WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.115 The simple questions are the hardest ones to answer. 00:00:03.115 --> 00:00:04.961 What is a thing? 00:00:04.961 --> 00:00:06.788 Why do things happen? 00:00:06.788 --> 00:00:09.519 And why do they happen the way they do? 00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:11.971 Let’s try to approach this step-by-step. 00:00:11.971 --> 00:00:13.828 What are you made of? 00:00:13.828 --> 00:00:16.503 You are matter which is made of molecules 00:00:16.503 --> 00:00:20.457 which are made of atoms and those are made of elementary particles. 00:00:20.457 --> 00:00:24.514 But if elementary particles are the smallest things that exist, 00:00:24.514 --> 00:00:35.075 what are they made of? 00:00:35.075 --> 00:00:40.660 To answer a simple question, let’s start simply - let’s wipe the universe clean. 00:00:40.660 --> 00:00:45.409 Away with matter ,antimatter, radiation, particles… anything. 00:00:45.409 --> 00:00:49.297 Now let’s take a closer look at absolutely nothing. 00:00:49.297 --> 00:00:51.232 What is empty space? 00:00:51.232 --> 00:00:53.259 Is it what we call a vacuum? 00:00:53.259 --> 00:00:56.179 There are no atoms, no matter, nothing. 00:00:56.179 --> 00:00:58.697 Is it really all that empty? 00:00:58.697 --> 00:01:02.182 Nothing gives us the building blocks for everything. 00:01:02.182 --> 00:01:06.168 In a sense, empty space is a lot like a vast calm ocean. 00:01:06.168 --> 00:01:09.258 While the water is very still when nothing is happening, 00:01:09.258 --> 00:01:12.349 a stiff breeze create some serious waves. 00:01:12.349 --> 00:01:14.865 Our universe works a lot like this. 00:01:14.865 --> 00:01:16.724 There are these "oceans" everywhere - 00:01:16.724 --> 00:01:18.881 Physicists call them “fields”. 00:01:18.881 --> 00:01:21.102 This might be strange and new. 00:01:21.102 --> 00:01:23.331 But think about radiation for example. 00:01:23.331 --> 00:01:26.746 By exciting what’s known as the electromagnetic field 00:01:26.746 --> 00:01:30.475 a little kink is created which is the particle we called the photon 00:01:30.475 --> 00:01:32.293 The particle that carries radiaton we perceive it as light 00:01:33.850 --> 00:01:36.165 This isn’t unique to light. 00:01:36.165 --> 00:01:36.415 Every particle in the universe is made this way. 00:01:38.906 --> 00:01:43.413 There are fields for every particle of matter all with their own rules. 00:01:43.413 --> 00:01:45.980 For example, along with the electromagnetic fields, 00:01:45.980 --> 00:01:48.722 there is an electron field everywhere in the universe 00:01:48.722 --> 00:01:51.688 and little kinks in that field are electrons 00:01:51.688 --> 00:01:55.934 Altogether, the fields of our universe can produce 17 particles 00:01:55.934 --> 00:01:58.506 which can be divided into three categories - 00:01:58.506 --> 00:02:02.161 The leptons, and the quarks and the bosons. 00:02:02.161 --> 00:02:07.257 Leptons consists of the electron as well as its cousins muon and tau particles. 00:02:07.257 --> 00:02:09.712 Each has an associated neutrino. 00:02:09.712 --> 00:02:11.315 Then, there are quarks. 00:02:11.315 --> 00:02:14.408 The quarks are the nuclear family of particles. 00:02:14.408 --> 00:02:17.169 They’re always found bound together in groups and pairs, 00:02:17.169 --> 00:02:20.972 and makeup protons and neutrons which make up the nuclei of atoms 00:02:20.972 --> 00:02:24.548 Together, electrons and quarks are the matter particles. 00:02:24.548 --> 00:02:26.313 They make up all the things you see. 00:02:26.313 --> 00:02:27.786 The air you breathe, 00:02:27.786 --> 00:02:29.046 the sun that warms you, 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. 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:35.034 But things don’t just exist, 00:02:35.034 --> 00:02:36.419 they also do stuff. 00:02:36.620 --> 00:02:39.439 In some philosophical sense, the properties of a thing 00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:42.875 are just as much a part of it as existence itself. 00:02:42.875 --> 00:02:46.129 This is where the bosons and the fields that make them come into play. 00:02:46.129 --> 00:02:49.534 While the quarks and leptons are made by matter fields, 00:02:49.534 --> 00:02:52.159 the bosons are made by force fields. 00:02:52.159 --> 00:02:55.261 We call a rule of the universe a force, 00:02:55.261 --> 00:02:58.877 and so far four fundamental forces have been discovered - 00:02:58.877 --> 00:03:03.246 Electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. 00:03:03.246 --> 00:03:05.721 These forces are the rule book of a game 00:03:05.721 --> 00:03:07.329 where the pieces are particles, 00:03:07.329 --> 00:03:09.326 and the game is the universe. 00:03:09.326 --> 00:03:12.957 They tell particles what they can do and how they can do it. 00:03:12.957 --> 00:03:17.305 Bishop’s more diagonally, massless particles move at the speed of light, 00:03:17.305 --> 00:03:19.987 nights can jump, gravity attracts. 00:03:19.987 --> 00:03:23.661 The forces are the rules for how particles interact, 00:03:23.661 --> 00:03:25.469 which ultimately make them the rules for 00:03:25.469 --> 00:03:29.526 help articles assemble into all the big things we see in the universe. 00:03:29.526 --> 00:03:32.106 Gravity isn’t just the rule for orbits around the Sun 00:03:32.378 --> 00:03:34.339 or Apples falling from trees. 00:03:34.339 --> 00:03:39.166 As a rule, it says matter attracts which build planets and stars. 00:03:39.166 --> 00:03:42.871 Electromagnetism isn’t just a rule for magnet attracting 00:03:42.871 --> 00:03:45.666 or repelling, or electric currents in light bulbs. 00:03:45.666 --> 00:03:50.003 It governs all atomic bombs, building every molecule. 00:03:50.003 --> 00:03:54.905 Together, forces and particles are sort of like the tinker toys of existence. 00:03:54.905 --> 00:03:57.540 The bosons are like messengers passed between, 00:03:57.540 --> 00:04:00.127 you could say connecting the matter particles, 00:04:00.127 --> 00:04:02.795 which they used to tell each other how to move. 00:04:02.795 --> 00:04:05.274 Each particle uses a certain set of the forces 00:04:05.274 --> 00:04:07.715 to interact with other particles. 00:04:07.715 --> 00:04:09.743 Quarks, for example, can interact with each other 00:04:09.743 --> 00:04:12.600 with electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force 00:04:12.600 --> 00:04:14.664 but electrons don’t use the strong force, 00:04:14.664 --> 00:04:16.184 just electromagnetism. 00:04:16.184 --> 00:04:19.237 The quarks exchange strong force bosons, 00:04:19.237 --> 00:04:21.944 communicating the strong nuclear attraction to each other, 00:04:21.944 --> 00:04:25.352 while the protons they build exchange particles of electromagnetism, 00:04:25.352 --> 00:04:27.744 photons with the electrons. 00:04:27.744 --> 00:04:30.151 Thus the quarks end up locked up in nuclei, 00:04:30.151 --> 00:04:32.015 while the electrons remain attached 00:04:32.015 --> 00:04:34.988 by their electric attraction building atoms. 00:04:34.988 --> 00:04:38.225 Even though the university has lots of big messy phenomenon 00:04:38.225 --> 00:04:42.507 like life, supernova and computers that seem complex on the surface, 00:04:42.507 --> 00:04:44.557 if you zoom in far enough on anything 00:04:44.557 --> 00:04:47.947 you just get 17 particles emerging form underlying fields, 00:04:47.947 --> 00:04:50.113 playing a game with four rules. 00:04:50.113 --> 00:04:53.257 To summarize, in the most basic from we know right now, 00:04:53.257 --> 00:04:55.650 this is what things are. 00:04:55.650 --> 00:04:57.616 This theory is what physicists call 00:04:57.616 --> 00:04:59.501 the Standard Model of Particle Physics. 00:04:59.501 --> 00:05:02.595 You are basically nothing more than disturbances 00:05:02.595 --> 00:05:05.551 on an ocean that’s excited by energy, and guided by 00:05:05.551 --> 00:05:10.558 forces that make up the rules of the universe. 00:05:10.558 --> 00:05:12.481 But why and what is a force? 00:05:13.155 --> 00:05:15.133 We’ll have to explore a few more simple questions 00:05:15.133 --> 00:05:17.396 to get to the bottom of this. 00:05:17.396 --> 00:05:19.355 We made some wallpapers from some of the graphics 00:05:19.355 --> 00:05:22.313 in this video, you can get them on patron.com. 00:05:22.313 --> 00:05:23.995 If you want to help us make more videos, 00:05:23.995 --> 00:05:25.420 you can do so there. 00:05:25.420 --> 00:05:27.814 We really appreciate your support! 00:05:27.814 --> 00:05:32.106 While you decide, here are some more videos we made.