Speaker 1: Welcome to the quark Side Quantum Physics Podcast, an exploration
Speaker 1: of the fundamental structure of reality, where quantum laws govern matter, energy,
Speaker 1: and information. Here, uncertainty is a feature, not a flaw,
Speaker 1: and understanding begins at the smallest scales.
Speaker 2: So imagine you've been playing this deeply complex, just incredibly
Speaker 2: immersive video game for like fifty years.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, fifty years is a long.
Speaker 2: Time, right, I mean, you know every single line of code,
Speaker 2: you know every hit a mechanic, every exploit, and you
Speaker 2: know exactly how the underlying physics engine operates.
Speaker 3: You're basically a master of the game at that.
Speaker 2: Point, exactly. You drop an object, it falls, you jump,
Speaker 2: you come back down. You have entirely mastered the rules
Speaker 2: of this digital reality. And then one day you're just
Speaker 2: playing normally and your character glitches straight through a solid
Speaker 2: brick wall.
Speaker 3: That would be terrifying.
Speaker 2: You would stop dead in your tracks, right. It's that
Speaker 2: they're staring at the screen, just wondering is the game
Speaker 2: fundamentally broken or did I just stumble into a completely
Speaker 2: new set of underlying rules that have been hiding beneath
Speaker 2: the surface this entire time.
Speaker 3: It is the ultimate reality breaking moment. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: the kind of observation that forces you to entirely reevaluate
Speaker 3: the environment you're operating in, because when the rules you
Speaker 3: rely on suddenly fail, you're no longer just playing the game.
Speaker 3: You're forced to question the actual architecture of the game itself.
Speaker 2: And that, like that exact precipice, is where physicists are
Speaker 2: standing right now. We are looking at a potential crack
Speaker 2: in the most fundamental rules of.
Speaker 3: The universe, which is just wild to think about.
Speaker 2: It's totally wild. For half a century, the standard model
Speaker 2: of physics has ruled supreme as the undisputed law of
Speaker 2: the land. It's been practically bulletproof has but down at
Speaker 2: CERN's large hadron collider, particles are suddenly misbehaving. They're doing
Speaker 2: things the math says they absolutely should not be doing,
Speaker 2: not even a little bit right. So today we're on
Speaker 2: a mission to figure out what this anomaly actually is,
Speaker 2: why a bizarre microscopic event known as a quote penguin
Speaker 2: decay is sitting at the very center of the mystery,
Speaker 2: and whether this is going to completely rewrite modern physics
Speaker 2: or just fizzle out as another statistical ghost.
Speaker 3: We really are teetering on the edge of a massive
Speaker 3: paradigm shift here. But you know, to appreciate the gravity
Speaker 3: of a glitch like this, you have to understand the sheer,
Speaker 3: unyielding weight of the rule book. We are trying to
Speaker 3: break the fifty year old rule book exactly. The Standard
Speaker 3: Model isn't just some casual theory. It is the absolute
Speaker 3: bedrock of modern particle physics. It rests on quantum mechanics
Speaker 3: and Einstein's special relativity. And for fifty years scientists have
Speaker 3: thrown everything they possibly can at it.
Speaker 2: They've been trying to break it on purpose.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, they want to break it. Yeah, and it
Speaker 3: is held up against every single stress test so far.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's unpack this because the open secret in physics
Speaker 2: is that we all know the Standard Model is deeply flawed.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, it definitely has its issues.
Speaker 2: It has massive glaring blind spots. I mean, it completely
Speaker 2: ignores gravity. It offers absolutely zero explanation for dark matter,
Speaker 2: this invisible substance that we know makes up roughly twenty
Speaker 2: five percent of.
Speaker 3: The entire universe, A huge chunk of reality just missing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I have to ask if this model is
Speaker 2: missing a quarter of the universe's mass, and completely ignores
Speaker 2: the force that keeps our feet planted on the ground.
Speaker 2: Why have we treated it as the holy grail of
Speaker 2: science for half a century without ripping it up and
Speaker 2: starting over.
Speaker 3: That's a very fair point. Yeah, But if we connect
Speaker 3: this to the bigger picture, you have to realize that
Speaker 3: you cannot throw away a theory just because it is incomplete,
Speaker 3: as long as it's predictive power in a specific domain
Speaker 3: remains miraculously precise. Oh, think of the standard model like
Speaker 3: a map of your immediate neighborhood that is accurate down
Speaker 3: to the millimeter of every single blade of grass.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like that.
Speaker 3: Yes, the map doesn't show you the rest of the globe.
Speaker 3: That's the missing dark matter and gravity. Right, But you
Speaker 3: can't throw that map in the trash because it flawlessly
Speaker 3: guides you through your local streets.
Speaker 2: Right, it still gets you to the grocery store exactly.
Speaker 3: Every single time physicists have run an experiment to test
Speaker 3: those local subatomic streets, the standard model has accurately predicted
Speaker 3: the result. To revise the framework, you need experimental data
Speaker 3: that explicitly contradicts it.
Speaker 2: But if this map is so accurate locally, how are
Speaker 2: we even finding these microscopic errors. We must be zooming
Speaker 2: into a ridiculous degree to find a flaw in the map.
Speaker 3: Oh we are. We're zooming in further than you can
Speaker 3: possibly imagine. That is the entire purpose of the Large
Speaker 3: Hadron Collider, and specifically the LHCb experiment.
Speaker 2: The twenty seven kilometer tunnel under the French Swiss border.
Speaker 3: That's the one by accelerating beams of protons to nearly
Speaker 3: the speed of light and smashing them together. We're looking
Speaker 3: at the subatomic debris. We are zooming in on incredibly rare,
Speaker 3: incredibly brief microscopic events, hoping to catch the math failing
Speaker 3: in real time.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to the anomaly itself, the electroweak
Speaker 2: penguin decay.
Speaker 3: I love that name.
Speaker 2: Aside from being arguably the greatest name for a scientific
Speaker 2: process ever, we need to break down what is actually
Speaker 2: happening in the collider. So we're looking at a sub
Speaker 2: atomic particle called a b misson, right, all right, And
Speaker 2: inside this misson there is a fundamental particle called a
Speaker 2: beauty quark, and in this specific anomaly, that beauty quark
Speaker 2: transforms into another type of particle called a strange quirk. Yes,
Speaker 2: and as it goes through this transformation, it spits out
Speaker 2: four other particles, a chon, a pion, and two muons.
Speaker 2: But what makes this so important isn't just the transformation itself, right,
Speaker 2: It's the rarity.
Speaker 3: The rarity is the entire key to the puzzle here.
Speaker 2: Because for every one million b messons, only one will
Speaker 2: decay in this specific manner.
Speaker 3: Right. What's fascinating here is how these particles transition. Usually
Speaker 3: a particle decay straightforwardly. You know, a particle A turns
Speaker 3: into particles B and C. Very simple, very simple, But
Speaker 3: in a penguin decay, it takes a highly complex detour
Speaker 3: through a quantum loop. When physicists map out this complex
Speaker 3: interaction using Feineman diagrams, which track how particles interact over time,
Speaker 3: the resulting drawing of the mathematical lines and loops sort
Speaker 3: of looks like a.
Speaker 2: Penguin, hence the name. But what is actually happening inside
Speaker 2: that drawing, Like, what is a quantum loop in physical reality?
Speaker 3: Well, inside that microscantic fraction of a second during the decay,
Speaker 3: the universe allows a particle to borrow a massive amount
Speaker 3: of energy from the quantum vacuum.
Speaker 2: Wait, it just borrows energy from nowhere.
Speaker 3: Basically, yes, as long as it pays it back almost instantly.
Speaker 3: The beauty quark briefly spawns incredibly heavy intermediate virtual particles
Speaker 3: that just pop into existence, interact, and then vanish as
Speaker 3: the transformation into a strange quirk completes.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me make sure you and I are on
Speaker 2: the same page here. These virtual particles don't exist permanently.
Speaker 2: They are just like ghosts, popping in and out of
Speaker 2: the quantum background to facilitate the decay.
Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to look at it. M h.
Speaker 3: And because this specific penguin decay is so incredibly rare,
Speaker 3: it is uniquely sensitive to that quantum background.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think them following.
Speaker 3: If there is a new, completely undiscovered heavy particle out
Speaker 3: there in the universe, it can also briefly pop into
Speaker 3: existence inside that quantum loop. Even if we cannot see
Speaker 3: this new particle directly, its momentary presence exerts a measurable
Speaker 3: influence on the decay.
Speaker 2: It tips the scales, so we aren't seeing a new particle.
Speaker 2: We are seeing the debris field of the decay and
Speaker 2: realizing the geometry of that debris is completely warped. The
Speaker 2: LHCb experiment found that the specific angles and energies at
Speaker 2: which those four particles the chaons, pions, and muons are
Speaker 2: being spit out, do not match the math of the
Speaker 2: standard model, not at all. It's like, uh, it's like
Speaker 2: feeding a dollar into a vending machine expecting a soda,
Speaker 2: but exactly one out of a million times times the
Speaker 2: machine spits out a fully baked pizza.
Speaker 3: That is a very weird machine.
Speaker 2: Right and right now, the entire physics community is gatted
Speaker 2: around staring at the pizza, trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: it got.
Speaker 3: There, because the output fundamentally defies the internal logic of
Speaker 3: the machine. Warped geometry at the sub atomic level implies
Speaker 3: unseen forces or particles tugging on the strings during that
Speaker 3: microscopic quantum loop. The predictions of the fifty year old
Speaker 3: game engine are failing.
Speaker 2: But let's pause and talk about the actual reality of
Speaker 2: this data. Because science isn't just about one weird observation,
Speaker 2: right It is deeply rooted in brutal, unforgiving statistic Oh.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, the math has to hold up.
Speaker 2: Right now, this anomaly is sitting at a four standard
Speaker 2: deviation tension a four.
Speaker 3: Sigma, which is high but not definitive.
Speaker 2: Right in plain English. After accounting for all the experimental
Speaker 2: and theoretical noise, there is a one in sixteen thousand
Speaker 2: chance that this warped geometry is just a random fluctuation
Speaker 2: in the data. Now, if you tell someone on the
Speaker 2: stree they have a one in sixteen thousand chance of
Speaker 2: something happening, they assume it's a guaranteed slam dunk.
Speaker 3: Sure in everyday life.
Speaker 2: But in high energy physics we collide billions and billions
Speaker 2: of particles.
Speaker 3: You are identifying the exact reason the physics community is
Speaker 3: treating this with rigorous skepticism. When you smash billions of
Speaker 3: protons together, incredibly rare statistical anomalies will happen purely.
Speaker 2: By chance, just a numbers game exactly.
Speaker 3: Physicists call this the look elsewhere effect. If you roll
Speaker 3: a twenty sided die millions of times, eventually you are
Speaker 3: going to roll ten twenties in a row. It doesn't
Speaker 3: mean the die is rigged. It just means you rolled
Speaker 3: it enough times for the improbable to become inevitable.
Speaker 2: And we have been burned by these statistical ghowths. So
Speaker 2: many times. I mean, if you are listening to this
Speaker 2: and wondering why scientists aren't throwing a parade right now,
Speaker 2: you have to look at the history of modern physics in.
Speaker 3: The very cautious field for good reason.
Speaker 2: It is littered with massive discoveries that hit four sigma,
Speaker 2: had everyone writing theoretical papers, and then simply vanished when
Speaker 2: the colliders gathered data, Like in nineteen ninety six, the
Speaker 2: LP collider saw a massive Higgs like excess that disappeared.
Speaker 3: YEP, completely evaporated.
Speaker 2: And in twenty fifteen the diffoton anomaly had the entire
Speaker 2: physics world buzzing, only to vanish a year later as
Speaker 2: a trick of the light.
Speaker 3: And we cannot forget the twenty eleven opera experiment.
Speaker 2: Oh Man, the faster than light neutrinos.
Speaker 3: That was wild.
Speaker 2: They published a six sigma result, which is incredibly mathematically secure,
Speaker 2: claiming particles were traveling faster than the speed of light.
Speaker 2: It would have completely broken Einstein's theory of special relativity.
Speaker 3: People are losing their minds over that one.
Speaker 2: And after months of absolute pandemonium in the scientific community,
Speaker 2: it turned out to be a faulty fiber optic cable
Speaker 2: in the machinery.
Speaker 3: The trauma of the opera experiment is exactly why critical
Speaker 3: thinking is non negotiable here. The gold standard for a
Speaker 3: confirmed discovery in physics is five sigma, which translates to
Speaker 3: roughly a one to one point seven million chance of
Speaker 3: a statistical fluke.
Speaker 2: And we just aren't there yet.
Speaker 3: We are not there yet, and beyond on just faulty
Speaker 3: equipment or statistical noise, there are theoretical hurdles within the
Speaker 3: standard model itself that could explain this weird data, specifically
Speaker 3: a set of processes known as charming penguins.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, I thought the electroweak penguin was complicated. What
Speaker 2: on Earth is a charming penguin?
Speaker 3: It refers to a quantum loop de kay that involves
Speaker 3: a charm quark. These are known particles, completely accounted for
Speaker 3: in the Standard Model, but their effects are notoriously messy
Speaker 3: and difficult to calculate.
Speaker 2: So the math is just really hard exactly.
Speaker 3: The background noise of the strong nuclear force interacting with
Speaker 3: these charm quarks creates an incredibly chaotic mathematical environment. Some
Speaker 3: highly respected skeptics argue that we might not be seeing
Speaker 3: new physics at all. Oh, really, Yeah, we might just
Speaker 3: be severely underestimating the incredibly complex influence of these charming
Speaker 3: penguins within the existing rules. We might be mistaking Messi
Speaker 3: math for a new particle.
Speaker 2: So it's totally possible that the rules of the game
Speaker 2: aren't broken at all. The math is it's just way
Speaker 2: harder to calculate than we previously thought.
Speaker 3: That is a very real possibility. Furthermore, the researchers also
Speaker 3: analyze the data for something called cpasymmetry.
Speaker 2: Okay, what is that?
Speaker 3: This stands for a charge parity. Simply put, if you
Speaker 3: swap a particle for its antimatter twin and look at
Speaker 3: its spatial behavior in a mirror, the physics should theoretically
Speaker 3: look identical. Looking for cpasymmetry means checking if matter and
Speaker 3: antimatter are behaving differently in these specific.
Speaker 2: Decays, and what did the data show.
Speaker 3: Currently, those extracted cpasymmetry observables show absolutely no significant deviations
Speaker 3: from zero. They align flawlessly with the standard model.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me stop you there, because that feels like
Speaker 2: a massive wrench in the gears of this discovery.
Speaker 3: It is a pretty big hurdle if there really.
Speaker 2: Is a monstrous undiscovered heavy particle warping the geometry of
Speaker 2: this decay. Shouldn't it also be warping the CPA symmetry.
Speaker 2: How can the standard model be cracking so violently in
Speaker 2: the angles of the decay but holding perfectly firm when
Speaker 2: we look at the matter antimatter behavior.
Speaker 3: That is the multi billion dollar question right there. If
Speaker 3: new physics exists, it is highly selective in how it
Speaker 3: interferes with our visible universe. It requires theoretical physicists to
Speaker 3: thread an incredibly tiny needle to explain how a new
Speaker 3: particle could warp one aspect of the decay while leaving
Speaker 3: the cpasymmetry completely untouched.
Speaker 2: Okay, but let's play Devil's advocate for a second.
Speaker 3: Sure, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's assume this isn't a faulty cable. Let's assume the
Speaker 2: charming penguins aren't muddying the waters, and the lack of
Speaker 2: CPAs symmetry is just a quirk of how this new
Speaker 2: particle operates. If we get the next batch of data
Speaker 2: from the collider and this four sigma tension actually crosses
Speaker 2: that five sigma gold standard, what exactly is the new
Speaker 2: physics hiding in this data? What is the unseen monster
Speaker 2: pulling the strings?
Speaker 3: This raises an important question, and leading theories all point
Speaker 3: to a profound new addition to the universe, which is
Speaker 3: the potential existence of leptoquarks.
Speaker 2: Lepto quarks. It honestly sounds like a made up word
Speaker 2: from a sci fi novel.
Speaker 3: It does, doesn't it. To understand the magnitude of what
Speaker 3: elliptocork is, you just have to look at the name.
Speaker 3: In this standard model, the fundamental building blocks of matter
Speaker 3: are strictly divided into two distinct families. You have leptons
Speaker 3: like the electron or the muon, and you have quarks,
Speaker 3: which are the particles that combine to make up the
Speaker 3: protons and neutrons and atoms. Under the current rules of physics,
Speaker 3: these two families are entirely separate.
Speaker 2: They don't mix.
Speaker 3: Elliptin cannot transform into a quark, and a quark cannot
Speaker 3: transform into eleptin. The conservation laws explicitly forbid.
Speaker 2: It never the twain shall meet.
Speaker 3: But elliptocork is a hypothetical hyper massive fundamental particle that
Speaker 3: would completely shatter that barrier. It would act as a
Speaker 3: bridge uniting those two entirely different types of matter.
Speaker 2: Wait, it would let them talk to each other.
Speaker 3: It would theoretically allow a quark to emit eleptin, fundamentally
Speaker 3: breaking the conservation rules we have relied on for decades.
Speaker 3: If they exist, leptoquorks are popping into existence in inside
Speaker 3: those quantum loops during the penguin decay, allowing the beauty
Speaker 3: cork to interact with muons in a way the standard
Speaker 3: model explicitly says is impossible.
Speaker 2: Now we are getting to the core of this. But
Speaker 2: if I'm understanding the mechanics correctly, we are actually seeing
Speaker 2: elleptoqu work in the collider. The LAFC isn't powerful enough
Speaker 2: to create a particle.
Speaker 3: That massive, No, not even close.
Speaker 2: We're just seeing the weird way the B massun decays
Speaker 2: and deducing that eleeptochwork must be the cause. It's like
Speaker 2: we can't see the massive submarine passing deep underwater, but
Speaker 2: we can measure the strange, mathematically incorrect way the booyes
Speaker 2: on the surface of the ocean are bobbing. The b
Speaker 2: masson decay is the boo, the leptocork is the submarine.
Speaker 3: That is a brilliant way to conceptualize indirect observation. And
Speaker 3: if you look at the history of science, Indirect observation
Speaker 3: is a deeply validated method of discovery. Oh really, well,
Speaker 3: we observe the effects of radioactivity eighty years before we
Speaker 3: had the technological capability to directly see the w bosons,
Speaker 3: the actual fundamental particles responsible for the radioactive decay. Oh wow, Yeah,
Speaker 3: we saw the shadow on the wall for nearly a
Speaker 3: century before we had a light bright enough to illuminate
Speaker 3: the monster casting it. These leptoquarks are too massive to
Speaker 3: be synthesized directly, even by the extraordinary energies of the
Speaker 3: large Hadron collider, but their quantum influence is undeniable in
Speaker 3: these incredibly rare subatomic events.
Speaker 2: So we are currently standing the dark, staring at a
Speaker 2: very weird shadow, just waiting for enough buoys to bob
Speaker 2: in exactly the wrong way to prove the submarine is real.
Speaker 2: How long are we going to be waiting for the
Speaker 2: data to confirm this?
Speaker 3: It is entirely a game of data accumulation. Now, the
Speaker 3: current four sigma tension we are discussing is based on
Speaker 3: analyzing roughly six hundred and fifty billion b mesen decays.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of decays, it is, and those.
Speaker 3: Were recorded between twenty eleven and twenty eighteen, but the
Speaker 3: machine does not stop. Since then, the LHCb experiment has
Speaker 3: already recorded three times as much data. Oh nice, they
Speaker 3: are crunching those incredibly complex numbers right now, filtering out
Speaker 3: the background noise of the charming penguins and the statistical ghosts. Furthermore,
Speaker 3: an entirely independent experiment at the LHC called CMS published
Speaker 3: initial results in twenty twenty five that beautifully align with
Speaker 3: the LHCb anomaly.
Speaker 2: So it's not just one detector exactly.
Speaker 3: Having two separate detectors see the same warped geometry makes
Speaker 3: it much harder to blame a faulty fiber optic cable.
Speaker 2: And the LHC is still undergoing massive upgrades, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, the technological advance as planned for the twenty thirties
Speaker 3: are staggering. Those upgrades are expected to accrue a data
Speaker 3: set fifteen times larger than what we currently possess.
Speaker 2: Wow, fifteen times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that ultimate step will give us the overwhelming, undeniable
Speaker 3: volume of statistical power required to make definitive claims. It
Speaker 3: will either cement the leptocork into reality or erase the
Speaker 3: anomaly forever.
Speaker 2: I know that whenever the general public hears about new
Speaker 2: physics or undiscovered particles, the imagination tends to run pretty wild.
Speaker 2: You look at the comments online and people are immediately asking, great,
Speaker 2: does this mean we get warp drives next week? Can
Speaker 2: we build a teleporter?
Speaker 3: Right? The sci fi stuff?
Speaker 2: But while elliptoquark isn't going to help us build faster
Speaker 2: than light spaceships tomorrow, the actual immediate impact is arguably
Speaker 2: much more profound. It is a fundamental rewriting of elementary matter.
Speaker 2: Changes our understanding of the universe's most basic ingredients.
Speaker 3: It dictates an entirely new architecture of reality if electoquarks exist.
Speaker 3: It proves that the hard dividing lines we drew between
Speaker 3: different families of matter are nothing more than an illusion
Speaker 3: created by our limited perspective.
Speaker 2: It's all connected.
Speaker 3: It tells us that the universe is far more interconnected,
Speaker 3: far more fluid at its deepest microscopic levels, than the
Speaker 3: fifty year old standard model led us to believe.
Speaker 2: So here we are sitting on the precipice. We are
Speaker 2: just waiting for the next massive dump of LHC data
Speaker 2: to either confirm the shadow of these lepto quarks, or
Speaker 2: to debunt the penguin decay once and for all as
Speaker 2: just another trick.
Speaker 3: Of the light. And you know, regardless of the final
Speaker 3: statistical outcome, the pursuit itself is the entire point of
Speaker 3: the scientific method. Questioning long held beliefs, constantly prodding at
Speaker 3: the frameworks we implicitly rely on. That is the lifeblood
Speaker 3: of discovery.
Speaker 2: Because we have to keep checking the map.
Speaker 3: If we never question the standard model, if we accepted
Speaker 3: that the map was perfect, we would never even bother
Speaker 3: looking for the deeper physics they could finally explain dark
Speaker 3: matter or the nature of gravity.
Speaker 2: It is entirely about keeping that curiosity alive and refusing
Speaker 2: to accept that the game we are currently playing is
Speaker 2: the only game in town.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for exploring the absolute frontier of
Speaker 3: this physics glitch with us today.
Speaker 2: It was a privilege to unpack the mechanics of it all.
Speaker 2: Before you go, I want to leave you with one
Speaker 2: final mind expanding thought to chew on if these heavy,
Speaker 2: undiscovered particles like leptoquarks really do exist, if they are
Speaker 2: secretly influencing matter today by popping in and out of
Speaker 2: microscopic quantum loops. What role did they play in the
Speaker 2: very first microsecond of the Big Bang, when the universe
Speaker 2: was infinitely den unimaginably hot and burn with energy, These
Speaker 2: massive particles wouldn't have been rare quantum ghosts. They would
Speaker 2: have been everywhere. Could these lepto quarks be the missing
Speaker 2: bridge that finally connects the erratic, microscopic quantum world with
Speaker 2: the massive, overarching gravity of the cosmos. The next time
Speaker 2: your video game character glitches through a solid wall, just
Speaker 2: remember the universe itself might be hiding an even bigger
Speaker 2: cheat code right under our noses. Keep wondering,