# Listener Questions #48

An episode of [Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1436616330), 25 Aug 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/f5d5fac6-77be-47e6-9aee-ae32006cd8c3/842a4bf0-f302-430b-9074-b4b100556834/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=b26cbbeb-86eb-4b97-9b34-ae32006cd8d6

Daniel and Kelly answer questions about crackpots, hearing meteors, and the age of everything. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:07] Speaker 1: When a meteor makes a fireball in the sky, is
[0:11] Speaker 1: it possible to hear it when it's up so high?
[0:14] Speaker 2: People have a lot of crazy ideas and thoughts. What
[0:17] Speaker 2: are Dnk's favorites from their inbox? Daniel, I don't know
[0:22] Speaker 2: if thoughts an inbox rhyme?
[0:25] Speaker 1: How old is the tree, the stone, the air, the
[0:28] Speaker 1: atoms in each one? What's the oldest thing that's anywhere
[0:32] Speaker 1: beneath the stars and the sun.
[0:34] Speaker 2: Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
[0:37] Speaker 2: answers will make it right.
[0:39] Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Listener.
[0:42] Speaker 2: Universe, episode number forty eight. Hello, I'm Kelly Wadersmith. I
[0:59] Speaker 2: study erites and space and we've got a lot of
[1:03] Speaker 2: great questions today and they're all Daniel questions. This is
[1:06] Speaker 2: a Daniel run episode. Hi.
[1:09] Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who loves to think
[1:11] Speaker 1: about aliens and answer questions from listeners. And I'll say
[1:15] Speaker 1: Kelly that I chose some that also ask for your input.
[1:18] Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. That was nice of you. And so
[1:21] Speaker 2: I see that we have a question about what are
[1:22] Speaker 2: some of our favorite sort of conspiracy theories. Let's say
[1:26] Speaker 2: that come across our email box, and so what I
[1:29] Speaker 2: want to know from you is what is your favorite
[1:32] Speaker 2: question period? Not a conspiracy theory, what question like just
[1:37] Speaker 2: lit you up when you read it?
[1:40] Speaker 1: Ooh, that's tough. I can remember lots of moments when
[1:44] Speaker 1: I saw a question in my inbox and I thought,
[1:47] Speaker 1: oh my gosh, what a fun question. Most often these
[1:50] Speaker 1: are questions from kids, you know, like seven year olds
[1:53] Speaker 1: with parents who listened to the podcast or something and
[1:56] Speaker 1: they asked a question that the parents couldn't answer, and
[1:59] Speaker 1: so then they ask us to step in. That's like
[2:01] Speaker 1: one of my favorite moments. But in terms of a
[2:03] Speaker 1: specific question, just last week, I got a question from
[2:06] Speaker 1: a nine year old who thought they had the solution
[2:10] Speaker 1: to quantum gravity. Oh, they heard us discussing Hawking radiation
[2:14] Speaker 1: and they were like, wait a second, that's a quantum
[2:17] Speaker 1: effect and it's gravity. Isn't that quantum gravity? Can't you
[2:20] Speaker 1: start from there and build a whole theory of quantum gravity?
[2:23] Speaker 1: And I was like, Wow, this nine year old isn't
[2:26] Speaker 1: really paying attention.
[2:27] Speaker 2: Nah, holy cow. I feel like that. I mean, that
[2:30] Speaker 2: is a great question, but I also feel like it's
[2:32] Speaker 2: a question where at the end you're like, I'm not
[2:34] Speaker 2: doing enough. I wasn't that smart as a nine year old.
[2:39] Speaker 2: This kid is going to be like President slash Emperor
[2:43] Speaker 2: of the Universe and what am I doing over here?
[2:45] Speaker 1: Well, only because you didn't have the benefit of this
[2:47] Speaker 1: amazing podcast to stimulate your mind.
[2:51] Speaker 2: Right, you're right, You're right.
[2:53] Speaker 1: So what is your favorite question you've gotten over email Kelly?
[2:56] Speaker 2: I get a lot of questions where at the end
[2:58] Speaker 2: I realize either whoh, I don't know the answer and
[3:02] Speaker 2: I should have. Or I get a lot of questions
[3:05] Speaker 2: that I love that are like, hey, you know what
[3:08] Speaker 2: banana slugs? I want the Kelly version of banana slugs.
[3:14] Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, man, I appreciate that you thought,
[3:17] Speaker 2: you know X topic is something I want to know
[3:19] Speaker 2: more about, but particularly I want to know, you know,
[3:22] Speaker 2: how's Kelly going to connect that to diarrhea?
[3:27] Speaker 1: I want the Kelly over research treatment of this question? Yeah?
[3:31] Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. So I mean those are always like
[3:33] Speaker 2: they're exciting for me because usually I don't know the
[3:36] Speaker 2: answer and so it's an excuse to like dive in
[3:38] Speaker 2: and do a ton of research. But also it's just
[3:40] Speaker 2: very flattering that someone thought I need to know what
[3:42] Speaker 2: Kelly thinks about banana slugs and that always, I don't know,
[3:45] Speaker 2: makes me feel great.
[3:47] Speaker 1: All right, well, let's hear some questions from listeners. Our
[3:50] Speaker 1: first question is from John mick Jenkin, who seems to
[3:53] Speaker 1: be having a debate with a friend and wants us
[3:55] Speaker 1: to weigh in.
[3:56] Speaker 2: Oh, that's always a little bit dangerous. At least it's
[3:59] Speaker 2: not a bait with a partner. Let's go ahead and
[4:02] Speaker 2: sear the question.
[4:03] Speaker 3: Hey, Daniel and Kelly, I'm John mcjunkin and old guy
[4:06] Speaker 3: in Arizona with over forty years in the music and
[4:08] Speaker 3: audio engineering biz, and I think a lot about sound.
[4:12] Speaker 3: I was once told by a friend that some meteors
[4:14] Speaker 3: have enough mass and energy to create sound that is
[4:17] Speaker 3: audible at ground level. He said he'd heard a meteor
[4:20] Speaker 3: once make a fizzy, whooshy sound.
[4:22] Speaker 1: Does this ring true to you? It sort of seems plausible.
[4:25] Speaker 3: The eighteen eighty three eruption of Krakatoa is said to
[4:28] Speaker 3: have been audible thousands of miles away. But there's no
[4:31] Speaker 3: way that a meteor could produce anywhere near the same
[4:33] Speaker 3: massive force as a huge volcano eruption, And considering that
[4:37] Speaker 3: it would take sound something like five minutes to travel
[4:39] Speaker 3: from the Mazo sphere down to ground level. It could
[4:42] Speaker 3: be a bit of a challenge to correlate a specific
[4:44] Speaker 3: whoosh with a specific meteor. It would be super cool
[4:48] Speaker 3: if meteors actually are audible, but I have my doubts.
[4:52] Speaker 3: What do you think if meteors are audible at ground level?
[4:55] Speaker 3: Maybe we could hear the Doppler shifting rock and roll
[4:57] Speaker 3: played by aliens as they zoom by if they have
[5:01] Speaker 3: their windows rolled down.
[5:02] Speaker 1: Thank you both so much for all you do.
[5:05] Speaker 2: Oh this is fun. On the one hand, I think
[5:08] Speaker 2: it would have been really interesting to have been present
[5:10] Speaker 2: for the what is it tunguskamm?
[5:13] Speaker 1: Was that a meteor which flattened all those trees in Siberia?
[5:16] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, to be able to like have heard
[5:19] Speaker 2: that or been far enough away to have like felt
[5:21] Speaker 2: a little bit of the pressure wave but not been
[5:23] Speaker 2: so close that you got like absolutely decimated. But yeah,
[5:26] Speaker 2: I totally loved this idea of imagining or knowing, like
[5:29] Speaker 2: what would it be like? Yeah, this thing that I'll
[5:31] Speaker 2: never see, tell me what it might be like.
[5:34] Speaker 1: I'm glad that we don't live in interesting times when
[5:37] Speaker 1: it comes to things from space, you know, it's fun
[5:40] Speaker 1: to imagine and to wonder what that would be like,
[5:43] Speaker 1: but boy, could be really catastrophic.
[5:45] Speaker 2: So yeah, instead we live in ai and geopolitical interesting times. Yeah,
[5:50] Speaker 2: I guess time will tell which one we prefer.
[5:52] Speaker 1: But mostly we can go about our days without worrying
[5:55] Speaker 1: about death from above due to falling rocks.
[5:58] Speaker 3: Correct.
[5:58] Speaker 1: But John is asking a really fun question and it
[6:01] Speaker 1: turns out to have a fascinating and subtle answer. Basically,
[6:04] Speaker 1: he's asking, can you hear a meteor? And so let's
[6:09] Speaker 1: first remind ourselves, like what is hearing all about? How
[6:11] Speaker 1: does that all work? Remember that sound is pressure waves, right,
[6:16] Speaker 1: So things moving through the air change the airflow and
[6:20] Speaker 1: make waves. The way that you are hearing me right
[6:22] Speaker 1: now is some speaker is vibrating and that is pushing
[6:26] Speaker 1: physically mechanically on some air. Even if you're getting like
[6:29] Speaker 1: a digital signal and it seems all fancy, in the end,
[6:33] Speaker 1: there's a speaker with a drum that's vibrating according to
[6:36] Speaker 1: those digital signals and pushing the air, and your ear
[6:39] Speaker 1: is hearing it because it's receiving those pressure waves in
[6:43] Speaker 1: the air. So all sound is pressure waves and it
[6:46] Speaker 1: travels it around eight hundred miles per hour twelve hundred
[6:50] Speaker 1: kilometers per hour.
[6:51] Speaker 2: It still blows my mind that, like something that's vibrating
[6:54] Speaker 2: in my headphones is able to both make the sound
[6:57] Speaker 2: of Daniel and the sound of Kelly, Like, yeah, I
[7:00] Speaker 2: don't know, I'm impressed.
[7:02] Speaker 1: Well. I think we had an episode on sound recently
[7:04] Speaker 1: and we talked about how you know, voices are a
[7:08] Speaker 1: mixtures of different frequencies, and like the thing that makes
[7:11] Speaker 1: you recognize my voice or your voice is that particular
[7:15] Speaker 1: mixture of frequencies. Did I tell you about getting recognized
[7:18] Speaker 1: by my voice?
[7:19] Speaker 3: Oh?
[7:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, you didn't tell me the whole story. Tell me
[7:21] Speaker 2: the whole story.
[7:23] Speaker 1: I was on vacation in Yosemite, walking across the parking
[7:25] Speaker 1: lot talking to Katrina, and somebody stopped me and said,
[7:29] Speaker 1: excuse me, are you Daniel? And I was like, do
[7:33] Speaker 1: I know you? And he was like no, But I
[7:35] Speaker 1: listened to your podcast and this guy like drives across
[7:38] Speaker 1: the country in a van and listens to us and
[7:41] Speaker 1: knows our voices. My man, I know, and his brain
[7:45] Speaker 1: was just like, wait a second, I know that voice.
[7:47] Speaker 2: That's amazing.
[7:48] Speaker 1: And he said to me, it's so weird to hear
[7:50] Speaker 1: your voice coming out of your mouth, and I was like,
[7:52] Speaker 1: that's how it happens.
[7:53] Speaker 4: Man.
[7:56] Speaker 1: All right, so you know you can hear things that
[7:59] Speaker 1: happen near you, but the farther away something is the
[8:02] Speaker 1: more deluded the power is. It's just like lots of
[8:05] Speaker 1: other stuff. You have a flashlight, the intensity of the
[8:08] Speaker 1: light goes like one over distance squared. It's the same
[8:11] Speaker 1: with sound. Somebody claps their hands, then the loudness of
[8:15] Speaker 1: that sound decreases with distance, actually with distance squared. So
[8:19] Speaker 1: for example, if you're standing next to an airplane, it
[8:22] Speaker 1: sounds really really loud. If you have an airplane flying overhead,
[8:26] Speaker 1: you can hear it, but it's not as loud. If
[8:29] Speaker 1: you see an airplane flying over you at like thirty
[8:31] Speaker 1: thousand feet or whatever, you can't hear it. It's too
[8:34] Speaker 1: far away. I mean, technically if you had a super microphone,
[8:37] Speaker 1: maybe you could hear it, but the sound is really
[8:39] Speaker 1: dispersed because of the distance.
[8:41] Speaker 2: Okay, got it, all right.
[8:42] Speaker 1: But we're not interested in hearing airplanes. We want to
[8:45] Speaker 1: hear about meteors, right, So what are meteors and how
[8:48] Speaker 1: do they make sound? Meteors are just rocks hitting the atmosphere. Remember,
[8:52] Speaker 1: stuff in the Solar System is moving, and the typical
[8:55] Speaker 1: orbital speed is like thirty kilometers per second. That's the
[8:58] Speaker 1: speed at which the Earth is going around the Sun.
[9:01] Speaker 1: So if you have something floating in the Solar System
[9:03] Speaker 1: or moving in the Solar System and the Earth runs
[9:06] Speaker 1: into it, or equivalently, it runs into the Earth, you
[9:09] Speaker 1: can expect it to impact at around thirty kilometers per second,
[9:13] Speaker 1: maybe more if they're heading towards each other, or a
[9:15] Speaker 1: little bit less if it's a glancing blow. But that's
[9:17] Speaker 1: the order of magnitude. And what happens when rocks hit
[9:20] Speaker 1: the atmosphere at thirty kilometers per second, right, is that
[9:25] Speaker 1: you get a collision. And people think about this in
[9:28] Speaker 1: terms of friction, but actually what's happening is that the
[9:31] Speaker 1: air in front of the meteor gets so rapidly compressed
[9:36] Speaker 1: that it turns into plasma. Just like how in the
[9:39] Speaker 1: Sun you're compressing gas and it gets hot because of
[9:42] Speaker 1: the pressure and it starts to glow. That's what's happening
[9:45] Speaker 1: in front of the asteroid. The gas in front of
[9:48] Speaker 1: it gets super duper compressed and it starts to glow.
[9:51] Speaker 1: Then that heat disintegrates the.
[9:53] Speaker 2: Asteroid that is fascinating but has no connection to why
[9:57] Speaker 2: you hear sound, is that right? That's just like an
[9:59] Speaker 2: ill stration of how fast it's going.
[10:01] Speaker 1: So that's what creates the visible signature, right, is the
[10:04] Speaker 1: glowing light. But the plasma and the disintegration of the
[10:07] Speaker 1: asteroid also creates sound, right, because it's basically an explosion, Right,
[10:13] Speaker 1: you have this like plasma being created, and just like
[10:16] Speaker 1: how you create high density, high temperature, high pressure when
[10:19] Speaker 1: you set off a bomb, and the same thing is happening,
[10:22] Speaker 1: and the scale of the effect depends entirely on the
[10:25] Speaker 1: size of the object. And so what you typically see,
[10:29] Speaker 1: like if you're looking up at night and you see
[10:31] Speaker 1: a shooting star, you're probably seeing an object that's between
[10:34] Speaker 1: a millimeter and a centimeter in size, and it streaks
[10:37] Speaker 1: across the sky, yes, and makes a visible track, and
[10:41] Speaker 1: doesn't make it to the ground. It disintegrates before it
[10:44] Speaker 1: hits the ground.
[10:45] Speaker 2: I was sure that shooting stars were like a meter
[10:49] Speaker 2: or something, and yes, they disintegrated before they hit the ground,
[10:52] Speaker 2: but like bigger than a centimeter or a millimeter, Like
[10:56] Speaker 2: the fact that you could see something from so far
[10:58] Speaker 2: away that was a centimeter bit's huge. Yeah, that's amazing.
[11:02] Speaker 2: It's not huge, it's tiny.
[11:03] Speaker 1: Yes, we should be very glad that we're not seeing
[11:06] Speaker 1: multiple meter size impactors every night, because a meter sized
[11:11] Speaker 1: impactor leaves about the energy of a nuclear bomb and
[11:15] Speaker 1: when it disintegratees that's so good.
[11:16] Speaker 2: Okay.
[11:17] Speaker 1: So, like a centimeter is a shooting star. Up to
[11:20] Speaker 1: like ten centimeter we call a fireball, and some of
[11:22] Speaker 1: those fragments even make it down to the ground to
[11:25] Speaker 1: give you like meteorites, right, those fragments of these rocks
[11:29] Speaker 1: left on the ground. If you're up to like a meter,
[11:31] Speaker 1: then you can get ground impacts, like the whole thing
[11:34] Speaker 1: can actually hit the ground, like meteor crater in Arizona.
[11:37] Speaker 1: Up to twenty meters wide was the size that the
[11:41] Speaker 1: rock that caused the event in Cheliabinsk. Basically the energy
[11:45] Speaker 1: of a nuclear bomb. If you go up to fifty meters,
[11:48] Speaker 1: then you get maybe city scale devastation. Something one hundred
[11:52] Speaker 1: meters wide can wipe out a whole region, like you know,
[11:55] Speaker 1: New England. If it's a kilometer wide, you're getting global
[11:59] Speaker 1: effects mass casualties. If it's ten kilometers wide, then you
[12:04] Speaker 1: have a mass extinction event. Something like the dinosaurs bigger
[12:08] Speaker 1: than that, and you're talking danger to the structure of
[12:11] Speaker 1: the Earth itself.
[12:12] Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not sleeping well tonight.
[12:15] Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, exactly. But fortunately the tiny ones are very
[12:20] Speaker 1: common and the big ones are very very rare. So
[12:22] Speaker 1: a millimeter across is very common. We're talking like millions
[12:26] Speaker 1: are hitting the earth every day at a millimeter or smaller,
[12:30] Speaker 1: and as it gets bigger, it gets very very rare.
[12:32] Speaker 1: But the question we're asking today is can you hear them? Right?
[12:35] Speaker 1: And so absolutely these make shockwaves, right, because we're looking
[12:39] Speaker 1: at a collision, and a collision is going to create
[12:42] Speaker 1: shockwaves in the air. The amount of energy released by
[12:45] Speaker 1: like a twenty centimeter impactor at like twenty kilometers per
[12:50] Speaker 1: second carries like tens of tons of T and T
[12:53] Speaker 1: of energy. You know, you can measure energy in terms
[12:55] Speaker 1: of like jewels or kilo calories, but those are ridiculous
[12:58] Speaker 1: when you're talking about explosion. So they have this unit
[13:01] Speaker 1: of tons of T and T, which I think is
[13:03] Speaker 1: kind of hilarious and steampunk as a unit, but it's cool,
[13:07] Speaker 1: And whether you can hear it on the ground depends
[13:10] Speaker 1: on a lot of things. It depends on like the speed,
[13:13] Speaker 1: the altitude that trajectory, and also the composition of it.
[13:17] Speaker 1: It depends on like whether it explodes high in the atmosphere,
[13:20] Speaker 1: does it survive down to the ground like a denser
[13:23] Speaker 1: iron meteor of the same size survives to lower altitudes,
[13:26] Speaker 1: which creates a stronger shockwave at the surface. So in
[13:30] Speaker 1: order to make something that you can hear on the ground,
[13:32] Speaker 1: you probably need something like between ten centimeters and a
[13:36] Speaker 1: meter what they call a fireball, that kind of thing
[13:38] Speaker 1: that will leave stuff that makes it all the way
[13:40] Speaker 1: to the ground. But here's the key thing about John's
[13:43] Speaker 1: question is that remember that sound is delayed relative to light,
[13:48] Speaker 1: So if you see the thing streaking across the sky,
[13:52] Speaker 1: then you would probably hear it much later because it's
[13:55] Speaker 1: still like tens of kilometers up in the atmosphere. It's
[13:58] Speaker 1: pretty far away.
[14:00] Speaker 2: And this is like lightning and thunder, right Like, you
[14:02] Speaker 2: exactly see the lightning, and then you count to see
[14:05] Speaker 2: how long it is till you hear the thunder to
[14:07] Speaker 2: figure out how far away that lightning strike was.
[14:10] Speaker 1: Exactly, the light and the sound are created at the
[14:12] Speaker 1: same time, but light travels much much faster than sound,
[14:16] Speaker 1: almost instantaneously across these distances, and sound travels pretty fast
[14:21] Speaker 1: but much slower than light, and so by measuring the
[14:24] Speaker 1: difference in the arrival times, you can actually tell how
[14:27] Speaker 1: far away it is, because if it's really close to you,
[14:29] Speaker 1: they arrive at the same time. So when you see
[14:31] Speaker 1: lightning and hear thunder at the same time, like uh
[14:34] Speaker 1: oh something close by, it has been zad And if
[14:37] Speaker 1: there's a big gap, it means it took a while
[14:39] Speaker 1: for the sound to get there. So same story here.
[14:42] Speaker 1: This is pretty far away. It's tens of kilometers up,
[14:45] Speaker 1: and so if you see something in the atmosphere that's
[14:48] Speaker 1: very bright, you should expect to hear it quite delayed.
[14:51] Speaker 1: We're talking like minutes later, right, So the sound and
[14:55] Speaker 1: the lights should not be synchronized. And John is asking
[14:58] Speaker 1: about hearing a fizzy, wooshy sound that's correlated with the light,
[15:04] Speaker 1: Like you're looking up at the sky and you see
[15:06] Speaker 1: a streak and at the same time you hear something. Okay,
[15:10] Speaker 1: and that sounds improbable, right, because of this whole issue
[15:13] Speaker 1: of the speed of sound and the speed of light.
[15:15] Speaker 2: Sounds like John wins.
[15:16] Speaker 1: No, But actually it turns out this can't happen and
[15:20] Speaker 1: not by sound, like breaking the laws of physics. When
[15:23] Speaker 1: this plasma is produced, it can also generate low frequency
[15:27] Speaker 1: electromagnetic waves so not visible light, way too low frequency
[15:31] Speaker 1: for us to see. But those travel also at the
[15:34] Speaker 1: speed of light, and then they can hit stuff nearby,
[15:37] Speaker 1: things like leaves or hair or glasses and induce vibrations
[15:42] Speaker 1: in them.
[15:43] Speaker 2: Oh no, John is wrong.
[15:46] Speaker 1: So these things can act like tiny speakers. So essentially
[15:50] Speaker 1: the information is transmitted at the speed of light, just
[15:53] Speaker 1: like if you're sending it along wires, and then stuff
[15:56] Speaker 1: around you acts like speakers. And so this is called
[15:59] Speaker 1: electro fl phonic sounds. It's rare and it's hard to study,
[16:04] Speaker 1: but experts now generally accept that this is a real phenomenon.
[16:07] Speaker 4: Wow.
[16:08] Speaker 1: In order to generate these kind of electrophonic sounds, you'd
[16:10] Speaker 1: need an impactor that's like probably several tens of centimeters across,
[16:15] Speaker 1: so a pretty big one. Okay, So it's rare, it's unusual,
[16:18] Speaker 1: but it's not impossible.
[16:20] Speaker 2: John, WHOA. All right, Sorry, John, that's probably not the
[16:23] Speaker 2: answer you were hoping for, but it's an interesting one.
[16:26] Speaker 2: So let's hear what John has to say.
[16:28] Speaker 1: Thanks, Daniel and Kelly.
[16:29] Speaker 3: So I'm okay with the answer, Kelly, because I learned
[16:32] Speaker 3: something I had never heard of, electrophonic sound, and it's
[16:36] Speaker 3: certainly not a phenomenon that would typically come up in
[16:39] Speaker 3: conversations with my music producer and audio engineer colleagues. We
[16:43] Speaker 3: tend to talk about things like the inverse square law
[16:46] Speaker 3: and sound propagation and the effect of things like temperature,
[16:49] Speaker 3: atmospheric pressure, and humidity.
[16:51] Speaker 1: On the speed of sound.
[16:52] Speaker 3: But you can bet that now I'll tell my advanced
[16:55] Speaker 3: live sound students about electrophonic sound. It's a treat for
[16:59] Speaker 3: this extraordinary time to get a carefully measured response from
[17:01] Speaker 3: his absolute favorite podcast.
[17:04] Speaker 5: Thanks so much, and we're back and the next question
[17:27] Speaker 5: is a very fun question from Grant.
[17:30] Speaker 6: Hello, Daniel and Kelly. I grew up in a scientist
[17:33] Speaker 6: and science communicator household, and my dad gives some popseye
[17:37] Speaker 6: interviews in the seventies on topics like animal cognition and
[17:40] Speaker 6: magnetic field sensing that brought out the weirdos. As such,
[17:46] Speaker 6: nut letters were a regular part of our family life
[17:48] Speaker 6: through the eighties, with the best of America's exuberantly amateur
[17:52] Speaker 6: theoreticians writing to us to explain why quantum magnetic esp
[17:57] Speaker 6: is being suppressed by fluoride. I've always had an nostalgia
[18:00] Speaker 6: for that age of more innocent crack pottery. Do you
[18:04] Speaker 6: have favorite crackpot theories? The ones that are just too
[18:07] Speaker 6: much fun to get upset at? Is Daniel secretly rooting
[18:10] Speaker 6: for the electric universe cranks? Or is Kelly an unacknowledged
[18:14] Speaker 6: enthusiast of deep hot biasphere a biogenic oil?
[18:18] Speaker 1: Is the next podcast?
[18:19] Speaker 6: Gas going to be gen Ray or Ludwig von Plutonium?
[18:23] Speaker 6: Yours in not taking anything too seriously ground.
[18:26] Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Okay, where do we start. Let's start
[18:29] Speaker 2: by talking about how much we love getting emails.
[18:32] Speaker 1: I do love getting emails, you know. I think that
[18:35] Speaker 1: science is by the people and for the people, and
[18:38] Speaker 1: it's especially important now to emphasize that. And I think
[18:43] Speaker 1: that academics shouldn't be walled off in universities and unavailable,
[18:48] Speaker 1: and so I think it's important that we break down
[18:52] Speaker 1: these barriers and that everybody feels like they can access
[18:55] Speaker 1: and a little bit participate in science at the very
[18:58] Speaker 1: least communicate with people who are being paid by them
[19:03] Speaker 1: through their tax dollars to do science. So I love
[19:06] Speaker 1: getting emails, not just from listeners, but from anybody out
[19:09] Speaker 1: there who's thinking about the universe and wants to, in
[19:12] Speaker 1: good faith participate in this joyful exploration of how things
[19:18] Speaker 1: work right?
[19:18] Speaker 2: Well that can I ask you a kind of killy
[19:20] Speaker 2: is grouchy question?
[19:22] Speaker 4: Uh?
[19:22] Speaker 1: So do you have another kind?
[19:26] Speaker 7: No?
[19:26] Speaker 2: So here it goes. So I've been seeing an uptick
[19:30] Speaker 2: in emails from high school students. And I love getting
[19:33] Speaker 2: emails from high school students out of the blue, but
[19:36] Speaker 2: I've been seeing an uptick in emails from students who
[19:38] Speaker 2: essentially say, I am required to write an essay on
[19:43] Speaker 2: whatever I want, and part of my requirement is I
[19:45] Speaker 2: have to interview an expert and it needs to be
[19:49] Speaker 2: a zoom call. Can I have an hour of your time?
[19:52] Speaker 2: Have you been getting those kinds of what? And what
[19:55] Speaker 2: do you think of those? Because I can I real quick.
[19:58] Speaker 2: What I think of those is that I feel like,
[20:01] Speaker 2: if you're trying to teach students how to do research,
[20:03] Speaker 2: having them learn that it's okay to reach out to
[20:06] Speaker 2: experts is good. But I don't think that the system
[20:09] Speaker 2: can handle. I don't want to call it a burden,
[20:12] Speaker 2: because again, I love talking to high school students, and
[20:14] Speaker 2: every once in a while I have a high school
[20:16] Speaker 2: student say, I read your book, I've got some questions.
[20:18] Speaker 2: Can we have a zoom call? Absolutely, I would love
[20:21] Speaker 2: to talk to you. But I get students who definitely
[20:24] Speaker 2: don't care about the topic but have to have a
[20:29] Speaker 2: thirty minute Well, you know they shouldn't read the book. Clearly, yes,
[20:34] Speaker 2: this is an assignment they have to do. There's really
[20:36] Speaker 2: no joy you can see in their eyes when you're
[20:38] Speaker 2: talking about this topic. And so, yeah, what do you
[20:41] Speaker 2: think about that being an assignment? Because I do want
[20:43] Speaker 2: people to feel like they can reach out to us.
[20:44] Speaker 2: But I also can't say yes to every invitation like
[20:48] Speaker 2: this I get because I wouldn't be able to write
[20:50] Speaker 2: my next book.
[20:54] Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you. I don't say yes to
[20:56] Speaker 1: those I offer an email exchange. I say, send me
[21:00] Speaker 1: a list of questions. I'll write back to you. Because
[21:04] Speaker 1: face to face chats take a lot of time, they're
[21:06] Speaker 1: hard to schedule, they're very inefficient, and I prefer asynchronous
[21:11] Speaker 1: stuff that I can squeeze in responses whenever I have
[21:13] Speaker 1: a moment. You know, I use email, especially with the public,
[21:17] Speaker 1: as a break. I'm working on something. It's hard, my
[21:20] Speaker 1: brain is tired. Oh, let's see what's in the inbox,
[21:22] Speaker 1: and there's always something fun in there to read, and
[21:26] Speaker 1: so I try to answer every email. And I also
[21:29] Speaker 1: get a lot of random theories. You know, here's my
[21:31] Speaker 1: theory of how physics went wrong in the beginning of
[21:34] Speaker 1: the twentieth century. And I read all of those and
[21:37] Speaker 1: you know, I know this question from Grant is in
[21:39] Speaker 1: good faith. And there are folks out there who are
[21:41] Speaker 1: crack pots, but they don't always know that there are
[21:44] Speaker 1: crack pots. You know, they're operating in good faith. They're
[21:47] Speaker 1: trying to explore the universe. They're trying to figure it out.
[21:51] Speaker 1: And as long as it's in good faith, and like,
[21:53] Speaker 1: I welcome it. And so I give everybody, you know,
[21:56] Speaker 1: fifteen to thirty minutes. I'll read your theory. I'll write
[21:59] Speaker 1: back and I'll tell you what I think and here
[22:01] Speaker 1: are the flaws and here's what you might work on.
[22:03] Speaker 1: And often people are not happy to get that feedback
[22:06] Speaker 1: because it's not always you're right and let's meet in
[22:09] Speaker 1: Stockholm to chat with the King of Sweden about it.
[22:12] Speaker 1: It's often like, oh, you didn't think of this, or
[22:14] Speaker 1: here's a concern or whatever. But I think that there's
[22:17] Speaker 1: an important role for outsiders. But I want to clarify
[22:21] Speaker 1: this question of being in good faith. You know, there
[22:24] Speaker 1: are definitely lots of people out there who want to
[22:27] Speaker 1: understand the universe and want to come up with a
[22:29] Speaker 1: theory or find the current theories of physics unsatisfactory, you know,
[22:34] Speaker 1: like I don't like that there's no local realism, or
[22:38] Speaker 1: I don't like this idea of the fabric space time.
[22:40] Speaker 1: And that's cool and it's totally valid if you go
[22:43] Speaker 1: off and then build your own theory. But there's also
[22:46] Speaker 1: a growing population with an unfortunately large platform that I
[22:50] Speaker 1: think is not operating in good faith. You know, people
[22:53] Speaker 1: who are out there and are pushing conspiracy theory, spreading
[22:57] Speaker 1: misinformation for clout, trying to convince to you that academics
[23:02] Speaker 1: are fraudsters and we're just wasting your time and tax
[23:05] Speaker 1: dollars while patting our fat wallets and everything we're doing
[23:09] Speaker 1: is nonsense, and like yeah, and then we're laughing with
[23:12] Speaker 1: fat wallets, right. But there's a lot of people out
[23:14] Speaker 1: there who are very receptive to the message that like
[23:17] Speaker 1: elites are dumb actually and or lying to you, and
[23:22] Speaker 1: here's the secret truth which you can know, and even
[23:26] Speaker 1: if those theories really make no sense and don't survive
[23:29] Speaker 1: any level of scrutiny. You know, I'm talking like Terrence
[23:33] Speaker 1: Howard's total nonsense one times one equals two level stuff.
[23:38] Speaker 1: There's a big audience for it, and a lot of
[23:40] Speaker 1: people buy it because they're primed to believe that elites
[23:45] Speaker 1: are dumb. Actually, and so that's what I mean when
[23:48] Speaker 1: I say like people not operating in good faith. Yeah,
[23:51] Speaker 1: you know folks we've talked about on the pod before,
[23:53] Speaker 1: you know, Ashton Forbes and this whole crowd of folks
[23:56] Speaker 1: who are out there just to build clout and get
[23:59] Speaker 1: your attention and your clicks and your ad dollars, not
[24:03] Speaker 1: really trying to figure out how the universe works.
[24:06] Speaker 2: My equivalent is that it seems to me like there's
[24:09] Speaker 2: more people out there these days trying to sell remedies
[24:13] Speaker 2: for parasitic infections, and in order to sell those in
[24:17] Speaker 2: the United States, where there's not a lot of parasitic infections,
[24:20] Speaker 2: you need to convince people that they're infected but they
[24:23] Speaker 2: don't realize it, and that they could be feeling better.
[24:26] Speaker 2: And the reason that they're tired isn't that you got
[24:29] Speaker 2: five kids or you know, like in kids, and plus
[24:31] Speaker 2: work is exhausting, it's because of the parasites. And so
[24:34] Speaker 2: I'm getting more and more not through the DKAU email,
[24:38] Speaker 2: but I'm getting more and more folks reaching out saying
[24:41] Speaker 2: like I found this in my body, and what do
[24:45] Speaker 2: I do? And it used to be that I would say, hey, look,
[24:49] Speaker 2: I'm really sorry. I can't. Yeah, I can't try to
[24:51] Speaker 2: diagnose based on a picture like that doesn't look like
[24:54] Speaker 2: a parasite to me. Very often it will be like,
[24:56] Speaker 2: it looks pretty clear to me that it's a piece
[24:58] Speaker 2: of thread or microp plastics or something, but it looks
[25:01] Speaker 2: nothing like any parasit I've ever seen. But on the
[25:04] Speaker 2: other hand, I don't know what their other symptoms are.
[25:06] Speaker 2: And I'm not a medical doctor, and so I always
[25:08] Speaker 2: tell them, like, you should talk to a doctor, and
[25:11] Speaker 2: maybe you should be open to the idea that it
[25:13] Speaker 2: might be helpful to talk to another kind of medical professional.
[25:16] Speaker 2: It might be helpful to talk to someone with you know,
[25:18] Speaker 2: an emphasis and mental health, which is, you know, like
[25:21] Speaker 2: the nicest way to say, like, look, we all have times.
[25:24] Speaker 2: I mean, the number of times I've thought I had
[25:25] Speaker 2: cancer almost crazy.
[25:27] Speaker 1: I diagnosed myself with toe cancer so many times.
[25:30] Speaker 2: Yes, well, and the solution for me I needed to
[25:33] Speaker 2: go on anxiety medications for a little while and talk
[25:35] Speaker 2: to a therapist. And I think for some people, their
[25:37] Speaker 2: stress manifests as maybe I'm infected by a parasite, and
[25:41] Speaker 2: that's what they focus on instead of do I have cancer?
[25:43] Speaker 2: And so anyway, it used to be that I would
[25:45] Speaker 2: tell people, I'm sorry, I'm not the right kind of
[25:46] Speaker 2: medical professional. It's not ethical for me to tell you
[25:49] Speaker 2: what I think based on a photo. You need to
[25:52] Speaker 2: talk to someone. But now the responses that are coming
[25:54] Speaker 2: back aren't okay, Well thanks for at least responding. The
[25:57] Speaker 2: responses are your community is suppressing the fact that there's
[26:03] Speaker 2: a lot more parasites. Oh no, And so now I'm
[26:06] Speaker 2: getting these conspiracy theory.
[26:08] Speaker 1: Are you in bed with big parasite killing?
[26:10] Speaker 2: I'm not even sure I understand what the argument is.
[26:13] Speaker 2: Why would I mean, the parasitologists are always complaining there's
[26:16] Speaker 2: not enough jobs for us. We should be trying to, like,
[26:20] Speaker 2: you know, get the word out that there's everyone's affected
[26:22] Speaker 2: by parasites. You need to hire us to solve all
[26:24] Speaker 2: these problems. But like, anyway, I'm getting a lot more
[26:26] Speaker 2: people who are aggressively responding to me saying that I
[26:29] Speaker 2: am part of a movement to cover this stuff up.
[26:32] Speaker 2: Those are my least favorite emails.
[26:33] Speaker 1: Those conspiracy theories never make any sense to me, and
[26:37] Speaker 1: they strike me as odd because they don't survive, you know,
[26:40] Speaker 1: even just like meeting one scientist, like the ones where
[26:43] Speaker 1: they tell you physicists are suppressing the truth. They don't
[26:47] Speaker 1: want to change the textbooks, or like archaeologists don't want
[26:52] Speaker 1: to rewrite the narrative, Like have you met an archaeologist,
[26:56] Speaker 1: Have you met a scientist? You can't get them to
[26:58] Speaker 1: shut up about their new ideas how everybody's wrong and
[27:01] Speaker 1: I have a theory or whatever, and like that's the dream,
[27:04] Speaker 1: that's what everybody's trying to do. I want to disprove
[27:08] Speaker 1: the standard model more than anything else. My personal scientific
[27:11] Speaker 1: fantasy is to find something that makes no sense and
[27:14] Speaker 1: requires us to throw everything away and start over. And
[27:19] Speaker 1: that's not unique, Like everybody feels that way. So there's
[27:22] Speaker 1: something pervasive and sinister about these conspiracy theories because they
[27:26] Speaker 1: mean that the people who are hearing them have no
[27:28] Speaker 1: contact with scientists. And that's one reason why I want
[27:31] Speaker 1: to be available. I want to be like, hey, look,
[27:33] Speaker 1: I'm just a person being curious about the world like
[27:35] Speaker 1: you are.
[27:36] Speaker 2: Yep, absolutely same.
[27:37] Speaker 1: I've seen an uptake in a new kind of communication
[27:39] Speaker 1: which isn't too surprising, which is AI assisted theories of everything.
[27:44] Speaker 1: It used to be people would write to me and say,
[27:45] Speaker 1: I have this idea, this intuition, but I don't know
[27:48] Speaker 1: how to express it with the math. Can you help me?
[27:51] Speaker 1: And now instead it's I have this idea, I feed
[27:54] Speaker 1: it into Claude. Here's what Claude wrote. I don't understand it.
[27:58] Speaker 1: Can you read it?
[28:00] Speaker 2: Okay?
[28:00] Speaker 1: And that's not something I'm interested in doing. I'm interested
[28:03] Speaker 1: in talking to people about their good faith ideas. I'm
[28:06] Speaker 1: not so excited about talking to people's AIS about the
[28:10] Speaker 1: AI's expression, because if people produce something with AI they
[28:14] Speaker 1: can't read and they don't understand, then they can't tell
[28:17] Speaker 1: whether it's nonsense. And nine to nine percent of the
[28:19] Speaker 1: time it is. It's shiny nonsense that the AI produced
[28:22] Speaker 1: to satisfy the user and makes no sense, and so
[28:26] Speaker 1: it's unfortunate. But I'm not interested in reading other people's
[28:29] Speaker 1: AI output.
[28:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm not getting I don't get a lot
[28:33] Speaker 2: of AI output okay, thankfully. But I have friends who
[28:37] Speaker 2: have gotten literal bags of feces sent to them in
[28:40] Speaker 2: the mail, which, wow, maybe is worse.
[28:43] Speaker 1: I think that's definitely worse. Yeah, I can just hit
[28:46] Speaker 1: delete and it's cleaned up, so.
[28:47] Speaker 2: Right right, I know this mess took a little bit
[28:49] Speaker 2: more cleaning up afterwards, and it was, you know, came
[28:51] Speaker 2: with a note like I think I have parasites? Can
[28:53] Speaker 2: you take a look? It was like, oh, absolutely not, friends,
[28:57] Speaker 2: absolutely not.
[28:58] Speaker 1: So back to Grant's question, what are the favorite categories
[29:01] Speaker 1: of theories? So I happen to be spending this week
[29:04] Speaker 1: at the Aspen Center for Physics and beautiful Colorado. I
[29:07] Speaker 1: come here every summer. It's wonderful. It's me and a
[29:09] Speaker 1: bunch of theorists and we all talk about crazy ideas
[29:12] Speaker 1: and whatever. And so I did a little informal survey
[29:15] Speaker 1: and I asked folks like, hey, what kind of emails
[29:17] Speaker 1: do you get? What theories do people tell you? What
[29:19] Speaker 1: are your favorites? And unfortunately, most of them said, I
[29:23] Speaker 1: don't read them. I just delete them. They're all the same. Yeah,
[29:28] Speaker 1: and I understand that, like a lot of academics, you know,
[29:31] Speaker 1: are overwhelmed by email and they don't respond to emails
[29:35] Speaker 1: from colleagues. I have lots of colleagues, so I will
[29:37] Speaker 1: email and I never hear back from and what's wrong
[29:40] Speaker 1: with you? But if they can't even respond to emails
[29:43] Speaker 1: from like other physicists they're working with actively, then you know,
[29:47] Speaker 1: how could they respond to the public. So I think
[29:49] Speaker 1: there's not a broad appetite among physicists for these theories.
[29:53] Speaker 1: And it's true, we get a lot that are very similar.
[29:55] Speaker 1: You know, physics took a wrong turn in the beginning
[29:57] Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, Einstein was wrong, this kind of stuff.
[30:01] Speaker 1: So there's a commonality to them and definitely patterns, and
[30:04] Speaker 1: so I think a lot of physicists just don't read them.
[30:07] Speaker 2: To be fair to your colleagues, So like I we
[30:11] Speaker 2: you and I both got an email once that was
[30:13] Speaker 2: really long. It connect and it contained a long PDF,
[30:16] Speaker 2: and I looked at it and I immediately was like,
[30:19] Speaker 2: this would take me hours. I can't I don't have hours.
[30:22] Speaker 2: I don't know what to do. And I wrote to
[30:24] Speaker 2: you and I was like, I want to respond, but
[30:27] Speaker 2: I don't have time. What do we do? And you
[30:29] Speaker 2: had a really good response, which was what you give
[30:33] Speaker 2: everything fifteen Any email you get gets fifteen minutes, and
[30:36] Speaker 2: you give your initial response based on fifteen minutes. And
[30:39] Speaker 2: I thought that was really nice because, like, you know,
[30:42] Speaker 2: fifteen minutes is actually still a lot of time from
[30:44] Speaker 2: someone who gets a lot of emails. And you then I,
[30:47] Speaker 2: you know, we share the same email box, and so
[30:49] Speaker 2: I saw what your response was and you gave a
[30:51] Speaker 2: like thoughtful response based on those fifteen minutes, and I
[30:53] Speaker 2: thought that was really nice. And so I don't I
[30:55] Speaker 2: wonder if maybe if everybody had like a policy where it's, like,
[30:59] Speaker 2: you know, on month, I'm willing to spend an hour
[31:02] Speaker 2: and however many emails are in the box I'll get to,
[31:05] Speaker 2: you know, I'll give each of them fifteen minutes, and
[31:07] Speaker 2: some might have to wait till the next month, or
[31:09] Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, yeah, some way to respond I
[31:11] Speaker 2: think would be nice if you can.
[31:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I hope that people prefer an imperfect
[31:17] Speaker 1: response to no response, because those are the options, right,
[31:21] Speaker 1: because I can't spend a week on every single one
[31:24] Speaker 1: coming up with alternatives and etc. But you know, that's
[31:27] Speaker 1: the whole context. And Grant's question was really like, which
[31:30] Speaker 1: are your favorites and I'll say that, you know, I
[31:33] Speaker 1: like any sincere, good faith attempt to understand the universe.
[31:37] Speaker 1: If it came from your brain and it's really your
[31:41] Speaker 1: way of making sense of the cosmos and our experience
[31:44] Speaker 1: in it, I love to hear it. My favorites are
[31:47] Speaker 1: geometric ones, like I really like geometry. I like visual explanations.
[31:53] Speaker 1: I like things that click together. I'm the kind of
[31:56] Speaker 1: person if you like, remember back when you're learning algebra
[31:58] Speaker 1: and you're like solving a system of equations. I don't
[32:01] Speaker 1: like thinking about it as equations on the page. I
[32:03] Speaker 1: like thinking about it geometrically, because two linear equations are
[32:07] Speaker 1: the same as two lines, and the solution is where
[32:09] Speaker 1: they cross, And to me, that solution is much more
[32:12] Speaker 1: appealing than like substitution and you know, manipulating symbols on
[32:16] Speaker 1: the page. So I like theories of everything that come
[32:19] Speaker 1: from geometry. Like people who think there's some hidden underneath
[32:23] Speaker 1: geometry and out of that comes the electron and all
[32:27] Speaker 1: the quarks and whatever, and I think that's probably true. Cool,
[32:29] Speaker 1: you know, I think there is something deep down out
[32:32] Speaker 1: of which comes all the complexity we see. So that's
[32:35] Speaker 1: my favorite category.
[32:36] Speaker 2: I don't think I have a favorite category like I love.
[32:40] Speaker 2: I get a little bit intimidated sometimes when I get
[32:43] Speaker 2: asked a question, for example, about how the immune system works,
[32:47] Speaker 2: and if I get a specific medical question, I have
[32:51] Speaker 2: to pass on that I'm willing to give like broad
[32:53] Speaker 2: strokes about like yeah, this is what this parasite tends
[32:56] Speaker 2: to do. But I can't get into super specifics because
[32:59] Speaker 2: I've just that does doesn't seem ethical to me. But
[33:02] Speaker 2: I don't know. In general, anytime anyone is like more
[33:05] Speaker 2: about banana slugs or more, you know, just I get
[33:09] Speaker 2: a lot of like, here's this natural thing I saw
[33:12] Speaker 2: or heard about. I want to know more about it,
[33:15] Speaker 2: but I don't really know where to go. That is
[33:16] Speaker 2: like sort of trusted where I can be sure that
[33:18] Speaker 2: I'm getting good information, So can you tell me about it?
[33:22] Speaker 2: And I don't know. I love. I really appreciate the trust,
[33:27] Speaker 2: and I really appreciate the opportunity to get to dig
[33:29] Speaker 2: into into more natural stuff because I love rating.
[33:32] Speaker 1: About it well. I also consulted our informal third co
[33:36] Speaker 1: host Katrina Nice, and I asked her about it, and
[33:39] Speaker 1: she said she really loves when listeners have like changed
[33:42] Speaker 1: their diet. For example, yesterday we got an email from
[33:45] Speaker 1: somebody who said that because the podcast, they're now a
[33:48] Speaker 1: big fan of beans and they even joined the Rancho
[33:51] Speaker 1: Gordo Being Club because of the podcast. And I'm thinking,
[33:55] Speaker 1: all right, may the fiber be with you.
[33:56] Speaker 2: Oh no, that's do you really say that. I'm writing
[34:02] Speaker 2: down the name of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club because
[34:04] Speaker 2: I've been meaning to ask you guys the name of
[34:05] Speaker 2: that so I can join it too. But anyway, absolutely yes.
[34:09] Speaker 1: So we love emails from listeners. We love thoughts from listeners.
[34:12] Speaker 1: We love theories from listeners. Please write to us. We
[34:15] Speaker 1: will write you back. We will, all right, Grant, I
[34:18] Speaker 1: hope that answered your question.
[34:19] Speaker 6: Thanks to that question, Grant, thank you, Daniel and Kelly.
[34:23] Speaker 8: That answer took an unexpected turn that really hit a
[34:25] Speaker 8: nerve for me.
[34:26] Speaker 6: Because thirty five years ago I was.
[34:28] Speaker 8: One of those kids emailing a prominent scientist with a
[34:32] Speaker 8: question for a high school research paper. I got a
[34:35] Speaker 8: cruel blowoff from the secretary that's still smarts, and I
[34:39] Speaker 8: ended up choosing engineering over physics shortly after. Thank you
[34:43] Speaker 8: for your heartfelt and frankly touching answers, and keep up
[34:47] Speaker 8: the good work, all right.
[35:09] Speaker 2: Next up, we've got a question from the United Kingdom.
[35:11] Speaker 2: Let's hear what Liam has to say.
[35:14] Speaker 7: Hi, Daniel and Kelly. My name is Liam and I'm
[35:16] Speaker 7: a research technician from the UK. My work takes me
[35:19] Speaker 7: to a lot of old growth forests and ancient woodlands,
[35:23] Speaker 7: and being around the old trees all the time kind
[35:26] Speaker 7: of got me thinking how old can something get? How
[35:31] Speaker 7: old can the trees get? How old could the carbon
[35:33] Speaker 7: the trees get? How old can the aptoms in the
[35:36] Speaker 7: trees get? What is the oldest something can be? Looking
[35:40] Speaker 7: forward to answer?
[35:41] Speaker 1: Wow, doesn't it sound like Liam has like the best job.
[35:44] Speaker 2: I was just thinking that, like if I could, you know,
[35:47] Speaker 2: roll back the tape of my life and start again.
[35:50] Speaker 2: Working in old growth forests and ancient woodlands is like
[35:54] Speaker 2: top tier awesomeness.
[35:56] Speaker 1: Being around old trees all the time. Gosh, it just
[35:59] Speaker 1: puts everything in perspective. It makes me wonder, like what
[36:02] Speaker 1: is this tree scene? You know, like my life is
[36:05] Speaker 1: a blink. I was just in the redwood forests of
[36:09] Speaker 1: California and like saw the sequoias and like wow, it
[36:12] Speaker 1: just makes all your problems seemingly minor.
[36:15] Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, that's right. You should live in a
[36:18] Speaker 2: Sequoia Forest and then be constantly blissed out. That would
[36:21] Speaker 2: be great.
[36:23] Speaker 1: Maybe, So Liam is asking about how old these trees
[36:26] Speaker 1: can get, and how old the stuff in them can get,
[36:28] Speaker 1: and how old is everything? Anyway, wonderful question. And so
[36:32] Speaker 1: I remember we have an episode from last year about
[36:35] Speaker 1: old trees, was from May twenty twenty five, and Kelly
[36:38] Speaker 1: did a great job researching it and of course acknowledging
[36:41] Speaker 1: that the best trees and the oldest trees are in California.
[36:45] Speaker 2: Goodness, I'm not sure I said that there were some competitors.
[36:49] Speaker 2: I don't remember exactly, but you're right. The Bristol Cone
[36:51] Speaker 2: pines are pretty old.
[36:53] Speaker 1: Yes, they're amazing. They're like almost five thousand years old.
[36:57] Speaker 1: It's really incredible. Though at risk of toppling California. I
[37:02] Speaker 1: will say that there is a contentious competitor, right, not
[37:07] Speaker 1: an individual tree, but there's this Pando network you've probably
[37:10] Speaker 1: heard of. These are forty seven thousand aspen trees in
[37:14] Speaker 1: Utah that are connected by a single root system and
[37:18] Speaker 1: considered by some ecologists to be a single organism. And
[37:22] Speaker 1: I think they have like a subtle genetic relationship. Do
[37:25] Speaker 1: you know something about this?
[37:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it always felt a little bit like cheating
[37:28] Speaker 2: to me. Yeah, because like, you know, the initial tree
[37:32] Speaker 2: could have long since died, but it spread out and
[37:34] Speaker 2: produced other trees that share the same root network. But
[37:37] Speaker 2: you know, trees have a totally different way of living
[37:40] Speaker 2: than humans do. That totally blows my mind. So maybe
[37:42] Speaker 2: this works for trees. But yes, I do know, And
[37:46] Speaker 2: I've seen some patches of aspens, and holy cow, there
[37:50] Speaker 2: are fewer more beautiful things on this planet than looking
[37:53] Speaker 2: yes at a big patch of aspens, especially when they're
[37:55] Speaker 2: changing colors.
[37:56] Speaker 1: And I'm like in Aspen this week, I'm like looking
[37:58] Speaker 1: out my window right now, I see the gorgeous so lucky,
[38:01] Speaker 1: and I love the idea that this community of trees
[38:05] Speaker 1: is the single biggest organism on the planet. That's amazing
[38:09] Speaker 1: as a name, right, they call it Pando, and they
[38:11] Speaker 1: think that it's fourteen to sixteen thousand years old. Why, right, So, like,
[38:15] Speaker 1: what has Pando seen?
[38:17] Speaker 2: I thought that was a huge patch of fungus under
[38:19] Speaker 2: Oregon or something that we thought was the biggest organism
[38:22] Speaker 2: on the planet.
[38:23] Speaker 1: All right, I think we're going to have to do
[38:24] Speaker 1: a whole episode on what's the biggest organism on the
[38:27] Speaker 1: planet or something a ranking.
[38:29] Speaker 2: And I think we should also answer the question what
[38:31] Speaker 2: counts as an organism? Like does the you know, forty
[38:35] Speaker 2: seven thousand trees that make up the aspen stand count
[38:37] Speaker 2: as one individual? Is that fair?
[38:39] Speaker 1: Right?
[38:39] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[38:40] Speaker 1: Yes, exactly? Okay, And if we could connect humans by
[38:43] Speaker 1: root systems, would we all be one? No?
[38:45] Speaker 2: Thanks, I'm going on record. Thanks, right.
[38:50] Speaker 1: So, these are some examples of really old trees and
[38:52] Speaker 1: more generally, as we talked about in that episode, there's
[38:55] Speaker 1: like twenty five species of trees that can live more
[38:57] Speaker 1: than a thousand years. Also, lots of trees that don't
[39:01] Speaker 1: live very long, like dogwoods live you know, twenty thirty
[39:04] Speaker 1: forty years. And the science is still out on this.
[39:07] Speaker 1: You know, why do some trees live really long and
[39:09] Speaker 1: some don't? How is it an evolutionary benefit? Check out
[39:13] Speaker 1: that whole episode for a deep dive by Kelly as
[39:16] Speaker 1: usual on the age of trees.
[39:18] Speaker 2: That was so fun to research.
[39:19] Speaker 1: Trees are fun to be around and think about, to
[39:22] Speaker 1: sit under.
[39:23] Speaker 2: And yes, so how old are carbon molecules?
[39:27] Speaker 1: Yeah? So, one of the most amazing thing about trees
[39:30] Speaker 1: is that they build themselves out of air.
[39:33] Speaker 2: That's crazy, Yeah, right, like.
[39:34] Speaker 1: Think about how you plant a seed in the ground
[39:37] Speaker 1: and a tree grows out of it, and you might
[39:38] Speaker 1: think to yourself, well, where does the stuff to make
[39:41] Speaker 1: the tree come from? And your first instinct might be
[39:44] Speaker 1: the ground. It's like pulling stuff out of the ground
[39:47] Speaker 1: and assembling it. But no, it is pulling carbon out
[39:50] Speaker 1: of the air. Trees literally are biological machines to build
[39:55] Speaker 1: themselves out of air. It bloots me.
[39:58] Speaker 2: It's crazy. Yeah, yep.
[40:00] Speaker 1: We have a palm tree that we planted fifteen years ago.
[40:04] Speaker 1: One time, we were going to go to cern for
[40:06] Speaker 1: like nine months and we had this potted plant that
[40:08] Speaker 1: we got from Akia, just like a little potted palm tree,
[40:11] Speaker 1: and we're like, oh, this is going to die. Let's
[40:12] Speaker 1: just put it outside. And we put it in a
[40:14] Speaker 1: corner of our yard and then we just left it
[40:16] Speaker 1: there and now it is taller than our house.
[40:19] Speaker 2: Wow.
[40:20] Speaker 1: And I look at the things sometimes I'm like, that's
[40:22] Speaker 1: just air. It's just air. It's unbelievable anyway. So the
[40:27] Speaker 1: point is to answer Liam's question, like, trees have carbon
[40:31] Speaker 1: in them, and this carbon is in several forms, and
[40:33] Speaker 1: there's a very complex carbon cycle on Earth where you
[40:37] Speaker 1: have carbon in the atmosphere and then trees can take
[40:41] Speaker 1: that carbon in right to build themselves up. And trees
[40:43] Speaker 1: are about fifty percent carbon, often stored in cellulose, but
[40:47] Speaker 1: then they die and then those trees return that carbon
[40:50] Speaker 1: to the soil and it can get washed out into
[40:53] Speaker 1: the oceans, where the carbon is mostly in the form
[40:55] Speaker 1: of like eight CO three and CO three, and sometimes
[41:00] Speaker 1: organisms can take that carbon in and make calcium carbonate,
[41:04] Speaker 1: and if enough of that builds up, then you can
[41:06] Speaker 1: get like limestone. So sometimes this carbon cycle can take
[41:09] Speaker 1: like ten or one hundred million years before the limestone
[41:14] Speaker 1: on the bottom of the ocean gets like subducted by
[41:17] Speaker 1: tectonic activity back into magma, melted, and then like burped
[41:22] Speaker 1: up back into the atmosphere by volcanoes. It's an incredible cycle.
[41:26] Speaker 2: And I'll mention that our plant friend Manuel Lerdau wants
[41:30] Speaker 2: to come back on the show to talk about carbon
[41:32] Speaker 2: cycle and stuff. That's a lot of what he works on.
[41:34] Speaker 2: So there'll be a lot more about this coming soon.
[41:37] Speaker 2: And you know, I have to throw space in there
[41:39] Speaker 2: whenever I can. Well, you know, one of my favorite
[41:42] Speaker 2: examples for why it would be hard to live on
[41:44] Speaker 2: the moon is that the moon doesn't even have a
[41:46] Speaker 2: lot of carbon. Yeah, and so it's like, how are
[41:48] Speaker 2: you going to imagine growing things when you just don't
[41:51] Speaker 2: even have carbon to start with. It's just so important. Okay,
[41:54] Speaker 2: anyway back to trees.
[41:56] Speaker 1: And so these cycles can be short, right, Like something
[41:59] Speaker 1: can and die and then decompose and then its carbon
[42:02] Speaker 1: is back in the atmosphere. Or if like a forest
[42:04] Speaker 1: fire comes through and burns the trees, the carbon is
[42:07] Speaker 1: released back from the atmosphere. So carbon can go into
[42:10] Speaker 1: trees and back into the atmosphere in years, or it
[42:14] Speaker 1: could be like two hundred million years, you know. And
[42:17] Speaker 1: a single bit of carbon can be like a hunk
[42:19] Speaker 1: of coal for a long long time before it returns
[42:22] Speaker 1: to the atmosphere. So individual carbon molecule that now we're
[42:26] Speaker 1: talking about can be in one form for a long
[42:29] Speaker 1: time or a short time. This fascinating, many many loops,
[42:32] Speaker 1: and I'm really looking forward to that episode digging into
[42:34] Speaker 1: the carbon cycle.
[42:36] Speaker 2: But so is this are we really answering Liam's question,
[42:39] Speaker 2: because like it does it matter where the carbon has been?
[42:42] Speaker 2: Like I guess he wants to know when did that
[42:44] Speaker 2: carbon start?
[42:46] Speaker 1: Yes, okay, right, so well I was thinking We talked
[42:48] Speaker 1: about the trees, and we talk about the molecules, and
[42:50] Speaker 1: now let's take into the atoms, because you're right, if
[42:52] Speaker 1: it changes from CO two to calcium carbonate or whatever,
[42:55] Speaker 1: it's the same carbon, right, Is it the same carbon?
[42:57] Speaker 1: And the answer is yes, that the out of are
[43:00] Speaker 1: not changing. Chemistry is mostly clicking together things but not
[43:04] Speaker 1: changing their elements. So the carbon and the oxygen, the nitrogen,
[43:08] Speaker 1: all that stuff is just being rearranged. And that stuff
[43:12] Speaker 1: is very very old. It's all older than the Earth, right,
[43:16] Speaker 1: because anything that's here on Earth could not have been
[43:19] Speaker 1: made on Earth. You cannot make carbon or oxygen or
[43:23] Speaker 1: nitrogen on Earth. It requires fusion at the heart of stars.
[43:27] Speaker 1: So remember that the universe began and we mostly had
[43:31] Speaker 1: hydrogen and then a little bit of helium. So the
[43:34] Speaker 1: universe begins almost entirely hydrogen. And then to make this
[43:37] Speaker 1: heavier stuff carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, you need fusion at the
[43:40] Speaker 1: heart of stars, and we have it here on Earth
[43:44] Speaker 1: because it was fused at the heart of some earlier
[43:47] Speaker 1: star which then exploded and spread its ashes through space
[43:51] Speaker 1: and that became part of the gas cloud which formed
[43:54] Speaker 1: our Solar system. And any carbon atom that's in you
[43:58] Speaker 1: or in a tree, created in that other star and
[44:02] Speaker 1: survived that explosion and floated through space and survived the
[44:06] Speaker 1: formation of the Earth. Because none of these processes are
[44:09] Speaker 1: powerful enough to break up carbon, so it's been around
[44:13] Speaker 1: for billions of years.
[44:14] Speaker 2: We are all star stuff.
[44:16] Speaker 1: We are star stuff. Actually we're mostly Big Bang stuff, right,
[44:21] Speaker 1: because the hydrogen that we're made out of is not
[44:24] Speaker 1: star stuff. It was made during the Big Bang. And
[44:27] Speaker 1: so like, if you get into the protons, right, all
[44:30] Speaker 1: these elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen are made of a bunch
[44:33] Speaker 1: of protons stuck together from the heart of stars. But
[44:36] Speaker 1: where do those protons come from? Those all come from
[44:39] Speaker 1: the Big Bang? Right, So as the universe is cooling
[44:42] Speaker 1: we're talking thirteen point eight billion years ago, then quarks
[44:47] Speaker 1: and gluons come together and cool and instead of being
[44:51] Speaker 1: a big soup, they fall together into mostly protons. And
[44:55] Speaker 1: protons are stable protons we think will live forever unless
[44:59] Speaker 1: you like mash them together at the large age on
[45:01] Speaker 1: collider or actually impact the Earth like a super tiny
[45:05] Speaker 1: little meteor, then they will live forever. Like you have
[45:08] Speaker 1: a proton just sitting in space, come back in a
[45:11] Speaker 1: hundred trillion years, we think you'll still have a proton.
[45:14] Speaker 1: We don't know because we've only been able to measure
[45:16] Speaker 1: protons and look for them decaying for you know, a
[45:19] Speaker 1: little while. But best measurements are that protons have a
[45:23] Speaker 1: longer lifetime than the current age of the universe.
[45:26] Speaker 2: Okay, first, I think we're all just bang stuff. Doesn't
[45:30] Speaker 2: have the same doesn't have the same flow as we're
[45:33] Speaker 2: all just star stuff. But I see your point, and
[45:34] Speaker 2: I'm glad you corrected me. But so when you are
[45:38] Speaker 2: working at the LHC and you're destroying protons that otherwise
[45:42] Speaker 2: would have lived forever, do you feel bad?
[45:48] Speaker 1: Well? Is it a proton genocide? I don't think protons
[45:51] Speaker 1: have rights. No, so I don't think they have emotions.
[45:54] Speaker 1: If they did, and they you know, if I was
[45:56] Speaker 1: a pan psychic somebody who believed that like consciousness is
[45:59] Speaker 1: inherent in the universe, and the electrons have a little
[46:02] Speaker 1: bit of consciousness, then yes, I would feel bad. And
[46:05] Speaker 1: now I have to feel very, very bad because we're
[46:07] Speaker 1: doing it all the time, right, Like every twenty four
[46:10] Speaker 1: nanoseconds we smash together like ten to the twelve protons.
[46:14] Speaker 1: So if I'm bad, I'm extremely bad.
[46:17] Speaker 2: It would be a lot to weigh on your conscience.
[46:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yeah, the protons are definitely not voting me
[46:23] Speaker 1: their favorite person, so, you know, to answer Liam's question,
[46:27] Speaker 1: trees are thousands of years old. The carbon molecules that
[46:32] Speaker 1: are in them have probably been in that form for
[46:36] Speaker 1: maybe longer, you know, up to millions of years old.
[46:40] Speaker 1: The carbon atoms that are in those carbon molecules are
[46:43] Speaker 1: definitely billions of years old. And the end everything is
[46:47] Speaker 1: made out of protons which have been around since the
[46:50] Speaker 1: universe was very very young. It's all really really old stuff.
[46:54] Speaker 1: We're talking about the very beginning of time.
[46:57] Speaker 2: So even when you're not here anymore, the bits that
[47:00] Speaker 2: we're a part of you will go on living.
[47:05] Speaker 1: No, they won't be in such a charming form again.
[47:07] Speaker 2: Yes, you will have always been their best configuration. However,
[47:12] Speaker 2: they'll go on to do other things, all right, Liam,
[47:14] Speaker 2: what do you think?
[47:16] Speaker 4: Hi, guys, thanks for answering my question. Well, it's not
[47:18] Speaker 4: too surprising that the molecules and particles in trees are
[47:23] Speaker 4: probably going to be around from much longer. It's pretty
[47:25] Speaker 4: cool to think about all the combinations and configurations they're
[47:29] Speaker 4: going to be in past the Earth cell by day
[47:31] Speaker 4: and beyond. I'm sad you think it's the best job
[47:34] Speaker 4: in the world.
[47:34] Speaker 1: It really is the.
[47:35] Speaker 2: Best job in the world.
[47:36] Speaker 4: I've just moved on to hydrography though, so less trees,
[47:40] Speaker 4: more water, but should still be quite exciting.
[47:43] Speaker 1: Thanks for answer my question.
[47:44] Speaker 4: Also, I'm going to start a society for the Protection
[47:48] Speaker 4: of protons. Anyone is free to join, especially you, Daniel. Okay,
[47:52] Speaker 4: thanks guys.
[47:53] Speaker 1: All right, thank you very much everybody for sharing your
[47:56] Speaker 1: curiosity with us. We really do love hearing from you.
[47:58] Speaker 1: We love answering your questions. We mean it. Write to us.
[48:01] Speaker 1: We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts, share
[48:04] Speaker 1: your ideas, share your curiosity. You'll hear back from us.
[48:07] Speaker 2: Yes, Daniel writes back in about thirty seconds. It takes
[48:10] Speaker 2: me about a week. Write to us at questions at
[48:12] Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly dot org. Or you can share your
[48:15] Speaker 2: questions with our amazing discord community by going to Daniel
[48:19] Speaker 2: and Kelly dot org and finding the link to our
[48:21] Speaker 2: Discord channel.
[48:22] Speaker 1: Thanks very much everyone, Thanks everybody for listening. Please go
[48:31] Speaker 1: and do us a favor and rate the show on
[48:34] Speaker 1: whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us.
[48:37] Speaker 2: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing
[48:41] Speaker 2: Matt Kesselman.
[48:42] Speaker 1: He really is a wizard. You can also find us
[48:46] Speaker 1: online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and x D and K Universe.
[48:51] Speaker 1: Come engage with us.
[48:52] Speaker 2: You can email us at questions at Danielankelly dot org.
[48:56] Speaker 2: We really do want to hear from you, and you.
[48:58] Speaker 1: Can find our website www dot danieland Kelly dot org,
[49:02] Speaker 1: where you'll also find an invitation to join our discord
[49:05] Speaker 1: where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.
[49:09] Speaker 2: And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is
[49:13] Speaker 2: an iHeart podcast. Thanks for joining us.

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