The Strongest Materials in the Universe with Prof. Matt Caplan

What created the strongest materials in the universe? What is it like inside of a white dwarf or neutron star?
Matt Caplan is a professor of physics at Illinois State University. He received his bachelors from the University of Virginia and PhD from Indiana University- his thesis work was recognized with the 2018 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics from the American Physical Society.
Dr. Caplan’s research is broadly concerned with materials at high densities inside stellar remnants, such as crystals that form in white dwarfs and nuclear pasta phases in neutron stars. In addition, he works on nuclear weapons issues and was an inaugural fellow of the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction. Beyond academia, he is a writer for several KZbin channels including Kurzgesagt ‘In a Nutshell’ and PBS Spacetime.
Matt Caplan links
www.sciencenews.org/article/n...
www.nationalgeographic.com/sc...
www.cnet.com/science/features...
White dwarf papers:
arxiv.org/abs/2008.02296
arxiv.org/abs/2010.00036
arxiv.org/abs/2105.05863
arxiv.org/abs/2108.11389
arxiv.org/abs/2303.03409
neutron star crust papers:
arxiv.org/abs/1606.03646
arxiv.org/abs/1807.02557
arxiv.org/abs/2005.04766
PBHs hitting the moon:
arxiv.org/abs/2104.00033
academic.oup.com/mnras/articl...
KZbin Membership: / @eventhorizonshow
Podcast: anchor.fm/john-michael-godier...
Apple: apple.co/3CS7rjT
More JMG
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Music:
stellardrone.bandcamp.com/
migueljohnson.bandcamp.com/
leerosevere.bandcamp.com/
aeriumambient.bandcamp.com/
FOOTAGE:
NASA
ESA/Hubble
ESO - M.Kornmesser
ESO - L.Calcada
ESO - Jose Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org)
NAOJ
University of Warwick
Goddard Visualization Studio
Langley Research Center
Pixabay

[@free_spirit1]

Guest: "do you know what the word degeneracy means" Me whilst erasing my browser history: "N-no?"

[@ryanb9749]

Yes. The squids doing dank nooners on their liter bikes through the clibbins.

[@ElyseCappataccio]

Lol - funny enough for me

[@vermasean]

💎 🙌 💎

[@edwardbell4928]

😂

[@sonsofthewestredwhiteblue5317]

Your feelings betray you young Jedi. 😔

[@BRUXXUS]

It's always so fun to hear guests light up when you ask them very specific questions that are within their expertise. They get so excited to be able to discuss things on a lower level than they may get to with other podcasters and interviewers.

[@sathivv950]

Matt Caplan was a fantastic guest and these questions were perfect for his expertise.

[@MCsCreations]

Fantastic interview, John! Thanks a bunch!!! 😃 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊

[@belliott538]

Im liking this notion of tossing Podcasters onto Stars… I’d pay a dollar to see that…

[@GoldenMinotaur]

Neil deGrasse Tyson is gonna have to change the format of Startalk

[@purplehaze667]

What about tossing tiktokers beforehand ?

[@Rick-Rarick]

Well, I know what I will be falling asleep to tonight! Thanks for all the amazing content!

[@sighfly2928]

15:35 *David Attenborough* voice “In the cosmic ballet of the universe, the neutron star performs a pirouette, its surface fiercely alight with the face of a goblin-a creature as mythical as it is mysterious, staring back through the abyss with eyes that twinkle like the very stars themselves.”

[@EventHorizonShow]

This is the kind of comment we love.

[@AndrewBlucher]

​@@EventHorizonShowExactly. We don't know what it means, but we love it!

[@sighfly2928]

@@AndrewBlucher have another look at the star in the timestamp

[@blyatcraft]

​@@AndrewBlucherTheres a familiar ferengi face in the star

[@jyreHeffron]

john and matt are like kids in a candy store... so excited, just cracking up and what-iffing to beat the band... so much fun in their back and forth...

[@CatChrist]

Thanks John. Great episode as always. Glad you've got long style content like this for when I'm stuck in hospital for a few days. Thanks for keeping me entertained all these years!

[@cavetroll666]

Thanks for the content cheers from Toronto

[@EventHorizonShow]

Thanks for watching!

[@baarbacoa]

Writing for Kurzgesacht and PBS Spacetime is impressive on it's own

[@douglasfaichnie6931]

Thank you John for enabling us to access this information from the greatest guests.

[@inthefade]

I love that you just jumped into the technical talk right away with this podcast.

[@ningayeti]

I'm sorry but you are mistaken in this video. The strongest material in the universe is the plastic packaging that is used in stores to hold small electronic devices. I can't prove it, but I suspect that they could survive a supernova.

[@247tubefan]

🤌 I'll have my Nuclear Pasta Al-Dente like my Nonna used to make. 🇮🇹 Grazie

[@anaguma90]

I love how the guests always thank JMG for asking great questions. Thanks for another great episode!

[@chiseldrock]

so far so good so refreshing to have a podcast worth spending my precious minutes on...I'll try one more....

[@MikeG-js1jt]

Quark star, very funny John!

[@EventHorizonShow]

The great Eryn Knight.

[@edwardbell4928]

Rules of Acquisition 78: never let them use your name for profit...unless it's you using your name.

[@thomasparisi5333]

Very informative, and John, the homework you did really shines through !

[@ankiesiii]

This has to be one of my favorite episodes

[@TheLondonAlliance]

Brilliant, love your channel and your obvious excitement for the matters explored! Thank you

[@OShackHennessy]

What a great interview this guy needs to come on more often 👍

[@EventHorizonShow]

Completely agree!

[@Thesilverrat]

I'm always amazed by gravity, I constantly learn about how weak gravity is and then discover gravity crushes suns into black holes. Awesome.

[@WhiteGeared]

It's about space-time.

[@captainhakob814]

Under rated comment

[@_ElisDTrailz]

What a fantastic guest and interview. Thanks for the outstanding content.

[@EventHorizonShow]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@ZozoOriginal]

Omg yes! been waiting for this one!

[@sasqetshenkley1190]

Dear Futurist & Author John Michael Goddier, Make a video on your other channel about how we might apply this to material science in the future. Make it so.

[@amangogna68]

Great video and information !

[@MartinCHorowitz]

John is pushing he new fast food chain Neutron Pasta a lot:)

[@glorymanheretosleep]

They left out the strongest material in the entire universe: love. Nothing can defeat it.

[@EventHorizonShow]

True. It’s undefeated.

[@OmegaTrooper]

Entropy beats love. Love can’t revive the dead.

[@oberonpanopticon]

No, love is a force, not a material. Electromagnetism, weak interaction, strong interaction, gravity and love. and also the higgs field on those days when y is a vowel.

[@oberonpanopticon]

@@OmegaTrooperYet they live on in our memory

[@robsquared2]

Having an Interstellar flashback.

[@robbabcock_]

Great interview!

[@levirivers2772]

❤, it was a great interview with well explained theorys.

[@BlackWolf6420]

Really enjoyed it 😊

[@DonnieGoodman-yp8pf]

I had thought about that. Neutrons that had overcome the strong force keeping them separated, and basically turns the star into a giant solid atom. Man! These kind of topics are incredibly cool.😊 Thank you kind sir.

[@slimal1]

This was so enjoyable

[@rogerward5576]

I wish you had talked about the source of the magnetic field in a neutron star. I was tought that electrical currents produce a magnetic field, but there are few if any electrons in a neutron star.

[@rezadaneshi]

Excellent presentation. So, can a asymmetrical placement of nucleus of the atom to its electron shell, cause the corkscrew or wave behavior of matter in its unbalanced spin?

[@damianp7313]

Was saving this one ... by the looks of the comments this is going to be a treat 🎉

[@rogerdudra178]

Greetings from the BIG SKY. You guys have a good subject that many should know.

[@vinniepeterss]

nice one!

[@EventHorizonShow]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@gardenlizard1586]

Waiting for tech to enable the finding of black dwarf stars and make Penrose smile.

[@wyllisheaton3915]

This episode utterly failed to put me to sleep ! So interesting!

[@warrenalberts6321]

Loved the intro animation ❤

[@paulwilson6511]

You can't take material from a degenerative star like a white dwarf or a neutron star. It would immediately explode like a hydrogen bomb. When you remove the gravitational force holding it degenerative, it would immediately resume a normal matter state (perhaps mostly neutrons but even some of these would transform into protons, electrons and anti-neutrinos ie. explosion).

[@Strideo1]

They talked about this in the interview.

[@koilerREC]

A scientific definition in 2024 "Nuclear Pasta Layer with a Nuclear Crust". Now I'm getting Hungry....

[@nicelydunwell5681]

Chuck Norris's muscle fibers

[@u.v.s.5583]

Also his beard hair.

[@archumwelten7135]

Nice Quark star

[@cheradenine1980]

I’ve been asking for a video on the applications of cold black dwarf matter for years!

[@DeadManVlog]

Great

[@keirangrant1607]

Is there a Deep Space Nine alien head sitting in one of the Neutron Stars at the 15 min mark? LOL

[@edwardbell4928]

And the security chief of that same station is probably close by...in the form of a opossum....

[@CodyDockerty]

Not even an hour breakdown of how the best material in the multiverse is the old Nokia phone

[@stevengill1736]

Whoa.....a crystalline core! White dwarves are amazing.....Chandrasekharadelic baby!

[@scottthomas6202]

Excellent episode! Nuclear Pasta...band name!

[@AllFlimmits]

I'm glad to see that the guy from Scrubs finally got a real degree

[@michaelblacktree]

That was a great interview! You guys were talking about finding primordial black hole impacts on the Moon. But if PBHs are impacting the Moon, it stands to reason they're also impacting the Earth. So wouldn't we be finding strange columns of shocked rock in the Earth as well?

[@patryn36]

You have to just love how contradicting these scientists are, on one hand if you removed nuclear pasta from a nuetron star it reverts to the matter we know but yet you can have a black hole below the minimum mass limit even though not one has been ever detected.

[@oberonpanopticon]

Uh… where’s the contradiction?

[@patryn36]

@@oberonpanopticon i spelled it out, reread the comment i posted, if you still can not see it then that is on you.

[@shinymike4301]

dis here one is eminently re-listenable!

[@jaybruce593]

@15:28 - Quark star - briulliant 👍👍

[@adambrain8365]

Strongest materials I get to deal with are Titanium, Cobalt, and iridium. They happen to be much colder and less radioactive than what we’re talking about here.

[@jeffmosesjr]

God I love this channel!

[@StevenBara]

@EventHorizonShow hey did I overhear it or did you miss the golden chance to ask what it would be like if a primordial black hole that's zipping somewhere in our solar system (meaning also outer layers) hits some matter like a bunch of space rock. As was stated, a black hole with an accretion disk is the brightest thing in the universe. You know like... Hey why do we see these bright objects in old photographic plates that are gone in the next plate and are not moving.

[@thekaxmax]

'Strongest' vs 'strongest in all conditions'

[@mrpocock]

If there is quark matter, would there be several versions of it that use heavier and heavier quark combinations?

[@bryanatmackncheeze419]

Would one these stars be able to harvested for its elects after it loses it heat ?

[@benruniko]

I wonder if at any point the ability for electrons to act like spin 1 Bosons in superconductors is relevant to how star corpses collapse. I only learned that was part of how superconductors work a couple days ago and it is mind-blowing to me.

[@OmegaTrooper]

God I love science…

[@jillengland3277]

Do all degenerate stars have the same charge? What if I could draw off all the electrons with a black hole? Would You get a proton star or would it explode without enough electrons? It couldn’t happen right? I still don’t know why thermal neutrons have different decay rates.

[@h4expo]

Is there a measured ratio of heavy elements as a result of neutron star collisions? EA: average 5% uranium vs 3% gold and so on? I would expect it to either be very consistent (statistically) or very random (chaos theory) due to the nature of the neutron soup being a basic building block for all matter.

[@Tompanelli1]

Fucking love this channel

[@AndrewBlucher]

Throw another podcaster on the neutron star!

[@NuisanceMan]

What is "thleek hith thi theketh ih thi hethleethik"?

[@ryanb9749]

Do these hyper dense atoms have fissuon?

[@Adog5454]

If you make two aletrnating black holes small ones and counter rotate theor mini singularities then you cam displace time!

[@johnstokes8511]

I think you surprised Matt Caplan with your level of knowledge.

[@robertsaca3512]

Oooooh pasta phases, how delicious!

[@thomascorbett2936]

Doesnt matter how stong it is if you cant use it .

[@kagazuki]

Matt has an obsession of throwing podcasters into stars.

[@robsquared2]

So we know about nuclear pasta but we don't know why there's a severe lack of antipasta in the universe.

[@djdrack4681]

A DCC (Degenerate Crystalline Core") 'might' just explain some of the features of Stellar Core Remnants. the oscillations, spin and emissions (for pulsars): are all things that crystals do well. My bet is that the Chand. Limit is not a 'hard limit', owing to the exotic nature of the unverse and what can occur in it. The notions of Iron being the key 'poison' to determine how the star's fate plays out doesn't necessarily add up. Too many unknowns.

[@djdrack4681]

We see how Lanthanides isotopes are happy to form BECs at supercooled temps. Yet, our research into high-energy physics doesn't have great understanding of Lanthanides/Actinides. At least under collider conditions, or atmos pressures we see short half-lives; but we have a poor understanding of what causes Radioactive Decay: and thus under the extreme environment (inside of a star, let alone stellar remnant) it would be wrong to 'assume' that Iron acts as seen here on Earth. There is argument itself that there really shouldn't be elements higher than Lithium or Carbon in stars. When you're talking temps so high that its 1000s to millions of times temp/pressure needed to melt transition/actinides/lanthanides, there aren't great solutions to HOW the elements don't undergo spontaneous fission...and yet we do detect 'superheavy' elements in stars, indicating fusion> fission. Basically, there would need to be phases beyond plasma (or perhaps plasma is a 'composite' of several phases, poorly understood) that would explain this. Granted we have only iota understanding of gravity; but even so, the fact we see that stars have either runaway fission OR fusion reactions ultimately; hints that there is another unobserved force at play inside stars, that doesn't occur outside the high temp/pressures (sustained) inside it. Depending on what exactly time is mediated by (GR seems bad solution), it could also only arise inside the exotic location (the 'gravity well' that is compressed spacetime which a star resides in. Based on how we see even quantum effects break down on the very upper and lower bounds (IE high-energy, and BEC experiments, universe right after BB), it wouldn't seem too fringe to argue that phenomenon or even additional forces only exist in such locations...ones that are more complex that degeneracy.

[@Leah.Martin]

These materials are so strong, even a stubborn jar of pickles wouldn't stand a chance!

[@jaked6746]

JMG… MASSIVE LEGEND. HONORABLE SCHOLAR.

[@PhilGregoryFX]

At what point in the video do they actually start discussing the strongest materials in the universe?

[@danm3570]

in the pc game elite dangerous, I jumped into a system with a certain type of neutron star, and it had 2 laser beams spinning around and out of it and the beam hit my ship and almost destroyed it

[@Paperbutton9]

incredible, i fell asleep within moments

[@ryanb9749]

Our whole universe was in a hot dense state...

[@jamespike5161]

Y’all don’t forget to hit like on this, yeah? Help Event Horizon and JMG! I’m doing my part! 👍

[@justarandomname420]

Sacraficing a podcaster to create a neutron star is now canon.

[@justsmashing4628]

if John was English he’d be Sir John…

[@u.v.s.5583]

Sir John Sir Michael Sir Godier.

[@IMBlakeley]

Lumps of Neutron star explode..Damn Niven's "There is a Tide" can't happen

[@michaelwicks7680]

What if all solar systems actually condense from premordial black holes

[@esquilax5563]

Is there a problem with this show's RSS feed? Last episode I see on there is from 25 days ago, with Garry Nolan and Peter Skafish

[@vassilisz.2835]

15:24....Romulan star...??

[@edwardbell4928]

PBH transiting through the Earth...that explains the little holes in my yard...

[@symmetricat188]

Wait. You mean, "transient lunar phenomena", or at least some of them, might be actual black hole "impacts"..? Also, I'm hungry. For whatever reason...

[@paladin0654]

What is the "shtrong force"?

[@medexamtoolsdotcom]

it's shtronger than the whheak force and a lot shtronger than grabbity

[@landgsmith]

7:43 ummm, what?

[@skipper6528]

Wavefunctions

[@rsoud9562]

if you die we better have an ai of your voice that make vids for rest of time

[@duran9664]

🔥According to the holy books🔥 There are 7 earths😒

[@edwardbell4928]

Matt likes to throw podcasters out of starships...of course John you have nothing to worry about as long as you stay with the LeBaron...

[@JohnMichaelGodier]

The key is do not get in the starship. For me, I'll happily be sitting in the LeBaron, here on earth beholding some beautiful roadside vista, eating fine process cheese and cracker products while the other podcasters head to space. That's luxury, and safety from getting tossed out the airlock.

[@Corn-Pop.]

I ate pasta today but it wasn't nuclear it was spaghetti