67 - Subatomic

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SciShow Tangents

Health & Fitness


Things get a little weird this episode, and by ‘little’ I mean very little! One thing I learned in this episode is that everything in the universe is touching each other, yet the particles in your body never truly touch! Mama Mia!    Well anyway, I hope you enjoy it! Thanks for listening!   Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions!    While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Stefan: @itsmestefanchin Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreen   If you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:   [Truth or Fail]   https://history.fnal.gov/felicia.html#Time https://history.fnal.gov/meson.html pictures: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/felicia-ferret-particle-accelerator-fermilab https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/stocking-series-part-1-wartime-rationing-and-nylon-riots-25391066/ [Fact Off]   Surface plasmon resonance https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2016/12/nist-device-detecting-subatomic-scale-motion-has-potential-robotics https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13746 Dark matter supercold water https://indico.cern.ch/event/699961/contributions/3043319/attachments/1692706/2723798/snowball_idm.pdf https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/snowball-chamber-uses-supercooled-water-to-hunt-for-dark-matter-particles/ http://www.astronomy.com/news/2019/04/new-snowball-chamber-might-aid-in-the-hunt-for-dark-matter https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-04/aps-ch041119.php   From Matthew Szydagis, Snowball Chamber project lead: (Only certain uncharged particles trigger the freeze) because charged particles interact with the electrons and lose their energy spread out over a greater distance. This is called "dE/dx"  Too low of dE/dx means energy is not deposited within a critical radius, and so no nucleation happens. This is similar to how bubble and cloud chambers work (note, however, I was partially mistaken in my original claims, and my fully published paper in a scientific journal will address this soon: if you go cold enough you lower the dE/dx threshold enough and do see reactions from electron recoils from betas for example -- lower temperature lowers both the energy and dE/dx threshold). Lastly, though, it is not strictly a charge versus uncharged thing, so article is not 100% perfectly accurate scientifically. A gamma-ray is not charged and yet will not trigger the chamber until the dE/dx threshold is low enough, since like betas, gammas will interact almost exclusively with the electron cloud, and lead to electron-electron multiple-Coulomb-scattering.   [Ask the Science Couch]   Do atoms touch? https://www.sciencealert.com/99-9999999-of-your-body-is-empty-space https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/04/16/do-atoms-ever-actually-touch-each-other/ https://www.britannica.com/science/Pauli-exclusion-principle http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/pauli.html https://www.britannica.com/science/fermion https://www.pnas.org/content/114/23/5766 [Butt One More Thing]   Proton-powered poops https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109104251.htm https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867407014791