July 26, 2012 • 34 mins
If you're tired of hearing about the Higgs "don't-call-me-a-god-particle" Boson but still want to know what it is, then this is the podcast episode for you. In this episode, Robert and Julie recount our hunt for the Higgs and what it means for science.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
don't go away, uh just yet, know to the listener,
because I know the title of this of this podcast
has Higgs in it. Higgs boson. You know, it's LHC.
(00:27):
It's all that stuff. It's subotomic particles, is subatomic physics.
But please don't run off this yet, because here's here's
my take on all of this, just real quick, I
kind of look at subatomic particles and particle physics is
being kind of like a chocolate covered Urnal cake. I'm
talking about this yesterday, So chocolate covered Urnal cake. It's
(00:49):
it's great so long as you do not bite in
too far, as long as you know exactly how deep
to go into the subject, and everything's chocolate and nice.
Go too deep and things get confusing, confusing and awful
really really fast. That's just my personal take. I'm not
meaning to dump on physics or particle physics. It's very important,
and we're gonna stress the importance of Higgs and everything
(01:11):
in this episode. But we're very much approaching this from
the standpoint of we're going to break it down and
tell you what you need to know about it, and
we're not going to go so deep that we're gonna
hit Urnal cake. Yeah, and if if you're really disturbed
by the Urnal cake, just think of it as the
most decadant chocolate covered dessert, not a Urnal cake that
you could only take a couple of bites of. You'd
(01:31):
be very satisfied by anything else if you'd have a
tummy ache. Yeah, because this is one of those those topics.
It's really important. That's why it's in the news all
the time. But I feel like we have a tendency
to not read articles that are actually about higgs, or
to just we just sort of register, oh, there's something
happening with the Higgs, and you can go on like
that for months and months and never actually stop to
(01:53):
attempt to understand what it is. And then certainly scientists
face that disconnect to trying to explain something that's really
really complicated. It's it's right at the bleeding edge of
our understanding, and only that it's it's a it's really
interesting exciting stuff because it says something about the way
that our whole world is is stuck together and how
(02:15):
we actually exist. So we're gonna try to get to
the bottom of that today without too much urine in
the urine cake, too much chocolate and the chocolate cake,
so to speak. So why is it in the news, Well,
it's because in the past couple of weeks and we
should mention that we were recording this h what's the date,
July seventeen, Yeah, we're recording this July seventeen thereabouts eight.
(02:39):
I don't know what day it is. Yeah, you know,
they're abouts. That's the time bubble that we're trapped in
recording us. It's entirely likely there'll be a new development
before this goes live. We may or may not have
time to edit things that that's the case, So just
bear with us. Uh, if you if you're hearing this
six months from now and there's all this sort of
crazy news out there that has given us new to
(03:00):
the understanding of Higgs, please please do not become incensed
with us. Yeah, but but this is all the data
in here is going to be good bedrock regardless. So
the whole news is that, you know, we've been searching
for the Higgs boson for a while, we've been we've
been slamming stuff together in a particle accelerator, which we'll
get into in a minute. We've been give another word,
we've been conducting this massive experiment to try and glimpse
(03:23):
this particle, uh that only exists for a fraction of
a second. We think it theoretically should exist, and we
want to find it. And so they have spotted something
they think maybe it, but we're not sure yet. Yeah,
and it's important to say that that right now, physicists
are simply calling it Higgs, like uh, not the Higgs
(03:44):
Boson particle. So um. And the reason they're doing that
is because they have a bunch of data. They've got
a mountain of data. But they want to be really
careful about it because it could be just turned out
to be not the Higgs particle but a different particle, yeah,
or something more exotic version of it. It's a lot
is writing on finding it, though, because we'll discuss I mean,
the whole standard model of physics points towards its existence
(04:07):
right right, and everything else lines up in the standard model. Okay,
so everything that we can make sense and it we
we have plugged everything in. We can see where things
are working, and we just need this last bit of
the puzzle, and Higgs is it's it's the clue that
makes everything happen. Um. Let's talk about certain real quick.
But this is a multinational research center headquartered in Geneva,
(04:29):
and it houses the super collider that we've been talking about,
called the Large Hadron Collider. There are two teams of
about three thousand physicists, each one named ATLAS, and that's
led by Fabulo Legion note and the other CMS is
led by dr Incandeta, and they operate giant detectors in
the collider, sorting the debris from the primordial fireballs left
(04:53):
after protown collisions. Now I'll give you a quick run
throound the protoun collisions. Um. So in order to get
this situation where we have all this stuff we can
analyze and try and spot things like the higgs um
what we have at the l h C. It's this
massive track, all right, this massive ring of super conducting magnets,
about seventeen miles of these things, giant underground loop. It
(05:17):
spans France and UH in Switzerland. Ever, and I like
to think of it in terms of UH. If you
remember the Adams family. Gomez Adams had the trains that
he would set up, but he would set them up
so that he would eventually have two trains have a
head on collision and crash, a big fiery explosive crash
there on his his model train set. And this is
how they came up with the idea of LHD. Right, well,
(05:39):
maybe it's fun to think think of it that way.
That's the way I imagine it, because he would get
real giddy and you would just be watching the super
close as those things collided. And that's what we're doing.
So instead of using trains, um, we are sending two
beams of particles close to the speed of light through
that ring, each traveling in a different direction, all inside
of a vacuum. And then the collision and happens. All right, Um,
(06:01):
things get smashed apart, and in that moment, that this
moment of chaos, we can glimpse these just ephemeral particles
that only exist, Um, you know in the this that
minute sliver of time following such a catastrophe. And we
know the mass of the different particles, right, So for instance,
a proton is about a billion electric volts when it's
(06:26):
smashed and then it begins to decay UM. And so
there's a specific signature that each of these particles has,
and it's believed that that our friend Higgs, that particle
has has a very specific range I think between something
I'm around there. And so what they began to see
(06:46):
is these what they call data bumps in this decay factor,
these signatures, and last winter they reported these hints of
this particle, this ghost of a particle in the machine UM,
and they wanted to make sure it wasn't us to
hisstical fluke, and it wasn't. And they've been working with
from Labs to in in Illinois because they also have
a collider and trying to figure out, I, hey, is
(07:08):
this little ghost for seeing something a hint of what
could be the Higgs particle? Of course, you know who
else UM has a particle accelerator? Who the Ghostbusters if
you'll remember the proton pop packs were particle accelerators, That's right.
So so we're talking about very similar technology here, except
instead of being used to harness a spirit and uh
(07:30):
and force it into a trap, we're instead just aiming
them at each other. In a way, we're kind of
crossing the streams were just colliding streams, right, well, plasma
involved in both. Right. Yeah, Um, that was an attempt
at a at a Higgs joke. But but there are
a lot of attempts at Higgs jokes going on right now.
It's a it's a rich area of comedy. Well, and
(07:50):
this is the reason, I think, because because everybody knows
that it's it's it's exciting news. It could change our
view of physics. Uh. And yet it's such a weighty
topic that I think that it's gotten some fuel here
from from comedy because you know, it's very hard to understand,
and yet people are trying to put it in terms
that makes sense of it and a little um less
(08:13):
afraid of it too, because it's gonna be intimidating. It's
like particle physics. But you throw in a joke about it,
then it's a little more relatable. Well you know, it's
fat joke. There are a lot of fat jokes about it,
mass jokes. Yeah. Um. Holly Fry from pop Stuff actually
was talking to me yesterday about the whole brew haha
about comic sands, the font that was used by CERN
(08:34):
in their power point slide when they were discussing their
discovery of this Higgs like particle, and people are just outraged.
Comics Sands, Is that the one that looks like illuminated
stand um? Yeah? Yeah, it actually is a font. It's
a font that is intended for children, was designed for
that purpose. It's very easy to read. Um. But people
(08:58):
are like, really like this huge relation that is going
to be now released into the world with that font um,
and people are going nuts. Ober. I think it's really
funny there they were. They were torn between that one
and the blood drippy font you know, one of the two. Yeah, yeah,
or maybe like the nineteen twenties like Broadway font um.
But anyway, I think that, you know, maybe it was intentional.
(09:19):
Maybe they felt like if they took this really simplistic
font and um and then gave all this really heavy
information that people would be more psychic psychologically primed to
be like, okay, I can get this who knows um.
But there's a bunch of big Higgs jokes going around
to Here's one Higgs Boston walks into a Catholic church
(09:40):
pret says, what are you doing here? Higgs Boston says,
you can't have mass without me? Yeah, because yeah, well,
we'll explain that later. Yeah, we're gonna get into that.
All right. We should probably set aside Higgs jokes unless
you have any more. Now, I mean, that's a good
example of one, right there. Um. I mean, because a
lot of them legacy come down to wait, they come
down mass, because the Higgs is very tied up in
(10:02):
this idea of mass and why does anything have mass? Uh,
So we need to talk a little bit about standard
model now. The the thing about standard model UM is
that it's about explaining the complexity of our universe. It's
about trying to really get down to what makes up
(10:22):
the universe, what are the rules concerning its structure. So
it's it's really important. You know, we're talking about the
the structure of the universe, the origins of the universe.
It's very hard, but it's also kind of like the
old It reminds me of the you know, the analogy
of the elephant, the blind men grasping of the elephant.
And in the past we've you know, various areas of
science have been touching one part of the elephant is saying,
(10:43):
oh it's a tree, Oh it's a snake, Oh it's
a it's a it's it's a sale or something that's
a giant pancake, it's a wall. But what we really
want is a more complete vision of what the universe
is and how it works, and so standard models an
attempt to do that. Um. Yeah, And for historical context,
you should point out that in the early days of
the twentieth century, particle physics was really in its infancy,
(11:07):
and we're talking about you know, just knowing about two particles,
protons and electrons. That was the extent of our knowledge. Yeah,
I mean, we discovered adams and protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks
and leptons eventually, So when we keep diving deeper. Uh
and and so uh enter the standard model, which describes
(11:28):
the universe as being made of twelve different matter particles
and four forces. Okay, those twelve particles include six quarks,
six leptons, but don't worry about that right now. Uh.
And then it also involves these four forces gravity, electromagnetic force,
strong force, and weak force. Yes, and those I think
(11:48):
are a lot easier to grasp. Um. Those those different forces,
they work over different ranges and they have different strengths.
Gravity is the weakest, but it has an infinite range.
The electromagnetic force so has an infinite range, but it's
many times stronger than gravity. The weak and strong forces
are effective only over a short, very short range and
dominate only at the level of sub atomic particles. So
(12:11):
that's really where Higgs Boston becomes important here. Um, and
despite its name, the weak force is much stronger than
gravity that it is actually the weakest of of the
other three the strong forces, as that the name says,
the strongest of the forces. Yeah, the theory proposes that electricity, magnetism, light,
and some types of radioactivity are all manifestations of that
(12:33):
single electroweak force. Uh. So it unites the electromagnetic and
weak forces, two of the four fundamental forces of nature,
along with strong force and gravity. But this theory only
holds water if the particles in question had no mass,
zero mass in the period immediately following the Big Bang.
So we this theory creates this situation where we have
(12:57):
there has to be this time when they had no mass,
so there has to be something it is giving them mass.
We have to find a perpetrator, a suspect, somebody we
can pin mass itself on. So it's kind of like
somebody's been stealing the donuts. We don't know who, but
we know that person exists. We know that that donut
thief exists somewhere and we just have to spot them.
And in this case, the donut thief is the Higgs boson.
(13:19):
It is this is the particle that theoretically is well
not stealing donuts, but um is involved in the process
of giving things mass. Okay, Yeah, And three of the
fundamental forces result from the exchange of force carrier carrier particles. Okay,
and um, this belongs to the broader group called bosons. Right,
(13:40):
this is where Higgs boson comes in. So that is
this exchange, that's what's giving it mass. This is this
is what works in the equation. So all of these forces,
these four forces that we're talking about UM, theoretically then
aligned to a particular particle. That's right. So Um, you
know you've got each fund of fundamental force having its
own corresponding boson particle. The strong forces carried by the gluon,
(14:03):
the electromagnetic forces carried by the photon um little packets
of light as we know them, and the W and
Z bosons are responsible for the weak force. Yeahs Um particle.
Physicists don't like for you to call Higgs Boson the
god particle, but you can kind of think of these
little particles as gods of their corresponding UM force. Yeah,
(14:26):
in the w Z, it gets it gets complicated fast,
Like even just throwing this set, you guys are probably
w Z the glue on the dada. But if you
think about them all corresponding with those different forces, it's
a lot easier to to understand. Um. And then of
course you're policy sitting there saying what about gravity? Um,
Well it's you know, we haven't found this particle yet
to correspond with gravity, but um, we expect something called
(14:48):
the graviton to be a force caring particle of gravity,
and gravity is the problem of the standard model. Um. Now,
according to CERN, it's not as big a problem as
we think it is. Though. Um. They seem to dawnplay
a bit. They say that fitting gravity comfortably into the
framework has proved to be a difficult challenge. The quantum
(15:09):
theory used to describe the micro world and the general
theory of relativity used to describe the macro world are
like two children who refused to play nicely together. Again,
these there's gonna be so many different examples when when
we come to talking about this, which is helpful, right
because and now we're thinking about two kids not playing
with each other. They say, no, one has managed to
make the two mathematically compatible in the context of the
(15:30):
Standard Model. But luckily for particle physics, when it comes
to the minuscule scale of particles, the effect of gravity
is so weak as to be negligible. So only when
we have matter in bulks, such as in ourselves or
in planets does the effect of gravity dominate. So the
standard model still works well despite its reluctant exclusion of
one of the fundamental forces. So again, two blind men,
(15:53):
varying ideas. It is the varying theories don't necessarily mess
well with one right, So they're saying, okay, we we
you know that we have a missing part here, but
this is still sort of limping along in terms of
bearing out what we think is happening, and we expect
to find this other corresponding particle, so that out of
the way, and knowing that the Higgs boson is really
(16:16):
important here, that w n C that we're talking about, Um,
let's talk more specifically about this particle that is involved
in making the standard model work as best it can.
This particle uh emits what is called Higgs field. All right,
and this field and use all the particles that passed
through it with mass, this this powerful thing called mass.
(16:39):
This almost I mean, it's it's difficult to imagine the
universe without mass. We have to think when I'm talking
about this field. This field is the size of the cosmos.
It is that big of a field. It's not like, oh,
there's this field here, this one little doorway, this magic door,
and every particle that goes through it became uh a
masked object. So it's a thing like a photon. The
(17:00):
packet of light, right is going to go through this
field because it doesn't have any mass, It's just gonna
go through really quickly, right um. And then you'd have
something like the W and Z bosons, these elementary particles
that mediate the weak interaction, that force that we're talking about,
would get bogged down with mass. Um. Assuming that the
Higgs bosson really is existing in here. And and this
(17:23):
is what we found, and this is what's happening. Everything
that has mass gets it by interacting with this field.
As you say, yeah, there's a good Uh. The analogy
that I ran across the Everyway Light comes from John Gunion,
physicist at the University of California at Davis, and he
said that, in short, the Higgs field is a cosmos
sized swimming pool and everything is swimming in it. Particles
(17:46):
that interact strongly with the Higgs field like a heavy
set man swimming with his clothes on, um, are heavier
than particles that breathe through the pool like an a
Limics Olympic swimmer in a wetsuit. Uh. I like the
analogy very much, and I want to point out to
that there's a lot of confusion between the Higgs particle
in the field. Um. They are two different things, obviously,
(18:08):
but the Higgs particle is inseparable from its field, and
it is this exchange of particles with a background field
that is giving the mass. And I know I keep
repeating it, but it's good to understand that that the
muck that it's going through these exchanges. So what is
giving this stuff um some weight? Um. There is another
analogy that I liked quite a bit. Um because yes,
(18:30):
just because it's super silly. Martin Archer of physicist at
Imperial Imperial College of London explains it as, Uh, think
about Justin Bieber in a crowd of teenage girls. If
he tries to move through them, they slow him down
and his speed decreases the more they're attracted to him.
So he's having a lot of exchanges in this field,
(18:51):
as opposed to so and so, Uh through this crowd
of teenage girls who just passes through very quickly, and
it doesn't have any mass or isn't accumulating any mass
because this person is not having any exchanges with the
wildly gesticulating teenage girls. Yeah, alright, Yeah, I'm having a
hold back from throwing trying to throw in my own
(19:12):
and out because we've we're already weighted down with with analogies. Yeah, Marver,
we are interacting a lot with these analogy He's and
gaining mass um by the second here. But I also
want to point out one more though, because I think
it's a good way to enter into this conversation about
a large hattern collider. Turns out that Brian Cox, who
was a particle physicist and reactor, not the older awesome actor,
(19:33):
but the younger Rocks are scientists. Such. Yeah, that's what
they call him. Um, he's funny, he's great, and you
can see why he's doing so many talks on TED
because he's a great science communicator. Uh. But he was
talking about CERN and trying to get funding for this
and that They talked to Margaret Thatcher about it and
(19:55):
she said, you know, if you can tell us what
the deep this thing is, then you make it explainable
to politicians, then um, then I will give you the
funding for it. But you've got to come up with
some sort of analogy that works. Well, what what sort
of analogy do you think they use? That They used
the room analogy again, and they said, this really popular politician. Uh,
(20:18):
you know that people really wanted to interact coming through
the room getting slowed down. So I thought it was
interesting that that's where that analogy was first used and
that's what helped to get the funding for certain Yes,
all right, well, hey, we're going to take a quick
break and let let all of that gain some mass
in your head, and then when we come back, we
will bite once more into the chocolate covered journal cake
(20:40):
or just delicious decadentge slice of cake. All right, we're back,
so Higgs Higgs, Okay, I think we have a better understanding. Um.
You know, it's the forces of nature require that that
mecan is m to make sense, that standard model, and
(21:02):
Higgs to be a part of it, and as a byproduct,
you and I exist, we think because and this is
according to Brian Cox, because many of the particles that
make us up get at least part of their mass
through Higgs. So on a personal level, that's why it
should matter to us. Um. But let's talk about the
large Hydrin collider because we wouldn't even be talking about
this today if it weren't for for this giant machine
that we talked about, this seventeen mile circumference, this beast
(21:26):
lurking below. Yeah. Well we've got into it a little
bit already, but I like to add just a little
more detail. Um. I mentioned that racetrack and you just
mentioned as well, Um, you have seven thousand super conducting
magnets that are in there to steer the protons around. Okay,
so it's uh, it's it's not just a matter of oh,
this is the core, you know, because you think back
(21:48):
to like a like a little race cars and little courses.
We have like that one little module that accelerates it
and then it just goes around. Well, the accelerators are
all around this ring. Well, and as you pointed out,
they're traveling at nine nine point one and one seven
five the speed of light, right, and the l C
LHC actually boost the protons energy by nearly sixteen times
(22:09):
and collides to them thirty million times a second for
ten hours. So I mean this is, ah, this is
quite a bashing. Um. So when we think about what
it means to have these collisions, that's the sort of
um environment that they are creating in order to try
to recreate this um, this idea of the Big Bang
(22:29):
or the billions of seconds, what happened after the Big Bang.
This is why it's so specific and why they bashed
them together this way. Yeah, I mean, in a way,
it's kind of like anything that happens on any given
episode of MythBusters. They're like, oh, what happens with can
if two trucks uh sandwich vehicle? Can it actually you know,
completely crush it? So what do they do. They get
a couple of trucks in a car and they smash
(22:50):
everything together. I mean, recreating, um, this catastrophic event for
the purposes of studying how it works, and that's essentially
what's going on here, uh, except in a more complicated,
uh and smaller form. I like this idea of them
being MythBusters because this is a playful group. By the way, um,
you may have seen the rap that they put out
(23:11):
about the large Headron collider. I love it. What are
you gonna? I mean, it's it's good. It's just uh,
it's uh, you know, there's just something it's you can't
help a cringe a little bit. When when when scientists, Uh,
it's so adorably geeky. It's adorably geeky, but it's you know,
beastie boys. It's not. Oh no, but that's the charm
(23:33):
of it, right, well, yeah, it's the charm. You gotta
love it. They're like, let's do this wrap about the
large Headron collider, and actually they kind of speak like that, um,
and the it's good. It's good. I'm not bastian. It's
it's funny. No, no, it's good stuff. But but I
think it's important for people in it, like they have
a sense of humor. They're they're playing with us. They're
not just stuffy scientists who are all you know. I
(23:54):
don't care if the public understands what we're doing. You know,
it's not that kind of a deal. Yeah, they're very excited.
One of the guys on the on the Atlas program
a couple of years ago, did he wrap. No, he
did not wrap. But he was a very very nice,
very down to earth guy who was willing to talk
with me on the phone and sort of break down UM,
you know, what they were looking for and how the
(24:14):
project works so well, and like they are obviously so
excited about it, and that comes across and and it's
wonderful to see UM. But I want to talk a
little bit more about the LHC and UM, this idea
of them smashing the particles together and how they actually
discovered the signature of the Higgs boson. The theory was
that um in this cosmic molasses normally uh you know,
(24:37):
which would be invisible as Higgs field, it would produce
its own quantum particle. If it was hit hard enough
with the right amount of energy, which is why they
have um that amount of energy that they've got running
through there. The particle would be fragile and would fall
apart within a millionth of a second and a dozen
possible ways, depending on its own mass, and then they
find the signatures by being able to recognize the particles
(25:00):
that are produced in these collisions with their decay patterns.
So these are the signatures that are left behind. And
each court has many different ways of decaying, so there
are several possible signatures and each one has to be
carefully examined to determine which particles were present at the
time of collision. So we're talking about anytime there's a collision,
just terabytes of data that is produced and then fed
(25:23):
through computers and then combed through until they could find
these really specific bumps um that we talked about. This
I think it's like a hundred and thirty electrical vaults
that they kept seeing over and over again or within
that range, and this is that ghost of a pattern
that I talked about. Yeah, the machine, it's I mean,
(25:43):
it's pretty fascinating. We we've talked before about kind of
the disappointment of like older visions of the future, and
they would involve say, really advanced space stations that never
actually came to fruition or at least have a confruition yet.
But the LFC is one of those things where it's
an incredible piece of just kind of an age technology
that is really pushing the boundaries of what we understand.
And it's not necessarily the kind of thing that would
(26:04):
have appeared in most science fictions, you know, it's but
it's just as exciting when you really really think about
what it's seeking to accomplish. That's just the pictures of
Loan of the LHC are phenomenal. And you see how
mammoth this machine is, and it really does look like
something from the future. It does look like this manifestation
of what we thought you might look like in the sixties, right, um,
(26:30):
in the nineteen sixties. But I think more importantly too,
if you step back and you look at this development
and it does seem like, Okay, it's murky, you know,
is it the particle? Is it not? You know, what
are the implications? Um? If you step back and you
look at everything that we've accomplished so far, it does
appear that we are in the cusp of a different
understanding of our universe. Yeah, I've seen it, um. Compared
(26:54):
to a Christopher Columbus, you know, his voyage to the
New World, and you know he thought he was he
was you know, he said sail for the East Indies
and he landed and what he thought was Asia, and
they're not to actually be the Bahamas. So we we
have no idea. We were not really sure exactly what's
gonna happen, you know, perhaps what what we're gonna find
(27:15):
the Higgs. In other words, we're gonna land on and
the Asian continent that we set out for, but it's
entirely possible that we land in the Bahamas instead. But
either way, our understanding of not the the world we
live in, and not the only out of the oceans
and continents, but the the the actual fabric of the
universe itself, our understanding of that is going to change.
And that's yeah, that's exciting. Yeah, our map of the
(27:37):
cosmos is shifting. I think um Brian Cox again the
rock star physicist, UM paraphrase Carl Sagen, and he said,
you know, look out Saturn, five rockets and spot Nik
and DNA and literature and science. These are the things
that hydrogen atoms do when given thirteen point seven billion years.
(27:58):
So he's saying like, let's back up said hands after
the Big Bang and see what a hydrogen atom can
do after thirteen billion years, And as you say that
the sort of understanding that we gain. Um, So I
thought that was a very nice way to put it.
That's why this is important to us. Well, do we
want to take a little listen to to what we
(28:18):
have some snified data here, um, which which we were
talking about early sonified data is always a little uh.
I mean, it's great, but it's also a little gimmicky
because you're just you're taking data and you're turning into
into sound and you're not necessarily gaining an immense amount
of insight into the original data by hearing it is sound,
but it's still real. It's really cool, and it is
(28:39):
really cool because the data, I guess you could say
that you could extrapolate this. The data is creating sort
of notes. It's got math and musicality to it. So
if you were if when you tun it into to music,
you do have I mean, I don't know, it's not
this is not what Higgs sounds like when it sings,
but it's kind of like what Higgs sound like if
(29:01):
it were a score to the nineteen eighties science fiction
film Let's See There You Go or in the Hands
of Brianino exactly. It does sound a lot like some
of the you know, some more ambient work. So so yeah,
let's listen to U the sound of Higgs. I like it.
(29:25):
I could, I could listen to that. I listened to
things that sound a lot like that. So so again,
sonified data. Um, it's not necessarily really giving us a
lot of insight, but is it? At the very least,
it's cool when it can serve as kind of a
nice um spoonful of sugar, you know, on the medicine
to get people interested in science. Well, and it's a
(29:46):
manifestation of of Higgs in one way. Right, the data
just went into your ear. So alright, let's see what's
going on with the mail. Yes, call the robot over here,
and let's see what he has for us. All right,
here's one from William William Wrightson and says, Hi, Robert
and Julie in regards to the episode, is Matthew human
invention or a human discovery? That was a good one? Um,
(30:09):
he says, well, here is what I think neither. Let
me explain Matthews. He used in a lot of animals,
including birds, which use very new these principle which states
that fast moving air is lighter than slow moving air.
I love the podcast, William, so it was kind of brief,
but but it does. He brings up an interesting, um,
I don't know, kind of a semiatic point, right, that
(30:31):
that a human invention is a human to discover you
kind of have to remove the human from the argument
to really get maybe a clearer grasp of how the
universe were well and serendipitously, we're discussing mass again too, right, yeah,
it's moving through air. All right. Here's one we heard
from a listener by the name of Tom out of Brooklyn,
New York, and he wrote in and says the following, Hi,
(30:54):
Robert and Julie, thanks for the killer episode about underwater
recording and music. As a listener and fan, episode inspired
me to write in, I wanted to share a funny
experience with you guys related to this very topic. I'm
a recording engineer by Perfection and co owned and operate Brooklyn,
New York Spaceman Sounds. Can you tell where sci fi
folks like you guys? Last year, when Hurricane Irene was
(31:15):
descending upon us, we were informed that our studio was
in an evacuation in zone A, meaning in case of
a hurricane or similar event, our premises would likely be flooded,
and we would We were made to evacuate. Given our
sizeable studio full of recording equipment and instruments, this was
a daunting endeavor. My band, called Title Arms More Space References,
had a rehearsal in the studio the night prior to
(31:37):
our evacuation and insisted on battering down the hatches ahead
of time. Our conversation dissolved into dark jokes about going
down with the ship and recording new tunes at the
studio got flooded, facing certain electrocution. Uh, then this susper
the question, wait can we record underwater again? For going responsibility,
we filled up the swap sink in the corner of
(31:58):
the room with water. We dropped one of our less
precious microphones into a plastic bag, sealed it up, plocked
it in. I'll be damned if it wasn't the most
awesome low frequency reverb sound I've ever heard mixed with
a normal high fi condenser microphone in the room. It
gave a monstrous, massive kick drum sound. Anyway, we didn't
and we did end up evacuating the next day, and
(32:19):
there wasn't a drop of water in the space despite
all the work for not we were relieved there was
no water damage. In fact, we learned a totally rad
recording trip. Thanks Irene, just I just wanted to share
this with you guys. This your episode reminded me of
it immediately. Thanks for the amazing undersee the mystery sounds
and the usual array of killer space age conversation. To
keep up the great work, and this is cool. After
(32:41):
Tom sent this in, I was, you know, I'm like, well,
you gotta send me the file of that, you know,
because he's gotten kind of excited about this. So he
did send in a file. And what we're gonna listen
to now, as he said, he had two microphones, one
in the slop sync and and one this is out
in the open air and uh and so both of
these microphone is recording, uh, the sounds of the that
(33:03):
they were playing. So what we're gonna listen to here
is just a brief clip that is a composed of
sound from both of those microphones. So yeah, yeah, that's
(33:34):
pretty cool. It's gonna be awesome. You can definitely hear
like you said that that that the watery, murky sort
of bloopy lever thing going into the background. Well, and
I just love too that this hurricane was about to
hit and they're like, hey, speaking of what would happen
if we dropped this microphone in here. I like it.
It's something you tend not to see the most post
apocalyptic or disaster films or whatever, you know, where it's like, oh,
(33:56):
my goodness, the world is ending, let's cut an album. Right,
So I'm so in the flow that let's just go
with it. Yeah. So, so that's really cool. Thanks for
sending that into all right, and if if you guys
have anything you would like to share, be it sounds
you've recorded, sonified data, or just your general thoughts on
particle physics, Higgs Higgs jokes, Higgs jokes, Uh, let us
(34:19):
have those. We may or may not read them, depending
on how funny they are, right um, or how how
weighty they are. Uh. You can you can let us know.
You can share all this stuff with us on Facebook
where we are we are stuff to blow your mind,
and you can also find us on Twitter. Our handle
there is blow the Mind and you can always drop
us a note at blew the Mind at Discovery dot
(34:40):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
is it, how stuff works? Dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
don't go away, uh just yet, know to the listener,
because I know the title of this of this podcast
has Higgs in it. Higgs boson. You know, it's LHC.
(00:27):
It's all that stuff. It's subotomic particles, is subatomic physics.
But please don't run off this yet, because here's here's
my take on all of this, just real quick, I
kind of look at subatomic particles and particle physics is
being kind of like a chocolate covered Urnal cake. I'm
talking about this yesterday, So chocolate covered Urnal cake. It's
(00:49):
it's great so long as you do not bite in
too far, as long as you know exactly how deep
to go into the subject, and everything's chocolate and nice.
Go too deep and things get confusing, confusing and awful
really really fast. That's just my personal take. I'm not
meaning to dump on physics or particle physics. It's very important,
and we're gonna stress the importance of Higgs and everything
(01:11):
in this episode. But we're very much approaching this from
the standpoint of we're going to break it down and
tell you what you need to know about it, and
we're not going to go so deep that we're gonna
hit Urnal cake. Yeah, and if if you're really disturbed
by the Urnal cake, just think of it as the
most decadant chocolate covered dessert, not a Urnal cake that
you could only take a couple of bites of. You'd
(01:31):
be very satisfied by anything else if you'd have a
tummy ache. Yeah, because this is one of those those topics.
It's really important. That's why it's in the news all
the time. But I feel like we have a tendency
to not read articles that are actually about higgs, or
to just we just sort of register, oh, there's something
happening with the Higgs, and you can go on like
that for months and months and never actually stop to
(01:53):
attempt to understand what it is. And then certainly scientists
face that disconnect to trying to explain something that's really
really complicated. It's it's right at the bleeding edge of
our understanding, and only that it's it's a it's really
interesting exciting stuff because it says something about the way
that our whole world is is stuck together and how
(02:15):
we actually exist. So we're gonna try to get to
the bottom of that today without too much urine in
the urine cake, too much chocolate and the chocolate cake,
so to speak. So why is it in the news, Well,
it's because in the past couple of weeks and we
should mention that we were recording this h what's the date,
July seventeen, Yeah, we're recording this July seventeen thereabouts eight.
(02:39):
I don't know what day it is. Yeah, you know,
they're abouts. That's the time bubble that we're trapped in
recording us. It's entirely likely there'll be a new development
before this goes live. We may or may not have
time to edit things that that's the case, So just
bear with us. Uh, if you if you're hearing this
six months from now and there's all this sort of
crazy news out there that has given us new to
(03:00):
the understanding of Higgs, please please do not become incensed
with us. Yeah, but but this is all the data
in here is going to be good bedrock regardless. So
the whole news is that, you know, we've been searching
for the Higgs boson for a while, we've been we've
been slamming stuff together in a particle accelerator, which we'll
get into in a minute. We've been give another word,
we've been conducting this massive experiment to try and glimpse
(03:23):
this particle, uh that only exists for a fraction of
a second. We think it theoretically should exist, and we
want to find it. And so they have spotted something
they think maybe it, but we're not sure yet. Yeah,
and it's important to say that that right now, physicists
are simply calling it Higgs, like uh, not the Higgs
(03:44):
Boson particle. So um. And the reason they're doing that
is because they have a bunch of data. They've got
a mountain of data. But they want to be really
careful about it because it could be just turned out
to be not the Higgs particle but a different particle, yeah,
or something more exotic version of it. It's a lot
is writing on finding it, though, because we'll discuss I mean,
the whole standard model of physics points towards its existence
(04:07):
right right, and everything else lines up in the standard model. Okay,
so everything that we can make sense and it we
we have plugged everything in. We can see where things
are working, and we just need this last bit of
the puzzle, and Higgs is it's it's the clue that
makes everything happen. Um. Let's talk about certain real quick.
But this is a multinational research center headquartered in Geneva,
(04:29):
and it houses the super collider that we've been talking about,
called the Large Hadron Collider. There are two teams of
about three thousand physicists, each one named ATLAS, and that's
led by Fabulo Legion note and the other CMS is
led by dr Incandeta, and they operate giant detectors in
the collider, sorting the debris from the primordial fireballs left
(04:53):
after protown collisions. Now I'll give you a quick run
throound the protoun collisions. Um. So in order to get
this situation where we have all this stuff we can
analyze and try and spot things like the higgs um
what we have at the l h C. It's this
massive track, all right, this massive ring of super conducting magnets,
about seventeen miles of these things, giant underground loop. It
(05:17):
spans France and UH in Switzerland. Ever, and I like
to think of it in terms of UH. If you
remember the Adams family. Gomez Adams had the trains that
he would set up, but he would set them up
so that he would eventually have two trains have a
head on collision and crash, a big fiery explosive crash
there on his his model train set. And this is
how they came up with the idea of LHD. Right, well,
(05:39):
maybe it's fun to think think of it that way.
That's the way I imagine it, because he would get
real giddy and you would just be watching the super
close as those things collided. And that's what we're doing.
So instead of using trains, um, we are sending two
beams of particles close to the speed of light through
that ring, each traveling in a different direction, all inside
of a vacuum. And then the collision and happens. All right, Um,
(06:01):
things get smashed apart, and in that moment, that this
moment of chaos, we can glimpse these just ephemeral particles
that only exist, Um, you know in the this that
minute sliver of time following such a catastrophe. And we
know the mass of the different particles, right, So for instance,
a proton is about a billion electric volts when it's
(06:26):
smashed and then it begins to decay UM. And so
there's a specific signature that each of these particles has,
and it's believed that that our friend Higgs, that particle
has has a very specific range I think between something
I'm around there. And so what they began to see
(06:46):
is these what they call data bumps in this decay factor,
these signatures, and last winter they reported these hints of
this particle, this ghost of a particle in the machine UM,
and they wanted to make sure it wasn't us to
hisstical fluke, and it wasn't. And they've been working with
from Labs to in in Illinois because they also have
a collider and trying to figure out, I, hey, is
(07:08):
this little ghost for seeing something a hint of what
could be the Higgs particle? Of course, you know who
else UM has a particle accelerator? Who the Ghostbusters if
you'll remember the proton pop packs were particle accelerators, That's right.
So so we're talking about very similar technology here, except
instead of being used to harness a spirit and uh
(07:30):
and force it into a trap, we're instead just aiming
them at each other. In a way, we're kind of
crossing the streams were just colliding streams, right, well, plasma
involved in both. Right. Yeah, Um, that was an attempt
at a at a Higgs joke. But but there are
a lot of attempts at Higgs jokes going on right now.
It's a it's a rich area of comedy. Well, and
(07:50):
this is the reason, I think, because because everybody knows
that it's it's it's exciting news. It could change our
view of physics. Uh. And yet it's such a weighty
topic that I think that it's gotten some fuel here
from from comedy because you know, it's very hard to understand,
and yet people are trying to put it in terms
that makes sense of it and a little um less
(08:13):
afraid of it too, because it's gonna be intimidating. It's
like particle physics. But you throw in a joke about it,
then it's a little more relatable. Well you know, it's
fat joke. There are a lot of fat jokes about it,
mass jokes. Yeah. Um. Holly Fry from pop Stuff actually
was talking to me yesterday about the whole brew haha
about comic sands, the font that was used by CERN
(08:34):
in their power point slide when they were discussing their
discovery of this Higgs like particle, and people are just outraged.
Comics Sands, Is that the one that looks like illuminated
stand um? Yeah? Yeah, it actually is a font. It's
a font that is intended for children, was designed for
that purpose. It's very easy to read. Um. But people
(08:58):
are like, really like this huge relation that is going
to be now released into the world with that font um,
and people are going nuts. Ober. I think it's really
funny there they were. They were torn between that one
and the blood drippy font you know, one of the two. Yeah, yeah,
or maybe like the nineteen twenties like Broadway font um.
But anyway, I think that, you know, maybe it was intentional.
(09:19):
Maybe they felt like if they took this really simplistic
font and um and then gave all this really heavy
information that people would be more psychic psychologically primed to
be like, okay, I can get this who knows um.
But there's a bunch of big Higgs jokes going around
to Here's one Higgs Boston walks into a Catholic church
(09:40):
pret says, what are you doing here? Higgs Boston says,
you can't have mass without me? Yeah, because yeah, well,
we'll explain that later. Yeah, we're gonna get into that.
All right. We should probably set aside Higgs jokes unless
you have any more. Now, I mean, that's a good
example of one, right there. Um. I mean, because a
lot of them legacy come down to wait, they come
down mass, because the Higgs is very tied up in
(10:02):
this idea of mass and why does anything have mass? Uh,
So we need to talk a little bit about standard
model now. The the thing about standard model UM is
that it's about explaining the complexity of our universe. It's
about trying to really get down to what makes up
(10:22):
the universe, what are the rules concerning its structure. So
it's it's really important. You know, we're talking about the
the structure of the universe, the origins of the universe.
It's very hard, but it's also kind of like the
old It reminds me of the you know, the analogy
of the elephant, the blind men grasping of the elephant.
And in the past we've you know, various areas of
science have been touching one part of the elephant is saying,
(10:43):
oh it's a tree, Oh it's a snake, Oh it's
a it's a it's it's a sale or something that's
a giant pancake, it's a wall. But what we really
want is a more complete vision of what the universe
is and how it works, and so standard models an
attempt to do that. Um. Yeah, And for historical context,
you should point out that in the early days of
the twentieth century, particle physics was really in its infancy,
(11:07):
and we're talking about you know, just knowing about two particles,
protons and electrons. That was the extent of our knowledge. Yeah,
I mean, we discovered adams and protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks
and leptons eventually, So when we keep diving deeper. Uh
and and so uh enter the standard model, which describes
(11:28):
the universe as being made of twelve different matter particles
and four forces. Okay, those twelve particles include six quarks,
six leptons, but don't worry about that right now. Uh.
And then it also involves these four forces gravity, electromagnetic force,
strong force, and weak force. Yes, and those I think
(11:48):
are a lot easier to grasp. Um. Those those different forces,
they work over different ranges and they have different strengths.
Gravity is the weakest, but it has an infinite range.
The electromagnetic force so has an infinite range, but it's
many times stronger than gravity. The weak and strong forces
are effective only over a short, very short range and
dominate only at the level of sub atomic particles. So
(12:11):
that's really where Higgs Boston becomes important here. Um, and
despite its name, the weak force is much stronger than
gravity that it is actually the weakest of of the
other three the strong forces, as that the name says,
the strongest of the forces. Yeah, the theory proposes that electricity, magnetism, light,
and some types of radioactivity are all manifestations of that
(12:33):
single electroweak force. Uh. So it unites the electromagnetic and
weak forces, two of the four fundamental forces of nature,
along with strong force and gravity. But this theory only
holds water if the particles in question had no mass,
zero mass in the period immediately following the Big Bang.
So we this theory creates this situation where we have
(12:57):
there has to be this time when they had no mass,
so there has to be something it is giving them mass.
We have to find a perpetrator, a suspect, somebody we
can pin mass itself on. So it's kind of like
somebody's been stealing the donuts. We don't know who, but
we know that person exists. We know that that donut
thief exists somewhere and we just have to spot them.
And in this case, the donut thief is the Higgs boson.
(13:19):
It is this is the particle that theoretically is well
not stealing donuts, but um is involved in the process
of giving things mass. Okay, Yeah, And three of the
fundamental forces result from the exchange of force carrier carrier particles. Okay,
and um, this belongs to the broader group called bosons. Right,
(13:40):
this is where Higgs boson comes in. So that is
this exchange, that's what's giving it mass. This is this
is what works in the equation. So all of these forces,
these four forces that we're talking about UM, theoretically then
aligned to a particular particle. That's right. So Um, you
know you've got each fund of fundamental force having its
own corresponding boson particle. The strong forces carried by the gluon,
(14:03):
the electromagnetic forces carried by the photon um little packets
of light as we know them, and the W and
Z bosons are responsible for the weak force. Yeahs Um particle.
Physicists don't like for you to call Higgs Boson the
god particle, but you can kind of think of these
little particles as gods of their corresponding UM force. Yeah,
(14:26):
in the w Z, it gets it gets complicated fast,
Like even just throwing this set, you guys are probably
w Z the glue on the dada. But if you
think about them all corresponding with those different forces, it's
a lot easier to to understand. Um. And then of
course you're policy sitting there saying what about gravity? Um,
Well it's you know, we haven't found this particle yet
to correspond with gravity, but um, we expect something called
(14:48):
the graviton to be a force caring particle of gravity,
and gravity is the problem of the standard model. Um. Now,
according to CERN, it's not as big a problem as
we think it is. Though. Um. They seem to dawnplay
a bit. They say that fitting gravity comfortably into the
framework has proved to be a difficult challenge. The quantum
(15:09):
theory used to describe the micro world and the general
theory of relativity used to describe the macro world are
like two children who refused to play nicely together. Again,
these there's gonna be so many different examples when when
we come to talking about this, which is helpful, right
because and now we're thinking about two kids not playing
with each other. They say, no, one has managed to
make the two mathematically compatible in the context of the
(15:30):
Standard Model. But luckily for particle physics, when it comes
to the minuscule scale of particles, the effect of gravity
is so weak as to be negligible. So only when
we have matter in bulks, such as in ourselves or
in planets does the effect of gravity dominate. So the
standard model still works well despite its reluctant exclusion of
one of the fundamental forces. So again, two blind men,
(15:53):
varying ideas. It is the varying theories don't necessarily mess
well with one right, So they're saying, okay, we we
you know that we have a missing part here, but
this is still sort of limping along in terms of
bearing out what we think is happening, and we expect
to find this other corresponding particle, so that out of
the way, and knowing that the Higgs boson is really
(16:16):
important here, that w n C that we're talking about, Um,
let's talk more specifically about this particle that is involved
in making the standard model work as best it can.
This particle uh emits what is called Higgs field. All right,
and this field and use all the particles that passed
through it with mass, this this powerful thing called mass.
(16:39):
This almost I mean, it's it's difficult to imagine the
universe without mass. We have to think when I'm talking
about this field. This field is the size of the cosmos.
It is that big of a field. It's not like, oh,
there's this field here, this one little doorway, this magic door,
and every particle that goes through it became uh a
masked object. So it's a thing like a photon. The
(17:00):
packet of light, right is going to go through this
field because it doesn't have any mass, It's just gonna
go through really quickly, right um. And then you'd have
something like the W and Z bosons, these elementary particles
that mediate the weak interaction, that force that we're talking about,
would get bogged down with mass. Um. Assuming that the
Higgs bosson really is existing in here. And and this
(17:23):
is what we found, and this is what's happening. Everything
that has mass gets it by interacting with this field.
As you say, yeah, there's a good Uh. The analogy
that I ran across the Everyway Light comes from John Gunion,
physicist at the University of California at Davis, and he
said that, in short, the Higgs field is a cosmos
sized swimming pool and everything is swimming in it. Particles
(17:46):
that interact strongly with the Higgs field like a heavy
set man swimming with his clothes on, um, are heavier
than particles that breathe through the pool like an a
Limics Olympic swimmer in a wetsuit. Uh. I like the
analogy very much, and I want to point out to
that there's a lot of confusion between the Higgs particle
in the field. Um. They are two different things, obviously,
(18:08):
but the Higgs particle is inseparable from its field, and
it is this exchange of particles with a background field
that is giving the mass. And I know I keep
repeating it, but it's good to understand that that the
muck that it's going through these exchanges. So what is
giving this stuff um some weight? Um. There is another
analogy that I liked quite a bit. Um because yes,
(18:30):
just because it's super silly. Martin Archer of physicist at
Imperial Imperial College of London explains it as, Uh, think
about Justin Bieber in a crowd of teenage girls. If
he tries to move through them, they slow him down
and his speed decreases the more they're attracted to him.
So he's having a lot of exchanges in this field,
(18:51):
as opposed to so and so, Uh through this crowd
of teenage girls who just passes through very quickly, and
it doesn't have any mass or isn't accumulating any mass
because this person is not having any exchanges with the
wildly gesticulating teenage girls. Yeah, alright, Yeah, I'm having a
hold back from throwing trying to throw in my own
(19:12):
and out because we've we're already weighted down with with analogies. Yeah, Marver,
we are interacting a lot with these analogy He's and
gaining mass um by the second here. But I also
want to point out one more though, because I think
it's a good way to enter into this conversation about
a large hattern collider. Turns out that Brian Cox, who
was a particle physicist and reactor, not the older awesome actor,
(19:33):
but the younger Rocks are scientists. Such. Yeah, that's what
they call him. Um, he's funny, he's great, and you
can see why he's doing so many talks on TED
because he's a great science communicator. Uh. But he was
talking about CERN and trying to get funding for this
and that They talked to Margaret Thatcher about it and
(19:55):
she said, you know, if you can tell us what
the deep this thing is, then you make it explainable
to politicians, then um, then I will give you the
funding for it. But you've got to come up with
some sort of analogy that works. Well, what what sort
of analogy do you think they use? That They used
the room analogy again, and they said, this really popular politician. Uh,
(20:18):
you know that people really wanted to interact coming through
the room getting slowed down. So I thought it was
interesting that that's where that analogy was first used and
that's what helped to get the funding for certain Yes,
all right, well, hey, we're going to take a quick
break and let let all of that gain some mass
in your head, and then when we come back, we
will bite once more into the chocolate covered journal cake
(20:40):
or just delicious decadentge slice of cake. All right, we're back,
so Higgs Higgs, Okay, I think we have a better understanding. Um.
You know, it's the forces of nature require that that
mecan is m to make sense, that standard model, and
(21:02):
Higgs to be a part of it, and as a byproduct,
you and I exist, we think because and this is
according to Brian Cox, because many of the particles that
make us up get at least part of their mass
through Higgs. So on a personal level, that's why it
should matter to us. Um. But let's talk about the
large Hydrin collider because we wouldn't even be talking about
this today if it weren't for for this giant machine
that we talked about, this seventeen mile circumference, this beast
(21:26):
lurking below. Yeah. Well we've got into it a little
bit already, but I like to add just a little
more detail. Um. I mentioned that racetrack and you just
mentioned as well, Um, you have seven thousand super conducting
magnets that are in there to steer the protons around. Okay,
so it's uh, it's it's not just a matter of oh,
this is the core, you know, because you think back
(21:48):
to like a like a little race cars and little courses.
We have like that one little module that accelerates it
and then it just goes around. Well, the accelerators are
all around this ring. Well, and as you pointed out,
they're traveling at nine nine point one and one seven
five the speed of light, right, and the l C
LHC actually boost the protons energy by nearly sixteen times
(22:09):
and collides to them thirty million times a second for
ten hours. So I mean this is, ah, this is
quite a bashing. Um. So when we think about what
it means to have these collisions, that's the sort of
um environment that they are creating in order to try
to recreate this um, this idea of the Big Bang
(22:29):
or the billions of seconds, what happened after the Big Bang.
This is why it's so specific and why they bashed
them together this way. Yeah, I mean, in a way,
it's kind of like anything that happens on any given
episode of MythBusters. They're like, oh, what happens with can
if two trucks uh sandwich vehicle? Can it actually you know,
completely crush it? So what do they do. They get
a couple of trucks in a car and they smash
(22:50):
everything together. I mean, recreating, um, this catastrophic event for
the purposes of studying how it works, and that's essentially
what's going on here, uh, except in a more complicated,
uh and smaller form. I like this idea of them
being MythBusters because this is a playful group. By the way, um,
you may have seen the rap that they put out
(23:11):
about the large Headron collider. I love it. What are
you gonna? I mean, it's it's good. It's just uh,
it's uh, you know, there's just something it's you can't
help a cringe a little bit. When when when scientists, Uh,
it's so adorably geeky. It's adorably geeky, but it's you know,
beastie boys. It's not. Oh no, but that's the charm
(23:33):
of it, right, well, yeah, it's the charm. You gotta
love it. They're like, let's do this wrap about the
large Headron collider, and actually they kind of speak like that, um,
and the it's good. It's good. I'm not bastian. It's
it's funny. No, no, it's good stuff. But but I
think it's important for people in it, like they have
a sense of humor. They're they're playing with us. They're
not just stuffy scientists who are all you know. I
(23:54):
don't care if the public understands what we're doing. You know,
it's not that kind of a deal. Yeah, they're very excited.
One of the guys on the on the Atlas program
a couple of years ago, did he wrap. No, he
did not wrap. But he was a very very nice,
very down to earth guy who was willing to talk
with me on the phone and sort of break down UM,
you know, what they were looking for and how the
(24:14):
project works so well, and like they are obviously so
excited about it, and that comes across and and it's
wonderful to see UM. But I want to talk a
little bit more about the LHC and UM, this idea
of them smashing the particles together and how they actually
discovered the signature of the Higgs boson. The theory was
that um in this cosmic molasses normally uh you know,
(24:37):
which would be invisible as Higgs field, it would produce
its own quantum particle. If it was hit hard enough
with the right amount of energy, which is why they
have um that amount of energy that they've got running
through there. The particle would be fragile and would fall
apart within a millionth of a second and a dozen
possible ways, depending on its own mass, and then they
find the signatures by being able to recognize the particles
(25:00):
that are produced in these collisions with their decay patterns.
So these are the signatures that are left behind. And
each court has many different ways of decaying, so there
are several possible signatures and each one has to be
carefully examined to determine which particles were present at the
time of collision. So we're talking about anytime there's a collision,
just terabytes of data that is produced and then fed
(25:23):
through computers and then combed through until they could find
these really specific bumps um that we talked about. This
I think it's like a hundred and thirty electrical vaults
that they kept seeing over and over again or within
that range, and this is that ghost of a pattern
that I talked about. Yeah, the machine, it's I mean,
(25:43):
it's pretty fascinating. We we've talked before about kind of
the disappointment of like older visions of the future, and
they would involve say, really advanced space stations that never
actually came to fruition or at least have a confruition yet.
But the LFC is one of those things where it's
an incredible piece of just kind of an age technology
that is really pushing the boundaries of what we understand.
And it's not necessarily the kind of thing that would
(26:04):
have appeared in most science fictions, you know, it's but
it's just as exciting when you really really think about
what it's seeking to accomplish. That's just the pictures of
Loan of the LHC are phenomenal. And you see how
mammoth this machine is, and it really does look like
something from the future. It does look like this manifestation
of what we thought you might look like in the sixties, right, um,
(26:30):
in the nineteen sixties. But I think more importantly too,
if you step back and you look at this development
and it does seem like, Okay, it's murky, you know,
is it the particle? Is it not? You know, what
are the implications? Um? If you step back and you
look at everything that we've accomplished so far, it does
appear that we are in the cusp of a different
understanding of our universe. Yeah, I've seen it, um. Compared
(26:54):
to a Christopher Columbus, you know, his voyage to the
New World, and you know he thought he was he
was you know, he said sail for the East Indies
and he landed and what he thought was Asia, and
they're not to actually be the Bahamas. So we we
have no idea. We were not really sure exactly what's
gonna happen, you know, perhaps what what we're gonna find
(27:15):
the Higgs. In other words, we're gonna land on and
the Asian continent that we set out for, but it's
entirely possible that we land in the Bahamas instead. But
either way, our understanding of not the the world we
live in, and not the only out of the oceans
and continents, but the the the actual fabric of the
universe itself, our understanding of that is going to change.
And that's yeah, that's exciting. Yeah, our map of the
(27:37):
cosmos is shifting. I think um Brian Cox again the
rock star physicist, UM paraphrase Carl Sagen, and he said,
you know, look out Saturn, five rockets and spot Nik
and DNA and literature and science. These are the things
that hydrogen atoms do when given thirteen point seven billion years.
(27:58):
So he's saying like, let's back up said hands after
the Big Bang and see what a hydrogen atom can
do after thirteen billion years, And as you say that
the sort of understanding that we gain. Um, So I
thought that was a very nice way to put it.
That's why this is important to us. Well, do we
want to take a little listen to to what we
(28:18):
have some snified data here, um, which which we were
talking about early sonified data is always a little uh.
I mean, it's great, but it's also a little gimmicky
because you're just you're taking data and you're turning into
into sound and you're not necessarily gaining an immense amount
of insight into the original data by hearing it is sound,
but it's still real. It's really cool, and it is
(28:39):
really cool because the data, I guess you could say
that you could extrapolate this. The data is creating sort
of notes. It's got math and musicality to it. So
if you were if when you tun it into to music,
you do have I mean, I don't know, it's not
this is not what Higgs sounds like when it sings,
but it's kind of like what Higgs sound like if
(29:01):
it were a score to the nineteen eighties science fiction
film Let's See There You Go or in the Hands
of Brianino exactly. It does sound a lot like some
of the you know, some more ambient work. So so yeah,
let's listen to U the sound of Higgs. I like it.
(29:25):
I could, I could listen to that. I listened to
things that sound a lot like that. So so again,
sonified data. Um, it's not necessarily really giving us a
lot of insight, but is it? At the very least,
it's cool when it can serve as kind of a
nice um spoonful of sugar, you know, on the medicine
to get people interested in science. Well, and it's a
(29:46):
manifestation of of Higgs in one way. Right, the data
just went into your ear. So alright, let's see what's
going on with the mail. Yes, call the robot over here,
and let's see what he has for us. All right,
here's one from William William Wrightson and says, Hi, Robert
and Julie in regards to the episode, is Matthew human
invention or a human discovery? That was a good one? Um,
(30:09):
he says, well, here is what I think neither. Let
me explain Matthews. He used in a lot of animals,
including birds, which use very new these principle which states
that fast moving air is lighter than slow moving air.
I love the podcast, William, so it was kind of brief,
but but it does. He brings up an interesting, um,
I don't know, kind of a semiatic point, right, that
(30:31):
that a human invention is a human to discover you
kind of have to remove the human from the argument
to really get maybe a clearer grasp of how the
universe were well and serendipitously, we're discussing mass again too, right, yeah,
it's moving through air. All right. Here's one we heard
from a listener by the name of Tom out of Brooklyn,
New York, and he wrote in and says the following, Hi,
(30:54):
Robert and Julie, thanks for the killer episode about underwater
recording and music. As a listener and fan, episode inspired
me to write in, I wanted to share a funny
experience with you guys related to this very topic. I'm
a recording engineer by Perfection and co owned and operate Brooklyn,
New York Spaceman Sounds. Can you tell where sci fi
folks like you guys? Last year, when Hurricane Irene was
(31:15):
descending upon us, we were informed that our studio was
in an evacuation in zone A, meaning in case of
a hurricane or similar event, our premises would likely be flooded,
and we would We were made to evacuate. Given our
sizeable studio full of recording equipment and instruments, this was
a daunting endeavor. My band, called Title Arms More Space References,
had a rehearsal in the studio the night prior to
(31:37):
our evacuation and insisted on battering down the hatches ahead
of time. Our conversation dissolved into dark jokes about going
down with the ship and recording new tunes at the
studio got flooded, facing certain electrocution. Uh, then this susper
the question, wait can we record underwater again? For going responsibility,
we filled up the swap sink in the corner of
(31:58):
the room with water. We dropped one of our less
precious microphones into a plastic bag, sealed it up, plocked
it in. I'll be damned if it wasn't the most
awesome low frequency reverb sound I've ever heard mixed with
a normal high fi condenser microphone in the room. It
gave a monstrous, massive kick drum sound. Anyway, we didn't
and we did end up evacuating the next day, and
(32:19):
there wasn't a drop of water in the space despite
all the work for not we were relieved there was
no water damage. In fact, we learned a totally rad
recording trip. Thanks Irene, just I just wanted to share
this with you guys. This your episode reminded me of
it immediately. Thanks for the amazing undersee the mystery sounds
and the usual array of killer space age conversation. To
keep up the great work, and this is cool. After
(32:41):
Tom sent this in, I was, you know, I'm like, well,
you gotta send me the file of that, you know,
because he's gotten kind of excited about this. So he
did send in a file. And what we're gonna listen
to now, as he said, he had two microphones, one
in the slop sync and and one this is out
in the open air and uh and so both of
these microphone is recording, uh, the sounds of the that
(33:03):
they were playing. So what we're gonna listen to here
is just a brief clip that is a composed of
sound from both of those microphones. So yeah, yeah, that's
(33:34):
pretty cool. It's gonna be awesome. You can definitely hear
like you said that that that the watery, murky sort
of bloopy lever thing going into the background. Well, and
I just love too that this hurricane was about to
hit and they're like, hey, speaking of what would happen
if we dropped this microphone in here. I like it.
It's something you tend not to see the most post
apocalyptic or disaster films or whatever, you know, where it's like, oh,
(33:56):
my goodness, the world is ending, let's cut an album. Right,
So I'm so in the flow that let's just go
with it. Yeah. So, so that's really cool. Thanks for
sending that into all right, and if if you guys
have anything you would like to share, be it sounds
you've recorded, sonified data, or just your general thoughts on
particle physics, Higgs Higgs jokes, Higgs jokes, Uh, let us
(34:19):
have those. We may or may not read them, depending
on how funny they are, right um, or how how
weighty they are. Uh. You can you can let us know.
You can share all this stuff with us on Facebook
where we are we are stuff to blow your mind,
and you can also find us on Twitter. Our handle
there is blow the Mind and you can always drop
us a note at blew the Mind at Discovery dot
(34:40):
com for more on this and thousands of other topics
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