The Infinite Monkey's Guide To… Tiny Things

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Hello, I'm Brian Cox.

I'm Robin Inc., and this is another Infinite Monkeys Guide 2.

Now, scientific jargon can be tricky, but it can be tricky for me.

It's not as tricky for Brian.

That's his kind of job.

You know, muons and gluons and strange quarks or quarks.

It's not jargon that.

It's just a list of nouns.

Yeah, I know, but it's jargon to a lot of us.

Why?

Because

nobody's oh, it's strange.

Is it quarks or quarks?

We've discussed this before.

Well, that's a literary question.

Quark for Mr.

Mark is where it comes from, James Joyce.

But a lot of people say quarks, and a quark for Mr.

Mawk entirely changes it.

Well, that's another thing as well.

The charm quark and the strange quark.

Why is a strange quark strange?

The story, which I don't think is apocryphal, is genuinely the particle was discovered that was very strange.

It was a particle.

It wasn't the quark that was discovered.

We didn't know about quarks at the time, but there was a particle that was strange and required the addition of the strange quark to the up and down quark in order to explain that particular particle.

Anyway, how do we go looking for these really, really tiny things?

And it is, it's very hard to imagine, isn't it, Brian, when we think about it, that enormous things we kind of take for granted there is a point where things become so vast that again you get that sense of being infinitesimal when you think of the size of the universe but sometimes when we talk about the tiny tiny things they're almost something that doesn't register if you know the the the tininess of an atom let alone subatomic particles those are things that are very hard to picture especially when we know that they are us.

Well they're hard to picture because they don't behave like grains of sand.

When When you say electron, I suppose most people picture it as just a grain of sand, like a little thing.

You could bounce them together like little billy balls.

But they don't behave like that at all.

They're quantum mechanical particles.

They, in a sense, expand to fill the space that they're in.

So they're not visualizable.

We're dealing with the easy stuff here because we do know electrons exist.

But now we're going to move into those other things as we get to a size and also something which you certainly wouldn't say was a made-up story.

We're going to talk a little bit about dark matter.

It isn't a made-up story.

No, but it's dark matter is scheduled.

There's strong evidence, but it's quite elusive, isn't it?

So we're pretty sure it's there, but the nature of it remains a mystery.

Here is the discussion about dark matter that we have with planetary scientist Monica Grady and physicist John Butterworth, who were explaining dark matter to, frankly, a sceptical Eric Idol.

What we've got really are astronomers and cosmologists demanding, or not demanding, but but suggesting very strongly there is another particle, which is a subatomic particle the size of an electron.

Or they've got gravity wrong, you know, we shouldn't rule that out.

Well, that's an interesting point, actually, isn't it?

Because as you said, the only way we know or we str suspect dark matter exists is because of the the way that gravity behaves.

So is it possible that our theory of gravity, which is Einstein's theory of general relativity, is wrong?

So

do you stop?

When do you stop looking?

I mean, I guess we were all kind of hoping that you guys would have found this particle by now.

Sorry.

I really feel like you've let us down.

You can't find what's not there.

Tell the wife.

So all of our observations,

and there are

numerous observations that all support this idea of there being this dark matter particle.

All of those observations are taken in a framework which is based on Einstein's theory of general relativity.

And if we're missing something in that theory,

then maybe we're misinterpreting our data.

And you know, something that would have got me thrown out of the university a decade ago is now really gaining momentum, and people are really seriously questioning our fundamental knowledge of physics.

I mean, when you don't understand something as gigantic as 95% of the universe, that's got to point you towards you missing some key piece of the puzzle.

Is dark matter outside our galaxy?

No, it's it surrounds us, a giant clump surrounds us all.

In fact,

it's in the room.

Right, so you know, I was talking about

neutrinos flying through you.

There is about between a million and a billion, depends on your model of the dark matter particle, between a million and a billion dark matter particles flying through, let's pick your thumbnail this time per second.

But just like the neutrinos, you don't feel that.

And very, very rarely, maybe once every four hours or so, there'll be a direct collision between one of those dark matter particles and the stuff that's in your body.

But you don't feel it.

They're absolutely tiny, tiny particles.

Can you see that?

No, that's just a theory of what we think.

If our numbers are right and what we think the dark matter particle is like, that's

how many would be in this room with us right now.

And how how do you calculate something you can't see and post?

You just postulate they bang into each other.

So there are lots of things that you can say about the properties of this dark matter particle from our observations of the universe.

So the first and most important thing is it doesn't interact with the stuff that we're made up of.

Because if it did, then we would have detected it already.

You know, these particle physics chaps to my left and right are pretty good at particle physics.

They would have found this particle if it really interacted with the stuff that we're made up of.

It doesn't.

So it's weakly interacting.

There are other properties.

It has to have quite a small cross-section, so that means that

it hardly ever collides with the particles that we're made up of, because otherwise, again, we would have detected it.

And it has to be moving quite slowly, quite a slow particle.

If it was moving too fast, then the galaxy simply wouldn't form in our universe.

This is the important thing, right?

We've just been talking about dark matter.

And I know we've covered this in the past in the show, but it still seems to be such a simple problem.

Why then call it dark energy because dark energy and dark matter they have nothing in common do they apart from using the word dark what was this you know ridiculous idea in terms of the naming system of physicists i mean dark matter the name makes sense in that the best theory we have is that it's a kind of particle a subatomic particle that doesn't interact with light for example So it's dark, so you can't see it.

It's stuff that looks like it's there because we feel its gravitational pull.

But you're right, the dark energy, we don't know what it is, it's the thing that appears to be causing the universe to accelerate in its expansion.

Brian Schmidt, who's been on the show several times, discovered that the universe is accelerating.

That requires something to make that so.

And so we don't know what it is, and we call it dark energy.

I mean, it might be a property of space.

We really genuinely, it's one of the greatest of mysteries.

And undoubtedly, solving that mystery will point to a deeper understanding of the way our universe is.

Someone might come up with a wonderful, obvious answer tomorrow.

That's the beauty of science.

This is where the beauty of science sometimes gets ugly for you because we're going to move on to biology.

So these tiny things are very big, tiny things by the standards of the atomic model, but very tiny by the standards, I suppose, of the biological model.

Because one of the things that I find fascinating, again, I only found this out really by doing this show over the last 15 years, was the fact that we are also a bacterial multitude.

So, even someone as clean as Brian, and Brian is very clean, he's very, very shiny.

But we were going through your weight of bacteria, we were thinking about six pounds of bacteria is Brian Cox.

Six pounds, 2.722 kilograms.

When I first heard this, I hadn't quite kind of put it in my head properly, which is the idea that in terms of numbers, we're more micro-organism than human because we've got 10 times as many microorganisms as human cells.

And then you find out that they're all very, very small.

Because I thought, what if I had a really hot shower and accidentally got rid of all the bacteria?

And then it turns out they were making my knees, and I'm just lying at the bottom of the thing.

It'd be an absolute disaster.

But yeah, so don't worry so much.

You eat a lot of bacteria, but in terms of actual mass, you are mainly human cell.

Not a problem.

The idea that it would be your knees.

Yeah.

Just your knees are made of bacteria.

Yeah, they are.

I'm so sorry, bacteria.

I hadn't realized this hinge system's all over the shop now.

We told you.

Anyway, here is Monica Grady again with marine biologist John Copley and Ed Byrne on the secret rulers of our world, microbes.

What excites me about the microbes here on Earth is their ubiquity.

So we find them everywhere from 20 miles, 32 kilometers up in the stratosphere.

They can survive those conditions.

We can find them in these things called lignite deposits, which is a sort of fossilized peat, and that occurs in some places two and a half kilometers below the ocean floor.

And there are microbes living there as well.

So that now they are everywhere and they're thriving in so many different ways.

Well, when you say they're like the Brian Cox of life.

You're everywhere, man.

You're ubiquitous.

In certain circles.

When you say, I mean, that seems when we talk about microbial life, and as we kind of alluded to in the introduction though, as well, the idea of that there's microbes and there's us, and then actually

we were saying, so 50%, is that right?

That we are, how much of us is microbial life, and how true is that of

most or even all living things?

So, yes,

we used to think that it was about, we were outnumbered in terms of cells, sort of 10 to 1 by microbes, but more recent work has said, no, it's about, it's about one to one.

So, yeah, I mean, plants live in partnership with microbes, animals live in partnership with microbes.

So, when we say we're half microbes, but we're not, I mean, that's not, we're all human, aren't we?

But it requires being.

How does it divide up?

Why if I accidentally flush out all my microbes?

What's going to happen then?

So, yes.

Why, when Jeff Goldblum got into the teleporter, why did he only fuse with the fly?

Why wasn't he genetically absorbed by the microbes and just a big half-human, half-microbe get out of it?

Or a fungus?

I mean, but it wouldn't have been as much fun, would it, I suppose, if it had been a mushroom.

I mean, it's kind of

funny.

It would have been a different show.

It would have been a very, very different film.

And you couldn't see what had happened to all the microbes when he went into the transporter, because they might also have become half of a fly microbe as well as half of a human microbe.

There was a whole other story happening, a million other stories happening.

I'm going to think that that film about a man and a fly being transported in a mass transporter may have had scientific flaws.

I don't know if you've got a favourite nanotechnology joke.

My favourite nanotechnology joke is: I work for the biggest nanotechnology company in the world, but not very good.

Which I think is a great nanotechnology joke.

Of course, small things have become incredibly useful to us in lots of ways.

But we asked Andy Hamilton, who is himself quite small, and biomaterials expert Eleanor Stride, whether size really matters.

As guest idiot, I would say

it depends what the context is.

I mean, if it's out in the sort of tooth and claw environment of nature, size probably does matter.

For instance, if I'm up against a mammoth,

I know that's unlikely.

Not with Channel 5's new man versus mammoth, Joe.

Joe, what's really sad is that if that gets broadcast, there'll be someone sitting in a room at Channel 5 going, do you know that might just work?

Can they bring back mammoths?

Yeah, I think it depends entirely on the context.

I mean, it's all relative.

I mean, how big you are to start with dictates how big something something looks to you.

You know, so when you're a child, everything looks big, doesn't it?

And then you go back to places when you're an adult that you visited as a child and you think, well, it's shrunk.

What's happened to it?

If you could be three times the size and a giant,

to terrorize all of those things.

I'm still worrying about the nano technology.

Because when you're working with stuff that tiny, you must lose a lot of it.

Well,

I don't want to go back to the ants, but we actually had a crazy project last year that someone proposed trying to make ants glow.

So, forget mice, this was trying to make ants glow.

And we were doing that by introducing nano-gold

into the system.

And actually, if you go beyond a certain size, the nano-gold does literally go everywhere, and that causes you enormous problems.

So, that was worth a fortune?

Or is it not the nano gold?

No, no, no, because it's a billionth of a metre's worth of

gold.

Yep.

For anyone trying to stick to a diet, anyone to just not love food as much, Erica McAllister is one of the best guests because she's a brilliant ability.

So, for anyone off their tea, especially when we've had shows that have gone out at 4:30 and someone's got their fish paste sandwich there, and a fly is then just buzzing around the kitchen.

I can tell you that more often than not, the fish-paste sandwich ends up in the pedal bin.

She loves flies, but she loves the expressions people pull on their faces when she talks about them.

It is some of the horrid stories about flies that Erica shared with comedian David Badil.

I think I have been bitten by a fly once.

You've never been bitten by a fly.

You may have been pierced, shredded, sucked, maimed, but you can't be bitten because they don't have jaws.

What fly was it?

Do you know?

Well, you know, I did not ask.

Foolish of me.

It was on my back, and it was a fly because I saw it buzz.

By the way, I want to ask later why they buzz because I would have thought that evolutionaryism is a bad thing because it alerts you to the fact they're there and you swap them more easily.

I don't think that.

Well, in fact, butt flies, because they're they're so fat and heavy, because they're such loud buzzers, they will catch a mosquito and lay their eggs on a mosquito.

So when the mosquito feeds off you, the buttfly egg then drops off and the larvae then crawls through the hole.

So not only can you have a buttfly maggot, you get dengue at the same time, which is quite fun.

Somebody's going to speak.

It must be said that amongst entomologists, rearing a buttfly is a great thing.

People want to, you know, they're very happy if they they go to the tropics and they get one of these maggots living underneath them.

They then want to rear it and to get the fly out of it.

No, I say this.

I've popped one out of my friend's head.

No, no, he's a primatologist, so he was very like...

So we're in Costa Rica and we're in a jungle.

No, I'm sorry, but that, that, so people are disgusted, but I think, but then you're meant to, people are not going to be, oh no, don't worry, it was a primatologist.

That doesn't seem to stop the disgust of you popping a thing out of someone's head merely due to their job.

Well, he should have been like, you know, it's a jungle, get used to it.

But he looks at primates, and you know, but he was in his head.

And what's quite fascinating because they can't burrow down at that point, obviously, because of the skull, so it grows across.

So I was able to watch it developing, which was fat.

So, but at night, when it's all quiet, you can hear it eating.

And

well done, Erica, by the way.

137 shows and already we've had more uh

than we've had in every single one of all of the other hundreds because it's this image though of the crawling across like some kind of underskin com over there.

Seriously, that's not the bad thing, it's because it's maggots feed one end, defecate the other end.

Obviously, obviously they do.

I don't think you should go uh about that, humans do that too.

Here's news for you, we all do that.

Now, one of the first moments of existential despair that usually occurs before, well, before we even know what the word existential means, or indeed even know the word existential, is a strange, dizzying horror of realising just how vast the universe is.

I don't know when you first came across it.

I think for me, it was, there's a great short film called The Powers of Ten.

It starts off with the couple on a picnic blanket, and then it keeps going out by a factor of 10 across the universe.

And then it does reverse.

And I think the next day, I felt so dizzy thinking about the size of the universe that I very nearly fell into the toilet.

For me, it was when I first crossed the Pennines to Halifax.

Well, they told you there was nothing beyond.

Did you?

They told me it was only oldham, but it turned out there was Halifax.

I said, No, they said there be Yorkshireman.

We end with a clip about how tiny we are in the vastness of the universe.

And who better to ask than an astronaut who's experienced this in a very visceral way?

Here's NASA astronaut Chris Hadfield with comedian Katie Brand.

I suddenly could see, with nobody filtering anything, that the Earth has been here uninterrupted for four and a half billion years, and there has been life on Earth uninterrupted for four of those four and a half billion years.

So the Earth is tough as nails and life is so tenacious.

And we can get all wrapped up in the, you know, the current events, be they good or horrible, and think that this is the only moment that's ever existed.

But life, we could not eliminate all the life on Earth if we tried our damnedest.

Life is tough.

And I found that reassuring.

You know, this little elephant's length life that we're going, it's important to us.

But in the big scheme of things, it's just a momentary blip.

Katie, I think you alluded to it right at the start.

It's a complex set of emotions that contemplating our place in the universe raises.

Because at one level, as you said, the sheer time scales,

the physical insignificance of our world might make us feel just that insignificant and irrelevant.

And yet, at the same time, there's a profound sense of value.

What's your feeling of what that complex mix of emotions signifies?

Yeah, I mean, I, as I've said before on this show, and you know, my mathematical ability is very low for various reasons, teaching and sort of slightly odd maths arrangements early in Catholic school where we just did art and Jesus.

And I was good at art and Jesus, so I'm still good at drawing.

Should have just come to you.

Yeah,

yeah, we were often told how insignificant we were, but for other reasons.

But I think the difference of emotions I've had, especially over the last year or two over lockdown, I got into some of this stuff.

And

what I felt was excited by the idea that there were ultimate truths out there that people in the world who study these things are really trying to get at.

And they're not afraid of the truths, the underlying truths of existence and how space works and on a quantum level, on a classic level, all of that.

But so I sort of broached it with this incredible fascination for like wow this could be really about what is the true stuff of life this is incredible and then I think I glimpsed out of the corner of my eye for a very brief second an understanding of what this all meant and I instantly became really terrified at the seriousness and the hugeness of it of how you know quantum physics might actually work and how that affects how I perceive my life on earth and how I perceive everything, how we all perceive each other.

Is anything real?

Does anything matter?

I went through all these emotions, you know, sort of in about 20 minutes.

And then I carried on reading, carried on being excited by it, came in and out of understanding.

And I did feel thrilled and uplifted, but also deeply unsettled and worried.

And I got quite upset for a bit because I thought, nothing I know is real.

Nothing I know makes sense anymore.

Nothing, you know, nothing matters, as you say.

But then a new thought came to me.

I didn't say that.

Well, no, I mean,

I wasn't saying you were directly saying nothing in my life has any value.

But I think I have settled on a new idea, which is all of this tells me that we should value every single second of our own life on earth, and that finding pleasure in life is the most important thing: pleasure, and beauty, and truth.

Obviously, I had to go off and have a quick bounty bar to calm down.

And then I thought, you know what?

Just have another one.

That's what the message is.

Next week, it's over to you, the listeners, as we bring you the Infinite Monkeys Guide to

audience favourites.

Just to warn you, we will have the one where you get all scared with those spiders.

People really enjoyed hearing you being scared.

I wasn't really scared.

He was scared.

Anyway, thanks for listening.

Bye-bye.

Now, all the episodes we took clips from are available on BBC Sounds, and you can find all the details of those in the programme description for this show.

In the Infinite Monkey Cage.

Till now, nice again.

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