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