All language subtitles for How the Universe Works s09e08 Secret Lives of Neutrinos.eng

af Afrikaans
sq Albanian
am Amharic
ar Arabic
hy Armenian
az Azerbaijani
eu Basque
be Belarusian
bn Bengali
bs Bosnian
bg Bulgarian
ca Catalan
ceb Cebuano
ny Chichewa
zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
co Corsican
hr Croatian
cs Czech
da Danish
nl Dutch Download
en English
eo Esperanto
et Estonian
tl Filipino
fi Finnish
fr French
fy Frisian
gl Galician
ka Georgian
de German
el Greek
gu Gujarati
ht Haitian Creole
ha Hausa
haw Hawaiian
iw Hebrew
hi Hindi
hmn Hmong
hu Hungarian
is Icelandic
ig Igbo
id Indonesian
ga Irish
it Italian
ja Japanese
jw Javanese
kn Kannada
kk Kazakh
km Khmer
ko Korean
ku Kurdish (Kurmanji)
ky Kyrgyz
lo Lao
la Latin
lv Latvian
lt Lithuanian
lb Luxembourgish
mk Macedonian
mg Malagasy
ms Malay
ml Malayalam
mt Maltese
mi Maori
mr Marathi
mn Mongolian
my Myanmar (Burmese)
ne Nepali
no Norwegian
ps Pashto
fa Persian
pl Polish
pt Portuguese
pa Punjabi
ro Romanian
ru Russian
sm Samoan
gd Scots Gaelic
sr Serbian
st Sesotho
sn Shona
sd Sindhi
si Sinhala
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
so Somali
es Spanish
su Sundanese
sw Swahili
sv Swedish
tg Tajik
ta Tamil
te Telugu
th Thai
tr Turkish
uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek
vi Vietnamese
cy Welsh
xh Xhosa
yi Yiddish
yo Yoruba
zu Zulu
or Odia (Oriya)
rw Kinyarwanda
tk Turkmen
tt Tatar
ug Uyghur
Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:01,801 --> 00:00:03,369 Our world, 2 00:00:03,470 --> 00:00:07,373 our solar system, our universe. 3 00:00:07,474 --> 00:00:09,174 None of it would exist without 4 00:00:09,275 --> 00:00:13,078 a ghostly particle called the neutrino. 5 00:00:13,179 --> 00:00:15,247 They can pass right through a wall, 6 00:00:15,348 --> 00:00:17,249 right through a planet, right through a star, 7 00:00:17,350 --> 00:00:18,384 without even noticing. 8 00:00:20,186 --> 00:00:22,888 They are our early warning system. 9 00:00:22,989 --> 00:00:24,957 Whenever there's trouble in the universe, 10 00:00:25,058 --> 00:00:28,794 you can expect a flood of neutrinos. 11 00:00:28,895 --> 00:00:32,598 Neutrinos trigger star-killing explosions, 12 00:00:32,699 --> 00:00:33,699 supernovas. 13 00:00:35,668 --> 00:00:39,905 Neutrinos can answer so many questions, from why 14 00:00:40,006 --> 00:00:44,309 do we exist to, how was the universe created? 15 00:00:44,411 --> 00:00:47,880 These tiny particles saved the infant cosmos 16 00:00:47,981 --> 00:00:49,581 from annihilation. 17 00:00:49,682 --> 00:00:51,617 They cause destruction. 18 00:00:51,718 --> 00:00:53,986 They, you know, sometimes they blow up a star. 19 00:00:54,087 --> 00:00:55,621 But, at the end of the day, 20 00:00:55,722 --> 00:01:00,359 they can be the very reason that we exist at all. 21 00:01:00,460 --> 00:01:03,829 Neutrinos are the key to how the universe works. 22 00:01:19,379 --> 00:01:23,048 In the 1960s, our sun appeared to be dying. 23 00:01:25,285 --> 00:01:27,252 There was tantalizing evidence that 24 00:01:27,353 --> 00:01:29,788 our sun might be shutting down. 25 00:01:29,889 --> 00:01:32,257 This question was a biggie for astronomers. 26 00:01:32,358 --> 00:01:35,094 If the sun isn't undergoing nuclear fusion at the rate 27 00:01:35,195 --> 00:01:37,896 we thought it was, then that's a big deal. 28 00:01:40,667 --> 00:01:44,136 Was the sun's nuclear core shutting down? 29 00:01:44,237 --> 00:01:46,538 Stars, including our own sun, 30 00:01:46,639 --> 00:01:49,675 are giant nuclear fusion reactors. 31 00:01:49,776 --> 00:01:52,978 Inside these fusion reactors, 32 00:01:53,079 --> 00:01:55,714 hydrogen atoms smash together, 33 00:01:57,750 --> 00:02:01,620 producing heat and light in the form of photons. 34 00:02:05,825 --> 00:02:07,392 All the light and all the heat that 35 00:02:07,494 --> 00:02:10,362 we receive on Earth comes from the sun. 36 00:02:10,463 --> 00:02:13,098 If the sun were to suddenly start cooling off, 37 00:02:13,166 --> 00:02:17,102 that would be seriously bad news for us. 38 00:02:19,072 --> 00:02:21,940 How do we check if the sun is shutting down? 39 00:02:26,079 --> 00:02:30,082 We have a spacecraft monitoring the solar surface, 40 00:02:30,183 --> 00:02:32,951 but they can't see into the heart of the reactor, 41 00:02:33,052 --> 00:02:34,987 the sun's core. 42 00:02:35,088 --> 00:02:38,123 You can see the surface, and the sun is very bright. 43 00:02:38,224 --> 00:02:40,092 That makes it very easy to study. 44 00:02:40,193 --> 00:02:45,330 Sadly, the core of the sun is under 400,000 miles of sun, 45 00:02:45,431 --> 00:02:48,467 and that makes it pretty hard to look at. 46 00:02:48,568 --> 00:02:52,271 Studying the light made in the core doesn't help. 47 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:57,242 By the time it gets to us, it's old news. 48 00:02:57,343 --> 00:03:00,879 Imagine a photon or this particle of light 49 00:03:00,980 --> 00:03:03,248 that's born in the center of a star, 50 00:03:03,349 --> 00:03:06,685 and now imagine that it wants to reach the surface of the star. 51 00:03:06,786 --> 00:03:10,122 It turns out that the star is so dense in the center, 52 00:03:10,223 --> 00:03:13,258 and the star itself is so physically large that it will 53 00:03:13,359 --> 00:03:16,428 take it 30,000 years to escape the core. 54 00:03:19,032 --> 00:03:21,466 It's like being at a cocktail party, 55 00:03:21,568 --> 00:03:24,102 where you're trying to leave, and every time that you 56 00:03:24,204 --> 00:03:25,871 make another step towards the door, 57 00:03:25,972 --> 00:03:28,440 another group of people want to talk to you, and you also 58 00:03:28,541 --> 00:03:30,709 want to talk to them, and then it just takes 59 00:03:30,810 --> 00:03:33,879 30,000 years to leave your cocktail party. 60 00:03:33,980 --> 00:03:36,715 Any information we get from sunlight 61 00:03:36,816 --> 00:03:38,584 about what's going on in the core 62 00:03:38,685 --> 00:03:41,320 is tens of thousands of years old. 63 00:03:42,689 --> 00:03:46,291 If you want the current events, the news headlines of 64 00:03:46,392 --> 00:03:49,027 what's going on in the sun's core right now, 65 00:03:49,128 --> 00:03:50,929 photons are not the way to do it. 66 00:03:51,030 --> 00:03:52,497 You want neutrinos. 67 00:03:54,467 --> 00:03:57,402 So what are these mysterious particles? 68 00:03:57,470 --> 00:04:01,673 Neutrino literally means tiny neutral one, right? 69 00:04:01,741 --> 00:04:04,243 We think they carry no net electrical charge, 70 00:04:04,344 --> 00:04:05,444 and they're really, 71 00:04:05,545 --> 00:04:08,313 really small, so we call them neutrinos. 72 00:04:08,414 --> 00:04:10,649 Neutrinos don't like to interact with matter. 73 00:04:12,118 --> 00:04:14,920 They fly through almost everything. 74 00:04:15,021 --> 00:04:19,524 The sun itself is generating enough neutrinos to 75 00:04:19,626 --> 00:04:23,695 send 60 billion of them through your thumbnail 76 00:04:23,796 --> 00:04:27,399 every single second, and you will spend... 77 00:04:27,500 --> 00:04:28,700 This is the craziest thing... 78 00:04:28,801 --> 00:04:33,338 You will spend your entire life without feeling 79 00:04:33,439 --> 00:04:34,706 a single one. 80 00:04:36,676 --> 00:04:40,045 Neutrinos form during nuclear fusion reactions 81 00:04:40,146 --> 00:04:45,584 inside the core of stars... Hydrogen atoms collide, 82 00:04:45,685 --> 00:04:50,989 fuse into helium, and release photons of light and neutrinos. 83 00:04:51,090 --> 00:04:53,759 In the core of the sun, 84 00:04:53,860 --> 00:04:56,194 nuclear bombs are going off, 85 00:04:56,296 --> 00:05:00,032 and all of these nuclear reactions release neutrinos. 86 00:05:00,133 --> 00:05:02,167 That's about 10 trillion, trillion, 87 00:05:02,268 --> 00:05:07,606 trillion neutrinos being created every second. 88 00:05:07,707 --> 00:05:11,810 The trillions of neutrinos shoot out of the core 89 00:05:11,911 --> 00:05:14,880 and up through 323,000 miles 90 00:05:14,981 --> 00:05:17,149 of the sun to the surface. 91 00:05:19,218 --> 00:05:21,053 A neutrino basically doesn't even notice 92 00:05:21,154 --> 00:05:22,187 the sun is there. 93 00:05:22,288 --> 00:05:25,123 It sails out at very close to the speed of light. 94 00:05:26,526 --> 00:05:29,194 If you imagine a gridlocked highway, 95 00:05:29,295 --> 00:05:31,763 the neutrinos would be the motor bikes that are just 96 00:05:31,864 --> 00:05:34,099 zooming through the traffic. 97 00:05:35,501 --> 00:05:37,803 The solar neutrinos race towards Earth. 98 00:05:39,472 --> 00:05:41,306 Most pass straight through. 99 00:05:42,675 --> 00:05:45,711 All the neutrinos, the trillions upon 100 00:05:45,812 --> 00:05:48,880 trillions of neutrinos passing through the Earth 101 00:05:48,981 --> 00:05:50,782 every single second, 102 00:05:50,883 --> 00:05:54,286 the entire Earth will only interact 103 00:05:54,387 --> 00:05:58,623 with one neutrino out of 10 billion. 104 00:06:00,193 --> 00:06:02,461 Because they pass through anything, 105 00:06:02,562 --> 00:06:05,063 they're hard to detect. 106 00:06:05,164 --> 00:06:09,735 I consider neutrino physicists to be the ghost hunters of 107 00:06:09,836 --> 00:06:11,203 the particle physics realm, 108 00:06:11,304 --> 00:06:14,940 because we study something so elusive, and they're really, 109 00:06:15,041 --> 00:06:17,843 really hard to nail down and study. 110 00:06:21,013 --> 00:06:23,782 Hard, but not impossible. 111 00:06:23,883 --> 00:06:26,618 While most neutrinos pass through Earth, 112 00:06:26,719 --> 00:06:31,056 a few collide with atoms in the planet, and we can detect 113 00:06:31,157 --> 00:06:33,225 those collisions. 114 00:06:33,326 --> 00:06:35,193 To spot these tiny impacts, 115 00:06:35,294 --> 00:06:38,363 we built underground neutrino detectors 116 00:06:38,464 --> 00:06:41,032 with giant sensors full of chlorine. 117 00:06:43,002 --> 00:06:46,538 When a neutrino strikes this chlorine atom, 118 00:06:46,639 --> 00:06:48,640 it transforms into argon. 119 00:06:48,741 --> 00:06:51,643 And then we can pick out the argon atoms from 120 00:06:51,744 --> 00:06:53,478 the detector and count them up 121 00:06:53,579 --> 00:06:56,982 to see how many neutrinos actually struck our atoms. 122 00:06:59,185 --> 00:07:02,254 The sensors detected neutrinos from the sun, 123 00:07:02,355 --> 00:07:04,656 but the numbers were lower than expected. 124 00:07:05,858 --> 00:07:08,860 Detectors were only detecting about a third of 125 00:07:08,961 --> 00:07:12,364 the number of the neutrinos that their models predicted. 126 00:07:12,465 --> 00:07:15,133 This is called the solar neutrino problem. 127 00:07:15,234 --> 00:07:18,336 That is a big deal... That either means 128 00:07:18,438 --> 00:07:21,440 we're doing something wrong or our physics is wrong. 129 00:07:21,541 --> 00:07:22,574 Where were the missing 130 00:07:22,675 --> 00:07:24,910 two-thirds of the solar neutrinos? 131 00:07:25,011 --> 00:07:27,312 They weren't AWOL. 132 00:07:27,413 --> 00:07:28,780 The detector had missed them, 133 00:07:28,881 --> 00:07:31,516 because neutrinos can change identities. 134 00:07:33,219 --> 00:07:36,354 It turns out neutrinos can change what kind 135 00:07:36,456 --> 00:07:39,424 of neutrino they are as they're flying through space, 136 00:07:39,525 --> 00:07:41,426 and we call this flavor changing. 137 00:07:42,929 --> 00:07:45,397 Neutrinos come in three different flavors. 138 00:07:47,233 --> 00:07:49,701 Think of them as different types of playing cards. 139 00:07:52,472 --> 00:07:55,974 The king is the electron neutrino. 140 00:07:56,075 --> 00:07:58,777 The muon neutrino is the queen, 141 00:07:58,878 --> 00:08:01,446 and the jack is the tau neutrino. 142 00:08:01,547 --> 00:08:05,450 The sun produces electron neutrinos, 143 00:08:05,551 --> 00:08:07,185 but by the time they reach Earth, 144 00:08:07,286 --> 00:08:08,687 they could be a different flavor. 145 00:08:10,056 --> 00:08:11,389 As they travel to the Earth, 146 00:08:11,491 --> 00:08:13,792 they constantly wave back and forth, 147 00:08:13,893 --> 00:08:15,460 trading their identities. 148 00:08:15,528 --> 00:08:19,164 So you never know exactly what you're gonna get 149 00:08:19,265 --> 00:08:22,033 until it arrives at the Earth, and we observe it. 150 00:08:22,134 --> 00:08:25,203 It could be... anything. 151 00:08:25,304 --> 00:08:28,907 The detectors weren't seeing the different flavors. 152 00:08:29,008 --> 00:08:31,343 But when we fine-tuned the sensors, 153 00:08:31,444 --> 00:08:34,613 we saw all the solar neutrinos. 154 00:08:34,714 --> 00:08:37,382 So there were actually enough neutrinos coming from 155 00:08:37,483 --> 00:08:40,719 the sun, but we were only detecting a third of them. 156 00:08:40,820 --> 00:08:43,922 Flavor-changing neutrinos showed the sun was healthy. 157 00:08:45,124 --> 00:08:47,225 The changing identities also answered 158 00:08:47,326 --> 00:08:49,528 an important question about neutrinos. 159 00:08:51,030 --> 00:08:52,297 Do they have mass? 160 00:08:53,633 --> 00:08:57,168 Einstein showed that only particles without mass can 161 00:08:57,270 --> 00:08:59,170 travel at the speed of light, 162 00:08:59,272 --> 00:09:02,841 and these particles don't experience time. 163 00:09:02,942 --> 00:09:05,644 But neutrinos can change their flavor, 164 00:09:05,745 --> 00:09:08,246 so that must happen over time. 165 00:09:08,347 --> 00:09:12,350 And that means neutrinos can't travel at the speed of light, 166 00:09:12,451 --> 00:09:15,353 and so they must have mass. 167 00:09:15,454 --> 00:09:18,356 When scientists first started thinking about neutrinos, 168 00:09:18,457 --> 00:09:20,058 they thought that they were massless, 169 00:09:20,159 --> 00:09:22,661 and if a neutrino has no mass, 170 00:09:22,762 --> 00:09:25,797 then it's bound to be one flavor 171 00:09:25,898 --> 00:09:27,732 or one type of neutrino forever. 172 00:09:30,503 --> 00:09:34,406 Experiments proved that neutrinos have mass. 173 00:09:34,507 --> 00:09:38,610 And if they have mass, they must produce gravity, 174 00:09:38,711 --> 00:09:42,280 which means they can influence other things around them. 175 00:09:48,821 --> 00:09:51,923 Neutrinos are also involved in moments of huge 176 00:09:52,024 --> 00:09:54,359 cosmic violence. 177 00:09:54,460 --> 00:09:57,529 Whenever there's trouble in the universe, 178 00:09:57,630 --> 00:10:00,832 you can expect a flood of neutrinos. 179 00:10:03,302 --> 00:10:05,470 These floods of neutrinos are the key to 180 00:10:05,571 --> 00:10:07,572 some of the biggest bangs in the cosmos. 181 00:10:08,674 --> 00:10:12,177 And new research suggests that without them, 182 00:10:12,278 --> 00:10:19,317 there would be no solar system, no planets, and no us. 183 00:10:27,159 --> 00:10:29,661 Neutrinos are one of the smallest particles in 184 00:10:29,762 --> 00:10:31,696 the cosmos. 185 00:10:31,797 --> 00:10:34,432 However, new research suggests they play 186 00:10:34,533 --> 00:10:37,369 a role in some of the universe's biggest events. 187 00:10:41,040 --> 00:10:43,775 Exploding stars called supernovas. 188 00:10:46,445 --> 00:10:49,848 The deaths of giant stars. 189 00:10:49,949 --> 00:10:53,284 But there is a mystery surrounding 190 00:10:53,386 --> 00:10:54,619 their explosive ends. 191 00:10:54,720 --> 00:11:01,259 Why do these giant stars end their lives so violently? 192 00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:05,096 This is a major puzzle in astrophysics. 193 00:11:05,197 --> 00:11:07,799 We got a lead when we detected 194 00:11:07,900 --> 00:11:12,270 a huge flash of light in the large Magellanic Cloud, 195 00:11:12,371 --> 00:11:15,440 a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. 196 00:11:15,541 --> 00:11:18,109 The light was a supernova explosion. 197 00:11:20,379 --> 00:11:22,080 But three hours before the flash, 198 00:11:22,181 --> 00:11:25,083 astronomers spotted something else 199 00:11:25,184 --> 00:11:28,787 a burst of neutrinos coming from the same region of the sky. 200 00:11:30,690 --> 00:11:32,957 This was the first time we have seen neutrinos 201 00:11:33,059 --> 00:11:35,293 coming from a source other than the sun, 202 00:11:35,394 --> 00:11:38,863 so there must be some sort of connection between neutrinos 203 00:11:38,964 --> 00:11:39,831 and supernovae, 204 00:11:39,932 --> 00:11:42,534 but... but what is that connection? 205 00:11:42,635 --> 00:11:44,736 When a star runs out of fuel, 206 00:11:44,837 --> 00:11:48,440 its core crushes down to a neutron star. 207 00:11:48,541 --> 00:11:51,943 Then the rest of the star collapses inwards, 208 00:11:52,044 --> 00:11:55,346 hits the neutron star, and bounces out, 209 00:11:55,448 --> 00:11:57,248 triggering a supernova. 210 00:11:59,452 --> 00:12:03,221 But computer models of supernovas reveal a problem. 211 00:12:03,322 --> 00:12:06,591 The star doesn't explode. 212 00:12:06,692 --> 00:12:09,994 When we run computer simulations of how supernova 213 00:12:10,096 --> 00:12:13,698 might work, after this bounce, 214 00:12:13,766 --> 00:12:17,469 the explosion stalls, it peters out. 215 00:12:17,570 --> 00:12:20,238 The supernova isn't so super. 216 00:12:20,339 --> 00:12:22,540 It needs another source of energy to 217 00:12:22,641 --> 00:12:26,377 propel it to become an actual explosion. 218 00:12:28,481 --> 00:12:30,448 Could the neutrinos that appeared before 219 00:12:30,549 --> 00:12:33,518 the explosion be that energy source? 220 00:12:35,287 --> 00:12:37,021 First, we need to understand 221 00:12:37,123 --> 00:12:40,158 what created the burst of neutrinos. 222 00:12:42,461 --> 00:12:47,265 The core of the star collapses inward and eventually, 223 00:12:47,366 --> 00:12:48,833 the outer layers of the star 224 00:12:48,934 --> 00:12:52,103 fall in toward that star at an appreciable fraction of 225 00:12:52,204 --> 00:12:54,839 the speed of light. 226 00:12:54,940 --> 00:12:56,841 As the core rapidly collapses, 227 00:12:56,942 --> 00:13:01,412 the intense pressure squeezes atoms together. 228 00:13:01,514 --> 00:13:03,648 That core of iron gets squeezed down 229 00:13:03,783 --> 00:13:05,216 to become a neutron star. 230 00:13:06,919 --> 00:13:09,521 The electrons and the protons that are part of this core are 231 00:13:09,622 --> 00:13:12,090 under so much pressure that they fuse together to form 232 00:13:12,191 --> 00:13:15,527 neutrons and neutrinos in the process. 233 00:13:15,628 --> 00:13:19,197 The neutrinos shoot out from the newly formed 234 00:13:19,298 --> 00:13:21,266 neutron star core, 235 00:13:21,367 --> 00:13:24,869 carrying an enormous amount of energy. 236 00:13:24,970 --> 00:13:28,840 99% of the energy is carried by the neutrinos. 237 00:13:28,941 --> 00:13:31,176 Neutrinos are the main event. 238 00:13:31,277 --> 00:13:33,711 Trillions of neutrinos smash into 239 00:13:33,813 --> 00:13:36,080 the remains of the dying star. 240 00:13:36,182 --> 00:13:39,651 And when those neutrinos are flying out of that core region, 241 00:13:39,752 --> 00:13:43,454 a very tiny fraction of them interact with the gas, 242 00:13:43,556 --> 00:13:46,191 and that fraction heats the gas. 243 00:13:48,794 --> 00:13:50,428 Everything that's hanging around 244 00:13:50,529 --> 00:13:53,164 this newborn neutron star 245 00:13:53,265 --> 00:13:56,301 get heated to an unimaginable degree. 246 00:13:56,402 --> 00:14:00,138 The heat creates pressures in the surrounding gas. 247 00:14:00,239 --> 00:14:02,740 It builds and builds until it triggers 248 00:14:02,842 --> 00:14:04,242 an enormous shock wave. 249 00:14:07,012 --> 00:14:09,180 And then the actual explosion, 250 00:14:09,315 --> 00:14:11,683 the actual fireworks show, begins. 251 00:14:14,119 --> 00:14:16,421 The star explodes 252 00:14:16,522 --> 00:14:19,624 in one of the brightest events in the universe, 253 00:14:19,725 --> 00:14:22,560 powered by neutrinos. 254 00:14:22,661 --> 00:14:25,797 We think that if it weren't for neutrinos, 255 00:14:25,898 --> 00:14:28,399 supernovas might not even exist. 256 00:14:29,869 --> 00:14:32,270 And we might not exist either. 257 00:14:32,371 --> 00:14:35,373 Our bodies contain heavy elements, like calcium 258 00:14:35,474 --> 00:14:39,210 in our bones and iron in our blood. 259 00:14:39,311 --> 00:14:42,847 These elements form in supernovas and are 260 00:14:42,948 --> 00:14:46,184 scattered across the cosmos by the blast. 261 00:14:46,285 --> 00:14:51,389 Neutrinos are what kindle the fire 262 00:14:51,490 --> 00:14:54,392 in the forages of these elements. 263 00:14:54,493 --> 00:14:57,161 And without the neutrinos, you don't have the elements. 264 00:14:57,263 --> 00:14:58,329 And without the elements, 265 00:14:58,430 --> 00:15:00,465 you don't have planets like the Earth. 266 00:15:00,566 --> 00:15:03,902 And without planets like the Earth, you don't have life. 267 00:15:04,003 --> 00:15:07,171 There's this common phrase, you know, we are stardust, 268 00:15:07,273 --> 00:15:09,307 which is true, but I like to think 269 00:15:09,408 --> 00:15:12,010 we're more like neutrino dust. 270 00:15:14,446 --> 00:15:17,916 Neutrinos reveal how supernovas explode, 271 00:15:18,017 --> 00:15:21,519 and they also warn us when one is about to detonate. 272 00:15:21,620 --> 00:15:23,421 So neutrinos can even be these 273 00:15:23,522 --> 00:15:26,457 ghostly signposts for something very violent 274 00:15:26,558 --> 00:15:28,036 that's happened in the universe, right? 275 00:15:28,060 --> 00:15:30,395 We detect a sudden burst of neutrinos. 276 00:15:30,496 --> 00:15:33,431 It could be that a star has gone supernova somewhere. 277 00:15:35,367 --> 00:15:38,736 Neutrino bursts are cosmic watchdogs, 278 00:15:38,837 --> 00:15:40,972 alerting us to danger. 279 00:15:41,073 --> 00:15:44,142 Neutrinos are definitely a sign 280 00:15:44,243 --> 00:15:47,712 that something troubling is happening. 281 00:15:47,813 --> 00:15:50,982 And in 2017, a single neutrino 282 00:15:51,083 --> 00:15:54,485 told us about something very troubling, 283 00:15:54,586 --> 00:15:57,221 one of the most intense sources of radiation 284 00:15:57,323 --> 00:16:01,059 in the universe, and it was pointing right at us. 285 00:16:10,803 --> 00:16:13,171 Spring 2017. 286 00:16:13,272 --> 00:16:15,506 Scientists at the South Pole are on the lookout 287 00:16:15,607 --> 00:16:16,607 for neutrinos. 288 00:16:18,010 --> 00:16:21,946 These ghostly particles are extremely hard to detect. 289 00:16:23,515 --> 00:16:25,984 Neutrinos are the biggest introverts in the universe. 290 00:16:26,085 --> 00:16:28,786 They just don't like interacting with anything, so if 291 00:16:28,887 --> 00:16:30,231 you want to detect one of these things, 292 00:16:30,255 --> 00:16:31,456 you need a lot of stuff. 293 00:16:31,557 --> 00:16:34,525 You need a lot of atoms in one spot. 294 00:16:34,626 --> 00:16:36,627 So scientists built a facility 295 00:16:36,729 --> 00:16:38,796 with lots of available atoms. 296 00:16:38,897 --> 00:16:41,599 It's called IceCube, with neutrino 297 00:16:41,700 --> 00:16:45,770 detectors buried deep beneath sheets of ice. 298 00:16:45,871 --> 00:16:48,673 It turns out that water is a very, 299 00:16:48,774 --> 00:16:52,377 very good detector of neutrinos. 300 00:16:52,478 --> 00:16:54,679 To catch neutrinos, you need to build 301 00:16:54,780 --> 00:16:57,782 a very large target for a reasonable cost. 302 00:16:57,883 --> 00:17:02,754 Large areas of ice checks both boxes. 303 00:17:02,855 --> 00:17:06,057 So you need a lot of water that's very, very clean. 304 00:17:06,158 --> 00:17:08,593 What's the cleanest source of water on the planet? 305 00:17:08,660 --> 00:17:11,729 The Antarctic Ice Sheet. 306 00:17:11,830 --> 00:17:14,265 The Antarctic detector IceCube 307 00:17:14,366 --> 00:17:18,803 measures 3,280 feet across. 308 00:17:18,904 --> 00:17:22,407 That's about the length of nine football fields. 309 00:17:22,508 --> 00:17:27,011 It contains 5,000 sensors, surrounded by more water 310 00:17:27,112 --> 00:17:30,048 atoms than there are stars in the universe. 311 00:17:33,018 --> 00:17:35,820 September 22nd, 2017. 312 00:17:37,623 --> 00:17:42,226 IceCube detects a neutrino colliding with a water atom. 313 00:17:42,327 --> 00:17:45,530 When a neutrino hits an ice atom inside of IceCube, 314 00:17:45,631 --> 00:17:47,565 a charged particle flies out, 315 00:17:47,666 --> 00:17:49,867 and it's this charged particle that makes a signal 316 00:17:49,968 --> 00:17:50,968 we can detect. 317 00:17:51,070 --> 00:17:53,971 The ejected particle appears to fly out 318 00:17:54,073 --> 00:17:56,207 faster than the speed of light. 319 00:17:56,308 --> 00:17:58,676 At first glance, this looks like it violates 320 00:17:58,777 --> 00:18:00,011 something very, very important 321 00:18:00,112 --> 00:18:03,281 about physics, that nothing can travel faster than light. 322 00:18:03,382 --> 00:18:07,185 But light slows down when traveling through a medium like 323 00:18:07,286 --> 00:18:11,355 air or water, and it is possible 324 00:18:11,457 --> 00:18:15,426 for other things, other particles, to outrun light 325 00:18:15,527 --> 00:18:17,261 in a medium. 326 00:18:17,362 --> 00:18:20,431 As it hurtles through the ice, 327 00:18:20,532 --> 00:18:24,168 the particle generates a burst of blue light called 328 00:18:24,269 --> 00:18:26,104 Cherenkov radiation. 329 00:18:26,205 --> 00:18:27,839 It's almost like a sonic boom. 330 00:18:27,940 --> 00:18:29,700 If you travel faster than the speed of sound, 331 00:18:29,775 --> 00:18:32,376 there's a boom, right? - When you hear that boom, 332 00:18:32,478 --> 00:18:35,813 you also see this cone of wind. 333 00:18:35,914 --> 00:18:38,916 It's the same thing with Cherenkov radiation. 334 00:18:39,017 --> 00:18:40,518 You get this cone of light. 335 00:18:42,521 --> 00:18:44,989 Neutrinos carry different amounts of energy. 336 00:18:45,090 --> 00:18:49,427 Some, like the 2017 neutrino, 337 00:18:49,528 --> 00:18:51,696 carry quite a punch, 338 00:18:51,797 --> 00:18:55,800 and the energy of the neutrino depends on its source. 339 00:18:55,901 --> 00:19:00,037 High-energy neutrinos come from high-energy events, 340 00:19:00,139 --> 00:19:02,507 so we're looking for stuff blowing up. 341 00:19:02,608 --> 00:19:04,208 We're looking for stuff colliding. 342 00:19:04,309 --> 00:19:06,878 We're looking for stuff colliding and blowing up. 343 00:19:06,979 --> 00:19:08,880 We're looking for awesome things. 344 00:19:08,981 --> 00:19:13,951 The blue burst of Cherenkov radiation 345 00:19:14,052 --> 00:19:16,387 gives us a clue about the fearsome origin of 346 00:19:16,488 --> 00:19:18,122 the neutrino. 347 00:19:18,223 --> 00:19:21,859 We can follow the path of that blue light, 348 00:19:21,960 --> 00:19:26,898 and we can look backwards to see where the neutrino came from. 349 00:19:29,201 --> 00:19:30,535 We track the neutrino to 350 00:19:30,636 --> 00:19:33,838 a galaxy nearly six billion light-years away. 351 00:19:35,207 --> 00:19:36,841 At its heart sits one of 352 00:19:36,942 --> 00:19:39,744 the most powerful objects in the universe, 353 00:19:44,016 --> 00:19:45,249 a blazar. 354 00:19:46,518 --> 00:19:52,456 A blazar is the biggest, baddest form of feeding 355 00:19:52,558 --> 00:19:55,493 active, supermassive black hole out there, 356 00:19:55,594 --> 00:19:58,629 where material isn't just falling into the black hole, 357 00:19:58,730 --> 00:20:00,865 it's swirling around, creating a high-energy 358 00:20:00,966 --> 00:20:02,867 accretion disk. 359 00:20:02,968 --> 00:20:06,470 The blazar's accretion disk spins at millions 360 00:20:06,572 --> 00:20:08,973 of miles an hour, 361 00:20:09,074 --> 00:20:11,108 charging particles of gas and dust. 362 00:20:11,210 --> 00:20:14,645 The disk also generates magnetic fields 363 00:20:14,746 --> 00:20:18,182 that twist and tangle as they swirl around the black hole. 364 00:20:20,986 --> 00:20:23,454 Because you have magnetic fields that are 365 00:20:23,555 --> 00:20:24,789 twisted around, 366 00:20:24,890 --> 00:20:27,024 they also generate electric fields. 367 00:20:27,125 --> 00:20:29,760 The electric fields can then accelerate the charged 368 00:20:29,861 --> 00:20:32,129 particles along the magnetic fields 369 00:20:32,231 --> 00:20:35,132 and thus produce a lot of both particles 370 00:20:35,234 --> 00:20:38,102 and radiation coming out along jets. 371 00:20:38,203 --> 00:20:40,304 The jets blast out 372 00:20:40,405 --> 00:20:41,939 of the poles of the black hole. 373 00:20:44,910 --> 00:20:50,047 These are the most intense sources of radiation 374 00:20:50,148 --> 00:20:52,383 that the cosmos can ever produce, 375 00:20:52,484 --> 00:20:56,153 and they are pointed right at us from billions of 376 00:20:56,255 --> 00:20:57,355 light-years away. 377 00:20:57,456 --> 00:21:00,825 Do the jets create the powerful neutrinos? 378 00:21:02,227 --> 00:21:03,694 It's a bit of a mystery. 379 00:21:03,795 --> 00:21:05,196 For a while, it was thought that 380 00:21:05,297 --> 00:21:07,865 neutrinos are produced directly by the jet. 381 00:21:07,966 --> 00:21:09,667 But now we think that matter, 382 00:21:09,768 --> 00:21:12,570 like protons, come in from the accretion disk, 383 00:21:12,671 --> 00:21:14,071 and they slam into each other, 384 00:21:14,172 --> 00:21:17,275 and that's what produces the neutrinos. 385 00:21:17,376 --> 00:21:19,644 Particles racing around the accretion disk 386 00:21:19,745 --> 00:21:22,046 crash into the base of the jet. 387 00:21:22,147 --> 00:21:25,683 The enormous energy there smashes the particles together, 388 00:21:25,784 --> 00:21:27,985 producing neutrinos. 389 00:21:28,086 --> 00:21:30,221 The jets focus the stream of 390 00:21:30,322 --> 00:21:34,392 neutrinos and fire them straight towards Earth. 391 00:21:34,493 --> 00:21:36,294 By just detecting one neutrino, 392 00:21:36,395 --> 00:21:39,230 we get to see a lot of information from 393 00:21:39,331 --> 00:21:42,600 the inner workings of an object outside of our galaxy. 394 00:21:42,701 --> 00:21:44,902 And that's what's really exciting about neutrinos 395 00:21:45,003 --> 00:21:48,439 is that it could peer into the unknown. 396 00:21:48,540 --> 00:21:52,810 Now we use neutrinos to probe even further 397 00:21:52,911 --> 00:21:54,312 into the universe, 398 00:21:57,149 --> 00:22:01,285 back towards the first second of the Big Bang 399 00:22:01,386 --> 00:22:04,622 to answer the biggest question of them all... 400 00:22:04,723 --> 00:22:08,125 How and why do we exist? 401 00:22:20,772 --> 00:22:23,307 Neutrinos are key to our understanding 402 00:22:23,408 --> 00:22:25,042 of how the universe works. 403 00:22:26,411 --> 00:22:29,280 They show us that the sun is healthy. 404 00:22:31,483 --> 00:22:35,086 They are the trigger that makes supernovas explode, 405 00:22:35,187 --> 00:22:39,824 and they reveal the location of lethal blazars. 406 00:22:39,925 --> 00:22:42,927 And now they may solve something that still 407 00:22:43,028 --> 00:22:47,598 puzzles physicists... How we exist. 408 00:22:47,699 --> 00:22:50,935 The fact that our universe appears to be filled 409 00:22:51,036 --> 00:22:53,738 with matter is puzzling. 410 00:22:53,839 --> 00:22:55,740 There should have been equal amounts of matter 411 00:22:55,841 --> 00:22:57,742 and antimatter in the beginning, 412 00:22:57,843 --> 00:22:59,710 and they should have annihilated one another, 413 00:22:59,811 --> 00:23:01,912 producing just pure energy. 414 00:23:02,013 --> 00:23:03,647 So why do we exist? 415 00:23:03,749 --> 00:23:05,716 This is a fundamental question, 416 00:23:05,817 --> 00:23:09,220 because this is a question about why is there something 417 00:23:09,321 --> 00:23:10,821 rather than nothing? 418 00:23:12,290 --> 00:23:15,092 To answer that question, we have to 419 00:23:15,193 --> 00:23:16,427 rewind the clock back 420 00:23:16,528 --> 00:23:21,866 nearly 14 billion years to the birth of the universe. 421 00:23:21,967 --> 00:23:25,970 A speck of energy sparks into existence. 422 00:23:26,071 --> 00:23:28,806 This energy cools and forms tiny, 423 00:23:28,907 --> 00:23:33,077 primitive particles of matter, including neutrinos, 424 00:23:33,178 --> 00:23:36,781 the building blocks of everything we see today. 425 00:23:36,882 --> 00:23:40,584 The early universe appears chaotic, 426 00:23:40,685 --> 00:23:43,554 but it quickly establishes some ground rules, 427 00:23:43,655 --> 00:23:45,456 including symmetry. 428 00:23:45,557 --> 00:23:49,627 Our universe is full of symmetries. 429 00:23:49,728 --> 00:23:52,029 There are positive electric charges 430 00:23:52,130 --> 00:23:53,898 and negative electric charges. 431 00:23:53,999 --> 00:23:55,433 There's the yin and the yang. 432 00:23:55,534 --> 00:23:59,837 Well, there's also matter and antimatter. 433 00:23:59,938 --> 00:24:02,873 The Big Bang stuck to the rule of symmetry 434 00:24:02,974 --> 00:24:07,211 and made the same amount of both forms of matter. 435 00:24:07,312 --> 00:24:10,681 The mechanisms that we have for creating matter in 436 00:24:10,782 --> 00:24:14,285 the early universe create an equal amount of antimatter. 437 00:24:14,386 --> 00:24:19,190 That symmetry is baked into the laws of physics. 438 00:24:19,291 --> 00:24:21,692 The laws of physics also say 439 00:24:21,793 --> 00:24:25,596 that when matter and antimatter meet... 440 00:24:25,697 --> 00:24:27,698 sparks fly. 441 00:24:27,799 --> 00:24:29,867 So matter and antimatter, 442 00:24:29,968 --> 00:24:31,769 when they touch, they annihilate. 443 00:24:31,870 --> 00:24:34,472 They just disappear in a flash of energy. 444 00:24:34,573 --> 00:24:37,408 And as far as we understand, the earliest moments of 445 00:24:37,509 --> 00:24:40,177 the universe, matter and antimatter were created in 446 00:24:40,312 --> 00:24:41,178 equal amounts. 447 00:24:41,279 --> 00:24:44,081 So they should have annihilated, 448 00:24:44,182 --> 00:24:46,984 leaving nothing but energy. 449 00:24:47,085 --> 00:24:51,088 Which means, no matter, no antimatter, no gas, 450 00:24:51,189 --> 00:24:54,358 no dust, no stars, no galaxies, no life, nothing. 451 00:24:54,459 --> 00:24:57,995 Somehow matter won the battle 452 00:24:58,096 --> 00:25:00,331 over antimatter in the early universe. 453 00:25:03,401 --> 00:25:04,568 In some ways, 454 00:25:04,669 --> 00:25:06,570 the universe ignored the rule of symmetry. 455 00:25:07,906 --> 00:25:12,409 Something has to drive the universe off balance. 456 00:25:12,511 --> 00:25:14,879 There has to be a violation 457 00:25:14,980 --> 00:25:18,516 of this fundamental balance in our universe. 458 00:25:18,617 --> 00:25:21,585 That way, when the matter and antimatter met 459 00:25:21,686 --> 00:25:24,588 and annihilated, because there was more matter, 460 00:25:24,689 --> 00:25:27,558 there would be a residual of leftover matter, 461 00:25:27,659 --> 00:25:31,295 and there would be no antimatter. 462 00:25:31,396 --> 00:25:33,430 How did the Big Bang break 463 00:25:33,498 --> 00:25:36,567 the symmetry between matter and antimatter? 464 00:25:36,668 --> 00:25:39,670 So we're looking for any interaction, 465 00:25:39,771 --> 00:25:44,174 any process whatsoever where matter behaves slightly 466 00:25:44,276 --> 00:25:46,043 differently than antimatter. 467 00:25:46,144 --> 00:25:50,714 We're trying to find a flaw in physics. 468 00:25:50,815 --> 00:25:54,451 We can't look for that flaw directly, 469 00:25:54,553 --> 00:25:56,453 because we can't see the Big Bang, 470 00:25:56,555 --> 00:25:59,156 but we can recreate it, 471 00:25:59,257 --> 00:26:01,959 and we think neutrinos are involved. 472 00:26:03,228 --> 00:26:05,296 This is incredibly complicated. 473 00:26:05,397 --> 00:26:09,166 I'm... we are diving deep into the bowels of 474 00:26:09,267 --> 00:26:12,102 fundamental physics, and it is not a pretty sight. 475 00:26:15,106 --> 00:26:17,474 Japanese scientists conducted an experiment 476 00:26:17,576 --> 00:26:19,910 called TK2. 477 00:26:20,011 --> 00:26:22,546 They re-created part of the Big Bang by 478 00:26:22,647 --> 00:26:24,281 studying neutrinos 479 00:26:24,382 --> 00:26:28,819 and their symmetrical twin, antineutrinos. 480 00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:32,089 The goal... to see if antineutrinos change their 481 00:26:32,190 --> 00:26:36,627 identity or flavor at the same rate as regular neutrinos. 482 00:26:37,696 --> 00:26:42,466 Matter and antimatter should behave exactly the same, 483 00:26:42,567 --> 00:26:44,969 but we found something very interesting with 484 00:26:45,070 --> 00:26:46,870 this experiment. 485 00:26:46,972 --> 00:26:49,373 The particles broke symmetry. 486 00:26:49,474 --> 00:26:52,876 Neutrinos and antineutrinos changed flavor at 487 00:26:52,978 --> 00:26:54,178 different rates. 488 00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:57,615 This was a clear-cut example 489 00:26:57,716 --> 00:27:01,051 of matter behaving differently than antimatter. 490 00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:04,955 And that has revolutionized our understanding 491 00:27:05,056 --> 00:27:07,458 of the formation of particles during the Big Bang. 492 00:27:08,927 --> 00:27:10,972 What could have happened in the early universe 493 00:27:10,996 --> 00:27:14,398 is that more of the neutrinos converted into matter 494 00:27:14,499 --> 00:27:18,435 than there were antineutrinos became into antimatter, 495 00:27:18,536 --> 00:27:21,739 and in this way, you end up with a surplus of matter 496 00:27:21,840 --> 00:27:23,040 over antimatter. 497 00:27:28,246 --> 00:27:29,947 Even though that surplus was just 498 00:27:30,048 --> 00:27:32,116 one particle in a billion, 499 00:27:32,217 --> 00:27:34,084 it was enough to build the cosmos. 500 00:27:36,121 --> 00:27:38,155 So neutrinos in the early universe 501 00:27:38,256 --> 00:27:40,457 could possibly solve the matter, 502 00:27:40,592 --> 00:27:42,660 antimatter asymmetry problem we have. 503 00:27:45,563 --> 00:27:47,498 Yes, they cause destruction. 504 00:27:47,599 --> 00:27:49,767 They... you know, sometimes they blow up a star, 505 00:27:49,868 --> 00:27:52,870 but, at the end of the day, they did save 506 00:27:52,971 --> 00:27:54,571 the entire universe. 507 00:27:56,508 --> 00:28:00,444 Now, scientists hope that neutrinos may solve 508 00:28:00,545 --> 00:28:03,647 one of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos... 509 00:28:03,748 --> 00:28:06,583 The identity of dark matter. 510 00:28:18,363 --> 00:28:20,831 Neutrinos have been around since 511 00:28:20,932 --> 00:28:22,433 the birth of the universe. 512 00:28:22,534 --> 00:28:28,105 They may even be responsible for the formation of matter. 513 00:28:28,206 --> 00:28:30,808 Now we investigate if they play an even 514 00:28:30,909 --> 00:28:34,311 larger role in the development of the universe, 515 00:28:34,412 --> 00:28:37,514 the formation of the cosmic web. 516 00:28:39,984 --> 00:28:43,487 At the very largest scales in our universe, 517 00:28:43,588 --> 00:28:48,058 galaxies are arranged in a very peculiar pattern. 518 00:28:48,159 --> 00:28:51,662 We see long, thin threads of galaxies, 519 00:28:51,763 --> 00:28:55,065 and at the intersections, we see dense clumps of galaxies 520 00:28:55,133 --> 00:28:56,133 called clusters. 521 00:28:56,234 --> 00:28:57,935 In between them, we have these vast 522 00:28:58,036 --> 00:29:01,238 empty regions called the cosmic voids. 523 00:29:01,339 --> 00:29:03,474 For a long time, how the cosmic 524 00:29:03,575 --> 00:29:06,343 web formed and held together was a mystery. 525 00:29:06,444 --> 00:29:09,980 One of the real mysteries about our existence is 526 00:29:10,081 --> 00:29:12,983 why the universe was able to hold together at all. 527 00:29:13,084 --> 00:29:15,586 All the matter was simply spread apart 528 00:29:15,687 --> 00:29:18,655 to sparsely to ever form galaxies or stars. 529 00:29:18,757 --> 00:29:21,925 Instead, something helped to hold it together. 530 00:29:22,026 --> 00:29:26,597 We now think the glue binding the cosmic web 531 00:29:26,698 --> 00:29:31,401 is a mysterious substance known as dark matter. 532 00:29:31,503 --> 00:29:34,571 If it wasn't for dark matter in the very early universe, 533 00:29:34,672 --> 00:29:36,740 there might be no structure at all. 534 00:29:39,511 --> 00:29:42,412 But what is this architect of the universe, 535 00:29:42,514 --> 00:29:43,514 this dark matter? 536 00:29:44,816 --> 00:29:47,618 Dark matter is invisible matter that we can't 537 00:29:47,719 --> 00:29:51,488 see... so you, me, all of the particles, everything that 538 00:29:51,589 --> 00:29:56,460 we see is actually only 5% of actual matter in the universe. 539 00:29:56,561 --> 00:29:58,428 The rest is dark matter. 540 00:29:59,998 --> 00:30:03,467 Dark matter is a fancy name 541 00:30:03,568 --> 00:30:05,769 for something we don't understand. 542 00:30:05,870 --> 00:30:07,871 What we do know is that there 543 00:30:07,972 --> 00:30:10,774 is much more stuff than we can see. 544 00:30:10,875 --> 00:30:13,277 But we have no idea what it is. 545 00:30:13,411 --> 00:30:17,281 It's one of the greatest open mysteries in science. 546 00:30:19,083 --> 00:30:21,718 Dark matter hardly interacts with anything, 547 00:30:21,820 --> 00:30:26,123 a bit like neutrinos... Also like neutrinos, 548 00:30:26,224 --> 00:30:30,360 dark matter was abundant and active in the infant universe. 549 00:30:30,461 --> 00:30:34,798 So could neutrinos and dark matter be the same thing? 550 00:30:36,334 --> 00:30:38,335 We don't know what dark matter is, 551 00:30:38,436 --> 00:30:40,637 but we kind of know how it behaves. 552 00:30:40,738 --> 00:30:43,607 And neutrinos sound like a pretty good candidate for it 553 00:30:43,708 --> 00:30:45,576 because, hey, they are dark. 554 00:30:45,677 --> 00:30:47,077 They are everywhere in the universe, 555 00:30:47,111 --> 00:30:49,346 and they do have a little bit of mess. 556 00:30:50,548 --> 00:30:54,651 And by little, we do mean little... neutrinos 557 00:30:54,752 --> 00:30:58,155 weigh around 10 billion, billion, billion 558 00:30:58,256 --> 00:31:02,192 times less than a grain of sand. 559 00:31:02,293 --> 00:31:06,029 But neutrinos are also exquisitely abundant, and so 560 00:31:06,130 --> 00:31:08,565 because they're so abundant, 561 00:31:08,666 --> 00:31:12,970 their individual tiny mass can actually add up to a large 562 00:31:13,071 --> 00:31:16,473 diffuse mass on very large scales. 563 00:31:22,981 --> 00:31:24,014 To investigate 564 00:31:24,115 --> 00:31:26,516 if neutrinos and dark matter are the same thing, 565 00:31:26,618 --> 00:31:28,185 we must return to the Big Bang. 566 00:31:30,855 --> 00:31:34,892 As the universe expands and cools, primitive matter forms, 567 00:31:34,993 --> 00:31:39,162 including dark matter and trillions of neutrinos. 568 00:31:39,264 --> 00:31:43,166 The dark matter clumps together, forming regions of 569 00:31:43,268 --> 00:31:47,437 higher gravity, which pulls in regular matter. 570 00:31:47,572 --> 00:31:51,842 It formed a structure, a scaffolding, that allowed 571 00:31:51,943 --> 00:31:54,244 regular matter to gravitationally begin to come 572 00:31:54,345 --> 00:31:56,947 together and collapse into galaxies, 573 00:31:57,048 --> 00:31:58,548 stars, and planets. 574 00:31:58,650 --> 00:32:01,985 Could the combined mass of neutrinos in the early 575 00:32:02,086 --> 00:32:05,489 cosmos have produced the extra gravity to help 576 00:32:05,590 --> 00:32:07,024 structures form? 577 00:32:09,193 --> 00:32:11,995 Could it be possible that this really is dark matter? 578 00:32:12,063 --> 00:32:13,297 These tiny little particles, 579 00:32:13,398 --> 00:32:15,165 but in abundance across the universe. 580 00:32:15,266 --> 00:32:18,101 And we know more... 581 00:32:18,202 --> 00:32:21,038 Not all... we know more about neutrinos than we do 582 00:32:21,139 --> 00:32:22,572 about dark matter, 583 00:32:22,674 --> 00:32:28,111 but there's still a question around whether or not neutrinos 584 00:32:28,212 --> 00:32:31,381 can be a specific type of dark matter. 585 00:32:33,351 --> 00:32:36,286 To answer this question, we have to work out what 586 00:32:36,387 --> 00:32:41,491 specific type of dark matter was around in the Big Bang... 587 00:32:41,592 --> 00:32:43,894 Hot or cold. 588 00:32:43,995 --> 00:32:46,530 People talk about hot dark matter 589 00:32:46,631 --> 00:32:47,965 and cold dark matter. 590 00:32:48,066 --> 00:32:49,766 And really, what you're saying is 591 00:32:49,867 --> 00:32:51,702 the speed of the particles themselves. 592 00:32:51,803 --> 00:32:53,737 The cold dark matter is moving slowly, 593 00:32:53,838 --> 00:32:56,340 and the hot dark matter is moving fast. 594 00:32:56,441 --> 00:33:00,410 This speed difference is an important clue 595 00:33:00,511 --> 00:33:03,046 to whether neutrinos make up dark matter. 596 00:33:05,016 --> 00:33:06,550 With hot and cold dark matter, 597 00:33:06,651 --> 00:33:08,685 the way they interact with regular matter has 598 00:33:08,786 --> 00:33:10,554 a lot to do with how fast they're going. 599 00:33:10,655 --> 00:33:12,889 So it's a good analogy to think about a river. 600 00:33:12,991 --> 00:33:15,525 With hot dark matter, you'd have a torrent. 601 00:33:15,626 --> 00:33:17,294 Basically, it's going so fast, 602 00:33:17,395 --> 00:33:19,006 it doesn't actually connect with anything. 603 00:33:19,030 --> 00:33:20,397 It just goes right on past. 604 00:33:20,498 --> 00:33:22,699 So there's no chance to form that larger structure. 605 00:33:24,369 --> 00:33:26,970 If you have relatively slow-moving dark matter, 606 00:33:27,071 --> 00:33:29,740 cold dark matter, think about a slow-moving river. 607 00:33:29,841 --> 00:33:32,275 A slow-moving river begins to deposit silt. 608 00:33:34,078 --> 00:33:35,946 Think of that silt as the billions 609 00:33:36,047 --> 00:33:39,483 of galaxies that make up the cosmic web. 610 00:33:39,584 --> 00:33:42,019 We observed that galaxies formed very early in 611 00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:43,587 the universe, and this is good 612 00:33:43,688 --> 00:33:45,622 for cold dark matter, but it doesn't work for 613 00:33:45,723 --> 00:33:46,723 hot dark matter. 614 00:33:46,758 --> 00:33:47,935 So we think cold dark matter is 615 00:33:47,959 --> 00:33:49,926 really dominating structure formation 616 00:33:50,028 --> 00:33:52,262 in the early universe. 617 00:33:52,363 --> 00:33:56,533 But cold and slow does not describe neutrinos. 618 00:33:56,634 --> 00:33:59,736 They move very fast, close to the speed of light. 619 00:33:59,837 --> 00:34:02,773 This is a problem with neutrinos, 620 00:34:02,874 --> 00:34:04,975 because neutrinos would be hot dark matter. 621 00:34:05,076 --> 00:34:09,112 That rules out neutrinos as cold dark matter. 622 00:34:11,416 --> 00:34:13,683 The idea that neutrinos are dark matter 623 00:34:13,785 --> 00:34:17,020 hit another setback when we weighed the universe. 624 00:34:19,490 --> 00:34:22,225 If you add up the total mass of all the neutrinos in 625 00:34:22,326 --> 00:34:24,127 the universe, it would wind up 626 00:34:24,228 --> 00:34:27,664 being about a half a percent to 1.5% of 627 00:34:27,765 --> 00:34:29,666 the total mass of dark matter. 628 00:34:31,402 --> 00:34:33,170 Neutrinos were a good candidates for 629 00:34:33,271 --> 00:34:36,373 dark matter because they exist, 630 00:34:36,474 --> 00:34:38,875 and they're very shy, just like the dark matter 631 00:34:38,976 --> 00:34:40,677 particles are. 632 00:34:40,778 --> 00:34:43,780 But then we were able to measure more accurately how 633 00:34:43,881 --> 00:34:47,484 much dark matter there is and how much neutrinos there are, 634 00:34:47,585 --> 00:34:49,853 and there's just way less neutrinos 635 00:34:49,954 --> 00:34:51,088 than there is dark matter. 636 00:34:52,757 --> 00:34:54,658 It sounds like game over, 637 00:34:54,759 --> 00:34:57,961 but the neutrino hunters aren't giving up. 638 00:34:58,062 --> 00:35:01,331 The search is on for a mysterious new kind 639 00:35:01,432 --> 00:35:02,599 of neutrino, 640 00:35:02,700 --> 00:35:05,435 one that could solve the riddle 641 00:35:05,536 --> 00:35:06,937 of dark matter. 642 00:35:17,982 --> 00:35:20,550 Neutrinos played a huge role in shaping 643 00:35:20,651 --> 00:35:22,352 the early universe. 644 00:35:24,322 --> 00:35:28,725 They helped matter defeat antimatter, 645 00:35:28,826 --> 00:35:31,128 and the cosmos develop structure. 646 00:35:32,597 --> 00:35:36,566 This led us to wonder if neutrinos might be dark matter. 647 00:35:38,970 --> 00:35:41,438 But when we weighed the universe, 648 00:35:41,539 --> 00:35:43,240 the numbers didn't add up. 649 00:35:43,341 --> 00:35:46,977 Neutrinos do have mass, and there are a lot of them 650 00:35:47,111 --> 00:35:49,079 out there, so it might be some tiny, 651 00:35:49,180 --> 00:35:52,048 tiny fraction of dark matter is made up of neutrinos. 652 00:35:52,150 --> 00:35:54,084 But we know that these things do 653 00:35:54,185 --> 00:35:55,919 not make up the bulk of dark matter. 654 00:35:56,020 --> 00:35:58,155 It must be something else. 655 00:35:58,256 --> 00:36:01,424 So neutrino scientists hunt for a different 656 00:36:01,526 --> 00:36:03,293 contender for dark matter, 657 00:36:03,361 --> 00:36:06,830 a completely new kind of neutrino. 658 00:36:06,931 --> 00:36:10,567 We know about three flavors of neutrinos... 659 00:36:10,668 --> 00:36:13,103 The electron neutrino, 660 00:36:13,204 --> 00:36:15,972 the muon neutrino, and the tau neutrino. 661 00:36:16,073 --> 00:36:19,943 But there could be a hidden fourth flavor of 662 00:36:20,044 --> 00:36:23,813 neutrino that could solve the riddle of dark matter. 663 00:36:27,685 --> 00:36:30,787 We call this a sterile neutrino. 664 00:36:30,888 --> 00:36:32,923 So-called because they interact 665 00:36:33,024 --> 00:36:36,593 even less than regular neutrinos. 666 00:36:36,694 --> 00:36:41,031 A particle so tiny, so hard to detect could actually turn out 667 00:36:41,132 --> 00:36:43,567 to have lots of the secrets wrapped up inside it 668 00:36:43,668 --> 00:36:45,168 as to how the universe works. 669 00:36:47,838 --> 00:36:49,739 The first step to find out if 670 00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,342 sterile neutrinos are dark matter 671 00:36:52,443 --> 00:36:54,544 is to prove they exist, 672 00:36:54,645 --> 00:36:56,479 and that's tough. 673 00:36:56,581 --> 00:37:00,417 Even though sterile neutrinos are almost impossible 674 00:37:00,518 --> 00:37:03,486 to detect, we can still hunt for them. 675 00:37:03,588 --> 00:37:06,156 Back in the day, neutrinos were also said 676 00:37:06,257 --> 00:37:09,526 to be difficult to detect. 677 00:37:09,627 --> 00:37:11,995 Trying to find dark matter, trying to find 678 00:37:12,096 --> 00:37:13,330 these sterile neutrinos, 679 00:37:13,431 --> 00:37:15,632 it's almost like using one invisible, 680 00:37:15,733 --> 00:37:18,301 undetectable thing to find another, using a ghost 681 00:37:18,402 --> 00:37:19,970 to find a goblin. 682 00:37:20,071 --> 00:37:23,473 We are definitely pushing the limits of science. 683 00:37:23,574 --> 00:37:28,378 A team at Fermilab has an ingenious idea. 684 00:37:28,479 --> 00:37:33,049 They can't spot sterile neutrinos directly, because 685 00:37:33,150 --> 00:37:36,586 they don't interact with atoms in the detectors. 686 00:37:36,687 --> 00:37:38,688 So they're looking for neutrinos as 687 00:37:38,789 --> 00:37:42,492 they change flavor into sterile neutrinos. 688 00:37:42,593 --> 00:37:46,162 We know that normally, neutrinos change type as they 689 00:37:46,264 --> 00:37:47,464 move through space, 690 00:37:47,565 --> 00:37:50,400 but they have to move far enough before that change happens. 691 00:37:52,436 --> 00:37:54,537 So tracking neutrinos over a short 692 00:37:54,639 --> 00:37:57,274 distance shouldn't show any flavor changing. 693 00:37:59,443 --> 00:38:01,088 In this experiment, they've constructed 694 00:38:01,112 --> 00:38:03,246 only a half-mile-long path. 695 00:38:03,347 --> 00:38:04,867 It's not enough time from the neutrinos 696 00:38:04,915 --> 00:38:06,916 to change flavor in the normal way. 697 00:38:07,018 --> 00:38:10,520 If they do see something, if they see something change, 698 00:38:10,621 --> 00:38:13,790 this could be some interesting aspect, perhaps evidence 699 00:38:13,891 --> 00:38:15,091 for sterile neutrinos. 700 00:38:15,192 --> 00:38:17,627 So is it possible that, over short distances, 701 00:38:17,728 --> 00:38:19,529 regular neutrinos can oscillate into this 702 00:38:19,630 --> 00:38:20,730 sterile neutrino? 703 00:38:26,370 --> 00:38:28,838 The team shoots beams of muon flavor 704 00:38:28,939 --> 00:38:31,007 neutrinos along the detector. 705 00:38:33,644 --> 00:38:36,313 In theory, they won't have time to change flavor. 706 00:38:40,985 --> 00:38:44,054 We can see whether or not these muon neutrinos 707 00:38:44,155 --> 00:38:48,491 morphed into a different type of neutrino. 708 00:38:48,592 --> 00:38:51,361 They shouldn't change, but if they do, 709 00:38:51,462 --> 00:38:54,497 that points us towards sterile neutrinos. 710 00:38:56,901 --> 00:38:58,335 The team compare the number 711 00:38:58,436 --> 00:39:01,871 of muon neutrinos reaching the detectors 712 00:39:01,972 --> 00:39:04,908 to those fired along the beam. 713 00:39:05,009 --> 00:39:09,512 Fewer muon neutrinos hit the detectors. 714 00:39:09,613 --> 00:39:12,716 Some neutrinos had changed flavor. 715 00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,787 So we are seeing that oscillation of 716 00:39:17,888 --> 00:39:21,224 neutrinos changing from one type to another. 717 00:39:21,325 --> 00:39:26,496 We had an idea of how many we should have seen, 718 00:39:26,597 --> 00:39:27,897 but we're seeing more, 719 00:39:27,998 --> 00:39:32,469 and that could be sterile neutrinos. 720 00:39:32,570 --> 00:39:35,205 If sterile neutrinos do exist, 721 00:39:35,306 --> 00:39:38,975 would they be dark matter? 722 00:39:39,076 --> 00:39:40,944 Right now, we don't know the mass 723 00:39:41,045 --> 00:39:42,912 of the sterile neutrino, 724 00:39:43,013 --> 00:39:48,118 but if it's heavy enough, it could be a contender. 725 00:39:48,219 --> 00:39:53,123 If it exists, it's prevalent enough to account 726 00:39:53,224 --> 00:39:56,359 for all the dark matter in the universe. 727 00:39:56,460 --> 00:39:59,062 Fermilab's results haven't been verified by 728 00:39:59,163 --> 00:40:01,464 other scientists. 729 00:40:01,565 --> 00:40:03,633 So it's too soon to say 730 00:40:03,734 --> 00:40:06,369 definitively that sterile neutrinos are real 731 00:40:08,038 --> 00:40:10,540 or that they make up dark matter. 732 00:40:10,641 --> 00:40:12,942 Dark matter is probably one of 733 00:40:13,043 --> 00:40:15,345 the biggest questions of our time. 734 00:40:15,446 --> 00:40:17,313 And the fact that Fermilab 735 00:40:17,415 --> 00:40:21,651 may be one of the places to answer that question, 736 00:40:21,752 --> 00:40:25,522 and the fact that I am working here is really fantastic, 737 00:40:25,623 --> 00:40:27,924 because we're attempting the impossible. 738 00:40:30,694 --> 00:40:34,164 We have to wait to see if the impossible is possible. 739 00:40:37,301 --> 00:40:39,636 We know neutrinos have played a vital 740 00:40:39,737 --> 00:40:41,838 role in the history of our universe, 741 00:40:43,507 --> 00:40:47,877 and even now, they refresh it by powering supernovas. 742 00:40:51,115 --> 00:40:55,718 Without them, our sun, our world, 743 00:40:57,188 --> 00:41:00,089 and even our bodies would not have formed. 744 00:41:01,459 --> 00:41:05,295 Neutrinos are pesky little particles, super elusive, 745 00:41:05,396 --> 00:41:08,565 difficult to study, but when you can catch them, 746 00:41:08,666 --> 00:41:12,535 they offer secrets to the universe. 747 00:41:12,636 --> 00:41:15,839 A story of neutrinos has been really interesting. 748 00:41:15,940 --> 00:41:16,973 It's like reading a book, 749 00:41:17,074 --> 00:41:18,452 and you think you're on the last page, and then 750 00:41:18,476 --> 00:41:21,544 you turn it, and then suddenly there's 100 new pages. 751 00:41:21,645 --> 00:41:24,681 Neutrinos are teaching us that the universe is, 752 00:41:24,782 --> 00:41:27,650 in many ways, subtle and hard to figure out. 753 00:41:27,751 --> 00:41:29,786 And the more we learn about these things, 754 00:41:29,887 --> 00:41:32,222 the more we learn about the universe. 755 00:41:32,323 --> 00:41:35,592 Neutrinos are the universe's great escape artists, 756 00:41:35,693 --> 00:41:37,293 the Houdini of particles. 757 00:41:37,394 --> 00:41:39,429 In fact, they may have helped us to 758 00:41:39,530 --> 00:41:42,532 escape the Big Bang and end up existing. 759 00:41:42,633 --> 00:41:46,002 At the end of the day, they're what saves us. 760 00:41:46,103 --> 00:41:49,806 The more we understand these elusive particles, 761 00:41:49,907 --> 00:41:55,111 the more we can gain insight into how the universe works, 762 00:41:55,212 --> 00:41:57,580 so it's really cool. 763 00:41:57,604 --> 00:41:59,604 764 00:41:59,654 --> 00:42:04,204 Repair and Synchronization by Easy Subtitles Synchronizer 1.0.0.0 60049

Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.