What If Charge is NOT Fundamental?

If you've studied any physics you know that like charges repel and opposite charges attract. But why? It's as though this thing - electric charge - is as fundamental a property of an object as its mass. It just sort of ... is. Well it turns out if you dig deep enough, the fundamental-ness of charge unravels, and in many things, including mass itself, are unraveled with it.

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Hosted by Matt O'Dowd
Written by Fernando Franco Félix & Matt O'Dowd
Post Production by Leonardo Scholzer, Yago Ballarini, Pedro Osinski, Adriano Leal & Stephanie Faria
GFX Visualizations: Ajay Manuel
Directed by Andrew Kornhaber
Assistant Producer: Setare Gholipour
Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber
Executives in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski, Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming (PBS): Gabrielle Ewing

Spacetime is produced by Kornhaber Brown for PBS Digital Studios.
This program is produced by Kornhaber Brown, which is solely responsible for its content.
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[seanbirtwistle]

whoever writes these episodes does a great job. i can't imagine how hard it must be to select and sequence information on topics like these in a way that makes sense to people who know very little. and do it in ten minutes . teaching is an underappreciated skill

[evilotis]

7:40 apparently Gell-Mann wasn't aware of group theory until after the fact—he actually worked out the symmetries and accompanying mathematics himself and then had it pointed out to him that what he'd constructed was the SU(3) group, which is honestly even more impressive

[awesomedata]

This is such a great series. I love this particular episode. We need more in-depth episodes like this one. Thanks, Matt!

[tommymclaughlin-artist]

Can't get over how consistently mind-blowingly excellent this show is.

[willo]

I love the analogy of the child’s “but whys”. A lot of physics feels like that sometimes once you get down to the basic structure of everything. I guess that’s what Science is, a grown up “But why” to the universe.

[Wasabiofip]

Sit down looking for video to watch with lunch, see PBS spacetime notification. Nice.

[J-tg]

As someone mentioned earlier, would LOVE a catch up episode of where we stand in these topics. That is, what is 100% proven, what is still purely theoretical, and what is still just an hypothesis.

[eusou]

I love how these titles are so shocking at first glance. Not because they're bait-ish, but because the topics are actually so fundamental to our understanding of our immediate reality that any new hypothesis in the field represents such great change.

[Cece]

I am neither a math person, nor a science person; I mainly watch these with my son, who loves this stuff. What I love are the moments when I can *see* or *feel* how it makes sense. I do not comprehend this on a scientific/mathematical level, but with Matt's brilliant explanations, the concepts drift in and out of comprehension in some vague, indefinable, "music of the spheres" sense.
I love it.

[mysteryhombre]

I''ve said it before, I'll continue to say it. This series is truly amazing and should be preserved as important to humanity. Will continue to watch for the rest of my life.

[bretfuzz]

I love how the more we know, the more we know we don’t know.

[TheTexas]

I'm starting to think physicists are just writing quantum mechanics fan fiction at this point

[andreubotella]

2:25 Does anyone else think that the "spin" label should've done a 720º rotation on screen, also spinning around itself such that the second 360º rotation had the word horizontally flipped?

[siRrk]

wow, this was an extra good episode. i feel like this time we truly need 4 more episodes to explain some of the concepts, but im also good with just diving deep for now. great work!

[TheGundeck]

9:52 Since chirality is defined in reference to the momentum vector of the particle, does the chirality depend on the observers reference frame? If so, couldn't two different observers see the particle as both right and left handed, and then both feeling and not feeling the weak force? How do the two observers deconflict their observations?

[jajssblue]

From charge to spin to chirality, it's funny how many things in Physics are just bi-valued conserved quantities oscillating between those two values.

[oskarskalski]

I'm no physicist, but several years ago I found myself dazzled with things connected to cosmology, astrophysics and quantum theory. When I tried to understand those charges, hypercharges and isospins my head almost blew. Thank you for this episode, I need to watch it several times to get a grasp of those concepts but I hope I'll get there. Is there a hint that you'll finally explain the Z boson?

[jaredf]

This is really one of the coolest episodes in a while, I learned so many new things. I can’t wait to hear more about the electroweak connection and all the deeper symmetries and what kinds of interactions emerge from them.

[timgabby]

Quite a few microcuts, for the sharp eyed. This is a seriously densely written episode. Pause, rewind, rewatch. Great stuff. Old UK duffer here :)

[nichonifroa]

Hi Matt & PBS Spacetime, really enjoyed this episode — many thanks.
One piece of feedback: I personally much prefer when consecutive episodes deal with one particular topic at a time, than when topical episodes are spread over time and interspersed with one-offs. I find myself more engaged with a series where I know that the next episode will address some of the questions that were left open. Just something to consider!