in exactly the right way all the time for life to continue as we know it.

So it's fun to imagine how life would be different if just one of those things went away. So again, maybe to refresh people, what is the tectonic activity? What does tectonic mean for us? It means essentially that the earth is still in motion. It's not just a frozen ball of rock, but we're sitting on top of the crust, which is sitting on top of essentially a liquid rock. And so these big pieces of land that we sit on that we stand on are floating around and changing. You know, if you look back of the history of the earth over millions of years, you can see the content. it's moving. They're like floating as if they were, you know, on a pool of hot lava. Wow. We're not on solid ground. Yeah, we are not on solid ground. In fact, most of the earth is molten, right? And there's

activity down there. There's all sorts of stuff swirling around. And that's good because it means that we have things like magnetic field that we think are generated by the motion of all that hot swirling metal inside the earth. And so the earth is not just a frozen cold ball. It's like it's hot and it's active and this stuff going on down there. Yeah, and we talked about how if, because we have a magnetic field, we have kind of a shield against cosmic rays, which would strip our atmosphere and basically kill us, right, pretty quickly. Yeah, space is filled with death bullets from the sun.

And if you don't have great shielding, then you get cancer and die really quick. And the earth has an awesome literal force field, which is its magnetic field, because these particles are charged and charged particles bend when they hit a magnetic field. And so basically just deflects most of this space radiation, which is good because otherwise we'd all get cancer. Right. All right. So then that's what tectonic means. It means that, you know, the plates of the Earth's cross are still moving around kind of a molten core. And so the question is, what would happen if that stopped? Like, I guess first of all, what would cause it to stop? Yeah, it would be pretty hard to stop. Like if you are a cartoon villain and you want to stop, you know, the motion of the earth, that would be pretty difficult because it's, it's at an enormous amount of energy.

How much energy is stored in like a cubic mile of liquid iron? A lot, right? So we have a lot more than one cubic mile of liquid iron. So it's just an incredibly vast amount of energy. Oh, I see. You were saying a lot of the tectonics come from just having stored energy inside of the earth. Yeah. It's not, you know, like if the earth got cooler and cold and frozen, wouldn't we still have some motion?

Or will we then turn into a solid ball of rock? No, that is the future of the Earth. We think that in a billion or two years, the Earth will cool and its internals will stop moving as much. And our magnetic field will dim and our tectonics will stop. And that's, in fact, what happened to Mars. Mars is smaller than the Earth, and so it cooled faster. And so we think that it's essentially frozen on the inside and its magnetic field, which it once had, is gone. And it has no more plate tectonics.

So plate tectonics are sort of like a feature of a younger planet. It tells us that we're still like... Hot. We're still young and hot. So we're saying we're still hot? Yes, exactly. Hot and flowing. We're still hot.

And so one question to ask is like, what happens when plate tectonics stop? The other one is like, how does that happen? What makes it happen? And to make it happen, you have to basically cool the earth, which means waiting a billion and a half years or developing some awesome technology that sucks all the heat out of the center of the earth. Or maybe to prevent it, we could inject energy into the earth. Yes, exactly.

We could keep the youth. We could inject Botox effectively into the earth to keep it young and good-looking. Prevent those, you know, tectonic wrinkles. You know, the tectonic wrinkles essentially are a way that the earth gives off some of this energy, burn some of this energy. And so if you like try to freeze the crust of the earth without cooling it in the inside, then that would like build up somehow and where would that heat all go? And so that could be pretty devastating.

I see. Well, I thought that a lot of like the moltenness and the meltiness and the heat and the energy inside the earth was due to gravity and like the pressure of all this rock, you know, being compressed down there at the center. So are you saying that we could freeze that? Or maybe are you saying that it wouldn't be enough for just from gravitational pressure to keep the magnetic field away? Yeah, it's not enough. Eventually we will cool. Like you're right, a lot of it comes from gravitational pressure. There's also a little bit of heat that comes from vision, just like. heavy stuff in the center of the earth decaying and giving off energy. But, you know, we're not dense enough to cause fusion like happens in the sun to stay hot. And so over a long time, eventually we will cool. Like gravity compressed the earth to a certain density, but, you know, the earth pushes back. It has a certain rigidity to it. And so it will not gravitationally collapse to anything more dense. It'll just eventually cool and become, you know, much colder. All right. So I guess then the answer to the question, what would happen if tectonics stop? The answer is nothing good.

We get fried by the sun. Magnetic field collapses. We get fried by the sun. But it's unlikely to happen for another one and a half billion years. Yeah, and I wouldn't say nothing good. I mean, living here in Southern California, where we're always thinking about earthquakes, there is one upside to freezing the earth is that, hey, no more earthquakes, right? Earthquakes are caused by tectonic activity. We get fried, but we wouldn't have to worry. We don't have to worry. We wouldn't have to get earthquake insurance is what you're saying. That's right. And this way we get fried from above instead of from below because if there's no tectonic activity

and the earth is cold, that means also no volcanoes, right? So no like devastating lava flows and super volcanoes. You see in that movie where a super volcano comes up from underneath Los Angeles and basically kills everybody but the good-looking actors? Wow. Is that the one with the megashark in it or? That swims through magma? Wow.

I want to see that one. I think there's a robo-mega shark, too. I believe, I mean, I wouldn't know I don't watch these kinds of movies, but... Yeah, and it transforms into an electric guitar, right? Yeah. No, so on the good side, you would have no more earthquakes, and you would have no more volcanoes. Right. But, yeah, you would also, you would have no more magnetic field, and then you would have no more mountains. Because remember that mountains, like the Himalayas, these are caused by tectonic plates ramming into each other and forcing dirt up and up and up.

And then mountains are sort of worn down by rain and wind and all that stuff. And so if you have no more tectonic activity, you don't have any fresh mountains. Wait, are you saying that we're still making mountains today? The earth is still like making fresh mountains? Yeah, I think the Himalayas get higher every year because India is basically ramming into the rest of Asia and causing the Himalayas. And so that's still going up. A lot of mountains are getting softer and softer because, you know, that tectonic activity has ceased for whatever reason. and then the rain wears them down.

Oh, wow. But, yeah, there's still some fresh, sharp mountains out there. Well, that's the reason I haven't climbed Mount Everest, to be honest, because, you know, it's just going to get taller. You're waiting for it to meet me. I'm waiting for the peak to peak, yeah. That's right. Because if you climb it this year, the next year comes somebody to say, well, you didn't climb the real Mount Everest, right? You missed a centimeter.

Yeah, I want to climb it at peak, peakness. Okay. All right. I'll sign you up to climb out of Everest in about two million years. 1.75 billion years, I guess that would be. All right, well, thank you for a threat. And thank you to everyone who submitted a question. We get tons of questions, right, Daniel?

We do, and we love them, and we answer every email. So if you have personal curiosity about the universe, if there's something that you are just dying to know the answer to, then, hey, become a scientist or just email us. That's probably easier. Yeah. And if you're a 99-year-old alien, we definitely want to hear from you because we have questions.

That's right. How did you stay so young? Lava Botox. Obviously, Daniel, is the answer. That's right. All right. Well, 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. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweetie. Monica Patton, Elaine Welteroth.

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