Can a Particle Be Neither Matter Nor Force?

Check out the Space Time Merch Store

Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord!

All particles belong to two large groups: fermions like protons and electrons make everything we consider "matter", while bosons like photons and gluons transmit the fundamental forces. And that about covers the universe: matter moving through space and time under the action of forces. But what if we could create particles in between these two possibilities. Physics says these neither matter nor force anyons can exist, and they may have some pretty incredible uses. They’re called anyons.

Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements!

Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Fernando Franco Félix & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini & Stephanie Faria
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Associate Producer: Bahar Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell

Spacetime is a production of Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.
This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.
© 2024 PBS. All rights reserved.

Space Time Was Made Possible In Part By:

Big Bang Sponsors
First Principles Foundation
John Sronce
Bryce Fort
Peter Barrett
David Neumann
Alexander Tamas
Morgan Hough
Juan Benet
Vinnie Falco
Mark Rosenthal

Quasar Sponsors
Grace Biaelcki
Glenn Sugden
Ethan Cohen
Stephen Wilcox
J. Tyacke
Mark Heising

Hypernova Sponsors
Michael Tidwell
Chris Webb
David Giltinan
Ivari Tölp
Kenneth See
Gregory Forfa
Alex Kern
Bradley Voorhees
Scott Gorlick
Paul Stehr-Green
Ben Delo
Scott Gray
Антон Кочков
Robert Ilardi
John R. Slavik
Donal Botkin
Edmund Fokschaner
Chuck Zegar
Daniel Muzquiz

Gamma Ray Burst Sponsors
Neil Moore
Robin Sur
Arko Provo Mukherjee
Mike Purvis
Christopher Wade
Anthony Crossland
Grace Seraph
Parliament
Stephen Saslow
Robert DeChellis
Tomaz Lovsin
Anthony Leon
Leonardo Schulthais Senna
Lori Ferris
Dennis Van Hoof
Koen Wilde
Nicolas Katsantonis
Joe Pavlovic
Justin Lloyd
Chuck Lukaszewski
Cole B Combs
Andrea Galvagni
Jerry Thomas
Nikhil Sharma
John Anderson
Bradley Ulis
Craig Falls
Kane Holbrook
Ross Story
Teng Guo
Harsh Khandhadia
Matt Quinn
Michael Lev
Rad Antonov
Terje Vold
James Trimmier
Jeremy Soller
Paul Wood
Kent Durham
Jim Bartosh
John H. Austin, Jr.
Diana S
Faraz Khan
Almog Cohen
Daniel Jennings
Russ Creech
Jeremy Reed
David Johnston
Michael Barton
Isaac Suttell
Oliver Flanagan
Bleys Goodson
Mark Delagasse
Mark Daniel Cohen
Shane Calimlim
Tybie Fitzhugh
Eric Kiebler
Craig Stonaha
Frederic Simon
John Robinson
Jim Hudson
Alex Gan
John Funai
Adrien Molyneux
Bradley Jenkins
Amy Hickman
Vlad Shipulin
Thomas Dougherty
King Zeckendorff
Dan Warren
Joseph Salomone
Patrick Sutton
Julien Dubois

[pbsspacetime]

Hey Space Timers! A few of you caught an little error on our part in the merch shoutout. And you are all technically correct, the best kind of correct! The Higgs UV shirt & hoodie will be available for sale at the Merch Store until July 4th, but we are currently past the date where we can guarantee delivery by July 4th. (shipping usually takes about two weeks). Hope that clears things up!

[dhaktizero]

summoning entities from lower dimensions
again

[NewMessage]

"Ok, class... Who can tell me what an η = X particle is called?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Anyone....?"

[Salisaad]

My man just spent 18 minutes explaining how these particles cannot exist and then just casually drops "anohyow, here's how to make them"

[parzh]

I always thought of spin as "that meaningless quantum number". Meanwhile, Matt casually explains what it is, its origins, and the implications of it having other values.

I don't think a lot of people can fully appreciate what happened here.

Incredible work, hats off!

[alexdamman]

Wait . . . what? You explained the Pauli exclusion principle in under a minute? This is what I have been looking for!

[cherubinth]

Very cool how a more rigorous explains why only two types are observed.

[jackielinde]

PBS Spacetime: "...that naming an electron is silly."
Me: "Oh, not this again. Eric the 1/2 Electron is not going to be happy hearing them say this again."

[jcarlile]

Probably one of the best videos for me. Don’t know why but all of this made sense to me. Pretty sure all the years of watching Matt have finally started to sink in and click. Thank you.

[ianboelts]

I'll take one order of fried Anyon rings please

[tmrogers]

Love videos like this. This is the first time I’ve ever heard about anyons and my mind is blown

[klikkolee]

18:10 this conflicts with the reasoning used to disprove "real" anyons. The reasoning was that even when the particles were constrained to a 2d plane, the embedding of that plane within a 3d space precludes anyons since the plane can be viewed from either side. And that describes the physics experiment too -- the particles are confined to a 2d plane, but that plane is embedded in 3d space and can be viewed from either side

[TheYeIIowDucK]

It's insane how such insane math underlies so much of our universe. This episode, more than any other, made me realize it really IS just maths all the way down. We are insane complex mathematical objects that somehow produce consciousness.

[Khyranleander]

Ever notice how often Limited Time ads are at least partially misscheduled?

Vid: "To get this merch, you have to order by June 23rd." Vid airs on the 27th.

[stephenspackman]

Wait wait. These researchers made anyons with spin _exactly_ 1/3, _roughly_ 1/3 or _indistinguishable_ from 1/3? These are algebraically very different.

[johnmichaelchase]

This is one of the few episodes where it's very difficult to parse even with the incredible effort and diagrams. That said! I had an awesome ah-ha moment with the clockwise flip demonstrations indicating why it's only possible to have multiples of pi as spin due to the mathematics behind that transformation with 3 spatial dimensions.

Will be pretty neat if this results in 'Anyonic Quantum Super Computers' in the future, even it's hard to even understand what that would even look/behave like!

[ordan]

Fascinating!
But I must say, really feels like you buried the lead here 😅
"There’s this special, 3rd(infinity-th?) type of particle, that only exists mathematically, and only in lower dimensional spaces... except we can artificially make materials which behave like their in lower dimensions, and suddenly this particle behaviour emerges!"

That's UTTERLY WILD
And I totally get that we won't understand until you've walked us through the math... but still, come on! That's SO COOL, let us know up-top that the difficult math is heading to somewhere so interesting! 😍

[tcddcdu]

If the universe is holographic and can be represented as a 2D-surface on its infinite boundary, can anyons exist on that boundary?

[jajssblue]

I applaud Spacetime for communicating these complex interactions so well.

[LanceMcCarthy]

Congrats! This the first episode that blew completely over my head, lol.