WEBVTT 1 00:00:03.399 --> 00:00:07.719 Welcome to Bedtime Astronomy. Explore the wonders of the cosmos 2 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:12.279 with our soothing Bedtime Astronomie podcast. Each episode offers a 3 00:00:12.359 --> 00:00:16.320 gentle journey through the stars, planets, and beyond, perfect for 4 00:00:16.399 --> 00:00:20.239 unwinding after a long day. Let's travel through the mysteries 5 00:00:20.239 --> 00:00:22.440 of the universe as you drift off into a peaceful 6 00:00:22.480 --> 00:00:26.719 slumber under the night sky. 7 00:00:26.879 --> 00:00:29.239 I want you to start by visualizing a scene with me. 8 00:00:29.920 --> 00:00:32.000 We are on land. We aren't looking up at the 9 00:00:32.039 --> 00:00:36.880 sky from some mountaintop. We are deep, deep, underwater, really 10 00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:40.240 due We're at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. It 11 00:00:40.280 --> 00:00:44.719 is it's pitch black. Obviously the sunlight gave up trying 12 00:00:44.759 --> 00:00:47.039 to reach this depth a long, long time ago. 13 00:00:47.200 --> 00:00:49.960 The pressure is immense, crushing. 14 00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:53.079 It's silent and down there, anchored to the seabed. Is 15 00:00:53.159 --> 00:00:57.159 this well, this strange vertical forest. 16 00:00:57.320 --> 00:00:58.479 That's a great way to put it. 17 00:00:58.479 --> 00:01:01.920 It's a forest of cables, strings of sensors, just floating 18 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.519 upright in the dark, stretching up from the mud, just 19 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:06.120 watching the water. 20 00:01:06.359 --> 00:01:10.120 This is the domain of the KM three net Neutrino telescope, 21 00:01:10.359 --> 00:01:14.760 and it's an incredibly eerie and frankly beautiful piece of engineering. 22 00:01:14.439 --> 00:01:17.640 Right, and they're waiting for a flash, a tiny, faint 23 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:20.280 blue flash of light that signals something is crashed into 24 00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:21.640 the water from space. 25 00:01:21.519 --> 00:01:24.040 A cosmic ray, a neutrino, something from out there. 26 00:01:24.120 --> 00:01:26.480 Now, usually this happens occasionally, you know, we catch a 27 00:01:26.519 --> 00:01:29.239 ghost particle here and there. It's part of the background noise. 28 00:01:29.040 --> 00:01:31.959 Of the universe, exactly, just the normal hum of reality. 29 00:01:32.280 --> 00:01:33.840 But I want you to take us back to twenty 30 00:01:33.879 --> 00:01:37.719 twenty three, because something happened in the data that well 31 00:01:37.920 --> 00:01:39.159 it really shouldn't have happened. 32 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.400 It was an anomaly that woke a lot of people up, 33 00:01:41.480 --> 00:01:44.599 a real wake up call in the data streams. 34 00:01:44.760 --> 00:01:48.799 Bam, a single particle slams into the atmosphere, It interacts, 35 00:01:48.920 --> 00:01:51.640 and it sends a signal down to the depths. But 36 00:01:51.959 --> 00:01:54.400 this wasn't just a polite knock at the door, Oh no, 37 00:01:54.519 --> 00:01:57.480 this was a battering ram. The energy level of this 38 00:01:57.599 --> 00:01:59.400 single subatomic particle was. 39 00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:02.200 Frankly, when I first read the briefing, I thought it 40 00:02:02.239 --> 00:02:03.959 was a typo. It just sounds made up. 41 00:02:04.040 --> 00:02:06.239 It does sound like science fiction, or you know, an 42 00:02:06.400 --> 00:02:08.360 error in the spreadsheet. But it wasn't. 43 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:11.960 I looked at the numbers. This single particle carried in 44 00:02:12.199 --> 00:02:16.560 energy level roughly one hundred thousand times higher than the 45 00:02:16.560 --> 00:02:19.639 most powerful collision human beings have ever produced. 46 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:21.719 And just to put that into context for you, we're 47 00:02:21.719 --> 00:02:24.800 talking about the Large Hadron Collider, the LHC, The. 48 00:02:24.879 --> 00:02:29.439 LHC, that twenty seven kilometer ring buried under the border 49 00:02:29.479 --> 00:02:31.240 of Friends in Switzerland. 50 00:02:30.680 --> 00:02:33.800 The most expensive, most complex machine our species is ever built. 51 00:02:33.919 --> 00:02:36.560 We use the power gred of a small country just 52 00:02:36.599 --> 00:02:40.120 to turn it on. We accelerate protons to ninety nine 53 00:02:40.159 --> 00:02:43.199 point nine nine percent of the speed of light. 54 00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:46.080 We smashed them together to try and recreate the conditions 55 00:02:46.159 --> 00:02:46.960 right after the Big. 56 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:49.840 Bang, and nature just casually threw a rock at us 57 00:02:49.879 --> 00:02:52.599 that was one hundred thousand times stronger than our absolute 58 00:02:52.680 --> 00:02:53.439 best effort. 59 00:02:53.599 --> 00:02:55.919 That is the scale we're dealing with. Yeah, and the problem, 60 00:02:55.960 --> 00:02:58.639 the whole reason we're having this conversation today is that 61 00:02:58.960 --> 00:03:03.759 according to standard astrophysics, that particle shouldn't exist. 62 00:03:03.879 --> 00:03:04.879 It shouldn't exist. 63 00:03:04.919 --> 00:03:07.159 There is no gun in the known universe big enough 64 00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:08.080 to fire that bullet. 65 00:03:08.319 --> 00:03:11.159 So we have a ballistics report with no gun exactly. 66 00:03:11.240 --> 00:03:12.800 We have the bullet hole, but no. 67 00:03:12.759 --> 00:03:15.120 Weapon, and that leads us to the source material. For 68 00:03:15.159 --> 00:03:19.319 today's analysis, we're looking at a fascinating new hypothesis from 69 00:03:19.319 --> 00:03:22.560 a team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, your mass Amherst, 70 00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:26.560 and they're proposing that this wasn't a star, it wasn't 71 00:03:26.599 --> 00:03:29.879 a supernova, it wasn't a gamma ray burst. They think 72 00:03:29.919 --> 00:03:30.680 we witnessed a. 73 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:35.439 Death, a very specific and a very violent death. 74 00:03:35.520 --> 00:03:37.919 I think we saw a black hole explode. 75 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:41.400 And not just any black hole, a quasi extremal, primordial 76 00:03:41.479 --> 00:03:42.039 black hole. 77 00:03:42.159 --> 00:03:47.080 Okay, hold on exploding black holes. I thought the number 78 00:03:47.080 --> 00:03:49.280 one rule of black hole club was that you don't 79 00:03:49.280 --> 00:03:51.800 talk about things coming out of them. Right, They're the 80 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:54.759 cosmic roach motel. You check in, you don't check out. 81 00:03:54.840 --> 00:03:57.680 Things go in, nothing comes out. How do we get 82 00:03:57.719 --> 00:03:58.360 an explosion? 83 00:03:58.479 --> 00:04:01.639 That's the popular understanding, and you know, for big, stellar 84 00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:04.680 mass black holes it's mostly true. But when you get 85 00:04:04.719 --> 00:04:07.560 into the quantum physics of the very very small, the 86 00:04:07.680 --> 00:04:09.360 rules they flip. 87 00:04:09.520 --> 00:04:10.039 They flip. 88 00:04:10.240 --> 00:04:12.599 We're going to find out that black holes aren't really black, 89 00:04:12.639 --> 00:04:16.360 they're not perfectly stable, and they definitely don't stay quiet forever. 90 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:18.240 This is what I love about this topic. We're going 91 00:04:18.279 --> 00:04:20.879 to peel back the layers here. We have a mystery 92 00:04:20.920 --> 00:04:23.800 crash in twenty twenty three. We have a suspect, this 93 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:28.800 exploding black hole. But the researchers we're talking Andrea tam Jaqui, 94 00:04:28.800 --> 00:04:31.560 Migua Juan, and Michael Baker, they aren't just trying to 95 00:04:31.600 --> 00:04:32.720 solve one crash, are they. 96 00:04:32.759 --> 00:04:35.279 No. No, that's why this paper is making such ways. 97 00:04:35.759 --> 00:04:39.399 They're suggesting that this single impossible particle is a key, 98 00:04:39.560 --> 00:04:42.439 aike to what a key that could unlock three of 99 00:04:42.480 --> 00:04:45.279 the biggest locked doors in physics all at the same time. 100 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:46.120 A three for one deal. 101 00:04:46.439 --> 00:04:50.879 If they're right, this explains the crash. It finally explains 102 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:55.240 dark matter, the invisible glue holding the universe together, and 103 00:04:55.680 --> 00:04:58.439 maybe most excitingly, it gives us a way to find 104 00:04:58.439 --> 00:05:02.160 particles that we haven't even discovered yet, a complete catalog 105 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:02.879 of reality. 106 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.759 That is a massive claim. So our mission today is 107 00:05:05.759 --> 00:05:08.319 to really get into that. We need to understand the 108 00:05:08.399 --> 00:05:11.399 crime scene, the weapon, and the motive. So it's good 109 00:05:11.519 --> 00:05:14.439 let's start with the crime scene, the twenty twenty three event. 110 00:05:15.199 --> 00:05:18.600 What exactly hit us? It was a neutrino, a newtrino, 111 00:05:19.040 --> 00:05:20.040 the ghost particle. 112 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:24.920 For good reason, newtritos are notoriously antisocial particles. They have 113 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:27.160 almost no mass, no electric. 114 00:05:26.839 --> 00:05:29.040 Charge, so they don't really interact with much. 115 00:05:29.079 --> 00:05:31.920 They don't interact with the electromagnetic force, which means they're 116 00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:34.879 invisible to light, radio X rays. They only really talk 117 00:05:34.959 --> 00:05:37.720 to the universe via the weak nuclear force and gravity. 118 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:40.079 I've heard the stat that what trillions of them are 119 00:05:40.120 --> 00:05:41.199 passing through my hand right. 120 00:05:41.120 --> 00:05:44.600 Now, trillions, mostly from the Sun. They're streaming through your body, 121 00:05:44.639 --> 00:05:46.680 through the chair you're sitting on, through the floor, through 122 00:05:46.720 --> 00:05:48.680 the entire crust of the Earth. 123 00:05:48.519 --> 00:05:50.560 All the way through the core, all the way through. 124 00:05:50.439 --> 00:05:53.399 The molten core, and out the other side, without bumping 125 00:05:53.399 --> 00:05:57.000 into a single atom to a newtrino. The Earth is 126 00:05:57.040 --> 00:05:59.600 basically just a thin fog. It's barely there. 127 00:05:59.759 --> 00:06:03.439 So if they're so ghostly, so hard to catch, how 128 00:06:03.480 --> 00:06:07.319 did Cam three net that telescope in the Mediterranean, how 129 00:06:07.319 --> 00:06:08.560 did it actually catch one? 130 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:11.279 It's all about probability. It's a numbers game. If you 131 00:06:11.360 --> 00:06:15.040 have enough neutrinos passing through enough water, eventually, just by 132 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:17.600 sheer luck, one of them will smack head on into 133 00:06:17.600 --> 00:06:19.839 the nucleus of a water molecule or an atom in 134 00:06:19.839 --> 00:06:20.360 the sea bed. 135 00:06:20.399 --> 00:06:21.040 A direct hit. 136 00:06:21.240 --> 00:06:23.959 A direct hit, And when that happens, the kinetic energy 137 00:06:23.959 --> 00:06:26.920 of that neutrino gets transferred to the wreckage. It creates 138 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:30.079 a cascade of other charged particles, mostly things like muons 139 00:06:30.120 --> 00:06:32.319 or electrons, that then scream through the. 140 00:06:32.279 --> 00:06:34.040 Water and they move incredibly fast. 141 00:06:34.319 --> 00:06:36.319 They move faster than the speed of light in water. 142 00:06:36.439 --> 00:06:38.720 Wait, faster than light? I thought Einstein put a start 143 00:06:38.759 --> 00:06:40.600 to that. That's the universal speed limit. 144 00:06:40.439 --> 00:06:43.920 Right, ah, But that's the key qualifier. Faster than light 145 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.360 in a vacuum is impossible. Nothing beats sea. But light 146 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:49.879 slows down when it goes through a medium like water 147 00:06:50.040 --> 00:06:54.319 or glass, it drags a bit. These high energy particles 148 00:06:54.399 --> 00:06:57.160 they don't slow down as much, so they actually outrun 149 00:06:57.279 --> 00:07:00.560 the light they're creating. It's like a sonic boom for light. 150 00:07:00.720 --> 00:07:01.680 And what does that look like? 151 00:07:01.959 --> 00:07:05.560 It creates a cone of faint blue light called Chernkov radiation. 152 00:07:05.839 --> 00:07:06.879 That's the blue flash. 153 00:07:06.879 --> 00:07:09.839 That's the flash. The sensors in that underwater forest they 154 00:07:09.879 --> 00:07:12.839 see that blue cone of light, and based on the 155 00:07:12.839 --> 00:07:15.480 brightness and the angle of the cone, they can calculate 156 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:19.199 exactly where the neutrino came from and crucially how much 157 00:07:19.319 --> 00:07:19.959 energy it had. 158 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:22.319 And this is where the twenty twenty three event just 159 00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:26.079 goes completely off the rails because the energy was well, 160 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:27.439 it was off the chart completely. 161 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:30.519 We measure this energy in a unit called electron volts. 162 00:07:31.120 --> 00:07:34.160 A visible photon particle of light you see with your 163 00:07:34.160 --> 00:07:37.480 eyes is about two or three electron volts, Okay, very small. 164 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:41.680 The lac smashes protons together at around thirteen terra electron volts. 165 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:43.639 That's a TeV. 166 00:07:43.560 --> 00:07:46.040 Trillions, thirteen trillion, Okay, that's a big number. 167 00:07:46.120 --> 00:07:48.959 This neutrino was in the range of pav put electron 168 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:54.199 bolt heta. What's that? That's quadrillions a thousand trillion, So 169 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:57.399 it's orders of magnitude beyond what we can produce on Earth. 170 00:07:57.519 --> 00:08:01.399 A thousand trillion electron vaults in one tiny particle. So 171 00:08:01.439 --> 00:08:03.680 why can't it be a star? We have big stars, 172 00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:08.879 We have supernovae, these massive explosions. Why can't a supernova 173 00:08:09.279 --> 00:08:11.279 spit out a peavy neutrino. 174 00:08:11.519 --> 00:08:14.160 It comes down to something called the energy ceiling. This 175 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:16.279 is a fascinating bit of cosmic. 176 00:08:16.120 --> 00:08:17.360 Mechanically, the energy ceiling. 177 00:08:17.439 --> 00:08:19.720 We know how magnetic fields and shock waves work in 178 00:08:19.800 --> 00:08:23.920 space and things like supernovae remnants. To get a particle 179 00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:25.759 up to that speed. You need to bounce it back 180 00:08:25.800 --> 00:08:28.480 and forth in a magnetic field like a pinball machine, 181 00:08:28.680 --> 00:08:30.120 gaining speed with airy bounce. 182 00:08:30.199 --> 00:08:32.519 So it's like a natural particle accelerator in space. You 183 00:08:32.559 --> 00:08:33.240 spin it up. 184 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:36.799 Exactly, but there's a problem. Eventually the particle gets so 185 00:08:36.879 --> 00:08:40.000 fast and has so much momentum that the magnetic field 186 00:08:40.039 --> 00:08:42.799 can't hold onto it anymore. It escapes, it flies off 187 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:43.159 the track. 188 00:08:43.279 --> 00:08:44.039 Ah okay. 189 00:08:44.120 --> 00:08:48.799 Standard astrophysical objects, supernova remnants, the jets from active galactic nuclei, 190 00:08:49.320 --> 00:08:51.200 they all have a limit on how tightly they can 191 00:08:51.240 --> 00:08:54.159 hold a particle while they're accelerating it. They leak, and 192 00:08:54.159 --> 00:08:56.320 the math says they generally leak before they can reach 193 00:08:56.360 --> 00:08:57.320 these peavy levels. 194 00:08:57.639 --> 00:09:00.799 So you're saying the accelerator itself, it breaks before the 195 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:02.080 particle gets fast enough. 196 00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:05.519 Precisely, so when we see a particle this hot, this energetic, 197 00:09:06.039 --> 00:09:08.759 we know it didn't come from a pinball machine process 198 00:09:08.759 --> 00:09:10.559 where it was gradually sped up over time. 199 00:09:10.679 --> 00:09:13.120 It had to be a single shot process. 200 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:15.879 A single shot something that released all that energy in 201 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.600 one instantaneous event, like a bomb, like a decay or 202 00:09:19.639 --> 00:09:21.840 an explosion. And that leads us right back to the 203 00:09:21.840 --> 00:09:26.879 suspect the primordial black hole. Now I need you to 204 00:09:27.000 --> 00:09:30.000 deprogram me a little bit here, because when I think 205 00:09:30.039 --> 00:09:33.200 black hole, I have a very specific movie poster image 206 00:09:33.200 --> 00:09:33.679 in my head. 207 00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:39.240 Interstellar Gargantua. Yeah, a giant, swirling disk of doom, a 208 00:09:39.279 --> 00:09:42.759 dead star that collapsed, spagheification, all that stuff. 209 00:09:42.799 --> 00:09:45.039 And that's a perfect description of a stellar black hole. 210 00:09:45.120 --> 00:09:47.919 That's the standard model. You take a star, say, twenty 211 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:50.759 times heavier than our sun, it burns through its fuel, 212 00:09:51.039 --> 00:09:53.360 gravity wins the final battle, and it crushes down to 213 00:09:53.399 --> 00:09:56.720 an infinitely dense point. Boom. You get a black. 214 00:09:56.480 --> 00:09:58.360 Hole right the end of a star's life. 215 00:09:58.399 --> 00:10:01.480 Primordial black holes or pdh are a completely different beast. 216 00:10:01.480 --> 00:10:04.639 They're not dead stars, they're fossils. They are relics from 217 00:10:04.679 --> 00:10:07.720 the very first moments of time, the Big Bang itself. 218 00:10:08.039 --> 00:10:12.440 So these things are older than stars, older than galaxies. 219 00:10:12.080 --> 00:10:15.039 Much older. Think about the universe. Just a fraction of 220 00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:18.240 a second after time zero, It wasn't empty space with 221 00:10:18.360 --> 00:10:21.679 stars sprinkled in it. It was a hot, dense, uniform 222 00:10:21.799 --> 00:10:24.240 soup of plasma. Everything was grammed. 223 00:10:23.919 --> 00:10:25.240 Together, the cosmic soup. 224 00:10:25.440 --> 00:10:28.720 Now, usually this soup is thought to expand smoothly, but 225 00:10:28.799 --> 00:10:32.080 Stephen Hawking and others back in the nineteen seventies proposed 226 00:10:32.080 --> 00:10:36.039 a fascinating idea. What if it wasn't perfectly smooth? What 227 00:10:36.080 --> 00:10:38.799 if there were lumps, lumps in the oatmeal exactly? What 228 00:10:38.840 --> 00:10:42.440 if there were tiny regions that were, just by random chance, 229 00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:45.120 slightly denser than the areas around them. 230 00:10:45.120 --> 00:10:46.840 Lumps in the oatmeal of reality. 231 00:10:46.960 --> 00:10:49.399 I like that if one of those lumps was dense enough, 232 00:10:49.679 --> 00:10:51.639 just purely by the weight of the matter packed into 233 00:10:51.639 --> 00:10:54.480 that small space, it would collapse under its own gravity. 234 00:10:54.919 --> 00:10:56.840 It wouldn't need to wait billions of years to become 235 00:10:56.879 --> 00:10:59.000 a star then die. It would just crunch, a direct 236 00:10:59.080 --> 00:11:00.000 collapse into a black hole. 237 00:11:00.240 --> 00:11:02.320 So you get a black hole created in the first 238 00:11:02.480 --> 00:11:04.879 fraction of a second of the universe's existence. 239 00:11:05.320 --> 00:11:10.320 Yes, and here is the absolutely crucial difference. A stellar 240 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:13.159 black hole has to be heavy. It has to be 241 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:15.759 heavier than the Sun because it came from a star 242 00:11:16.039 --> 00:11:17.159 that was heavier than the Sun. 243 00:11:17.240 --> 00:11:18.679 Right, that's the entry requirement. 244 00:11:18.759 --> 00:11:22.320 But a primordial black hole it forms from a random 245 00:11:22.440 --> 00:11:25.639 lump in the primordial soup. It could be any size. 246 00:11:25.679 --> 00:11:26.679 How small are you talking? 247 00:11:26.759 --> 00:11:29.200 It could be the mass of a mountain compressed into 248 00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:31.519 the size of a proton. It could be the mass 249 00:11:31.559 --> 00:11:34.759 of an asteroid compressed into the size of a single atom. 250 00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:37.000 A black hole the size of an atom. That is 251 00:11:37.039 --> 00:11:41.039 a genuinely terrifying thought, just floating around out there in. 252 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:43.120 Space, potentially trillions and trillions of them. 253 00:11:43.200 --> 00:11:44.799 Yes, Oh, wait a minute, if there's the size of 254 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:48.399 an atom, wouldn't they just vanish? I mean, don't black 255 00:11:48.440 --> 00:11:51.480 holes need to eat stuff to grow and survive? If 256 00:11:51.480 --> 00:11:54.799 they're that tiny, can they even eat? Or do they starve? 257 00:11:55.240 --> 00:11:58.480 That's the perfect question. They don't starve, they evaporate. And 258 00:11:58.519 --> 00:12:02.000 this brings us to probably the most famous equation Stephen 259 00:12:02.039 --> 00:12:04.399 Hawking ever wrote. It's called Hawking radiation. 260 00:12:04.639 --> 00:12:06.919 I've definitely heard the term. It's the idea that black 261 00:12:06.919 --> 00:12:09.120 holes aren't truly black, right, they leak? 262 00:12:09.519 --> 00:12:14.960 Correct. In classical physics, nothing escapes a black hole's event horizon. 263 00:12:15.679 --> 00:12:18.639 But quantum mechanics comes along and says, not so fast. 264 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:22.759 At the very edge of the black hole, space is 265 00:12:22.799 --> 00:12:27.840 a weird, frothing foam. You have what are called virtual 266 00:12:27.879 --> 00:12:30.080 particles popping in and out of existence constantly. 267 00:12:30.279 --> 00:12:31.000 Quantum phone. 268 00:12:31.080 --> 00:12:34.200 Right, it's happening everywhere all the time. Usually a particle 269 00:12:34.240 --> 00:12:36.279 and its andy particle pop up, they find each other, 270 00:12:36.279 --> 00:12:39.000 they annihilate, and they vanish back into the vacuum. It's 271 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:41.840 a zero sum game. But right at the edge of 272 00:12:41.840 --> 00:12:44.759 a black hole, at the event horizon, sometimes a pair 273 00:12:44.799 --> 00:12:47.639 pops into existence and one falls in and the other 274 00:12:47.639 --> 00:12:48.720 one escapes out into space. 275 00:12:48.840 --> 00:12:52.000 So the black hole just it actually spits something out effectively. 276 00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:55.120 Yes, from an outside observer's point of view, it looks 277 00:12:55.159 --> 00:12:58.360 like the black hole is blowing emitting particles. And because 278 00:12:58.360 --> 00:13:01.080 of the conservation of energy, the energy for that escaping 279 00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:03.679 particle has to come from somewhere. It comes from the 280 00:13:03.720 --> 00:13:05.240 mass of the black hole itself. 281 00:13:05.320 --> 00:13:07.960 So the black hole loses a tiny, tiny gooit of mass. 282 00:13:07.960 --> 00:13:08.559 It's leaking. 283 00:13:08.840 --> 00:13:13.399 It's leaking, it's evaporating. Now, for a big black hole 284 00:13:13.519 --> 00:13:16.360 like Sagittarius A, the one in the center of our galaxy, 285 00:13:16.799 --> 00:13:21.639 this leak is pathetic. It's colder than the background temperature 286 00:13:21.679 --> 00:13:23.840 of the universe. It would take a trillion times the 287 00:13:23.840 --> 00:13:26.000 current age of the universe for it to evaporate away. 288 00:13:26.399 --> 00:13:27.799 It's completely negligible. 289 00:13:28.039 --> 00:13:29.919 But we aren't talking about big ones. 290 00:13:30.120 --> 00:13:34.720 No, we are talking about the tiny primordial ones. And 291 00:13:34.840 --> 00:13:39.960 here is the completely counterintuitive rule of black hole thermodynamics, 292 00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:43.200 The smaller the black hole, the hotter it is. 293 00:13:43.279 --> 00:13:45.679 Wait, run that by me again. Smaller is hotter, that 294 00:13:45.720 --> 00:13:48.440 feels backwards. Usually, you know, a big bonfire is hotter 295 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:49.039 than the single. 296 00:13:49.120 --> 00:13:53.279 Match the quantum world of black holes, it's an inverse relationship. 297 00:13:53.559 --> 00:13:56.840 A massive black hole is cosmically cold, and atam sized 298 00:13:56.840 --> 00:14:00.320 black hole is a ferocious furnace. It radiates energy furiation. 299 00:14:00.399 --> 00:14:01.919 Okay, okay, I think I see it. So if it 300 00:14:02.039 --> 00:14:04.679 radiates energy furiously, it must be losing. 301 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:06.200 Mass faster correct, much faster. 302 00:14:06.320 --> 00:14:09.000 And if it loses mass, it gets smaller. Correct, And 303 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:10.840 if it gets smaller, it gets even hotter. 304 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:11.840 You see where this is going. 305 00:14:12.000 --> 00:14:14.000 It's a death spiral. It's a runaway reaction. 306 00:14:14.279 --> 00:14:17.799 It's a runaway feedback loop. A primordial black hole might 307 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:22.559 spend billions of years slowly leaking, very quietly, not bothering anyone. 308 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:25.519 But as it gets smaller and smaller, it hits a 309 00:14:25.559 --> 00:14:30.960 tipping point. The evaporation rates skyrockets. It starts screaming out particles. 310 00:14:30.559 --> 00:14:33.399 So it shrinks faster, it gets hotter, screams louder. 311 00:14:33.840 --> 00:14:36.440 The cycle accelerates until the last few seconds of its 312 00:14:36.440 --> 00:14:39.000 life or just a catastrophic release of energy. 313 00:14:38.799 --> 00:14:41.759 And that final moment when it hits zero mass, that's 314 00:14:41.799 --> 00:14:42.240 the boom. 315 00:14:42.440 --> 00:14:45.480 That is the explosion, a violent detonation that releases all 316 00:14:45.519 --> 00:14:48.960 of its remaining mass energy into a flash of fundamental particles. 317 00:14:49.440 --> 00:14:52.039 And according to the U mass researchers, that is what 318 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:55.279 hit our atmosphere in twenty twenty three. We didn't see 319 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:58.840 a star explode. We saw a microscopic, ancient black hole 320 00:14:59.039 --> 00:15:01.840 finally reach the end of its multi billion year fuze. 321 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:03.799 That is actually kind of poetic. This thing has been 322 00:15:03.840 --> 00:15:06.399 dying since the moment the universe began, and I finally 323 00:15:06.399 --> 00:15:08.679 went out with a bang, right on our cosmic doorstep. 324 00:15:08.759 --> 00:15:11.559 And the energy profile fits a dying black hole of 325 00:15:11.559 --> 00:15:14.200 a certain mass, releases particles and exactly the kind of 326 00:15:14.279 --> 00:15:17.879 energies that heavy scale that cam three net detected. The 327 00:15:17.919 --> 00:15:19.600 shoe fits the crime scene perfectly. 328 00:15:19.919 --> 00:15:22.480 But the UMAs team is saying it's not just about 329 00:15:22.480 --> 00:15:25.200 the energy, it's about what comes out of the explosion. 330 00:15:25.919 --> 00:15:28.200 They used a phrase in the paper that caught my eye, 331 00:15:28.720 --> 00:15:30.399 a democratic explosion. 332 00:15:31.080 --> 00:15:34.480 Yes, this is a fascinating part of the theory. 333 00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:37.519 I assume they don't mean the black hole is you know, 334 00:15:37.720 --> 00:15:39.360 holding elections before it blows up. 335 00:15:39.399 --> 00:15:43.679 Hey. No. In particle physics, most interactions are biased, They 336 00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:47.240 play favorites. For example, the electromagnetic force only talks to 337 00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:51.639 particles that have an electric charge. It completely ignores neutrinos. Sure, 338 00:15:51.919 --> 00:15:55.799 the strong nuclear force only talks to quarks. It holds 339 00:15:55.799 --> 00:15:58.720 them together in protons and neutrons, but it doesn't care 340 00:15:58.720 --> 00:15:59.720 about electrons at all. 341 00:15:59.799 --> 00:16:02.879 Right, it's a click different forces for different particles exactly. 342 00:16:03.320 --> 00:16:06.720 But gravity, gravity is the ultimate democrat. Gravity doesn't care 343 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:09.000 if you're a proton, a photon, a neutrino, or some 344 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:13.080 weird hypothetical dark matter particle. If you have mass or energy, 345 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:17.519 gravity treats you exactly the same, one particle, one vote, exactly. 346 00:16:17.799 --> 00:16:20.840 So when a black hole explodes, which is fundamentally a 347 00:16:20.879 --> 00:16:26.279 gravitational process, the unwinding of space time itself, it doesn't discriminate. 348 00:16:26.600 --> 00:16:28.639 It doesn't just spit out light, It doesn't just spit 349 00:16:28.679 --> 00:16:33.159 out electrons. It spits out everything, everything, everything that can 350 00:16:33.240 --> 00:16:36.840 theoretically exist in nature. According to our laws of physics, 351 00:16:37.120 --> 00:16:40.759 if a particle is possible in our universe, the evaporating 352 00:16:40.799 --> 00:16:43.480 black hole will create it. It has no choice. 353 00:16:43.799 --> 00:16:47.120 That is just wild. So in that final burst, it's 354 00:16:47.120 --> 00:16:50.759 spitting out a shower of electrons, quarks, higgs, boson. 355 00:16:50.480 --> 00:16:52.879 All the particles of the standard model. Yes, but it's 356 00:16:52.919 --> 00:16:54.879 also spitting out things we haven't discovered yet. 357 00:16:54.960 --> 00:16:56.759 I love the analogy you could use here. It's like 358 00:16:56.759 --> 00:16:59.480 a pinata. You know, you hit a normal pinata star 359 00:17:00.120 --> 00:17:01.879 and you get I don't know, a stream of light 360 00:17:01.919 --> 00:17:04.359 beams a certain type of candy. But you crack open 361 00:17:04.400 --> 00:17:07.720 a primordial black hole pinata and you get the entire 362 00:17:08.119 --> 00:17:11.440 inventory of the candy factor. You get the standard lollipops 363 00:17:11.440 --> 00:17:15.079 and chocolates, but you also get the secret prototype candies 364 00:17:15.119 --> 00:17:17.160 that they haven't even released to the public yet. 365 00:17:17.279 --> 00:17:20.960 That is a surprisingly accurate and useful analogy, and that's 366 00:17:21.000 --> 00:17:24.079 why this theory is being called a potential Rosetta stone 367 00:17:24.160 --> 00:17:25.079 for particle. 368 00:17:24.680 --> 00:17:27.000 Physics, because it contains everything. 369 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:30.240 If we can analyze the debris from this explosion, like 370 00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:33.079 that single high energy in neutrino, we saw, we're not 371 00:17:33.160 --> 00:17:35.759 just seeing a crash, We're getting a data dump of 372 00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:38.680 the entire universe's fundamental particle catalog. 373 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:41.319 So we had a better look at that twenty twenty 374 00:17:41.319 --> 00:17:44.440 three event with more sensitive instruments we might have seen 375 00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:50.319 what Derek, dark matter, particles, particles predicted by string theory, supersymmetry, all. 376 00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:52.640 Of it in theory, it's all in the debris cloud. 377 00:17:52.799 --> 00:17:55.920 It turns these explosions into the ultimate particle physics experiment. 378 00:17:56.279 --> 00:17:57.440 It's better than the LHC. 379 00:17:57.480 --> 00:17:58.240 Better than the LHC. 380 00:17:58.440 --> 00:18:01.400 The LHC can only smash together what we put into it, protons, 381 00:18:01.480 --> 00:18:04.759 lad ions. The black hole smashes spacetime itself and sees 382 00:18:04.759 --> 00:18:07.799 what falls out. It's nature doing the experiment for us. 383 00:18:07.960 --> 00:18:10.359 With energies, we could never dream of building on Earth. 384 00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:13.839 Okay, I am completely sold on the concept. It's elegant, 385 00:18:14.480 --> 00:18:18.079 it explains the energy, it offers this incredible kresure trove 386 00:18:18.160 --> 00:18:21.359 of data. But here's the problem I'm seeing now. If 387 00:18:21.359 --> 00:18:24.119 these things are exploding, how often does it happen? Is 388 00:18:24.160 --> 00:18:25.680 this a once in a billion year's event. 389 00:18:26.160 --> 00:18:28.400 You would think so, wouldn't you. But the UMass team 390 00:18:28.519 --> 00:18:32.200 ran the numbers based on the standard primordial black hole models. 391 00:18:32.799 --> 00:18:35.960 They calculated that these explosions should be happening within range 392 00:18:35.960 --> 00:18:40.119 of our detectors surprisingly often. How often is often? Maybe 393 00:18:40.160 --> 00:18:41.519 every decade or every decade? 394 00:18:41.519 --> 00:18:43.960 Wait a minute, if a black hole blows up every 395 00:18:44.000 --> 00:18:47.160 ten years, and it releases this insane amount of energy. 396 00:18:47.559 --> 00:18:50.440 Why haven't we noticed this before? Why was twenty twenty 397 00:18:50.440 --> 00:18:52.880 three the first time we all said, whoa look at that? 398 00:18:53.160 --> 00:18:55.680 And that question brings us to the plot twist. This 399 00:18:55.759 --> 00:18:58.240 is the detective story part of the paper because you 400 00:18:58.279 --> 00:19:00.880 are absolutely right. If they happen every decade, we should 401 00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:03.759