Learn from theoretical physicist Sean Carroll why we don’t understand how gravity works — and how we can figure it out. You’ll also learn about enormous balloon-like structures that scientists have discovered in the center of our galaxy. Please support our sponsors! Visit capterra.com/curiosity to find the best software solution for your business — for free! In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about enormous balloon-like structures that scientists have discovered in the center of our galaxy: https://curiosity.im/2nfKAwS Publications and more from Sean Carroll: “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime” on Amazon — https://amazon.com “The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself” on Amazon — https://amazon.com “From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Follow @seanmcarroll on Twitter — https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll Sean Carroll’s website — https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/ Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Podcast — https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/ Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn from theoretical physicist Sean Carroll why we don’t understand how gravity works — and how we can figure it out. You’ll also learn about enormous balloon-like structures that scientists have discovered in the center of our galaxy.
Please support our sponsors! Visit capterra.com/curiosity to find the best software solution for your business — for free!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about enormous balloon-like structures that scientists have discovered in the center of our galaxy: https://curiosity.im/2nfKAwS
Publications and more from Sean Carroll:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/we-dont-know-how-gravity-works-w-sean-carroll-and-the-milky-ways-bubble-mystery
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn from renowned theoretical physicist Sean Carroll why we don’t understand how gravity works — and how we can figure it out. You’ll also learn about enormous balloon-like structures that scientists have discovered in the center of our galaxy.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Sean Carroll 2 - Gravity and why we should look into quantum [4:34] (2 segments) (Cody)
We don’t understand how gravity works. Are you surprised? Well Sean Carroll is not. He’s a renowned theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, and one of the world’s most celebrated science writers. His newest book is called “SOMETHING DEEPLY HIDDEN: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime,” and in it, he argues that scientists need to start digging into the serious questions around the inner workings of quantum physics. And Sean told us that we need to start asking those questions now if we ever want to understand how our universe really works.
[CLIP 1:09]
Okay, so of all the forces of nature, gravity is the one that we can’t explain using quantum physics. And we’re lucky we even understand the other ones! Fortunately, Sean has reason to believe we’ll start to find answers soon.
[CLIP 2:27]
Basically, over the last hundred years or so, scientists have started to close the gap between classical and quantum physics. So now’s as good a time as any to start to look for answers to nature’s hardest problems. Here are some final thoughts from Sean on why he’s optimistic for the future.
[CLIP 0:57]
It’s all about perspective, right? Don’t think of quantum physics as a necessarily un-solvable problem; think about it as an OPPORTUNITY to understand our universe better. Again, Sean Carroll is a renowned theoretical physicist and author of the new book “SOMETHING DEEPLY HIDDEN: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime.” You can find links to that and more in today’s show notes.
[CAPTERRA]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Capterra: the leading, free online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business.
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ASHLEY: Capterra, that’s C-A-P-T-E-R-R-A dot com slash CURIOSITY.
CODY: Capterra: software selection simplified.
Scientists Have Discovered Enormous Balloon-Like Structures in the Center of Our Galaxy — https://curiosity.im/2nfKAwS (Ashley)
ASHLEY: Scientists have discovered something really, really big in the middle of our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, it’s one of the largest structures ever observed in the region.
CODY: And by “structures,” you mean… [ad lib]
ASHELY: An enormous pair of bubbles in an hourglass-like arrangement is sending out radio emissions hundreds of light-years beyond our galaxy. And while scientists aren’t sure how they formed, there are some pretty cool theories. The waves of radio emission probably came from an eruption a few million years ago in the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. For a new study published in the journal Nature, astronomers peered at the center of our galaxy using the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory MeerKAT telescope. There, they looked at radio emissions produced when magnetic fields accelerate electrons to a rate close to the speed of light. And that’s when they spotted these huge structures. The explosion that caused them was a dramatic moment in what is usually a quiet black hole. Yes, I said “usually”; once in a while, the Milky Way's central black hole can flare up as it periodically devours massive clumps of dust and gas. One of those flare-ups may have triggered powerful outbursts that inflated this previously unseen feature. And we probably never saw the huge bubbles before because there’s a lot of radio emission coming from the center of the galaxy. It took a pristine dark sky and the incredibly powerful MeerKAT telescope that could sense even faint radio waves for us to notice this. Anyway, back to what caused these bubbles: whatever triggered that huge eruption from the Milky Way must have been big. As in, a staggeringly powerful event that happened a few million years ago, very close to our galaxy's central black hole. One possibility is that interstellar gas fell into the black hole and triggered an enormous explosion. Another is a flare-up of star formation near the black hole. That would have created shock waves, which could have caused gas bubbles near the Milky Way's center to heat up and expand. But there's still so much for us to learn. [INSERT AD LIBS]
CODY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that scientists don’t actually know how gravity works from a quantum physics perspective — but now technology is helping us see the effects of quantum physics on a scale that used to only belong to classical physics.
ASHLEY: And that there are enormous balloon-like structures in the center of the Milky Way, which probably got there because of a massive event a few million years ago.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!