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