The Biggest Ideas in the Universe | 18. Atoms

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe is a series of videos where I talk informally about some of the fundamental concepts that help us understand our natural world. Exceedingly casual, not overly polished, and meant for absolutely everybody.
This is Idea #18, "Atoms." Though in true Biggest Ideas tradition, it's less about actual atoms and more about why atoms are the way that Standard Model particles end up existing in our world.
My web page: www.preposterou...
My KZbin channel: / seancarroll
Mindscape podcast: www.preposterou...
The Biggest Ideas playlist: • The Biggest Ideas in t...
Blog posts for the series: www.preposterou...
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#science #physics #ideas #universe #learning #cosmology #philosophy #particles #atoms

[@seancarroll]

Okay, admittedly, in this branch of the multiverse it's Lithium, not Beryllium, that is the third element in the periodic table. Ordinarily I'd point to the fact that fundamental physicists can't be bothered keeping such trifles straight, but I've actually written papers on Big Bang nucleosynthesis, so this is just embarrassing.

[@TheD4VR0S]

I was just about to point at you and laugh but you acknowledged your mistake ;)

[@joshua3171]

the missing lithium problem has been solved :)

[@null_carrier]

Just when I, the greatest Wizard of them all, wanted to ridicule you to the end of space-time and dismiss all your claims as nonsense! ;)

[@johncordone2548]

Why not a capital G for the graviton?

[@johncordone2548]

@@PetraKann 😂😂😂

[@cryptobrian4732]

Thank you Sean for taking the time to put this series together ,as I’m sure this is no major monetary endeavor, lol. To us layman it is invaluable.

[@sadsalidhalskdjhsald]

I love these videos. I literally don't understand a single thing... but I still love them!

[@MrArdytube]

Coochicoo Yeah... Sean usually finds a way to make complex things accessible But this seemed laughably inscrutable If this was a Monty Python skit it would be hilarious

[@bahauddinalam4109]

You're right!😄

[@steenthorup3892]

These lectures are like a mini-birthday every time. Thx. Sean.

[@LindaCovey]

I listen/watch your KZbin videos almost every night. I love thinking about physics. Thank you, 74 yr old wanna be scientist.

[@Valdagast]

There are stories of a math professor who used to include whatever unsolved problem he was working on into his exams because, hey, someone might be able to solve it and he may pick up new approaches that way.

[@seancarroll]

Sorry about all the inserted ads -- it's a new thing from KZbin that they automatically turn on. They should be gone now.

[@ChronosWS]

I'd love to see you on Nebula!

[@somachatterjee6364]

It's ok... I can wait for hours to get knowledge from you

[@protoword10]

Well we have to “suffer” it, symply you have already many views!

[@Saitama62181]

Not gone

[@Saitama62181]

I restarted my browser and the ads seem to be gone now

[@asolarasolarasolar]

This is the one I was expecting. Thank you so much, Sean. You're the greatest.

[@ozgurmisman5759]

Fantastic lecture . Appreciate what you do for the community. I am a non practicing physicist and I truly enjoy your lectures . It is so refreshing to listen to an expert that can communicate and connect with an audience that is not an expert on subject matter . Fascinating !!

[@gilbertengler9064]

Dear Caroll, this is one of your most impressive presentations. Just fantastic and not to be found nowhere!

[@sambarta9865]

Hey Sean, if you get a chance to read this i just wanted to say thanks for the free content! I didn't study much science in highschool and only was exposed to the fascinating theories in physics after school so i appreciate the casual yet detailed explanations :) Much love from down under in Aus!

[@nowhereman8374]

Thx Dr. Carroll. During my engineering education in the 80's, these beautiful concepts were rarely discussed and when they were they were very convoluted. This series has helped me considerably to fill in the gaps in my own meager education.

[@constpegasus]

Thank you for doing this for us Sean. I love it.

[@Quantum_GirlE]

Love this man's brain. Would love to have an amazing conversation with him! Him and Dr. Tyson need to collab again! 💕

[@Toocrash]

I'd like to witness a podcast with Matt O'Dowd from PBS Space Time.

[@johncordone2548]

I would like to hear a talk between Sean Carroll and Eric Weinstein

[@KrwiomoczBogurodzicy]

and David Deutsch...

[@brinsino]

Honestly yuck. NDT is great for getting young children interested in science, but Sean Carroll is on a whole other level when it comes to actually explaining physics. I feel physically ill when I hear Tyson give the same tired platitudes and sugar-coated analogies about quantum mechanics. You could watch every NDT science documentary ever made, and come out of it understanding nothing about quantum mechanics except that it's weird and also there's uncertainty. Meanwhile, you could go to grad school for physics, and still learn new concepts by watching this playlist (das me).

[@Toocrash]

@@brinsino Tyson is a great communicator, and indeed mostly superficial. Me, with Sean (Carrol), am definitely out of my comfort zone.

[@gbye007]

This is a truly remarkable series. I like this intro: "Lots of people have tried to invent fun geometric ways to present the fundamental particles - I think they are all a bit ad-hoc." What amazed me after this grand statement was the tour de force rundown of all those particles that you have presented here in this video. Mind blowing. BTW, please turn this into a book.

[@henktl3580]

Two neutrinos walk through a bar.

[@owaisahmad7841]

Brilliant as usual. One of the Sean's easier lectures to follow and understand.

[@premprakashjauhari2751]

Very informative for those even with some basic knowledge of science.

[@RKarmaKill]

Mr. Carroll, thank you.

[@rhondagoodloe3275]

Sean, Thanks so much for doing this! Very grateful!

[@mikep6798]

THANK YOU! Please don't change anything. Your videos have a beautiful balance of information and historical reference(or progression of the subject) without wasting time. I would love if you could find the time for a video on tensors.

[@paulc96]

Thanks again Prof. Carroll. Watching your lectures makes my day. (Like the haircut BTW !!)

[@mudkip_btw]

A huge thanks Mr Carroll for the fantastic explanations. These are on a level where I can learn something from KZbin outside of my classes. Going to do additional quantum mechanics next year in my bachelor's cuz I love fundamental physics. Really appreciate your help, and it's all free!

[@mudkip_btw]

If the proton were a little bit heavier the biologist and chemist would lose their jobs xd

[@swamihuman9395]

Another great "lecture", Sean. Thx. P.S. Love the philosophy at the end, too. It's important to think about the way we think.

[@gavinthomas87]

Sean, thank you so much for this series.

[@jimgraham6722]

I am not sure I fully understand this, but it is amazing and very important that someone does.

[@gilbertengler9064]

Congratulations! This story about atoms is soooo beautiful and opens the door for a better understanding of chemistry and biology. This should be included in the program of last year high school students.

[@gilbertengler9064]

@@michaelsommers2356 I am convinced that there are very few high school teachers on this planet explaining this stuff as clear. There are simply no high school teachers that have such a deep understanding of this matter as f.e. Sean Carroll, able to convey this level of understanding to non-physicists. Indeed in high school books there is a lot of information, but most of it escapes the students.

[@gilbertengler9064]

@@michaelsommers2356 I know, you are wright. I just wanted to say that an excellent prof can make it soooo interesting for people who never studied these things deeply. Good chemists understand all of this! But even when you know a lot about it, sometimes super-explanations can open a door to get a different and more deep understanding of the things. Even when you are a scientist.

[@kevinegan1267]

Hi Sean, very illuminating series of public lectures given by a genuine erudite. I wonder where you get the time to do everything from doing your day job of teaching, doing research and publishing research papers, giving public lectures all over the World, doing interviews, writing text books, writing science books popularising physics topics and also these “Biggest Ideas in the Universe” and the “Mindscape; Ask Me Anything” series of online gold, plus live your everyday life like everyone else, as well. I am fairly sure that I have probably missed missed other work. Keep up the good work.

[@KrisPucci]

The last minute bummed me out. I knew this was true, but hearing it from Sean makes it real.

[@atimholt]

I say it's exciting: Anything that is possible within these constraints is, in principle, derivable from “first principles”. Until humanity significantly raises its Kardashev scale number (or arrives at *extremely* surprising new physics beyond the standard model), our technological constraints are not bounded by our ignorance, but our tooling (if you include computers under “tooling”). We've broken through a barrier that makes it all but inevitable that we'll eventually be able to do all things that are not *literally* against the laws of physics.

[@forrestorange]

Brilliant. A pay-off after struggling through the earlier tough lectures :)

[@vincentbrancato5146]

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us Sean!

[@macsilvr]

This was a riveting lecture, thanks so much for investing the time to produce and post these!

[@jdc7923]

Haven't watched this video yet, so I apologize if I'm repeating something that Sean mentions. The great Richard Feynman was asked what was the one bit of knowledge he would hope got preserved if civilization got destroyed somehow. He said: "That everything is made of atoms."

[@climbeverest]

One of the best human beings on the planet

[@Stadtpark90]

1:21:01 I waited for him to break his pen for effect

[@amaarquadri]

Great video! Its amazing to think that the universe was 0.1% away from ending up with just neutrons!

[@theodoridi]

GREAT EXPLANATIONS, EXCELLENT HUMILITY......BUT MYSTERIES STILL ABOUND......WHAT A MARVELLOUS SERIES OF "TALKS". SINCERE THANKS.

[@kindlin]

Caps lock is cruise control for cool. Sean's tried to avoid the label of 'lecture' for these videos, but I think that's the best description. It's about 3-8 weeks of college level information packed into an hour+ video.

[@dedoslav]

1:12:02 Being raised in the Russian scientific tradition, I appreciate that the single molecule Dr. Carroll chose to illustrate organic chemistry is ethanol. He refers to it as a "nice little example" :) Nice indeed :)))

[@orsozapata]

Hi professor Sean, thanks for the exquisite quality content once again. @36:10: It seems that most of human body is composed of protons, not neutrons: "For atoms lighter than neon there are an equal number protons and neutrons. Most of the body is lighter than that, but there is a lot of sodium, calcium, etc. The result is that about 45% of the mass of the human body is due to neutrons, 55% is protons (0.027% is electrons)" (www.quora.com/How-many-neutrons-do-we-have-in-our-body).

[@radishpineapple74]

I wrote my own reply on this, and I'm glad to see that somebody else noticed this, too. Maybe the simplest way to explain it is that 62.0% of the human body's atoms are hydrogen atoms, which works out to be 9.5% of the human body's mass. Since 99.98% of hydrogen atoms have no neutrons whatsoever, this means that hydrogen causes a significant imbalance in favor of protons. The majority of the remainder of the mass of the human body is made up of elements which have equal parts protons and neutrons, while heavier elements which have significant imbalances in favor of neutrons are comparatively rare in the human body.

[@wafikiri_]

World of neutrons: there is an interesting sci-fi novel, Dragon's Egg, by Robert L. Forward (who also made important contributions to research on gravitational wave detection), wherein life on a neutron star (called Dragon's Egg) is described that runs and develops a million times faster than that on Earth.

[@ThePatsyMusic]

PLEASE, WILL SOMEONE LIKE SHAUN CARROLL RUN FOR PRESIDENT!!! feynman is gone but, hey... this guy sits at his old desk at caltech thats good enough for me!

[@hamoudalwardy1341]

Thank you for the interesting build up approach to the atom.

[@FighterFred]

Excellent lecture. Guess there are two ways to look at the situation; either investigate how complexity arises from the standard model or do the opposite. This zoo of particles needs an explanation, why do they exist in the first place, why only four forces and is there a very simple origin without spacetime and all the rest. Also, in the 1800s they said that physics was over and then came quantum theory and Einstein. It could be that we miss something fundamental since we're a product of this universe.

[@kapsi]

I'd say weak force is pretty important in everyday life, since it's what causes radioactive decay, and that's used in a lot of technology

[@markweitzman]

What about searches for a fifth force?

[@markweitzman]

@Sean Carroll - For some reason ads are running every couple of minutes - perhaps you changed the ad setting on this video - but it is difficult to watch.

[@aceskoot3]

For Q & A: what actually is charge? Like what is the physical difference between a prositron and and electron

[@johncordone2548]

He does a whole thing about Fields. That's the most fundamental part of the universe. Now I think of a field in a two-dimensional space like a trampoline or the surface of a drum. A positive particle, made of matter would be like pulling up on that 2D field / trampoline / drum head. An antiparticle would be like pushing down on that field. If they Collide, they cancel each other out. 3D fields are kind of difficult. But I sort of Imagine it like an infinite vibrating block of Jell-O. Charge is one of the most basic properties of a particle. It's not really a + or -, but they have to call it something.

[@JohnDlugosz]

This was covered in the lecture on Gauge Bosons. Electric charge is most familiar, but any abstract property that controls interactions is a "charge", and they work in different ways which can be understood via an underlying symmetry group. So electric charge comes in + and -, mass is just one thing only, "weak" chrge (called isospin) is positive and negative, but the "strong" charge comes in 3 colors and three anticolors. There is a deep relationship between the fact that a conserved property exists and the fact that bosons interact with particles bearing that property and cause "forces" (or more generally, interactions).

[@lomiification]

Oh nice. My guess for the number of stable isotopes was "maybe a couple hundred?"

[@joshua3171]

baryons: named after Barry when people noticed he was on to something???

[@joshua3171]

wouldn't the world/universe of only neutrons be inside of a neutron star??

[@chrisofnottingham]

At the end, the "We would have seen it" argument sounds pretty convincing, except we wouldn't know about gravity if all we ever did was experimental particle physics.

[@atimholt]

I think the point is just that experimental physics hasn't just *found* things, it has also *eliminated* a massive number of things, and it's easy to forget that. QFT doesn't leave holes between the enumerable phenomena it explains, because it's the kind of theory that's all about “hole filling” (greater stability within lower energy states).

[@tovarischkrasnyjeshi]

I kind of want to try the little homework assignment. I know I'm going to be wrong I mean, but ok. 0. Logic describes all possible worlds. 1. Some logics have ~(A · ~A), the principle of non-contradiction (something cannot be both true and not-true at the same time; it turns out that statistical logic doesn't work this way, so this would imply some kind of hidden number determinism something going on underneath QM). 2. That means that *something* existing is necessary to contrast with nothing, otherwise a space of only something would be indistinguishable from a space full of nothing and lead to two states with equal truth. So you get 1 and 0, within some space, [1,0]. 3. If [1, 0] can form a thing together, you end up being able to use the principle of non-contradiction to get [0, 1], [1, 1], and [0, 0] and so on. 4. And with that you have a binary number space, with indeterminate ends, which is the same as saying infinite. 5. Number theory shows that anything is fundamentally representable. ∴ Somewhere in the infinite number space is a set of numbers that describes the multiverse and by extension our universe. The fields and their particular symmetries and what not are fundamentally arbitrary and can't really be derived from 1st principles themselves but maybe existence can. We're also in danger of the numbers emerging into us crashing into arbitrary noise at any second (kinda like the possibility of a vacuum catastrophe but like infinitely more likely) but we can be confident that for any particular moment at least we're in a space sophisticated enough to emerge out of the numbers a boltzmann brain of the instant we're in. Personally I put my confidence in this at about numberphile's proof that the sum of all positive integers is -1/12

[@nickreisinger4645]

I like the notion that we have discovered all of the ingredients of every day physics. I feel like this is the case for most of science but pride and ego's get in the way and cloud issues and make simple ideas and problems complicated

[@Len385]

QUESTION: Are atoms impacted - or will they be - by the expansion of space/spacetime. In particular, is the space within an atom also expanding? As a thought experiment, I visualize a balloon with a happy face on it. As the balloon blows up the face gets bigger too. However, it seems from how physicists speak that atoms stay the same size, otherwise I would hear speculation about the earth - consisting of atoms - getting bigger. Assuming I have that correct, then in what space is an atom staying the same size? Continuing the thought experiment with a magician's eye, I would surmise regarding an unchanging happy face on a blowing up balloon, that the happy face is really in the magician's space and only looks like it is on the balloon's surface - balloon-space.

[@fieryweasel]

This may be a common mnemonic for people who have actually formally studied this, but I always remember the constituent quarks of a neutron as DUD...it's a dud, or neutral.

[@jimmyb998]

50:30 Someone *should* compose a symphony, starting form the Standard Model of particle physics!

[@chakradharmahapatra1958]

Last querry. In the upcoming Q&A, can you approach the discussed issue from an evolutionary point of view - both for particles & forces. I mean how one thing led to the other - from the known starting point & pathways. A temporal evolution of particles & forces would help in decluttering the issue. Thanks.

[@danfg7215]

0:02 John Carroll?

[@Amseldrossler]

I'm sure there is a student who is taking on that homework assignment to "derive this chart from first principles" just to impress Sean Carroll

[@8-P]

Q: 1. when Atoms interact with eachother in molecules and exchange electrons, is there every time a photon created and absorbed? So in a electric cable for example, each time there is current flowing, an uncountable number of photons are there too? 2. The ending was kind of depressing, knowing that there might not be some fundamental changing discovery that opens up new possibilities. But when these 4 everyday physics pillars and its rules are known, how can we not predict chemistry/biology yet? Where are the missing pieces that holds up back?

[@JohnDlugosz]

1. Virtual particles, he explains in earlier lectures, are just book-keeping to model the math, and not real. 2. Trying to discover new physics currently requires looking for things are are extremely subtle or requires extraordinary energy scales. Sean (and others, like Brian Greene) have stated that when it comes to anything on our human scale of existence, like chemistry and electricity, we've got it down pat. Predicting chemistry from QFT/QED is impractical not because we're missing any rules, but because the number crunching is too much. Look for a recent lecture from Perimeter Institute titled "Building Blocks of the Universe".

[@JohnDlugosz]

@Anifco67 Lightbulbs work when excess electrons and "holes" in a semiconductor matrix annihilate at specific energy levels. Oh, you mean Edison's lightbulb like you might find in a museum? That's thermal energy making electrons jostle around randomly -- they accelerate. In a metal they act like a fluid. In other materials, phonons (quantized electron density waves) collectively act in a similar matter. That "black body radiation" is due to the temperature, and it doesn't matter that it's electricity doing the heating. A bit of ni-chrome wire heated up in a flame will glow just the same. I suppose it's fair to say that a simple current in a wire emits very low energy long wavelength radio waves if the wire is not perfectly straight, and that the mechanisms that cause resistance in wires also involve individual electrons accelerating as they bump into things, but that's usually not significant. The electron drift velocity is about walking speed. I thought he was referring to _virtual_ photons, as simply moving charge carriers at constant velocity creates a magnetic field.

[@anirudhadhote]

Hi Sir, I have a simple question. Inside a factory at the end of the shift a supervisor and his co-worker are counting the produced objects, the objects are approximately the size of a tennis ball. It is their daily routine,the worker counts the objects as he takes it from the production lot and puts it inside a bag. The role of the supervisor is to keep watch so that there is no mistake while counting. One fine day, before starting the counting process, the supervisor looks at the lot and writes down some random three digit number as quantity of the produced items, in short he assumes that the actual quantity would probably match with that number. Now the question is what are the chances of that actual quantity matching exactly with that random number?

[@rickharold7884]

Awesome. Love the series!

[@sbeckmesser]

I found 1:12:00 to the end to be unexpectedly moving, even more so than reading about it in his book.

[@jonadams8841]

I appreciate the ethanol diagram.

[@teddybrow]

(Probably too late, but maybe Sean will see this...) This has actually been a (very minor) issue for me in a number of the videos in the series, but the yellow and green pen colors (i.e. those used at 1:07:45) appear barely distinguishable to me. I do have deuteranomaly (a very mild form of red/green "color blindness"), so it might just be a result of that. That said, deuteranomaly is the most common color vision deficiency (e.g. present in 5% of European males), so might be worth choosing more distinct colors going forward :) Absolutely loving the videos, by the way! Thank you so much for doing these!

[@otterruin]

I'm gonna request you to start a separate series, a la Binging with Babish's "Bedtime with Babish" Fire side story telling. Need it

[@johnbaillot1308]

Wonderful stuff again. Of course, topics are raised in Q&A's that were not mentioned in the main topic headings. So, understandably, there are questions upon questions. One of my questions hearkens back to the loss of information at the event horizon of a black hole, an ongoing issue for theoretical physicists. If two entangled electrons are generated and one falls into the black hole, is the entanglement for its fortunate surviving sibling still preserved? It cannot be known, there is no way of knowing. Moreover the nature of information is inexact in this context. Shannon with his theories of information gave meaning to information, but from the standpoint of communication of whatever type. If you phone your "better half" asking for how many loaves to buy, it is communication in the Shannon sense and can be measured as such, but does it have any meaning in a universal sense, that of black holes? Such a message is encoded on a microwave transmission at some frequency. If this signal from your phone were to be beamed into a black-box cavity where it would be completely absorbed, there would be a slight temperature rise due to the microwave radiation being absorbed, and once thermal equilibrium had been reached, there would be no means to reconstitute the information contained in the signal. Hence, if such a signal were to be sent to a black hole, the photons would be absorbed and in a similar way, the information would be lost. So the question is: is there such a thing as conservation of information, or is it a "red herring"?

[@kidmohair8151]

57:32 pretty good that "lucky stars" stuff, hmmmm....does that mean that luck is a new force?

[@jainalabdin4923]

Question: Is it possible to have negative mass, like negative charge?

[@johncordone2548]

Good one. I want to know too.

[@Dexerinos]

I really loved the ending and the retrospect of the topic ... everyday Atom is cool enough ... and also it isnt cool enough :) I would maybe suggest to do a small general debunk, or small general sci-fi debunk story (or maybe even urban legend) idea in all future videos, as it was done here :)

[@atimholt]

So if I take you correctly, our everyday physics is only possible (as encountered, at least) because of the second law of thermodynamics: particles decay to lower energy states because there are more “conservation-law equivalent” microstates with decayed arrangements (unless my loose understanding of entropy is too “classical”), leaving us with the everyday lowest-state particles. What does quantum physics look like without a big bang? How well can one “ignore” the divides between past, “FTL”, and future in a hypothetical “arrowless” QFT?

[@jamesgreen2495]

But I think gravity has two forces. I think maybe there is undiscovered anti-gravity.

[@tetraedri_1834]

What makes you think so?

[@jimgraham6722]

Anti particle of the graviton (anti graviton) = inflation? Just idle speculation!!

[@ecsciguy79]

I think that the next force to be discovered derives from the manifestations of flux densities originating from my belly button. I read Deepak Chopra so I know what I'm talking about.

[@commonsense1103]

I have on my desk an atom I made. My own invention.

[@HowShouldIKnow6543]

C2H6O - funny. These talks are amazing!

[@nostradamuscat1131]

JESUSSSSS!!! I F**KING LOVE YOU SEAN, the videos are great, your the man!!!!!!!!!!!

[@johntavers6878]

wow. tell us how you really feel dude

[@nostradamuscat1131]

John Tavers you know what.... now I don’t want to, now I’m going to stay tight lipped. You SOB

[@paulc96]

Hi Nostradamus Cat - after Physics, how about a course in English language, including grammar & spelling !!

[@kindlin]

@@paulc96 And less vulgarity on a channel meant entirely for learning.

[@ryan-cole]

Q: Is there any reason to think there might not be a 4th or 5th generation of particles? Why 3?

[@naimulhaq9626]

Nima's amplituhedrons/associahedrons is probably what you are looking for.

[@JohnDlugosz]

If there were more generations, there would be more choices for decay process and that would affect the lifetimes and branching ratios. If there is a 4th generation neutrino, it has to be very very heavy and is essentially ruled out.

[@zephilandevol]

John Długosz could one of the mass states be degenerate?

[@JohnDlugosz]

@@zephilandevol You mean have another generation in which the mass is the same as one of the known generations? I don't think that would count as being different. Instead, it would be pointed out that the coupling constant is 2 units instead.

[@KaiHenningsen]

1) In your list of what EM explains, you missed one very important thing: electromagnetic radiation (protons), that is, light, radio waves, cosmic microwave background, and so on. 2) I wonder if perhaps the black matter could (fully or partially) consist of baryons, and thus make up for the baryon number imbalance. Maybe there's an easy reason why not?

[@dwskyline4]

Please do a quick explanation on how vacuum decay changes the universal constants but without the ball and valley metaphor because I feel This metaphor is counterproductive because it's linear with time.

[@tonydarcy1606]

OK, so after the big bang the universe was too dense and hot for atoms to form. Presumably with the inflation the "cooling" energy had to go somewhere. Is it it lost to our universe forever ? Or did the expansion of space outpace the photons ?

[@PavlosPapageorgiou]

Not sure if you covered this. Is it a general pattern that fermions have fixed mass like the electron, and bosons have an open range of energies like the photon?

[@franklehman8677]

Prof Carroll: Alright students, here's a *little* homework assignment. Derive the entire standard model of particle physics from first principles. Student: Lol, okay, you got it prof! ::cries::

[@sinebar]

I wonder what would happen if you changed the color charge of a gluon in a hydrogen atom? I wonder if that would change the properties just enough to make fusion easier. Or the properties of a quark.

[@orsozapata]

Damn, I want the book of this series!

[@paulc96]

Which one ? There are several : 1. From Eternity to Here. (2011) 2. The Particle at the End of the Universe (2012) 3. The Big Picture (2017) 4. Spacetime and Geometry (2017 - undergrad GR text book) 5. Something Deeply Hidden (2019 - about QM) Take too long to list all the subtitles, sorry. All available from any good online book retailer. Happy reading !!

[@orsozapata]

@@paulc96 Hah :) I happily possess Something Deeply Hidden, but I believe a single comprehensive book "lightly" going through all the Big Ideas as this series does would (will?) be a great thing

[@paulc96]

@@orsozapata Hi Orsozapata, I suggested making a set of DVDs of the whole series (at the end). Some people liked that idea. If you agree, please add another comment in support. Thanks.

[@anirudhadhote]

❤ Very good 👍🏼

[@martinds4895]

Great video !

[@ReginaldCarey]

Dr Carroll, how do we know that other star systems consist of only positive baryons? Is this information conveyed via a property of light? I suppose it would be if there existed anti-photons.

[@HenrikScheel_]

If an electron has a mass, what is this mass made of? And is this mass spread all over the wave function? What does an electrons charge consist of?

[@c0nsaw]

Can we get these added to the podcast audio feed Sean

[@Anthony-ym6iz]

I’m enjoying the series. Many thanks! I always find it strange that the photon, the carrier of the electromagnetic charge has no electrical charge!!

[@jazzkiri5791]

Hi I want to first say thank you. I have learned a lot from you. Please do not stop sharing science knowledge. Keep making videos you are a great teacher. Here is a question. Why bosons do not have anti version. Maybe i just do not understand but it seem that the electron and the positron both interact with the same photon and follow the same rules. Why isn't there an anti-photon? Is it because photons are massless and that you need mass to have an antiversion? Also does a positron have some antimass or mass is the same for matter and antimatter? Thank you for sharing knowledge.

[@DrPommels]

I may be cutting too fine a line.... but I think if we identified a new particle that explains dark matter or dark energy it would qualify as finding a new particle that impacts our everyday life....

[@Kowzorz]

Is there any rule that dictates the timing of the virtual particle interactions? Like in the Higgs decay where quark/antiquark triangle was fulfilled emitting a set of photons, that's tight enough in both timing and gluon nakedness that it seems likely it would interact with itself "locally" like it exists on the diagram. But suppose we built a more complicated array of decomposition products. On layer, say #5, could a quark emitted there interact with another product of something else on say layer #4 or #5? (would the "same" layer even matter?). I would guess that these events do happen but at some % chance based on the phase space available? Do we know what affects the timing even at all?

[@wlegna18]

If we could generate a Higgs boson with a high enough velocity so that it’s decay time in our reference frame is appreciable, could we then detect it directly?

[@christianfredh]

Isn’t quantum computing included in ”everyday physics” in a not too distant future? Is QFT including all the fundation for that?

[@atimholt]

It's still made out of the simple list of ingredients and forces he listed. As with all technology, the subtlety arises from execution. The electrons, isotopes, etc., are already quantum in nature, but the natural world is noisy and jumbled, which doesn't lend itself to “macroscopic quantum effects” (at least of the relevant types).

[@The1Helleri]

What would it take for quantum field theory to not be correct?

[@chakradharmahapatra1958]

Sorry, two more queries. You conclude "If QFT is basically correct, we will never discover new particles/forces relevant to "everyday physics" ". Since obviously new particles( may be even forces?) are waiting to be discovered, do you mean the current QFT is actually misleading us?

[@UserUser-pv2wo]

is there any way of two particles to have no entanglment at all with each other? What is a cost of making two particles entangled? Any form of energy is consumed/released (relation to "conservation")? Any types of particles can be entangled or there are some restrictions?

[@tetraedri_1834]

1:20:40 Isn't there the possibility to use muons for nuclear fusion? Since muons are much heavier than electrons, they are closer to nucleai, making fusion easier. Although currently making muons is too energy-consuming to be practical, and there is the alpha-sticking problem (i.e. 1/100 chance that muon will stay confined to helium-nucleus formed in fusion), this may not be the case later if we figure out solutions to one of (or both) the problems. Muons are electrically charged, after all, so they have rich interaction possibilities.

[@JohnDlugosz]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion "Existing Source for Muon-Catalyzed Nuclear Fusion Can Give Megawatt Thermal Fusion Generator" ==> www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15361055.2018.1546090

[@sudhanshusharma5497]

Please explain the Quantum Mechanical Spin of a particle.... the name is very misleading and if it were really spinning...math suggests that the particles like electrons should be spinning at a speed higher than that of the speed of light itself....but that is not possible....so I came across a definition saying that it is "intrinsic angular momentum".....I donot know what that means....I have spent many hours and sleepless nights....but haven't come across anything that for even a very small part makes sense...please enlighten me..... Regards

[@chakradharmahapatra1958]

The fundamentals of everyday life broken into 4 parts ( 2 matter: electrons & stable isotopes; 2 forces: electromagnetism & gravity) do not address Human Emotions/Thoughts? Can you address that in Q&A? Thanks.

[@hhaavvvvii]

Emotions and thoughts are patterns (highly complex patterns albeit) of electrons, stable isotopes, and electromagnetism, assuming QFT is basically correct. That was literally his last point in the video. Not in his video, you can basically state that there are a tower of stable patterns that each can be combined in ways that make more stable patterns. At each level, you can almost abstract away the details of what's causing those patterns and treat that as a baseline of inquiry. From particle physics you get nuclear physics and electricity. From those, you can combine them to get geology (with gravity) and biology. And from biology you can get to emotions and thoughts. But ultimately at a fundamental level, it's still electrons, stable isotopes, electromagnetism, and sometimes gravity.

[@chakradharmahapatra1958]

@@hhaavvvvii Thanks. I am reading "The Emperor's New Mind" by Roger Penrose. Difficult stuff for me. But he seems to go different ways to understand various aspects of human emotions/thoughts. Thanks again.

[@paulmichaelfreedman8334]

Dear Sean, Sir, There's one thing bugging me after you talked about the matter-antimatter imbalance. If it was indeed so, that there was a one in ten billion imbalance between matter and anti-matter, where did the photons from the annihilations go and is it possible to search for them?

[@hhaavvvvii]

It would have all happened when the universe was opaque, so full of electrons that photons couldn't travel more than a light-year without basically being absorbed by a dense cloud of electrons (and anti-electrons that haven't yet annihilated). At some point, the universe cooled down enough that atoms could form, trapping the electrons and photons could travel forever. Spacetime (kzbin.info/www/bejne/eWWmfKd7hq96g7s ) has more information on this event.