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