Could dark matter be made of quarks?

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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, do you know what dark matter is? Meet us? Oh man, I wish I did. Are you sure it's not something simple like what, you know, like a bunch of rocks painted black. Maybe yeah, okay, it's not that, or you know, just a huge ginormous black hole that would be awesome, but it's not that either, or maybe it could be. Uh, don't go there, space banana. I knew you were going to go there. I have to. I mean, how do you know it's not a space banana? Daniel? I am poor hammy cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I don't believe in space bananas. Would you mean you don't believe in space? You don't believe bananas can be in space? Or you don't believe that space can have bananas. I don't believe that particles randomly bouncing around in space will spontaneously form bananas. That's sort of like the Relateman bananas hypothesis. Not even in an infinite universe where anything that's probable happens. Well, you know, in an infinite universe, there actually must be a space banana out there. So and I do think the universe is probably infinite, So you know what, I'm a convert now and now in space. But welcome to my cult, and welcome to all of you to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio, in which we talk about all the amazing things that are out there and all the amazing things that are in here, and how it all connects and how it all fits together and explain it to you in a way that you can understand and hopefully makes you chuckle. Yeah. We talked about all of the things that are out there that we know about and all the things out there that we don't know about, and not just space bananas. Maybe space bananas made out of dark matter. That's right, because one of the most exciting things about science is not just getting answers and figuring stuff out, but asking questions. So our goal is to take you to the forefront of those questions, to show you what scientists are thinking about, what are the possibilities for some of the answers to those biggest questions, and explain them to you. Yeah, because I think for scientists it's not just enough to know that something is out there and to classify it and to kind of catalog it. But yeah, it seems you guys really want to know what things are made of, you know, you want to keep drilling down until you get to what like mathematics. Well that's my goal. I mean, I don't want to just know that something is there. I want to know is it made out of the same stuff as you and I are. Can we explain all of the crazy, beautiful, amazing, hasty, weird stuff in the universe in terms of the same basic building blocks or do we need to add another building block? So to me, it's it's really interesting just to know, like what is it made out of? Right? Like what what would a space banana be made out of? Ben ainos or bars, bananatons, whatever they're made out of, you will get to name them good and taste them, hopefully. But the question is if we find space bananas, are they made out of the same particles that normal bananas are made out of? Or they made out of something new and weird and different, which might mean that you can't eat them. Oh, I see, they wouldn't taste the same, not if they're made out of some new, weird kind of particle right exotic space bananas, They might not even be digestible by your system. They might pass right through you. That would be weird, oh man. And but then begs the question are they still bananas? And then we have to go through the department of banana philosophy to answer that question. But yeah, we often talk about what things are made of. And one of the biggest questions is not just for us and humans, but in all of the human history, maybe is what is this twenty five of the universe made out of that scientists have discovered. That's right. We spent a lot of time understanding the kind of matter that's around us, bananas and people and toes and ferret and lava, and discovered that all of it's made out of these tiny little particles, quirks and electrons mostly. But then we found that a huge chunk of the universe, twenty of all the energy budget of the universe, is this other kind of matter, this dark matter. And so, of course, as particle physicists, we want to know what is it made out of? Is it made out of particles? If so, is it one particle, is it a familiar particle that we've seen before, or something totally new and weird and different. And I'm used to sort of hyperbolizing this problem. Is saying it's not just the biggest question in physics, it's the biggest question in science. But you just went even further. You're like, this is the biggest question in human history regarding physics. I think that's what. Oh you're qualifying it now, all right, it's too late, man, it's too late. Were already number one question? Ever, m uh, it doesn't. Isn't dark wood? Is dark energy bigger? Okay? Number two question? Ever, is still pretty good? And um so yeah, so it's it's pretty big. I mean it's it's of the universe. And like we the regular matter is only five percent, So this is not like a small question. It's it's um it's like, what is most of the stuff in the universe made out of? Yeah, we're kind of the little detail, right. We thought for a long time that we had figured out mostly what matter was made out of, and then we tried to generalize. You said, well, it must be that the rest of the universe is also made out of similar kinds of stuff. But if the rest of the universe is more then we're sort of the rest of the universe, and that's the normal stuff, and so it's really important that we figure out what that dark matter is made out of. Is it made out of our kind of particles or is it made out of something else? Yeah, And so we have I think a couple of episodes about dark matter, and maybe if you even go back to some of our first podcast episodes, so it's you know, about when we were younger, before the virus, where we talked about what dark matter is, what scientists think it is, what scientists, how scientists know that it's there. And so if you're curious and or catching up about what dark matter, please go through our archive and check those episodes out. But the big question about dark matter is what is it made out of? So we it's this weird matter out there in the universe, right Daniel, that is pulling on stars and keeping galaxies together, But nobody knows what it's made out of because it's not made out of stuff that you can see or touch. Yeah, And for a long time, we thought that dark matter couldn't be made out of corks, and it couldn't be made out of the kinds of stuff that's around us, that it had to be some new, weird, exotic kind of particle. And so we've had lots of ideas for what kind of particle dark matter could be mad at of, and maybe you've heard of them. There's the weakly interacting massive particle the WIMP. Then there's theme macho massive astronomical compact halo objects, and then there's other weird stuff like axions. But the sort of the scientific mainstream is to think that dark matter is probably may have something new and weird, and that's fascinating. That's an amazing opportunity because if you discover this new kind of particle that gives you like a whole new Lego block, a whole you know, it opens up this whole new place to play, this new area of physics that we can explore. Yeah, it's like that time you figure out you can combine Lincoln logs and legos and it's like, WHOA, what can I build now? Or it turns out most of the world is not built out of Lincoln logs or legos, right, and you learned how to use actual concrete to make buildings. This just this just took an engineeringly turn. But so that that was the sort of the thinking about dark matter. But recently in the news, there's a lot of attention being paid to a new paper that just came out. Then maybe answers this question whether or not dark matter is may it out of courts? Yeah, it's really sort of a fun question to just ask. Hold on a second, maybe dark matters actually just made out of something simple, something familiar, in a new arrangement. Maybe it's found way to hide from us, and so it's worth examining, like why don't we think dark matter is made out of quarks and and could those assumptions be wrong? Okay, so there's a new paper, right you were telling me that has a new idea for how you can maybe use corks old regular quirks, uh and use them in a new way to make dark matter. Now, is this a theoretical paper or is this an experimental they saw something. Well, the paper is theoretical, but it touches on experimental work. Is from the University of York, and it's by a couple of guys who came up with a new way to five quirks together um that could explain dark matter. And so it's a theoretical paper, but it references experimental work like it talks about this thing called a hexa cork, which combines six corks into a weird particle, and it about how maybe if you put those quirks together, it could look like dark matter and it could like evade all the arguments against why quarks can't be dark matter. And so it's sort of like theoretical, like can we make this work? And then they rounded up I think in a cool way by suggesting some ways to check their idea. Well, interesting, it's a pretty cool idea. And so today on the program, we'll be asking the question could dark matter be made out of hext of cords? And several listeners had a question about this paper, so they sent it to us. Jeff Sagar and Geal Turner will send us this paper and staid, could this be right? Could dark matter just be made out of quirks? So we thought it would be fun to talk about. I feel like I like how people sometimes treaty like the you know how you have a medical doctor relative. Sometimes you're like, I got this itch here in the back of my neck. Can you check it out and tell me if this is something I should be concerned about. I feel like you're sort of like in and it's now physicist uncle, I'm happy to be your on call physicists. Or because your dark matter has a rash, then please don't take it to the e er. You just needed to rest at home, that's right. Do not apply dark energy to it or antimatter might be might have a secondary consequences, that's right. But if you do have a question about something you see online that you think is probably bunked or you don't understand it, send it to us. We'll have to dive into it, maybe give you a short answer over email, or devote an entire episode to it like this one. Yeah, and so as usual, we were curious to see how many people had heard of these HEXA works and how far has the news about them spread into the public. So, as usual, Daniel went out there and ask people this question, have you heard of hexachords? Now? Daniel, because of the situation we're in with the virus coronavirus, how did you did you approach people this time? Or did you did you a person from twenty feet away? How did you record these answers? Um, I have a massive bubble that has six foot diameter and I just walk around inside that bubble and people you normally have that just avoid people open. Now it comes in handy. It's usually a natural effect of my odor and my hairstyle. I see, it's a virtual bubble, I see, which is naturally stay away for it's an effective bubble. Now, these recordings were done last week in advance, and so this was pre pandemic, when people were still walking around in the world and talking to strangers. And I was letting strangers breathe on my phone, which is maybe not a great idea. And I have since disinfected it. But in the future we may have to go to internet person on the street questions. So if you're interested in participating in future person on the street interview questions, send me a line and I'll send you our questions. Because everyone always dreams about being a person on the internet, well it's sort of inverting it, right. Instead of people on the Internet asking me physics questions, I'm asking random people on the internet physics questions. So it's only fair. I see. So you would ask maybe online hey have your to hex, of course, and you just get a bunch of recordings of people saying nope. Never. We've done this a couple of times though, with remote listeners who wanted to participate, and I would send them the questions in advance and tell them to record their answers with no googling. All right, well here here's what people have to say. So before you listen to these answers, just think about it. Have you heard of hexachords or have an inkling as to what they might be? Here's what people had to say. No, or do you guess they might be some kind of start? Nope? No, I have not heard her come up, but I don't know anything about it. No. No, al right, not a lot of positive recognition they're out there about hex of cords almost exactly zero. No. My favorite answer was hexa what hexa? Hood? Is it like a witchcraft thing? Like? Do you hex people? Well, what do you think? Do you think that's poorly named? Or you think it just hasn't penetrated. I'll look out there. I mean, if I asked you about hexacord, wouldn't you have thought, Oh, it's a particle with six corks in it. It seems very natural to me. Well, I guess, um, it depends on what it is, and I currently I don't I don't have a good sense of what it is. But if I had to bet whether it's physicists name something not in the best way possible, that's where my money would be. So you're like, hexa corks, it's probably a new kind of fruit. Yeah, I think hexachords. It's like it sounded like a good idea, but actually it doesn't help you. All right, Well, we'll explain what hexa corks are and how they might possibly but probably not, could explain what dark matter is. But first let's take a quick break. All right. Then we're talking about hexachords and it's a new idea that maybe physicist think that it could tell us what dark matter is made out of. So I guess maybe step us through here. First, we know sort of what dark matter is, and the question was before you thought that dark matter couldn't be made out of quarks, So maybe tell us a little bit about why we thought it couldn't be made out of corks. Yeah, this is an unusual idea to explain dark matter using quarks, because we thought that we had to rule that out. Most of mainstream science that dark matter has to be some new, weird kind of particle. So if we're gonna understand this new idea for how hex of quarks could be dark matter. It's really worth re visiting an understanding, like why did we rule out of quarks and how does this new idea maybe sort of evade those arguments. So number one thing is that corks have electric charge, and quarks interact with light. You know, if you shoot photons, it's something man out of quarks, it will react. You shoot light at protons, you shoot lights at atoms, it reacts, It shines, it absorbs, in admits. All the stuff out there in the universe does interact with photons. And so that's why that's kind of why we thought maybe dark matter couldn't be made out of quarks because regular quarks you can see, but dark matter you can't see. Yeah, it's dark, right, it doesn't give off light, it doesn't reflect light, it doesn't interact in any way with light. Right, it's invisible. It's invisible. Yeah, invisible matter would have been such a better name. Dark matter. It can sound like it's black, right, it's not. And and you might think, all there's ways to evade that, you know, what about neutral objects, And it's true that, like you know, photons don't interact with neutral objects, and we thought maybe dark matter was made of neutrinos or something else like that, or maybe neutral atoms. I guess maybe initially when you guys found dark matter, it's not that you knew it was invisible, and you just knew. You said it didn't emit light and you couldn't see it, right, So at that point when you found it and you named it, it could have just been dark or like painted black, right well, but then it would have obscured. If it was just black and and absorbed light but didn't admit it, then it would have obscured stuff, like there's so much of it out there. If you could see the dark matter, then the night sky would be a lot darker because we'd be shrouded in it, like our galaxy is in the middle of a huge dark matter halo. If it wasn't invisible, most of the universe would be invisible to us. We would just see darkness in the sky, right well, it could be like really small dense pellets of something, right and you we wouldn't see it, but it wouldn't be invisible. But we can see the effects of like gas and dust in the universe, like most of the stuff in the universe is gas and dust, and we can definitely see that it absorbs light. It blocks our view. The center of the galaxy, for example, is mostly obscured because of all the gas and dust. So even tiny pellets, if you've got zillions and zillions of them, they obscured a view. It's like a fog. Okay. So, so we didn't think it could be quarks because it's dark and it doesn't interact with the light, and we know quarks interact with light, and so is that the main reason didn't think that dark matter or we don't think dark matter could be made out of quirks. It's not because it's not that convincing an argument. There are ways to evade it, right, There is normal matter that's invisible to photons, like neutrinos and space space bananas are invisible to Yeah, ok right, as long as we're making up the things, I feel like I just entered the second level of this cult. Now I've been informed, and you read into the invisible he made he made it to a level three. So I'm saying things um and then you know, people wondered like, could you possibly have neutral atoms that don't interact with photons, etcetera, etcetera. So it turns out we have a much stronger argument for why dark matter can't be made out of quarks, and actually comes from calculations about the Big Bang. M So we we studied the Big Bang and we sort of see the remnants of the debris from the Big Bang, and that actually tells you that dark matter can't be made out of quarks. Yeah, what it does. That tells you how much stuff in the universe is made out of quarks, Because it turns out that the density of quarks in the very early moments of the universe controls how cork matter is formed. Quark matter being like hydrogen and helium and light elements me and you and all that stuff. The density of the quarks determines how much heavy elements you get. So if you have a huge density of quarks in the early universe, you get more heavy elements like lithium and carbon and oxygen. If you have fewer quirks, of the quirks aren't as dense than they don't combine to form as many heavy elements. And so we we measure how much hydrogen is there, how much helium is there, and we can tell from that sort of the density of quarks in the early universe, and that tells us just like how many quarks were there. But it's and I guess it's not just about quantities, because I mean you could imagine that maybe there there were a ton more corks than we think there were, and some of them just went on to make dark matter instead of hydrogen and helium. Well, that's sort of this idea, that sort of the idea from this paper. Yeah, Okay, sorry, we actual gating credit there and the noble price if it turns out to be true. Okay, so I see. So before we we didn't think that the Big Band made enough corks two make dark matter because it didn't make sense. But maybe there is a way for this to make sense. Yeah, And it's sort of a it's in a subtle argument. It's a subtraction, right saying, here's how much matters out there in the universe, and we know that by looking at how galaxy swirl and we can just see the gravitational effects of it. That's how much dark matter there is. And we know how much cork matter there is based on this Big Bang nucleosynthesis argument how much helium and lithium was made and so, and they don't add up, so that leaves a gap. So we can't explain all the matter in the universe using corks. But again, that's assuming that corks turned into the kind of familiar matter where we're we're familiar with, you know, hydrogen and atoms and protons and neutrons and stuff like like. It couldn't be that it turned into hydrogen helium and then some of that stuff turned into dark matter. That wouldn't That wouldn't work. No, that doesn't work. But if you could somehow siphon off a bunch of quarks into a new invisible kind of matter that then wouldn't interact with those hydrogen helium and stuff, then maybe that dark matter could be explained by those quirks and not mess up this early universe Big Bang nucleus and thisis stuff. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. No, I think we're here. I think we're here, right, I mean, that's that's what this idea of a hexa cork is, is that maybe it's something that that happened to all those corks at the Big Bang. Yeah, and there's a few steps you need there, You need to understand what hexa work is, and then the hexa corks have to sort of siphon themselves off into some state that wouldn't want to interact with the hydrogen and the helium that was happening around then, because remember it was a hot and nasty place the early universe. It's not like you made something and it just got to hang out for fourteen billion years. It was. It was really dense and there are photons everywhere, and so you need to somehow create this stuff and then also protected from the rest of the universe. I see, take it, like take it out of the craziness. Yeah, so that it can account for dark matter. Now, yeah, well, so step us through them. What is hectic coork? And is it a different kind of cork or is it like a poorly named constant physic. I'm feeling a little bit of judgment here, but I'm just gonna keep going because now I'm like, curse cork, you know, like I see, Oh, I get it. It's like a like a um like a witch's cork. Yeah, yeah, yes, boiled, boiled, toil and trouble through the eye of Newton. Hexa cork that sounds good. Um, you know, a hexa cork is not a new kind of cork, it's a new combination of existing corks. Oh, I see. And so corks are very familiar particles. They make up protons and neutrons and other exotic particles. And so there are up quarks and down corks inside me and you, non exotic mean particles. Right, they make up non exotic particles, but also you know, weird particles like pions and other kinds of masons they make up. You can rearrange these legos to make all sorts of different kinds of things. We had a whole episode about that how that works. Quirks are amazing little legos, right, and usually they're in pairs or in threes, right, that's right. And so there are a lot of rules for how you put these legos together. You can't just say I'm gonna put these seven quarks together, those nine quarks together, because they feel the strong nuclear force, the most powerful force in the universe, which is very particular about how you put them together. And the strong nuclear forces a different kind of way of arranging itself than any other kind of force, like electromagnetism has plus and minus. So if you want something that's neutral, you put a plus in a minus together. Right. That that one's simple to think about, because like two pluses can't go together because they repel each other, and two negatives can't go together. But the plus and minus they're be together, that's right, and they form a neutral atom and or a neutral system. In the case of the strong nuclear force. Though, there are three kinds of charges, and so we can't call them plus and minus because they don't sit nicely along one axis. So we give them the names red, green, and blue, because if you add them all up together, then you get a neutral atom, what we call a colorless atom. Right, Like if you take a red cork, green cork, and a blue cork, they you get sort of like a happy trio. Yeah, they're happy trio. So they're balanced out together, and that's sort of similar to electromagnetism. You take one of each of the kinds of charges, a plus anamnus, you add it together, you get neutral. Right. In this way, you get one of each of the kinds of colors. You add them together, you get white or colorless. So you can make triplets. You can also make pairs like you take a red cork and pair it with an anti red cork. That's what color is, anti red, like orange or like a c cyan. If only I knew a visual artist who was really well versed inside, what are you're talking to? Uh? Comics for parties, I only do black and white, Okay, I'll ask the Sunday cartoonist that question. Um, I don't know what the anti red is, but whatever it is, when you add it to red, you get white. And so a red and an anti red can sit happily together and be something what do you call that, like a bi cork or as called that's called a mazon, a mazon. All right, yeah, so you can. So you can start with two corks a cork and it's anti color cork. You can do three corks if you have like R G B and that's called a barryon. And examples are protons and neutrons, right, very familiar, mm hmm. And then you can get more complicated. And those are the most common particles in the universe, mazons and baryons. That's what we're made out of, right, We're like our protons and neutrons and your atoms are made out of threesomes of corks. That's right, these cork triplets. And but you can combine them in other ways, like you can take four quarks. If you have a red and a green and an anti red and an anti green, right, that also is color neutral, Yeah, because the antis cancel out the red and the green, and then they they can all sit happening together. And can you already guess what that's called? Uh, a quat cork A tetraquork a tetra oh right, yeah, tetra tetras. Sorry, And you can fit them together just like tetris pieces. So that's the four cork version. And so that's that's stable because you know, like a color and an anti cork, we're happy by them as a two zone. But you're saying you can get two couples and and they're also happy together they form a colorless object. Not all of these things are stable, right, Like the proton is stable. The proton will sit around. Proton by itself will sit around for billions of years and do nothing. A neutron is not stable, right, A neutron will turn into a proton and an electron. And similarly, the pairs the masons they're also not stable. So some of these things are colorless, like they're neutral, but they're not necessarily stable, all right, But that you're saying that they can fit together, they just won't fit together for very long. Yeah, And you can keep going, and you can make a combination of five corks. So here you would need like an R, A B, A G that's color neutral, plus maybe like an R and an anti R, so that gives you an overall particle that's a neutral and that's called a pent cork, right, not a sunk cork. And then finally we get to hexa corks. But wait to tell me about these weird particles with lots of quirks and it like do they do they act like regular particles or you know what I mean? Like do they just bounce around with the rest of us here or do they suddenly change or do something different. They're very short lived. We can make them only in special situations. In particle colliders, you smashing of quarks together for a very short amount of time. These particles can form, but they last like ten the mine is twenty three seconds, and then they fall apart and they turned into lighter, more stable particles and I see. But while they're alive, they're just like regular particles. They're just like regular particles. But you know that's a whole other question, like, well, what is a particle anyway? But they are the bound states, right, They moved together, and if you touch them with anything that has less energy than those bonds, then they react all as one. And so yeah, they act as as a particle, though it's very short lived, m all right. So then and then, but then you can get six quarts together. You can get six quarks together. And this is just sort of like a die barrion. It's like a red green and blue and then another red green blue or an anti red, anti green, anti blue. But isn't that the same as like a quark and an anti like a like a proton and an anti proton. Yeah, like or like a proton and a neutron. Yeah, it's similar, but it's you know, they're compressed together. A proton and a neutron has the same quirk content as a hexa cork, but it's a different arrangement, you know, the same way that I have the same core content as you, but I'm a different arrangement. It's all about the arrangement. It's all about the bonds and how you fit them together. Like I could make a really ugly thing out of my legos and you could make something beautiful, and I could say, well, they're made of the same legos, but that doesn't take away from the beauty of your creation, right, Yeah, all right, So then, so you're saying these are six quarks, not just in like you know, three pairs or two three ors. There are actually like six of them or they're all interacting with each other, they're all sort of connected to each other. Yeah, And there's one in particular. It's called the d Star and it has a certain mass. It's just under two and a half times the mass of the proton and it was found in two thousand eleven and then confirmed in two thousand and thirteen again in particle collisions, and it lasts for ten to the twenty three seconds. And we think it's made out of three up quarks and three down corks all put together. So you've found this. This is something that you've seen in the particle collider, like, hey, this came out. Yeah, So hexic corks are real. They but we don't think they last very long. We think you can make a hex of cork, but then it's gone after ten of the minors twenty three seconds. Wow, which is like, like you know, SA many electron years, But it's much smaller than the amount of time we think dark matter has been around. We think dark matter lasts for billions of years. Right, So you start hexa works to explain dark matter, you have to explain how, for some reason it's lasting for billions of years. Oh, I see, all right, so this is the candidate for what dark matter might be made out of. It might be made out of these interesting and funny hexacorks. And so let's get into whether or not that's actually true and what this paper says about dark matter and what it's made up. But first let's take a quick break. All right, we're talking about the hexachorks, and you're telling me that there are just six quarks hell together. That's it, man, just six quirks hell together, like anybody could have done this at any time. Uh. Yeah, you seem kind of underwhelmed a little bit. I mean, you're expecting which is quarks and like spell quirks and magic works. I feel like you're using the word cork for two things. You're using it for the particle that are corks of fundamental particles that are quirks, and you're using it also for arrangements of quarks. You know what I mean, Like you strange cork. That's confusing. Well, I feel like it's strange quarks. It's like, Okay, that's a different kind of cord. But this is not a different kind of corks. This is just an arrangement of courts. It's like seeing a bananas a banana, and a bundle of bananas is a hex of banana. Actually, that sounds like a great idea to me. What would you like today, sir, I'll have a hex of banana. But I guess the idea is said. It's it acts like a particle, just like a like a bunch of bananas. Um, you can throw a bunch of bananas together because they're held together, but they're made out of individual bananas. Yes, they're made out of individual bananas. And so in this case, we're interested in this d star hexa cork not so much because we're interested in like how can you put corks together? At the whole field of quantum chromodynamics that people are interested in um. But here we're interested in, like, maybe could this possibly explain the dark matter m M and so, because maybe when you put these six corks together and they suddenly have special powers. Yeah, and so to get the star hexa co works to look like dark matter, you have to do a couple of things. First thing is you have to make it last longer than ten to the minus twenty three seconds, because we think dark matter exists on sort of cosmological time scales, that it was created in the early universe, and it's still around. So like decaying into normal matter into and just evaporate, doesn't just evaporate, It sticks around, right, It's otherwise there. It's still around. Yeah, it's been here for fourteen billion years. No reason to think it's going to disappear tomorrow, right, So you you would have to find a way for these hexachords to be stable to hang around. Yeah. And the idea is that maybe these d star of corks form some weird state of matter of Bose Einstein condensate where they all sort of grouped together and act like one big mega particle. Oh man, and let me get how you call that one omega cork. Now, that's the name of a transformer. I think you're thinking of omegatron um and Bose Einstein condensate is a weird quantum mechanical state of matter where you've got a lot of particles together that are bosons, things like photons or or other particles that can sit on top of each other, can be in the same quantum state with some particles fer meons that don't like to be in the same quantum state, like electrons. If you put two electrons around and atom, they don't want to be in the same energy level, but bosons they're happy to sit in the same place. You can have ten million photons all in the same state with the same energy. But if you get enough of these particles, enough of these bosons together, they have like a macroscopic quantity like a droplet. Then it forms the state called a Bose Einstein condensate, where it's macroscopically sized, but it behaves like a quantum object like one like they share the quantum uncertainty kind of in a way, it's a quantum wave function with like visible size is usually all the quantum effects are hidden away at the tiny scales where you can't see them, and they're averaged down to zero. But here's an object that actually you can see quantum mechanical effects. And we should do a whole podcast episode on Bose Einstein condensates. All right, So we think that maybe this hex a chord lives in a Bose Einstein contented state, and that's how it becomes dark matter. Yeah, they did this calculation and they showed that maybe if you could get enough and these together, they could form of Bose Einstein condensate, in which case maybe it would be stable. Like they wouldn't evaporate, they would just they would like being in a Bose Einstein condensate, and then they wouldn't they wouldn't disappear. And there's, you know, a good history here for this kind of idea of saying you have a particle which on itself is unstable, like the neutron, but you put it in a special situation like neutron stars, and it's stable. So like a huge pile of neutrons altogether, they stick around. A neutron star sticks around a single neutron will decay pretty quickly into other stuff. So maybe the same thing happens with these the star hex of corks. And they did some calculations in the paper that showed it it was plausible. It's not just like let's throw this banana against the wall and see if it sticks. Mm. So what do you think? It's a math? Right? Can you candy things sitting in Bose einst Einstein condesant. Well, it's pretty complicated stuff and it might be right. But you know, I don't see a flaw in it in that part of the calculation. Um. But you know, there are a lot of ideas that could be possible but that aren't real. You know, you have to not just say this might work. You have to see that it actually does work. Because we're interested in doing in this case is saying like, is it actually the dark matter? Not just couldn't may believe? Maybe be because the long list already of maybes for dark matter. I see, so it can exist, Um, but there's a question of does it happen in nature? And the second question, which is is it that what dark matter is made out of? Yeah, and there is one question to have about this paper that makes me very skeptical that these things could be produced and live long enough to become dark matter. Physics drama. Physics drama, And that's what you remember that in the early universe there was a lot of radiation, Like most of the energy the early universe were as photons and other things just like energy radiating around. It was a crazy time. A tiny fraction of the energy of the universe was matter back then. And you know, and since then things have cooled out a little bit and we have more matter, etcetera. But back then it was really hard for anything to stay together. You formed an atom five seconds after the universe was born, immediately was blasted apart by a photon. And so it's hard to imagine how these d star corks all survived that crazy photonic time with all this energy bouncing around. And in the paper, I don't see them doing a calculation to show that these things, somehow um will not interact with photons, because remember they're still made of quarks. Right, a photon hits one of these d star hexa corks, it should break it up, right. Well, I guess that that brings me to my question, which is, why do they think this might be dark matter? Like when you put six quarts together, does it become invisible suddenly and not react to light the way we know dark matter doesn't either well, that's a good question. I mean, these things are electrically neutral, right, and so in that way they could be, but a high enough energy photon will penetrate them. I think the core idea is that maybe this dark matter is made out of these quirks right in this configuration that allowed them to evade the sort of creation of light matter in the early universe. Remember we talked about how in the early universe most of the corks got together to make helium and hydrogen and all that kind of stuff. And so we know how many corks were used to make all that stuff, and it can't explain the dark matter. So this is the way to like siphon off some of those corks into another kind of matter which could still exist in the universe. And so it's we've always assumed that dark matter couldn't be made of quirks for this reason, and the other arguments against dark matter being corks are a little looser. They're like, as you're saying, like what happens if you shoot a photon at it? And so if it's possible to have more corks in the early universe and siphon them off into this special kind of matter, then you know that gives you the license to add more quirks into the universe, which could then explain the dark matter. And it could be that that forms this boson set and condensate, and then we don't really know, Like it might be that that sensage to photons, like you small sho into it hard enough with the photon they can break it up, but that it's still transparent, So it could be like hanging out there in great ribbons and sheets and fogs made out of corks, but mostly invisible. I feel like you're sort of a little bit skeptical about this idea because you're saying that in something like that wouldn't survive the big the craziness of the Big Bang. Yeah, And they don't explain in the paper how it would survive the very intense photonic atmosphere just after the Big Bang, Like why does this thing last so long? Like they explain how you could make it stable, meaning if you left it by itself, it would last long enough, and if you bombard it with photons, it should break up in their in the universe, right, But what what if it's invisible to photons, then wouldn't it sort of sit outside of that crazy Big Bang explosion. But it's not invisible to photons. I mean, most low energy photons would pass through it because you pass If you bombard it with very high energy photons and there are corks inside of it, then the bonds between the corks are no longer relevant. If you shoot a photon is something that's made out of quarks, and the energy the photon is greater than the energy of the bonds between the corks, and the bonds to the corks don't matter. It doesn't matter anymore whether it's inside a proton or neutron or some other kind of cork matter Bose Einstein quantum wave unity doesn't matter either. It doesn't matter if you have high enough energy photons. And back in the Big Bang it was crazy high energy photons all the time. I feel like you're almost saying, like the Big Bang photons would poke a hole in this theory. Uh, they would shine a light on the flaws of this. Yeah, there you go, all right, Well that's but that's pretty interesting. And so this is a paper that and an and an idea that made a lot of the news because they're like, hey, maybe this is what dark matter is. Made out of but you know, it sounds like it's a weight and see kind of thing like there is not. It doesn't answer all the questions. It is something that possibly exists out there, but it's a bit of a stretch. Yeah, And as usual in science journalism, it was very it was hyped this life, maybe this explains dark matter, but really it's just like another idea. And it's great to have a breadth of ideas. We need a lot of ideas because we haven't found dark matter and we've been looking for a while, and so we got to be creative and think, oh, maybe it's this other thing we forgot, or maybe it could still be this thing we ruled out. That's very healthy and it's great that these guys are thinking about these new ideas. But right now it's just sort of like one more thing on the list of what dark matter could be, and it's got some question marks around it. Do you think it would be better if journalists just ignored science and not treated things as if there were more run of the mill. I think they would be better if they didn't act like every minor step forward was an incredible discovery that answered a big open question, because then the day we actually do answer those open questions, people will be like, whatever, you found dark matter fifty times in the last time ten years, what do I care? You know? So this should have been covered as like businists have new idea for dark matter, not like dark matter riddle have been solved? What have you put in? Like really for real this time, guys at the end of that news article, we'll save that code for when we actually discover it. But the thing one thing I really like and respect about this paper is that they also came up with a new way to look for this. They're like, Okay, if these things are real, how would we prove it. We can't just have this theoretical idea. They were wondering, like, how would we prove it? And so they thought about, like, if these the star Hexa corps were real, maybe there's some of them here on Earth, and maybe occasionally they sort of collapse and they create these big, crazy showers of cosmic rays, but they look different because they're going sort of up instead of down. Anyway, it's a fascinating idea, and kudos to them for coming up for a new theoretical idea that sort of breaks some of the existing rules and for coming up with an experimental way to look for their idea, right, because you're in experimentalism, and so you reacted to that, you're like, hey, I like that part. Yeah. Well, anytime you have a new theoretical idea, you have to figure out how to test it. You. Ideas are just ideas until they're proven to be reality. That's what experiments are for. Mm hmm, alright, well, I guess we'll see, Well they'll they'll do you think they'll do these experiments and figure out if if it could be dark matter or do you think this will sort of sit on a shelf for a while until there's more of a consensus or more of a appealing theoretical argument here. I think that it will generate some more work in the theoretical community to figure out how to answer some of these other questions and to see like can it really be dark matter? This is sort of like the first bide of the apple. There's a lot of details still left to figure out that we talked about. But also it's not that hard to do these experiments. It's just sort of like looking in the data of existing experimental facilities to see if you can see evidence for these things that we just haven't looked for before, So that's kind of exciting. You can you don't have to run any experiment, you can just look at the data from old experiments. Yes, all right, Well my last question is, Daniel, if you take six space bananas and tie them together, does that make them a hexta space banana? It makes him a heck of a tasty banana. Heck of whether I'll give you points for naming that one? All right, thank you? All right, Well, I hope that answered the question that a lot of you sent in as to what a hex of cork is and whether or not it can actually explain what dorc matter is. I think, as usual with science and physics in the universe, the question is let's wait and see. Thanks for sending your questions and thanks for tuning in. See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcast from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H