Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - What is a graviton?

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

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Maximize your edge by shopping at Lenovo.com during their back-to-school sale. That's Lenovo.com. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal.

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

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

What are we talking about today? It's time to talk about particle names. All right, my favorite subject. Hey, don't blame me. There are a lot of particles out there. All right, let's do it, Daniel. Well, today's game is, I'm going to give you a word. And you have to guess whether it's the name of a fundamental particle

or the name of a character in the Transformers. All right, I'm ready. Hit me. All right, first one, Megatron. That one's a gimme. That's definitely a transformer. All right, that was the warm-up. How about Galvatron?

Ooh, I'm going to go with particle. All right. Computron. I'm going to go with a transformer or 80s computer company. All right. Last one is Tripticon. That sounds more like a convention for puzzle nerves. Hey, I want to go to that.

That sounds awesome. Done. All right, which ones are particles and which ones are transformers? All right. It was a bit of a trick question. They were all names of transformers. What? I had to do a bit of deep research, but those are actually.

actual transformer character names. Oh, man, you got me. All right, but you have to promise me. If you ever discover a particle, Daniel, at the Large Hadron Collider, you have to name it Megatron. Done. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of Ph.D. Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, a closet transformer geek, and definitely a nerd. And welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge explain 80s toy franchises.

No, I mean, Daniel and Jorge explain the universe, a production of IHeart Radio. IHeart Radio is going to get sued now by Mattel or whoever puts out the Transformers. Oh, man. This is the first domino, isn't it? Beginning of the downfall of the podcast. But welcome to our podcast in which we take crazy, amazing things that blow your mind and try to relate them to silly, fun, easily understandable things like robots that turn into cars. Or airplanes or, you know, dinosaurs. Television.

Transformers are very versatile. I never understood the dinosaur thing. Like, you're already a killer robot. What's the advantage of transforming into a dinosaur? Like, seriously. I mean, think about this. Robot versus dinosaur who wins a robot every time. Right.

I think they're just trying to blend in. with the other dinosaurs. Oh, these are prehistoric transformers. Robots in disguise. So if transformers had come to Earth before the dinosaurs, would they have transformed into like insects and trilobites and stuff like that? They did. There's a transformer for everything.

But anyways, welcome to our podcast in which we talk about all the things in the universe, the big ones, the small ones, the ones that maybe don't even exist. That's right. And we love delving into these theoretical hypothetical topics. And so today we're going to talk about a very interesting. interesting concept, right, Daniel, which is something that may be in your everyday life affecting you on a daily, every second of your life basis, but which physicists don't even know if it exists or not.

That's right. This relates to something you experience every day, but physics still doesn't really understand. The kind of thing which in 200 years, people will look back and say, man, I wish I had had those ideas. I totally would have gotten the Nobel Prize. The puzzle was right there in front of them. And it's something that I think you've told me this before, that if it exists, it may totally upend all of our theories about physics, right? That's right.

One of the challenges with this kind of idea is that we don't even really know how to form the idea. Like the idea itself has problems, not to mention whether or not it exists, but we can't even really seem to get it to behave itself on the page. So today on the podcast, we'll be talking about... What is the Graviton? Is it a transformer? Is it a transformer? Is it a particle? Is it, and how is it pronounced?

Really, is it Graviton or is it Graviton? Yeah, what kind of transformer would the Graviton be? Shoot streams of hot gravy at you or something? Yeah, transform into a gravy bowl. Oh, man, so terrifying. Graviton versus Turkitron. Baster, the baster. The base or bot.

No, but it's a funny name. And, you know, you are often a critic of physics naming. And so, you know, if the folks have done a good job in this case, then the name should be pretty clear, right? That's your mantras. Name something in a clear way. So not knowing anything about it, just knowing the name, what do you imagine the graviton means? The Graviton? It has something to do with graves or I imagine it has something to do with gravity, like gravity.

I like how you first went for gravy, second went for graves, and only third on the physics podcast, consider we might be talking about gravity. So, yeah, it's a particle related to gravity, right, Daniel? Yeah, exactly. And we'll be talking exactly about what that means. And we've touched on this a few times, but this is the scenario where a particle exists theoretically and has already been given a name before it's discovered. Some particles, we find them, then we argue about how to name it, right?

some particles are named before they're discovered. Like we have the idea for them, and then we go out and find it. We already know what to call it, like the Higgs boson. So let's say you're physicists and you think of something on your notepad or you find something. Do you think most physicists have sort of a name in their minds when they're looking for these things, or even if they don't think they're looking for these things? I don't know. But I haven't noticed recently.

There are a lot more names being given to ideas. I think this is, you know, young people coming up and recognizing the value of branding. And so every sort of new idea that somebody comes up with has like a slick sounding name that's associated with it so that it sticks in people's heads. It's not just some complicated new idea. You know, it's got some branding to it. Cool. But of course, I've already thought about the name of a particle I would discover. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. I mean, my last name ends with S-O-N. So it's very clearly, I got to call it the white son. No, you'd have to call it the Weizenton. That sounds like some complicated Icelandic person. Cool. So today we'll be talking about what is the Graviton? And does it exist?

And what does it mean if we ever actually find this particle? Right. And how would we look for it and what would it mean? Yeah. So it sounds like something either out of a Transformers movie or something out of a physics textbook. But we were wondering, as usual, how many people out there know what a graviton is. So I walked around wherever I was in the world, and I asked people what they knew about the Graviton. Could they explain it? Did they have any idea? Had they heard it before? Did they play with one when they were a kid?

So before you listen to these, think about it for a second. If you were approached by a physicist at an airport in London, what would you answer to the question? What is a Graviton? Here's what people had to say. I heard of it, but don't know it. It's probably about, you know, gravity. Gravity. I heard about gravity, but I don't, I've ever heard about a material like Graviton, no. Graviton's, yes. They're the theoretical particle that is used to describe gravity's effects. Something in space. Gravitron? Graviton. Oh, because the two were indistinguishable to me.

Okay. All right. I like these answers. There's some creative ones there. There's one that I don't really understand. Like, there's a guy talking about the gravitron. What is a gravitron? I don't even know. He was confused.

He was like, wait a minute. Do you mean the graviton or the gravitron? I know. But he's referring to something he's familiar with called the gravitron. And I don't even know what that is. Like, it sounds like a machine he can use to control gravity or something, you know, the gravitinator. You know, it does sound kind of more physics-y, doesn't it? Yeah, it does.

Like it's a machine. Yeah, it's like pipes and it's hissing and, you know, the steam coming out the side of it or whatever. It's like a steampunk gravity accelerator. All right, well, before I feel like people feel like we're making fun of our listeners, I have to admit that I didn't know what a graviton was until basically I started talking to you only a few years ago. Oh, yeah? If I had asked you a few years ago, you might have said it was some like new sleep kitchen appliance or something. I would have said it was a transformer, most likely.

Probably the Transformer guys are bummed if they can't name a transformer the Graviton because the name is taken my physics. Oh, I don't think that's ever stopped toy companies, you know? Hold on. Are you saying that these big toy companies don't have a particle physicist like on retainer for consulting? I would be surprised if they had a robotic robot department there. Do you have robotic criticisms of the science behind transformers? Like, no, that joint would work differently or it should fold in this other way or something. thing. You know how you have a pet piece about movies that feature physics?

That's how robot is this feel about every movie or anything that has robots in it. Wow. Well, I never even imagine. Like, what? How could that possibly have the right, you know, energy density output? You need a different kind of cable for that. Come on, people. But all good answers and all good ways to look at the universe.

Yeah, and as usual, I'm grateful to those random folks out there. who are totally willing to talk to a scruffy-looking scientist about strange random science questions. So kudos to anybody out there who's willing to answer science questions with no Googling. That's right. I certainly would run away from you as fast as I could. Don't say hypothetical. Like that's happened. Well, this is a perfect point to take a break. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon,

ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance that keeps up with your business, not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors,

so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

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

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't. 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. Well, let's get into it, Daniel. Step us through it here. What is a graviton? Like, if you had to name it in one sentence, what would it be? A graviton, basically. Or if you had to describe it in one sentence, what would that sentence be?

How long can this sentence be? Can I just keep going on and on like James Joyce? One clause, one clause, or maybe two clauses, but, All right. A graviton is the particle that transmits gravity. In theory, if there is a particle that transmits gravity. So the force of gravity, the idea is that it transmits its force, its forceiness, I guess, through a particle. And if that exists, that particle is called the graviton. Exactly. That's the idea. And you can imagine, like, you know, gravitational fields have to somehow transmit information. Like if the sun disappeared, right, then we wouldn't feel the fact that the sun has disappeared until that information gets to us, right? Gravitational fields are not instantaneous.

Otherwise, you could build a machine to send information fast in the speed of light by wiggling rocks or something. Okay, so forces are not instantaneous. Yeah, and so somehow that information has to get from the sun to the earth. So like that, I know light has to travel at the speed of light, but you're saying like, even the force between two magnets has to travel at the speed of light? Yeah, nothing, no information at all can travel faster than the speed of light. And that includes information about fields, fields that generate forces like gravitational fields or magnetic fields or something, right? In fact, that's the way you make light.

You can like wiggle charged particles and they will make light. They will shoot off photons. All right. So a graviton is the particle that transmits the force of gravity, huh? Yeah. And is that weird that a force is transmitted by a particle? It's not weird at all. In fact, it's sort of a natural concept because every other force that we've ever seen has a particle associated with it.

The particle that transmits the information for that force, like electromagnetism has photons, right? Well, the other forces, like the weak nuclear force, it has three particles to do its bidding. The W plus, the W minus, and the Z. The strong nuclear force has the gluon. Actually, there's eight of them, right? And so we have these forces, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. And for those, we have good quantum theories. Those quantum theories describe these particles that transmit the information.

So now we have gravity. We're like, well, can gravity do the same thing? Like, how does gravity transmit its force or its power? Exactly. That's the question is how is information transmitted for gravity, right? In Newton's theory, Newton's original theory, he thought it was instantaneous, right? He thought if the sun disappeared or went away or was wiggled, that we would feel that instantly, right? But this was before the advent of relativity.

At the instant that the sun disappeared, the earth would start to crane out of control and shoot out into space. That's right. That's Newton's idea. Then Einstein comes along, and he gives us general relativity and special relativity, and that tells us that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light, right? And so if, for example, you change a gravitational field, right, then that information propagates through the gravitational field, right, at the speed of light. Like a shockwave kind of. Exactly, like a shock wave.

But here's the thing. What we're talking about right there is a gravitational wave, right? Like if you turn on a flashlight and you send out a beam of light, then you're sending out electromagnetic waves, right? If you wiggle the sun, if you wiggle a black hole. whole, then you're going to make gravitational waves. Those are not the same thing as a graviton. They're not.

They're not. No. A graviton is to gravitational waves, what photons are to a beam of light. Remember that general relativity describes the universe really, really well, but we think that the universe is quantum mechanical. We think that the universe is made of little bits. And in the same way that a beam of light turns out to be made up of tiny little photons, The idea is maybe gravity and gravitational waves are made up of tiny little gravitons.

It sounds like the day is that like right now I'm sitting here in my studio and I'm being pulled down by gravity towards the center of the earth. And you're saying that that somehow being like somehow the earth is shooting gravitons at me or it's or I'm shooting gravitons at the earth? What does that mean for me, Daniel, for my universe? I think the important thing to think about is how fields change. So if the Earth is not moving, relative to you, then you have a constant gravitational field. And so there are no gravitational waves being propagated there. And so you don't need to build it out of any gravitons. But if the Earth changes, right, then that information comes as a gravitational wave, which is built out of gravitons.

I see. So then if I stand up, you're saying then there's some gravitons exchange between my behind and the center of the Earth. I really wanted to get through a whole podcast without talking about your behind, but all right, let's do it. Yes, exactly. Because remember that the earth is pulling on you, right, and you are also pulling on the earth with the same force, right? One way I heard somebody say cleverly is that, like, on the surface of the earth,

you weigh, I don't know what, 150 pounds, right? But on the surface of Jorge, the earth weighs 150 pounds. There's a force of attraction between you and the earth, and any time that changes, you're going to need gravitational, little gravitational waves made out of even smaller gravitons. And the whole idea is just an extrapolation from the other fields, right? We see that it happens for electromagnetism. We see that it happens for the weak force and the strong force. And so we like patterns.

We'd like to say, hmm, maybe this is really a deep thing. And if it, if so, why doesn't it also apply to gravity? Okay, so if I stand up, then are there gravitons exchange between me and the Earth? Is that kind of what you're saying? It's like it's about the changes in. in the gravitational field? Yeah, exactly. Information about the gravitational field can be conveyed,

and we think that it's probably made up at sort of the microscopic level of gravitons, right? These are the basic quanta. The same way that we think that light, we know that light is made out of tiny little bits we call photons, right? We think that all gravitational information is built out of tiny little bits called gravitons.

But of course, we've never seen them. It's just theoretical. It's purely a concept extrapolated from other examples. Right, because I think a lot of people maybe forget that it's not just light that's made out of photons. It's just, it's the electromagnetic force itself, right? Like between two magnets, when you're pulling or pushing each other, they're shooting each other with photons, right?

In some ways. Yeah, exactly. And remember, a photon is just like a ripple in some quantum field. These days, we don't think about the basic thing in the universe is being particles, right? You probably have an image in your mind of like two particles pushing each other by shooting them, each other with little laser guns or something, right? Instead, think about... A little ping pong balls, maybe. This is microscopic, right? So instead think about like two particles on a water bed, right? And every time one of the moves, it affects the other one. It's like

it ripples over to the other one. And those ripples are ripples in the photonic quantum field, right? And those are what we call photons. We reimagine these particles as ripples in these sort of base, more base objects, these deeper, more fundamental objects called quantum fields. And a big part of the theory is that these ripples have a minimum size, right? Like, you can't have an infinitely small ripple. At some point, they sort of like become chunky too. Exactly. Then that's where Einstein, you sort of ran up against the wall, right? Einstein correctly predicts that gravity takes time to propagate for example his his theory has gravitational waves in it and we've seen them right that's awesome but what we don't know is if those waves are made of tiny little bits like if you zoom in on them

enough and you break them down into tiny little bits like if you turn down a flashlight really really low eventually if you have a really awesome flashlight you'll get it down to the point where it's sending out one photon at a time right there's a minimum amount of energy that has to come out of your flashlight's either off or it's sending out one photon for a second it can't out half a photon. And so the idea is that there's maybe a minimum amount of gravity. And that's what a graviton is. Yeah, exactly. You know, think about it maybe spatially, if that's helpful. Like, you know, the universe has pixels, right? We talked about space maybe being sliced up into little pixels. Well, this is sort of like pixelization of gravity. Like, is there a minimum

bit of gravity? And, you know, we don't know. There's a very strong argument that there should be because everything else in the universe seems to be quantum mechanical, right? The, the universe, as you like to say, is chunky and a creamy peanut butter, right? And so we think everything should behave those rules. But our theory of gravity, general relativity, is not a quantum theory, right? It's a classical theory. It assumes that you could have an infinitely tiny amount of gravity or that you could have mass in an infinite amount in a tiny little dot, right, a singularity. Those things are at odds with quantum mechanics. Yeah, because the difference I think you've told me this before is that, you know,

all the other forces act via quantum field, but we don't know if gravity has a gravity field in the universe, right? Like, gravity kind of has a special place among the other forces in that it's more like a bending of time and space. Exactly, but we hate special cases, right? Physicists like to generalize. We like to see patterns. We like to organize everything together. So to say, like, everything works this way except for gravity. Things run in this certain manner, except for gravity. You think nobody's special, basically. Well, if something is special, then it's a clue, right?

So it's a clue about how the universe works at some really interesting deep fundamental level. So before we believe that, we'd like to remove all other possible explanations. And it's a pretty good argument that every other force we've ever seen as a quantum force can be described in terms of particles and fields. So we're going to try really hard to make that work also for gravity before we declare that it's impossible. Gravity is special because you can think of it as a bending of space and time, whereas all the other forces, you can't think of them as a bending of space and time, right?

Like the way that it makes sense to think about those forces is quantum physics, but the way it makes sense to think about gravity is as a bending of space and time. And so that's kind of the problem, isn't it? That is a problem, but like everything in physics, you can describe it in multiple ways. And so you can build up a theory of gravity that comes from particles and fields. right? You can start with a gravitational field, right, a quantum field, and you can have gravitons zipping around. And then you can say, well, can I build that? Can I sort of build this mental model? And can I have it predict the same things that general relativity predicts, right? Because

general relativity, very successful. That description of gravity works really well. But can I get the same description building it up in another way? And that's sort of the theoretical challenge. And so far, the answer is no. Like, have not yet been able to build a theory of gravity that starts from quantum bits and explains all the same stuff as Einstein's theory. They haven't because it just doesn't work. They just cannot make it work. Like they put a theory together using the same strategies as they have for electromagnetism and the weak force and the strong force. And it just doesn't work. It gives nonsense answers. Like it says, if you do this experiment, then you will measure infinity mass or there will be

an infinite amount of energy released, which is nonsense, right? You can't. have an infinite amount of energy. So it predicts things which cannot be true, which just means that we have a problem with the calculation. And we had similar problems with every other quantum field theory, but we figured them out. But what is it about gravity in particular, you think that is giving you so much trouble? Gravity has this weird feature that it gets stronger when there's more energy, right? Because gravity essentially is the bending of space due to energy, right? That's the way we like to think about it. So as the energy goes up, then you get stronger gravity. And then because you have stronger gravity, the energy has gone up. And so you get this feedback effect where these

infinities crop up much more easily than in other forces. Because like electromagnetism doesn't get stronger when you have more energy. So it's kind of like it's more tied into the very nature of the universe maybe. And so it doesn't quite work. That's right. And if it is a quantum field and if it does have a quantum particle, it will still be different, it'll still be unique. Like the graviton, we think it has this weird kind of way of spinning. Like all the other particles

that transmit forces, they have either spin one or spin zero. But the graviton, the only way people have even come close to making it work, is having it have a lot more ways to spin. So it's spin two, which means there's five different ways it can spin instead of just one way or three ways.

So it would definitely be a different beast. If we, if we were able to make a quantum theory of gravity, it would not look that similar to like the strong force or the weak force or electromagnetism. You have to kind of give it a few more bells and whistles. And that's just to try to make it work, right? And even still, those theories don't work. The only theory of quantum gravity that works at all is one that starts very, very basic, right? Like string theory and loop quantum gravity. These are attempts to start from a very different place and build up quantum fields themselves. And they have succeeded in making some useful theories of quantum

gravity, but none that we can test yet. What would it mean if it is, if the graviton does exist and it is true, right? It would mean that the bending of space and time is, like you said, pixelated or chunky or, you know, I can't bend space and time perfectly smoothly. It sort of kinks. There's a knob there, and instead of rotating smoothly, it has little divvets, right? You have one or two or three, you can't have, you can't turn it to two and a half, right? But also I think it would mean something much deeper, right? It would mean that gravity really is a force the way we think about the other forces. We're trying to squeeze gravity into this mold. Can we describe it using the same mathematical tools we've used for the other forces? If we can succeed, then we can say

something deep about gravity, like, oh yeah, it's just a force like the other ones. It happens to have this ability to bend space and time, which is weird and interesting. We have to ask, why is that, you know, and can we connect it to the other forces? But we, We met a huge step forward and sort of unifying all the forces together, seeing them all as one. If we can't, then you're right. Gravity is weird and special. And then we have to ask, what makes it weird and special? Why does it seem so much like a force if it's not really?

All right. So it may or may not exist, this graviton. And it may or may not totally change our understanding of the whole universe. And so then I think that brings us to the question of how are you going to resolve this? How are you going to find this thing or not find it or conclude that it doesn't exist? So let's get into that. But first, let's take a quick break. Ah, come on.

Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel core ultra-processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance.

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so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys, Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene.

In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is, Back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school. a 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. All right, we're talking about the graviton, and we're saying that it's kind of the minimum little ripple that maybe gravity acts through. That's right. That if it exists, it means gravity is like the other forces, and if it doesn't exist, it means gravity is something totally different and special. So how are we going to find out what the answer is, Daniel? Well, there's two basic

approaches. One is to sort of look for evidence of it happening already, right? And we do this in astrophysics all the time. We just say, well, let's just look at it into the universe and find something crazy, which reveals to us the truth. Like when we're studying dark matter, we saw the collisions of two galactic clusters that showed us how dark matter gets separated from normal matter. So in this case, we'd be looking for like really huge gravitational waves. So we've already seen gravitational waves, right? Those are evidence of the wiggling of a gravitational field when like black holes collide or whatever.

And it's hard to see them, right? It's really difficult to see them because they're really faint. And so it's even harder to see whether they're made of little bits or not, right? Like, we can just barely see them. So it's hard to tell if they're, what they're made out of. So what you need to do is spot like a really mondo gravitational wave. One that was big enough that you could sort of zoom in on it and see what is made out of. Something really big, like a megatron.

I think I'd call it a gravitronator or something. Yeah, exactly. So you need to find, it's so, the gravitons, if they exist are so small and weak, You can't just measure them with your finger, right? You're saying we need to find something really crazy happening in the universe that's producing so many of these and such an amount that you can notice them. Yeah, exactly. That's one strategy.

The other strategy is to try to make them here on Earth. And, you know, the go-to place for making crazy stuff here on Earth, of course, is the particle collider. Like, you want to make something new, something you're not sure as possible. Just keep smashing particles together. eventually it'll come out. And so you're saying one way to maybe study a graviton is to make gravitons. Yeah, exactly.

And that's the magic of a particle collider is you throw stuff together. And if something can exist, then you will see it. And so if we smash protons together often enough, and gravitons are a thing, that eventually those two protons, one in a trillion or one in a quadrillion collisions, will turn into a graviton. And that graviton will then turn into something else that we can see. Hold on a second, Daniel, here. You're saying that at the particle collider, you're taking protons, smashing them together, and then transforming them into gravitons.

We want to. We're hoping to. That would be a dream come true. So far, no. So a graviton is a transformer if you find it. I see. Is what I'm saying. I totally walked into that.

Yes, exactly. Or the particle helider is a transformer because it transforms protons into other kinds of stuff. But, you know, there's a huge difference there. transformer when it changes it's all the same stuff just rearranged in a different shape right the dinosaur is actually the robot just with the head with the tail is or whatever but in this case we're not doing that or not we're not rearranging what's inside the proton into a different shape to make a graviton the proton annihilates it turns into nothing it turns into raw energy which that can then be turned into something new that's how exactly you explore the universe by turning this raw energy into so any of the stuff that he can turn into So it's more like alchemy than transformation. And those are totally different for sure. Yeah, exactly. If gravitons exist, then the idea is we could make them by colliding protons together.

Eventually, one out of a billion times we would make them. And then we would see them turn into other particles like a pair of electrons, right? Essentially, a graviton would look sort of like another version of the photon. Would you be able to see it, though? Wouldn't it be so weak and small that you'd be very, very much? very, very, very, very difficult to see. Well, that's the cool thing about the collider, right? I feel like I'm a collider evangelist today,

is that things that are really weak that are hard to see, it just turn into things that are really rare at the collider. And so the more collisions you make, the more you can see rare stuff. Like, yeah, it's weak, which means every time a proton collides, you've got to roll a like trillion-sided dye to figure out what's going to happen.

And only one of those sides says, a graviton is made. But that's cool. If you roll a die a trillion times a day, then you're probably going to get a graviton a day. So it sort of sounds like you're basically looking for effects that you can point to and say, hey, that means that there's a graviton somewhere in there, like when two black holes collide or when you smash these protons together.

Exactly. That's what we do with collider is we look for unique signatures of new particles, something that says, oh, this has to be a new particle. It's very likely to be a new particle. It can't be explained in any other way. And so we have theories of how gravitons would look in our detectors, and so we're looking for them. So far, we haven't found a hint of gravitons in our detectors, which just means that, you know, they're basically smaller than we can see. So we could just keep looking.

Wait, you said you haven't seen a hint of them? No way. So like zero. Zero, no, yeah, exactly. What we've seen so far is totally consistent with Einstein's theory of general relativity. Well, what do you think is more likely, just in your personal opinion? Do you think the graviton exists or do you think maybe it doesn't and gravity is a very special kind of force?

I think that we're going to figure out that everything is quantum mechanical. I think the quantum mechanics is just so fundamental to everything we've seen in the universe except for this one thing that it seems more likely to me that we just haven't understood that one last thing yet. That it's the one thing that's left over that hasn't been translated yet into modern theories of physics. So that's my suspicion that everything is quantum mechanical. Because if most things are quantum mechanical, it's hard to imagine how you can't have everything quantum mechanical.

You know, like where's the interface between the quantum mechanical stuff and the non-quantan mechanical stuff? They have to interact. And so they have to both be quantum mechanical that sort of talk to each other. Yeah, so you're really hoping that it's true because then that would be like the gravy ton on your mashed potatoes. No, no, I suspect it's true. I hope it's not. because it would be a huge shock if it wasn't, right? And that's the best case scenario for science,

is learning something which is a deep shock to like the fundamental community to say like, what, that's impossible? That makes us rethink everything. Awesome. That's what science is about, right? Not like, yeah, we're pretty sure as quantum mechanical, and it turns out it is check.

That's much less exciting, even if I think that's most likely the reality. Well, that's my personal philosophy. Aim high, but have low expectations. Well, I hope that's working for you. Well, I have low expectations, so it doesn't, I won't be disappointed. No matter how the gravy tastes, you're happy with it. If it's made out of big lumps or tiny little gravitons.

All right, so I think that I covered what a graviton is, right, Daniel? Yeah. How would you summarize it? I would say it's like gravy with a port on top of the transformer and then mixed together with some alchemy. That's what I got out of this conversation. And then put into a particle slider. Take two of those and smash them together. No, I think it's the idea that, you know, gravity as a force has to transmit in some way, right?

Like, you know, it's not like an instantaneous thing, like a magical thing. So it has to transmit in some way and possibly in a minimum way. And that's kind of what this graviton is, right? The idea that something is transmitting the force of gravity. You are officially a quantum physicist. All right. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. This is one of my favorite topics in physics because it's theoretical.

it's experimental. It's experimentally theoretical. It's theoretically experimental. It's crazy. It's fascinating. And we don't know what the answer is, but someday humans will. Someday somebody will know is gravity quantum mechanical or is it special? Great. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Ah, come on, why is this taking so long?

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