One of my favorite things about making these
videos are your awesome questions and comments.
So today what I'm going to do is something
completely different and I'm just going to
directly answer the questions that you've
sent me over Facebook and Twitter and YouTube.
So the first question is from BHole Nath,
who asks: "What happens if a black hole collides
with another black hole?"
Well, if you have two black holes in space
and they're coming at each other, they'll
probably miss.
But they're attracted to each other, so they
start dancing, they start spiraling in toward
each other, and then, eventually they go *whoosh*
and they suck up into one huge back hole.
What's even cooler is that when they're going
around each other, they give off gravitational
waves.
Like wave of gravity.
This is true for any mass that's accelerating,
like if you have your hand, which is made
of mass, and you accelerate it, gravitational
waves come off of it it.
You can't detect them because they're very
weak, but there are gravitational waves.
And with black holes, you can actually detect
those gravitational waves because they're
super-huge.
And in 2015 at LIGO, the Laser Interferometer
Gravitational Wave Observatory, they actually
detected gravitational waves from two black
holes colliding.
In our previous video about how to see quantum
with the naked eye, iM4rtyx4 asks: "Is it
possible that these streaks can be seen on
photos?"
So the answer is yes.
In the video I talk about how if you look
at a light and you squint, you can see streaks
of light coming off the lamp or whatever you're
looking at.
And you can actually also see those in photos.
So if you take your phone and you put, say,
two credit cards in front of the camera and
then take a picture, just like through a slit,
you'll actually see two streaks of light coming
off, you know, if it's a lamp you're taking
a picture of, you see streaks of light coming
off of it.
In the video "Can We Measure Consciousness?"
Sjors de bruijn3 asks, "What if I take my
barely conscious phone and use it to simulate
what would be a conscious machine?
Like what would be a conscious process?
Would that be considered consciousness inside
a non-conscious machine?
Did I just create consciousness?"
Well, sort of.
So, in the video I describe how the Integrated
Information theory of Consciousness, which
is a consciousness theory that's growing in
popularity, can calculate the amount of consciousness,
say, in a computer, or in a thermostat, or
in some circuitry, and hopefully could eventually
calculate it in the brain.
Your consciousness is so large -- so much
consciousness -- it's kinda tough to calculate.
So in that video, a phone is a little conscious.
In order to make your phone more conscious,
what you'd have to do is you'd have to make
a bunch of connections that are more integrated.
Like, for example, in your brain, every neuron
is connected to, like, thousands of other
neurons.
It's very interconnected; you couldn't just
pull out one neuron and the brain would be
fine.
And so if you somehow took the circuitry in
the phone and made it so there were a lot
of interconnections -- like every wire connected
to, you know, 1,000 other wires and they all
looped back on themselves so it could also
be more self-aware.
Then you'd be making it more conscious, but
the software itself -- if you just run a particular
software on your phone, you can't make it
any more conscious.
Faiz Khan asks: "I would like to know about
the conditions before the Big Bang."
All right, so Faiz, I also would really like
to know this; lots of physics really want
to know this too.
The thing is that when the Big Bang happened,
it created the universe, and that means that
it created space and it created time.
And with time came the concepts of before
and after, past and future.
And so to try to go before the Big Bang means
to go before time...that is, before the concept
of "before."
So, it's hard to know what that means.
Nobody knows.
But if anybody out there has theories, send
them my way.
Netron asks: "So, you do research?
What's it like?"
I've done lots of different kinds of research.
I've done nuclear physics theory -- basically,
take two gold nuclei, smash them together:
what do you get?
And what you get is something called quark-gluon
plasma.
It's a fluid made of the stuff that makes
up nuclei.
This fluid was at the beginning of the universe,
and you can actually create it in these nuclear
collisions.
So that was really cool.
I've done some fusion energy theory.
I've done some gravitational wave physics.
That's LIGO, the thing that detected the merger
of two black holes.
And my most recent research -- this is what
I did my Ph.D on -- is theoretical particle
physics.
Basically, the smallest things in the universe
-- specifically related to the Large Hadron
Collider, which is smashing protons together
and what you get out of those collisions.
All of the research is similar in that it's
a lot of being wrong and a little bit of being
right.
So, I sort of feel like at any point, I go
down, like, 20 paths, and wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong,
and then right.
And you eventually can get to a correct answer,
but you have to be wrong a lot.
Next question is from Tech News, who asks,
"How come matter anti-quarks emit quarks at
high energies, whereas protons and neutrons
consist of three valence quarks?"
So, what's going on is, basically, in a big
collision, when you collide, say, two protons
together like they do at the Large Hadron
Collider, you basically get a mini explosion,
where you get a bunch of new quarks just like
popping out.
But in a proton and a neutron, you sort of
have bound together -- they're all like tied
up -- three quarks.
So any neutron or any proton is made of three
quarks, which can't escape.
So the question is: In one of these explosions,
how come one anti-matter quark can just like
emit a quark but inside a proton and a neutron
you don't just get new quarks popping into
existence?
And the answer is that you actually do get
new quarks popping into existence inside a
proton and neutron.
Anywhere in space, like at the smallest, most
fundamental level, even like right here in
this space, there's some quark and anti-quark
-- like, here's an up-quark and an anti-upquark
-- basically the anti-matter of this quark
-- coming into existence and then *pop* annihilating
again.
Or you could have, like, an electron and its
anti-matter pair -- a positron -- come into
existence and then *pop* annihilate again.
So, basically, what's going on is that that's
always happening, except when you collide
two things together, these two things that
come into existence, they have enough energy
that they can just fly off and be detected.
And that's what's happening inside the experiments
at the Large Hadron Collider.
So the last question I want to answer is a
question that I asked you and thousands of
you told me the answer.
So the question was: "If you took a laser
beam and you shined it at one side of the
moon and then flicked your wrist like this,
you'd actually get a laser dot that moved
across the moon faster than the speed of light.
And how is that possible?"
So, a lot of you gave this correct answer,
which is really cool, which is basically that
when you're holding the laser, it's like shooting
photons.
It's like shooting photons -- you go like
this and it shoots photons there, shoots photons
there, and each photon is moving at the speed
of light.
But they land in succession, right, so you
have a photon lands on the moon, lands on
the moon, lands on the moon, lands on the
moon, lands on the moon.
And if you follow where they're landing, it
looks like it's a dot moving faster than the
speed of light across the face of the moon.
So, thank you for answering that question
and if you have more questions about physics
or reality or the universe, or where to get
a cute little bunny like this, put it down
in the comments.
I'll answer it in the next Q&A.
