How Quantum Mechanics Holds Up a Dead Star - Ask a Spaceman!

[@Stefunkk]

I love this new longer, in-depth format videos. May I suggest to rethink the thumbnails? It seems to me they don't manage to grab the attention they deserve

[@PaulMSutter]

Glad you like the new format, and I'm constantly tinkering with the thumbnail, thanks for the feedback!

[@cyrilio]

Stefano Cilla agreed

[@redbox303]

Love the longer vids and explanations

[@PaulMSutter]

Cool, glad you like them!

[@whiteknight7889]

Imagine a hypernova collapse and exerted inward pressure. First it exceeds electron degeneracy pressure and become neutron star. If it has even higher energy it breaks the neutron degenarcy limit and become blackhole. What happens when pressure exceeds neutron degeneracy limit and what is the next barrier that hold the blackholes gets even denser? Can it be more dense that subatomic particles?

[@daveanderson718]

F*CKIN A, Yes!! Somebody with half a brain---that means you Mr. Sutter---please answer this man's question, "What happens when pressure exceeds neutron degeneracy limit and what is the next barrier that hold the blackholes gets even denser?"

[@MusiCaninesTheMusicalDogs]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge!

[@PaulMSutter]

Thanks for watching!

[@MrWorld-hc5rs]

OMG Paul this video was amazing. Thank you for making me love quantum physics even more.

[@PaulMSutter]

So cool, glad you enjoyed it!

[@oisnowy5368]

Every time I hear "degeneracy pressure" I feel I must fight the urge to rewind. Those words have a certain ring to it. I'd love to hear more about the spin statistics theorem too.

[@PaulMSutter]

Indeed, it's a pretty cool phrase! And I've added more about spin statistics to my list!

[@astrodcr3362]

Brilliant video once again. One question, would we be able to detect our own radio and tv signals at our closest star Proxima Centauri at 4 light years away? Or would we have trouble detecting them.

[@PaulMSutter]

Thanks, glad you liked it! And yes, the Centaurians are certainly watching our TV :)

[@barefootalien]

But what actually _is_ it that prevents them from occupying the same state? Nobody ever answers that. If I have two electrons that are far apart, and I attempt to push them toward each other, the electric fields they produce interact and apply a force opposite my push, attempting to push them back apart. Zooming in with quantum mechanics, we find that that force is mediated by photons or, more precisely, usually virtual photons. Nearing the limit of my current understanding now, if we zooming in even further with QED, we find that the electron field's coupling with the photon i.e. electromagnetic field creates restrictions as the two stable oscillations that represent the electrons, excluding certain possible virtual quantum states in the region in between the two, disturbing what would otherwise be a symmetrical (and thus destructively interfering) field around each 'particle', creating a force, via the now _constructive_ interference between the two electrons, which pushes them apart again. I may not have all of this _exactly_ right, but I feel like I can wrap my head around it. It's all kind of a similar mental construct. As I zoom in more and more on the details of what's really going on, the classical idea of the electric potential is replaced by something that, while more _nuanced_ is not fundamentally _different._ It's still in essence one of the four primary forces that govern the universe. But when we push them together even harder, and try to zoom in another conceptual level to see what's actually happening in, say, a White Dwarf, suddenly nobody can answer in a similar form. I've seen the math. I get what it says. But not being a mathematical realist, I don't believe mathematics has any real physical power in the universe; rather that it's just a model we use to describe it. A remarkably self-consistent model because of how it's built, but still fundamentally a matter of _thought,_ not of matter, which it only _describes._ I understand the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to a pretty good level, I think. Not just the pairs of quantum operators that can't be simultaneously known to arbitrary precision, but I have a pretty good sense for _why_ that is, with the idea of... gah, I'm not remembering the name of it right now, but the idea that as you increase the energy/frequency of the observing particles to try to get a tighter and tighter knowledge of, say, a target particle's position, you start to create enough energy in the space right around the particle you're interested in, that what is normally a cloud of virtual particles around the particle can start to manifest as _real_ particles, as if in trying to nail down both its location and momentum makes it uncertain even how many particles there are. Anyway, even at that level, it seems like we're still dealing with the four fundamental forces and the standard model's array of particles from SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1). But then we go to the densities involved in a white dwarf, for electrons, or a neutron star, for nucleons, or I assume a quark star for quarks, and suddenly all anyone seems able to say is "degeneracy pressure" and "no two spin-1/2 particles can occupy exactly the same quantum state," as if saying those words is some kind of magic spell that can mysteriously hold a neutron star from collapsing into a black hole. I could wrap my head around it if what happened was that as two electrons get really really close together, there is effectively no upper bound to the electromagnetic force they exert on each other, until finally they give each other enough energy that a W-boson can form and convert each of the electrons along with a neighboring proton into a pair of neutrons... but I've had many people very emphatically claim that the electromagnetic force is simply not involved, that it's literally "just degeneracy pressure". But pressure is not a fundamental concept; it's emergent. What's really going on with pressure in a gas is that actual molecules are bouncing off of each other into the walls of the container, exerting an average net force on it. Those bounces are clearly governed by the electromagnetic force, by the exchange of virtual photons, by the coupling of the Electron field with the EM field, or whatever level you care to zoom in on. I've even had fairly knowledgeable people swear that the reason I don't fall through my chair right now has nothing to do with the electromagnetic force, because, as they claim, it's too weak to support me; that it's the Pauli Exclusion Principle and degeneracy pressure that holds my butt separate from my chair, and that.... just seems like nonsense. The Electromagnetic force is _extremely_ strong in my understanding. If this is one of those topics where the answer is "we just don't know, because we've been shutting up and calculating instead of trying to figure it out for the last century and a bit," then fine... but I wish someone would admit that. If it isn't, though, then... what _force_ is behind degeneracy pressure, and how does it operate? "Because the maths says so" isn't good enough for me, because I do not believe in the fundamental _reality_ of the maths. 1+1=2 is a wonderful concept, that describes many, many things in the universe, but it can't throw a ball. My own instincts say that for each type of degeneracy pressure, the force acting on smaller scales that gives rise to the emergent property of 'pressure' would be the corresponding force to the kind of particle degeneracy in question, i.e. Electromagnetic Force for electron degeneracy pressure in White Dwarves, which grows and grows until it becomes energetically more favorable to create the moderators of the Weak Force to convert protons and electrons into neutrons. Then in a Neutron Star, I'd guess it would be the Strong Force underlying neutron degeneracy pressure, in a Quark Star (if they exist), it'd be... I dunno... color charge? Which is.... governed by the Weak Force IIRC (which is actually stronger than the Strong force at extremely short range IIRC)? But some pretty credentialed people _insist rather vehemently_ that that isn't the case, and that it "just is what it is", without every being able to give a sensible _answer,_ you know?

[@TheSimmaster7]

Can you do a video on magnetar's or just any type of neutron stars

[@nicholashylton6857]

cameron leek Magnetars are mind-blowingly awesome, aren't they? Every once in awhile I revisit pages about the magnetar *SGR 1806-20*, and what happens when it blasted us back on December 26th of 2004. A starquake unleashed a blastwave of radiation which blinded the Swift x-ray satellite, altered ionosphere for a while, made the Earth's magnetic field 'ring', and even lit up the moon in x-rays like a flashbulb. Truly mind-boggling energy released from the object no larger than an average city. I wonder if Advanced LIGO could have just detected the event if it had operating back in 2004?

[@antoniomaraziti4606]

Great video!

[@jayk7169]

Any chance you can talk about Planck stars as a theory for black holes?

[@PaulMSutter]

It's on the list!

[@lastsilhouette85]

I feel like I'm misunderstanding the Pauli Exclusion principle here... Can the two particles be identical here? Or is this more of a thought experiment to get across an idea?

[@lastsilhouette85]

Never mind, rewatched some parts of the video and I figured it out

[@nazhatkhan8470]

Adrion and enrigo at wider distsnce can be easily traced but when they come closer the two particles can be identified as per symmetry (identical) in the spin stage of bozon or else it is not a symetrical spining below 0 or half , 3 half etc.at the stage of formion.with the result that no two formians can be identical but are different with spin statistic theoram.

[@daveanderson718]

I believe you means Bosons and Fermions, ...…..just saying.

[@illogicmath]

Great video. Thank God you weren't my high school physics teacher, humanity was saved from having another mediocre physicist. (With you I would have chosen this career for sure)

[@russellneitzke4972]

Can the fabric of space have degeneracy pressure that black holes overwhelm? Is space a planck field?

[@thomasdoyle4246]

Good Talk

[@cyrilio]

When Frasier had twins he named them Kevin and Other Kevin. I liked those names better.

[@PaulMSutter]

ha, thanks!

[@jimashby43]

That was deep

[@frasercain]

No, it was our name for the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way.

[@cyrilio]

Fraser Cain I actually remembered that you were talking about the brain of the viewer. It’s a kinda old video you made.

[@hmmmmmmmmmize]

And Dirac kicked all that off then by combining special relativity and quantum mechanics, predicting the positron and allowing the theorem to be derived ?

[@AZOffRoadster]

If a mirror image of one of your coworkers showed up to work one day, would you notice?

[@jaswik2023]

Please make your thumbnail better it need attention and it deserves it

[@OrionB1498]

Cool jacket.

[@PaulMSutter]

Thanks!

[@iliaslerias7374]

Can I like more than once? I really want to....Please?

[@PaulMSutter]

Once is more than enough, I appreciate it :)

[@daveanderson718]

Dear Mr. Sutter, with all due respect, you sure said a lot in this video without really taking this discussion to it's somewhat obvious, yet logical conclusion. And you were so close too. You brought up the spin statistic theorem and then dropped it because the math was too involved. So what. All you need is the qualitative understanding. Its time for someone like yourself--or not--to get serious and publish a plausible QM explanation of BH formation. Hope I have made myself clear. Thank you.

[@Sciolist]

I hate dumbing down that happens in science videos. Feel like I'm watching 2nd grade online class.

[@TeethToothman]

🐈🫀🐈

[@elliottrobb3906]

I used to think I was smart until I started watching your show.... :-(

[@PaulMSutter]

True wisdom is knowing what you don't know, or something like that :)

[@AZOffRoadster]

The more you know, the more you know you don't know.

[@ChinnuWoW]

You reiterated multiple times throughout this very slow-paced video.