August 16, 2019 • 56 mins
What does the Large Hadron Collider do? How large is it? What is the LHC looking for? Listen in and get the scoop on the Large Hadron Collider with Chris and Jonathan.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
with How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I
love all things tech. And in this classic episode, which
dates back to September five, two thousand twelve, Chris Billette
(00:28):
and I took a look at the large Hadron Collider,
which obviously had not really got going the way it
has over the last few years. And since then, I've
actually had Daniel of Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe
over on our show to talk about the you know,
running data for the LHC and and analyzing information that
(00:49):
has gathered by the LHC. So I've talked about this
in subsequent episodes, but I think it's fun to go
back and listen to this early one where Chris and
I really suss out what it's all about and give
out the details of this amazing, amazing piece of technology.
So enjoy. So today we wanted to cover a pretty
(01:11):
big piece of technology. Actually, yes, we're going to get
deep into it, and it's a big piece of technology
that looks at teeny tiny stuff yeah. Yeah, We've had
quite a few people say that they wanted us to
talk about this, and we've kind of put it off because, well,
we wanted to talk about it. I know, it's it's strange.
(01:32):
It's the large Hadron collider, folks, that's what we're gonna
talk about. And really we were going to do a
podcast about this about nine months ago, but then a
bird dropped a bag out on my head and it
just threw everything off for ages. What really frightens me
is that I thought about making that joke and hadn't yet. Yeah, well,
I was like, one of us is going to it's
(01:53):
just gonna be a race, all right. So um, and
if you don't know the story about the bird and
the bread, we will all become clear. Yes, we will
allude to it in in a moment. But let's talk
about the large Hadron collider, what it is, what it does,
and um and kind of get a grip on the
whole idea of adam smashers and particle accelerators. Yes, this
(02:16):
actually is the latest if you will entered in a
a a race that has gone on, a scientific race
that has gone on for many many years, a game
of one upsmanship. Um that that started so long ago.
But basically, in in in scientific terms, we're talking about
(02:36):
the race to build, uh, the largest particle accelerator. And
it has gone back and forth between the United States
and Europe for many years and and basically it seems like, um,
the United States is sort of seeded uh this to
a group of scientists or an organization called that calls
itself CERN, which is which stands for the European Organization
(03:01):
for Nuclear Research. Yes, and if it doesn't make sense,
why because Europeans there foreign that's why to our to
our listeners in Europe, I love you guys, teasing being silly,
but yes. The CERN of course also famous for a
few other minor contributions to technology, the Worldwide Web, like
(03:23):
the world Wide Web, Tim berners Lee of CERN being
the guy who who developed what would later become the
World Wide Web, so built on top of the Internet
network of networks. So anyway, yes, certain, definitely a pioneer
in science and technology. They were the ones who spearheaded
(03:48):
this whole development of the large Hadron collider, which was,
you know, such an enormous project. It involved more than
just certain it involved the cooperation of various organizations, search institutions, countries, UM.
And you know, it's a it's really a testament to
science and to exploration, but it's kind of an exploration
(04:11):
that involves recreating conditions that were prevalent immediately following the
creation of the universe, but on the tiniest scale we
can manage right now. Yes, yes, well, the scientists seem
to think now. And the reason I say seemed to
is because I have just a paltry layman's interpretation of
(04:35):
these things. UM. They believe that there are these these
particles that existed um in the creation of the universe
that simply aren't there today. And it's not because they
couldn't be. It's because the conditions just aren't right now.
So they want to recreate the conditions that they believe
existed right after that, UM by accelerating very tiny things
(05:01):
to smash together and basically make bits of particles that
they think would be those those things that they're trying
to identify. Basically, there's a roadmap. They think there's a
city there, and they want to see if they can
make it happen. Right. So, so let's this really boils
down to the whole Big Bang Theory, So our whole
(05:23):
universe was in a hot, dense state. Really what there? Yes,
I did go there. Hey, some of the characters from
the Big Bang Theory were some of my earliest Twitter followers,
not the actors, the actual factional characters of the television
show Big Bang Theory were following me on Twitter for
(05:43):
a while, which I thought. I was thrilled anyway. Yes,
according to the Big Bang Theory, which is one of
the I would say the most prevalent theory of how
our universe was formed. Um, the Big Bang Theory states
that there was a moment when which did not last
(06:04):
very long relatively speaking compared to the life of the universe.
There was a moment when energy and matter were one.
They were not two different things. Energy and matter kind
of were coupled together, uh, and then split apart and
then developed into what we see today, into the matter
(06:28):
and energy that we are able to observe today, as
well as stuff that we may not ever be able
to observe. Yeah, and so there were these these fundamental
particles that eventually became matter. And by taking sub atomic
(06:49):
particles and accelerating them to near the speed of light,
the speed of light and making them collide together, you
can smash them apart so that they become these even
more basic particles and energies that are what make up
(07:11):
the stuff around us. So it's it's like reducing matter
that we have today into the proto matter that existed
immediately following the Big Bang. UM, and they're well, we'll
get a little bit more into the Big Bang stuff.
It gets really really complex and complicated. It goes beyond
the scope of tech stuff, and it gets difficult to
(07:34):
to explain. I had a friend of mine asked me, well,
what was there before the Big Bang? As if that
question is meaningless? And so why is that question meaningless?
Is it because time did not exist until the universe
came into being during the Big Bang. If you, according
to the theory, as you get closer to the Big Bang,
(07:54):
you eventually get to a point where time didn't exist.
So before and after are meaningless because are concepts that
depend upon the existence of time. What's really funny to
me is, now, now that you've reached this point of
the discussion, I feel like philosophy and science have become one,
and really they have been. At that point. There's there
(08:15):
is a point where science and philosophy are one because
you cannot or at least philosophy takes over because you
cannot test or observe. And you know, scientific theory, this
the whole scientific method is based upon the idea that
you make observations and then you project future guesses essentially
(08:36):
based on those observations, you test, and you continue to observe,
and based upon those results you build knowledge. Right, I mean,
that's the basic when you boil it down, that's the
basic scientific method, and you want to do it in
a controlled way, so that way you can determine if
in fact what you observe is a result of whatever
(08:57):
the phenomena is you're observing. You know, like whatever whatever
state you're looking at now, is in fact a result
of a previous state, or if it was just a
something something else. You know, you can't say A causes
B immediately. You have to build that case. Well, that's
that's one of the reasons why this is so such
(09:19):
a weird topic in a way, because the particle that
they've been looking for most famously is the Higgs boson,
and this is a theoretical particle. Yeah, this is the
thing according to the theories. You know, they they're they're
the scientists are going by what we know of the universe,
and they're they're essentially saying this should be able to exist,
(09:43):
and we want to see if it actually can exist.
That is just such a weird concept. Yeah, it's essentially
what you do is you look at the math and
you say, well, based upon our understanding of the universe
and based upon some mathematical formulas that are far more
comp lex and I could ever hope to understand. So
I want to make that clear. I'm stating this from
(10:06):
the perspective of someone who is interested in the subject,
but it is not an expert. But based upon the
math and based upon our understanding of the universe, we
think that there is a particle that we're calling the
Higgs Boson particle that would explain why matter has mass,
(10:27):
Because that's a it's a it's a question I would
never have thought to ask, like why does why does stuff?
Why does matter actually have mass? Why do we have
mass in the universe? That's actually a great question. There
are a couple of reasons why it's a great question.
One is that again, energy and mass at one point,
or energy and matter at one point, we're coupled together
and they split apart. So what was it that did that?
(10:51):
Also was messy. There was alimony. Also, there was the
element of the I shouldn't say element. There was the
factor of matter and anti manner. Okay. So when you
have a matter, a particle of matter encounter a particle
of antimatter, Uh, they annihilate one another, right, I mean
antimatter and matter cannot coexist? They do right, right, hypothetical
(11:15):
person who knows what I'm talking about in the room.
So yes, when matter and antimatter uh encounter one another,
they annihilate each other. So matter and antimatter both were
products of the Big Banks. So there must have been
a little more matter than there was antimatter, or else
(11:37):
we wouldn't have matter, but it would have all been
annihilated there there would be there'd be no us, right
because animatter and h and matter would have destroyed one another.
So by that logic, there must have been more matter
than antimatter. Well, why is that? It's a good question.
The LHC might be able to give us some answers.
(11:59):
And the reason why the LHC might give us some
answers is again because by smashing these sub atomic particles
together at incredible speeds, we can recreate in miniature by
several orders of magnitude, conditions that were around, or what
we believe were around shortly after the universe was formed.
(12:20):
By observing that, we could start to draw conclusions of
what happened immediately after the universe was formed and why
stuff is the way it is. These are huge questions,
and I mean it blows my mind to think about
it for more than like to go beyond the surface level.
I started getting a bit dizzy. Yeah, you know, well
(12:43):
the uh I was going to get into how the
monitor and the anti monitor deal with all of this
and the green lantern core, but that will be a
discussion best used for another podcast, maybe pop stuff. So
they created this thinget down. Yeah, that only took you know,
sixteen years and ten billion dollars to come up with. Technically,
(13:05):
it is one below ground feet as as Chris was saying,
uh it is Uh, it's got a circumference of twenty
seven kilometers, which is just under seventeen miles sixteen point
eight miles or so. Uh. The entire thing, like if
you think of it as a giant circle, because that's
what the main part of the Large Hadron Collider is.
(13:25):
It's an enormous circular ring. Um. It's got eight sectors,
all right. Each of those sectors has an end cap
that connects it to the next sector. Okay, that end
cap is called an insertion. Now, UH, within this circle protons,
beams of protons mainly, although other atomic particles can also
(13:49):
be accelerated through the Large Hadron Collider, but primarily it's
it's beams of protons reached this speed of the speed
of light. Now you might ask, why is it not
actually the speed of light? Well, there's two reasons. One
is that, according to what we know of the universe,
lights the fastest stuff there is, and you cannot equal
(14:11):
or exceed the speed of light unless you're light like,
unless you're a photon. You're not gonna do it. Well.
Put it this way, the traffic ticket would be enormous. Yeah,
so don't do it. Well. The other reason is because
this this UH the facility is so large it actually
spans the border between UH France and Switzerland, so which
(14:34):
is why the French it has to stop for customs
each time it goes through, which delays it a little nice.
So anytime it has any duty free stuff or you know,
it's got to declare that it's carrying a certain amount
of stuff from France to Switzerland, mainly cheese, then it
has to slow down. That's all a lie that that
(14:54):
customs part the rest of we've been saying, besides the
green lantern and other silly asides, totally true. Yes, but
it's um it's fascinating in a way to think about because, um,
you know, this very big, very expensive machine is necessary
to smash tiny, tiny, tiny particles into even tinier particles.
(15:17):
And and again remember we're looking for lots of different stuff.
Higgs boson is probably the most famous you know, and
and someone that's made the news recently as at the
time we're recording this, right, you are right. The recent
news states that we have discovered a particle that fits
very closely to what we would expect the Higgs boson
to be. So it's not that we found the Higgs
(15:38):
boson necessarily, but that we found something that's promising along
those lines. Yes, So again we cannot say we found
the Higgs boson with certainty. Actually will probably never be
able to say it with a hundred percent certainty. But
we you know, what we can say is that the
findings we've discovered our prom sing along those lines. It
(16:02):
appears to be, but there's no way to know for certain, right,
and we're gonna continue obviously, they're going to continue to
do experiments, make sure it's repeatable, make sure that the
things that they have observed are in fact actual observations
and not some form of error. Uh. This is all
part of science, you know. Science is all about You've
got to replicate whatever it is you did to make
(16:25):
sure that it is in fact a real effect. What
did you do? I don't know. But beyond the Higgs
bo song, we're looking at other stuff too, Like, for instance,
our universe is expanding, yes, all right, and uh, and
it expands at a particular rate, and that rate is
very difficult to explain based upon the observable amount of
matter in the universe. So the way the galaxies we're
(16:48):
talking massive massive systems, not you know, not solar systems,
we're talking entire galaxies, the way that they behave seems
to contradict our knowledge of what the universe, how the
universe should behave based upon the amount of matter we
believe exists within the universe, so we have to figure
(17:10):
out why is that? Why is that the case? And
one of the theories proposed, and a very popular one
since really the ninety nineties, is that there is the
stuff that we cannot observe, that is, it's it's undetectable
by humans. Right now, we don't have the ability to
figure out where and what it is. But that scientists,
(17:33):
for lack of a better term, call it dark matter.
So it's the stuff that we cannot detect, but that
at least in theory, must exist in order for the
universe to behave the way it behaves despite the way
we understand the universe. And by saying, okay, well, what
if there's this stuff that we cannot see but it
does exist and it otherwise behaves like matter, What if
(17:56):
it's out there, how much of it would it? We
need to balance out the way galaxies do behave and
the way we think they should behave and uh. And
once we kind of created that theory, there's also a
theory that kind of partners with this about dark energy,
which is, you know, again an energy component that we
(18:17):
cannot directly detect. We detect its uh, its effects, but
not the actual energy itself. This would account for the
way the universe is expanding and the way galaxies move
in relation to one another. Um And you know, again,
this is not a perfect explanation because it really just
(18:38):
says we don't really know. These are sort of place
holders until we can figure out more. Well. Again, because
the Large Hadron Collider will recreate conditions similar to those
shortly after the Big Bang, there's hope that perhaps we
will find some sort of evidence that supports or perhaps
contradicts this theory of dark matter and dark energy. Beyond that,
(19:02):
there's also the wonderful world of string theory, which I'll
admit to you guys. I mean, like I said, I
am not an expert. So what I've been talking about
so far is stuff that I have a weak grasp
on right like I can, I can almost get my
head around it. But it's still pretty perplexing to me.
(19:26):
String theory just kicks my brain out my ear and
says you do not belong here. Never show your face
here again. Because string theory is again a completely theoretical
model that is based primarily upon mathematics that would reconcile
what we call the standard theory with uh, something that
(19:52):
the centard theory could not explain before. Um. So standard
theory is kind of our our explanation about how the
universe works, right, um, and it has uh. It encompasses
three of the four fundamental forces we understand about the universe.
(20:13):
Those those three forces are the weak nuclear force, the
strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force. But the fourth fundamental force,
the one that it does not explain, is gravity. String
theory is one attempt to reconcile everything we know about
the universe and sort of it's kind of like the
whole unified theory approach you might have you've heard the
(20:35):
unified theory, right, this idea that there is there's got
to be an explanation that brings together all of these
elements so that we have a working model of why
the universe behaves the way it does. Well. The string
theory is kind of an approach to that. It is
again theoretical, it's all based on mathematics. Uh. A lot
(20:57):
of the different string theories suggests that there are are
at least eleven dimensions to the universe. Uh. We of
course cannot directly observe all of these dimensions. We know,
you know, there's certain spatial dimensions that we are aware of, length, height, depth,
that kind of thing. There's also the dimension of time,
(21:18):
which we perceive as a linear progression, though again time
is relative. If you move, you know, depending upon the
speed that you are moving throughout the universe, time is
going to pass at a different rate, but between you
and as stationary observer, which is crazy as well. Also,
(21:40):
by the way, alternative theory of why the universe is
expanding the way it is at the speed at what
it is is that it's not accelerating or anything like that.
It's that time itself is slowing down. But we are
incapable of perceiving that ourselves. It's just time is slowing
down in the context of the universe. It's a hole. Again,
(22:01):
I can't even grasp that. So string theory boils down
to this idea that everything in the universe, when you
get really, really, really really down to it, is made
up of these strings. And the strings can either be open,
meaning that the ends are free, or they can be closed.
So it's like a it's like a rubber band, a loop,
(22:22):
and they vibrate at different frequencies, and how they vibrate
determines what they are. So a string vibrating a certain
way would be an electron, or would really a collection
of strings vibrating that way would be an electron versus
a proton or a neutron or whatever. Uh. The problem
(22:43):
with string theory, among many other problems, one of the
big problems with string theory is that you can't make
an observation to prove or disproved string theory because it's
it's dealing with something that is so tiny and fundamental
that there's no way we can detect it, So you
can't observe it and you can't test it, which has
(23:04):
led some scientists to say string theory is more of
a philosophy that it is a science, because if you
cannot observe or test it, how can you call it science.
It's a mathematical theory that's more in the line of philosophy,
which I agree that's a fairly valid argument at this stage. Well,
there's some hope that the LHC could perhaps uncover some
(23:28):
evidence that strength that would support string theory, mainly supersymmetry,
and supersymmetry is a step beyond the idea of matter
and anti matter. So we do know that there is
matter and anti matter. So for example, the anti matter
component or or uh partner to an electron is a positron,
(23:51):
which is a positively charged sub atomic particle. So positron
and electron are our counters to one another. They would
annihilate each other with extreme prejudice. And then supersymmetry are
suggests that there are other counterparticles besides matter and anti matter.
(24:13):
They would say that each particle would have a superpartner
partner and an anti superpartner, which we would call a supervillain,
and that that those that perhaps the experiments in the
LHC might uncover evidence of supersymmetry, which in turn would
be support for string theory. So there are lots of
(24:35):
different things that the LHC is looking for, and how
it does it is pretty phenomenal. And as we said,
you know, it involves accelerating these these particles at near
the speed of light and using an enormous machine to
do it, and how that happens is insane. H Well,
(24:57):
the collider itself is really one of of three main
your parts to to what the the entire scientific machine
if you will, that they are using over there um.
The colliders is one the detectors. Therefore huge areas where
the detectors sit and those you know, are there to
(25:20):
identify the results of the collisions. You know there there
there are four major ones and two minor ones that
are kind of piggybacked onto the major ones. And then
there's the grid, which is the computers, the grid computer
grid computers, so a series of network computers that handle
all that data and crunch the numbers. So when you
(25:42):
when we get down, let's get down to the physical
way that this system works. And you can't just flip
a switch and have beams of sub atomic particles traveling
at near the speed of light. It actually takes quite
some time to ramp up that speed so that these
particles are moving at the right velocity to make them
collide with one another. UM. Now you remember we've got
(26:02):
the LHC. It's a big ring. So these different beams
are both traveling in opposite directions, and then we'll ultimately
converge on one of these detector sites around the ring,
and at that detector site you will have your collisions. UH.
So one beam is traveling counterclockwise and the other one
(26:24):
is traveling anti counter clockwise as uh directions I once
received for a fan said I, I am surprised you
didn't say whitterians. Yes, yes, okay, So that would be
clockwise and whitter sians. One is traveling clockwise, the other
one's traveling whitter sians. If you wonder what whitter sians
is read McMath uh the so the it's counterclockwise. So
(26:47):
these two beams are traveling in different directions. But before
they can even do that, they have to be accelerated
in separate accelerators. Separate in the sense that you know,
it goes through them first and then gets injected into
to the l h C. They are connected to the LHC,
but they are each their own thing. So it starts
off in the linnak T l I n a C
(27:09):
the number two, which is UH. It fires beams of
protons generally protons, although it can be other things as well,
into an accelerator that's called the PS booster. Now the
PS booster uses UH these chambers called radio frequency cavities
to actually push the protons with radio frequencies through a pathway,
(27:34):
and that pathway is secured by magnets because you know,
protons are positively charged. So by using magnets in the
appropriate kind of magnetic field, you can keep those those
positively charged particles traveling in a very specific pathway. Um.
(27:55):
Then once the protons reached the right velocity of where
right energy level, like the PS two booster injects them
into the super proton syncotron, which, to my disappointment, is
not a decepticon. Uh. That's when the sincotron will actually
divide these proton beams into bunches. That's a technical term,
(28:19):
and that really is the term that cern uses. The
protons get divided into bunches. Those bunches are about around
a hundred billion protons per bunch, and there are about
two thousand, eight hundred and eight bunches per beam. Yep. Now,
these beams start traveling around the LHC. It takes about
twenty minutes for them to uh to hit that speed
(28:40):
of nine the speed of light. And at top speed,
a proton will make eleven thousand, two hundred forty five
trips around the entire large Hadron collider each second. And
and and what was that distance again, it's uh twenty
(29:00):
seven kilometers, so twenty seven kilometers. Uh, it takes it.
There's a twenty seven kilometer trip and eleven eleven five
kilometer trips every second. That's a lot of frequent flyer
miles or kilometers as the case may be. Hey, it's
Jonathan from two thousand nineteen. I just pop back here
(29:21):
to two thousand twelve so I can drop a piece
of bread down a ventilation shaft in order to sabotage
the LHC. While I'm doing that, let's take a quick
break the fun part of this. Of course, they have
to be kept separate initially, because you want them to
(29:42):
collide when they're at act speed, yeah, and at the
detector sites, so they have to They have to collide
at the right speed and at the right location. It
also means that you have to make this this environment
as close to a perfect vacuum as you possibly can,
because even a single moat of dust floating in this
(30:03):
device somewhere would cause billions of protons to collide prematurely,
So you have to try and make it as close
to a perfect vacuum as possible. It also means that
in order to get the magnets to be as efficient
and fast as possible, you have two super cool them.
Now super cooling an electro magnet. The reason why you
(30:26):
want to do that is to reduce resistance. Now, resistance
is well, it kind of is what it sounds. It's
it's a conductor's tendency to resist the flow of electrons.
Typically we experience this in the form of heat. So
as an electronic device heats up, as the electronic components
(30:48):
are heating up, it's because they are resisting the flow
of electrons through that that whatever component is. So in
order to reduce this quality that all conductors as I mean,
as you know, you can reduce it in different ways,
but one of the ways is too super cool an electromagnet.
(31:08):
You can reduce the resistance to almost nothing. Um, they
use not liquid nitrogen. Uh, not liquid hydrogen, but liquid helium,
which is incredibly cold, about one point eight degree kelvin.
Technically we shouldn't say degree, but yes, one point eight kelvin. Sorry, no,
(31:29):
that that's something else I need to have correct in
my article. I do have an article about the large
hadron collider at How Stuff Works, and it's an article
I'm particularly proud of. But as I was reading, I said, huh,
I said degree kelvin. I should have just said kelvin.
So so that's my fault. Send all hate mail to me.
The the the UM information I got from the scientists
(31:52):
over you know, and doing the research from the certain
website they said degree kelvin shows degree. Well, it's not
this certain website, it's um UM, a different a different group,
one of the groups from the UK that that works
as part of the scientists that are doing that. I
suddenly feel better than I had. Someone once chastise me
for saying to Greek kelvin, that's why, that's why I
(32:13):
jumped up. That is a good point, but I think
I think it's a useful construct in our hands. So
if you're wondering what zero kelvin is, so one point
eight one point nine kelvin, depending on who you ask.
Zero kelvin is zero molecular movement. Yeah, that would be
in the deepest, zero deep absolute zero, deepest reaches of
(32:35):
space where there is no molecular movement at all. That
is zero kelen. It's the coldest you can possibly be
because heat really boils down to molecular movement, and if
you don't have any molecular movement, you can't get any
colder than that. Um, you can't have negative molecular movement.
(32:56):
So one point nine one kelvin, which what I had
originally seen, but one point eight kelvin if you want
to know what that translates to in in the terms
that we tend to use on a day to day basis,
that is colder than negative two hundred seventy one degrees
celsius or for those fahrenheit fans among us, negative four
(33:18):
hundred fifty six fahrenheits. So bundle up. Yeah. Yeah. By
the way, the organization I was quoting from was the Science,
Science and Technology Facilities Council, got you, well, you know
what they know what they're talking about. I'm going to
say degreek Helvin then, And anyway, the the at this temperature,
you have reduced resistance to almost a non factor, which
(33:40):
is important to get these electromagnets to operate at the
proper speed and efficiency, to keep these beams on track,
and to direct them properly so they're going faster and
faster till they hit their top speed. At that point
you want to direct them at whichever detector site is
going to be measuring collisions at that moment, and uh,
(34:02):
when the collisions happened. They happen at about six hundred
million collisions per second. Now, remember we're talking about a
hundred billion protons per bunch, so six million per second.
That should lead you to the conclusion that not all
these protons are colliding with other protons. And it's true
(34:24):
because at that level, at that sub atomic size, it's
really hard to be so precise that you're going to
make sure that every proton is going to collide with
a proton coming from the other direction. It's just not
really possible. We don't have that level precision. So some
of these protons actually a lot of protons will not
(34:44):
collide with anything, and they end up going through the
Large Hadron Collider further until they hit UH essentially a
wall that's designed to absorb protons, and it's it's their
proton dump UH. And again it's not all it's just protons.
There there's one particular UH set of of of measuring
(35:08):
devices connected to the LHC that's all about iron ions,
so it's not just protons. But that's again the the
the typical use for the LHC. So six hundred million
collisions per second. And then at these detector sites, they
have these very very advanced pieces of equipment that observe
(35:31):
what happens next, and they're observing trajectories and accelerations and well,
really velocities I should say velocities trajectories of various um
sub atomic particles that result from this collision, and things
like quarks, which are sounds made by dirks. Dirk makes
(35:54):
a quirk. Uh, now quirks, which are they They're very unstable.
They last less than a fraction of a second. Well,
I guess technically they would last a fraction of a second.
They last less than a second long. Yeah. Uh. And
there's this stuff called gluon, which is a mitigating force.
I thought that's what you used to stick together your muans.
(36:17):
Uh No, I use glue on applied directly to forehead. Um,
you were doing so well without the jokes. Muan muans,
by the way, also interesting, very tiny little particles they are.
They're negatively charged particles, so in that way, they're kind
of like electrons, but they are two hundred times heavier
than an electron is and also very unstable. One of
(36:41):
the other things that could potentially result from these collisions
is the tiniest version of a black hole I can imagine, uh,
which caused some people to freak out right. They thought, oh,
the AlgC is going to create a black hole and
we're all going to die, which was a silly, silly
thing to think, because a black hole, as we think
(37:03):
of it, is a collapsed star. It's an incredibly dense
uh point where or really point is the wrong term too,
But it's incredibly dense and has an incredibly strong gravitational
poll that light itself cannot escape. But you think about that,
that's the result of a star collapsing in on itself,
(37:27):
gravity pulling the contents of the star into a dense
a more and more dense uh point. Really, we're talking
about protons slapping into each other at that scale. It's
entirely different. And a black hole generated by a proton
(37:47):
collision would last less than a fraction of a second.
So you're talking about something that is not at all
a danger to human life on Earth. Um. I've seen
the documentary The black Hole. Yeah, it looks pretty scary.
Uh yeah, the it's just not something you need to
(38:11):
worry about. There's also the the there's been a little
bit of news about the fact that one of the
many scientific Studies that's connected to the Large Hadron Collider
is looking at um cosmic rays, and really it's looking
to see how we could create better devices to study
cosmic rays out in the universe, which it's really hard
(38:34):
to do from Earth because the Earth's magnetic field and
atmosphere protect us from cosmic rays, So you can't really
build a device here on Earth that can study them
because they can't get here UM. And there was so
there was some worry about cosmic rays, which could be
potentially incredibly dangerous to humans. It could cause lots of
problems that that would be an issue. But again, uh,
(38:58):
not not as as gary as it would first sound.
That we're talking about stuff that is on a tiny
scale and lasts, so it doesn't exist long enough for
it to really do anything other than give us really
cool information about how to study this stuff beyond a
(39:18):
laboratory environment. And that's important too, because you know the
implications for the study they fall. There's a domino effect.
It affects other stuff, including things like if we ever
wanted to look at space exploration, exploration or colonization beyond
what we've already done, you know, manned exploration and colonization.
(39:42):
We need to know more about cosmic radiation because this
is stuff that we have to protect ourselves against. Otherwise
we could end up having a tragedy on our hands,
where you know, everything technologically works fine, we just didn't
take into account other factors that would be and play
in the far reaches of space. So there are definitely
(40:05):
some some applications to this future application. So that's beyond
just the fact that we have an understanding of our universe,
which personally, I think is important enough on its own
to justify the existence of something like this. Um, I'm
sorry you're gonna say something. Well, no, I didn't know
if you had another point to add about the actual No, No,
that's that's that. I think that's a That's pretty much
(40:27):
all I have about the cans apart from I. Then
we're gonna I can talk a little bit about the
the various sites UH and and equipment that's connected to
the LHC. All right, Um, well, yeah, the when it,
when it's working at full strength, it should be able
to uh smash particles up to seven times the amount
(40:49):
of force that current um the current colliders around the
world can um. The you know, the in the United States.
The uh Fermi Lab has the most powerful collider that
we have here in this country, and they actually were
going to build another one to rival the LHC. Yes,
actually was going to be larger than the LHC. Yes. However, um,
(41:12):
those are expensive and the United States eventually donated money
to the LHC project. Um so basically they said, okay,
well we'll just go in with you guys for right now. Yeah,
because you know, because after all, it is a friendly rivalry. Well,
and I mean, ultimately, this is all about uncovering more
(41:32):
information about the universe, not about you know, it's it's
not like the space race. It's not a political thing, no,
not not to that extent, Not to the extent there. Yeah,
there's the there's the bragging rights issues. So um so yeah,
they they've gone to a great deal of effort to
to build this device. Hey it's Jonathan from two thousand nineteen.
(41:53):
It looks like I really mess things up by dropping
that piece of bread down that ventilation shaft, and so
I've decided to go back to two thousand twelve to
stop the other two thousand nineteen me from doing that.
But we're just gonna do that while we take this
quick break. So which projects did you want to Well,
(42:18):
I was going to mention the major ones. So there's
a like I said, there's the different collision points, the
detector sites. Uh. The one of the major ones is
called ATLASES, which stands for a Toroidal LHC Apparatus atlas uh,
and that is it's a measuring device. It's about long,
(42:40):
which is about hundred forty seven ft twenty five tall
which is two ft, and it weighs about seven thousand tons,
and it's an observation station. Uh. Just that's probably the
biggest one. I would say it's the most well known
out of the people who have studied the whole LHC development.
(43:02):
There's also my favorite is ALICE. Yes, the a large
Ion Collider Experiment or ALICE. That's the one that I said,
you know, there were there was a device specifically designed
to look at the collisions of iron ions. This is it,
and that's specifically to look at conditions that would have
(43:23):
been present right after the very early stages of the
Big Bang. So um, yeah, that's ah, you know, that's
that's the one that specifically is about that the all
the stuff references I was making earlier in the episode.
Then there's CMS, which is the compact muon solenoid experiment, right,
(43:44):
and that one can actually generate a magnetic field that's
one times almost one hundred times stronger than the Earth's
magnetic field. Um. Powerful stuff. There's the so if your
forks suddenly fly across the room and stick to the wall,
they got it to work. That's a joke. The Large
Hadron Collider Beauty Detector, which is looking for a beauty quirk,
(44:06):
which is what you can find on Cindy Crawford's face.
She's got a little beauty quirk right there, bubber lip.
This is known as LHC B. It's a great Pepsi commercial.
This is rapidly devolving. Yeah alright, no, so beauty quark
is one of those um, those uh, those subatomic fundamental
particles that only exists for a fraction of a second.
(44:29):
Then there's the Total Elastic and Defractive cross Section Measurement
Experiment or totem UM. That's one of the smaller detectors
in the LHC, and it measures the size of protons
and how effective the LHC actually is. So in other words,
this this is really to make sure that the LHC
(44:50):
is in fact performing at UH at the level that
it needs to. So it's it's almost like it's more
about the the measuring device than about what it's measuring,
which is sort of funny because after all this time
and all this money and effort that have been spent
on it, the LHC is still not working at full capacity. Well,
(45:13):
it's also had a few delays. One of those delays,
there was one delay where I mean, you're talking about
the most complex machine ever built, right, So it's it's
incredibly complicated, which also means there are a lot of
different points of failure, and there have been several fairly
(45:34):
well publicized failures that the LHC suffered on its way
to becoming operational, Like the Dusk Star. UH, there were ewoks.
Ewoks definitely were a problem. No, no, there was one
of them was there was a leak and the liquid
helium UH system, which led a lot of people to
make jokes about scientists speaking in high pitched, squeaky voices.
(45:57):
But you know, liquid helium, I would not recommend in
hailing it. It would kill you instantly. Uh, maybe not instantly,
but it would definitely kill you. Because you're talking about
something that's so cold that it would, you know, destroy
any tissue it came into contact with. Not a pleasant
way to go, I would imagine, But anyway, liquid helium leaks,
so they had to repair that to get the magnets
(46:20):
working properly. Um there was there are tens of thousands
of magnets, lots and lots of magnets UM for the
big ones. I think there's nine thousand, six hundred, and
then there are a bunch of support magnets too, UM
magnet schools as well around the whole area. The The
the other big failure news story was what we alluded
(46:44):
to early in the podcast about there was a story
that something had fouled up some of the instruments for
the LHC and and delayed its opening, and they had
no idea what it was. They linked it, they they
they flipped the switch. Yeah, they linked it to the possibility.
Apparently a bird dropped some bread, specifically a piece of baguette.
(47:09):
Because we're talking about France and door Switzerland, so strutle
not to be Germany. Um, so I dropped a piece
of baguette down a ventilation shaft which would eventually ended
up gumming up some of the works and causing mechanical
failure electrical failure, which set back the operational date of
(47:32):
the LHC UH and created a wonderful um ground for
some amazing jokes. Of course, also, I mean, since the
LHC has come online, we've heard other funny jokes, like
the possibility that neutrinos, which are particles that have no mass.
(47:57):
So you remember I was talking about there's some particles
that have mass and some that don't. Neutrinos don't have mass.
So why do neutrinos have no mass while other particles
do have mass. That's again one of the questions we
want to ask um. Some experiments that are related discern
seemed to indicate that neutrinos were traveling faster than they should,
(48:18):
faster than the speed of light, that they were actually
arriving at their destination fractions of a second before they
should have, and that if this were in fact true,
that it would mean that neutrinos could travel faster than
the speed of light and would call into question lots
of fundamental things we believe about the universe. Ah, while
(48:39):
that's still kind of unfolding, it appears that all of
that was really more down to some very simple errors,
and that neutrinos in fact do not travel faster than
the speed of light. This did not stop people from
making jokes like neutrino knock, knock, who's there? Like that's
(49:01):
where our idea. The neutrino arrives before the joke does. Um.
So yeah. So there's a couple of interesting stories about
the LHC. There are a lot more of them. I mean,
there's also the whole story about the people who wanted
to SUECERN to keep the LHC from going online because
(49:22):
they firmly believe that the facility would destroy the Earth
if it were turned on. Despite the fact that we
should point out LHC is what what it's doing is
simulating stuff in a laboratory that happens all the time
in the universe, and the universe is still around. So like,
like these particles smashing into things at incredible speeds that
(49:45):
happens all the time in the universe. It doesn't happen
on the surface of Earth so much because we have
a magnetic field and atmosphere that that prevents it from happening,
But it happens all the time out in space, and
we don't see any evidence of that wreaking havoc. So
there's no real difference between it happening out in space
(50:05):
and having in a in a lab, apart from the
fact that it's a controlled environment that we can actually observe.
So a lot of the objections that people raised were
really they had no merit, And if you thought about
it for a few minutes, you realize, wait a minute,
if this happens all the time anyway, and we're all
still around, chances are it's not a big problem. So
(50:27):
there was there were those stories too, which you know,
ultimately we're still around. The LEGC has been working, so
it doesn't seem to be a problem. Plus we've also
had other particle accelerators that been doing work very similar
to the LHC for years, not at the level of
the LHC, but but comparable work. So those held no water.
(50:48):
And there are other LHC stories too that are interesting
and I'm using um to varying degrees depending on how
dorky you are. For me, there are a lot of them.
That's how dorky I am. Well, I'm interested to see
what happens when they finally get the machine running at
full power, UM, they they think they may have found
the Higgs boson um you know, running in approximately half power,
(51:14):
and so just imagining what's going to happen when they
can get it running at full strength, they may be
able to to, uh do some confirmation of some of
these these things, at least, you know, repeat the experiments
and get them to uh to produce similar results. So
it's it'll be interesting. And I think one of the
nice things about it is too that UM with this
(51:37):
device science has been able to capture a few headlines
UM well, because it doesn't all that I think it's Yeah,
I think it's definitely one of the many scientific endeavors
that is UM that's prevalent in the news that has
really helped kind of bring you know, it's a weird
word to use, but sort of a renaissance and interest
(51:57):
in science because that partnered with some of the space
exploration stories we've talked about recently on the podcast and
just stuff that's recently in the news, I think has
really kind of inspired new generations of potential scientists and
engineers to really push themselves and and and push forward
(52:19):
our barriers of knowledge, which is fantastic. So that's also
a huge contribution, you know. And I forgot the one
story that we had talked about before the show that
I wanted to mention that the one bizarre theory that
the reason why the LHC was failing so many times
or and or the reason why it was so hard
(52:41):
to find the Higgs boson was that the Higgs boson
itself was some form of sentience was traveling back in
time from the future to sabotage the LHC so that
we would not be able to discover the Higgs boson,
because were we to discover the Higgs boson on, a
series of events events would unfold that would be so
(53:04):
incredibly catastrophic as to bring the entire universe's safety into
jeopardy or something along those lines. Essentially, it's the story
of Terminator Too, but done with a Higgs Boson in
place of Arnold Schwartzenegger. I'm I mean, sort of, which
is and I was telling Chris, like, the more I
(53:25):
read about this, the more I could not tell if
this was just someone being incredibly tongue in cheeks silly
about it and just you know, sort of well, you know,
the reason the all age he has had so many problems,
it's probably because blah blah blah blah blah, or if
it was someone who genuinely believed this bizarre theory. I
(53:47):
honestly don't know the answer to that. I'm hoping it's
the first case, because that's awesome. It's almost like it's
almost like if Andy Kaufman were a quantum physicist. You know,
the problem is that this sub atomic theoretical particle has
traveled from the future and is is mucking about with
all of our works so that we can't find it.
(54:08):
That sounds like an Andy Kaufman joke to me. So anyway,
that's kind of the basis of how the LHC works
and what it does and why it's important, and the
work that's going on is amazing. I mean, the the
reason why CERN has that grid of computers that we
talked about is because the amount of data that the
(54:30):
LHC gathers every second is huge, basically millions of snapshots
what's going on. So there has to be this massive
network of grid computers there to help decipher what all
that data actually means and to make it meaningful to us. So, yeah,
it's a phenomenal project that's continuing, and I hope that
(54:52):
they continue doing great science. I can't wait to see
what else comes out of it. And that wraps up
this classic episode of text Stuff. It was a weird one.
There was that one part where I was fighting myself
from like twenty minutes before. You didn't get to hear
any of that because it all happened during the commercial breaks.
But um, you know, I think I learned a lot
(55:14):
about myself. Tarry learned a lot about me too. Yeah.
If you want to learn more about me, or you
want to give suggestions for the show, you can contact
me by email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff
works dot com, or pop on over to our website
that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find links to
our presence on social media. You'll find an archive of
(55:36):
all of our past episodes. Ever, you will also find
a link to our online store, where every purchasing make
goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,
and we'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Tex
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
(55:58):
Heart Radio app. Apple Pie Casts or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
with How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I
love all things tech. And in this classic episode, which
dates back to September five, two thousand twelve, Chris Billette
(00:28):
and I took a look at the large Hadron Collider,
which obviously had not really got going the way it
has over the last few years. And since then, I've
actually had Daniel of Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe
over on our show to talk about the you know,
running data for the LHC and and analyzing information that
(00:49):
has gathered by the LHC. So I've talked about this
in subsequent episodes, but I think it's fun to go
back and listen to this early one where Chris and
I really suss out what it's all about and give
out the details of this amazing, amazing piece of technology.
So enjoy. So today we wanted to cover a pretty
(01:11):
big piece of technology. Actually, yes, we're going to get
deep into it, and it's a big piece of technology
that looks at teeny tiny stuff yeah. Yeah, We've had
quite a few people say that they wanted us to
talk about this, and we've kind of put it off because, well,
we wanted to talk about it. I know, it's it's strange.
(01:32):
It's the large Hadron collider, folks, that's what we're gonna
talk about. And really we were going to do a
podcast about this about nine months ago, but then a
bird dropped a bag out on my head and it
just threw everything off for ages. What really frightens me
is that I thought about making that joke and hadn't yet. Yeah, well,
I was like, one of us is going to it's
(01:53):
just gonna be a race, all right. So um, and
if you don't know the story about the bird and
the bread, we will all become clear. Yes, we will
allude to it in in a moment. But let's talk
about the large Hadron collider, what it is, what it does,
and um and kind of get a grip on the
whole idea of adam smashers and particle accelerators. Yes, this
(02:16):
actually is the latest if you will entered in a
a a race that has gone on, a scientific race
that has gone on for many many years, a game
of one upsmanship. Um that that started so long ago.
But basically, in in in scientific terms, we're talking about
(02:36):
the race to build, uh, the largest particle accelerator. And
it has gone back and forth between the United States
and Europe for many years and and basically it seems like, um,
the United States is sort of seeded uh this to
a group of scientists or an organization called that calls
itself CERN, which is which stands for the European Organization
(03:01):
for Nuclear Research. Yes, and if it doesn't make sense,
why because Europeans there foreign that's why to our to
our listeners in Europe, I love you guys, teasing being silly,
but yes. The CERN of course also famous for a
few other minor contributions to technology, the Worldwide Web, like
(03:23):
the world Wide Web, Tim berners Lee of CERN being
the guy who who developed what would later become the
World Wide Web, so built on top of the Internet
network of networks. So anyway, yes, certain, definitely a pioneer
in science and technology. They were the ones who spearheaded
(03:48):
this whole development of the large Hadron collider, which was,
you know, such an enormous project. It involved more than
just certain it involved the cooperation of various organizations, search institutions, countries, UM.
And you know, it's a it's really a testament to
science and to exploration, but it's kind of an exploration
(04:11):
that involves recreating conditions that were prevalent immediately following the
creation of the universe, but on the tiniest scale we
can manage right now. Yes, yes, well, the scientists seem
to think now. And the reason I say seemed to
is because I have just a paltry layman's interpretation of
(04:35):
these things. UM. They believe that there are these these
particles that existed um in the creation of the universe
that simply aren't there today. And it's not because they
couldn't be. It's because the conditions just aren't right now.
So they want to recreate the conditions that they believe
existed right after that, UM by accelerating very tiny things
(05:01):
to smash together and basically make bits of particles that
they think would be those those things that they're trying
to identify. Basically, there's a roadmap. They think there's a
city there, and they want to see if they can
make it happen. Right. So, so let's this really boils
down to the whole Big Bang Theory, So our whole
(05:23):
universe was in a hot, dense state. Really what there? Yes,
I did go there. Hey, some of the characters from
the Big Bang Theory were some of my earliest Twitter followers,
not the actors, the actual factional characters of the television
show Big Bang Theory were following me on Twitter for
(05:43):
a while, which I thought. I was thrilled anyway. Yes,
according to the Big Bang Theory, which is one of
the I would say the most prevalent theory of how
our universe was formed. Um, the Big Bang Theory states
that there was a moment when which did not last
(06:04):
very long relatively speaking compared to the life of the universe.
There was a moment when energy and matter were one.
They were not two different things. Energy and matter kind
of were coupled together, uh, and then split apart and
then developed into what we see today, into the matter
(06:28):
and energy that we are able to observe today, as
well as stuff that we may not ever be able
to observe. Yeah, and so there were these these fundamental
particles that eventually became matter. And by taking sub atomic
(06:49):
particles and accelerating them to near the speed of light,
the speed of light and making them collide together, you
can smash them apart so that they become these even
more basic particles and energies that are what make up
(07:11):
the stuff around us. So it's it's like reducing matter
that we have today into the proto matter that existed
immediately following the Big Bang. UM, and they're well, we'll
get a little bit more into the Big Bang stuff.
It gets really really complex and complicated. It goes beyond
the scope of tech stuff, and it gets difficult to
(07:34):
to explain. I had a friend of mine asked me, well,
what was there before the Big Bang? As if that
question is meaningless? And so why is that question meaningless?
Is it because time did not exist until the universe
came into being during the Big Bang. If you, according
to the theory, as you get closer to the Big Bang,
(07:54):
you eventually get to a point where time didn't exist.
So before and after are meaningless because are concepts that
depend upon the existence of time. What's really funny to
me is, now, now that you've reached this point of
the discussion, I feel like philosophy and science have become one,
and really they have been. At that point. There's there
(08:15):
is a point where science and philosophy are one because
you cannot or at least philosophy takes over because you
cannot test or observe. And you know, scientific theory, this
the whole scientific method is based upon the idea that
you make observations and then you project future guesses essentially
(08:36):
based on those observations, you test, and you continue to observe,
and based upon those results you build knowledge. Right, I mean,
that's the basic when you boil it down, that's the
basic scientific method, and you want to do it in
a controlled way, so that way you can determine if
in fact what you observe is a result of whatever
(08:57):
the phenomena is you're observing. You know, like whatever whatever
state you're looking at now, is in fact a result
of a previous state, or if it was just a
something something else. You know, you can't say A causes
B immediately. You have to build that case. Well, that's
that's one of the reasons why this is so such
(09:19):
a weird topic in a way, because the particle that
they've been looking for most famously is the Higgs boson,
and this is a theoretical particle. Yeah, this is the
thing according to the theories. You know, they they're they're
the scientists are going by what we know of the universe,
and they're they're essentially saying this should be able to exist,
(09:43):
and we want to see if it actually can exist.
That is just such a weird concept. Yeah, it's essentially
what you do is you look at the math and
you say, well, based upon our understanding of the universe
and based upon some mathematical formulas that are far more
comp lex and I could ever hope to understand. So
I want to make that clear. I'm stating this from
(10:06):
the perspective of someone who is interested in the subject,
but it is not an expert. But based upon the
math and based upon our understanding of the universe, we
think that there is a particle that we're calling the
Higgs Boson particle that would explain why matter has mass,
(10:27):
Because that's a it's a it's a question I would
never have thought to ask, like why does why does stuff?
Why does matter actually have mass? Why do we have
mass in the universe? That's actually a great question. There
are a couple of reasons why it's a great question.
One is that again, energy and mass at one point,
or energy and matter at one point, we're coupled together
and they split apart. So what was it that did that?
(10:51):
Also was messy. There was alimony. Also, there was the
element of the I shouldn't say element. There was the
factor of matter and anti manner. Okay. So when you
have a matter, a particle of matter encounter a particle
of antimatter, Uh, they annihilate one another, right, I mean
antimatter and matter cannot coexist? They do right, right, hypothetical
(11:15):
person who knows what I'm talking about in the room.
So yes, when matter and antimatter uh encounter one another,
they annihilate each other. So matter and antimatter both were
products of the Big Banks. So there must have been
a little more matter than there was antimatter, or else
(11:37):
we wouldn't have matter, but it would have all been
annihilated there there would be there'd be no us, right
because animatter and h and matter would have destroyed one another.
So by that logic, there must have been more matter
than antimatter. Well, why is that? It's a good question.
The LHC might be able to give us some answers.
(11:59):
And the reason why the LHC might give us some
answers is again because by smashing these sub atomic particles
together at incredible speeds, we can recreate in miniature by
several orders of magnitude, conditions that were around, or what
we believe were around shortly after the universe was formed.
(12:20):
By observing that, we could start to draw conclusions of
what happened immediately after the universe was formed and why
stuff is the way it is. These are huge questions,
and I mean it blows my mind to think about
it for more than like to go beyond the surface level.
I started getting a bit dizzy. Yeah, you know, well
(12:43):
the uh I was going to get into how the
monitor and the anti monitor deal with all of this
and the green lantern core, but that will be a
discussion best used for another podcast, maybe pop stuff. So
they created this thinget down. Yeah, that only took you know,
sixteen years and ten billion dollars to come up with. Technically,
(13:05):
it is one below ground feet as as Chris was saying,
uh it is Uh, it's got a circumference of twenty
seven kilometers, which is just under seventeen miles sixteen point
eight miles or so. Uh. The entire thing, like if
you think of it as a giant circle, because that's
what the main part of the Large Hadron Collider is.
(13:25):
It's an enormous circular ring. Um. It's got eight sectors,
all right. Each of those sectors has an end cap
that connects it to the next sector. Okay, that end
cap is called an insertion. Now, UH, within this circle protons,
beams of protons mainly, although other atomic particles can also
(13:49):
be accelerated through the Large Hadron Collider, but primarily it's
it's beams of protons reached this speed of the speed
of light. Now you might ask, why is it not
actually the speed of light? Well, there's two reasons. One
is that, according to what we know of the universe,
lights the fastest stuff there is, and you cannot equal
(14:11):
or exceed the speed of light unless you're light like,
unless you're a photon. You're not gonna do it. Well.
Put it this way, the traffic ticket would be enormous. Yeah,
so don't do it. Well. The other reason is because
this this UH the facility is so large it actually
spans the border between UH France and Switzerland, so which
(14:34):
is why the French it has to stop for customs
each time it goes through, which delays it a little nice.
So anytime it has any duty free stuff or you know,
it's got to declare that it's carrying a certain amount
of stuff from France to Switzerland, mainly cheese, then it
has to slow down. That's all a lie that that
(14:54):
customs part the rest of we've been saying, besides the
green lantern and other silly asides, totally true. Yes, but
it's um it's fascinating in a way to think about because, um,
you know, this very big, very expensive machine is necessary
to smash tiny, tiny, tiny particles into even tinier particles.
(15:17):
And and again remember we're looking for lots of different stuff.
Higgs boson is probably the most famous you know, and
and someone that's made the news recently as at the
time we're recording this, right, you are right. The recent
news states that we have discovered a particle that fits
very closely to what we would expect the Higgs boson
to be. So it's not that we found the Higgs
(15:38):
boson necessarily, but that we found something that's promising along
those lines. Yes, So again we cannot say we found
the Higgs boson with certainty. Actually will probably never be
able to say it with a hundred percent certainty. But
we you know, what we can say is that the
findings we've discovered our prom sing along those lines. It
(16:02):
appears to be, but there's no way to know for certain, right,
and we're gonna continue obviously, they're going to continue to
do experiments, make sure it's repeatable, make sure that the
things that they have observed are in fact actual observations
and not some form of error. Uh. This is all
part of science, you know. Science is all about You've
got to replicate whatever it is you did to make
(16:25):
sure that it is in fact a real effect. What
did you do? I don't know. But beyond the Higgs
bo song, we're looking at other stuff too, Like, for instance,
our universe is expanding, yes, all right, and uh, and
it expands at a particular rate, and that rate is
very difficult to explain based upon the observable amount of
matter in the universe. So the way the galaxies we're
(16:48):
talking massive massive systems, not you know, not solar systems,
we're talking entire galaxies, the way that they behave seems
to contradict our knowledge of what the universe, how the
universe should behave based upon the amount of matter we
believe exists within the universe, so we have to figure
(17:10):
out why is that? Why is that the case? And
one of the theories proposed, and a very popular one
since really the ninety nineties, is that there is the
stuff that we cannot observe, that is, it's it's undetectable
by humans. Right now, we don't have the ability to
figure out where and what it is. But that scientists,
(17:33):
for lack of a better term, call it dark matter.
So it's the stuff that we cannot detect, but that
at least in theory, must exist in order for the
universe to behave the way it behaves despite the way
we understand the universe. And by saying, okay, well, what
if there's this stuff that we cannot see but it
does exist and it otherwise behaves like matter, What if
(17:56):
it's out there, how much of it would it? We
need to balance out the way galaxies do behave and
the way we think they should behave and uh. And
once we kind of created that theory, there's also a
theory that kind of partners with this about dark energy,
which is, you know, again an energy component that we
(18:17):
cannot directly detect. We detect its uh, its effects, but
not the actual energy itself. This would account for the
way the universe is expanding and the way galaxies move
in relation to one another. Um And you know, again,
this is not a perfect explanation because it really just
(18:38):
says we don't really know. These are sort of place
holders until we can figure out more. Well. Again, because
the Large Hadron Collider will recreate conditions similar to those
shortly after the Big Bang, there's hope that perhaps we
will find some sort of evidence that supports or perhaps
contradicts this theory of dark matter and dark energy. Beyond that,
(19:02):
there's also the wonderful world of string theory, which I'll
admit to you guys. I mean, like I said, I
am not an expert. So what I've been talking about
so far is stuff that I have a weak grasp
on right like I can, I can almost get my
head around it. But it's still pretty perplexing to me.
(19:26):
String theory just kicks my brain out my ear and
says you do not belong here. Never show your face
here again. Because string theory is again a completely theoretical
model that is based primarily upon mathematics that would reconcile
what we call the standard theory with uh, something that
(19:52):
the centard theory could not explain before. Um. So standard
theory is kind of our our explanation about how the
universe works, right, um, and it has uh. It encompasses
three of the four fundamental forces we understand about the universe.
(20:13):
Those those three forces are the weak nuclear force, the
strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force. But the fourth fundamental force,
the one that it does not explain, is gravity. String
theory is one attempt to reconcile everything we know about
the universe and sort of it's kind of like the
whole unified theory approach you might have you've heard the
(20:35):
unified theory, right, this idea that there is there's got
to be an explanation that brings together all of these
elements so that we have a working model of why
the universe behaves the way it does. Well. The string
theory is kind of an approach to that. It is
again theoretical, it's all based on mathematics. Uh. A lot
(20:57):
of the different string theories suggests that there are are
at least eleven dimensions to the universe. Uh. We of
course cannot directly observe all of these dimensions. We know,
you know, there's certain spatial dimensions that we are aware of, length, height, depth,
that kind of thing. There's also the dimension of time,
(21:18):
which we perceive as a linear progression, though again time
is relative. If you move, you know, depending upon the
speed that you are moving throughout the universe, time is
going to pass at a different rate, but between you
and as stationary observer, which is crazy as well. Also,
(21:40):
by the way, alternative theory of why the universe is
expanding the way it is at the speed at what
it is is that it's not accelerating or anything like that.
It's that time itself is slowing down. But we are
incapable of perceiving that ourselves. It's just time is slowing
down in the context of the universe. It's a hole. Again,
(22:01):
I can't even grasp that. So string theory boils down
to this idea that everything in the universe, when you
get really, really, really really down to it, is made
up of these strings. And the strings can either be open,
meaning that the ends are free, or they can be closed.
So it's like a it's like a rubber band, a loop,
(22:22):
and they vibrate at different frequencies, and how they vibrate
determines what they are. So a string vibrating a certain
way would be an electron, or would really a collection
of strings vibrating that way would be an electron versus
a proton or a neutron or whatever. Uh. The problem
(22:43):
with string theory, among many other problems, one of the
big problems with string theory is that you can't make
an observation to prove or disproved string theory because it's
it's dealing with something that is so tiny and fundamental
that there's no way we can detect it, So you
can't observe it and you can't test it, which has
(23:04):
led some scientists to say string theory is more of
a philosophy that it is a science, because if you
cannot observe or test it, how can you call it science.
It's a mathematical theory that's more in the line of philosophy,
which I agree that's a fairly valid argument at this stage. Well,
there's some hope that the LHC could perhaps uncover some
(23:28):
evidence that strength that would support string theory, mainly supersymmetry,
and supersymmetry is a step beyond the idea of matter
and anti matter. So we do know that there is
matter and anti matter. So for example, the anti matter
component or or uh partner to an electron is a positron,
(23:51):
which is a positively charged sub atomic particle. So positron
and electron are our counters to one another. They would
annihilate each other with extreme prejudice. And then supersymmetry are
suggests that there are other counterparticles besides matter and anti matter.
(24:13):
They would say that each particle would have a superpartner
partner and an anti superpartner, which we would call a supervillain,
and that that those that perhaps the experiments in the
LHC might uncover evidence of supersymmetry, which in turn would
be support for string theory. So there are lots of
(24:35):
different things that the LHC is looking for, and how
it does it is pretty phenomenal. And as we said,
you know, it involves accelerating these these particles at near
the speed of light and using an enormous machine to
do it, and how that happens is insane. H Well,
(24:57):
the collider itself is really one of of three main
your parts to to what the the entire scientific machine
if you will, that they are using over there um.
The colliders is one the detectors. Therefore huge areas where
the detectors sit and those you know, are there to
(25:20):
identify the results of the collisions. You know there there
there are four major ones and two minor ones that
are kind of piggybacked onto the major ones. And then
there's the grid, which is the computers, the grid computer
grid computers, so a series of network computers that handle
all that data and crunch the numbers. So when you
(25:42):
when we get down, let's get down to the physical
way that this system works. And you can't just flip
a switch and have beams of sub atomic particles traveling
at near the speed of light. It actually takes quite
some time to ramp up that speed so that these
particles are moving at the right velocity to make them
collide with one another. UM. Now you remember we've got
(26:02):
the LHC. It's a big ring. So these different beams
are both traveling in opposite directions, and then we'll ultimately
converge on one of these detector sites around the ring,
and at that detector site you will have your collisions. UH.
So one beam is traveling counterclockwise and the other one
(26:24):
is traveling anti counter clockwise as uh directions I once
received for a fan said I, I am surprised you
didn't say whitterians. Yes, yes, okay, So that would be
clockwise and whitter sians. One is traveling clockwise, the other
one's traveling whitter sians. If you wonder what whitter sians
is read McMath uh the so the it's counterclockwise. So
(26:47):
these two beams are traveling in different directions. But before
they can even do that, they have to be accelerated
in separate accelerators. Separate in the sense that you know,
it goes through them first and then gets injected into
to the l h C. They are connected to the LHC,
but they are each their own thing. So it starts
off in the linnak T l I n a C
(27:09):
the number two, which is UH. It fires beams of
protons generally protons, although it can be other things as well,
into an accelerator that's called the PS booster. Now the
PS booster uses UH these chambers called radio frequency cavities
to actually push the protons with radio frequencies through a pathway,
(27:34):
and that pathway is secured by magnets because you know,
protons are positively charged. So by using magnets in the
appropriate kind of magnetic field, you can keep those those
positively charged particles traveling in a very specific pathway. Um.
(27:55):
Then once the protons reached the right velocity of where
right energy level, like the PS two booster injects them
into the super proton syncotron, which, to my disappointment, is
not a decepticon. Uh. That's when the sincotron will actually
divide these proton beams into bunches. That's a technical term,
(28:19):
and that really is the term that cern uses. The
protons get divided into bunches. Those bunches are about around
a hundred billion protons per bunch, and there are about
two thousand, eight hundred and eight bunches per beam. Yep. Now,
these beams start traveling around the LHC. It takes about
twenty minutes for them to uh to hit that speed
(28:40):
of nine the speed of light. And at top speed,
a proton will make eleven thousand, two hundred forty five
trips around the entire large Hadron collider each second. And
and and what was that distance again, it's uh twenty
(29:00):
seven kilometers, so twenty seven kilometers. Uh, it takes it.
There's a twenty seven kilometer trip and eleven eleven five
kilometer trips every second. That's a lot of frequent flyer
miles or kilometers as the case may be. Hey, it's
Jonathan from two thousand nineteen. I just pop back here
(29:21):
to two thousand twelve so I can drop a piece
of bread down a ventilation shaft in order to sabotage
the LHC. While I'm doing that, let's take a quick
break the fun part of this. Of course, they have
to be kept separate initially, because you want them to
(29:42):
collide when they're at act speed, yeah, and at the
detector sites, so they have to They have to collide
at the right speed and at the right location. It
also means that you have to make this this environment
as close to a perfect vacuum as you possibly can,
because even a single moat of dust floating in this
(30:03):
device somewhere would cause billions of protons to collide prematurely,
So you have to try and make it as close
to a perfect vacuum as possible. It also means that
in order to get the magnets to be as efficient
and fast as possible, you have two super cool them.
Now super cooling an electro magnet. The reason why you
(30:26):
want to do that is to reduce resistance. Now, resistance
is well, it kind of is what it sounds. It's
it's a conductor's tendency to resist the flow of electrons.
Typically we experience this in the form of heat. So
as an electronic device heats up, as the electronic components
(30:48):
are heating up, it's because they are resisting the flow
of electrons through that that whatever component is. So in
order to reduce this quality that all conductors as I mean,
as you know, you can reduce it in different ways,
but one of the ways is too super cool an electromagnet.
(31:08):
You can reduce the resistance to almost nothing. Um, they
use not liquid nitrogen. Uh, not liquid hydrogen, but liquid helium,
which is incredibly cold, about one point eight degree kelvin.
Technically we shouldn't say degree, but yes, one point eight kelvin. Sorry, no,
(31:29):
that that's something else I need to have correct in
my article. I do have an article about the large
hadron collider at How Stuff Works, and it's an article
I'm particularly proud of. But as I was reading, I said, huh,
I said degree kelvin. I should have just said kelvin.
So so that's my fault. Send all hate mail to me.
The the the UM information I got from the scientists
(31:52):
over you know, and doing the research from the certain
website they said degree kelvin shows degree. Well, it's not
this certain website, it's um UM, a different a different group,
one of the groups from the UK that that works
as part of the scientists that are doing that. I
suddenly feel better than I had. Someone once chastise me
for saying to Greek kelvin, that's why, that's why I
(32:13):
jumped up. That is a good point, but I think
I think it's a useful construct in our hands. So
if you're wondering what zero kelvin is, so one point
eight one point nine kelvin, depending on who you ask.
Zero kelvin is zero molecular movement. Yeah, that would be
in the deepest, zero deep absolute zero, deepest reaches of
(32:35):
space where there is no molecular movement at all. That
is zero kelen. It's the coldest you can possibly be
because heat really boils down to molecular movement, and if
you don't have any molecular movement, you can't get any
colder than that. Um, you can't have negative molecular movement.
(32:56):
So one point nine one kelvin, which what I had
originally seen, but one point eight kelvin if you want
to know what that translates to in in the terms
that we tend to use on a day to day basis,
that is colder than negative two hundred seventy one degrees
celsius or for those fahrenheit fans among us, negative four
(33:18):
hundred fifty six fahrenheits. So bundle up. Yeah. Yeah. By
the way, the organization I was quoting from was the Science,
Science and Technology Facilities Council, got you, well, you know
what they know what they're talking about. I'm going to
say degreek Helvin then, And anyway, the the at this temperature,
you have reduced resistance to almost a non factor, which
(33:40):
is important to get these electromagnets to operate at the
proper speed and efficiency, to keep these beams on track,
and to direct them properly so they're going faster and
faster till they hit their top speed. At that point
you want to direct them at whichever detector site is
going to be measuring collisions at that moment, and uh,
(34:02):
when the collisions happened. They happen at about six hundred
million collisions per second. Now, remember we're talking about a
hundred billion protons per bunch, so six million per second.
That should lead you to the conclusion that not all
these protons are colliding with other protons. And it's true
(34:24):
because at that level, at that sub atomic size, it's
really hard to be so precise that you're going to
make sure that every proton is going to collide with
a proton coming from the other direction. It's just not
really possible. We don't have that level precision. So some
of these protons actually a lot of protons will not
(34:44):
collide with anything, and they end up going through the
Large Hadron Collider further until they hit UH essentially a
wall that's designed to absorb protons, and it's it's their
proton dump UH. And again it's not all it's just protons.
There there's one particular UH set of of of measuring
(35:08):
devices connected to the LHC that's all about iron ions,
so it's not just protons. But that's again the the
the typical use for the LHC. So six hundred million
collisions per second. And then at these detector sites, they
have these very very advanced pieces of equipment that observe
(35:31):
what happens next, and they're observing trajectories and accelerations and well,
really velocities I should say velocities trajectories of various um
sub atomic particles that result from this collision, and things
like quarks, which are sounds made by dirks. Dirk makes
(35:54):
a quirk. Uh, now quirks, which are they They're very unstable.
They last less than a fraction of a second. Well,
I guess technically they would last a fraction of a second.
They last less than a second long. Yeah. Uh. And
there's this stuff called gluon, which is a mitigating force.
I thought that's what you used to stick together your muans.
(36:17):
Uh No, I use glue on applied directly to forehead. Um,
you were doing so well without the jokes. Muan muans,
by the way, also interesting, very tiny little particles they are.
They're negatively charged particles, so in that way, they're kind
of like electrons, but they are two hundred times heavier
than an electron is and also very unstable. One of
(36:41):
the other things that could potentially result from these collisions
is the tiniest version of a black hole I can imagine, uh,
which caused some people to freak out right. They thought, oh,
the AlgC is going to create a black hole and
we're all going to die, which was a silly, silly
thing to think, because a black hole, as we think
(37:03):
of it, is a collapsed star. It's an incredibly dense
uh point where or really point is the wrong term too,
But it's incredibly dense and has an incredibly strong gravitational
poll that light itself cannot escape. But you think about that,
that's the result of a star collapsing in on itself,
(37:27):
gravity pulling the contents of the star into a dense
a more and more dense uh point. Really, we're talking
about protons slapping into each other at that scale. It's
entirely different. And a black hole generated by a proton
(37:47):
collision would last less than a fraction of a second.
So you're talking about something that is not at all
a danger to human life on Earth. Um. I've seen
the documentary The black Hole. Yeah, it looks pretty scary.
Uh yeah, the it's just not something you need to
(38:11):
worry about. There's also the the there's been a little
bit of news about the fact that one of the
many scientific Studies that's connected to the Large Hadron Collider
is looking at um cosmic rays, and really it's looking
to see how we could create better devices to study
cosmic rays out in the universe, which it's really hard
(38:34):
to do from Earth because the Earth's magnetic field and
atmosphere protect us from cosmic rays, So you can't really
build a device here on Earth that can study them
because they can't get here UM. And there was so
there was some worry about cosmic rays, which could be
potentially incredibly dangerous to humans. It could cause lots of
problems that that would be an issue. But again, uh,
(38:58):
not not as as gary as it would first sound.
That we're talking about stuff that is on a tiny
scale and lasts, so it doesn't exist long enough for
it to really do anything other than give us really
cool information about how to study this stuff beyond a
(39:18):
laboratory environment. And that's important too, because you know the
implications for the study they fall. There's a domino effect.
It affects other stuff, including things like if we ever
wanted to look at space exploration, exploration or colonization beyond
what we've already done, you know, manned exploration and colonization.
(39:42):
We need to know more about cosmic radiation because this
is stuff that we have to protect ourselves against. Otherwise
we could end up having a tragedy on our hands,
where you know, everything technologically works fine, we just didn't
take into account other factors that would be and play
in the far reaches of space. So there are definitely
(40:05):
some some applications to this future application. So that's beyond
just the fact that we have an understanding of our universe,
which personally, I think is important enough on its own
to justify the existence of something like this. Um, I'm
sorry you're gonna say something. Well, no, I didn't know
if you had another point to add about the actual No, No,
that's that's that. I think that's a That's pretty much
(40:27):
all I have about the cans apart from I. Then
we're gonna I can talk a little bit about the
the various sites UH and and equipment that's connected to
the LHC. All right, Um, well, yeah, the when it,
when it's working at full strength, it should be able
to uh smash particles up to seven times the amount
(40:49):
of force that current um the current colliders around the
world can um. The you know, the in the United States.
The uh Fermi Lab has the most powerful collider that
we have here in this country, and they actually were
going to build another one to rival the LHC. Yes,
actually was going to be larger than the LHC. Yes. However, um,
(41:12):
those are expensive and the United States eventually donated money
to the LHC project. Um so basically they said, okay,
well we'll just go in with you guys for right now. Yeah,
because you know, because after all, it is a friendly rivalry. Well,
and I mean, ultimately, this is all about uncovering more
(41:32):
information about the universe, not about you know, it's it's
not like the space race. It's not a political thing, no,
not not to that extent, Not to the extent there. Yeah,
there's the there's the bragging rights issues. So um so yeah,
they they've gone to a great deal of effort to
to build this device. Hey it's Jonathan from two thousand nineteen.
(41:53):
It looks like I really mess things up by dropping
that piece of bread down that ventilation shaft, and so
I've decided to go back to two thousand twelve to
stop the other two thousand nineteen me from doing that.
But we're just gonna do that while we take this
quick break. So which projects did you want to Well,
(42:18):
I was going to mention the major ones. So there's
a like I said, there's the different collision points, the
detector sites. Uh. The one of the major ones is
called ATLASES, which stands for a Toroidal LHC Apparatus atlas uh,
and that is it's a measuring device. It's about long,
(42:40):
which is about hundred forty seven ft twenty five tall
which is two ft, and it weighs about seven thousand tons,
and it's an observation station. Uh. Just that's probably the
biggest one. I would say it's the most well known
out of the people who have studied the whole LHC development.
(43:02):
There's also my favorite is ALICE. Yes, the a large
Ion Collider Experiment or ALICE. That's the one that I said,
you know, there were there was a device specifically designed
to look at the collisions of iron ions. This is it,
and that's specifically to look at conditions that would have
(43:23):
been present right after the very early stages of the
Big Bang. So um, yeah, that's ah, you know, that's
that's the one that specifically is about that the all
the stuff references I was making earlier in the episode.
Then there's CMS, which is the compact muon solenoid experiment, right,
(43:44):
and that one can actually generate a magnetic field that's
one times almost one hundred times stronger than the Earth's
magnetic field. Um. Powerful stuff. There's the so if your
forks suddenly fly across the room and stick to the wall,
they got it to work. That's a joke. The Large
Hadron Collider Beauty Detector, which is looking for a beauty quirk,
(44:06):
which is what you can find on Cindy Crawford's face.
She's got a little beauty quirk right there, bubber lip.
This is known as LHC B. It's a great Pepsi commercial.
This is rapidly devolving. Yeah alright, no, so beauty quark
is one of those um, those uh, those subatomic fundamental
particles that only exists for a fraction of a second.
(44:29):
Then there's the Total Elastic and Defractive cross Section Measurement
Experiment or totem UM. That's one of the smaller detectors
in the LHC, and it measures the size of protons
and how effective the LHC actually is. So in other words,
this this is really to make sure that the LHC
(44:50):
is in fact performing at UH at the level that
it needs to. So it's it's almost like it's more
about the the measuring device than about what it's measuring,
which is sort of funny because after all this time
and all this money and effort that have been spent
on it, the LHC is still not working at full capacity. Well,
(45:13):
it's also had a few delays. One of those delays,
there was one delay where I mean, you're talking about
the most complex machine ever built, right, So it's it's
incredibly complicated, which also means there are a lot of
different points of failure, and there have been several fairly
(45:34):
well publicized failures that the LHC suffered on its way
to becoming operational, Like the Dusk Star. UH, there were ewoks.
Ewoks definitely were a problem. No, no, there was one
of them was there was a leak and the liquid
helium UH system, which led a lot of people to
make jokes about scientists speaking in high pitched, squeaky voices.
(45:57):
But you know, liquid helium, I would not recommend in
hailing it. It would kill you instantly. Uh, maybe not instantly,
but it would definitely kill you. Because you're talking about
something that's so cold that it would, you know, destroy
any tissue it came into contact with. Not a pleasant
way to go, I would imagine, But anyway, liquid helium leaks,
so they had to repair that to get the magnets
(46:20):
working properly. Um there was there are tens of thousands
of magnets, lots and lots of magnets UM for the
big ones. I think there's nine thousand, six hundred, and
then there are a bunch of support magnets too, UM
magnet schools as well around the whole area. The The
the other big failure news story was what we alluded
(46:44):
to early in the podcast about there was a story
that something had fouled up some of the instruments for
the LHC and and delayed its opening, and they had
no idea what it was. They linked it, they they
they flipped the switch. Yeah, they linked it to the possibility.
Apparently a bird dropped some bread, specifically a piece of baguette.
(47:09):
Because we're talking about France and door Switzerland, so strutle
not to be Germany. Um, so I dropped a piece
of baguette down a ventilation shaft which would eventually ended
up gumming up some of the works and causing mechanical
failure electrical failure, which set back the operational date of
(47:32):
the LHC UH and created a wonderful um ground for
some amazing jokes. Of course, also, I mean, since the
LHC has come online, we've heard other funny jokes, like
the possibility that neutrinos, which are particles that have no mass.
(47:57):
So you remember I was talking about there's some particles
that have mass and some that don't. Neutrinos don't have mass.
So why do neutrinos have no mass while other particles
do have mass. That's again one of the questions we
want to ask um. Some experiments that are related discern
seemed to indicate that neutrinos were traveling faster than they should,
(48:18):
faster than the speed of light, that they were actually
arriving at their destination fractions of a second before they
should have, and that if this were in fact true,
that it would mean that neutrinos could travel faster than
the speed of light and would call into question lots
of fundamental things we believe about the universe. Ah, while
(48:39):
that's still kind of unfolding, it appears that all of
that was really more down to some very simple errors,
and that neutrinos in fact do not travel faster than
the speed of light. This did not stop people from
making jokes like neutrino knock, knock, who's there? Like that's
(49:01):
where our idea. The neutrino arrives before the joke does. Um.
So yeah. So there's a couple of interesting stories about
the LHC. There are a lot more of them. I mean,
there's also the whole story about the people who wanted
to SUECERN to keep the LHC from going online because
(49:22):
they firmly believe that the facility would destroy the Earth
if it were turned on. Despite the fact that we
should point out LHC is what what it's doing is
simulating stuff in a laboratory that happens all the time
in the universe, and the universe is still around. So like,
like these particles smashing into things at incredible speeds that
(49:45):
happens all the time in the universe. It doesn't happen
on the surface of Earth so much because we have
a magnetic field and atmosphere that that prevents it from happening,
But it happens all the time out in space, and
we don't see any evidence of that wreaking havoc. So
there's no real difference between it happening out in space
(50:05):
and having in a in a lab, apart from the
fact that it's a controlled environment that we can actually observe.
So a lot of the objections that people raised were
really they had no merit, And if you thought about
it for a few minutes, you realize, wait a minute,
if this happens all the time anyway, and we're all
still around, chances are it's not a big problem. So
(50:27):
there was there were those stories too, which you know,
ultimately we're still around. The LEGC has been working, so
it doesn't seem to be a problem. Plus we've also
had other particle accelerators that been doing work very similar
to the LHC for years, not at the level of
the LHC, but but comparable work. So those held no water.
(50:48):
And there are other LHC stories too that are interesting
and I'm using um to varying degrees depending on how
dorky you are. For me, there are a lot of them.
That's how dorky I am. Well, I'm interested to see
what happens when they finally get the machine running at
full power, UM, they they think they may have found
the Higgs boson um you know, running in approximately half power,
(51:14):
and so just imagining what's going to happen when they
can get it running at full strength, they may be
able to to, uh do some confirmation of some of
these these things, at least, you know, repeat the experiments
and get them to uh to produce similar results. So
it's it'll be interesting. And I think one of the
nice things about it is too that UM with this
(51:37):
device science has been able to capture a few headlines
UM well, because it doesn't all that I think it's Yeah,
I think it's definitely one of the many scientific endeavors
that is UM that's prevalent in the news that has
really helped kind of bring you know, it's a weird
word to use, but sort of a renaissance and interest
(51:57):
in science because that partnered with some of the space
exploration stories we've talked about recently on the podcast and
just stuff that's recently in the news, I think has
really kind of inspired new generations of potential scientists and
engineers to really push themselves and and and push forward
(52:19):
our barriers of knowledge, which is fantastic. So that's also
a huge contribution, you know. And I forgot the one
story that we had talked about before the show that
I wanted to mention that the one bizarre theory that
the reason why the LHC was failing so many times
or and or the reason why it was so hard
(52:41):
to find the Higgs boson was that the Higgs boson
itself was some form of sentience was traveling back in
time from the future to sabotage the LHC so that
we would not be able to discover the Higgs boson,
because were we to discover the Higgs boson on, a
series of events events would unfold that would be so
(53:04):
incredibly catastrophic as to bring the entire universe's safety into
jeopardy or something along those lines. Essentially, it's the story
of Terminator Too, but done with a Higgs Boson in
place of Arnold Schwartzenegger. I'm I mean, sort of, which
is and I was telling Chris, like, the more I
(53:25):
read about this, the more I could not tell if
this was just someone being incredibly tongue in cheeks silly
about it and just you know, sort of well, you know,
the reason the all age he has had so many problems,
it's probably because blah blah blah blah blah, or if
it was someone who genuinely believed this bizarre theory. I
(53:47):
honestly don't know the answer to that. I'm hoping it's
the first case, because that's awesome. It's almost like it's
almost like if Andy Kaufman were a quantum physicist. You know,
the problem is that this sub atomic theoretical particle has
traveled from the future and is is mucking about with
all of our works so that we can't find it.
(54:08):
That sounds like an Andy Kaufman joke to me. So anyway,
that's kind of the basis of how the LHC works
and what it does and why it's important, and the
work that's going on is amazing. I mean, the the
reason why CERN has that grid of computers that we
talked about is because the amount of data that the
(54:30):
LHC gathers every second is huge, basically millions of snapshots
what's going on. So there has to be this massive
network of grid computers there to help decipher what all
that data actually means and to make it meaningful to us. So, yeah,
it's a phenomenal project that's continuing, and I hope that
(54:52):
they continue doing great science. I can't wait to see
what else comes out of it. And that wraps up
this classic episode of text Stuff. It was a weird one.
There was that one part where I was fighting myself
from like twenty minutes before. You didn't get to hear
any of that because it all happened during the commercial breaks.
But um, you know, I think I learned a lot
(55:14):
about myself. Tarry learned a lot about me too. Yeah.
If you want to learn more about me, or you
want to give suggestions for the show, you can contact
me by email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff
works dot com, or pop on over to our website
that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find links to
our presence on social media. You'll find an archive of
(55:36):
all of our past episodes. Ever, you will also find
a link to our online store, where every purchasing make
goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,
and we'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Tex
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
(55:58):
Heart Radio app. Apple Pie Casts or wherever you listen
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