Questions From The Zeitgeist (ft The Daily Zeitgeist hosts)
Jack and Miles, hosts of The Daily Zeitgeist, ask Daniel and Jorge their most pressing questions about the universe; Why is the sky blue? Whats a quantum machine gun? How do planets form?
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2019-04-16
40 min
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00:00:07 Speaker 1: Hi, I'm and I'm Daniel. Welcome to our podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio in which we take the entire universe, slice it up into little pieces, and explain every single one to you, one at a time. We answer all of your deep and amazing questions about this incredible universe, and we try to make sure that you come away understanding something so you can sound smart at the next cocktail party you go to with a bunch of physicists. Today, we have a special episode. We're going to be once again answering listener questions, but not your normal listeners, not your everyday listeners. That's right. There's a twist today. Today we have special listener guests. That's our Today we have the host of the podcast, the Daily Site, guys Miles and Jack here, and we're gonna be answering their questions about out the universe, about planets, about quantum machine guns. That's right. Usually these guys are talking about the daily events of what's going on in the world we should care about, but they also think deeply about the universe. So they were here to talk to us about deep questions about the universe. Very deeply record scratch. It's just stopped in. This is Jack sound oh sorry, and this is Miles. This is what this is my voice. Much so welcome Jack and Miles. Thank you thanks for having us. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about your podcast Where can people You know, it's like it's like a woke morning show. You know what I mean, you wake up, we'll give you the best news we have. It's Jack and I and a comedian and we just run down the top stories. Uh. I have a background in politics, so i'll you know, talk like I know what I'm talking about. Uh, And then Jack does the funny stuff. Every other every other morning show is a sleeping morning problems. That is the only our only excuse for people expressive. Yeah. But I started the website cracked dot com and I've been doing this for the past year and a half with Miles. Wow, it's a good time. Yeah, pretty cool. So do you guys cover science topics as well? When you talk about the daily we do. If there's something like I think that's important to humanity or funny, so we'll talk about like, you know, the biomass, like insect biomass just decreasing at an alarming rate. But we don't typically get into super heavy stuff because like, if it's like gravitational waves territory, I'm like, as long as Miles can see it, he believes it exists, exactly. So I don't believe in germs or dinosaurs. So do you believe in scientology because I can see that building. You know, I believe it. We are you're talking to at six operating sex right now. I believe it exists, right, yeah, And then you're gonna have to explain the universe of scientology to me someday. Oh yeah, do you have a moment because I just feeling clear? Actually yeah, great, great, I mean I feel like I guess Zeno does have a lot to offer us, but I think this maybe for another show. Yeah. Yeah, that's a different universe exactly right. But there are aliens involved, right, aren't there aliens? Yes, don't be patronizing. There are many aliens, but in many different volcanoes we talked about, right, Oh yeah, we did, because I think and the that Navy footage where they said they found like an unidentified yeah, that flying object, unidentified flying tic tach, did you say that's interest in aliens is never pagonizing it's totally a great do you that sounded? Yeah? So yeah, my claims about not being sarcastic are since here. Okay, but what do you think what did you see that video of that tic tac? What did you what do you think that was? I think it's something crazy we don't understand, but it is something. It's something that was something something. Okay, definitely not nothing. I figure it's just something like a technology we're not familiar with. Yeah, it could be. It doesn't have to be like extraterrestrial or weird under not understood. You're talking from you know, the Navy pipe like that like fighter pilot footage of how they saw that thing just like rotating and then like inexplicably accelerating in different directions that it was different. Yeah, And the Pentagon released it like at the end of last year or the year before. That wasn't just special effects. No, the Pentagon was like, all right, we'll declassify this video if you guys want to see it. Yeah. Yeah. Pentagon is crowdsourcing its intelligence Internet, Yeah, to help us this out there, Like this is why we invented the Internet. Source are intelligence exactly to capture the intelligence of the genius of the crowds. Cool, well as you guys talk about the daily culture and the dailies, guys of of the humanity on a daily basis. Yeah, and I imagine sometimes you must have questions about the universe, about space, about the role that humans and our cultures have it it um, and so do they. You guys have three questions. We're gonna try to run through them in an episode today, and they're about plant information and quantum machines, guns, machines, guns, and machine guns. Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was a quantum machine gun or a quantum machine gun, a gun that shoots understanding quantum mechanics into your brain. Yeah, I think I have a more simple questions. And then Jack is the one about quantum leap or whatever, quantum back. Yeah, let's after all, Yes, it's almost definitely all right. So where should we start? Oh, let's just let's go nice and easy. Yeah. I get most of my scientific questions from the Jiza. And there's a song called Fourth Chamber that asked the question why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? The second question doesn't make any sense to me, but the first one I have always been curious, why is the sky blue? I love that question? Why is water wet? Actually it's like a really interesting deep Yeah, is just too much for my brain to hold. You know that song particle many particle man. Yeah, when he's underwater, does he get wet or does the water get instead? Deep stuff? Yeah? Mine that I guess like as a child, I'm just curious. Is the version that I understand the sky to be blue true, which is like because the ocean is that? It s almost it's kind of like a wet wet and water say this ocean is blue sort of because the sky is blue, isn't it? Daniel, I'm not the scientist. Oh there are those, so short answer is the sky is blue, but not because the ocean is blue. Okay, but you're not You're not alone in that thought. I walked around campus that you see Irvine is today and I asked a bunch of people, why is the sky blue? Is that how scientists figure things out? Crowd around was down, so you got a second professor. Three out of four people, I mean I asked more than four people, but three fourth of them said because the ocean, right, that's I think the misinformation we're given, like when your parents are like, so what was your thinking that the ocean is blue? And so somehow that's making the skuy? I don't know. And it's just like if something. I never really bothered to think through that because half the time when I look at those and like that ain't blue or whatever. If you're in the desert, like a thousand miles of sands around you, the sky is still blue exactly. See, like a jealousy thing like this guy was like, oh I like that color, right, I'll put on my blue. They're always fighting, so drop some science, all right, So why is this guy blue? Well to answer the question why is anything any color, you have to think for a moment about what that means to have color, right, And I think there's a basic misperception like, um, you know light has lots of colors in it, right, And if something is painted blue, for example, that doesn't mean that it absorbs blue light. It's not like sucking in the blueness and is blue. It's reflecting blue light. Right. So if something like this cleanex blocks in front of me is blue, it means that the paint on it reflects blue light and it's absorbing all the other colors. Yeah, it sucks in all the other colors. That's why black things get really hot and white things don't, because they're youncing all the light back. And I know this because the interior of my prelude was jet black, and in the bat hot l a heat, I would burn myself on the inside of the car. And that's why jet eyes and whatever I'm tattooing, we're all white to reflect the sunlight. Yeah, all right, so the sky must be blue because it's reflecting blue light, right, And in fact that's true. The atmosphere when the light comes from the sun, the sun light from the sun is mostly is white. Is a big mix of colors. Actually it's a tiny big green, but it's mostly white light. We looked at the sun in space, it would be white. Um. Don't look at the sun though directly. When astronauts are out there, do they have to avert their eyes or do they have like sunglasses the sun visor? Yeah, um, I don't know. That's a great question. I imagine NASA sends them up there with sunglasses. That's because a blinded astronaut would be a bad or. The astronauts are just smart enough to not look at the sun. And then that's how they got to be an astronaut. The sun's big, got to be hard, and this is why you didn't get into an assag every day. Yeah, how long do I get to look at the sun? Is that why you have an eye patch right now? That it Yeah, that was from the eclipse. Told them don't use those binoculars. Alright. So we got white light hitting the atmosphere right, and um, when when the light hits the atmosphere, you've got the different colors, and the blue light is the one that wiggles the most. It's got the highest energy. And so you know, light is a wave and it wiggles. So the red light wiggles really slowly and the blue light wiggles really fast. And the blue light bounces off the atmosphere more than the red light does. Like little particles in the atmosphere when the blue light hits them, they get bounced. It's it's kind of like it's a scattering, right, It doesn't like bounce off back into space. It's sort of like the atmosphere. And then it makes basically glows, right, it makes the atmosphere glow blue. That kind of datia. Yeah, I think of it more like it gets reflected. Like, Um, so you're looking up at the sky. You're not looking at the sun, right, Why is there light coming from that part at all? It's because it got reflected. So light from the sun hit that part of the atmosphere and then comes to your eyes. What part of that light hits your eyes the part that got reflected, which is the blue light. Just like if you're looking at a blue wall, it's not glowing right, So it doesn't produce lights, only reflecting light. It's reflecting the blue light only right. Atmosphere is the same way. So the atmosphere reflects the blue light, which is why it looks blue. So why does it only reflect the blue and not the other colors? Yeah, because the blue light wiggles more, and the atmosphere is made of these little tiny particles, and and the little tiny particles are better at reflecting things that wiggle more because the wiggles are shorter. And so imagine, for example, you're like walking across the field filled with rocks. Right, if the box are really really big, then you're gonna get bounced around. It's gonna be a big obstacle. The rocks are really really tiny, like you're walking across the beach. You don't even really notice. So the blue light sees like really big rocks because it wiggles more it's tiny, and so it gets bounced off with them. The red light just like skips over them, like walking over the same surface. Over the atmosphere, Yeah exactly. So red light mostly goes through straight through air. What blue light gets bounced, which is why you see in the blue light in your eyes when you're looking up at this guy. So it's about the size of the atoms up in the atmosphere. It's not like a quantum electron level kind of thing. No, it's basically about the relative sizes of the wiggles and the light and the atmosphere. But you know, bigger stuff reflects all light light, which is why most powders are white, right, Because the particles of the powder are pretty big, so they reflect everything. But the atmospheric particles are much much smaller than the powder you might have in your nine prelude, for example, sugar and salt, the powdered sugar in the in the seat of your the back seat of your old car. Yeah exactly. Um, And so that's why the sky right, because it reflects blue light. It also explains why, for example, sunsets are not blue. Right, How does that explain it? It's the same atmosphere, right, It's I understand it. But when we were I mean, I'm just trying to see, if you know, Daniel, So, yeah, why is the sky so um? So? If you so, if you look at the atmosphere, you're seeing reflected light. If you look directly of the sun, don't do that. But if you were to, you'd be seeing light directly from the sun. We're all the blue is removed, right, because the blue light that comes to you directly from the sun gets bounced away, So you're seeing the redd or or the yellower side of the spectrum. Right, So the blue is removed and somewhere else and you see the yellows, the red, the oranges. That's why the sun looks yellow in the sky. Right. The sun isn't yellow, it's white, but it looks yellow in the sky through the filter of the at exactly the atmosphere. And now it's sunset, you're looking through a lot more atmosphere because the sun is low in the sky, so doesn't just come through a little bit of atmosphere. It skims along through a lot of atmosphere, so it gets like yellow wer so yellow, it looks orange and red and darker and darker. Oh so as like a sphere like versus just hitting it straight on, because it's like that, you're getting this curvature, this slice that gets way more atmospheres, You get more, more and more blue light gets filtered out, and then you get just the red light left. But the whole sky turns pink, or at least half of the sky turns pink. Yeah, that's mostly because of smog. That's because we live in l A. If the sky was perfectly clear, right then the sunset would look more yellow and mostly just around the sun. But then that light, that yellowy red light whatever, bounces off of particles in the atmosphere or smog whatever, and that clouds and that's what gives you the beautiful sunset. But the color comes from all the blue getting filtered out by the atmosphere. Does being closer to the equator effect the beauty of the sunset, because I think of like like tropical places that have amazing sunse there there really isn't that much pollution or this I feel like the smog is influencing a color of the sunset. So I'm curious if that you could probably just in a better mood if you're you're like, oh my god, that's the best sunset ever, and the locals are like, what cocktails make the sunset better? That's a physics physical effect for it. Also be the haze, like water vapor will do that also, gotcha, there's probably more equation at the equation. Wow, you've embarrassed yourself. Let's talk quantum machine guns. Wow, I'm just hosting a podcast. But first let's take a quick break. All right, moving on, Jack, what is your question today? My question is I would love to hear from like your how your brain and explaining the quantum machine gun theory, because it's hard for me to get my simple brain. Yes, Jack tried when we were talking about this. He tried to explain it, and I actually just walked away because I did not understand the single thing he was trying to say. I have a question about your question that why are you so fascinated by quantum machine guns? Are you looking at build one? Are you think about purchasing one in eBay? And you want to know if it's real or what's the situation. I mean, it's a very so I was a philosophy major and it's like a very philosophical I don't know what like it's worth. You can't say I was a philosophy major. I became a philosophy major. That's a philosophic question question in itself. And it's like that it gets into you know, multiverse and all those different things, which it would seem to me would affect just the entire metaphysical reality of of the world. So that's why it interests me, like if if it is real and not just a thought experiment, it would seem to be like a a existence of shaping thing. I guess, all right, well, what you can explain what it is? And then what is he talking about? What is it? What is it? Quantum machine gun? Quantum machine done is like a variation on the Schrodinger's catecorum experiment that from Silicon Valley. Okay, Hollywood is entertaining and educating, awesome. So the idea there is put something like a particle that's decaying. We don't know how long it's going to take the decay. Put it in a box and then when the particle decays, it kills the cats, amount releases poison or something, and then you can ask the question, is the cat dead or is the kind of live? It's inside the box. You can't see it, right, It's just determined by what that quantum random particle does. And so the idea is you put the particle in the box and you don't know whether or not it is decay aid, which you know has consequences for the cat, and so because you don't know, then you say things like it's both dead and alive because as a probability to be both. Okay, So that's the shorting, right, because the particle is both doing but doing both things at the same time, and so if the cat's life depends on the particle, then the cats must be also dead and alive at the same time. That's right. And that's that's actually the heart of the question, which the machine gun example probes also is what's going on with quantum mechanics, Like if a particle can do A or B has probability to do A and B, is it both A and B before you've looked, or has it chosen one or has the universe split into one? Universe where the particle has done a one universe where the particles done b That seems like this explanation obviously, right, Let's just create a whole new universe every time. Max Tegmark took this to the next level and he said, let's not put cats at risk. Let's put ourselves at risk. He said, let's put um Let's build a machine gun where the machine gun fires based on what a particle does. So a particle can can be spin up or spin down with equal probability. It's like a coin flip, right, And if every time you press the trigger on the machine gun, it asks the particle, are you spin up? Are you spin down? It's been up, it shoots. If it's been down, it doesn't. It's like the particles in charge of the safety switch the gun. You pull it, you pull the trigger, but the particle, if it's doing one thing, they'll let you shoot. If it's doing the other thing, it won't let you shoot. It's a little like Russian roulette, right, Russian roulette. You you know, put three bullets in a six chamber gun or whatever, you spin it, you have a fifty chance of dying. Right. The problem with the Russian roulette is it's determined once you put them in there and you spin it, it's either going to be a bullet or an envy chamber. It's fixed. Right. With a quantum machine gun, it's supposed to be truly random, like the universe is really random. So when you press the button, Max Tegmark says, the universe splits into two one where it shoots a bullet and one where it doesn't shoot a bullet. And that's the crazy thing is imagining, Like the universe is splitting into two universes. So the thought experiment is like you go in real sure the Inger's box. Would you take out the cat? You put yourself in and you see what happens. Yeah, but it's more than that, he says, Now build the gun pointed at yourself and keep pressing the button. What will you hear? And his point is you will only hear click click, click click. You will never hear the gun go off, which you would think would be a one and a billion uh probability, right, because if you're multiplying by and it gets more and more unlikely that you're not gonna hear the gun go off. But why does it have to be life or death, though you can just be a light, and yeah, that's true. People have to do with I mean, if it was just a light, it wouldn't you wouldn't cease to exist, right, And the idea is that in there there are nine other like if it's a one thousand things, there are nine other branches of reality and probability where you did die. But because you're you only exist because you are your experience, then you are only in the one branch that where it didn't go off. Essentially, there's always one one version of the universe and which it doesn't go off no matter how many times you click. You click a million times, there's some probability for it to never kill you. And there's somebody who pressed it a million times and had that experience. There's some version of the universe in which that happened. So that guy is the only one who's still awake. And he says, you know, you only ever hear clicks. I think you hear a bunch of clicks and then eventually you hear a boom. Right, But there's there's some version of you that can do as many clicks as you want. Right. They seem they both both Schrodinger's cat and quantum machine gun theories seem like really good ways for you to make physicists who believe in the more diverse like realize that they don't actually believe. Okay, you believe that here, do this thing, and if you truly believe in it thing, you'll never die, right because and I think that was what Schroedeger's cat was originally designed to like illustrate the absurdity of quantum theory, like how can a cat be alive? And right? Yeah, exactly do you think is that true? Was that example that Max Techmark come up with this example to, like, you know, kind of puts physicist on the spot. I think he probably came up with his example to sell his book, which I think went pretty well for him and didn't sell it at the same time. In some universe, it's the best summer universe is a warehouse full of it. But you're the philosopher. Tell me, do you think there's another universe out there where you you know, it's something else? This morning a different kind of cereal. I think it's as good as anything I've come up with on my end, or anything I've had a high ball or a low. Not very good, yeah, very very low. Bar No. I think it's just a really interesting way to think about things. I don't think you necessarily want to think about it if it's think about it that way, if it's going to make you behave recklessly, if you're gonna be like I'm invincible, like driving down, don't die. But well, basically, right, that's that's the conclusion of the experiment, is that if you're still healing here in the click, you must be in the one universe, however improbable, where where it's like running back and forth across the freeway. Right version of you survives that for an hour, and you survives it for a day as a version gets splat immediately, right, Yeah, but you are don't do any of these things because I mean, the reason that they design it where the gun goes off based on a quantum coin flip, is because that's really the only truly like random thing. So I mean, you're still on a chain of probability where some thing is or isn't going to happen unless you are. Existence is being determined by a quantum coin flip, which still blows my mind. I mean, I think I understand quantum mechanics as well as I'm ever going to. But I still don't understand how something can be truly random, Like there has to be some mechanism in the universe that's producing random numbers. There's like some What does it mean to be truly random and not truly random? What's the difference? Well, truly random means not predictable, right, not repeatable, it doesn't depend anything, doesn't Well, it can depend on something, it can be influenced by it. But you have a distribution where the random draw is not repeatable, not determined by the initial conditions. Right, It's not a true magical box. Not magical. It's physics, man. Physics is indistinguishable from that. I mean, that's que what you're saying, Like if we have magic, I mean, like violating the laws of physics is impossible, that would be like Lord of the Rinks man magic. But if you were to call that quantum nugget there that can give you anything at any given time, you might you might use the word magic, wouldn't you. I think you might use the word magic. Yeah, yea yeah. I think there's a physics we understand and physics we don't yet understand, right, You can call that magic if you like, or you can call it, you know, science fiction or whatever. But wait, so what's the other form of randomness if it because you said truly random, there's there's really only truly random and earnest pseudo random, like your computer can generate random numbers, but do not actually random. Like you ask computer, give me a series of random numbers, it will give you the same series every time, so it's not really random. Or it's going through an algorithm that someone's created, and it's algorithm for choosing things, which you know, spread the numbers out basically, but it's not actually random. You can be the same you just ask the same computer the same question. It will give you the same string of random numbers. Right. Or even throwing a die is not truly random, right because you can trace the result back to some something you did way back. That's right, Like whether you have decided to put a rabbit foot in your pocket or not? Right, magic physics, you skipped your scientology meeting or not. I don't skip. It's going to get downgraded. No, you're right, it's not random. It's chaotic, right, difficult to predict. So it's a good proxy for randomness, right, but it is totally determined by how you roll the die. You roll the die the same way every time, you're gonna get exactly the same answer. It's impossible to do, which is why it's a good proxy for randomness. But yeah, quantumic Hanks is the only true randomness in the universe that we know of, and it seems random because we just can't explain it yet, right, although there are experiments they have done that basically proved that it's random, that it's completely and it's completely random. Yeah, there are these crazy experiments that are really subtle. They're called It's about Bills inequality, these correlations between particles where they prove that it can't be determined by the initial conditions, that has to be actually random, which is pretty mind blowing something. We asked your question, Jack do we um. Yeah, that was that was that actually was a much better explanation. I don't know, I it's it's so interesting, like multiverse theory just in general, so like to even think that there are other questions delving into that is just like another splitting my brain in nine directions. Again, Well, I think the multiverse is bonkers. I mean, that's not a scientific point of that's philosophical boys. So you can say bonkers and crazy, but you can't see magic. No magic is not allowed. Bonkers, they're going to bleep that work. And I don't mean bonker is in a negative way, Like the universe is bonkers. I mean like the crazy stuff we talk about on our show, like you know, how do you wrap your head around it? Huge spinning stars and black holes and all that stuff is bonkers even if it's real. Right, But the multiverse is like extra bonkers because imagining like extra universe is being created all this stuff. I just don't I can't. I don't know where to put that in my head. A version where you are on our show, Jack and Miles explaining that's it. I really want to want to be a very different kind of universe. Well, um, we we do have a whole episode about the multiverse, and the whole episode about quantum randomness. Magic, No bonkers, quantum bonkers. I've never heard of a game called physics the gathering that sounds like there's nothing on all the cards. How do I know I'm winning? All right, So let's get to your last question about But first, let's take our last break of the episode. Alright, Miles, you have one last question for Yes, and it's a it's and it's an epic and scale, it's planetarry and scale, it's planetary. Yes, it's gigantic. It's probably probably the best question you've ever been asked at. Yeah, this is some real magic stuff. I'm gonna hit you with. Yeah, I gotta do some stretches here. Yeah, it was incredible. He just put his leg behind his head hanging from the ceiling. You wish this was the TV show? Right? Oh? I do? Um. You know, I I love space and I like uh the soldiers like crows. Yeah, I love space. I'm still on my Space. Actually, I don't use Facebook anything. Space that even on my keyboard gigantic space bar it overtakes the rest of the keys. Um. But you know, just planetary formation is just another not necessarily philosophical thing because that's a physical, uh phenomenon. I'm just curious because once I started reading about the Juno probe that's going around Jupiter. Uh, there were some people I spoke with who worked at JPL who were sort of saying, like, Jupiter has a lot of seek grits, or it will give us a better understanding of planetary formation in this Solar system. And I'm sort of like, well, why don't we why can't we look at like Earth or whatever. So I'm just sort of like that got me thinking, like, wow, it's interesting to think they say, if we look at planetary planetary formation is like a cookbook, We're only seeing the finished product, right of everything being cooked or baked or whatever. The end thing is is like but with understanding Jupiter will begin to understand the recipe and that they want system, yeah or whatever. But I just but it's interesting to even think, you know, because we live on this physical or Earth what what you know? What went down really was the magic And you said you were a JPL when you you got interested in Yeah, yeah, because I at the at the time, I just knew that this was like a very novel, like just a very important experiment. This probe was going out and it was like months before the first sets of data we're going to be sent back, and everyone was just so like this is man, like we really this is the thing, Like Jupiter really is going to help us understand so much, so many other things like weather and all these other things. So it was just so interesting to me that there was this this planet out there that if we can study a bit more like it's gonna it could potentially help us understand many other things that we experienced. So that's why I'm like, Okay, yeah, I guess planetary formation is is a lot more in depth than merely saying, hey, we're here on Earth. You know, some stuff started swirling around each other, got dense, and then boom. Yeah, well that basically answers the question and density swirling, boom, planet really got to planet. There's the recipe. Yeah, I think that's really interesting question. I think it touches on something which is like deep in everybody, which is we want to understand our history, what went down, how did this come about? And is this unusual? Like are there other solar systems out there that have Earth's or is it all jupiters? Is there a solarist method that's just like all Uranus for example, or all Saturn's or something. Um. Yeah, So it's pretty interesting stuff. And you know, the planets. I think one of the interesting things that about that is that the planets are formed about the same time as the star. Right. The whole thing is basically a big mix. You start with a big cloud of like gas and dust and and other stuff that comes from you know, other stars that blew up, and so you like rubble out there in space, and then gravity gradually pulls it together and most of the gas gets sucked towards the center. So you get this huge star in the middle of right, and then the leftover is just sort of swirling around it. Right, Well, why does the gas come in first? Why does the gas come in first? It all sort of happens at once, But the gas is light, and so it gets pulled in towards the center. Yeah, and it rushes in faster, I guess because it's it's gas. Well I think it's equally distributed. But the gas gets sucked in towards the center faster than like the rocks and stuff. So you end up with like a lot of gas at the center, which becomes a star, and then you get like, you know, where the gas was pulled away, You get rocks which trying into like rocky planets, and then the outer part you have still have gas and ice and stuff left over, which is why you get like big gas ants. Oh god, OK, So Jupiter is like mostly hydrogen and water and that kind of stuff, whereas Earth is not as mostly rock, right, But basically it's just gravity, right. Gravity. It takes you a long time, but gravity sucks this stuff together. You get a big star and the stuff that's orbiting around it um gradually gathers together, right, So it bounces into each other and and you know, gravity sticks them together and just sort of gradually pulls everything together, as you said, like density, boom boom. Right. I guess the question is why doesn't why why do we have planets at all? Why is and why isn't the Solar System just a star? Why doesn't everything just get sucked into the middle? Or why aren't planets just asteroid belts? Yeah? Okay, so there's two different answers there. Why do we have planets at all? Right? Why didn't everything just gets sucked into like one black hole or one star? Right? Well, there's some things keeping things from falling into the center, right, And that's just enough spinning. Right, So the whole blob when it started was spinning already, and that spinning can't go away right as angular momentum. It can't have to be conserved. You can't just you can't just stop spinning. It's it's not rubbing against anything to slow it down. It's just it's in space, so it just keeps on spinning. Somehow, you made that sound inappropriate. I mean, I would have preferred frictionless environments. It was just weird that you are waggling your eyebrows on my shirt. Yeah, the Sun does have a history of rubbing inappropriately against things. Yes, no, it's yeah, it's out there in space and there's nothing to slow down. There's no friction, nothing to to grab onto it, so it's going to keep spinning forever. And so the stuff is moving and it ends up in orbit. Right. It's like asking why doesn't the Moon fall to the Earth Because it's moving so fast that it doesn't fall. That keeps going around the Earth instead of falling the same way the Earth is. And the stuff that made the Earth is not going to fall into the Sun because it's moving fast enough and it comes from that initial rotation. Oh I see, So even though we get the Sun, there's still stuff out there spinning around. It doesn't want to fall into the Sun. Yeah, exactly, it's moving too fast fall into the center. So it's too good to be the Sun. It doesn't want to r up against the Sun. Right, But why why does it form at the planets? Like, like Jack said, some of someone just stays as asteroid belts like debris, but some of it forms into planets. Eventually it'll all gathered together. Like you fast forward the Solar System a billion years or so, and you'll have a smaller number of bigger asteroids. Eventually these all come together. So that's about will be a planet. I don't know about one planet, but like will still really billion billions of years, we could have a new place of visit in the same way rings turned into moons, right, Rings are not a stable situation for a planet really gathered together and turned it into moons. Yeah, like the Earth probably had rings for a while after he got hit by some other Plorida planet and created all this debris that surrounded it which formed the moon. We probably had some awesome set of rings which then gathered together into a moon. So Saturn's on its way to having a moon. Yeah, we don't know how old the rings of Saturn are, but we think they're not very old. I mean they're millions of years sure, but on the Solar System time scale, they're pretty young, and so that stuff eventually is going to gather together and form larger objects. Yeah wow, okay, but each but also each planet got different stuff based on where it was in the Solar System. Right, The closer stuff got the rocks that were left over not much gas because they got sucked up by the sun. Stuff on the outside is like mostly gas. Like if you look at what's inside Jupiter, crazy right, super compressed and like metallic hydrogen. It's not hydrogen. Yeah, it sounds like a color for a new iPhone or something, right, we just call it silver. But but the marketing genius is over. I mean you often hear Jupiter described as a gas giant. People think, oh, it's just a big ball of gas. It's gas, and then it's hydrogen. But it's not in gaseous state, right, some of it's like solid. So you could land on Jupiter because it's like it's metallic hydrogen covered by like an ocean of liquid hydrogen and then gas on top of it. So it has an atmosphere, but there's an ocean of liquid hydrogen. I mean, I wouldn't recommend going there without something like pretty nice equipment, right, But there's a pretty pretty radiation, but there's something solid there to land on. Well I read that, um, like these gas planet gas planets out there, they represent ninety of the mass of the Solar system. So it's it's like, it's most of the Solar system except for the Sun. Yeah, yeah, it's the Sun. Are are in these gas giants way out there? Yeah, exactly, most of the mass in the Solar systems the Sun. It's like then, of that one percent, most of it's the gas giant planets. Because remember the Earth is about one tenth of the radius of Jupiter, which is about one tenth the radius of the Sun. Right, all right, right, right, yeah, remember that. I just remember as a kid, they're like, there could be I don't remember the number, but it's like so many earths could fit in the Sun. And I was like, yeah, right, miss Holton, I'm out of here. I don't need this. I'm in third grade. But you always forget that volume goes by like the radius cube, so you can fit It's only ten times wider, but you could fit a thousand earths into you could fit a thousand jupiters into the Sun. Right, So it's a yeah, So that's the number, millionaire A million, yeah, million, A cool mill exactly. Yeah, so you're right, Jupiter is huge and most of the stuff that's not in the Sun is in Jupiter gobbled up all this stuff. But we should be grateful, right active Jupiter being really big could have saved our lives because asteroids that would destroy Earth get sucked into Jupiter. Yeah, exactly. It's acting like a linebacker out there, like cleaning out the Solar system and gathering all that stuff. Um. I don't know if you guys remember, but like twenty years ago or so, there was a huge comment to enter the Solar system and then like slammed right into Jupiter. Oh really yeah comment Shoemaker Levy was really awesome. They got broken shoemaker, I remember that. Yeah. Yeah, it's slamming a Jupiter and each piece that hit it we got broken in like twenty pieces made a huge fireball, like bigger than the Earth. But that he hit up us, it would have caused a big wave. Who would have had we'd probably recording a very different podcasting. Yeah. So yeah, shout out to Jupiter. Thank you so much for you do. I didn't realize how much of a debt wheel to Jupiter. I have a new appreciation for it. Cool. So that's the answer to planet information is it is just gravity and stuff just that doesn't want to fall into the sun out there. It starts to clump together. We get the leftovers and we get a beautiful Earth with beautiful sunsets exactly, exactly, and some call that magic. All right, Well, thank you guys for joining us day um and be sure for this you listening to check out their podcast, The Daily See Guys. Yeah, Monday through Friday, Monday through to give them the twitters and the Facebook. Oh yeah, you can find our show at Daily zeit Geist on Twitter, at the Daily See Geist on Instagram. I'm at Miles of Gray g r a Y on Twitter and Instagram, and i am at Jack Underscore O'Brien on Twitter. Awesome. Well, thank you guys. Anyway, you guys have any question out there, anyone listening has any questions, send us an email at Feedback at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Send us your philosophy questions, send us your physics questions, send us your dating questions. We'll give physics answers to all of this and not not your magic questions. There are no magic questions only magic answers. Yeah, alright, alright, see you next time. Thanks for tuning in. 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, 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.
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