Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions 43: Light, heat and vision

Episode Date: September 28, 2023

Daniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners like you! Send in your questions to [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, host of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. I know how overwhelming it can feel if flying makes you anxious. In session 418 of the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, Dr. Angela Neal-Barnett and I discuss flight anxiety. What is not a norm is to allow it to prevent you from doing the things that you want to do, the things that you were. made to do. Listen to therapy for black girls on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. House prizes are through the roof. Temperature is really hot. And the people, I think, are pretty hot.

Are you guys, like, in danger of melting into a puddle of hotness? Yeah, it's like a big volcano out here. So where is the epicenter from where is all this hotness flowing? I'm not giving you my home address, man. It's too hot. Hi, I'm Jorge M. Cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great Big Universe. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I totally dig the heat. You like the heat. Oh, absolutely. I'm a desert person. Heat and dry air is my jam.

You and lizards. Me and lizards, exactly. Lizards know what's up, man. You don't see lizards in Chicago in the winter for a reason. It's miserable. Well, maybe they just don't like deep dish pizza. I'm pretty sure there were no lizards in Chicago like 500 years ago before pizza was even invented. I'm pretty sure there were dinosaurs in Chicago 500 million years ago. But, you know, it's not miserable for people who love the snow, and I'm just not one of those people. Your snow, snow fan. It's a slippery subject.

Ooh, an icy reception there from Daniel Whiteson. But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, explain the universe, a production of IHeart Radio. in which we treat the universe with a warm heart and an open mind. We try to soak up all of the information that's coming to us from the distant cosmos and from our nearby star to get an understanding of how everything works, to tell ourselves a mathematical story about how the universe clicks together and operates to make this incredible cosmos that we live in. That's right, because it is a pretty hot universe full of things going on,

things moving about, and a lot of attractive forces going on. And repulsive, I guess. at the same time. I guess hot is pretty relative, though. I mean, compared to the history of the universe, we're basically at its coldest moment. Ever? Isn't the universe going to get colder?

Well, it's the coldest moment so far. Absolutely. The universe just keeps cooling and cooling as it expands. So every moment is the coldest moment we've ever had. But it also means it's the hottest or as pretty hot compared to how cold it's going to get. That's right. We're all getting less and less hot as time goes on.

I don't know about all of us. I think I'm aging pretty well. You and Harrison Ford are violating thermodynamics. That's right. That's right. Unlike, I guess, Keanu Reeves, who's not aging at all. I thought you were about to say he's aging badly. I was holding my breath there.

No, no, I think the whole universe agrees. Keanu Reeves is not aging. He's frozen in time somehow. That's true. He's somehow violating the loss of physics. Maybe he's a lizard, too. Let's get him on the podcast and ask his opinion of deep dish pizza. Yeah, we'll place a call.

especially I have to recall the belizzard. But it is a pretty interesting universe full of all kinds of things going on and all kinds of questions to ask about it, which is the job of scientists and also the public and everyday people. It's just part of being human to be curious about the nature of the world we live in. You can't help but ask yourself questions when you see something. How does that work? How does that connect with this other idea I have?

If the universe is microscopically all these tiny whizzing particles, how does that all come together to make this rock feel hot too much? me right now. There's so many questions we can ask about the nature of the universe, and we want you to ask them because it's a deep part of the joy of being human, and also it literally fuels all of our science. If humanity stop being curious about science, we wouldn't get to do it anymore. So please keep asking questions. Or at least keep funding scientists to ask questions professionally. But yeah, everyone can ask questions, though. Everyone can, everyone should, and everyone does ask questions. And on this podcast, we encourage you to send us,

questions. If you're curious about something you don't understand, please write to us to questions at Danielanhorpe.com. We write back to everybody. We answer everybody's questions, even if it takes one reply or a whole series of emails. That's right. Sometimes the questions you send in, we'll get an answer. And sometimes we pick them to be on the podcast because they're so interesting that we think that everyone would be interesting knowing the answer. That's right. And so from the daily onslaught of emails from listeners, I picked a new batch of questions. for us to answer. So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling.

Listener questions. Number 43. Light, vision, and heat. That sounds like an album title. Daniel and Horace explains the universe. The sound and the fury. Light vision and heat. It sounds like our 80s electronic album.

Yeah, there you go. Pull out that synthesizer, man. Well, or we can just beatbox it, I guess. How's your singing voice? I got a bare tone. It's out of tune, but I got a baritone. I'll just do the do do do do do. But yeah, we got some awesome questions here today about light, vision, and heat,

about what kinds of particles humans can and might be able to see in the future, about how to vaporize, liquid water, and about the spectrum of light. So let's dig into it. Our first question comes from Milo, who's six years old. Hey, guys, I have a question. Could people evolve to see other things? There are particles besides photons, like neutrons, protons, and a whole bunch more. Awesome question from a six-year-old.

That's amazing. There's like so many science concepts in that one question. I know. I feel like there's a whole high school curriculum there. Milo is amazing. Wow. I don't think I knew about neutrons, protons, and a whole bunch more when I was six years old. I don't think I was pondering the evolution of human sensory organs at six years old.

I felt like neutrons, protons, and a whole bunch more should be like a breakfast cereal that Milo invents. Neutrinos already sounds like a breakfast cereal name. Nutrinos? Like, do you take your neutrinos with milk? Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm kind of neutral to it. Oat milk, soy milk. You all charge the same. Seems like something you need is just a tiny little sip of, right? Nobody has a big bowl of neutrinos. Just like a little espresso shot of neutrinos.

to start your day. Well, it depends on your diet, I guess. But yeah, it's an interesting question, and let's break it down here. So, Milo wants to know, could people evolve to see other particles besides photons? Other particles like neutrons, protons, and a bunch more. Yeah, it's a really cool question. And he starts with seeing, right? Can we see other particles besides photons?

And he's right that technically what we're seeing are photons. Like when you look out at the view in front of you, you're getting light bounced off of the rocks and the trees. and the grass and the water, different wavelengths are coming and hitting your eyes and making up that vision that you see. So when you see, it's the photons around you that you are most directly seeing. Yeah. And how does that work? I guess a photon enters your eye and it hits the receptor cones in the back of your eye and then that creates a brain signal. Yeah, there are these amazing proteins inside the rods and cones of your eyeball, which respond to various

frequencies of light. They're like flip a switch. They change their configuration. And that generates a signal, which goes down the optic nerve, and then your brain interprets it as a certain color or brightness or darkness. And we did a fun podcast episode about, like, the amazing ability of the human eye to see a single individual photon. There are these incredible experiments they did. We've verified that the human eye can detect a single photon at a time. Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

But I guess those only respond to photons, right, which is light. Like if you shoot it with another kind of particle, would it create, Is it possible that it can create a signal that you might detect? So probably not. If one of those proteins got hit by a proton or a neutron or something, it wouldn't react the same way and give you that signal. But remember that those rods and cones are embedded kind of deep in your eye. You have to get all the way through like the lens and the fluid

and all that stuff to the back of the eyeball. So if a proton hit those rods and cones directly, you probably wouldn't see it. But another question is what would happen if you shot a single proton or neutron into your eyeball, would you then see it? And the answer to that is probably yes. What? What do you mean?

Well, a proton and a neutron will not just pass through your eyeball. It will interact with the material in your eyeball. Protons and neutrons are made out of corks. The stuff in your eyeball is made out of corks. So protons and neutrons will not just pass through your eyeball. It's like throwing a tennis ball at a rock wall. It's either going to bounce off or it's going to smash through. And when it smashes through, it's going to break open those particles.

And it's going to create all sorts of. showers of particles, including photons. So you might see like a flash of light as a proton enters your eye, maybe hit some of the water inside of your eyeball, and then it creates like a little light spark. Exactly. And so you can argue about whether you're technically seeing the proton because the rods and cones themselves are not interacting with the proton, but the proton is causing a shower of particles, some of which are photons.

And that's actually how we see protons like at the Large H-Torne Collider. You create a proton in the collision. You don't see the proton directly. It smashes into these layers of steel or depleted uranium and then creates showers of particles, which we then can see, mostly the photons that are created. So you have like a little particle collider in your eye. Large eye collider. I'm not recommending anybody shoot protons at their eyeball, but I'm saying if it did happen,

you probably would see a flash. If there's high enough energy, if you just like very gently throw a proton at your eyeball, it'll just bounce off the same way like a tennis ball will bounce off of a wall but a bullet shooting really hard will penetrate in and so it just depends

on the energy of the proton you mean like the speed of it like it has to be going fast enough for you to maybe be able to see a proton or neutron exactly if it's going really slow it's just going to bounce off and the same is true of a neutron

the neutron is also a little bag of quarks if you shoot in a very high energy at your eyeball it'll create little flashes of light inside your eyeball and you'll see them but it's also I think not good right If you shoot a bunch of protons into your eye, it's going to kill your eyes, isn't it? Yeah, these are many bullets, right?

You're shooting tiny bullets at eyeballs, not something we recommend. I mean, I'm answering the question, would you see it? The answer is yes, not should you do it? That answer is definitely no. Do not do this experiment. Or like, for example, when astronauts are out there in space and near orbit, I mean, they need a lot of shielding in the space station just because of things like protons and neutrons raining down on them, right?

Like, those are not good to be hit with. Yeah, exactly. Cosmic rays are nothing but high energy particles in space, usually produced by the sun or from other stars, et cetera. Those are high energy electrons or protons, et cetera. And yeah, you don't want to get hit by those. Those are tiny bullets, and they can pass through your body and cause all sorts of damage. They can wreck your DNA. They can deposit energy, all sorts of stuff. And that's true. Any particle that has the strong force, meaning it's made of corks, or any particle that has electromagnetism. You shoot an electron at your eyeball. The same kind of stuff is going to happen. It's going to generate photons as it interacts with your eyeball.

And that's true of basically any particle we know about except neutrinos. Well, wait, electrons. Electrons might possibly activate one of your eye sensors, right? Irods or cones, couldn't it? Because they sort of work electrically. Yeah, it's going to be one step removed because the way an electron would interact with it is by emitting a photon. And so it's a photon more directly that you're seeing.

And when an electron enters a medium like that, it slows down or changes direction. and to do so, it emits photons. So electrons will also create showers of photons when they hit something. And that, again, happens at particle colliders. We produce very high-energy electrons, and they create these showers of photons, which then produce more electrons, which produce more photons. And you start out with, like, one high-energy particle. You end up with, like, a billion lower-energy photons.

But could an electron maybe make it all the way to the back of your eye and hit one of your eye sensor and then flip the switch? An electron could make it all the way back to your eye and hit one of those proteins, but those proteins are very sensitive, right? They're designed to respond only to certain frequencies of light, which is how you can tell the difference between green and red and blue because some sensors have flipped and other sensors have not flipped. So a random electron banging into it, I don't know what's going to happen.

It's sort of like asking, like, what poem would you type if you randomly mash on the keyboard? I don't know. So you're saying we can see electron poetry. That's what I got from that. No, I'm just kidding. You might see an occasional electron directly, but it's not likely, maybe. Yeah, mostly you would see an electron if it creates photons in your eyeball, which it would.

If it's moving at high speed through the medium of your eyeball, it will be creating photons as it interacts with atomic electrons and atomic nuclei. All right. Now, what about my last question, a second part of the question, which asks about a bunch more particles. What about all the other particles? Yeah, so the other particles are ones that don't have electromagnetic or strong interactions. And so far, that list is just neutrinos that might also include dark matter eventually, right?

So, like, you can ask, could we evolve to detect neutrinos? Well, in principle, it is possible to detect neutrinos. It's just that neutrinos are very, very hard to detect. There's lots of them all over the place, but they interact very, very rarely. So, for example, in order to detect the existence of neutrinos in the first place, they had to set up these instruments that have like 100,000 gallons, of special fluid just to detect a few neutrinos a week when there's like trillions and trillions of them passing through. That means that the physics is there for materials to interact with

neutrinos, which means you could evolve a body part to do it, but it would have to be enormous. Well, what happens when I feel like your eyeball is sort of like one of these water detectors, right, like liquid detectors, right? I mean, it is technically possible for a neutrino, because we're getting shower with them by the billions, trillions. It is possible for one of them to interact with maybe a water molecule inside your eye and generate some photons, right? Oh, yeah, it's totally possible. In that sense, yes, your eyeball can see neutrinos indirectly. The same way you can see electrons, like a neutrino passing through your eyeball,

could give an electron a little kick, and that electron could then generate some photons, or give an atomic nucleus a kick and break it apart, or that nucleus could vibrate and rotate and then emit a photon. So, yeah, indirectly, neutrinos can deposit their energy inside the stuff, your eyeball and then you could see it. It's just that it's much less likely. Like you shoot an electron at your eyeball, you're almost definitely going to see every individual single electron.

You shoot a neutrino at your eyeball. You have like a one in a gazillion chance of seeing it. So you can't detect neutrinos, just not all of them, I guess, or it's very unlikely for you to detect the neutrino. Yeah. If you wanted to like use neutrino vision, if you wanted to have a reliable neutrino sense, you'd have to evolve some kind of eyeball

that was either very, very, very large. You know, we're talking like swimming pool size tanks of liquid or very, very, very dense. So the neutrinos had a harder time getting through it. It seems pretty impractical unless, you know, you're enormous. Or maybe you just don't need to detect all of them, right? Like night vision. I think in the case of night vision, you are detecting those photons.

You're super sensitive to individual ones because they're so rare. But you're right. We don't need to necessarily detect all of them. I guess it depends on what you want to do. Like, what are neutrinos useful for? can you know about the universe if you could see neutrinos? That's an interesting question. What would happen if you could?

Would you have like x-ray vision, kind of? Well, you know, if you could see neutrinos, then you could see the sun during the nighttime because you could look through the earth and see the neutrinos because they pass almost entirely unscathed through the earth. And people have done this. They've built neutrino telescopes and pointed them at the earth at nighttime and you can see the sun. So you can like verify the sun is still there during nighttime if that's the kind of thing

you worry about. Like the sun would be underneath your feet. Yeah. So I guess in principle, you could prove that the sun will rise tomorrow if you had neutrino eyeballs. You could predict when the sun will rise. Well, I feel like that's a big part of Milo's question, which is like, could people evolve to see these particles?

To evolve something, it has to be kind of useful to evolution, right? To the species. Otherwise, life wouldn't bother getting that ability. Exactly. In developing new bits costs energy. And so it has to have some sort of benefit. It's interesting to think about that, though, because I think that life on Earth existed for hundreds of millions of years

before any of it was photosensitive. Right? We'd be like bathed in photons and totally blind to them. I'm talking about our microbial ancestors before anybody evolved it. And the same way that like there was no ability to hear sounds for hundreds of millions of years before hearing evolved. So it could take a long time, even for things that seem obvious and have huge benefits.

In the case of neutrinos, like, I can't hardly even think of a benefit. Like, it's not going to help you find food or evade hunters. Maybe you could help you, like, see through a mountain to see if there are caves in there where you could, like, build a home. I'm really reaching for the application of neutrino eyeballs. Well, it sounds like having x-ray vision would be useful, right? Like if there's a predator hiding behind a tree or something. Yeah, but you're going to see right through the predator and through the tree.

But you would see maybe a hint of the predator behind the tree, couldn't you? Sort of how x-rays work. the predator and the tree had like different sensitivities to neutrinos, but both of them are going to be like totally invisible to neutrinos. So you're not going to be able to see it. I mean, you could see a predator if they were like generating neutrinos. Oh, you know, what you could do is you could detect nuclear reactors all over the world, right? Because those generate neutrinos. Oh, there you go. You could detect atomic bombs going off, that kind of stuff. I'm not sure seeing it before it happens. Is going to really help you once you, if you're that close to

an atomic bomb. Yeah, an atomic bomb's not famously subtle anyway. Yeah, yeah. You would see and feel it in other ways. But it would be super cool and it's fascinating that there is all this stuff going on in the universe right around us that we don't have senses to. I feel like that's sort of what Milo is reaching for is like he wants to know more about what's out there in the universe. He wants to see more. He wants to experience more of these things about the universe. And I totally get that. Like I feel the same way. I want to know what's out there. I feel like we can only see this time. tiny sliver of what's really happening in the universe. Sounds like you need to evolve, Daniel.

It's either that or get frozen in time like Keanu Reeves. I can't decide. Yeah. How do you know Kenner Reeves can't see neutrinos? Maybe lizards can see neutrinos. His career is sort of like an atomic bomb. That's true. Yeah, he keeps blowing up.

All right. Well, I think that answers my last question. Could people evolve to see other particles besides photons? The answer is, yes, technically, you could. And you have sort of in a way. You can sense with your eyes. You can sense particles like high-speed protons and neutrons and electrons. You can see those with your eyeballs right now if they shoot into your eyes.

Again, not recommended, but you can't do it. And you can maybe even imagine evolving your eye in some way that you are more sensitive to those things, right? Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, thanks for the question, Mila. Let's get to some of these other questions about vaporizing water and also the spectrum of light. But first, let's take a question. break.

Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer.

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For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're answering listener questions here today. And we have some awesome questions by light, vision, and heat. It's getting pretty hot in here. It's funny. try to group these questions by topic, but these just came in right one after another. People are just naturally thinking about these things at the same time around the world or something. It's a hot topic. All right, well, let's get to our next question, which comes from Mark

from the UK. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. My name is Mark, and I'm calling from London, UK. I have a hypothetical question for you. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to melt my one kilogram block of ice in the fastest time possible. You can use any existing tools or technology, but I'd like one kilogram of liquid water as a result of your efforts. So how will you do it? How long will it take you? And why can't it be done any faster? Many thanks. Love the podcast. All right. Awesome question from Mark. I feel like he's challenging us. He is. Exactly. This sounds like more of a question for engineers than physicists.

You mean people who can actually do it? People who like have useful skills to solve real world problems. I'm with you. I'm not arguing at all. We'll have to ask that question at my other podcast. Or it fixes the universe with engineering. Jorge melts your ice. There you go. All right. Well, so the challenge for Mark is to take a one kilogram block of ice and melt it into liquid water, but just liquid, I guess, not a liquid water vapor in the fastest way possible.

It's like a race. Yeah, it's a really interesting challenge. You know, the physics or I guess the chemistry underlying it, of course, is that you need to get some end. energy into this ice. You need to heat it up. You need to get those molecules moving so they break those bonds and they relax and change phases from solid into liquid. So it's all about getting energy into this object as fast as possible. Yeah. And the tricky thing is you want to liquefy, not vaporize. Yeah. He started out saying milk. And then I was thinking, hmm, interesting. We could just like zap that thing with energy. But then he was very specific. He wants a kilogram of liquid

water not steam. So you can't just like blow up a nuclear bomb next to it because that's going to vaporize it. So he's thirsty. He doesn't want to saun it. Yeah, I don't know if he has an actual situation where this will improve his life or if he's just challenging us. Usually people want to freeze water, right? Or right now the problem is that the ice caps are melting, which is the opposite problem. Yeah, exactly. All right. So you're saying a bomb would not work. Like if I explode a bomb, a grenade, a nuclear bomb next to a block of ice, that would definitely take it away from being solid, but it would maybe take it too far and would vaporize it.

Yeah, essentially it would overshoot, right? It would deposit an incredible amount of energy, vaporize it into fraction of a second, but it wouldn't be something we could then pass to Mark and say, here's your kilogram of liquid water. It would not only be vaporized, it would be dispersed. Wouldn't it just get blown away, like pushed out of the way? Oh, would the block of ice survive?

Mm-hmm. Or parts of it, I don't know. I guess it depends on how big of the bomb. It depends on how big the bomb is and how close you are to it. But it's definitely going to be a fireball. And there's going to be a huge amount of energy, right, dumped into it. It's uncontrolled. Yeah, you're dumping an incredible amount of energy into the air.

And then that creates a shockwave, which travels outwards. So it probably would shatter the ice also and dump energy into it. All right. So a bomb or something explosive wouldn't work. Can we use technology? Can we just stick it in a microwave? Yeah, a microwave is a cool idea because it deposits energy, right? You take the energy, you create this radiation,

that radiation then gets absorbed by the material, and then it heats up. And it's actually especially good at heating up water. Molecules like water have these partial electric dipoles, meaning that they're like more positively charged in one direction and more negatively charged in the other direction, and these get like spun around by the waves. The waves go back and forth, and the molecules spin back and forth. So it's actually a very efficient way to heat up liquid water,

If you have a tub of liquid water, you put it in the microwave, it's very, very efficient. Dump that energy into the motion, the wiggling of those molecules, heat it up. Unfortunately, it doesn't work nearly as well for frozen water, which is what we're starting with. Because in frozen, the molecules can't wiggle, so you can't really, like, get them moving. And you might have noticed that you put something frozen in the microwave, it takes a long time to defrost it. Well, they do sort of wiggle, but they maybe wiggle in place, or maybe they don't wiggle as much.

Yeah, exactly. They don't wiggle as effectively, which is why it's more. more efficient to put energy into liquid water than frozen water using a microwave. So if your goal is to take water from frozen to liquid, a microwave is not a very efficient way to do it. But it would work. It's also kind of uncontrolled, right? Like you might be turning some of those water molecules into vapor, right? Because you're just shooting microwaves into it.

You're not controlling which water molecules get the energy. Yeah, you're going to get hot spots and cold spots, right? And so some of it's going to vaporize and other bees are still going to be frozen. Exactly. Mark is not going to be a happy customer. All right. So what else can we do to liquefy this block of ice? So Mark says we can use any existing technology. So I'm thinking, let's go basic. Let's like chop this thing up because our goal is to dump a bunch of energy into it. And a challenge of the block of ice is getting to the core of it. How do you heat up the center of it?

So I thought, well, let's like take this block of ice and chop it into a lot of tiny little pieces. And then we can just melt those individual pieces by like pouring hot water over them. Wait, what? You can pour hot water. into it? Yeah, if you have an ice cube and you can just pour hot water onto it and that will melt the ice cube. So your strategy would be chop it up and then dump it all into a not steaming but still hot tub of water. Exactly. And if you wanted to melt even faster, you can even pour salt water on it because salt water melts at a lower temperature than distilled water. I don't know that Mark really wants to drink a kilogram of salt water, but that would melt

faster. I don't know if he wants to drink a whole cup full of salt water. That's your plan. I feel like you've just multiplied his water, sort of like a certain character from the Bible. Another option is to sort of take advantage of the weird chemistry of water. Water has this weird property that ice takes up more volume than liquid water. When you freeze it, it gets bigger instead of getting smaller. And so the opposite effect is cool. When you apply pressure to ice, it tends to melt because you're squeezing it down. So it prefers to change phase down to water, which takes less volume. So you're saying like if I just put pressure on my block of ice, it'll melt?

The phase diagram of water has this weird angle on it. And for some temperatures of ice, if you do increase the pressure, it will turn into water. So like a regular ice temperature, like 0C, that would work? Yeah, 0C. If you increase the pressure, it will turn into water. It won't increase the temperature, right? If you just increase the pressure and keep the temperature the same, then technically it'll be water.

Now, you can't really like serve that to Mark because as soon as you take away the pressure, it's going to turn back into an ice cube. But you could deliver to him a high pressure kilogram of water in some intense container. Well, what if you just kind of like squeeze it between in a vice or something, you know, like a press? Wouldn't that just instantly increase the pressure inside the block of ice and melt it? If you increase it in a press, it's going to crush it, right? You're going to get crushed ice.

How much would you have to squeeze it without breaking it for it to increase the pressure to the melting point? It depends a little bit on the temperature, but I think the key thing here is you need to maintain that pressure to keep it liquid. And in a device, you crush it and then it like what falls down and it's no longer like contained. So I'm talking about like putting it in some like hyper pressure chamber. Oh, I see. So you're saying putting it inside of a tank and then rapidly pour a bunch of air into the tank to increase the pressure inside the tank. Would that just instantly melt the whole block or what would happen? I don't think it would melt the whole block instantly.

I think it would work from the outside in as the outer layers are applying pressure to the inner layers. So I don't know exactly how fast it would be, but it is another way to melt ice. So then, I guess, Mark's question was which is the fastest way? I think the fastest way is to chop it up and grind it and then pour water over it. But those are just my impractical physicist ideas. I'm curious to hear your thoughts as an actual problem-solving engine. I think he asked a question of you, Daniel, not me. Okay, well, then my answer is, I'll consult with my mechanical engineering friend.

Oh, well, then my answer would be, let's try a whole bunch of times and see which one is faster. Okay. That's how an engineer would tackle. Screw first principles, let's just try all of them. Yeah, basically. Well, you know, guided by first principles, you would come up with a bunch of different solutions, try them out and see. which one works faster. So I guess the answer is

give us some money and we'll give you an answer. This is going to take a lab and some resources here, Mark, because our physicist has no clear answer here. Or maybe we should crowdsource it. Maybe somebody out there has a lab that can do these things and enjoys melting ice cubes and

has done these experiments. If so, get in touch. Oh, there you go. It could be the latest TikTok trend. What's the fastest you can melt the block of ice? How big is a kilogram of water of ice? A kilogram of water is not very much, right? It's a thousand milliliters. It's just a liter of water.

Actually, I have figured out the fastest way to turn this a liter of ice into water for Mark. What's that? I would just swap it out. Take his block of ice, hand him a liter of water, done. That's how an engineer would solve this problem. We have no shortage of liquid water. Let's just serve him up some of it. That's right, yeah.

It's an instant solution. I like it. There you go. All right. Well, I think that answers Mark's question. Let's get to our last question, which is about the spectrum of light and heat from the human body. But first, let's take another quick break. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your receptions and give you new insight on the people around you.

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Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency, and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this, pull that, turn this. It's just... I can do my eyes close.

I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devon. And on our new show, no such thing. We get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing.

Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, it's HoneyGerman. 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, I'm me. But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Culture podcast network on the IHartRadio 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, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan. starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt

when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, Listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, we're getting to our last question of the day, and this one is pretty interesting. It's about body heat. So things might get a little hot. It comes from Eldon from Australia.

Hello, my question is about infrared light and heat and how they relate to each. other. I was taught that light comes into the planet as visible light, hits the surface of the earth, is absorbed, and then reflected as a lower energy infrared, which is what causes the greenhouse effect. Now, what happens to the excess energy when a visible light is absorbed by the earth and then re-emitted as the lower energy infrared? What happens to the infrared that is directly radiated from the sun? Does it hit the earth and get reflected as a lower energy microwave? Also, if you stand in front of a fire, it is giving off visible an infrared light. Is it giving off any other frequencies of light? And what is infrared's relationship with the thermal heating of particles from the fire?

Does a fire's heat come from infrared or the oscillation of air particles or maybe both? Why do we feel infrared as heat? That's my main question. Is heat just how the human body sensors infrared? What I'm asking is essentially how does heat relate to infrared and how does infrared relate to heat. I've wondered about this phenomenon since I was a little boy. Cheers. All right. Awesome question or questions from Eldon from Australia. I feel like he's not like seven questions in there. I know. Eldon is very curious about how hot he is feeling and whether it's due to infrared light or what. Yeah. And I've been to Australia and it is pretty hot there. And also the people are pretty hot as well. And the housing market I hear also. Yeah, yeah. And the

lizards are pretty big as well. So yeah, yeah, I guess it's just maybe a kind of a general question about how heat or what we interpret this heat is related to infrared and the spectrum of light. Exactly. He talks about a lot of different contexts there where infrared light is bouncing around and being absorbed and emitted. So maybe we should start with like what is infrared light anyway? What are we talking about?

And remember that infrared light is just a kind of light. Light comes in lots of different wavelengths from very, very long wavelengths to very, very short wavelengths and a tiny fraction of that spectrum we can see, we call it visible light. And there's a lot of wavelengths of light we just can't see. Infrared light, for example, has wavelengths that are too long for us to see. Ultraviolet light has wavelengths that are too short for us to see. So infrared light in the end is just light with long wavelengths, too long for us to see with our eyeballs.

Okay, that's infrared light. How would you define heat? So heat is a very tricky topic because it's used in so many. ways in so many different contexts it's too hot to handle it's too hot to handle you know there's like the colloquial sense of heat where like you are feeling warm right you feel like there's energy being transferred to you you're warming up and then there's like the thermodynamic definition of heat which is maybe not so useful because it's physicists using normal sounding words to find something very very technical and in thermodynamics heat is energy transfer thermal energy transfer between

systems that doesn't count as work. Not something that's like spinning a turbine or lifting something up, all that other kind of energy transfer they call heat. But I think maybe you're getting a little too technical. I think maybe you can just replace the word hot. Like what does it mean for something to be hot?

It's maybe kind of more of what Eldon is asking. Yeah, I don't think Elden is asking about the details of thermodynamics. Right. But we do know. I think he is, but I think he wants to translate it to everyday terms. Yeah. And so, you know, what we feel, as heat is energy flowing from like hot objects to cold objects.

So something that's hot is something that has kind of energy as stored in it and how the molecules are moving? Heat and temperature are not exactly the same thing, right? Temperature is like a measure of how much energy is inside something. Like particles are whizzing around microscopically. If they're whizzing around really, really fast, that thing is hot. If they're whizzing around slowly, then that thing is cold. So that's temperature.

It's like a property of an object. Heat is the flow of energy from one. thing to another. So you have something that's hot and something that's cold. Heat is the flow of energy from the hot thing to the cold thing. Okay. So you're saying something can be hot but not give off a lot of heat and something can be hot and give off a lot of heat. Well, it depends a little on the context, right? You have something at 100 degrees. It's either going to absorb energy or give off energy based on what it's next to. If it's next to something colder, it's going to lose energy too. If it's next to something hotter, it's going to gain energy from it. But I think

what Eldon is talking about is like things glowing. Like you're standing next to to a fire or you're getting energy from the sun, right? So what he's talking about is like things essentially emitting light because everything out there does emit. Like you stand next to a rock, it's emitting light. You can't see that light with your eye, but it is emitting light. Everything emits light based on its temperature. The sun emits light at certain frequencies because it's super duper hot.

Those frequencies of light happen to be visible. But everything, your body, the earth, rocks, even tiny dust particles in space give off light. usually at much lower frequencies than we can see. So I guess you're saying that when something is hot, it naturally gives off light. But if it's sort of warm and not super duper hot, then most of the light it gives off is in the infrared. That's why we kind of associate, at least in our human experience, hot things with infrared. Yeah, everything glows in the infrared.

But there's another aspect to this, right, which is like how your body responds to these different frequencies. I mean, you can see some of them with your eyeballs and you can't. fancy other ones, but also they impact your body differently. Like if you have a whole spectrum of light hitting you, then your body responds differently to infrared light and visible light and ultraviolet light and like super duper high energy photons. And infrared light actually will make you feel warmer more than those other frequencies because it's very good at being absorbed by your body.

Like we were just talking about with microwaves, your body is good at absorbing infrared radiation because it's well matched to like the vibrational frequencies of your molecules. And so that's, I think, the connection that Eldon was asking about between heat and infrared, which is that what we call infrared, which is really just like another frequency of light, but it just happens to be the frequency of light that's just beyond our visible spectrum that we can see. That range of frequencies is somehow tuned to our molecules, just like the microwave is kind of. Exactly. It can penetrate into your body and heat up stuff. And you might think, well, hold on.

second the other frequencies of light actually have higher energy like ultraviolet light and blue light has a shorter wavelength and a higher energy right and it does have more energy that's true but you don't feel it as heat because of how it penetrates your body uv light is mostly absorbed in a very thin outer layer of your skin that's why for example uv light will give you a sunburn and as you go even higher energy like x-rays your body's mostly transparent to x-rays x-rays will pass through your body without interacting. So even though x-rays do have more energy, they don't deposit it in your body. And even though ultraviolet light does have more energy than infrared, you don't feel warm when you're bathed in it because it's mostly just like toasting your skin. But then if it's

toasting your skin, you would feel it as heat, wouldn't you? Well, you do feel it as heat sort of indirectly in the way that you're like, feel a sunburn, right? You can sit out in the sun and get sunburn, but you don't feel it immediate. Your skin is absorbing that energy and it is getting damaged, but it's not increasing in temperature the same way, right? Whereas like if you were bathed in infrared light, then it's actually shaking those molecules and making them wiggle. Temperature of your flesh goes up. Whereas if you're bathed in UV light, it's mostly just like doing damage to those cells. And eventually you'll feel warm because you'll feel sunburned and that always feels like uncomfortably glowy, but sort of in a different way. But in either case,

they're depositing energy into your body, right? Like both the UV rays and the infrared are both depositing energy is just that somehow we feel the infrared energy light more or it's just your body's more efficient at absorbing infrared light. And your body's so efficient at absorbing ultraviolet that it doesn't even penetrate very far beyond your skin. It all gets deposited into your skin. You don't feel it immediately as temperature because mostly it's like breaking bonds inside your cells and doing all sorts of damage. Whereas infrared light will penetrate more deeply, but it also has a different effect on the particles, the objects. It makes them rotate and spin and vibrate.

It doesn't necessarily break them down, but it heats it up. I think you're saying like what kinds of light are depositing energy on your body, but the UV light, it's being destructive when it does that, which you don't feel like your temperature receptors in your skin are not designed to feel your cells being destroyed. But the infrared light, sort of like the microwave, it does kind of shake the molecules in your skin,

which translates more directly to heat, which your heat sensors are tuned to detect. Exactly. And so if you had the option, for example, to stand in front of a 100 watt UV bulb or 100 watt infrared bulb, and you wanted to feel warm, you should stand in front of the infrared bulb

because it's going to more efficiently transfer that energy into the temperature of your flesh. Now, of course, you do it too long and it's going to cook you, and that's not something we recommend here on the podcast. That's a little too hot. He also was asking about, like, if you stand in front of a fire,

what's happening there. And a fire is definitely emitting in the infrared, but it's also releasing a lot of chemical energy, which is just like heating up the molecules of the air, and then those molecules of the air are depositing energy new. And that's just like thermodynamic transfer. It's just like if you stand next to something warm, in this case the air near you is warm from the fire, then that warm air is depositing energy on your body, not by radiating light, just by like molecules bouncing off of each other.

But the fire is also generating visible light, right? Like, that's why you can see the fire and it's bright. That's right. So the fire is heating you in lots of ways. It's like directly heating the air, which is heating you up. And it's also emitting light and infrared. Also, everything is glowing in the infrared. And the infrared light does heat you up as well.

All right. So then I think to answer the question is like if you have a fire going in front of you, is generating light in the almost the full spectrum of light. Some of that and light being given off is in the UV, which is heating you up. Technically, destroying the cells in your body. but you're not feeling as heat. Some of that light is in the infrared, which you do feel as heat

because your cells are sort of tuned to receive that kind of energy. And some of it is being transmitted to the air molecules, which you then feel as hot wind. And then if you have a very nice fire in your backyard, it increases the resale value of your house, which makes the housing market hotter.

That's right. Unless it gets out of control and it burns your house. Then you're in hot water. Which Mark from the UK might enjoy. Yeah. Or if your house is worth nothing, you might actually be underwater with your mortgage, which will put out the housing market.

There you go. At least for your own personal finances. But again, do not take real estate or financial advice from this podcast, please. That's right. Or engineering advice, apparently from at least half of the podcast. All right. Well, those are three really interesting questions about light, vision, and heat. Thanks to all of our listeners who send in their questions and share their curiosity with us.

And thanks to everybody out there who is powering science with their curiosity. And tax dollars. And tax dollars. The combined force of everybody's curiosity is what moves everything forward. So keep thinking, keep asking questions, keep wondering about the universe. We'll figure it out eventually. Or at least we'll try a bunch of stuff and see which one works. We'll satisfy our requirements technically, even if not spiritually.

Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Hey, it's Jorge from the podcast. And I'm super excited to announce that my new book, Oliver's Great Big Universe, is available to order now. 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 Apple, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer free the next Friday.

No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why are TSA rules so confusing?

You got a hood of you. I'm take it off. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me?

I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney,

the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. tune in on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an IHeart podcast.