Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - What is quantized inertia?

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

Daniel and Jorge explore the mystery of inertia and whether a controversial theory can explain it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. Good morning, Jorge. Have you left the house yet today? I have, yeah. I record in my garage.

I have a setup there. So technically, I'm out of the house. But if you mean, like, leaving the premises of my house, no, I haven't done that yet. I mean, it's not even new. Who leaves the house before noon? I guess most of humanity have that experience. Are you saying I'm not part of humanity?

I'm just saying maybe you have more inertia than the rest of us. Yes, a cartoonist at rest tends to stay in rest unless an external deadline is applied to it. Yeah, I think that's Newton's forgotten fourth law of cartooning physics. Forgotten or he never got to it because he had too much inertia. He never managed to change out of his pajamas. Hi, I'm Jorge, I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at UC Irvine, and I have my own kind of inertia.

Oh yeah? Is it mostly around your waist or you have a very inertial head? It's sort of more conceptual inertia. Once I have an I I don't like to let go of it. So the idea has inertia, though. Is that what you mean? Is it a heavy idea or a light idea? It sort of stubbornly sticks around in my brain. Sometimes I'll get curious about something

and it just will not leave me for months or years until eventually I find an answer. Aren't you describing all physicists though? Is there a certain sense an amount of compulsion you need to be a researcher or a scientist? I think there is in fact a minimum quantum level of obsession you have to have in order to dedicate your life to these crazy ideas.

Well, welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge, explain the universe, hopefully your new obsession, which is a production of iHeartRadio. In which we explore the entire universe without leaving our houses or changing out of our pajamas. We help you perform the incredible feat of trying to import the entire universe, all of the stars and galaxies and tiny particles and alien landscapes that might be out there into your brain without ever leaving your home. If you are lying in bed or sitting on your couch or otherwise chilling out, we hope to bring the entire universe to you.

That's right, because it is a pretty heavy universe full of massive and amazing revelations and things to discover that we try to fit all inside of your head. It's a big project to understand how the universe works and something we've been working on for a long time, decades, centuries, even millennia, if you take seriously early Greek physics. Which you don't, right? I've seen you talk about Greek physicists or as you like to call them Greek guessers. You know, they had a different approach. They began by thinking internally just what made sense to them. The concept of empiricism came a little bit later. Actually going out and testing these ideas to see if they do describe our universe

is a little bit more modern than the ancient Greeks. I feel like that's a little bit unfair though because, like, you know a lot more than them, but only because there were a lot of people who did signs and research before you did. Like if you were born in Greek times, who knows what you might be thinking. Oh, that's definitely true. And I don't claim to be smarter than Aristotle or Galileo. I think the lesson to take away from it is that progress is slow. And the things that seem obvious to us were actually big intellectual steps forward.

And we can't really recognize that anymore because we are so marinated in our current way of thinking. We forget how big an intellectual leap it was to try to describe the universe in terms of mathematics and make predictions and go out and test those things. All of that was a big idea that took thousands of years to bubble up from inside human brains. Yeah, although it all seems like Greek to me, these things. There is a lot the scientists have discovered and theorize about the universe, and we've made a huge amount of progress. We have a pretty solid theory about what things are made out of

and also how the stars and the galaxies and the black holes out there move. It is kind of incredible how much progress we have made. Our mastery of technology is, evidence that we understand how the universe works at a very microscopic scale all the way up to a macroscopic scale. We can use computers which are based on the motions of tiny little particles to guide enormous things like a 747 across the ocean. It's this harmony between the very, very small and the very, very big. We have explored the universe at all of these scales and many scales in between. And at each step, we can find some story to tell about what's going on, how things work,

what laws they seem to be following. It never ceases to amaze me that the universe is understandable. It is pretty amazing. Although, even though we have theories that can predict things like the motion of particles and the motion of galaxies and stars out there in space, that doesn't necessarily mean that we understand these theories or what they mean or where they come from. Yeah, we tell little mathematical stories about the universe,

but sometimes it's useful to stop and say, like, what is this thing we are talking about anyway. Like we have the shorteninger equation that tells us the wave function of a particle and how it moves through space, but it leaves unanswered important questions like, well, what is a particle anyway? And it turns out that physicists and philosophers have riotously different opinions about what this thing is we're talking about. But we can still tell stories about these objects, even if we don't quite understand what they are. But it's very fun and very fruitful to dig into these questions and try to understand exactly what it is we are talking about. Yeah, there are still very basic things about the universe we don't understand.

And they don't just relate to tiny little minuscule particles that you can see. It also applies to you and me and what you do every day, which is to move. Or to not move and to just sit in your chair all day long. Are you describing physicists or cartoonists or both? I was just being general. I don't know why you're particularly responding, you know. Well, why are you mentioning it? Well, it's a sort of mysterious process, right?

you sit in your chair and you stay sitting in your chair you expect that unless you're getting up to move across the room or go fetch another banana you're going to be in your chair all day long and that's the kind of thing that seems obvious to you and it seemed obvious to aristotle and it seems obvious to everybody but understanding the mechanics of it like why things at rest stay at rest why things in motion stay in motion raises some really fascinating issues about like what is momentum. What is inertia? What is mass anyway? So today on the podcast, we'll be tackling the question. What is quantized inertia? I'm guessing this means quantum mechanics of inertia? It's two buzzwords stuck together to make a buzzword sandwich. I'm not sure

inertia is a buzzword. Do people use it to denote, you know, exciting things? Not usually. Yeah, inertia is never a good thing, is it? Like Silicon Valley disruptors, they're usually looking to disrupt industries that have too much inertia. Yes. It's something you want to break, I guess, unless you're a gratuitous, in which case you enjoy a little bit of inertia sometimes. But it is a fascinating question because I feel like inertia is a word that, you know, even as a little kid, you learn pretty early on that it's just like what heavy things have that makes them hard to move. And so to think about the idea that we don't know what it is is kind of crazy. It's interesting word also because I'm not sure if it comes from physics and then we use it in our lives to describe like our emotional states or our motivation levels as a metaphor for a concept from physics or if it went the other direction and physics stole it from English because it's similar to the concept that already existed.

There's no history of words in physics. Oh, I'm sure there is, but I'm not an expert in linguistics. Somebody out there who knows the history of the word inertia, write in and let us know. Well, also it depends what you call a scientist, right? Maybe like early cavemen saw a big rock and they found it hard to move and they said, you know, came up with a word for it. And that's kind of like being a scientist, right? It's certainly being descriptive. I think philosophers of science might quibble about whether you're doing science just by describing your experience in the world.

I think maybe science also requires developing a model to explain what you've seen, what you've experienced that also predicts what would happen in the future. I'm sure they predicted that the rock. with a move. Rock was heavy yesterday. Rock heavy today. Rock heavy tomorrow. Me, scientist. Me published first paper or first rock.

Yeah, first stone tablet. First case painting. Got a publication range of one. Impact factor one. But it is a pretty amazing question to ask because I imagine it's not a question people ask every day. Like, what is inertia? We just kind of take it for granted.

That inertia exists. We do take it for granted, especially because we have fair. fairly solid theories of physics which use it. You know, Newtonian physics, Einsteinian relativity, they all rely in this concept of mass and on inertia. So they play a role in the mathematical stories these theories tell, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily explain what it is or where it comes from. You know, Einstein's relativity can tell us that things with energy in them have mass and

that mass has inertia, but doesn't answer the question, why? Why do things with energy in them tend to need a force to accelerate them for example. Yeah, it's a pretty fascinating question. And so as usual, we were wondering how many people out there had thought about this question or had heard of the term quantized inertia. So thanks very much to everybody who volunteers for these to be on the mic for the podcast. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to hear your voice speculating about future topics for the podcast, please don't be shy. Write to us to questions at danielandhorpe.com. So think about it for a second. What do you think is quantized inertia? Here's what people had to say. First, I'm going to

to take a wild guess that quantized inertia is essentially just a quantized view of inertia. And secondly, that you're using the same definition of inertia as I learned in school way back when. I guess you would just build the quantum of inertia with the quantum of mass times, the quantum of distance over the quantum of time. And quantized inertia would be inertia, momentum, whatever I want to call it. measured in that unit. Quantized inertia sounds to me like it's going to be small packets of movement that can be discreetly segmented into, you know, little individual quantized bits of movement.

So it's not this continuous, everything stays in motion as long as it's in motion that we would expect from Newtonian physics. Inertia, but quantized, quantized inertia. So, hmm, I don't know. I don't know what context inertia means, but I'm guessing it's something to do with inertia that originates from something that doesn't have mass.

So if you were to take a box, an empty box, like completely empty, I mean, apart from virtual particles, I guess, but if you had an empty box and weighed it, it would weigh less than if you took a box with photons in it, even though photons are massless according to the current. prevailing theory, just because of their motion, because of their momentum, that box would have inertia. So I don't know because photons are the quantum of the electro-magnetic fields.

So maybe that's what quantized inertia means, but I'm not sure. All right. Not a lot of solid guesses here. I like the person who said, it's inertia, but quantized. Isn't that what quantum physics is? It's physics, but quantized. That's what quantum everything is, right? quantum dessert. Dippin dots. Yeah. Yeah, I think quantizing your dessert would probably help

with your own inertia around your waist. I don't know. I think the smaller the pieces are, the more of them you can have. So you just end up consuming an infinite number of dip and dots. They're so small. How can they possibly add up to anything? That seems physically impossible, Daniel. I thought you were a physicist. I can bend logic when it comes to dessert. Yeah. It does make it harder to bend your body. But I did really like the answer that suggested that quantized inertia could come out of, quantized distance and quantized time. Essentially, if all of reality is quantized, then everything is quantized, including

inertia and dessert. Yeah, yeah, I guess if space is quantized and technically moving through space or not moving through space is also quantized. That's right. Either you're eating dessert or you're not, unless it's quantum mechanics, in which case maybe you're doing both at the same time. The dessert uncertainty principle. So this is a really fun topic, quantized inertia.

I like it because it touches on a really core question. physics, like what is inertia and mass anyway, but it also lets us explore a recent hypothesis a suggestion that might answer those questions. Right. And I guess just to be clear, quantized inertia is a concept that comes from a theory that tries to explain what inertia is. Yeah, that's exactly right. It suggests that inertia comes from tiny little quantum effects in the universe.

All right. Well, let's jump into it. And I guess let's start at the beginning. What do physicists call inertia? How do they define it? So inertia first appears in Newton's theory, right? It tells us that things in motion will stay in motion and that things at rest will stay at rest. And in that sense, it's another way to state conservation of momentum.

You know, things that have no momentum, their mass times their velocity, will continue to have no momentum unless you apply a force to them, unless you accelerate them by applying a force. Things who have constant velocity, constant momentum, will continue to have that momentum and less again, you apply a force to change that momentum. So that's the principle of inertia. Right. It's kind of the idea that if something has velocity, it's hard to change that thing's velocity, right?

So that's kind of the concept. And maybe the more of it that you have, the more inertia that you have, the harder it is to change that velocity. Yeah, and that's where Newton's laws of physics come in, right? You have a certain velocity. You need to apply a force to change that velocity. And because force is mass times acceleration,

then to get a larger acceleration, you need a larger force. And because force is mass times acceleration, the more mass you have, the larger the force you need to get the same acceleration. So things that have more mass, therefore, need bigger forces in order to accelerate them. Like if you push on a tiny rock, you're going to accelerate it more than if you push on the entire earth with the same force. Right. So then I guess is inertia related to mass?

Does it include mass? Or is it just the general concept that you need a force to move a mass? You know what I mean? The mass that we're talking about there, we often call inertial mass because we think it's the mass that gives things inertia, the property of having mass. If you didn't have mass, then you wouldn't have inertia. So the inertia comes from having mass because you also need that mass to have momentum. Right.

Although, could you also say that you can't have mass if you don't have inertia or that what we call mass is actually the property of inertia? I think it's the second that what we call mass is actually the property of inertia. That's why we get more specific and we call it inertial mass. Right, because there are other kinds of masses. There are other kinds of masses, exactly. And it's also a subtle distinction between momentum and inertia because it is possible to have momentum without mass, like photons have momentum, even though they don't have any mass.

Does that mean photons have inertia or not? Or is it all very light? Well, photons do carry momentum, right? And so a photon, for example, can bounce off of something and push it, you know, like a solar sail is a photon pushing on something and transferring its momentum to that object. So from that sense, they have momentum. But inertia is like the resistance of an object to changing its velocity. And photons can't change their velocity, right?

They always travel at the speed of light. So inertia when it comes to photons is very confusing. Does that mean photons have infinite inertia? That's an interesting question. You can change the direction of a photon, even though you can't change its velocity. And that does actually count as a change. in its velocity vector because you're changing its components. Something with infinite inertia, you wouldn't be able to change its direction either.

So light is a sort of special category there. I think you're saying that light does have inertia. Or maybe that it doesn't apply to things without inertial mass. I think there's a few different concepts here. There's momentum, which light definitely carries. But inertia here, we're talking about inertial mass. And photons definitely don't have any inertial mass. All right.

So some particles in the universe seem to have inertial mass. And it's sort of related to Einstein theories about gravity too, right? That's right. And there's another interesting wrinkle about inertial mass there, which is it doesn't just come from the mass of your particles, right? So for example, particles have their own little mass, which they get from the Higgs boson. But then you can put them together and use energy to build those bonds, and that energy also contributes to the mass of the object. So for example, a proton is made of little quarks. Those quarks have really, really tiny inertial masses. The proton has a lot of inertial mass because of the energy in it. So the proton, this bound state

of all the quarks, has a lot more mass than the things it's made out of. And that's because energy inside an object is sort of what gives it mass. It gives it inertia. So there's all these different ideas here. What is mass? What is inertia for an object? It reflects how much energy is sort of stored inside the object, not just the mass of the objects inside of it. Right. And in our book, frequently ask questions about the universe, we tackled this in a whole chapter where we basically conclude that there's no such thing as mass, right? Like, everything is just

energy because most of what we call mass in our bodies is actually the energy stored in the between the particles. And also, like, even the mass of a particle is really just the energy it has with the Higgs field, right? And so it's all just energy which means there is not just thing

as mass. It is all just energy, but it does seem to have inertia. And that's true also in other counterintuitive examples like with photons, photons have no mass, but if you put a bunch of photons in a box with mirrors inside, for example, so they're bouncing around, then that will have more mass than an empty box. So you can like make a box more massive by shooting a laser into it and capturing those photons because you've put energy into it. So it is all just energy, but that energy has this property of inertia. Right. It kind of seems like maybe the right order of these

concept is that you know whenever you have energy localized or put together in a particular object or a spot or even a box it's somehow difficult to move that box or object like you need to apply some kind of force energy to change its velocity and then that's the concept of inertia and then what we call mass is kind of a measure of its inertia yeah mass is like a dial that tells you how much stored energy there is inside of it and there's this really between the stored energy inside of it and how hard it is to move that thing. And mass is that multiplicative factor between those two things, exactly. Right, which means inertia is it kind of like predates mass or is more important or, you know,

it comes before the concept of mass. So it's pretty, pretty important, right? Before in what sense, like chronologically or sort of conceptually? I mean like conceptually, like in terms of the way that we think about these ideas, the order of concepts, it comes first, right? Yeah, you could definitely think about it that way. What we observe is that there are things in the universe and those things seem to have inertia. We explain that by coming up with this concept of mass for these things, that is sort of the

origin of their inertia. But it's really just more of a description than an actual explanation. We don't really understand the mechanism by which energy resists changes in its inertia. I think that's what you mean. Well, I think I mean like in your light box example, if I put light inside of a box with mirrors inside of it, it's going to have inertia. but that doesn't mean that the light I put into it has mass. So it's almost like inertia is kind of a more important

or overarching kind of fundamental concept than mass. I think big inertia will be happy to hear you say that. Oh, good. I'll wait for the check. All right. Well, let's get into this idea of inertia and why we don't understand what it is. And also a new theory that might have an answer for it. First, let's take a quick break. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast.

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Like, if the energy is not right, we're not doing it, whatever that it is. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We're talking about inertia. And ironically, it's taken us a while to get to this topic. You might say we have a lot of inertia. And there's also some sort of inertia in the field about answering these questions at the foundations. Once we have a theory that works that we can use to describe the universe, a lot of people like to just run with it and go off and predict things and build ideas on top of it. There isn't always an appetite for like digging into the details of like, what does this mean? It feels to people a little bit like doing philosophy, which is why for a long time people ignored questions

at the heart of like quantum mechanics, you know, what are particles and is the wave function actually collapsing because we had a theory that worked. But I think it's really interesting and really important to dig into these details and try to understand what is this foundation on which we're building all of our theories. Yeah. And so we define inertia as kind of the,

basically the observation that whenever you have an object, which is mostly energy, or whenever you have a lot of energy in one side, spot in one kind of thing, it's kind of hard to make that thing move or to slow it down or basically to change its velocity. And so that observation, that's what we call inertia. Yeah, that's what we call inertia. Okay, but I guess the big question is like, why is that? Why is the universe like that? Well, like, why is it hard to change the velocity of things that have a lot of energy? That's a great question. And I think it's important when we ask big questions like that to think about what

kind of answer are we looking for? Are we looking for an answer that's like, this is the only way the universe can be because it's the only way the mathematics hangs together in a consistent way. Like there is no way to build another theory of physics that doesn't have this property. It's like a necessary consequence of something fundamental to our universe. Or another kind of answer would be like, oh, here's the mechanism. Here's microscopically what's happening when you try to push on that box of photons. Like to understand the little details of it. exactly what's happening and why this concept of inertia sort of emerges from that. Right. I think you're talking about the difference between giving up and throwing your hands

up in the air and saying, ah, just the way, that's just the way the universe is. And the other option, which is to dig in deeper and see if there's maybe a simpler explanation for things like inertia, right? Like at some point, you could just say, hey, that's just the way the universe is because there's no other way that the universe could have been differently. Inertia is just there because it's there. Or you might dig in deeper and say, oh, no, look, actually it's because of this other thing that we know about the universe, right? I think it's just a question of which rabbit hole you want to go down. If you want to go down the path of like finding fundamental principles that force the universe to be this way, then you can make arguments like the ones we

make about conservation and momentum. Why does momentum seem to be conserved in our universe? We think because of Nother's theorem and various symmetries, that is because space is the same everywhere. And so And then you can ask, well, why is space the same everywhere? It's a fun rabbit hole to go down. But it's sort of a different structure of the argument to say that it's constrained by certain physical principles. And then you can, of course, ask, like, well, why those physical principles? So you never really get to an answer, I think. But it's just sort of like a different direction to try to explore.

I don't think either one should be called Giving Up. Giving up is like staying at home in your pajamas all day. Unless you're doing physics in your pajamas at home. Isn't that what you do a lot of the time, too? Yeah, I stay home. I sit in my pajamas, I eat dipping dots, and I think about the universe. There you go. See, inertia can be a good thing.

I feel like it gets a bad rap. It does. People always talk about inertia as a negative thing. Whereas momentum, now, that's a good thing usually. See, I think you're just a shill for big inertia. I think you're being paid on the side by big inertia to rehab its image in the community. In the physics community. Exactly.

You're here telling us that it shouldn't be a negative thing. You're here telling us that it's more fundamental than mass. I mean, these are basically big inertia's talking points. Well, I think we're all on the thumb of inertia. So really, I kind of want to make it happy, right? You don't want inertia to turn against you. I see. Now you're resorting to threats, huh?

Fall in line, everyone, or big inertia will get you. I didn't say that. You did, then. But in terms of the question of what is inertia, I guess then, so which answer are we looking for? Are we looking for a way to say that inertia is because the universe couldn't have been any other way without inertia, or are we trying to find a mechanism for inertia? People are going in both directions. There are some folks on the sort of philosophical side trying to understand whether we can connect it to symmetries of the universe, et cetera. But today we're going to dig into

this theory of quantized inertia, which is trying to describe it from the bottom up, explaining the mechanism of it from the quantum scale, from the microscopic picture of the universe, what is actually out there pushing back against you when you try to move that heavy rock. I see. So maybe like, you're trying to find a way to say that it's not that inertia is just is it's like the result of this other simple theory that we have about the universe exactly the way that for example we can explain the mass of little particles by saying oh it's the interaction with this field there's a physical mechanism the higgs field that's changing the way particles move as if they have mass right that's a nice mechanistic explanation or why these particles seem to move in this way can we find a more general similar sort of description an explanation for something that's happening out there in space that's pushing back on things. It's changing how they move in a way that we describe as inertia. Right. And I guess this gets us to this kind of very subtle distinction

between the inertia of fundamental particles and the inertia of objects like you and me. Like we know that for small fundamental particles, their inertia comes from the interaction with the Higgs field, right? What we don't understand is why collections of particles or when you have energy stored in a spot between particles, why that has. to nourishing because that's not interacting with the Higgs field. Is that what you're saying?

It's a good question. I mean, we can describe what happens when an electron is moving through the universe and interacting with the Higgs field as certain mathematical properties of that interaction. We think the electron by itself without the Higgs field would have no mass. We travel always at the speed of life, for example. And we can describe exactly how the interaction of the electron with the Higgs field changes its motion just the same way as if you sort of like created mass for this particle. if you just gave it inherently this inertia. We don't have a mechanism for the Higgs boson to do that to like a collection of electrons differently

than it's just its interaction with the individual electrons. Like we can describe how the Higgs talks to one electron, but now put 1,000 electrons together in a box and give them energy. It has more inertia. We can't explain that using the Higgs field. The Higgs field just interacts with the individual electrons. So then the inertia of a box full of electrons is due to something else entirely. you're saying we don't understand the source of that inertia but it sort of acts exactly like the

higgs fuel acts on fundamental particles in the sense that they both have inertia yes they both have inertia which we can describe as mass they resist changes in their motion right but isn't it suspicious that it's exactly the same like you know an electron is just a little bit of energy and it interacts with the hicks field and that's how it gets its inertia but then when you have a whole bunch of energy together from multiple particles wouldn't you think that also interacts with the hicks field You might, but we don't think that the Higgs boson has a monopoly on inertia or on mass. We think that there are other ways even fundamental particles might get mass. For example, dark matter we suspect is a particle.

We're also fairly certain it doesn't get its mass from the Higgs boson because the Higgs boson only interacts with particles that feel the weak force. We're pretty sure dark matter doesn't feel the weak force. Neutrinos even might get their mass not from the Higgs boson, but through some other mechanism. if they are myerona particles, check out our whole episode about neutrino masses. So we think that there might be multiple ways for even fundamental particles to get mass. The Higgs boson is not the only way. And so more broadly, we think it might be possible for collections of these objects to get mass via other mechanisms. And that's exactly what quantized inertia is.

It's another way to give mass to objects. All right. Let's get into this theory of quantized inertia. It's a recent theory, right, by one person. It is a fairly recent idea and is championed by one particular physicist in the UK, Mike McCullough, and it has a sort of nice collection of ideas inspired by black holes and event horizons and quantum mechanics, all mixed together in sort of a clever package. He's like, let's throw everything that we can into this to give it more inertia or momentum,

whichever it sounds better. It is a bit of a grab bag. And recently he's used this theory quantized inertia to try to explain mysteries like dark matter. and also things like sonoluminescence and the pioneer anomaly and free energy and also dark energy in the expansion of the universe. So it's sort of a very useful toolbox for him. Can I come up with cartoon ideas also? That would be more helpful for me.

I'm thinking maybe you can also explain who shot JFK. I mean, let's just solve all the mysteries while we're at it. Well, technically inertia did kill JFK. But I guess the main question here that we're, that physicists are trying to. to solve is why do collections of energy like when you pull energy together why is it hard to move it from one place to another and this theory says that maybe it's due to quantum effects that's what's called quantized inertia right exactly he takes the picture of the universe as filled with quantum particles right all space has fields and these fields can't have zero energy so they're always sort of oscillating out there in the universe and in certain situations these fields do weird things like for example if you have a black hole you have an event horizon beyond which you can't see anything. David Hawking predicted that if you have these fields near an event horizon, it generates radiation. So this is called Hawking radiation. It's the particular combination of having these quantum fields and an event horizon. In order for those fields to be

sort of self-consistent, you need the black hole to be generating some radiation. You need the propagation of waves through that field outward from the event horizon in order for sort of mathematically things to add up. So the lesson there is that event horizons tend to cause radiation. Right. That's why they say that a black hole will eventually evaporate, right? Or black holes are always evaporating. Although, has this been actually observed? Or is this just a theory that black holes have radiation? Just a theory, definitely never observed. Hawking radiation, if it exists, would be extremely faint. For small black holes, it's quite bright. But for the black holes we expect are out there in the universe, it would be very, very low intensity.

So very difficult to observe, especially this far from black holes. So we don't know for sure that it exists. But in the theory, these quantum waves which fill the universe, if they encounter an event horizon, it generates radiation in the other direction. And it's this kind of radiation that McCullough suspects causes inertia. Wait, what do you mean? So if I have a black hole, it has an event horizon, which is like the edge of the black hole where stuff can fall in and will never get out. You said a quantum wave hits it or a quantum field interacts with it. What's the difference? Quantum fields exist all through space. If you're going to solve the equations for that field to get a consistent solution, you have to figure out what happens to those fields at the

event horizon. So Hawking's derivation shows that in order to satisfy the wave equations of quantum fields, there has to be outward radiation. And so you're saying this is kind of an example of what's also happening with inertia? It's an example of an important principle at the heart of quantized inertia, which is event horizons cause radiation. It's not suggesting that black holes cause inertia. It's just an example of how event horizons cause radiation. His argument needs one more piece, every time we move we're basically creating event horizons what what do you mean every time we move where i'm creating like like a black hole sort of like a black hole we did an episode once about whether or not it's possible to outrun a beam of light right you might imagine that

if somebody shoots a beam of light at you that there's no way you can run fast enough to avoid it right if you run away from me and then i turn on my flashlight that eventually that light will catch up to you because it's traveling at the speed of light and you can't travel at the speed of light. So eventually given infinite time, it will catch you. That's not actually true if you run away with constant acceleration. So if you move with constant acceleration, it actually creates an event horizon behind you, a part of the universe which no longer can reach you. We did a whole episode about this counterintuitive principle where acceleration itself causes event horizons. Right, although it seems it's impossible to have constant acceleration forever. Wouldn't that take an infinite amount of

energy? It definitely would take an infinite amount of energy. Practically, it's not something I know how you could achieve or I would recommend. But in principle, mathematically, if you are undergoing constant acceleration, then you're cutting yourself off from part of the universe. It's part of the universe whose messages will never reach you. Those light beams will get closer and closer to you every year, but never actually touch your back. Basically, you're leaving the rest of the universe that's behind you in the dust, kind of what you're saying, right? Like if I move with constant acceleration, in one direction, I'll never kind of see the stuff behind me, maybe forever.

But then how does this related to inertia? Now, take these two ideas. One is event horizons cause radiation. Second is acceleration causes event horizons. Put them together, and you get acceleration causes event horizons, which cause radiation. So now every time you accelerate, you're creating an event horizon behind you

that's sort of similar to the edge of a black hole, which is going to create radiation for the same reason you get hawking radiation. So every time you accelerate, you're creating this event horizon behind you, which is going to generate a kind of radiation behind you and basically bathe you in radiation from the universe. Because this radiation is not the same in all directions, because the event horizon is behind you and not ahead of you, it can change the way you move.

And that's the core principle of quantized inertia, that the way you move is changed by this quantum radiation caused by the event horizons created as you accelerate. That's a long sentence there. I guess I'm still stuck in this idea that every time I move, you're saying every time I move or accelerate, even my hand, I'm creating an event horizon. But earlier you said I need an infinite amount of acceleration

to generate that event horizon. What are you trying to say that even a little bit of acceleration causes an event horizon right behind it, really far away? Or how does that work? In order to outrun the beam of light, you would need to accelerate forever. You need to create that event horizon and never let it dissipate.

You'd need to accelerate forever. And that would require infinite energy, not necessarily infinite acceleration, but you'd have to be accelerating till the end of time to avoid that beam of light. But every time you accelerate, you do create an event horizon. That event horizon collapses when you stop accelerating because now those parts of the universe can reach you. So you create an event horizon temporarily when you accelerate, it collapses when you stop accelerating. If you want to maintain it, you'd need to keep going forever.

Where does that event horizon get formed? Not right behind me, right? Probably super far away, isn't it? Depends on how fast you're going and how much you accelerate. The faster you're going, the closer that event horizon is to you. Okay, so then if I move my hand, let's say I'm waving my hands here in front of me. Where is the event horizon forming? Well, you're moving a fairly slow velocity, I'm assuming.

And so that event horizon would be like light years away. Okay, so you're saying like if I move my hand forward, it's someone during that brief time that I'm moving my hand, someone in Alpha Centauri shooting a laser at me, technically that in theory, like if you do the math, that laser won't reach my hand. And if you kept accelerating your hand, the laser would never hit your hand. Since you probably stopped accelerating your hand,

that Event Horizon collapses and it will eventually fry you. Right. Okay. So now I created a little Event Horizon with respect to my hand. Event Horizon is light years away in Alpha Centauri. How is this related to inertia? Because event horizons create radiation. So when you did that, you generated a kind of radiation from the quantum fields of the universe. This is called Unruh radiation, named after a physicist whose last name is Unru, U-N-R-U-H.

And so this radiation generated by this event horizon, Mike McCullough thinks is the source of inertia, because it basically is pushing against you. I feel like you're saying that me moving my hand is creating particles in Alpha Centauri. Is that what you're saying? It's creating radiation from the event horizon that may be very, very far away. Yes. So, and it's instantly community, like the movement of my hand is instantly communicating to Alpha Centauri to make particles out of nothing. It's not making particles out of nothing.

The event horizon that you created in Alpha Centauri triggers radiation in the rest of the universe is quantum fields. So Unruh radiation, which is a whole interesting thing that people actually believe exists, suggests that anybody who's accelerating will feel this quantum radiation from the universe. And Mike McCullough suggests that quantum radiation is responsible for inertia. Right. I guess it's a little hard to, I guess, process this because I feel like you're saying that the rest of the universe somehow cares if I move my hand forward. We are all tied together by these quantum fields. But it's light years away, but I'm feeling the inertia of my hand right now. Yeah, it definitely doesn't take millions of years for you to feel that inertia. I think that's because the event horizon that's created as you accelerate isn't immediately formed really far away from you, sort of like sweeping away from you as you accelerate.

Because even in Alpha Centauri, they don't know that you've moved. your hand. So that event horizon is sort of like being created as the information propagates out to Alpha Centauri. And as it's doing so, it can also generate this quantum radiation that's pushing back at you. All right. I'm feeling a lot of inertia in my head right now, as I'm sure a lot of people are. So let's dig into this a little bit more and figure out how this crazy quantum radiation gives us inertia and also how true this theory is. But first, let's take another quick break. I'm Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, host of the psychology podcast.

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I'm telling you, I'm on the energy committee. Like, if the energy is not right, we're not doing it. Whatever that it is. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're talking about quantized inertia, which is not like inertia chopped up to the little bits. It's more like the idea that inertia is caused by quantum effects.

Yeah, I think that the picture of quantized inertia is that accelerating things in the universe generate this radiation from the background quantum fields that change the way they move. It's sort of similar to the way an electron. gets mass from the Higgs field, right? As electron moves to the Higgs field, it's interacting with that field, and that interaction changes the way it moves.

So here, the picture is you're moving through the universe and your acceleration is now creating these virtual particles, which you can think of as interacting with the background quantum fields of the universe in such a way to change your motion and effectively give you inertia. Right. And you said it's because when I move my hand, I'm creating an event horizon of a point that things that move at the speed of like can't reach my hand, and somehow that creates particles out of thin air, which in creating these particles, I guess, takes energy, which then means

that I need energy to move my hand. Yeah, somehow they all work together so that when you're trying to accelerate, you're basically running into this quantum wind of virtual particles pushing you back. So according to this theory, the reason it's hard to get a blob of energy going is that when you push on it, the universe sort of pushes back with all these virtual particles. Would it pushes you back or it pulls you back? I feel like it pulls you back because you're creating an event horizon behind you, right?

Remember that quantum interactions, especially with the virtual particles, can also pass negative momentum. So it's a little bit counterintuitive whether to think about that as a push or a pull. Like with quantum particles, I can throw you a ball that has negative momentum, which is sort of like pulling on you

even though I've thrown something to you. Right. It pushes you back, which I think most people would say is pulls you back. All right, cool. So it's an interesting combination of ideas, this idea of unrued radiation is a real idea that's taken very seriously. Quantized inertia sort of co-opted it to try to use it to explain inertia. One big problem with it, though, is that people don't expect unroot radiation the sort of way that virtual particles will hit

you when you accelerate to be something we could ever actually measure. It's predicted to be like super duper duper tiny. What does that mean? Isn't inertia pretty significant? Like if I have a big block of lead or iron, it feels a lot of inertia. So it's unrued radiation should be pretty significant. You're exactly right. And that's a big problem for quantized inertia. Because if you calculate the unrued radiation you get for reasonable accelerations, it just isn't enough to explain the effects we see from inertia.

So for example, if you accelerate an object at one meters per second squared, and you calculate how much is unrued radiation heating that object up or pushing back on how much energy is bathing that object from unrued radiation, it's usually measured as how much you would heat that object. object up. You get like 10 to the minus 21 degrees Kelvin. So one meters per second squared acceleration, which is pretty typical, normal kind of thing to feel on Earth is basically imperceptible amounts of radiation you would get from the quantum fields. So it doesn't seem like enough to explain actual inertia. You mean like if you apply the theory of unre radiation, it wouldn't

be enough to count for inertia. Also like if you're creating a bunch of particles in your wake every time you move, wouldn't you like see these particles? People have looked for unrued radiation, but nobody's ever seen it because it's so tiny. It's sort of like looking for hawking radiation. We think maybe it's there, but nobody's ever seen it because it's so faint. It's so difficult to detect. I'll say it would technically be really far away, right? Like when I move my arm, you said that my, the event horizon that forms is like light years away.

Wouldn't that be there where the particles form? It's difficult to pin these things down because we're talking about quantum waves, which aren't necessarily always very well localized, right? And as we said before, the inventorized is probably created as an outgoing wave in these quantum fields. So I think it's tricky to think about the sort of special relativity of the motion of these quantum fields. But I guess where is this theory now? Like, does it work out mathematically? Or is it still kind of a stretch? It's not taken very seriously in mainstream physics. People don't think that mechanistically it works. I've read a paper analyzing carefully they found a bunch of flaws in the

derivation of quantized inertia. Oh, wouldn't that just kill it if there are flaws mathematically? I think that's one reason why it's not taken very seriously in mainstream physics, but it has gotten a lot of press. And one reason is that it's been used to try to explain some other big mysteries in the universe. So like maybe it explains inertia, maybe not. But the proponent of quantized inertia is also suggested that maybe it can explain dark matter.

And maybe it can explain how to build warp drives. And maybe it can explain the pioneer anomaly. And maybe it can explain dark energy. So instead of taking this tool and try to apply it to all the big mysteries of the day, which makes it easier to get like clickbait articles. Wait, so how would it explain things like dark matter? Just because it would give dark matter inertia or mass that can't be explained any other way? So it can explain dark matter by changing how much inertial mass we think stars might have.

Remember that one of the origins of the whole idea of dark matter, was that galaxies are spinning and they're spinning way too fast for the gravity of those galaxies to hold them together. And in order to do that calculation, you have to assume you understand how stars move, you understand their inertia and the force of gravity on those stars. Quantized inertia says, well, maybe we've been miscalculating the inertia of these stars, right? That maybe for things that are not accelerated very much, they have less inertia. So he proposes a different relationship between inertia and acceleration. He says that really small accelerations, maybe things have less inertia. And so the picture then is that maybe these stars at the edge of

the galaxy, you don't need as much gravity to hold onto them because they actually have less inertia than we thought they did. So you solve the problem not by saying, oh, there's more matter which provides more gravity, but by saying you don't need as much gravity because those stars can be held in without a strong of force because they have less inertia than you thought. So this quantized inertia isn't explaining dark matter. It's just, it's actually saying it doesn't exist. It's saying that there is no dark matter. What we're seeing is really just that inertia doesn't scale the way we think it does.

Exactly. It's more similar to Mond, the idea that gravity changes over very, very large distances. You're right, it doesn't explain dark matter. It explains the mysteries that originated the ideas of dark matter, but without dark matter. So it's an alternative to dark matter. And some people actually like it better than Mond. Mon remember is a theory that gravity works differently at different distances. But Mond has a sort of arbitrary parameter in it.

It says like below some acceleration, gravity works differently than above some acceleration. People don't like when there's like an arbitrary number in a theory. Like why that number or why not something else? And so people have argued that quantized inertia is a more elegant explanation for this because it doesn't have this arbitrary parameter in it. But then again, also, it doesn't really work. So, and is it well known that this theory doesn't work mathematically or is it just like a setback? Like, oh, you have this error, but eventually they might be able to fix that error. Like, why are we still talking about this if the math doesn't work?

We're talking about it for two reasons. One is that a bunch of listeners wrote in and saying, hey, what is this theory of quantized inertia? I keep hearing about it because the main proponent of it has been successful in like giving TED talks and writing public articles and getting attention. for it. So it's an idea that's out there in the community about like explaining this deep mystery of inertia. I don't think that it works. I think most mainstream physicists think it has big problems with it. That doesn't mean it's wrong. It doesn't mean that those problems might not be solvable at some point in the future. But as it stands today, it's sort of like a vague idea that doesn't really hang together to actually explain anything. I see. So like the specific ideation or instance of it right now

doesn't seem to quite work, but it's still an interesting idea to think that maybe what we think is stuff like dark matter or maybe the way we can explain things like inertia is, you know, matter and energy's interaction with the quantized fields and the creation of these event horizons. That's the idea that maybe is still sticking around. Yeah, and it's important to remember that we can't solve these problems all at once. He's taking out a really big problem, like what is inertia? and you don't expect somebody to come up with the complete explanation in their basement all by themselves.

The way the process works is somebody has an idea which sort of takes you in a certain direction and maybe it doesn't work. And five years later, somebody comes up with another idea that maybe solves a problem and makes it work or brings you closer. So it's sort of this iterative search. It's not like evolution where the theory has to work at every stage to survive. We can keep a theory around even if it's not quite working yet because it might potentially come together later.

All right. Well, it sounds like an interesting idea that more. might solve a pretty fundamental question about our universe. Why do things have inertia? Because without inertia, the universe would be totally different, right? Without inertia, things would be pretty chaotic. Yeah, our entire experience of the universe would be very different without inertia. inertia is a basic property of matter and motion. And yet it's something we still don't really understand. So I love when people take on these deep questions and think out of the box and try to combine ideas they've heard in a ways that might.

explain them doesn't mean that their first idea will be right but it's definitely the kind of thing that's worth pursuing right right i think what you just said is that inertia is a good thing right right am i getting some of that sweet big inertia money if so yes i'm getting the money to turn you oh i see on to inertia all right yes you don't get a cut no all right put me on your list of converts i'm pro inertia all right well hopefully these ideas fit inside your head and maybe uh nudge them with a little bit of inertia, a little bit of momentum to think differently about the world around you and about how interesting things

that we maybe never thought about could explain why things are the way they are. And to those young scientists out there be encouraged because there are still deep and basic questions about the universe we do not know the answer to. Somebody out there will figure these things out. It might be you.

Even those of you sitting in your pajamas at home. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship.

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