Beyond the Standard Model

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever heard of a beauty quark? How about a glueball? Physics is full of weird particles that leave many of us scratching our heads. But these tiny particles make up everything in the quantum world and in us and are the basis of the fundamental scientific theory called The Standard Model. But it doesn’t explain everything. It can’t account for dark matter or dark energy, for example. We find out whether new physics experiments might force us to rewrite the Standard Model. Plus, we discuss a NASA proposal to fly spacecraft close to the sun in search of new physics. Guests: Phil Plait – Aka the Bad Astronomer, former astronomer on Hubble, teacher, lecturer and debunker of conspiracy theories. He is also the author of a new book “Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe.” Harry Cliff – Particle physicist at the University of Cambridge who works on the LHCb experiment at the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, CERN. He is the author of: “Space Oddities, The Mysterious Anomalies Challenging Our Understanding of the Universe.” Slava Turyshev – Research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Featuring music by Dewey Dellay and Jun Miyake Originally aired May 20, 2024 You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact [email protected] to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
0:04.2	I'm Matt Kaplan, the host of Safeguarding Sound Science, Evolution Edition.
0:09.6	Evolution is the unifying principle of biology, yet it still breeds controversy a century
0:15.3	and a half after Charles Darwin.
0:17.7	Join us as we meet the passionate researchers and communicators who are expanding our knowledge
0:23.0	and fighting to keep good science in our schools and politics. Subscribe to Safeguarding Sound
0:29.3	Science on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you like to listen.
0:48.4	Is it possible that the more we study the universe, the stranger it appears?
0:56.0	We know that 95% of the matter and energy in the universe is invisible. And it's made of substances that we have no understanding of.
0:59.0	After scientists detected the elusive Higgs boson,
1:02.0	it seemed like the big questions about the universe were answered.
1:05.0	But as it turns out, not only are there more particles out there,
1:09.0	get ready for beauty quarks and glue balls,
1:11.9	but we also have more questions about the fundamental forces that define the universe.
1:16.7	Our models predict one thing, our observations reveal something different.
1:21.8	For example, the existence of dark energy and dark matter doesn't fit in to what's called
1:26.1	the standard model of particle physics
1:28.1	that scientists use. I'm Molly Bentley. In this episode of Big Picture Science from the SETI
1:33.2	Institute, we explore how new physics experiments are shaking up cosmology, why the universe
1:39.0	is stranger than we thought, and why it may be time for us to go beyond the standard model.
1:55.6	As we get better at science exploration, things get weirder, but this is natural. First you identify
2:01.9	the big things like how large objects move according to Newtonian physics, and then the more
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