Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Listener Questions 66
Episode Date: September 10, 2024Daniel and Jorge answer questions about galaxy collisions, black holes and Nitrogen!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
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Hey, Jorge, are you preparing your kids for when the end times come?
Ooh, you mean when bananas go extinct?
Or do you mean when I retire?
Yeah, I mean the fall of civilization when we're all listening to podcast in our caves.
I feel like I've been preparing my whole life.
If there's a post-apocalyptic movie out there, I've probably seen it.
Well, then I hope you're teaching your kids some useful skills, you know, blacksmithing, martial arts, cartooning.
Oh, yeah, cartooning for sure.
That's going to come in handy.
But you don't think they should learn particle physics?
I don't know that anybody's going to be building colliders out of sticks and rocks.
Isn't it fire?
Doesn't a fire involve particles colliding?
A fire is kind of a chemical accelerator.
I suppose there must be some collisions.
Are you going to be like, you know, freezing out there and you're going to be like, oh, no, no, sorry.
as far as just not fundamental enough for me.
I think I would be hiding in my cave,
eating the last of the world's chocolate reserves.
Who would that be a useful skill?
You could be the world's only chocolate tier.
Hopefully the zombies like chocolate.
Dark chocolate is the world's final currency.
Hi, I'm Jorge, I'm a 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 purposely got into particle physics because it was useless.
You're like, how can I make my time here on Earth less useful?
I wasn't so much worried about the positive practical benefits as the negative.
You know, my parents worked in the weapons programs, and I really, really, really,
didn't want to do anything that could be used as the basis of a death ray.
I see.
But you could have picked something positively useful.
Like making chocolate?
Yeah, there you go.
Making people happy.
Well, you know, my dad did retire from the lab and then became a blacksmith.
So he's definitely got useful skills for the end times.
He became a blacksmith.
Wow.
Was he forging like swords or internal combustion engines in your garage or what?
Swords, spears, all kinds of stuff, yes.
He's like, I want to wake more weapons.
I wish I were joking.
More direct.
But anyways, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge,
Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio.
In which our only weapon is our minds as we tackle the quest of understanding the universe.
We go forging through all of the craziness that's out there and try to weave it all together
into an explanation that makes sense.
We hope that whatever the universe is made out of its tiny little basic bits
that somehow their dance together can explain everything that we experience in the universe,
that we can somehow find fundamental laws and that we can also make sense of it all.
That's right.
We try to hone our knowledge of science here and try to prepare you for the end times
when we'll all be looking up at the stars wondering how do we all get here
and how do we avoid those pesky zombies?
I guess we should all try to sharpen our minds
so we can slice our way through these problems.
Yeah, I'm sure having physics knowledge
will be helpful in the apocalypse, right?
You can, I guess,
try to build a laser gun to fight the zombies.
If the zombies assign a lot of homework problems,
then I'm definitely there to help.
Oh, that could be another way to defeat them.
You know, you give them physics problems that are so tricky
that their brains explode
and that everyone knows.
that's how you kill zombies.
Wow.
Yes, exactly.
Too many intergals.
Cuculus, no.
You know, Newton definitely believed.
In zombies, really?
Newton definitely believed in some weird stuff.
I don't know about zombies.
But, you know, he was an alchemist,
and he definitely was a fan of the arcane.
Wasn't he really into currencies too?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, exactly.
At some point, he came like a coin master or something.
He was definitely a weird dude, yes.
By weird, you mean a genius who basically invented science?
I think that's actually giving him a little bit too much credit.
But, yeah, he invented lots of physics and big chunks of math.
And I think he would be pretty tickled if we could use calculus against the zombies.
Well, I'm sure a lot of people will be relieved to learn it's useful for something.
After all that work in high school.
Yeah, they can integrate it into their lives.
Oh, boy, that's very derivatively joked in him.
But anyways, we do like to think about the universe, and we try to explain it here on the podcast,
and sometimes that involves answering questions.
That's right.
It's not just Isaac Newton who's thinking about the nature of the universe.
It's everybody.
The goal of science is to understand the universe, and that means for everybody to figure it out.
And that, of course, means everybody's got to be out there thinking about the universe,
asking questions, wondering how it all works.
And we want you to be doing that.
we hope that this podcast stimulates your curiosity.
You hear on the podcast about the questions we are asking,
but we want to hear about the questions you are asking,
and then we want to answer them.
So if you have questions about the nature of the universe
or something you heard about on the podcast
or something you heard about on Gasp, another podcast,
please write to me to Questions at Danielanhorpe.com.
We'll clear it up for you.
Yeah, because it's part of human nature to be asking questions,
and it's totally fun to ask questions as well.
And so here in the podcast, we sometimes like to answer questions that listeners send us.
And so to the end of the podcast, we'll be tackling.
Listener questions number 66.
You have a 66 related snide comment?
Only a warning, Daniel, if we keep going, we're going to hit listener questions 666.
Oh, I thought you were going to warn me about listener question 69, where we turned everything upside down.
I have warned you repeatedly about that milestone, and you don't seem very concerned.
I'm mindlessly barreling towards it.
We'll just maybe we'll record it, but then we'll censor it.
Maybe we'll just skip it.
We'll go straight to 70.
Yeah, yeah.
70 is a new 69.
Nobody says that.
Don't make that a thing.
I don't care of other people say it.
Oh, I see.
But yeah, we do like to answer questions here on the podcast.
as the listeners said this, and so today we have three awesome questions.
They are about galaxies colliding, about extreme forces, and about the air we breathe.
So let's jump right in.
Our first question comes from Petra, who hails from Boston.
Hi, Daniel and Jorge.
I routinely hear not to worry about the impending collision between our galaxy and the
Indromeda galaxy.
Since the space between the stars within each galaxy is so great, there won't be any
direct collisions.
However, on some of the podcast episodes, it seems as though the orbital stability of the planets in our solar system isn't all that great.
For example, some planets may have traded places, while other planets could have been captured or ejected.
So really, which argument wins?
Do I need to tell my descendants to start worrying about it in 4.5 billion years?
I really want them to see the sun become a red giant.
Thanks for the great podcast.
All right. Interesting question. Basically, should we be worried four and a half billion years from now?
Yeah, exactly. If we're all alive, or should the zombies that have succeeded us, should they be worried about what's going to happen?
I think that's the best part of being a zombie is you don't have to worry about anything.
As long as you've killed off all the people who might assign you homework problems, you're fine.
I mean, I would think the best part of being a zombie is you can just turn your brain off.
Don't you need to protect it from exploding, right?
Isn't that the kryptonite of zombies?
Well, I think fire also kills zombies.
Oh, boy. Wow.
Yeah.
I'm so glad you've been doing this research.
I'm glad the people I'll be hanging up with know how to make a fire.
But I think Petra's question is really touching on two things we hear about a lot in science.
One that our galaxy is colliding with another galaxy.
And the other, that our solar system is kind of fragile, that the orbits are not really that stable.
And so he's worried that even if something,
stars are pretty dilute in the galaxy, would our solar system get upset?
Basically, what's going to happen when our galaxy collides with Andromeda?
Like, are we safe?
Like, is nothing going to happen to us?
Or should we be concerned that maybe our planet might get disrupted and thrown out into space?
Yeah, it's definitely a valid concern.
And it touches on a lot of really interesting physics.
And first thing I want to talk about is why Andromeda is going to collide with the Milky Way,
because I get a lot of questions about exactly this.
people hear us talking about how the universe is expanding and space is being created between galaxies
and then they hear us talking about how andromeda is coming towards us and say how does that make any sense
why isn't space expanding between us and andromeda and pushing it further and further away and so first
we should try to reconcile that apparent contradiction yeah because we talked about like how because
dark energy is expanding the universe that galaxies out there getting further and further away from us but we've also
talked about how Dramida is in a collision course with our galaxy.
Yeah, and the answer comes down to distances.
And dark energy is something that gets more powerful for distant objects.
It's basically like a chunk of space grows a little bit, and so more chunks of space
are growing more.
So a little tiny chunk of space is hardly growing, but a vast distance between our galaxy
cluster and a really distant other galaxy cluster, that's kind of growing a lot.
And gravity is the opposite.
Gravity gets weaker with distance.
As things get further apart, gravity fades away.
So for stuff that's really close together, like the Earth and the Sun, or even our galaxy
and the neighboring galaxy, gravity wins over dark energy.
Things that are really, really far apart, like clusters of galaxies, not individual galaxies,
dark energy is winning.
And most of the universe is far apart from most of the universe.
So mostly things are expanding away from each other.
But in little neighborhoods like our cluster of galaxy, stuff is still getting pulled.
together by gravity. So gravity is the reason the Milky Way and Indromeda will collide in a few
billion years. Is it gravity or is it just that we just happen to be on a course that intercepts
the course of Indromeda? Like is endromeda really being attracted to our galaxy? I mean,
obviously it is, but is it really significant to call it the main reason. It's we're going to collide
with it. It definitely is. I mean, the Milky Way and Indromeda are part of a cluster of galaxies
and that cluster exists because of gravity. It's what's holding it together. And the
galaxies are sort of sloshing around. It's not guaranteed at any moment that they're going to
hit each other, but it's gravity that holds them together that's pulling them together.
It's sort of like asking if a comet falls towards the sun and it collides with the sun, why is that?
Well, it's definitely because of the gravity. That doesn't mean that every comet does collide
with the sun. Gravity is not omnipotent. Sometimes comets go around the back of the sun.
In the same way, in the local cluster, not every galaxy is going to collide with every other galaxy
as soon as possible. Sometimes they pass around each other. But it is gravity.
that's pulling these two together.
Well, I guess what I mean is, like, if you have two asteroids, for example, in the solar
system and they're going to collide with each other, I mean, sure, they're in the solar
system together because of the gravity well of the sun, but the fact that they're colliding
with each other, as opposed to not colliding, it's mostly just kind of luck, right?
Yeah, it's gravity plus chance.
It's possible to have a cluster where galaxies like ours and Andromeda don't collide until
later on.
Eventually everything is going to collide, and it's all going to collapse into one supermassive
black hole. So it's really just a waiting game. But the collision that's going to happen in
four and a half billion years, uh, that's basically luck, right? It's not like it's inevitable. Like if our
galaxy was moving a few degrees in another direction or to the right or to the left, we wouldn't
be colliding with Andromeda, would we? Yeah, that's right. If you change the initial conditions,
that collision might happen later. It also might happen earlier, right? It could be that we're
lucky we got this far without colliding with Andromeda. So yeah, the whole system is very chaotic,
but it is gravity, but gravity is really the only force at play here.
And so the reason we're worried about Andromeda and not other galaxies
is because the other galaxies are further away
and those are definitely moving away from us because of dark energy
or are some of them potentially getting closer to us?
Everything in our galaxy cluster is gravitationally bound,
which means it has enough gravity to hold itself together
and resist the pull of dark energy.
And galaxy clusters are like the biggest thing that have that property.
Anything that's larger than that,
what we call a super cluster,
is probably too big and too spread out
for gravity to hold itself together
and dark energy is going to win.
So that's sort of the tipping point.
So anything that's in our galaxy cluster
is eventually going to collapse
into one big supermassive black hole.
And we're talking very, very far in the future.
Unless dark energy changes, right?
Yes.
Like if it accelerates,
then it's going to get a little more crowded,
or if it, like, weekends,
things might get a little roomier.
Yeah, I think it's the opposite.
If dark energy accelerates,
then even our galaxy clusters
is going to get torn apart because it becomes more powerful than gravity.
We talked about that once on the podcast.
There's even a theory of like phantom dark energy where dark energy gets so powerful that it
tears apart atoms and even protons.
And if dark energy weakens, then gravity wins over larger distances and it might gather
together even super clusters.
Right.
That's what I meant.
I meant the opposite of what I said.
But you definitely are right on the conceptual part, which is that we don't know what
dark energy is or what it's going to do and we can't really predict it.
So this is assuming a naive extrapolation.
of dark energy, which is basically all we can do at this point.
All right.
So we're in a collision course with Andromeda.
What's going to happen when we collide?
So when we collide with Andromeda, there's a bunch of different components of the galaxy,
and you really need to think about each of them individually because they all have different
behavior.
So for example, the gas and the dust that are in the two galaxies, those are going to collide
and you're going to get all sorts of dramatic stuff.
It's going to seed the creation of lots of new stars, which would be really exciting.
But the stars themselves are very different from the gas and the dust, right?
The gas and the dust is very spread out.
It's definitely going to smash into the other stuff.
But stars are very different from gas and dust.
They're not as spread out.
They're tiny and they're clumpy and they're really, really dilute.
So when stars approach other stars, it's very hard for them to actually collide
because space is really, really, really big and the stars are really, really far apart.
I guess how far apart are they?
Like how far is our nearest neighbor?
So our nearest neighbor is light years away.
Or the closest star to us is almost four light years away.
and the sun is the tiny fraction of a light year wide.
I mean, if you shrink, for example, the sun down to the size of a tennis ball
that you could hold in your hand,
then the nearest neighbor star would be four or five thousand miles away.
Whoa, that's like on the other side of the Atlantic kind of.
Yeah, exactly.
So imagine you're throwing a tennis ball
and somebody on the other side of the ocean is throwing a tennis ball.
What are the chances that they're going to hit each other over the ocean?
Like basically zero.
But I guess how wide is the sphere of influence of something like the sun?
Like how close do you need to get to it before you feel it's gravity?
Yeah, exactly.
Good point because we're not actually just interested in like a collision where like the two stars really touch each other and merge and become one.
Stars can pull in each other if they're even near each other, right?
And that's really what Petra's question is about is how close does a star need to get to distort our star or distort the orbit of stuff around the star?
right because near misses can destabilize things
we know that already in our galaxy because other stars are moving
relative to the sun sometimes they come closer sometimes they come further away
and that can distort the orbits of stuff in our solar system
so there's not a clear crisp answer it's not like there's a certain distance
within which something happens and out of which nothing happens
it's gradual right the closer it comes the greater the gravitational distortion
but I guess maybe it depends on how unstable our orbit
is or how fragile our orbit is, do you have a sense of how precarious our path around the sun is?
Like, if I bring in another sun, I don't know, a few million miles away, is it going to affect us and
kick us out of the solar system or maybe causes to fall into the sun or are we going to be okay?
Yeah, it's a good question.
The Earth is pretty stable.
Like, just the Earth in the solar system is a pretty stable orbit.
There's a lot of stuff going on that's going to influence.
the Earth's orbit makes its orbit change, for example, like the Sun is losing mass,
so its gravity shrinks. The Sun is also pushing on the Earth, not just pulling on it with
gravity, but its wind pushes on the Earth. There's effects of Jupiter. There's gravitational
radiation. But you're right, the biggest wild card are like things from outside the solar
system. And this is something we've thought about, not just in the case of another galaxy,
but again, just stuff in our solar system. So, for example, there is a star. It's called Glees
710 that we've been tracking and we predict that it's going to come kind of close to our star.
It's going to come within 1 25th of the distance to Proxima Centauri.
So Proxima Centauri is four light years away.
And so this is going to come like an eighth of a light year away from our star.
Wait, wait, wait.
So this is a star that's going to come within 1.25th of the nearest star?
Yeah.
Wouldn't it become the nearest star if it's coming close to us?
Yeah, that's just for scale.
our current near stars four light years away, this one's going to come within
one 25th of that distance, again, in the far, far future.
How far in the future?
In about one and a half million years.
Oh, that's pretty soon, cosmically speaking.
Yeah, it's a lot of generations to survive between now and then.
But yeah, that's not far away, and it's definitely a lot sooner than when the Milky Way collides
with Andromeda.
And this is a star that's like traveling through space relative to us, or are we
traveling close to it.
You know what I mean? Like is this an anomaly or in our quiet neighborhood or is it all part
of the movement of the stars?
It's part of all the movement of the stars around the center of the galaxy.
You know, all the stars are orbiting the center and they orbit at different velocities.
Also, the stars are moving up and down.
They're sort of like wiggling through the plane of the galaxy.
And so the stars that are in our immediate neighborhood change over millions of years as
these stars sort of swim through the lazy river differently.
So this is a totally normal thing to happen.
And what a scientist predict is going to happen when the start flies close to us?
Is it going to disrupt us or are we going to feel it?
So we are probably not going to feel it directly in the sense that it's not going to come close enough to perturb the Earth's orbit.
So that's already kind of an answer.
Like you can come fairly close to the solar system, you know, within an eighth of a light year and really have no effect on the Earth's orbit directly.
but it could have serious impacts for life on Earth
because it could impact stuff that's in the outer solar system
that could then rain down on the inner solar system.
The very far edges of the solar system,
past Pluto and all the dwarf planets,
is a theoretical cloud of trillions of icy objects
called the Ort cloud.
We think it's probably the source of long period comets.
These things are really, really far away
compared to stuff in the inner solar system
or even to Pluto.
And so a nearby passing star could disturb some of these.
There's lots of them.
And they take just like a little nudge to fall out of their orbit
and come barreling into the inner solar system
where they could become very high speed,
very dangerous comets that could impact on the Earth.
Whoa.
But maybe it might get lucky not get hit by it.
Right?
Because even the space between us and the sun is huge.
Yeah, absolutely.
We might get lucky.
And we could get protected by Jupiter, right?
Jupiter has a lot of gravity and it tends to shield the inner solar system.
by pulling these things towards it.
Like when Comet Shoemaker Levy
came through the solar system in the 90s,
it impacted on Jupiter, and that wasn't an accident.
Not only is Jupiter just a much bigger target,
but it has that gravity.
But it's not a die you want to roll.
It's sort of like playing cosmic Russian roulette.
You know, if a star comes by
and dislodges a lot of Orch Cloud objects,
tens, millions, even, for example,
then we're going to have to get lucky
a lot of times to avoid being hit.
So that's the most likely scenario for Gleas
and also for the collision
between Andromeda and the Milky Way, that our orc cloud gets perturbed.
Well, but I guess what is the scenario that's going to happen when we collide with
Andromeda?
Are we going to see a lot of these stars flying as close as Gleas, or is it going to be worse?
Because I imagine, you know, the nearest star to us is pretty far away, but, you know,
we're colliding with a cloud of 100 billion stars.
Maybe that increases the chances of something flying closer.
Yeah, actually, Andromeda is much bigger than the Milky Way.
There's lots of more stars in Andromeda than in the Milky Way.
It's really a big, fat galaxy, I mean, in a very positive way.
And so there's no specific answers.
There's just chances, right?
The chances of a direct collision are zero.
The chances of a near miss are larger.
The chances of stars flying sort of within a light year or so is reasonable.
I haven't done the actual calculations.
Don't have numbers, but qualitatively, it's extraordinarily unlikely for a direct star-star collision.
I think it's quite likely for a near miss, like Gleas, 7.
10, but I think the most likely scenario is that no star comes really anywhere near us.
Even though there are a lot of them, there are also very, very spread out.
Now, should we just take your word for it?
Or should maybe 100 of you guys get on the computer and simulate this to figure it out?
We've got four and a half billion years to figure it out.
So, yeah, that's enough computation time.
I don't know.
I like to plan ahead, as you know.
You know, got to get ready.
The problem with these calculations is that the further in the future you have to extrapolate,
the more uncertainty there is, right?
Like, NASA can predict the path of these objects for 100 years, very precisely.
You ask them to tell you where they're going to be in 5 billion years.
They have no idea because small uncertainties add up over time to make those predictions
essentially useless.
So our understanding, for example, of the dark matter in the Milky Way will affect this,
and the dark matter and and the dark matter between us and them.
So we could do a calculation and give you a number, but it's going to be different next year,
and it's going to be different in a million years.
It's going to be different in a billion years.
Well, I mean, you don't need to predict what's going to happen exactly, but could you maybe get a statistical sense?
Like, if I take a cloud of stars like the Andromeda Galaxy and you take a cloud of stars like the Milky Way Galaxy and you smash them into each other at the speed they're going, what are the chances or how likely or, you know, how often would a star come near as enough to disrupt our orbit?
That's totally possible and probably somebody is working on that, but I haven't actually seen that number anywhere.
All right.
Well, then the answer for Petra is, hopefully, nothing bad will happen.
Daniel doesn't think.
Yeah, don't worry too much about Petra.
Zombies are much more likely.
Yeah, don't collide with any zombies if you can't.
Especially when I was with teeth.
But keep working on those intervals.
That's going to save you in the end times.
That's right.
Bring your math book whenever you go out foraging for, you know, particle colliders to start your fire.
Or do what my dad did.
Become a blacksmith and make your own.
weapons. Oh. Yeah, that's a good suggestion. Or just go to Daniel's garage and, you know, steal some of those
swords. I wouldn't recommend that. That's pretty well protected. By math. If you come within 10
meters, you'll be faced with some physics questions. Or you could just blast the podcast out
in speakers. They'll keep everyone away. All right, let's get to our other questions here today.
and we have some questions about extreme forces in the universe
and about what kind of air are we all breathing.
So we'll dig into those.
But first, let's take a quick break.
My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly,
and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Wait a minute, Sam.
Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, 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 person?
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.
December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.
The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.
Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.
There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.
Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass.
The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.
In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.
Terrorism.
Law and order, criminal justice system is back.
In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.
That's harder to predict and even harder to stop.
Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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.
Hola, it's Honey German, and my podcast, Grasias Come Again, is back. This season, we're going
even deeper into the world of music and entertainment, with raw and honest conversations
with some of your favorite Latin artists and celebrities. You didn't have to audition?
No, I didn't audition. I haven't auditioned in like over 25.
Oh, wow.
That's a real G-talk right there.
Oh, yeah.
We've got some of the biggest actors, musicians, content creators, and culture shifters
sharing their real stories of failure and success.
You were destined to be a start.
We talk all about what's viral and trending with a little bit of chisement, a lot of laughs,
and those amazing Vibras you've come to expect.
And, of course, we'll explore deeper topics dealing with identity, struggles,
and all the issues affecting our Latin.
community. You feel like you get a little whitewash because you have to do the
code switching? I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm
me. But the whole pretending and coat, you know, it takes a toll on you. Listen to the new season
of Grasas Has Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the Iheart radio app, Apple
podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They
had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot
was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change.
Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our
lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools,
they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going
to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha.
On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors,
and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum,
the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable.
Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, we're asking us.
listening to our questions. And our second question comes from Derek, who comes from planet Earth,
I guess, probably. We hope so. No, we hope not. Yeah. Hi, Daniel and Jorge. So I have a question
about extreme forces. I know gravity is one the weakest forces in nature, but it seems like there's
no limit to how much gravity there can be. And once you have enough of it, an event horizon is formed
in a black hole is made. Even then, more massacist.
can be added and gravity will continue to increase. Can this be done with any of the other forces?
Like, can a magnetic field become so strong that it forms its own kind of event horizon? Or is there
a limit that prevents the other forces from increasing infinitely? Thank you. All right,
interesting question. I guess the question is, how extreme can other forces get? Can you make like
a magnetic black hole or a weak black hole? Yeah, super fun question. Really great to think about.
the sort of philosophy behind this question, like trying to make connections between forces
and try to understand the differences between ideas. This is really how you make progress in
physics, how you build a consistent model in your head. Try to understand where that model doesn't
work and where the bits don't fit together and then try to understand how they can possibly
click together. So kudos to you, Derek, for thinking about it this way and for asking this great
question. All right, the question is Derek is wondering, like we know that a black hole happens
when you gravity gets so intense that it becomes basically a black hole with an event horizon.
Can that sort of thing happen with the other forces in nature like electromagnetism or the weak
force or the strong force?
Can you get a situation where a magnetic force is so strong it maybe creates its own kind
of event horizon?
Yeah, so super fun question.
And it's tempting to think that there is because Derek probably thinks about gravity as a force
in the same way he thinks about magnetism as a force.
and that it creates an acceleration on objects, right?
Two objects, as Newton described, that have mass, will pull on each other the same way.
Two objects with electric charge, the electric force will pull on them or push on them.
And the strong force pulls and pushes on things that have color charge.
And so it's tempting to think about that.
It's very intuitive.
But remember that gravity is not actually a force.
Our understanding of gravity today is that it represents the curvature of space time itself.
And in many ways, that's equivalent, like most of the time you can think about the curvature of space time, and from that you can get exactly the same behavior that Newton would have predicted.
But it's also crucially different in many respects.
There's lots of things that the curvature of space time can do that the simple force of gravity cannot do, and form an event horizon is one of those things.
So Einstein's Reconception of gravity as the curvature of space time describes all of Newton's physics, but also more than that.
It doesn't just reformulate gravity as another way to think about it.
It adds new capacity to gravity, new things that it can do.
And so the force description of gravity cannot create an event horizon, but the curvature description of gravity can create event horizons.
And so the other forces, which can't be described in terms of curvature, can't create event horizons.
That's not something a force can do.
Only space-time curvature can do that.
Well, I guess I might ask.
Are you sure about that?
Couldn't you define the event horizon as the point at which the force of gravity is so strong
that nothing can escape it?
I'm definitely not sure about that because we don't understand gravity, right?
Gravity is really weird.
Einstein's theory is beautiful, but we also know that it's flawed.
We don't understand how singularities could form.
We don't understand why gravity seems to not be quantum mechanical or if it is when you zoom in
enough, for example.
So everything we say here today assumes that GR is correct.
But we know that GR is not correct ultimately.
And so there's lots of things to be learned.
And in the far future, this could all be totally wrong.
So yeah, absolutely not.
But you're right.
First, we should define what we mean by an event horizon, right?
And the reason a black hole can exist,
the reason we have event horizons,
the reason that curvature can do this
and that forces cannot is that curvature does something to space.
It changes the shape of space, like the relationship between points.
So you can think about it as like a region from which even a photon can
not escape, right? And that, again, is something gravity can do, but you can't do that with
magnetism, with electric force, or the strong force. Well, I guess what I mean is, like, you know,
for example, you might say that the Earth has an event horizon, right? Like, there's a point
and a velocity at which you can escape the Earth, and there's a point at which you cannot escape
Earth, right? So maybe you might be able to call that the event horizon of the Earth, gravity,
black holes, event horizon is just that, but taken to the extreme where you're
talking about not even light being able to escape.
I wonder if you can do that the same with a magnetic field or electromagnetic force.
Like, is there a point at which not even like a super fast moving charged particle
will escape the attractive force that something has electromagnetically?
I mean, you can definitely form bound states, right?
Like the moon is bound to the earth gravitationally, but it can still escape, right?
Or photons from the moon can definitely escape the gravitational system.
And that's not just like a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind, right?
The inside of an event horizon really is cut off from the rest of the universe.
Nothing that happens there can influence anything that happens outside the universe,
whereas things that happen on Earth can always influence things far away.
You just take some time.
So it's a question of like causality.
Like are these things linked or not?
Can one area of space affect another?
You can definitely attract things together and they can even be stuck together and they can be
stable and they can even last for millions or billions of years or configurations like the proton
might last forever. But, you know, the quarks inside the proton could still potentially escape.
You give them enough energy. It's a bound state. It's not the same thing as an event horizon.
But could you say that like a charge ball of electricity has an escape velocity to it
and a point at which no charge particle can escape it? A charge ball, for example, definitely has
an escape velocity. Like there's a minimum energy you would need to escape the potential well-created
by that ball and things below that energy are bound to it, but there is still always an escape
velocity. And that's why photons are a useful way to think about event horizons, because there's
no force that can bound a photon. Like photons always move at the speed of light locally,
and there's no force that can prevent them from doing that. But changing the direction of space,
right, changing the configuration of space the way gravity does, that can trap a photon because
it can change space from flat to curved. You can make the photon move in a circle forever, which is
sort of amazing. And so that's why gravity can do this, which no other force can do.
But I guess light is electrically neutral, right? Yeah. So I wonder if you can envision,
like, is there a ball of charge that can be so intense that not even a core going at the speed
of light can escape it? Did you maybe call that the event horizon of an electromagnetic force?
So you take a ball of charge, it has a very strong electric force, right? And now imagine some
electron near it, and you're wondering, like, is it possible to have that ball be so electrically
charged that even an electron moving at the speed of light couldn't escape it? Yeah. Yeah, it's a great
question. The problem is that electrons can't move at the speed of light because they have mass, right?
Well, of course, I know this, but like, if it was moving at the speed of light, is there a point,
or closing on that point 999% of the speed of light, is there an event horizon for that ball
of positive charge? Right. And I bring up the velocity not just to be like, actually,
but because velocity is the wrong way to think about it,
because for a massive object, energy is the right way to think about it.
As you say, you can't get to the speed of light.
It can get arbitrarily close,
but there's no limit to the amount of energy that an electron can have.
And so you can just keep putting energy into that electron,
and eventually it will escape that ball of charge.
So, no, there's no way you can trap an electron forever.
You can't create an event horizon using electric charge.
You can always just give that electron more energy,
and it would escape your ball of charge no matter how big it is.
Mm-hmm. All right. So then the answer for Derek is, no, you can't make an electromagnetic black hole.
Yeah. And I think there's another wrinkle there, which is something you brought up, which is photons are neutral electromagnetically, right?
And I think that's really cool and kind of weird that photons, even though they carry electromagnetic information, they don't feel the force themselves.
And that's something true about all of the forces, electromagnetism, the weak force, the strong force. There are always some particles that are neutral to it, right?
So like the strong force can create really, really strong bound states, but then neutrinos ignore it, right?
They would just fly right through it.
So in that sense, an event horizon for like electromagnetism wouldn't really be an event horizon, even if you could make one, because some particles ignore it.
The amazing, awesome thing about gravity is that nothing can ignore it.
Gravity is just linked to energy.
So anything that has energy, which is basically anything in the way we conceive of it, is affected by gravity.
It's inescapable.
Oh, all right.
Hmm, I'm still wondering, like, could you make that calculation?
Like, what if you take an electron, give it the speed of light, could you use that to compute a positive ball of charge strong enough for which that's the escape velocity?
Well, if you have an electron and you effectively give it velocity of the speed of light, you're giving it infinite energy.
And of course, that's impossible.
But what that means is that there is no ball of charge that's powerful enough to bound it because it has infinite energy.
more energy than any energy level in that bound state, unless you make that ball infinite,
right? So now you're just like infinity versus infinity. Well, I guess what I mean is like when
you compute the escape velocity of something escaping Earth, you're not actually using the
relativistic equations, right? You're just kind of using more basic math. You're ignoring relativistic
effects, right? Yeah, the simplest calculations ignore relativistic effects, but I don't think relativistic
effects are really relevant for the Earth. Right, but so let's say I do that for an electron.
and I give it the speed of light,
could I compute an event horizon,
even though maybe it's not realistic,
but is there one?
So you're saying if I ignore the fact
that electrons can't go the speed of light
and I ignore relativity,
can we make an event horizon for an electron?
Yeah, just like when we compute the escape velocity
of a satellite or a spacecraft,
we sort of ignore that too.
You can definitely calculate an escape velocity, right,
or effectively an energy
beyond which the electron is free
and below which the electron is bound.
So you can definitely calculate that.
You can ignore relativity.
You can include relativity or whatever.
But in order to trap that electron forever so that there's no chance it ever leaves,
then you essentially need an infinitely powerful electric force.
You need an infinite amount of charge to trap an electron that could effectively have infinite energy.
So would that mean that my electric black hole is infinitely big or infinitely small?
It would be infinitely charged.
Oh, does it have to be infinitely charged or could it just be a charge, but infinitely dense?
You might imagine bringing the electron really, really close to that charge so that the electric force gets really powerful because the electric force also gets powerful as things get really close together.
But again, these are quantum objects.
There's always like a minimum effective radius.
It's not really an orbit, but there's like a mean distance from the center for the ground state.
And so that effectively limits how powerful these things can get.
like there's a reason the hydrogen atom has a ground state
and the electron is not closer to it.
It can't settle any closer.
And that effectively bounds like how strong the force can get.
Oh, man.
So you're saying quantum mechanics ruins all the fun.
Like usual.
But you also ask another question about like,
why can't we describe the other forces in terms of curvature?
And there are people working on that.
People wondering like, well,
what if electromagnetism actually is curvature
but not in our 3D space?
What if it's curvature in like additional spatial dimensions?
And nobody's really made that theory work, but it's really fun to think about how
electromagnetism might be like curvature in other ways that we can't see it yet.
And even in that theory, you might be able to describe electromagnetism as curvature,
and you might wonder like, can I make event horizons in those other dimensions?
But then you wouldn't be making event horizons in our 3D space,
which I think is really what the question was.
So then it would be sort of like a black hole, but in other dimensions?
It's pretty hard to think about, but it would be curvature in other dimensions.
And you might have event horizons in those dimensions, but not in our dimensions.
So pretty wonky stuff.
There'd be holes in our black hole is basically what you're saying.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
Well, that's an interesting answer for Derek.
Now let's get to our last question of the day.
And it's about the air we breathe and where does part of it come from.
So let's dig into that question.
But first, let's take a quick break.
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.
December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.
The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys.
Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.
There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.
Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal, glass.
The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.
In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.
terrorism law and order criminal justice system is back in season two we're turning our focus
to a threat that hides in plain sight that's harder to predict and even harder to stop listen to
the new season of law and order criminal justice system on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts hey says what if i could promise you you never have
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 Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. A foot washed up, a shoe,
with some bones in it.
They had no idea who it was.
Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire
that not a whole lot was salvageable.
These are the coldest of cold cases,
but everything is about to change.
Every case that is a cold case that has DNA
right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.
A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA.
Using new scientific tools,
they're finding clues in evidence so tiny
you might just miss it.
He never thought he was going to get caught.
And I just looked at my computer screen.
I was just like, ah, gotcha.
On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors.
And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum,
the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases
to finally solve the unsolvable.
Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, it's Honey German.
And my podcast,
Grasas 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 vivas you've come to expect.
And of course, we'll explore deeper topics
dealing with identity, struggles,
and all the issues affecting our Latin community.
You feel like you get a little whitewash
because you have to do the code switching?
I won't say whitewash because at the end of the day, you know, I'm me.
But the whole pretending and code, you know, it takes a toll on you.
Listen to the new season of Grasasas Come Again as part of My Cultura Podcast Network
on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hi, Daniel and Jorge. This is Steve Parin from Quebec, Canada.
my question is where is all the nitrogen in our atmosphere coming from and what role does it play
amazing podcast guys i love it thank you all right a pretty uh straightforward question here
where does all the nitrogen in our atmosphere come from and what role does it play yeah nitrogen
is a big deal on earth like most of the atmosphere is nitrogen you take a deep breath you're thinking
about yourself as like gulping oxygen but it's mostly nitrogen
that you're breathing in, which is kind of weird.
Whoa, what do you mean mostly?
What are the percentages?
It's almost 80% of the air is nitrogen.
80% by like volume, mass, or atoms?
It's 78% by mass.
Oh, and how much of it is oxygen?
So it's like most of the air is nitrogen.
It's 78% by quantity.
Meaning by volume or what do you mean by quantity?
Like number of atoms?
Yeah, like number of molecules, actually.
if you count it up, if you take like a cubic meter of air and you count all the molecules in
it, 70% of those are nitrogen and 21% of those are oxygen.
Whoa, no hydrogen?
There's almost no hydrogen in the atmosphere because it's very volatile.
Any hydrogen will react with the oxygen and make water.
So where did all this nitrogen come from?
Yeah, it's a really fun question.
It goes back to the whole origin of like why we have an atmosphere in the first place
because it's kind of weird, you know, that we have enough gravity to like hold this little
super thin envelope of gas around the planet.
And if you think about how the planet came to be,
it's not clear like why we have an atmosphere that survived the formation of the solar
system because as things were condensing very early in the solar system,
it was a very volatile place.
Like first of all,
we're in the inner solar system,
which means we're pretty close to the sun.
And so most of the hydrogen in the inner solar system was gobbled up by the sun.
Like the sun has huge gravity.
The reason that Earth was formed is because it's not.
not hydrogen, it's because it's rocky,
had like enough gravity to form
its own little gravitational well
and cluster stuff together before it all got gobbled up
by the sun, but that tends to gather together heavy things
like rocks and metal, right, chunks of iron floating in space,
not clouds of gas, most of which fell into the sun.
Some of it did form with the Earth,
but then when the sun started fusing,
it created all this intense radiation
and blasted away our atmosphere.
So we might have had like a very thin hydrogen atmosphere
to begin with.
But then most of that got lost due to the solar radiation and then also collisions by heavy stuff.
Like the formation of the moon was due to this collision with a proto planet.
And that probably destroyed all the atmosphere we had initially.
But I guess a deeper question is where did it all come from originally?
Like it just got formed inside the sun like all the other heavy elements in previous iterations of the sun or supernova or what?
All the nitrogen and everything in our solar system that is.
hydrogen was not made by our star. All that was made by previous stars. So like the deeper
history is that we have mostly hydrogen formed in the very, very early universe, tiny, tiny
trace amounts of helium. And then you have to wait for stars to be born hundreds of millions
of years later to turn that hydrogen into heavier stuff. And so that nitrogen that you're breathing
right now was made at the heart of stars previous generations, which burned, created that nitrogen
inside them and then blew up and spread those heavier elements, including nitrogen and iron
and copper and on carbon and all that good stuff throughout the galaxy, and then that re-coelaced
into our solar system. So all the nitrogen and the iron and all that stuff in our bodies and
in the air and in the earth was made by a different star that no longer exists.
Whoa. And it was made at the core of that previous star or when it exploded?
The stuff that's iron or lighter was made at the core of that star. It's made by fusion.
because when you fuse two lighter elements together,
you release energy, but that's only true up to making iron.
Beyond iron, when you fuse stuff together, it costs energy.
So if a star starts to do that, it begins to dim and like steals away the energy.
And stars need that energy to survive because they're fighting against gravity.
Gravity is trying to compress them down into a black hole.
And the only reason a star survives for millions or billions of years
is that radiation pressure outwards that's created by the energy released by fusion.
If that goes away, then the star starts to collapse.
And so stars can't make a lot of the heavier elements above iron.
For that, you need either the death of the star, the supernova,
which has super dense conditions capable of creating those heavier elements
or things later on like collisions of neutron stars to create the heaviest elements.
But nitrogen is made in the heart of those stars during normal fusion.
So we're basically breathing dead stars every time you take a breath.
It's a gift from those stars.
You're basically breathing zombie star.
Yes, exactly.
Zombie star brains.
Take a deep breath.
Yeah.
Hmm, smells delicious.
Smells like brains.
So the previous star made that.
It was floating around just like all the hydrogen and carbon and dust and rocks that was made by previous stars.
When our sun started burning and then how did it end up on Earth?
Or is it spread out all around?
the solar system. It's all over the solar system. Nitrogen is everywhere. It's not just on Earth.
And the nitrogen in our atmosphere ended up on Earth in an interesting way. Number one, it came
from the bombardment of the Earth by like comets and asteroids that had like frozen nitrogen in
them. And so we think like a lot of the water on Earth may have come from comets. The same thing is true
of nitrogen. So the early Earth was blasted clean, essentially was just a bare rock because
of the solar radiation, but then it got a second atmosphere due to collisions and also because
of nitrogen and other gases trapped inside the Earth, which escaped out due to like volcanoes.
You know, you have a lot of these gases in the early Earth, and as the Earth is settling,
the heavy stuff goes down to the core, the lighter stuff rises in the mantle, and then
some of that escapes through cracks in the Earth. So volcanoes and the bombardment of asteroids
created our second atmosphere, which was mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
So that's where the nitrogen comes from.
And then eventually you got oxygen.
But I guess the second part of Steve's question is, what role does nitrogen play?
Like, do our bodies need nitrogen or do we just ignore it mostly?
Yeah, it's definitely not inert.
Nitrogen plays a really important role in the life cycle here on Earth.
Like plants need nitrogen.
It's a crucial part of a lot of amino acids.
And so in order for plants to grow, you need nitrogen in the same.
soil, a big component of like fertilizer that people are constantly putting onto their plants.
Farmers import huge amounts of it.
The reason you put manure on fields is that it has nitrogen in it and other stuff.
So plants need this nitrogen in order to grow.
And there are these bacteria that will breathe the nitrogen from the atmosphere and then
basically make it available for the plants.
So there's a whole complicated nitrogen cycle that involves like these nitrogen fixing bacteria
and then plants using it to grow and animals eating it and then pooping it back out.
out into the ground.
It's a very complex cycle, but it's definitely not inert.
It's a huge part of life on Earth.
Right, right.
And I just want to take a quick moment here to note that you were the first one to bring
a poop in this episode, not me.
Is that something you keep track of?
Who says poop first?
I'm just saying sometimes I get, you know, accused of...
Colorful language.
Bringing the podcast down.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's the conversation we have at my house all the time because my wife works
on the gut microbiome, like literally what's happening inside your guts.
And so the kids are always timing, like, how long till mom brings up poop at the dinner
table?
Oh, boy.
And it's never very long.
Maybe you just call it nitrogen instead of poop.
Nitrogen rich content.
There you go.
They'll spare your appetites.
We're just fertilizing the conversation.
Yeah, you just want to make it more fragrant.
But I guess why is nitrogen important in biological processes?
Is it something, there's something special about that molecule?
You know, because carbon has some special things about it
that make it kind of crucial to life.
Is hydrogen similar?
Well, I think you're getting pretty deep into the chemistry here.
You know, the amino acids are the basic building blocks of life
and having different kinds of atoms there
and gives you different options, different things you can build.
But yeah, dot, dot, dot, dot chemistry, I guess.
Dot, dot, dot, dot to be a Wikipedia later.
I mean, nitrogen is already at the edge of my ability to think about things.
There's so many protons there.
It's crazy.
And then you have it connected with another nitrogen.
Your brain would explode.
Yeah, exactly.
It's too many integrals for me.
Whereas a physicist's zombie, you just have to throw some chemistry questions at them.
Absolutely.
And then their brains will explode.
Yes, chemistry is our kryptonite for sure.
And they don't even have to be that hard.
Just like my high schoolers AP chemistry questions, whoa, headache time.
Right, right. Hey, Daniel, what's Avogato's number?
Big.
Boom!
Welcome to Jorge Explains the universe.
All right, well, that's the answer for Steve, which is that the nitrogen we're all breathing.
80% of the air we're breathing came from up to that previous star in our solar system.
Then it got formed with the rest of the earth and the rocks and the other elements, and that's how we're breathing it today.
That's right.
from comets, possibly from earth burping. Yeah, exactly. And there have been some people doing
really interesting studies to try to understand exactly where this nitrogen came from. Because not all
nitrogen is the same. Some of them have different isotope ratios. And you can tell, like, was it
formed in the outer solar system or the inner solar system? The molecules, not the pure nitrogen
which was made in the stars. And so there are these studies that tell us that some of the nitrogen
on Earth came from the inner solar system and some definitely came from the outer solar system.
So it's a similar question to like, where did our water come from?
All right.
Well, three awesome questions here today.
Thanks to all of our listeners who sent in their questions.
Thanks to everybody who asks questions.
Please don't be shy.
Write to us to Questions at Danielanhorpe.com.
You'll definitely hear back from us.
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