Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe - Will Physics Ever Explain Everything?

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

What is a "Theory of Everything" and how close are we to discovering it? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network. Hey, Daniel, do you think physicists and scientists will ever come up with some equation that just describes everything, the whole thing?

You know, like one line of symbols that just sums up the entirety of all of existence. The whole universe on its, t-shirt. I'm sort of a two minds about it. Like, one, I would love for that to happen because it means it would be a singular achievement in human intellectual history, you know, to actually unravel all of the mysteries of the universe. Which part did you come up with it or to put it on the t-shirt? Yeah, to get down to the base layer of knowledge and reveal like the source code

of the universe. That would be amazing. On the other hand, that would kind of mean physics is over, right? Like, that's the fundamental goal of physics. And if we get there and then we're done, like, what are we going to do? So, you know, we have a whole raft of physicists becoming cartoonists or something, so be careful. So your fear is that you'll be unemployed. That's right. Don't work too hard, you know. If you get too productive, then, you know, you'll work yourself out of a job.

That's exactly the concern. Maybe you'll just take a little bit extra time to figure it out. That's right. I'll figure out the theory of everything, and then I'll just keep it in a drawer in my office. Right. And then the day before you retire, you're like, ta-da. Boom. Noble Prize, please.

before I die quickly. Let's put Daniel out of a job. Let's make this physicist unemployed. Hi, I'm Jorge. And I'm Daniel. And this is our podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the universe. Where we take the entire unit.

and we roll it up into a burrito so you can eat it for lunch. Or put it on your t-shirt. That's right. Our goal is to take everything in the universe and make us so that you can actually understand it. We're not eager to have you feel like you're in the presence of a great scientist, hearing things you'll never really understand. We want to break things down so you can really understand them. You know, explain them to your grandma or that fat uncle at family reunions. That's the goal of this podcast.

Or show off to your coworkers at the next water cooler break. Yeah. Or point out that they actually don't understand. actually don't understand what they're talking about because you do. Because you listen to this awesome podcast. Today on the podcast, we're going to tackle the biggest question in human knowledge, right? That's right. The most fundamental, the deepest, the biggest question in human intellectual history.

What is that question, Horan? Is it possible for humans to know everything? Do you mean to know everything? Like, where is that sock I lost in the eighth grade? Yeah, everything. Some formula that tells you where that sock went, you know? No, a theory of everything does not include location of all lost socks. That's impossible, right?

Then we could just end the podcast right now because that's just impossible. No, a theory of everything tries to describe the way things work, right? They can't possibly explain all the details of everything that has happened because there's a lot of chaos there. But, you know, a theory of everything tries to say, we understand the way. everything works. We have a system that explains it. Even the things we don't see or where we can't see. That's right. It would have to be a theory of everything. It would have to be something that describes the universe

at the deepest level. You know, sort of like the end of our quest to take the universe apart into its tiny little bits. To understand it at every level. That's right. Yeah. To have a theory from which anything can be derived, right? All the physics and biology and chemistry and economics and everything would just be the emergent phenomena that flow naturally from this one fundamental theory. And then we'll know everything, basically, right?

Except for where those socks are. Yeah, so I went out and I asked people, do you think it's possible, given the fullness of time and a bunch of geniuses in the future, that physics could eventually describe everything, explain everything in a single formula that goes onto a t-shirt? Do you think there's a theory of everything? Here's what people had to say. Yes. Yeah, you have great confidence in physics? Yeah, with due time, I think research will elucidate everything that we're looking for.

Like, I'm religious, I'm a Christian, so I believe that there are some things that God made that just can't be described by, you know, sciences, so that's just what I believe. Cool. I think it could happen. It gives you such confidence. It's math, and math, in essence, can describe everything. So in theory, we can use math to describe everything. I think eventually that can happen, but it's going to take a long time and lots of work.

All right, so some people felt pretty confident in physicists. I know those people, I love those people. They also sort of terrified me. I really appreciate, they're like, well, physics has figured a bunch of stuff out, so I'm sure given enough time, they'll figure it out, you know. And the guy who said, like, math describes everything. Of course. That's kind of cool, but also it's a lot of pressure.

You know, like, if you feel like, well, physics can figure everything out, then all you have to do is sit in your office with pencil and paper, and eventually all the answers in the universe will come to you. You know, it's, yeah, it's a lot of pressure. So I appreciate those people having so much faith in us. But it's, you know, if we do figure out a theory of everything, it's still a lot of work. You want to leave a little bit of room for like, hey, maybe we won't do it. Well, I don't know.

And some people, some people definitely felt like it's impossible. Yeah. No. There's a gap. There are things that humanity can never understand. You know, and there was the one guy who thought, well, God created some things that cannot be understood. Right. And there's some people who just thought humans are not smart enough.

And maybe he'd been watching too many political talk shows or something, which, you know, I might be of the same opinion if you watch enough of those things. So it's like people generally have faith in physicists, but not in human beings in general. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe those people don't realize that physics is just people, right? Physics is just people thinking. There's no, like, deep physics that's absent of humanity, right? Everything we do in physics is a model inside our head, our attempt to understand the universe,

but it's always going to be inherently human, right? It's nothing extra human about it. You don't think people like Einstein had some sort of extra capacity than most people? Oh, no, I think Einstein was a super-duper human. But we're all human, right? And we think about the universe in a certain way. We perceive it in a certain way. Things make sense to us in a certain way.

I mean, imagine if we met alien scientists, right? What fraction of our human physics would be understandable to them? Skip over the part where we have to, like, develop a common language and, you know, agree not to kill each other. And, you know, you got a bunch of the best alien physicists in a room and the bunch of the best human physicists in a room. Everybody's wearing the same lab coat and, you know, start comparing notes. How does that go?

well I think that's a really deep question and I think probably we would learn more about the way the human mind works like the human mind than the way the universe works because I'm sure a lot of the theories we've built reflect the way we think and feel. Do you think it would be sort of like if we got together with

a bunch of chimpanzees and we're like hey guys let's talk physics how would that you know how that would go and we were trying to explain to them quantum physics and they just wouldn't be intellectually capable of grasping it right even if you could speak their language Yeah, they would probably just be throwing poop at us while we're talking about quantum physics.

Which, you know, I think I've had that experience in the classroom, you know, lecturing to a bunch of people who's just totally uninterested. Never actually got to the throwing poop part of the equation, but sometimes I do feel like people aren't interested. Did you just call your students a bunch of chimps? None of my current students, of course. No, they're all very, very talented. They're wonderful. No, it's not a question of whether the aliens are smarter than us. I just think that the theories we've come up with as humans are going to be indelibly human.

You know, they are a product of a human mind, and they cannot be separated from that. So I think it's until we meet alien physicists, until we find another intelligence with different set of biases and perspective and fundamental thought structure, that we can learn what about the physics we've developed is just human and what of it is actually fundamental and inescapable. It could be that we're seeing everything in the wrong way, totally. Yeah, absolutely. Everything we've learned is filtered through our experience, our consciousness, right? So we have these few senses. If you have a different set of senses, you experience the universe differently, you think very differently about the way the universe might be structured. I mean, there's a lot of deeply flawed sci-fi movies which touch on this really important issue, like arrival, right? You know, the aliens and arrival think about time differently. And so I'm sure their physics is built in a completely different way. ours is built on our limited experience that's right yeah absolutely and a very limited grand funding

well let's break it down what does it actually mean to have a theory of everything yeah does it mean an equation does it mean a set of axioms you know or statements or does it mean like a little computer to which you can input anything and it'll tell you what the universe would do

yeah and it doesn't mean something which will tell you where your lost socks are right then what's at their point then why are we even doing this man the entire physics enterprise is just to help you find lost socks in my view a theory of everything would be a set of equations

that describe the way the universe works at its most fundamental level meaning that from that anything else can be explained you know take for example our current understanding of chemistry right molecules interacting etc now can you use that to

explain hurricanes, right, or weather or, you know, the solar system. Our current laws of physics and chemistry can explain things that are larger, emergent phenomena that arise from those more fundamental aspects, right? So that works. So when you say explain, you actually mean, like, we see something, and then we can go back to your magic formula, and your magic formula would say, oh, yeah, I can see how that came to be. Or if I run it, then we get the same result. That's right. Or you can encode those rules into a simulation and predict exactly what's going to happen. Or you can be super smart and do it in pencil and paper and say, these equations predict that hurricanes will happen or these equations predict that planets will orbit the sun in this way. All these things that we see that we experience, these are emergent phenomena, right?

There are higher level events that arise out of deeper, lower level rules, right? So what's actually happening when, for example, you throw a baseball is all those particles are moving in tandem, and there's all this quantum field theory that's happening while that happens. And, you know, you can describe the way baseball moves using a very simple parabolic formula. That parabolic formula can be derived from the lower level set of rules. So it's sort of like an onion. You know, we think about theories of the universe in layers. It's like equations to describe the way things work in the macroscopic level, you know, baseballs. Then there's equations that describe how things work at the atomic level.

And then there's equations that describe the way things work at the cork level or the electron level, right? And so the idea is a theory of everything would be the lowest level, would be one from which everything else could be derived in principle. It's like the rules at the very, very, very, very center of the onion. Exactly. If the universe is a simulation, right, then this would be like the source code of that simulation. It would be the basic rules for which everything results. it's like you can have a rule about economics in macroeconomics people respond to their best interests or they go for the lowest price

that's a good theory and it describes this complex phenomenon but it doesn't actually tell you the most basic thing that's going on that's right and the most basic thing that's going on is you know a bunch of particles are sloshing around inside their head you know and you can describe at different levels you can describe it at the particle level which is very cumbersome because there's so many particles that doing this kind of calculations would be almost impossible. Or you can describe it at the biochemical level. You know, these dopamine and this sort of neurotransmitter and all these things are happening, a lot of these things you can

describe at lots of different levels. And you pick the level that's most appropriate, right? You want to solve a problem involving a baseball, you're going to do a simple parabolic calculation. You're not going to go with the heavy hitting quantum field theory calculation, right? But the theory of everything in principle could derive anything else, right? You can derive those laws of parabolic motion from the deepest level, from the core of the onion. So that's the goal, the theory of everything, describe everything that happens in terms of the smallest, most fundamental units. Well, I think an even bigger question is, how do you even know such a thing is possible?

Like, how do you know that everything can be described by one equation or two equations or three equations, right? Like, what makes a thing it's possible to even understand everything? I know, it seems like hubris, right? Like somebody ate a bunch of mushrooms and had a vision. And now they're like, yes, I saw it, man. Like the universe makes sense, man. Right.

So it's either a weed-filled dream or enormous hubris. What makes us think it's possible is that we're making steady progress, you know. I think about the way the world used to be a total mystery to people, you know, thousands of years ago. So much about everyday life was a mystery. And, you know, we've cracked a lot of those nuts. You know, everything that we thought was strange or mysterious, so we had to attribute to some bizarre god with unknown motives,

we've understood in terms of natural phenomena that which follow rules. So for some reason, we don't understand. It appears that the universe follows a set of rules. And those rules are fairly constant. And so we can discover them by experimenting and tinkering and trying stuff. And humans seem to have the capability, the mathematical, the logical, the scientific capability to reveal these rules and then use them for good or evil.

right so you're saying you have faith in physicists and humans i have some faith i mean look at what look at what we have accomplished look upon my great art what's the line upon my works ye mighty and despair now i love that poem ozimandias because it's both positive and negative right yeah you know be jealous of what i've accomplished because you are so small or if you think you're so great remember that i ones once great and have now fallen into dust um yeah so it may be that future physics looks at us and and says they had accomplished nothing. But I would say what makes us think it's possible is that we're making steady progress.

I mean, the kind of things we understand about the universe now are incredible compared to what we understood 100 years ago, 500 years ago, 5,000 years ago. But is there maybe a limit? And let's get into it, but first, let's take a quick break. In sitcoms, when someone has a problem, they just blurt it out and move on. I lost my job and my parakeet is missing.

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So my favorite thing about the theory of everything is its acronym, its initials. So really, when you're talking about the theory of the universe, you're talking, you're talking about the universe is big toe, right? Right. Such a grand idea humbled by its acronym. Yeah, yeah. Not a great PR move there by physicists. No.

No, we have to find that secret circle of scientists who are in charge of naming this stuff because they got some real work to do. I mean, I got notes, let me tell you. I mean, the particles got ridiculous names. The theory of everything is a silly name. I don't even know what the history of it is. Like, who was the first person to say theory of everything?

Yeah, I don't know. I know that Einstein was one of the first people's like seriously go after it, though, of course, he didn't make much progress. Why not the everything theory? E.T. Right? Better. The everything theory. Yeah, I like that. All right. You should file a trademark for that. You'll get one penny every time somebody says it. We talked about what it means to say a theory of everything and what it could be and

what we think when is possible. So what do we know? Like, why isn't what we know now a good theory of everything? What makes us think that we don't have it yet? Right. Well, we do know a lot. We've learned a lot about the universe, and one thing that persuades us that things might be understandable, that there might be a simple theory of everything, is that we've been making a lot of progress, as I've been saying, but it's more than that. Every time we peel back a layer of reality and see what's underneath, the description that's beneath it is simpler, right? The level of complexity required to describe the universe keeps getting simpler and simpler. Like, you know, for example, think about the objects in the universe. You want to describe everything in the universe. So there's like an infinite number of kinds of things, right? There's gas and stars and hamsters and ice cream and llamas and cartoonists and all this stuff.

And you can explain all of that using 100 basic building blocks, periodic table. You can explain the periodic table, everything that's in that, using just corks and leptons, right? You can build any atom out of just corks and leptons. So the number of pieces you need to describe basically everything we've encountered keeps getting smaller. So to me that's progress. You were asking earlier, like, why do we think this is possible? How do we know we get there? So we're making this progress, and I feel like how will we know we get there when we get

to the simplest possible theory, you know, a theory that has the smallest number of bits and the smallest number of parameters and has no hanging questions, no room to say, well, why this and not that, or why these two different things instead of just one thing? So when you can simplify it no longer, that's how you know you got there. So it's kind of about the number of ingredients that we're going to be. we think things are made out of kind of, right? We went from 100 elements in the periodic table of elements to like an electron and small particles.

You're saying that maybe one day will get to one particle. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like if you go from infinity to 100 to 3, the next step is just two and one, right? Right. Yeah. The goal is to get to one, right? And the deepest goal in particle physics is to simplify the universe and explain it in terms

of just one thing. And I've just had like a sort of personal epiphany, which is I realized that one of the reasons that physics appeals to me so much is this attempt to simplify. In my life, I'm always trying to simplify everything. Like, can I get this simplified? Can I explain all these two different things in terms of just one thing? Can I just send one email to everybody? Is there a rule that, you know, it kind of tells me how to live my whole life? How do I respond to a party invite? Or, you know, is there a strategy for making small talk that works in any situation? I mean, I would love that. Is that what you mean? You're always trying to look for the underlying rules of things.

Yeah, I want the theory of every conversation, right? I want to know how to handle, how to navigate a party conversation no matter what happens. That would be a fantastic theory. Hopefully you'll figure it out before you start a podcast or something. A conversational podcast. Oops, too late. Is there a basic building block of the universe out of which everything is built? I mean, because right now, we have 12 basic building blocks.

So we're definitely not there, right? We have six quarks and six leptons. Only three of those 12 particles are ever used to make atoms. And those 12 particles don't even describe like the dark matter and everything else that's out there in the universe. So not only do we know there are other particles we haven't discovered, but we also have questions about these particles, like, why are there so many? So it would be great to narrow that down.

So you're saying that we think there might be a theory of everything because there's plenty of stuff still left to explain, basically, right? like we're not there yet because there's a lot we haven't explained that's right we're not there yet and we've been making steady progress and at every stage things get simpler and so we suspect that if we keep cracking the nut then we'll get simpler and simpler nuts until eventually maybe we'll get down to the one thing that it built everything else is built out of and that would explain everything the peanut of the universe if we find that particle and somebody names it peanut i'm going to blame you for that horde.

That's right. Because then there's going to be the anti-peonet, you know, peanutonium, you know, bound states of peanuts, and, oh, man, it's going to be a disaster. But, you know, that's not the whole story, right? There's particles, but then there's also forces. So what do you think a theory of everything would look like? Like, it'd be like, everything is made out of the peanut. And the peanut can be form an electron if it stacks up this way,

or it can form a cork if it stacks up this other way. basically like the idea of the peanut and how it stacks up and how it gives rise to everything we see around us, that would be sort of like the theory of everything. Yeah, well, the current form, what we use to describe the deepest level of nature that we currently know is quantum field theory. And quantum field theory works by describing the fields

and the way the fields interact with each other. So the fields give us the particles because particles are excited states of these fields. And then the way the fields interact with us give us forces. And so currently you can describe everything we know about particle physics just by describing these fields and how they interact with each other. And so that we can write down in a single equation, it's called a Lagrangian. And from that Lagrangian, we can derive all the rules of how everything works, how everything interacts with

each other. And from that you get electrons and quarks and atoms. Everything comes from this one equation, the Lagrangian. But of course, there are problems with it. As we said earlier, there's a bunch of different kinds of fields, you know, which generate all these different particles, and not everything is described by this Lagrangian. So that's what it would look like, I think, if it turns out that quantum fields are the fundamental building block of the universe. But, you know, nobody really believes that. But aren't we saying that maybe there's just one field that maybe results in these other multiple fields?

That's right. Or like these other fields are just combinations of maybe one fundamental field. Exactly. If quantum field theory is the right way to think about the universe, then a theory of everything as a quantum field theory would be a single field. Yeah. And it could interact with itself, and that could give all sorts of interesting stuff. In coming up with quantum field theories, we've made a lot of progress

and bringing together lots of different kinds of things to describe them in terms of just one thing. You know, for example, we used to think of electricity and magnetism is completely different things. You know, electricity was like zapping stuff, and magnetism was these weird rocks that pushed away each other or attracted each other until people figured out, oh, actually, electricity and magnetism are two sides of the same coin. They go hand in hand. They're like the same field. Yeah. They're just two parts.

There are two manifestations of the same field, right? So they go as to get it down to like a theory with one field. Let's call it the peanut field. Please, let's not call it the peanut field. All right. All right. All right. I'm on board with the peanut field.

Let's do it. Let's just grab the universe into. So we got the peanut and we got the toe. We got the mixed metaphors here, Jorge. Peanuts and toes. Is the universe a peanut or is it a toe? Maybe you can eat peanuts with your toes And then you wouldn't need socks

So hey, that solves all of our problems Let's leave folks with that visual And then take a quick break While you think about eating peanuts with your toes How serious is youth vaping Irreversible lung damage serious One in 10 kids vape serious Which warrants a serious conversation

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Imagine that you're on an airplane and all of a sudden you hear this. Attention passengers. The pilot is having an emergency and we need someone, anyone, to land this plane. Think you could do it? It turns out that nearly 50% of men think that they could land the plane with the help of air traffic control. And they're saying like, okay, pull this. Do this, pull that, turn this. It's just... I can do my eyes close. I'm Mani.

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

Oh, that's the run right. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we were talking about the theory of everything, and currently we have quantum fields, and we were saying that a theory of everything, if it was described using quantum fields, would be a single field. And that field would generate all the particles because they would be excited states of that field. And it would describe the way those particles interact with each other and form other other sorts of bound states, which would be more complex things like electrons, and everything would be made out of these one fundamental particle which came from this field.

The peanut. The peanut field, exactly. What's interesting is that you're saying that even if we have, let's say, in the future, 20 years from now, you know, I discover the peanut field and it describes all the other fields that we know about right now, you're saying we still wouldn't know if that was it. if that was like the ultimate theory. Well, it's hard to know for sure when you're done. Something is the ultimate theory.

Right. I mean, say we have the peanut field and it solves all the open problems in physics, and Jorge goes and collects like five Nobel Prizes for discovering this thing, right? It unifies quantum mechanics and gravity, and it explains everything we know and dark matter and all that stuff. It tells us what happened at the Big Bang. Right, exactly. Whether we're in a multiverse. Right.

And this is totally possible, right? But then you have that theory. You write on a piece of paper, and you're going to have questions. about that theory, right? Like, say, for example, the theory has a number in it, you know, because all of our theories currently have numbers in it, you know, like speed of light or there's basic physical units. But then there's also sometimes just numbers, like one or four or two or pie or whatever. And you have to wonder, like, what do those numbers mean? Does those numbers reveal something deep about the universe, right? Like, if your peanut theory has the

number, you know, five in it, then that tells you that the universe is fundamentally like five-ish in some way. what does that mean? And that's a question, right? Like, why does the theory of everything have the number five in it? Yeah, exactly. But does it have to have a number? What if my theory is so pure and amazing and abstract that it just doesn't have any numbers in it? Right, exactly. So your peanut theory has the number five in it. And then a few years later, some clever scientist comes along with her theory that has no arbitrary numbers in it, right?

And she's like, actually, my theory is simpler than Professor Jorge's theory. And so he's got to deliver me all of his Nobel Prizes. And so, you know, that's how we judge theories. We judge them by their simplicity. And that's sort of what I was talking about earlier. Like, it's our human desire to explain the universe in terms of a simple set of rules, right? Maybe aliens think about things differently, and they don't look for one single equation to describe everything or a simplest equation. Or maybe what they think is beautiful is a huge chaotic mess of an equation.

And for some reason, that really satisfies their itch to understand the universe, right? I think there must be something deeply human about this whole process, and it's a bias we can't see because we've only ever talked to humans about it. Interesting. Like maybe aliens are happy with this crazy theory that explains where socks are. And, you know, do you know what I mean? It's not reductive. It's maybe just like super complicated because it explains all the little things.

Exactly. That could be, it could very well be. And they could be like, you guys are totally wasting your time. I don't even know why you care, right? Yeah. And, you know, there's another possibility we haven't even talked about, which is that there is no deepest level, right? It could be that it goes on forever.

Whoa, whoa. Things just get smaller and smaller, and, like, particle A is made out of little bits of B, and then you can make B's at a little bits of C, and C is made out of a little bits of D. Okay, so I shouldn't be on the particle physics PR naming committee, obviously, because I can't come up with clever stuff on top of my head, but it could just go on forever. But then wouldn't it stop at P for peanut?

Absolutely, yes. But I mean, what I mean is what could be smaller than, the unit one, you know what I mean? Like, what could be more fundamental than one field and one particle? You can't split one, right? If you discover at some level that everything in the universe could be described in terms of one field, that's great. But where does that field come from, right?

Is that field the fundamental thing in the universe? It was like the first thing made, the first thing coded in the simulation? Or is it itself an emergent phenomena from something simpler? Just because there's only one kind of particle doesn't mean it's not made out of little bits of another kind of particle, right? It could be made out of two halves or something else. Yeah, exactly.

You know, two units of sub-peanuts that come together to make the glorious peanut. Or you're saying it could be sort of infinitely divisible. You mean, like peanut butter. Like maybe the universe doesn't have a peanut in the middle. It's just this continuous, yummy, smooth. I think in the future you should have lunch before we record these podcasts.

Yeah, it could be, right? It certainly could be. Although it seems so far, everything we understand about the universe is that it seems to be quantized. You know, that it's the smallest level, everything is quantized. So we think that particles or quantized excitations of quantum fields ruled the day. But, you know, it could be that as you get deeper, that you get some sort of scale invariant matter that looks the same no matter how close you get up to it, right? That it doesn't resolve into tiny little bits. It's just infinitely smooth.

Yeah, that could totally be a possibility. Well, you've got into an interesting idea a little bit before, which is, why do we even want the theory of everything? Is it really going to help us cure cancer or is it really going to solve global warming if we figure out these super quantum fields? What's motivating us as a species to look for these simplifications? I can't believe that an artist, a cartoonist, is demanding practical immediate benefits for my profession. Excuse me. You didn't even mention the possibility that there could be like a deep human need to understand, you know, that it adds to the experience of being human to reveal mysteries of the universe, right?

It doesn't need to necessarily give you a better widget, right, or cure cancer. It's just, for me, at least, it's a deep desire to understand the world around me. I mean, I don't know if it comes out of evolutionary desires to understand how things work so I can, like, better protect myself from a saber-tooth tire or something. But humans have a deep desire to understand the way things. work to reveal the rules and manipulate them. And so I just really want to understand. And, you know, of course, along the way, like, funding for basic research has always yielded

tremendous technological advancements. I mean, we wouldn't be recorded in this podcast if it wasn't for funding for basic research. So I can sing the praises of basic research for decades because of all the spin-off. It's generated incidentally, accidentally, right? Not intentionally. But fundamentally, the reason we want to do is just because we have this deep desire to know, right, to understand the way the universe works. I mean, if somebody told you, hey, Jorge, I have the theory of everything.

Do you want to know it? You wouldn't be like, piss off, I'm busy making a peanut butter sandwich, right? Right. That would be an important moment. That would be like a deep thing to understand. So we've made a lot of progress and understanding the theory of everything. You know, we have boiled down matter into 12 particles. We have described all the forces in terms of just a few.

you know, we unified electricity and magnetism, and then we also unified that with the weak nuclear force. We have one force that's called the electro-weak force. It describes electricity and magnetism and the weak force. We still have the strong nuclear force, which we haven't understood how to put together with the other ones, right? And then we still have gravity, which is a whole other mystery. We can talk about a whole other podcast,

which resists all efforts to give it a quantum description and unify it with everything, and even Einstein was not able to bring gravity to heal. And then, of course, there's lots of things in the universe we don't understand, which are not described by these bits. So we made a lot of progress in understanding, but we still have a lot to go. So your basic message is keep physicists employed. Is that the kind of public service?

That's right. Pump funding into physics. Yes, exactly. It's worthwhile, people. We've got a long way to go. People think that scientists have everything figured out. You know, we can have these amazing phones and amazing technologies and airplanes and rockets. you know, people sort of assume that why do we need more physics? But there could be a whole lot of amazing things ahead of us, right? Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, folks a thousand years ago who were surrounded by mysteries are a lot of opportunities there for scientists to explain the way things work. These days, it's pretty unusual. If you walk down the street, for you to see something that you don't think has a scientific explanation, right? Like very few people see miracles or ghosts or things that they think are outside of the realm of science. And that used to be every day. Now it's like pretty rare.

I mean, people go to magic shows just to have that experience, right? But there are lots of things that we still don't understand. They're not things that appear in your everyday life. They're at the particle level or the tiny little level or the cosmic scale. But there are huge questions about the universe that we still have to unravel. All right. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed dipping your toes into this topic. Yeah, we hope you enjoyed this slice of everything and peanuts.

And peanut butter. The peanut butter theory. of the universe. It's spreading. It's really jiffy. See you next time. Thanks for listening. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you.

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