Speaker 1: Hey, this is Ali Ward here with Ologies. Now a
Speaker 1: few things up up top. If you like Ologies, I
Speaker 1: personally myself would love it if you took a second
Speaker 1: to rate and or review it on iTunes. Have you
Speaker 1: done that yet? It doesn't cost any money, you just
Speaker 1: do it. This week we were in the top twenty
Speaker 1: of science podcasts, which gets the show seen by so
Speaker 1: many people. It was nestled between literally four shows about
Speaker 1: ghost crimes, which is like, okay, but I think the
Speaker 1: ologists I've gotten to talk to you deserve to be
Speaker 1: heard and I would love to see Ologies climb up.
Speaker 1: And I also totally read all of your reviews. I'm
Speaker 1: thrilled by them. Today someone named smileness. There are sixss'es
Speaker 1: in that said the actual best, yep, the actual best.
Speaker 1: When things get all jargony, Ali fills in the gaps,
Speaker 1: great guests, great topics, and a genuinely lovable host, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I read that while walking into the
Speaker 1: post office and I almost started crying or skipping. So
Speaker 1: thank you everyone for these. When you leave reviews and
Speaker 1: you rate it, other people say, hey, what's this thing now?
Speaker 1: Cosmology Part two? If you listen to the very very
Speaker 1: end of part one last week with the just phenomenal
Speaker 1: doctor Katie Mac aka Astro Katie. Then you learned a
Speaker 1: lot about particle physics and the large heart on collider string, cheese,
Speaker 1: black holes, the world's most expensive selfie, and your own
Speaker 1: aching insignificance, all of ours. If you haven't listened, give
Speaker 1: it to go. I also tell you of somewhat embarrassing
Speaker 1: secret at the very end of the podcast. Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: do that again. So Part two with Doctor Mac means
Speaker 1: getting right into the nitty gritty your questions and trust me,
Speaker 1: I had a million, but Katie and I were late
Speaker 1: to meet up with friends to see Murder on the
Speaker 1: Oran Express, so I could only ask about half an
Speaker 1: hour's worth of questions. So I may have to nab
Speaker 1: her in a few sure to ask the rest because
Speaker 1: there's so many good questions. I have so many questions
Speaker 1: from Okay, it's like a rapid fire around Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just I'm here for it.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to throw a bunch of questions at you.
Speaker 1: If you want to skip any of them, you can
Speaker 1: just pass. First questions. I'm going to ask her from
Speaker 1: the patron page. So people are patrons.
Speaker 2: We appreciate them very much. They are great people.
Speaker 1: They are great people, task sick, and we.
Speaker 2: Want them to continue and ask lots of questions. Yes,
Speaker 2: which are all very good questions.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Yes, you can be a patron for twenty
Speaker 1: five cents an episode.
Speaker 2: Which is an amazing deal.
Speaker 1: Isn't it a good deal?
Speaker 2: People should totally do that.
Speaker 1: I want to make it accessible.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you did feel like tossing a dollar a month
Speaker 1: to keep this podcast continuing free of obnoxious ads, then
Speaker 1: get yourself overdue patreon dot com slash ologies. I post
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Speaker 1: I'll be your emergency contact, which I hope you never need.
Speaker 1: And also I may not be reliable, so for a
Speaker 1: dollar a month, your questions get bumped to the top.
Speaker 1: This is a question. I'm just gonna say one of
Speaker 1: the questions, but three different people asked a variation of it.
Speaker 1: Aaron Herdman and Alex Introini Intornini, Alex diy that right,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Both wanted to know is there a name
Speaker 1: for the disorientation in panic one feels when considering the
Speaker 1: vastness of the universe. Also, do you know of a
Speaker 1: way to get past it?
Speaker 2: There is a name, so, but there are a couple
Speaker 2: of names. One is cosmic brutigo, okay, and the other
Speaker 2: is cosmophobia. And I don't know if these are like
Speaker 2: official names, but these are names that I've heard. There's
Speaker 2: a couple of friends and colleagues of mine have a
Speaker 2: podcast called Cosmic Vertigo where they talk about cosmology and
Speaker 2: stuff and space and things. But it's based on that topic.
Speaker 2: And cosmophobia I know about because I occasionally get emails
Speaker 2: from people who say that they have severe cases and
Speaker 2: want my help. So it is a thing sometimes people
Speaker 2: get really really upset about, like the fastness of space
Speaker 2: or just like the fact that we have no control
Speaker 2: over these huge forces. I mean that is something like
Speaker 2: I have moments where I'm like, whoa right, Like, because
Speaker 2: there are things like you know, black holes are colliding
Speaker 2: with each other, and and like the universe is expanding
Speaker 2: and it's accelerating. It's in its expansion, and like it's
Speaker 2: getting bigger and bigger and faster and faster, and like
Speaker 2: sometimes you know that stuff is really you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: you think about your little life and what's going on
Speaker 2: in your day to day and at the same time,
Speaker 2: like stars are exploding and you know, and we have
Speaker 2: we can look, but we can look at the Big Bang,
Speaker 2: like we can actually see the primordial fireball of the
Speaker 2: Big Bang, Like we can see that.
Speaker 1: How ladies and gentlemen ali ward zero chill.
Speaker 2: The reason is that the Big Bang Theory TV show.
Speaker 2: Beginning of the show.
Speaker 1: Are universe seeing a hot dance.
Speaker 2: And nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Anyway, that's
Speaker 2: the Big Bang theory. That is, that's a very good
Speaker 2: explanation of the Big Bang theory.
Speaker 1: Thank you Bare Naked Ladies, which is the first and
Speaker 1: maybe the only time I'm going to say that sentence start.
Speaker 2: With a big bang. The whole universe was hot and
Speaker 2: dense and smaller than it is now. So the Big
Speaker 2: Bang theory is just the idea that the universe in
Speaker 2: the past was smaller and denser and hotter than it
Speaker 2: is now. And so if you kind of dial back
Speaker 2: the current expansion of the universe, then you get to
Speaker 2: the universe being very very small and dense and hot.
Speaker 2: And so every point in the universe now was at
Speaker 2: some point much hotter and filled with like radiation. Right, So,
Speaker 2: like this part of the universe now, in the very
Speaker 2: distant past was full of radiation and very hot and
Speaker 2: very dense.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But so when we look out into other parts of
Speaker 2: the universe, because light takes time to travel everywhere, every
Speaker 2: time we look farther away, we're looking farther into the past.
Speaker 2: And so we're looking at that part of the universe
Speaker 2: as it was maybe a billion years ago or five
Speaker 2: billion years ago or whatever. And there's a part of
Speaker 2: the universe that's so distant that when we look at it,
Speaker 2: we're looking at it as it was during the time
Speaker 2: when it was still on fire. Right, So we look
Speaker 2: as we look into the distance in any direction, we're
Speaker 2: seeing that part of the universe as it was when
Speaker 2: it was still in that primordial fireball kind of state.
Speaker 1: Which was how long ago it was, well.
Speaker 2: That was that was around So the fireball started to
Speaker 2: cool around three hundred and eighty thousand years after the
Speaker 2: Big bang whatever, after the moment of the beginning, whatever
Speaker 2: you call that, because this is that's still part of
Speaker 2: the hot big bang, which is like the hot phase.
Speaker 2: So we can actually see radiation coming from every direction
Speaker 2: in the sky. That is the radiation of that heat.
Speaker 2: Like that that radiation from that early time just reaching
Speaker 2: us now from really distant parts of the universe, and
Speaker 2: so we can look at it and we're looking at
Speaker 2: like the fireball universe. We're looking at that primordial plasma,
Speaker 2: and so like we see the yeah, yeah, and so
Speaker 2: like we know that it happened because we can see it.
Speaker 2: We can watch it, right, We can actually see parts
Speaker 2: of the universe that are still still there as far
Speaker 2: as we're concerned.
Speaker 1: And that can give you cosmic fartigogy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, just like just like thinking about like you know,
Speaker 2: that was that was a big important event, and like
Speaker 2: so this sort of like nice, gentle stable universe is
Speaker 2: not That's not how it always was. And we don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, we think that most cosmologists think at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the universe, before or that hot phase, there
Speaker 2: was a period of very rapid expansion of the universe
Speaker 2: called inflation. We don't know why that started, We don't
Speaker 2: know why that ended. We don't know that that couldn't
Speaker 2: just start happening again right here, right now. There are
Speaker 2: theories of the theories where you could have you can
Speaker 2: have the universe like and right here, right now in
Speaker 2: this room.
Speaker 1: Oh god.
Speaker 2: Oh, so this is an idea called vacuum decay where
Speaker 2: you can you can have like the universe, like have
Speaker 2: a quantum event happen where one point in the universe
Speaker 2: like transitions to this other state it's called another vacuum,
Speaker 2: a true vacuum state, and that would create this.
Speaker 3: Bubble of like death again, bubble of death that expands
Speaker 3: out at the speed of light in every direction, so
Speaker 3: you would never see it coming.
Speaker 2: And it's a probabilistic event. It's a quantum event, so
Speaker 2: it could happen at any moment. It probably won't, oh god,
Speaker 2: you know it probably probably were just wrong about the theory.
Speaker 2: And even if we weren't wrong about the theory, like
Speaker 2: the sort of timescale that we calculate for it, it
Speaker 2: would probably take like, you know, trillions of years or something.
Speaker 2: But like it's a probabilistic e then it could happen
Speaker 2: at any moment. Technically, it's just with very low probability,
Speaker 2: so like that could freak you out. And I've gotten
Speaker 2: emails from people like they read about that and they're
Speaker 2: like I can't sleep, and I'm like I'm sorry, do.
Speaker 1: You have any advice for that?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I tell them, like they so
Speaker 2: about vacuum decay. I can tell them like a few things.
Speaker 2: One is that we don't know, we don't have any
Speaker 2: We don't know for sure that this is even possible.
Speaker 2: If it were possible, it probably would have happened in
Speaker 2: the very beginning of the universe because the conditions for
Speaker 2: it happening then were much more favorable. So it probably
Speaker 2: would have already happened if it was going to happen already,
Speaker 2: or if it was possible at all. And then I say, well,
Speaker 2: if it's gonna like you, there's nothing you can do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, like like it's it's traveling at the speed
Speaker 2: a lot. You won't have and see it coming.
Speaker 1: That's the best way to die. Yeah, you won't.
Speaker 2: I mean you won't notice like basically like like so
Speaker 2: it is absolutely the best because you don't see it coming,
Speaker 2: so you can't be scared of it. You don't even
Speaker 2: really notice it because it's happening at speed of light
Speaker 2: and you're not like around afterward and nothing is around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone you love dies at the same time.
Speaker 2: Everything does. Everything's gone immediately at the same time, there's
Speaker 2: no there's no fomo, right, there's nothing. You're not missing
Speaker 2: out on anything because the whole universe is done now right, like,
Speaker 2: and so it's kind of in some sense, it's like
Speaker 2: really inconsequential because there's like no consequences of it. It's yeah,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Like you could just blink, you.
Speaker 2: Know, and then like like you know, you blink and
Speaker 2: like maybe you open your eyes again and maybe you're
Speaker 2: consumed by a vacuum bubble of death.
Speaker 1: But like who cares? Like who? You don't know. I
Speaker 1: if I could vote on a way for everything to end,
Speaker 1: I would be like totally yeah.
Speaker 2: Vacuum vacuum decay.
Speaker 1: Vacuum decay. Yeah, that's gonna be my platform. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: run twenty twenty. Vacuum decay is my platform.
Speaker 2: It is the best to end the universe.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's one way to chill out. Paula Herrera
Speaker 1: wants to know how scared should we be of a
Speaker 1: giant asteroid destroying Earth? Are any of the sci fi
Speaker 1: movie methods to save the planet plausible or are we
Speaker 1: basically doomed should an asteroid come our way?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a little bit of a sadder point
Speaker 2: because like, okay, so we're basically not really monitoring about
Speaker 2: half the sky right now.
Speaker 1: What Okay, no big deal, No, a big deal.
Speaker 2: Because we used to have some monitoring stations in the
Speaker 2: southern hemisphere and they lost funding, So we don't have
Speaker 2: as good a handle on like the number of objects
Speaker 2: out there that could cause really big problems there. There
Speaker 2: is like we have there's some kind of like goals
Speaker 2: about how many like what fraction of objects above a
Speaker 2: certain size we should be you know, aware of, right
Speaker 2: and it's like you're supposed to see ninety percent of
Speaker 2: objects above some size or whatever, and we're not really there.
Speaker 2: Oh no, So I think there are programs being put
Speaker 2: together now, and there's there's efforts to have a better catalog.
Speaker 2: It's not like we're due for a giant you know,
Speaker 2: impact or anything like. It's you know, these are still
Speaker 2: things that are probably not gonna happen anytime soon. But
Speaker 2: but I can't honestly tell you that like we're on
Speaker 2: top of it.
Speaker 1: Wow, like we have.
Speaker 2: You know, we're monitoring a lot, but we're not monitoring
Speaker 2: enough to say that like we definitely don't have anything
Speaker 2: coming in so okay, so whether or not we could
Speaker 2: stop it, like okay, So there's there are a couple
Speaker 2: of methods. If we find out about it early enough,
Speaker 2: like five years ahead, ten years ahead, then there's a
Speaker 2: possibility of sending a spacecraft to it and changing the
Speaker 2: course of it in some way. You don't want to
Speaker 2: just blow it up, partially because some of these things
Speaker 2: are like kind of loose rubble piles and so it
Speaker 2: wouldn't really work to try to blow it up, but
Speaker 2: also because like if you have a huge asteroid and
Speaker 2: then you blow it up, then you have like a
Speaker 2: bunch of smaller asteroids and that's not always better. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But but there are a bunch of really cool ideas
Speaker 2: for just nudging in a little bit. And if you
Speaker 2: find out about it long enough in the you know,
Speaker 2: before it comes, then you don't have to nudge it
Speaker 2: very far at all to get it totally off course.
Speaker 2: It will miss the Earth. So like one of them
Speaker 2: is to take a really really massive spacecraft and just
Speaker 2: like park it next to the asteroid in the orbit
Speaker 2: for a while, and so it gets like pulled a
Speaker 2: little bit by the gravity of the spacecraft, and that
Speaker 2: can if you get it early enough. That's called gravitational tractor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you get it early enough, that can work.
Speaker 2: There are other ideas about like creating like a giant
Speaker 2: sack and like like capturing it in a sack, because
Speaker 2: you can't necessarily it's not necessarily like a solid thing.
Speaker 1: How are you gonna make a bag? They're gonna have
Speaker 1: to put her on an asteroid.
Speaker 2: I mean it depends on the size of the asteroid, right.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I don't know, like this is made
Speaker 1: out of like my lar caped on tape.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm a little activated by this. I looked
Speaker 1: up asteroid bags. I was distracted for a few minutes
Speaker 1: on some Galaxy printed totes and duffels, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's nice. And then okay, I realized that space people
Speaker 1: call these capture bags. Like it's just no big deal,
Speaker 1: like just used to collect fallen leaves or a dog doodle.
Speaker 1: But NASA introduced a plant a few years ago, and
Speaker 1: I asked the search engine gods what the bag might
Speaker 1: be made of, and I found out it could be inflatable,
Speaker 1: could be metal mesh, or could just be high strength
Speaker 1: material sounds like they're figuring that out too. My guess
Speaker 1: is it's just a very large blue Ikia bag toe
Speaker 1: that fucker in. Those things are strong.
Speaker 2: It's another idea, which is even which is also really cool,
Speaker 2: where you like spray paint half of the object so
Speaker 2: that it changes like the reflectivity, and then that means
Speaker 2: that like the solar wind will push a little bit
Speaker 2: more on one half than the other in some way,
Speaker 2: and that can change the trajectory.
Speaker 1: So there are a couple of possibilities. Those are some
Speaker 1: good options.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but you need a lot of lead time
Speaker 2: and a.
Speaker 1: Lot of paint in a really big bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I just can't believe that we're kind
Speaker 1: of sleeping on the job there.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like we're not. I mean, there are people,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of a lot of these things are
Speaker 2: being monitored, and there's nothing that we know about that's
Speaker 2: anytime soon coming as a threat. But there's also like
Speaker 2: we're not we're not fully on top of this in
Speaker 2: the way that I feel like we should.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, good to know. Yeah, Russell Kelly wants to know.
Speaker 1: Will the universe expand forever or will it eventually collapse
Speaker 1: in on itself?
Speaker 2: That is a great question. Based on our current understanding
Speaker 2: and the data that we have now, it looks like
Speaker 2: it will expand forever, which will lead to something called
Speaker 2: the heat death, which is the most depressing way for
Speaker 2: the universe to end, which is the like that we
Speaker 2: have dark energy. Dark energy is whatever is making the
Speaker 2: universe expand faster and faster. If it's a cosmological constant,
Speaker 2: which is just a kind of dark energy that first
Speaker 2: invented by Einstein, but it seems to be the case,
Speaker 2: then what will happen is that over time, the other
Speaker 2: galaxies will get farther and farther away. Not a dramatat
Speaker 2: the Androma galaxy is coming for us now. It's on
Speaker 2: its way. It's gonna collide with the Milky Way in
Speaker 2: about four billion years. Okay, that'll be fine, whatever, But
Speaker 2: then you know, the more distant galaxies will just get
Speaker 2: farther and farther away, and eventually we won't be able
Speaker 2: to see any other galaxies outside of our little local group.
Speaker 1: This is like when all your friends grow up and
Speaker 1: move out to the suburbs or get rich and go
Speaker 1: to Santa Monica.
Speaker 2: And then you know, we won't be able to see
Speaker 2: like the cosm mic right background anymore, that after globe
Speaker 2: of the Big Bang, so the universe will just get
Speaker 2: really really dark and really empty, and then our little
Speaker 2: group of galaxies will kind of be combined to one
Speaker 2: big blob. But eventually, like all the stars will burn
Speaker 2: out out because they'll run out of fuel and there's
Speaker 2: no more like gas coming in to make new stars
Speaker 2: from other galaxies, So the stars will burn out, and
Speaker 2: then like a bunch of things will collapse into black holes,
Speaker 2: and the black holes will evaporate, and like the protons
Speaker 2: will decay, and like everything will just kind of like
Speaker 2: decay into nothingness. And then then like there'll be this
Speaker 2: like it'll be this really empty, cold, dark universe with
Speaker 2: nothing in it and no like and just like this
Speaker 2: tiny amount of radiation and no ability for any new
Speaker 2: structures to form except maybe through some kind of quantum process,
Speaker 2: which is kind of a cool thing. But this is
Speaker 2: another topic.
Speaker 1: That's so goddamn lonely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's called the heat death.
Speaker 1: So what happens when the Andromeda galaxy collies with the
Speaker 1: Milky Way? Though you glanzed right over that what the
Speaker 1: hell is there about?
Speaker 2: That's really cool? Actually, So the Andromeda galaxy is a
Speaker 2: spiral galaxy like around it's it's got about it's got
Speaker 2: about a trillion stars. There's more massive than the Milky Way,
Speaker 2: and it's got a super massive black hole. And they're
Speaker 2: all coming toward us at something like I think it
Speaker 2: was like one hundred kilometers a second. Anyway, they're all
Speaker 2: they're all coming toward us right now.
Speaker 1: And is it gonna smishy smash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna it's gonna come and in about four
Speaker 2: billion years it'll get here and it'll it'll collide with
Speaker 2: the Milky Way galaxy. And the way that galaxies collide
Speaker 2: is kind of cool. They like sort of merge and
Speaker 2: like they make these long trails of stars coming out,
Speaker 2: and it'll be this sort of like really spectacular light
Speaker 2: show of like gas will collide and make new stars
Speaker 2: and there will be this burst of star formation and
Speaker 2: the black holes might like turn on and start like
Speaker 2: pulling in matter and like getting really bright, and stars
Speaker 2: will be flung out into space and on these long tails.
Speaker 1: The sounds like a warehouse space rave. I'm not gonna lie.
Speaker 1: I'd be down for this.
Speaker 2: But because galaxy is because there's so much space between
Speaker 2: stars in galaxy. Probably our solar system will not be affected, Okay,
Speaker 2: like probably we'll just like this, the sky will get
Speaker 2: really interesting. But you know, it'll also be four billion
Speaker 2: years from now, so the Sun will be burning out,
Speaker 2: and you know, the Earth will already have its oceans
Speaker 2: boiled away and life on Earth will be impossible. But
Speaker 2: if you know, we left something here to take pictures,
Speaker 2: they would be really pretty. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mike mel Choir Melchior wants to know are uranus joke
Speaker 1: still funny? It's really urinus, isn't it. So?
Speaker 2: Actually I don't know which is a better pronunciation. I
Speaker 2: usually say urinus just because I don't want to I
Speaker 2: don't want to deal with it. But then it's got
Speaker 2: the name Urine in it too, Like it doesn't really help. No,
Speaker 2: they're not, they're not particularly okay checking out.
Speaker 1: So I use an AI for transcription for this podcast,
Speaker 1: and it transcribed to urine ass And I'm sorry, but yes,
Speaker 1: that is funny. Megan Gerard wants to know slightly more
Speaker 1: on a local practical level. She loves stargazing, but even
Speaker 1: in a small city it's hard to do because of
Speaker 1: light pollution. Yes, so can you then any tactics resources
Speaker 1: organizations for helping reduce light pollution. Also, she thinks maybe
Speaker 1: light pollution is bad for us and animals, and so
Speaker 1: good way to stargaze and good way to reduce light pollution.
Speaker 2: So there are there are national organizations for like dark skies.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the names, but if you if you
Speaker 2: look them up, there's they have. There are charities that
Speaker 2: that their whole purpose is to try to get better
Speaker 2: lighting in cities so that more of the light goes
Speaker 2: down and not up and changing like what the lamps
Speaker 2: are made of and stuff like that. So you can
Speaker 2: get involved in these campaigns and they're really they're really helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't remember the name of the organizations right now,
Speaker 2: but but there are a few of them out there.
Speaker 1: Dark sky dot org has a bunch of information on
Speaker 1: getting involved in dark sky advocacy and membership in this
Speaker 1: kind of a dark sky club. So hit that up.
Speaker 1: I will try to do my part and stop falling
Speaker 1: asleep with lights on. I fell asleep with them on
Speaker 1: again last night. But tonight Tonight to Night International Dark
Speaker 1: Sky Association, I'm gonna do my part.
Speaker 2: If you want to go stargazing and your city's too bright.
Speaker 2: You just have to go somewhere else. Basically, So when
Speaker 2: I was living here, when I was growing up in
Speaker 2: La in Long Beach, I was part of the La
Speaker 2: Astronomical Society and they would have dark Sky Star Star
Speaker 2: parties where we would drive like four hours into the
Speaker 2: mountains and it would be really dark there. So you
Speaker 2: don't have to get that far out out of the
Speaker 2: city to do good stargazing.
Speaker 1: So getting the fuck out of Dodge, Yes, got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty much. It's There's a really great film
Speaker 2: called The City Dark, which is about it's about light
Speaker 2: pollution and what it does to us and what it
Speaker 2: does to astronomy. And I'd recommend checking that out.
Speaker 1: I fell sleep the lights on last night. It's not
Speaker 1: good your brain. And now this said questions comes from
Speaker 1: the Facebook group. There's ologies podcast facebook group. Yes they
Speaker 1: get next cracket questions Isabelle Lauren wants to know what
Speaker 1: do you think the shape of the universe is hyperbolic terroid?
Speaker 1: What do you think did I sell it? Did I
Speaker 1: say toroid?
Speaker 2: Okay, you said tid okay, okay, toroidal is the adjective, Okay,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's so toruid. The torus is a donut shape.
Speaker 1: Oh that's all, that's what.
Speaker 2: That's all she's saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a troid cake would be a donut. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I went my whole life not knowing this somehow. But
Speaker 1: also a taurus apparently technically would be like an inner
Speaker 1: tube hollow, and a solid Taurus is a donut. But
Speaker 1: I want to say I was on a dessert show
Speaker 1: called Unique Sweets for like a lot of seasons. I
Speaker 1: have to say a cake donut seems like a solid torus.
Speaker 1: But if it's a fluffier yeast donut, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of air pockets in there, and the volume in density
Speaker 1: seems somewhere between a taurus and a solid torus. And
Speaker 1: I need a physicist to get on this for me,
Speaker 1: thank you. Okay, Oh yeah, back to the shape of
Speaker 1: the universe.
Speaker 2: The universe the way she's asking the question. The answer
Speaker 2: is the universe is probably flat, okay, which just means
Speaker 2: it just means that there's no large scale curvature to
Speaker 2: the universe. So I said that matter curves space, so
Speaker 2: you get these like dents in space on the very
Speaker 2: large scales. The space is flat in the sense that
Speaker 2: it's not large scale curved, it's still probably three dimensional.
Speaker 2: I mean, the space part is three dimensional, and then
Speaker 2: there's time that's a fourth dimension. But you know, it's
Speaker 2: flat in the sense that if you had two beams
Speaker 2: of light that were parallel, they would stay parallel forever. Okay,
Speaker 2: that seems to be the case, at least as far
Speaker 2: as we can measure. There could be some larger scale
Speaker 2: curvature that we don't measure because it's just so big,
Speaker 2: like if you have a ball that's big enough, it
Speaker 2: looks flat, Like the surface of the Earth looks flat.
Speaker 2: But the universe on the whole, as far as we know,
Speaker 2: appears to be flat. There's no evidence for curvature, but
Speaker 2: that it could be curved around on some really large scale.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll find out before the stars all collapse on
Speaker 1: themselves healthily. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: PJ. King and Laurie March both had kind of the
Speaker 1: same question. Is there a reason why some stars appear
Speaker 1: to twinkle more than others?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, Well, so stars appear to twinkle when you're
Speaker 2: looking through the atmosphere because the atmosphere is bending the
Speaker 2: light a little bit just by being like a little
Speaker 2: bit hotter, a little bit wetter, or something in different parts.
Speaker 2: And so when you look through that sort of you know,
Speaker 2: messy air, it makes the position of the star move
Speaker 2: around a little bit from your perspective, and that means
Speaker 2: that sometimes it'll look a little bit brighter and sometimes
Speaker 2: it'll a little bit dimmer, and that makes the twinkling.
Speaker 2: So the brighter star is sometimes that makes it look
Speaker 2: less twinkly or or more. It depends on kind of
Speaker 2: what the air is doing. But planets don't twinkle.
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 2: So the reason planets don't twinkle is because so the
Speaker 2: twinkling of a star comes from the fact that we
Speaker 2: like it's it's just a point of light from our perspective,
Speaker 2: it's just a single point of light, and so it
Speaker 2: can be moved around, and that little point of light
Speaker 2: can be sort of magnified a little bit, and that
Speaker 2: makes it look brighter or less. But a planet is
Speaker 2: a disc of light from our perspective. It's really really
Speaker 2: small disc. But it's it's a disc of light that's
Speaker 2: big enough that the little the little sort of turbulence
Speaker 2: cells or whatever in the atmosphere only like just move
Speaker 2: the light around within the disc. Mostly and so it
Speaker 2: doesn't get significantly brighter or dimmer because the motion of
Speaker 2: the air is not enough to really change the sort
Speaker 2: of size and shape of that disc.
Speaker 1: So if he twinkles, you got a star. If it
Speaker 1: doesn't twinkle, you got a plant.
Speaker 2: More or less. H yeah, more or less. So if
Speaker 2: you see something pretty bright in the sky and it's
Speaker 2: not twinkling and other things are, then you've probably seen
Speaker 2: a planet and they're probably seeing Jupiter, Saturn, Mars or Venus.
Speaker 1: It's so great. Yeah, if you and if that does
Speaker 1: happen and it's the first time you've read this, then
Speaker 1: you should high five Katie on Twitter. Lauren Oakes wants
Speaker 1: to know what is the deal with other dimensions? This
Speaker 1: might not be the right person to ask, but I
Speaker 1: still want to know. Okay.
Speaker 2: So we have three dimensions of space, so that's forward, back,
Speaker 2: or left, right, up and down. We also considered time
Speaker 2: to be a bit dimension, so when you think about
Speaker 2: things like relativity, you have to include time as like
Speaker 2: part of your coordinate grid basically, and so that coordinate
Speaker 2: grid has to have four dimensions. So the time is
Speaker 2: the fourth dimension, and the reason for that is that
Speaker 2: you know space and time can kind of affect each other,
Speaker 2: like like things like move Being through space at a
Speaker 2: higher speed changes the way you move through time, and
Speaker 2: when you're close to a gravitating object, that changes the
Speaker 2: way you move through time. And so it has to
Speaker 2: be part of the same sort of malleable fabric. In
Speaker 2: some mathematical sense, there could be higher there could be
Speaker 2: other dimensions of space and that we just can't interact with.
Speaker 2: We can't see, we can't perceive, and in some cases
Speaker 2: those other dimensions of space might be kind of wrapped
Speaker 2: around themselves, okay, which is a weird concept, but it's
Speaker 2: kind of like if you imagine, like like if you
Speaker 2: imagine a string, right, a string is a three dimensional object.
Speaker 2: Two of those dimensions are kind of wrapped around really tight,
Speaker 2: so it only has a little bit a little direction.
Speaker 2: You can go in two of the dimensions. You can
Speaker 2: go really long way in the other one. And so
Speaker 2: it might be that in space in our universe, we
Speaker 2: can go as far as we want in our three dimensions,
Speaker 2: but the other dimensions are so small that we don't
Speaker 2: notice them because they're all wrapped up. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that those extra dimensions are hypothesized is that
Speaker 2: it might be that all of our sort of particle
Speaker 2: interactions to stuff can only happen in this three dimensional space,
Speaker 2: but gravity can leak out into the other ones a
Speaker 2: little bit, and so if that were happening, that would
Speaker 2: explain why gravity is so weak compared to all the
Speaker 2: other forces. So that's a hypothesis, you know. So there
Speaker 2: could be other dimensions that might solve that problem.
Speaker 1: But what about multiverses? And is there another me with
Speaker 1: a better life living in a different dimension.
Speaker 2: So when people say dimension in that sense, they just
Speaker 2: mean another universe the dimensionality, Like the dimension doesn't mean
Speaker 2: space and anymore, it means something else. So there could
Speaker 2: be other universes depending on how you define a universe,
Speaker 2: Because you could just define a universe to be everything,
Speaker 2: and then everything is part of the universe by definition.
Speaker 1: There can't be a second everything. Yeah, OK, but you.
Speaker 2: Can define a universe as just the observable universe. So
Speaker 2: what's within our sort of the distance out to which
Speaker 2: we can observe anything, which is a set distance, and
Speaker 2: then there could be stuff beyond that. We know there's
Speaker 2: stuff beyond that, so that's kind of outside of our universe.
Speaker 2: You can think of that as another universe, and then
Speaker 2: you can have other universes that are separated by higher
Speaker 2: dimensions from us, So you can have like like our
Speaker 2: you can imagine our universe as a flat sheet, and
Speaker 2: there's another flat sheet, so we just take the one
Speaker 2: dimension down and they could collide maybe, And this is
Speaker 2: like there's a theory for the big bang that comes
Speaker 2: from these two sheets collide and that makes a big bang,
Speaker 2: and they come apart, and then they collide again later on,
Speaker 2: so called the ekpyrotic model. My thesis advisor was one
Speaker 2: of the people who came up with that. So there
Speaker 2: and then there are other ways to have other universes,
Speaker 2: like with the many world's idea of quantum mechanics, which
Speaker 2: says that every time a quantum event happens, basically another
Speaker 2: universe branches out from ours in a way that somehow
Speaker 2: makes sense mathematically but sounds ridiculous when you think about it.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of like an alternate reality? Kind of Yeah,
Speaker 1: is there another me in another universe, in another reality
Speaker 1: who brushes her hair more regularly?
Speaker 2: Well, in the many worlds hypothesis, I guess technically that
Speaker 2: that would be the case, But.
Speaker 1: So if that's like a rabbit hole that you want
Speaker 1: to go into, just like start googling.
Speaker 2: Because in many worlds, like there's another universe where like
Speaker 2: a photon just went through that window or didn't, and
Speaker 2: that's the only difference.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: So, like every possible thing, ri.
Speaker 1: Kyle Land wants to know, is there actual scientific proof
Speaker 1: that there might be life beyond our planet aliens? Yes?
Speaker 1: Now probably? Okay, So what does Katie hate about her job?
Speaker 1: What does she hate? So?
Speaker 2: What is the uncertainty of the kind of academic career ladder?
Speaker 2: So I spent the last eight years as a postdoc,
Speaker 2: which means I had my PhD and I was doing research,
Speaker 2: but I didn't have a permanent job, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know where I was going to go next, or how
Speaker 2: long I would be there, or whether or not I
Speaker 2: would be able to continue in science because it was
Speaker 2: just you know, applying for jobs and it's just a
Speaker 2: it's a difficult thing to be doing. And I, you know,
Speaker 2: all jobs have some uncertainty at some stage, but I
Speaker 2: feel like in academia that uncertainty and that sort of
Speaker 2: tenuousness lasts a really long time. Yeah, And if you
Speaker 2: get to the stage where you're definitely not going to
Speaker 2: get an academic job and you wanted one, then you
Speaker 2: have spent many years making not very much money when
Speaker 2: you could have done something more lucrative, and it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have it would have been better off in like every way.
Speaker 2: So you know, I mean, I enjoyed doing the research,
Speaker 2: and so for me, it was like, well, I'll just
Speaker 2: keep doing science as long as I can. I enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I'm willing to make that sacrifice. But for a lot
Speaker 2: of people, it's just so disruptive and it's so difficult
Speaker 2: that it's like it's it's a really high anxiety time
Speaker 2: and it's really hard, and a lot of people leave
Speaker 2: because that that is just really hard to deal with.
Speaker 1: So that's the main thing.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing is that like it's just
Speaker 2: it's really easy to have a lot of like self
Speaker 2: doubt and you have to be very kind of self driven,
Speaker 2: and it's hard to know if you're doing a good job.
Speaker 2: And like it's it's academia can be very competitive and
Speaker 2: you don't get a lot of like positive feedback, and
Speaker 2: so it can be just hard to kind of like
Speaker 2: keep doing what you're doing and know that you're doing
Speaker 2: it well or know how to do it well, or
Speaker 2: you know, all of that stuff can be difficult.
Speaker 1: Which is great that you're a science communicator as well,
Speaker 1: because you get to get a lot of feedback from
Speaker 1: the public. Imagine, I know, yeah, I mean that, and
Speaker 1: that does help a lot.
Speaker 2: Like if I'm you know, sitting in my office banging
Speaker 2: my head again something that I feel like I really
Speaker 2: should know this thing or I really should understand it,
Speaker 2: that this should come more easily, and then, you know,
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm a total failure and I don't
Speaker 2: know anything. And then I go talk to you know,
Speaker 2: room full of school kids and suddenly like I'm an expert.
Speaker 2: Like then I feel like I know a lot of things,
Speaker 2: and then it helps a lot. So yeah, for me,
Speaker 2: it's it's made a big difference in like just keeping
Speaker 2: me from getting too depressed about, you know, not understanding
Speaker 2: the universe as well as I wanted to.
Speaker 1: What about your favorite thing about the job, or cosmology
Speaker 1: or physics or my.
Speaker 2: Favorite thing is that I get to ponder the deep
Speaker 2: questions of reality as my job, you know. Yeah, Like
Speaker 2: I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: and it was most of the topics in this conference
Speaker 2: were not stuff I work on, So it was like
Speaker 2: really deep questions about the nature of reality and like
Speaker 2: whether or not space time is really a thing, and
Speaker 2: how particles really work and all of that, and I
Speaker 2: was just like, like, I didn't it's not the area
Speaker 2: I work in. So there was a lot I didn't
Speaker 2: understand about it, but I could grasp some of it,
Speaker 2: and I felt like I just felt so privileged to
Speaker 2: be able to be in that room and to think
Speaker 2: about these things and to have some grasp of these
Speaker 2: huge concepts, and like I get to that that was
Speaker 2: part of my work, you know, and that that was
Speaker 2: just an amazing That's just an every time that happens,
Speaker 2: it's an amazing feeling that I get to do these
Speaker 2: mental exercises and learn about the fundamental properties of the universe.
Speaker 2: And that's my job. I mean, and you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: writing the papers and teaching and all of that stuff
Speaker 2: is also my job. So there's a lot of other
Speaker 2: aspects to it, but just learning about the universe is
Speaker 2: a big part of my job and.
Speaker 1: I love that. It's so Baalar, Yeah, all right, thank
Speaker 1: you for letting me talk to you person how long.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that long interview ever done because there's too
Speaker 1: many questions. Okay, let's go to a movie. Okay, bye.
Speaker 1: So we barely manage the movie, which was a very
Speaker 1: forgettable mystery romp about a train stuck in the snow,
Speaker 1: but stellar mustaches and I will remain forever shook it
Speaker 1: by this conversation. I'm glad we took as long as
Speaker 1: we did. Now to follow doctor Mac, you can find
Speaker 1: her on Twitter or Facebook as astro Katie or on
Speaker 1: Instagram at academic Nomad. And this podcast is at ologies
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram, and I'm at Ali Ward on
Speaker 1: both And for t shirts and tots and mugs and
Speaker 1: to support the podcast while also covering your nude body,
Speaker 1: go to ologiesmerch dot com. And of course, if you
Speaker 1: like the podcast and want to support, just tell a
Speaker 1: friend or make a post about it or rate it
Speaker 1: on iTunes. That's huge. And yeah, I'll give you a
Speaker 1: secret this week. This week's secret is that I record
Speaker 1: all this narration in my closet because the sound is
Speaker 1: pretty good, there's all these clothes to dampen it. But
Speaker 1: the real nugget here is that I have a real
Speaker 1: laundry situation and about half my body currently sitting on
Speaker 1: a pile of towels, which I will get to this
Speaker 1: weekend after I obtain some soap. So yeah, I'm podcasting
Speaker 1: from a laundry nest. I'm like a cozy little woodland
Speaker 1: rodent talking at you through a machine. Big huge thanks
Speaker 1: to Stephen Ray Morris Patron saint Off Podcasts for editing
Speaker 1: this episode, and to Shannon Felds in Bonnie Dutch for
Speaker 1: all of their help with merch and Hannah and Aaron
Speaker 1: for running the ologies podcast Facebook group. And the theme
Speaker 1: song was composed and performed by Nick Thorburn aka Nick
Speaker 1: Diamonds of the band Islands. He's great. Check out his
Speaker 1: music now Next week A little episode on carbohydrates comes
Speaker 1: out the day after Christmas? So what the hell are they?
Speaker 1: Why do we like them? And why do our cells
Speaker 1: wear them like hats? Because they do? A glycobiologist spills
Speaker 1: the starch beans. Until then, ask smart people all the
Speaker 1: dumb questions you want. The universe is big, and regret
Speaker 1: is maybe the scariest thing there is, Okay, Burby pacodermatology, hobbiology, cryptozoology, lithology, numinology,
Speaker 1: meteorology and patology, nanthology, zeriology, elinology,