Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions 64: Phase of the Universe, particle interactions and Universe-sized black holes!
Episode Date: July 23, 2024Daniel and Jorge answer questions from listeners like you! Send your questions to questions@danielandjorge.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.
The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.
Then, everything changed.
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Hey, Daniel, how many questions to we get about black holes? Oh man, maybe like half of all
of our questions are about black holes. Wow. So even after we talked about it for
so much people still have questions you know i think there's just like a never-ending curiosity
about black holes there's like a black hole of curiosity about black holes
maybe all of our answers are just going into a black hole somewhere or maybe we're in a
black hole and people can't listen to our answers in which case those people should just jump
into the black hole with us and then they can hear all of our explanations that's why we could
all be trapped in a black hole together knowing the truth but never able to escape but at least they can
out with us.
Hi, I'm Jorge McCartunist 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've pretty much accepted the fact that we may never see inside a black hole.
Well, I think that's definitely true, right?
Like, if you're inside of a black hole, can you even see?
If you're inside a black hole, you can see things from outside the universe.
And general relativity tells us we can never see inside a black hole.
But, you know, quantum mechanics opens a little door there.
We might one day be able to crack open.
But maybe not.
There might just be some secrets of the universe forever hidden from us.
But everything else will figure out, right?
Wow, that's so optimistic.
Everything else, definitely, how to get a good night's sleep, definitely sure, how to raise kids without conflict.
Oh, yeah, we'll figure all that stuff out.
I'm sure, yeah.
I mean, compared to black holes, that stuff is easy, right?
Compared to black holes, that stuff is actually hard because there doesn't necessarily have to be an answer.
At least with black holes, there's something in there.
There is a truth.
That's the thing I like about science questions as opposed to like philosophy or, you know, moral questions where there isn't always even an answer.
At least science, you know, there is a truth, even if you don't know it.
What if you can't know it?
Like, what if it's impossible to know, in which case, isn't that the same as there not
being an answer?
Well, now you're asking a philosophical question, to which there is no answer.
Which are even harder questions than black holes.
What's it like to be a bat inside a black hole?
Nobody will ever know.
What's it like to be a banana?
That's an even harder question.
It's a more slippery subject.
Well, some fraction of you is bananas, so you could speak to that question.
Wait, what?
I'm saying you are what you eat and you eat a lot of bananas, so you are some fraction of banana.
But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, explain the universe, a production of our heart radio.
In which we believe without justification that the universe is understandable, that with our little minds, we can somehow build models to explain how it all works out there.
That our little mathematical tools can give us some insight into what's going on,
inside black holes, the early universe, the far future of the universe, and everything in between.
We think that colliding questions and answers is like matter and anti-matter annihilation,
producing huge explosions of understanding.
And we encourage you to think about the universe with us and come along for the journey.
That's right. We'd like to track here.
Humanities worthy attempt at trying to understand how everything around us works and why it came to be the way it is.
and to look into the darkest corners of the universe to ask questions and figure out what's going on even in black holes.
And while most of us don't get paid to think about these things about the universe, it is something that belongs to all of us and something that everybody can enjoy.
We should all be thinking about the fundamental nature of our reality and wondering about it, trying to piece it together in our minds.
And when something doesn't make sense, asking questions, why is it this way?
How does this work?
How does this fit with that thing?
We'd love to encourage you to ask those questions and specifically to ask them to us.
Write to us to questions at Danielanhorpe.com or straight to me to find my email address everywhere online.
We will answer your questions.
Everybody gets an answer.
That's right because we believe everyone is part of science.
Science is a group effort here with humanity because we all have questions about how everything works, why we're here.
and what the true nature of the universe is.
Yes, science is democratic.
It's by the people and for the people.
I'm not sure if it's of the people or not, or of the bananas.
But science is about people.
It's about people.
Some of it, yeah.
Sometimes.
Sometimes, yeah, there are scientific questions about people.
And we encourage everybody to play a role because it's your curiosity that drives all of science forward
and that allows us to do research at the cutting edge
and to figure out the answers to fundamental questions about the,
universe. So please send us your questions. Sometimes I'll get a question and I think, ooh, we should
answer this one on the podcast and I'll ask you to record yourself asking it so we can talk
about it here on the pod. Yeah, sometimes we like to answer listener questions and so today on the
podcast we'll be tackling listener questions. Number 64. It's a special power of two
edition. Oh, 64? Yeah. I think there are a lot of numbers that are the power of
Yeah, but as you go up, there are fewer and fewer.
We're not going to get to another one for a while.
Does that mean we ignore number 32?
We didn't commemorate, yes, unfortunately.
We missed those opportunities.
But I didn't want to let another one slide by unmentioned.
Yes, we need to double our efforts here.
Exactly.
But I wonder if it even makes sense to keep counting these.
You know, I think I've raised this before, but we seem to be doing these pretty often.
Yeah, we've been getting a lot more questions from listeners.
and I feel bad about the baglog,
and so we should be going through these.
But it's helpful to have a number
because then I can point people to them
and let them know when their question is going to be answered.
If you prefer, we can give them a name.
This can be listener questions, Samantha.
Or something.
Bob.
Doug.
Welcome to listener questions, Alfonso.
Well, we have some awesome questions here today,
whether they're from Samantha, Bob, or Alfonso.
And they're about really interesting topics.
We have some questions here
about the beginning of the universe, about matter and antimatter, and of course, about black holes.
What percentage of our questions are about black holes, Daniel? The ones that come in
made me like 50%, but I can't put them all in the pod.
Sounds like we need an offshoot podcast, just about black holes. But anyways, let's jump into it.
Our first question comes from Dale, who lives in Washington. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. My name is Dale and I live in
And I have a question for you.
You often say that at the beginning of our universe,
physics was different when things were really dense and hot,
and that our universe had to cool off and dilute a bit
for things to settle down to the way we see it now.
...that in the future, things will get so cool and dilute
that physics we see now won't work the same way.
Not just the heat death of our universe,
but possibly gravity or time or whatever,
just stops working as we understand it.
Time to answer my question. Love the podcast.
All right. Interesting question. Kind of about the beginning of the universe, but also about
the end of the universe or the future of the universe.
Yeah. And I picked this question to talk about it on the podcast because I think it raises
a really important and kind of subtle issue about the physics that we're doing and what
we know about how the universe works. It has to do with how things emerge from the fundamental
rules of the universe, whether we know those fundamental rules, and whether the emergent stuff
can change over time. Yeah, it kind of raises the idea that maybe the rules of the universe
can change, right? Because the idea that scientists have is that maybe the rules of the universe
have changed or they can change from the beginning of the universe. Yeah, and that is probably
confusing the people because they think, well, the universe follow some rules and how could those
rules change. So I think in your mind it's important to draw a distinction between like the
fundamental laws of the universe, sort of at the base level of reality. We don't know where that is
or what that is or what those laws are, but imagine that they exist as some sort of like
foundational firmament, the basic bits of the universe, how they interact with each other. We think
probably those don't change. Those were true always and they will always be true. But how those
manifest themselves depends on sort of like the temperature and the
conditions of the universe, the same way that you experience like in our everyday life.
Take, for example, a glass of water. You know, you can describe the fluid dynamics of a glass
of water when it's liquid, but those laws don't really apply anymore if you freeze it or
if you turn it into steam. It's still the same basic rules describing like water molecules
and how they interact. Those haven't changed. But the effective laws, what actually helps you
describe what you're seeing, does change as the conditions change. And we think that probably is
also true for particle physics. We think that the laws we have now are not the fundamental
laws of the universe. They're more like the fluid dynamics or the crystal structures of water
or the ideal gas law for steam. They're an effective description of some emerging phenomena
that has bubbled up from the fundamental laws. Meaning there's sort of like F equals M.A. Like it helps
you throw a baseball. It helps you launch a projectile, but it may not necessarily help you
put to particles together.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
F equals MA is an effective law.
You know, a more fundamental description of a baseball is thinking about the quantum
mechanical wave function of all of those particles.
And that's really hard to do.
It's much more useful to talk about the emergent phenomena, the simplicity that somehow emerges
from the chaos that's going on underneath.
And the crucial thing to know is that that's really, really hard to do.
You can't always start from the tiny little bits and blobs, towing and froing and derive
the emerging phenomenon. You mostly just have to observe them and say, oh, look, there is some
simplification here. So when you say that you have some effective laws in particle physics,
what are those laws? Like, how would you describe the laws we have right now? So we have laws
at many, many different layers. You know, for example, we can talk about chemistry. Chemistry are
effective laws. You want to talk about how hydrogen and oxygen come together to make water.
Chemists have all sorts of rules about how that happens. Those are not the fundamental laws of
the universe, they're effective laws. You want to drill down into atomic physics. Talk about like
the structure of the hydrogen atom. There are rules and laws there we can follow. Those are not the
fundamental laws. Then you want to drill down into nuclear physics. We can do calculations. There's
all these different layers at which you can do calculations. None of those are fundamental laws.
Even the most basic level that we do understand, quarks and leptons, the standard model of particle
physics, we sometimes describe those as the fundamental laws of the universe, but we're pretty sure.
they're not. We know, for example, as Dale mentions, that they don't describe the very early
universe, that there's a moment before which our laws cannot describe. And so we know they have to be
effective. They're not fundamental. Right. And I think the idea that these laws are, it can change
or are different. It's not necessarily that they change, but it's more like they only apply to certain
conditions, right? Like F equals, they may works for a baseball and a cannon ball, but doesn't work
for little tiny particles, just like maybe your particle physics laws don't work under certain
conditions, but they don't work maybe under extreme conditions, like maybe the kind we had
at the beginning of the universe.
Yeah, the laws themselves don't change.
The conditions change.
And then which laws are relevant changes?
Just like if you're floating in water, you're going to use a certain set of laws.
And then if somebody boils that into steam, you're not going to use the fluid dynamics anymore.
Now are you going to use your understanding of how gas.
masses work. And so the universe is changing because the universe is cooling. It started off very,
very hot and dense in a state that we can't describe using our current laws because gravity
and quantum mechanics were both important and we don't know how to unify them. And then it cooled
to a place where we could do those calculations because mostly gravity and quantum mechanics
don't intermingle and aren't both relevant so we know how to do those calculations. And the universe
has been cooling ever since. And Dale's question is, are we going to pass into some new phase where
there are some new effective laws in the future of the universe so that these effective laws
aren't really relevant anymore.
Right.
Because like at the beginning of the universe, things were so hot and dense that, I know we mentioned
this in the podcast, that the quantum fields were sort of different.
They hadn't settled yet.
Yeah.
There's sort of two different regimes there.
One is before we can even really talk about quantum fields, where we're in a regime of
quantum gravity because quantum fields can't describe everything because they ignore the gravitational
effects.
So before that, not even quantum fields are relevant.
Then there's a period at the very beginning of the universe that we can describe using quantum fields,
but the quantum fields have so much energy that doesn't really make sense to talk about
individual particles.
The fields themselves are just frothing with energy.
Then as the universe cools, particles start to be a useful thing to talk about because the energy
in the fields is spread out and matter has diluted enough that you have these individual pockets
that are useful to talk about.
And so fields emerge first and then particles.
But isn't there a point sort of where physicists talk about the Higgs field sort of settling or finding a right spot?
Yeah, as the universe cools, all these fields, their energy dissipates.
And a lot of them go towards zero, none of them actually to zero.
And the Higgs field gets stuck at a particularly high value of potential energy, unlike a lot of the other fields.
And that's a process of the whole universe cooling.
But again, Dale's question is about like the far future, are things going to change again so that we might need a new set of a
laws to describe what's going to happen.
Right. I guess the question is like, is the universe going to change or do you foresee the
conditions of the universe changing enough so that our current laws don't even work?
Yeah, it's a good question. What we do think is the universe will keep expanding, which means
it's going to keep cooling. The current average temperature of the universe is about 2.7 Kelvin.
That's the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation that fills the universe
been redshifted down to 2.7 Kelvin. So we're not that far.
from zero, right? We've gone a long way from very high temperature at the early universe down to
approaching zero. There's not much room left. But what we don't know is what the future holds.
But isn't it all sort of relative, though? Yeah, exactly. It's all sort of relative. We don't know
what the future holds. What seems like to us is a small change from zero to two point zero point seven
or two point seven. It could be a big difference. We don't know, right? We don't know. It could be
very rich with interesting new physics on very different timescales. Like say nothing.
fundamentally changes. Maybe the Higgs field doesn't collapse and nothing else fundamentally
changes. As we approach the heat death of the universe, things spread out and keep cooling. It could
be that there are new emergent phenomena that come about, you know, the same particles we know
about now moving very, very slowly, the universe is very cold. There could be interesting things
that happen instead of over microseconds or milliseconds or even seconds over like centuries
or millennia, new emergent phenomena. Wait, wait. Are particles actually going to be
moving slower? They're not, right?
Why do you say that? You might say that the temperature is getting lower,
meaning like the average velocity of the particles per square cubic meter or something
is getting smaller, but individual particles, are they necessarily going to be going slower?
Well, the energy in the universe is decreasing as it expands. Things do get redshifted.
So, for example, photons lose energy, right? As the universe expands, they get stretched, they get redshifted.
So like, let's say a neutrino flying through space, I think we talked about this recently,
If it's just flying through space and space is stretching, it's going to slow down.
So photons do not slow down.
They lose energy.
Particles with mass do get redshifted, though I know you objected to the ease of the word red on that.
And so they do lose energy.
I think an intuitive way to think about it is think about expansion as the opposite of compression.
If you compress things, they heat up, right?
Why?
Because you're confining them to a box.
If something hits the edge of the box, you're turning it around.
You're squeezing them.
Expansion is the opposite process.
And so that's why things cool down when they expand.
So particles do slow down, you're saying, as they fly through expanding space.
Yeah.
And so you might imagine that in the future, if particles are all moving very slowly,
there could still be really interesting things that happen.
Like think about glaciers.
Glaciers move super duper slowly, but there's interesting effects from glaciers, right?
Valleys and mountains and all sorts of geological effects that are super duper slow,
but that emerge over long periods.
of time. It could be that the universe in some future state is a cold soup that seems like it's
not doing anything interesting on our scale. Some new emergent laws could come about that are
really fascinating and even lead to complexity and life even over like much, much longer time
scales. That would be interesting, although it is a little bit slow. I wonder if something
more dramatic could happen as things stretch out. Like could maybe the Higgs field collapse again or could
maybe the electromagnetic field collapsed suddenly?
It's certainly possible that the Higgs field collapses, right?
The Higgs field didn't cool like everything else.
The energy in it got stuck because the Higgs field is different from the other fields.
It has a different kind of potential energy.
It's not straightforward for it to go down to zero.
It's sort of like gets stuck in a little valley on a hill.
Instead of just rolling down the hill, it got stuck in this little valley that's sort of embedded on the side of a hill.
And it's not easy for it to go down to lower energy.
But it's possible.
We don't actually know how stable that Little Valley is.
It could get kicked out of there and then roll down the hill,
in which case the universe would be in a very, very different sort of effective phase
because all these particles would lose their mass.
And again, the effective laws of physics would be different.
The fundamental laws from the very, very grounding of the universe wouldn't have changed,
but the conditions of the universe will have changed.
And so the effective laws might.
Could maybe in one of the other fields somehow collapse to or get stuck?
The other fields have a different structure.
So they already naturally gravitate towards zero.
They're not at zero and it can't be at zero
because quantum mechanics prevents them
from ever actually minimizing to zero.
So the Higgs field is the only one
with what we call a vacuum expectation value
because the structure of its potential energy is different.
You know, these fields are weird.
We're talking about like energy in the fields.
What does that mean?
Remember, these fields can oscillate.
They can vibrate the way a string vibrates, right?
We have values of the field
and the fields can have kinetic energy,
which is the oscillation of the field.
They can also have potential energy, which means like some configuration of the field has more energy than another configuration of the field.
The way like pulling on a guitar string or a spring can give it energy just because of its configuration.
And so these fields can store energy.
So it's possible for these fields who suddenly work in a different way.
Yeah, it is possible.
And also, as you've pointed out many times, we don't know that these fields actually describe fundamental things.
You know, we used to think of the proton as having a field.
We now know it actually is the field of various corks.
And the proton field is just an effective description that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.
And so it could be that the fields we're talking about are not even the fundamental fields of the universe.
They're bubbling up from some tinier little squigglyon fields that are the real description.
And the conditions for the squigglyons could change and the fields we're looking at could change.
You know, we've tested them under all sorts of conditions.
We're pretty confident that they work in the range of the temperature of the universe today
and probably to the far future because cold conditions,
are not hard to test in the lab.
Really, really hot conditions are much harder to test.
But again, we don't know.
What about Dale's part of the question?
Where do you ask if maybe gravity or time can stop working or work in a different way?
Is that possible as the universe expands?
It certainly is possible because we don't understand gravity or time.
And these things are closely related to the expansion of the universe.
And our current description of the expansion of the universe comes from general relativity,
which tells us how it expands or contracts as you have not.
matter density and radiation density and dark energy density. But most of that is dark energy,
which is something we don't understand. And we also don't think general relativity is the correct
description of the universe because it ignores quantum mechanics. And so you have a lot of possibility
there for surprises. Dark energy could be very different from what we expect. You could do something
different from what our naive extrapolations suggest. And gravity could turn out to be very different
from what we expect. You know, there could be additional dimensions of space and time and those could
like unravel as time goes on. You never know.
All right. Well, it sounds like the answer to Dale is that, yes, it is possible that in the
future maybe physics will work differently. Maybe something will happen to the fields.
The fields might snap or change or gravity might unravel, as you say. And also, maybe we'll
get to see new kinds of physics because there'll be super extra cold conditions we have never
maybe seen before in the universe. Exactly. So eat blueberries and bananas stay healthy so you can be
around to see the loss of physics changing.
Do you want to see the loss of physics changing?
Absolutely.
Do you want to see the Higgs field collapse?
I don't think we would get to see that,
experience that for very long, would you?
No, we would not experience it for very long.
But one of my dreams is to be around as humanity unravels some of these puzzles.
We talk about so many times, it'd be frustrating to pass on before we figure it out.
Sounds like eating a lot of chocolate.
Maybe it's not going to help you with that goal, Daniel.
I'm conflicted.
some things might not be worth it all right well let's get to our next questions we have a question here about matter and antimatter
and a question about black holes and also about matter so we'll get to those but first let's take a quick break
December 29th,
1975, LaGuardia Airport.
The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage,
kids gripping their new Christmas toys.
Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.
There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.
Apparently, the explosion actually,
impelled metal, glass.
The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.
In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.
Terrorism.
Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back.
In Season 2, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.
That's harder to predict and even harder to stop.
Listen to the new season of Law and Order.
criminal justice system on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
my boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now i'm seriously suspicious oh wait a minute
sam maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit well dakota it's back to school week on the
okay story time podcast so we'll find out soon this person writes my boyfriend has been hanging out
with his young professor a lot he doesn't think it's a problem but i don't trust her now he's insisting
we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy?
That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age.
And it's even more likely that they're cheating.
He insists there's nothing between them.
I mean, do you believe him?
Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet.
So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?
To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
you get your podcast.
I don't write songs.
God writes songs.
I take dictation.
I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years.
I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you.
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.
This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened.
Was there a particular moment where you realize,
just how instrumental music culture was
to shaping all of our global ecosystem.
I was eight years old,
and the Motown 25 special came on.
And all the great Motown artists,
Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Raw.
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.
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, do this, pull that, turn this.
It's just... I can do it in my eyes closed.
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 run right.
I'm looking at this thing.
Listen to no such thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, we're answering listener questions here today, and our next question comes from James from Colorado.
Hi, Daniel and Jorge. This is James from Colorado. Thank you for your wonderful show and explanation.
I still have a question I can't figure out. It has to do with annihilating antimatter and matter.
When I think of two particles being in the same place, I thought that wasn't allowed, like a polyexclusion principle.
But when I think of two particles as weight,
On, it feels like they're always touching.
So how is it that antimatter and matter don't annihilate sometimes, but do annihilate
other times?
How close does antimatter have to get to matter before it annihilates?
I look forward to the explanation.
Chocolate and bananas.
Bye.
All right.
Interesting question.
It's sort of a question and an anti-question in itself.
What?
Sort of a statement, but also a question?
Yeah, and he definitely wants to hear about chocolate and bananas.
So he's even on brand for our jokes this episode.
Oh, my goodness.
He must be a faithful listener.
Thanks very much, James.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
He said he hopes it in was chocolate and banana.
I feel like that's a challenge.
All right.
I'll bring the chocolate.
Can white chocolate and dark chocolate exist at the same time?
If you annihilate dark chocolate and white chocolate, do you get bananas?
Or do you get plantains?
You never know.
They're quantum bananas.
They are.
Well, let's jump into it.
Here's how I interpret the question.
We've talked about before how if you get antimatter together with matter, they annihilate and disappear.
But then we've also talked about how like two particles can coexist in the same spot at the same time.
So I think that's what's confusing James.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think what's going on in James's mind is that he's imagining that matter and antimatter have to like touch or overlap in some physical way in order to annihilate.
I think he's thinking about like two tiny grains of sand coming together and touching or overlapping
and then turning into a flash of light.
But instead we should think about matter, anti-matter annihilation.
See, you already failed, Danny.
You could have said a banana.
But you went with a grain of sand.
An absolutely tiny banana.
I mean, that's such an easy, easy fruit to pick.
They're a little hanging fruit like bananas.
But you went with the grains of sand.
Do you imagine that people think about particles as tiny bananas?
I was thinking tiny tiny particles
is like tiny specks of matter.
We've always said they're not little balls.
Maybe they're little banana-shaped particles.
So when you have these two tiny bananas,
how do they actually annihilate?
I think the useful thing is to remember
that particle annihilation is just another kind of particle interaction.
You know, when two particles come
and bump against each other
and change direction or something,
they can change direction.
They can also change what particles there are.
So, for example, an electron and a positron can come near each other and turn into a photon.
So now you've changed the kind of particles there are.
You can also have an electron just like emit a photon.
So now you have changed what kind of particles there are.
And you can even wonder, like, is the electron that came out of that the same as the electron that went into it?
The point is just that matter, antimatter annihilation is just another kind of interaction of particles.
And for particles to interact, they don't have to actually touch or overlap.
each other. They do that at a distance using their fields.
But I guess what is it about, let's say, an electron and a positron, which is an antimatter
electron, what is it about them that makes them want to interact with each other? Like an electron
and another electron don't interact with each other, do they? Or do they interact the same way?
Just can't get them close enough together. They definitely interact with each other. Absolutely.
Two electrons will push against each other, right? Where else does that repulsion come from?
It comes from the interaction of those two electrons.
But not just pushing against each other, but sort of like transforming into something else.
Yeah, well, you know, you can ask the philosophical question of whether the electrons that came out of that interaction are the same as the electrons that went into the interaction.
It's possible for those interactions to keep the same kinds of particles as they come out.
But, you know, it's a new momentum.
It's a different direction.
You could also say it's sort of like the incoming electrons disappear and you get new electrons coming out.
But in the case of electrons and positrons annihilating and turning into a photon,
it's much clearer that you don't have the same kinds of particles coming in as going out.
But again, you don't need matter, anti-matter annihilation to do that.
For example, you can have an electron come in and interact with a neutrino and give you a W boson.
So now the electron and the neutrino are gone.
But the electron and the neutrino are not matter-antimatter pairs.
Would you say they annihilated each other?
You wouldn't say they annihilate because that's only a special word we use for matter,
anti-matter interactions but the point I'm making is that that's really just a subset of particle
interactions and it's possible to change the kind of particles that exist without matter anti-matter
annihilation it's just like a special little subset but to understand how it works it's easiest to think
about in terms of the broader category of just particles interacting with each other when they get
near each other which doesn't require them to actually overlap and touch whoa whoa whoa hold on
Hold on.
You just got into word definitions there and I have to force a little stop here.
Sure.
So he was saying that you only use the word annihilation when it's matter and antimatter
interacting with each other.
But if two other particles interact and they totally disappear, just like the matter and
antimatter and they become something else, you don't call that annihilation.
Why not?
I don't call that annihilation.
That's just an interaction, you know.
But the same thing happens, right?
The exact same thing, you're just choosing the word.
annihilation for one and not the other. Yeah, I don't actually like the word annihilation.
I think of all these things as an interaction. I know that there's this word annihilation that's
used to describe matter and antimatter. And so we can do that. But the point I'm making is that
that's just a subset of broader category of interactions, some of which also include particles
disappearing. And in fact, the point I was making earlier is you could argue every interaction
involves the initial particles disappearing and new particles coming out. It's just in some of those,
the new particles are the same type, and some of those they're not.
But in every case, it's sort of like the particles of Theseus, you know,
is it the same particle that came in and went out?
You're saying like all particle interactions are annihilation, kind of.
I'm saying every time you have a particle interaction,
you can view the final particles not the same as the initial particle.
Sometimes it has some things in common like, oh, it's an electron also like the initial
particle was, but it's also different in some ways.
It's going in a new direction, has a new energy.
So, yeah, the initial states disappear and the final states appear.
Sometimes they have something in common, but they don't always have to.
But isn't there something special about matter and antimatter interactions or slash annihilation,
which is that they release a lot of energy?
So why do we think of those as releasing a lot of energy, but maybe not the others releasing a lot of energy?
They don't really release energy.
They just transform it, you know, like when an electron and positron interact in a way to produce a photon,
they've transformed matter into the energy of a photon.
And we sometimes say into pure energy,
but there's no such thing as pure energy.
Energy has to be in some form.
In this case, it can be a photon
or an electron and positron can also annihilate into a z boson.
And so we talk about that because there is a flash of light if you do that.
And so if you take, for example, a raisin and an anti-raison
and they interact with each other and converting to a bunch of photons,
that is a lot of energy because there is a lot of energy stored
in the mass of that raisin and anti-raison.
reason. So there's a lot of energy available to transform into photons, which is why like matter,
anti-matter engines would be very, very powerful with very small amounts of fuel just because there's
so much energy stored in mass because E equals mc squared, C squared is a big number. Well, I wonder if maybe
the real explanation is that, you know, when you have an electron and an anti-electron, like one thing that
they can do is interact and turn into photons, which is going to be a lot. But maybe if I have an
electron and another electron, that's not a possible interaction that can happen between the two of them.
Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of rules in particle physics about what can't happen and what can't
happen. And so that's why, for example, you can't have an electron and a proton turn into a photon,
right? Because there's a rule against that. There's actually two different rules against that.
The universe says you can't just delete electrons. It keeps track of the number of electrons.
And so you can't just delete an electron from the universe. It also keeps track of the number of
baryons, a proton is a kind of baryon.
So you can't just delete a baryon from the universe.
So that's why you can do electron positron annihilation because a positron counts as a negative
electrons.
So you can destroy an electron if you also destroy it anti-electron.
But I think maybe James's question was more, how does this annihilation and interaction interact
with what I think we've talked about before, which is maybe the poly exclusion principle,
which is the certain rules that say you can't have two particles in the,
super close to each other.
They repel each other kind of naturally,
like in a neutron star, for example.
Yeah, and that's a good question.
And remember, the poly exclusion principle
applies to identical particles.
So two electrons cannot be in the same state
at the same time.
Why not?
Why can they not be in the same state
at the same time?
Yeah.
Particles that have spin one half
follows certain quantum rules.
And if you try to write down a solution
to the rule of quantum mechanics
for two spin one half particles
in exactly the same state,
the math just doesn't work. It's incompatible. The only way to satisfy the equations is for that state to not exist. So mathematically it's just incoherent. Like there are no solutions to those equations. We actually answered this on the podcast in some more detail another time talking about the spin statistics theorem, which is what determines this. So particles of spin one or spin zero behave differently in quantum mechanics and they can exist on top of each other and have solutions to the equations. But you can't do that with spin one half particles like electrons. You can with photons.
As many photons as you like can lie on top of each other.
So can an electron and an anti-electron be in the same spot at the same time?
They can be in the same spot at the same time because they're not identical particles, right?
There's already something to distinguish them.
The point of the polyexclusion principle is something has to distinguish them.
You can have two electrons at different energy levels or at different locations or different something else's, different spins.
Or you can have two different particles.
An electron and a positron can be on top of each other and be identical in every other way.
the poly exclusion principle does not prevent that.
So I guess that's basically the answer for James,
which is that the exclusion principle
only applies to particles that are the same.
Yeah, identical.
Matter and antimatter are not the same.
They are not the same.
In fact, they're sort of anti-eatiel.
Yeah, they're also sort of very closely connected.
You know, the electron's closest cousin is the positron.
It's just like another thing that the same field can do.
There's only one field that makes the electron and the positron.
It's just two different ways that it's.
can wiggle. Whoa, whoa, what? But they have opposite charge. So the same field can make the same wiggle,
but they have different charge. Yeah, exactly. There's no positron field in the universe. It's just an
electron field. It can wiggle like an electron or can wiggle like a positron. It's two different
wiggles the same field can do. It's like the way you can do more than one dance, right? I hope,
I assume, I don't know, never seen you dance. Yeah, that's a shame. It might annihilate my
eyeballs, I don't know. Yeah, or I mean, just interact with your eyeballs. There you go.
James also asks how close do they have to get before they annihilate? And remember that these
things happen via fields and particles never have to be on top of each other in order to interact
or to annihilate. So an electron and a positron can annihilate with each other turn into a photon
at some distance. In fact, it always happens at some distance because in our theory, these
particles are point particles and so they really have no size that we can determine well i mean
there's something a little bit more to it though right because like an electron and an anti-electron
they have opposite charges so they actually attract each other right absolutely they do you
they will pull towards each other if you have an electron and a positron alone in the universe
eventually they will come together and annihilate and so when they're really close to each other
they're going to be pulling each other even closer which then raises even the
the probability that they'll annihilate and interact.
Exactly.
And the word you used was very precise there.
Probabilities.
These things are quantum mechanical.
It's always a probability for these things to happen.
And as the electron and positron get closer and closer,
the probability of turning into a photon increases.
But it's always a probability.
It's always the universe rolling a die.
Or if there's no observation,
maintaining all those probabilities in parallel, in superposition.
Right.
So I wonder if it's possible for an electron and an anti-electron
to attract each other.
pull each other in
and even though it's improbable
have them not interact
until they're right on top of each other
is that possible?
It's possible
except I'm not sure what you mean
by right on top of each other
if we're thinking about point particles.
Like right on top of each other
occupying the exact same space.
Yeah, well that depends on whether
space has infinite resolution
and whether electrons are infinitely small
if so then it might be impossible
for them to be literally in the same location.
Two infinitely precise numbers
can never be exactly the same.
Well, there's sort of point particles, right?
In our theory, we suspect they're probably not.
They actually do have some extent and substructure even.
But in our theory, they are currently point particles, yeah.
So could they exist in the same point?
It's like asking if two infinitely long strings of numbers are the same, right?
Can they ever be exactly the same, two physical things?
Yeah, could they?
The answers yes, right?
You're asking a lot of philosophy questions here on the pod today.
I do have a Ph.D.
Exactly. You're a doctor of philosophy, and it shows.
I can't cure your philosophy, though.
Or prescribe any medication for it.
I can only record a podcast.
Well, in order to satisfy James, how much chocolate and bananas does it take to cure somebody of philosophy?
Well, if you eat enough chocolate, you'd definitely be cured of many things.
Including living.
Including having a working hard.
But yeah, let's try to bring it back to a chocolate.
chocolates and bananas.
So I think what you're saying is that this rule in the universe that says that two things can be in the same spot at the same time only applies to things that are the same time.
So you can't have two bananas in the same spot or two chocolate shaped bananas in the same spot.
But it doesn't apply to things very different.
So you can have a banana on top of a chocolate.
Yeah.
And only two spit one half particles, right?
So photons, for example, can be in exactly the same spot, even if they have the same energy, et cetera, et cetera.
There's no limitation there.
They're bosons.
Wait, what?
What else is like light?
Does only light have none spin one half?
No, all the force particles have integer spin.
The Higgs boson is spin zero.
The Z and the W are spin one.
The graviton, if it exists, is spin two.
So all the force particles have integer spin
and all the matter particles have half integer spin, spin one half.
All right, so then the answer is,
if the rule applies to you, it only applies if you're the same particle.
Yeah, exactly.
Or the same kind of snack.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thanks, James, for that question.
Let's get to our last question.
And it's about kind of all the things.
Black holes matter, the universe, and what's inside.
So let's get to it.
But first, let's take another quick break.
December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.
The holiday rush.
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There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.
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Just a chaotic, chaotic scene.
In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.
Terrorism.
Law and order criminal justice system is back.
In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.
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Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age.
And it's even more likely that they're cheating.
He insists there's nothing between them.
I mean, do you believe him?
Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet.
So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?
To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
I would love for you to share your breakdown on pivoting.
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On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us, I was joined by Volusia Butterfield,
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I am a free black woman who worked really hard to be able to say that.
I'd love for you to break down.
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Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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 to...
someone, anyone to land this plane.
Think you could do it?
It turns out that nearly 50% of men
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with the help of air traffic control.
And they're saying like, okay, pull this,
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Pull that, turn this.
It's just...
I can do it in my eyes close.
I'm Manny.
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This is Devin.
And on our new show, no such thing.
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Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence.
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Our last question here is about, of course, black holes.
This is a question about the size of a black hole.
So if you add up all of the matter, so dark matter and matter matter, real matter,
in the universe and apply the Schwarzschild equation
How big would the resulting black hole be?
All right.
Basically, I think the question here is, what's the biggest black hole you can make?
Yeah, instead of asking, like, is our universe a black hole?
If not, why not?
It's a really interesting question, and it comes down to some pretty simple mathematics
that predicts when you get a black hole and when you don't,
which is what Rebecca is referring to when she mentions the short-styled equation.
Right, right. That's the equation that tells you like if you condense matter, stuff and energy into a certain sphere, then you get a black hole. If you don't, you don't get a black hole.
Yeah, exactly. And the equation is very simple. It says if you have a certain amount of mass, then if you contain all that mass in a radius of less than two times the gravitational constant times the mass divided by the speed of light squared, then that's a black hole. So it's called the short-siled radius.
Well, it's weird how it's so simple, isn't it?
It's amazing.
Yeah, it's really kind of beautiful.
So it's just a mass time, some constant,
divided by the speed of light.
Yeah.
And it's linear in mass, which is really interesting, right?
Which means twice as much mass means the radius grows by two, right?
10 times as much mass, the radius grows by 10,
which is why we talked about one time on the podcast,
how black holes that are larger, technically, are lower density.
Because if the mass doubles, the radius doubles, which means,
the volume octupils.
So I guess Rebecca's question here, then, is what if you took everything that we know about
in the universe, I guess everything in the observable universe, and you squeeze it down into a black
hole, what's the maximum size of this black hole can be?
Yeah, and the answer is going to be sort of weird and shocking because as black holes get
larger, their radius gets larger very quickly.
Well, first of all, how much stuff and energy is there in the universe?
Do we have a number for that?
Yeah, so we can calculate that for the observable universe, for the part of the universe that we can see.
So the observable universe is about 46 billion light years across, and we know a lot about the density of energy in the universe because we've measured the curvature of it.
And we can calculate the mass of galaxies and stars and dark matter and even dark energy.
And that comes out to be a pretty small number.
It's like 10 to the minus 30 grams per cubic centimeter.
But that lets us calculate the total effective mass of the universe.
And when you say mass, you also mean energy, right?
Like you're also counting all the light.
And are you also counting the dark matter and dark energy?
Yes, all the energy in the universe, including dark matter and dark energy,
we can treat it as if it was just mass, equivalent mass of that equals MC squared,
take the energy act as if it was mass.
But I feel like, you know, the mass of stars and planets and rocks and even dark matter,
You could technically squeeze that down if you move it.
But could you move or squeeze the dark energy of the universe?
Turns out you're not going to need to.
What do you mean?
So wait for it.
I'll walk through the calculation.
The total mass contained in the observable universe is something like 10 to the 57 grams, which is huge.
But the swart child radius for that is 475 billion light years.
That's pretty weird that says if you have a bunch of stuff, which is the mass of the observable universe, you only need.
need to squeeze it down into a size much, much bigger than the observable universe before it becomes
a black hole. Wait, what? That means that to someone outside of our observable universe,
we are a black hole. That's the interpretation on the face of it, right? That's what it seems like.
There's important cadiots in that calculation. We're not sure that the Swartzschild radius calculation
applies in this scenario. Wait, wait, let me see if I get this straight. So you're saying the density
of energy and mass in the observable universe is higher than it is in a black hole in a black hole
of the radius of the observable universe remember the density of black holes gets very very low as
they get big because the radius grows with the mass but the volume goes as mass cubed right so
as black holes get very very large their density actually becomes very very low and so even though
our observable universe is very low energy density you know averaged over all the vast
of space, it's actually larger energy density than a black hole of that radius.
Well, but does that mean that, like, let's say I was a giant, you know, I don't know if you
know the comic book character Galactus, like, let's say you are being that's bigger than
the observable universe and I held the observable universe in my hand, would I just be looking
at a black hole?
It depends on a couple of things, right?
So if the rest of the universe is empty and the observable universe has no one.
electric charge and no spin, then yes, if you took as much stuff as there is in the
observable universe and crammed it into the radius of the observable universe, it would
be a black hole. That doesn't mean that our universe is a black hole because we don't
know what's outside of it. This calculation, the short-style radius calculation, it's a
simple, beautiful equation because it's making a bunch of important approximations that might
not apply to our universe. Number one, it assumes that everything has no spin, that
everything has no electric charge, right?
And that there's nothing outside of it.
When Schwarzenau did his calculation, like how do you make a black hole?
He did it in a very simplified situation.
He imagined an empty universe with nothing else in it and then a blob of matter.
And he calculated how much you would have to squeeze that down to make a black hole.
How would there being stuff elsewhere affect whether or not you make a black hole or not?
Well, the general relativity stuff is a little bit complicated to think about, to gain some intuition,
we can think about a sort of Newtonian point of view, like just think about gravity as a force.
You know, if you have a universe filled with stuff, are you going to get black holes?
Even if the energy density is really, really high, even if you're exceeding the Schwartz
out radius, will you get black holes? No, because everything is tugging on stuff, right? Having
stuff outside will prevent anything from collapsing and falling in. And so there is gravity from
stuff outside that affects what's going to happen inside. And so what you really need in order to
a black hole is a region of high energy density surrounded by a region of low energy density.
That's why, for example, in the early universe, when everything was filled with energy,
it didn't just collapse into one big black hole because it was mostly uniform.
And so that's why it's crucial part of that calculation that the stuff is surrounded by an
empty universe so it can collapse into a black hole.
I think I'm starting to understand here.
It's sort of like that analogy that they use in physics class a lot about gravity, which
is like a giant rubber sheet.
And if you place a planner or a bowling ball,
it creates an indentation and that's sort of like gravity.
I think what you're saying is that you basically need a flat sheet of rubber
in order to poke a hole in it or to press down into it enough
to create a black hole.
But if like, you know, you put a bazillion bowling balls into this rubber sheet,
then not one ball is going to create enough of an indentation
to make a black hole.
The whole basic rubber sheet just bows down.
Yeah, there are many flaws.
and the rubber sheet analogy, which can be misleading, but in some cases, it can be useful.
And here, yeah, think of a black hole, not as some absolute stretching of the sheet,
but a relative stretching, right?
A place where things are stretched much more than the surroundings.
And so if you put an infinite number of bowling balls, you get no black holes rather than an infinite number of black holes.
You need one bowling ball to stretch the sheet relative to the surroundings.
You need like a mega bowling ball amidst all of the other bowling balls.
Exactly.
So if you're the Galacticus giant and the Galactus, sorry, if you're the Galactus giant,
we don't want to get hate mail from Marvel fans.
If the only mass in the universe is inside the observable universe, then yes, it satisfies
Schwartisle's condition and it is a black hole.
But if the observable universe is just one scoop of a potentially much larger, maybe infinite
universe and like, you know, 50 billion light years over, there's just as much stuff as there
is here, then no, none of it's going to be a black hole.
And so it really depends what's going on outside the observable universe, whether our universe is a black hole or not.
Right.
Like the observable universe is a bowling ball.
And if the rest of the universe is just a flat sheet of rubber with nothing in it, then yes, we are living inside of a black hole.
But if the rest of the universe is just more bowling balls, then we're not a black hole.
Yeah, exactly.
Does that mean that if you're inside of a black hole, you can things sort of look normal?
We really just don't know.
It could be that inside a black hole, that it's very, very low density, that a lot of interesting things can still happen.
They can take time for that to collapse into a singularity.
Another crucial thing about Schwartz-Siles calculation is that he was not taking into account an expanding universe, right?
In his calculation, he did not have dark energy, and dark energy completely changes the general relativity of it.
So an expanding universe also violates Schwartz-Siles calculation, and we don't know how to calculate what happens to mass's energy.
expanding universe, whether they make black holes or not.
The equations are too complicated.
So I don't know the answer to that question.
But I feel like maybe the takeaway here is that we could be living in a black hole and not
know it.
We could be living in a black hole and not know it.
To me, I think it's unlikely because it would require the rest of the universe to somehow
magically have no stuff in it.
That's the kind of thing someone living in a black hole would think.
To be like, how can the rest of the universe not be the same as here?
You know, it's like the whole fish and a fishbowl analogy.
You're like, you're a fish in a fishbow.
You must think the whole universe is made out of water.
Yeah, it's possible.
And if the rest of the universe is vacuum, then there's nobody in that vacuum wondering why they're in a vacuum.
They're only people in not vacuum thinking the rest of the universe is not vacuum.
So you're right.
And we don't know.
But it doesn't have to be a vacuum, does it?
It could just be like empty space or less dense space.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what I mean.
I don't mean no space.
I mean empty space by the vacuum.
But we also, again, don't know how to catch.
what happens to very dense mass in an expanding universe.
So the expansion of the universe might prevent it
from turning into a black hole in that scenario also.
You know, our prediction for what happens to our cosmos currently
is that all the galactic clusters collapse into black holes,
which are then separated by dark energy.
And so it could be that super duper huge black holes
in expanding space don't have a singularity
to have a bunch of singularities inside of them
that are separated by expanding space.
maybe, we just don't know how to calculate those things in general relativity.
So we don't even know what would happen.
I see.
And then what would happen to the Schwarzschild equation if you didn't take into account
chocolate and bananas?
Would it still be the same?
Depends on the fraction in the universe that is chocolate and bananas,
which is decreasing as we go on forward in time because of our contributions.
That's right.
That's right.
Because we're eating it and turning into a different kind of dark matter.
All right, well, I think that's the answer for Rebecca, which is a super interesting question,
which is that, yeah, if you look at the density of the universe, we should be living in a black hole,
but who knows, it depends on what is outside of the observable universe.
Yeah, that's right.
And remember that a lot of the calculations we do in general relativity are for very specific simplified situations
and cannot be applied to more realistic situations.
Wait, wait, you mean general relativity?
It doesn't apply to the general case?
It applies to the general case, but we don't know how to solve it in the general case.
Only a few solutions have ever been found for very highly simplified situations like a universe filled equally smooth with stuff or an empty universe or a dot of matter in a universe.
We can't even solve it for like our solar system.
So it's very complicated and to be very careful applying simplified solutions to more general cases.
Man, that is just bananas.
Go have some chocolate and feel better.
Just trying to bring it back for James.
I'm just trying to satisfy James' request here.
All right, well, those are three awesome questions.
Thank you to our question askers.
I think another great reminder of how there are things in this universe
that we don't know and may never know.
Will the universe change its rules?
Are we living in a black hole?
Will you die first if you eat too many bananas or too much chocolate?
Or if you annihilate a dark chocolate and bananas.
Is that going to kill you faster?
Probably?
Let's find out.
No, let's not find out.
Or you find out and then you will report it to the podcast.
Sounds good.
Post-humously.
I'll do my homework.
All right.
Well, thanks again, everyone for asking these questions.
We hope you enjoyed that.
Thanks for joining us.
See you next time.
For more science and curiosity, come find us on social media where we answer questions and post videos.
We're on Twitter, Discord, Insta, and now TikTok.
Thanks for listening.
and remember that Daniel and Jorge
Explain the Universe
is a production of I-Heart Radio.
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visit the I-Heart Radio app,
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