1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,115 The simple questions are the hardest ones to answer. 2 00:00:03,115 --> 00:00:04,961 What is a thing? 3 00:00:04,961 --> 00:00:06,788 Why do things happen? 4 00:00:06,788 --> 00:00:09,519 And why do they happen the way they do? 5 00:00:09,519 --> 00:00:11,971 Let’s try to approach this step-by-step. 6 00:00:11,971 --> 00:00:13,828 What are you made of? 7 00:00:13,828 --> 00:00:16,503 You are matter which is made of molecules 8 00:00:16,503 --> 00:00:20,457 which are made of atoms and those are made of elementary particles. 9 00:00:20,457 --> 00:00:24,514 But if elementary particles are the smallest things that exist, 10 00:00:24,514 --> 00:00:35,075 what are they made of? 11 00:00:35,075 --> 00:00:40,660 To answer a simple question, let’s start simply - let’s wipe the universe clean. 12 00:00:40,660 --> 00:00:45,409 Away with matter ,antimatter, radiation, particles… anything. 13 00:00:45,409 --> 00:00:49,297 Now let’s take a closer look at absolutely nothing. 14 00:00:49,297 --> 00:00:51,232 What is empty space? 15 00:00:51,232 --> 00:00:53,259 Is it what we call a vacuum? 16 00:00:53,259 --> 00:00:56,179 There are no atoms, no matter, nothing. 17 00:00:56,179 --> 00:00:58,697 Is it really all that empty? 18 00:00:58,697 --> 00:01:02,182 Nothing gives us the building blocks for everything. 19 00:01:02,182 --> 00:01:06,168 In a sense, empty space is a lot like a vast calm ocean. 20 00:01:06,168 --> 00:01:09,258 While the water is very still when nothing is happening, 21 00:01:09,258 --> 00:01:12,349 a stiff breeze create some serious waves. 22 00:01:12,349 --> 00:01:14,865 Our universe works a lot like this. 23 00:01:14,865 --> 00:01:16,724 There are these "oceans" everywhere - 24 00:01:16,724 --> 00:01:18,881 Physicists call them “fields”. 25 00:01:18,881 --> 00:01:21,102 This might be strange and new. 26 00:01:21,102 --> 00:01:23,331 But think about radiation for example. 27 00:01:23,331 --> 00:01:26,746 By exciting what’s known as the electromagnetic field 28 00:01:26,746 --> 00:01:30,475 a little kink is created which is the particle we called the photon 29 00:01:30,475 --> 00:01:32,293 The particle that carries radiaton we perceive it as light 30 00:01:33,850 --> 00:01:36,165 This isn’t unique to light. 31 00:01:36,165 --> 00:01:36,415 Every particle in the universe is made this way. 32 00:01:38,906 --> 00:01:43,413 There are fields for every particle of matter all with their own rules. 33 00:01:43,413 --> 00:01:45,980 For example, along with the electromagnetic fields, 34 00:01:45,980 --> 00:01:48,722 there is an electron field everywhere in the universe 35 00:01:48,722 --> 00:01:51,688 and little kinks in that field are electrons 36 00:01:51,688 --> 00:01:55,934 Altogether, the fields of our universe can produce 17 particles 37 00:01:55,934 --> 00:01:58,506 which can be divided into three categories - 38 00:01:58,506 --> 00:02:02,161 The leptons, and the quarks and the bosons. 39 00:02:02,161 --> 00:02:07,257 Leptons consists of the electron as well as its cousins muon and tau particles. 40 00:02:07,257 --> 00:02:09,712 Each has an associated neutrino. 41 00:02:09,712 --> 00:02:11,315 Then, there are quarks. 42 00:02:11,315 --> 00:02:14,408 The quarks are the nuclear family of particles. 43 00:02:14,408 --> 00:02:17,169 They’re always found bound together in groups and pairs, 44 00:02:17,169 --> 00:02:20,972 and makeup protons and neutrons which make up the nuclei of atoms 45 00:02:20,972 --> 00:02:24,548 Together, electrons and quarks are the matter particles. 46 00:02:24,548 --> 00:02:26,313 They make up all the things you see. 47 00:02:26,313 --> 00:02:27,786 The air you breathe, 48 00:02:27,786 --> 00:02:29,046 the sun that warms you, 49 00:02:29,046 --> 00:02:33,000 the computer you’re using right now to distract yourself from the stuff you should be doing. 50 00:02:33,000 --> 00:02:35,034 But things don’t just exist, 51 00:02:35,034 --> 00:02:36,419 they also do stuff. 52 00:02:36,620 --> 00:02:39,439 In some philosophical sense, the properties of a thing 53 00:02:39,439 --> 00:02:42,875 are just as much a part of it as existence itself. 54 00:02:42,875 --> 00:02:46,129 This is where the bosons and the fields that make them come into play. 55 00:02:46,129 --> 00:02:49,534 While the quarks and leptons are made by matter fields, 56 00:02:49,534 --> 00:02:52,159 the bosons are made by force fields. 57 00:02:52,159 --> 00:02:55,261 We call a rule of the universe a force, 58 00:02:55,261 --> 00:02:58,877 and so far four fundamental forces have been discovered - 59 00:02:58,877 --> 00:03:03,246 Electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. 60 00:03:03,246 --> 00:03:05,721 These forces are the rule book of a game 61 00:03:05,721 --> 00:03:07,329 where the pieces are particles, 62 00:03:07,329 --> 00:03:09,326 and the game is the universe. 63 00:03:09,326 --> 00:03:12,957 They tell particles what they can do and how they can do it. 64 00:03:12,957 --> 00:03:17,305 Bishop’s more diagonally, massless particles move at the speed of light, 65 00:03:17,305 --> 00:03:19,987 nights can jump, gravity attracts. 66 00:03:19,987 --> 00:03:23,661 The forces are the rules for how particles interact, 67 00:03:23,661 --> 00:03:25,469 which ultimately make them the rules for 68 00:03:25,469 --> 00:03:29,526 help articles assemble into all the big things we see in the universe. 69 00:03:29,526 --> 00:03:32,106 Gravity isn’t just the rule for orbits around the Sun 70 00:03:32,378 --> 00:03:34,339 or Apples falling from trees. 71 00:03:34,339 --> 00:03:39,166 As a rule, it says matter attracts which build planets and stars. 72 00:03:39,166 --> 00:03:42,871 Electromagnetism isn’t just a rule for magnet attracting 73 00:03:42,871 --> 00:03:45,666 or repelling, or electric currents in light bulbs. 74 00:03:45,666 --> 00:03:50,003 It governs all atomic bombs, building every molecule. 75 00:03:50,003 --> 00:03:54,905 Together, forces and particles are sort of like the tinker toys of existence. 76 00:03:54,905 --> 00:03:57,540 The bosons are like messengers passed between, 77 00:03:57,540 --> 00:04:00,127 you could say connecting the matter particles, 78 00:04:00,127 --> 00:04:02,795 which they used to tell each other how to move. 79 00:04:02,795 --> 00:04:05,274 Each particle uses a certain set of the forces 80 00:04:05,274 --> 00:04:07,715 to interact with other particles. 81 00:04:07,715 --> 00:04:09,743 Quarks, for example, can interact with each other 82 00:04:09,743 --> 00:04:12,600 with electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force 83 00:04:12,600 --> 00:04:14,664 but electrons don’t use the strong force, 84 00:04:14,664 --> 00:04:16,184 just electromagnetism. 85 00:04:16,184 --> 00:04:19,237 The quarks exchange strong force bosons, 86 00:04:19,237 --> 00:04:21,944 communicating the strong nuclear attraction to each other, 87 00:04:21,944 --> 00:04:25,352 while the protons they build exchange particles of electromagnetism, 88 00:04:25,352 --> 00:04:27,744 photons with the electrons. 89 00:04:27,744 --> 00:04:30,151 Thus the quarks end up locked up in nuclei, 90 00:04:30,151 --> 00:04:32,015 while the electrons remain attached 91 00:04:32,015 --> 00:04:34,988 by their electric attraction building atoms. 92 00:04:34,988 --> 00:04:38,225 Even though the university has lots of big messy phenomenon 93 00:04:38,225 --> 00:04:42,507 like life, supernova and computers that seem complex on the surface, 94 00:04:42,507 --> 00:04:44,557 if you zoom in far enough on anything 95 00:04:44,557 --> 00:04:47,947 you just get 17 particles emerging form underlying fields, 96 00:04:47,947 --> 00:04:50,113 playing a game with four rules. 97 00:04:50,113 --> 00:04:53,257 To summarize, in the most basic from we know right now, 98 00:04:53,257 --> 00:04:55,650 this is what things are. 99 00:04:55,650 --> 00:04:57,616 This theory is what physicists call 100 00:04:57,616 --> 00:04:59,501 the Standard Model of Particle Physics. 101 00:04:59,501 --> 00:05:02,595 You are basically nothing more than disturbances 102 00:05:02,595 --> 00:05:05,551 on an ocean that’s excited by energy, and guided by 103 00:05:05,551 --> 00:05:10,558 forces that make up the rules of the universe. 104 00:05:10,558 --> 00:05:12,481 But why and what is a force? 105 00:05:13,155 --> 00:05:15,133 We’ll have to explore a few more simple questions 106 00:05:15,133 --> 00:05:17,396 to get to the bottom of this. 107 00:05:17,396 --> 00:05:19,355 We made some wallpapers from some of the graphics 108 00:05:19,355 --> 00:05:22,313 in this video, you can get them on patron.com. 109 00:05:22,313 --> 00:05:23,995 If you want to help us make more videos, 110 00:05:23,995 --> 00:05:25,420 you can do so there. 111 00:05:25,420 --> 00:05:27,814 We really appreciate your support! 112 00:05:27,814 --> 00:05:32,106 While you decide, here are some more videos we made.