Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, when was the last time your family moved.
Speaker 2: We moved to our house maybe eleven years ago.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's been a while. You know, the longer you
Speaker 1: live somewhere, the harder it is to move.
Speaker 2: What do you think that is, like inertia or potential energy?
Speaker 2: Are we trapped in a potential energy?
Speaker 1: Well sort of. I think you're trapped by your stuff.
Speaker 1: You gradually accumulate stuff in every corner, makes it impossible
Speaker 1: to ever.
Speaker 2: Leave because of the gravity or the nostalgia.
Speaker 1: The overwhelming task of packing it all up into boxes.
Speaker 2: Sounds like you need Mariconda to do some consulting for you.
Speaker 1: It's all right. I try to leave the house as
Speaker 1: little as possible anyway.
Speaker 2: Hi am jorgemmy cartoonist and the author of Oliver's Great
Speaker 2: Big Universe.
Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor
Speaker 1: at UC Irvine, and I've moved a lot of times
Speaker 1: in my life, and never was it fun.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a certain aspect of getting rid of your
Speaker 2: old stuff that's kind of cathartic. Din'd you feel lighter
Speaker 2: after you move or did you just bring everything with you?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I always start out so optimistic and thinking, Oh, this
Speaker 1: time it's going to be great. And then about halfway
Speaker 1: through I realized I'm only five percent of the way through.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of just throwing random stuff away.
Speaker 2: Of throwing out your stuff, of packing. Oh, but you
Speaker 2: know you can hire people to do that, right, or
Speaker 2: ask your friends and buy them a peer.
Speaker 1: I usually use moving as an opportunity to cleanse myself
Speaker 1: of all the stuff I should have thrown away earlier.
Speaker 2: When was the last time you moved?
Speaker 1: Between two thousand and seven and twenty twelve, the family
Speaker 1: moved across the Atlantic, I think eleven times.
Speaker 2: I think that's just call it going on vacation.
Speaker 1: It now when you're living there for nine months and
Speaker 1: setting up schools and bank accounts. Soul man, But.
Speaker 2: You've been in the same place now for twelve years.
Speaker 1: Yes, since the kids got older. We've stayed in California
Speaker 1: and haven't moved back to the Collider as often.
Speaker 2: Wow, so it's your house now, just the giant pile
Speaker 2: of stuff.
Speaker 1: I can't even close the door, it's so jam full
Speaker 1: of crap.
Speaker 2: Well, fortunately it makes for a good soundproofing, I guess
Speaker 2: for podcasts recording.
Speaker 1: That's why I've been doing it.
Speaker 2: Yes, one positive thing, but anyways, welcome to our podcast
Speaker 2: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: In which we help you soar through the ever increasing
Speaker 1: piles of knowledge that humanity has accumulated along the way.
Speaker 1: We learned this, we learned that, we learned the other thing,
Speaker 1: and our goal is to organize it to marry condo
Speaker 1: your mind and make it crisp and clean and understandable
Speaker 1: because we think, we hope, we assume the universe is understandable,
Speaker 1: that we can make sense of it with our little minds,
Speaker 1: and that we can explain all of it to you.
Speaker 2: That's right. We try to relocate your brain out there
Speaker 2: to the giant, vast cosmos that exists out there for
Speaker 2: us to try to understand, and we try to move
Speaker 2: you with the amazing things that scientists have discovered about
Speaker 2: why we're here and how things work.
Speaker 1: And one thing we'd love our listeners to do is
Speaker 1: to participate in this goal directly by asking their own
Speaker 1: questions about the universe. Don't just sit back and let
Speaker 1: the answers from scientists rain down upon your brain. Go
Speaker 1: out there and ask your own questions. About the universe.
Speaker 1: What doesn't make sense to you, how do you think
Speaker 1: it works, Why isn't your idea the right one about
Speaker 1: the universe? And so On this podcast we talk to
Speaker 1: you about the universe, but we also want to hear
Speaker 1: from you. Send us your questions to questions at Danielanjorge
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: That's right, because it's not just scientists that have questions,
Speaker 2: it's everybody. We all look at the night sky, the
Speaker 2: day sky, all of the skuis and we wonder about
Speaker 2: what's out there and how to make sense of it all.
Speaker 1: It's a part of being human, trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of the universe, wanting to understand it, and it's something
Speaker 1: that everybody can do. You don't have to be a
Speaker 1: professional scientist to look up at the night sky and
Speaker 1: wonder what it all means. Or if you've been listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast and there's some ideas that don't quite
Speaker 1: fit into your mind together they don't click the way
Speaker 1: that you want them to, then write to me questions
Speaker 1: at Daniel and Jorge dot com. Everybody gets an answer,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I got a question that we answer right
Speaker 1: here on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and sometimes we'd like to answer your questions, And
Speaker 2: so today on the program, we'll be tackling listener questions
Speaker 2: number sixty seven over five dozen.
Speaker 1: These are questions for listeners that tickled me, or I
Speaker 1: thought we would have fun talking about, or I needed
Speaker 1: a little extra time to do some research before answering.
Speaker 2: So we have three awesome questions here today. They are
Speaker 2: about habitable moons, about the Higgs field, and about Daniel's
Speaker 2: favorite subject, particle colliders and moving it. Right? Are we
Speaker 2: going to move the particle collider?
Speaker 1: We're not going to move the particle collider, but we
Speaker 1: might spend tens of billions of dollars on a new one.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, isn't it easier just to move it.
Speaker 1: You don't gain anything from moving it. You need a bigger,
Speaker 1: fancier one or a different flavor of one, and those
Speaker 1: are expensive.
Speaker 2: Oh boy. Well we'll dig into that, but first we'll
Speaker 2: tackle a question from Lydia, who is eleven years old.
Speaker 3: Hi, Daniel Jorge. My name is Lydia and I'm eleven
Speaker 3: years old. I have a question for you. Do you
Speaker 3: think it will ever be possible to move planets or
Speaker 3: moons into more habitable zones? And if you could, which
Speaker 3: planet or moon in our Solar system? Would you move?
Speaker 2: All right? Pretty interesting question about lots of things here,
Speaker 2: about habitable zones and solar systems and about I guess
Speaker 2: planet orbits. That's a lot going on in the mind
Speaker 2: of an eleven year old.
Speaker 1: I love that Lydia is thinking about the future. She's
Speaker 1: trying to make the Solar System a better place for humanity,
Speaker 1: and she's wondering about all the details of it. So
Speaker 1: good job, Lydia, thanks for your forward thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, future president, hopefully seems like we could use some
Speaker 2: some forward thinking in our leadership. But the question is interesting.
Speaker 2: It sounds like she's asking whether there are planets out
Speaker 2: there that we can't live in, like or moons, whether
Speaker 2: we can somehow not terraform it or change it, but
Speaker 2: actually just move it to a cozier spot.
Speaker 1: Yeah. For example, some of the planets that are closer
Speaker 1: to the Sun than Earth, Venus and Mercury, are very
Speaker 1: very hot, and planets that are further from Earth, like Mars,
Speaker 1: are very very cold. Neither of those seem very cozy
Speaker 1: to live on. And so I think Lydia's ideas like,
Speaker 1: could we bring Mars closer? Could we push Venus further out.
Speaker 1: Or I love that she even mentions moons. You know,
Speaker 1: Jupiter and Saturn have some huge moons. Snag one of
Speaker 1: those and bring them closer and make it a place
Speaker 1: that humanity could survive.
Speaker 2: M you need a lot of friends and a lot
Speaker 2: of beer to get your friends to move a whole moon.
Speaker 1: Depends how much stuff it's accumulated in the years. Right,
Speaker 1: if you've been keeping it clean and crisp, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a little easier to pack everything up.
Speaker 2: I think it just depends on how many friends you have.
Speaker 1: Can you call a moving company and be like, hey,
Speaker 1: do you have a box big enough to fit like Europa?
Speaker 2: I'm sure you haul has something Forday, you haul the moon,
Speaker 2: you haul a planet. I mean they just rent you
Speaker 2: the va to the stuff. Then you have to do it.
Speaker 1: Hey, if they have a device capable of moving the Moon,
Speaker 1: I'll drive it. That sounds like fun. I can parallel
Speaker 1: park that thing.
Speaker 2: But you need a special license though, only if you
Speaker 2: get pulled over by the Solar syste the police. But anyways,
Speaker 2: it's a pretty interesting question, and so let's dig into it. Daniel.
Speaker 2: Is it possible to move a planet to a different orbit.
Speaker 1: So it definitely is possible, like the physics doesn't say no,
Speaker 1: But in the case of some planets or moons, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily a good idea, Like even if you could
Speaker 1: do it, it wouldn't really give you a place humans
Speaker 1: could live. And in other cases, like Mars, it's possible
Speaker 1: and it might solve some of the problems, but it
Speaker 1: would cost an enormous amount of energy.
Speaker 2: Hmm, Well, you mentioned Mars, so maybe let's start with that.
Speaker 2: What's wrong with Mars now, isn't it sort of already
Speaker 2: in the habitable zone.
Speaker 1: So Mars is a lot smaller than Earth and a
Speaker 1: little further out, so it gets a lot less sun
Speaker 1: than Earth does, which makes it very very cold. It
Speaker 1: also has a very dilute atmosphere, so it has trouble
Speaker 1: hanging on to any of the heat that it does
Speaker 1: get from the Sun. So bringing Mars close to Earth
Speaker 1: would definitely help that. You also need to increase the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't totally avoid doing terraforming. You need to
Speaker 1: make an oxygen rich atmosphere unless you want to live
Speaker 1: in bubbles your whole life. But bringing it closer to
Speaker 1: Earth would be handy. Would also make it easier to
Speaker 1: colonize Mars, like the round trip time would be shorter,
Speaker 1: connections between the two civilizations could be crisper, so there'd
Speaker 1: be a lot of advantages to having Mars closer in.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see. It's sort of like that saying, right,
Speaker 2: like if Muhammad can't go to the mountain, then you
Speaker 2: bring the mountain to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's sort of like where you're going to
Speaker 1: buy your vacation house. Is it just going to be
Speaker 1: half an hour away or is it a nine hour
Speaker 1: plane flight. It's a lot easier if it's just the
Speaker 1: short drive.
Speaker 2: But is he the biggest problem for Mars, it's I
Speaker 2: know it's cold, but it's not like crazy cold.
Speaker 1: I mean, Mars is definitely like less comfortable than Antarctica,
Speaker 1: So it's not cold the way like the surface of
Speaker 1: Pluto is. But it's definitely very cold, too cold for humans.
Speaker 1: But that's all connected to the atmosphere, right. It has
Speaker 1: a very dilute atmosphere, so it doesn't hold in that temperature.
Speaker 1: That thin atmosphere also means that it doesn't protect you
Speaker 1: from cosmic rays with the Earth's atmosphere does. It also
Speaker 1: doesn't have a magnetic field to do a lot of shielding.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's big problems with Mars that you couldn't
Speaker 1: solve even by moving it.
Speaker 2: So then would it even help to move it, Like
Speaker 2: if it got warmer, would it maybe just blow off
Speaker 2: all the atmosphere or is this an actual working proposal.
Speaker 1: No, that's definitely an issue. Now you bring it warmer,
Speaker 1: you're going to melt some of the frozen CO two
Speaker 1: for example that's at the poles, and that's going to
Speaker 1: increase the atmosphere, but you might also blow it off. Right,
Speaker 1: as you said, there's increasing radiation because Mars is smaller,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have the same gravity as Earth, so
Speaker 1: it's harder for it to hang onto its atmosphere. That's
Speaker 1: a bigger issue for the moons for example, like Europa
Speaker 1: or Enceladus or Io, all these big moons of the
Speaker 1: gas giants, a lot of them have frozen surfaces and
Speaker 1: some of them even have like liquid oceans underneath them.
Speaker 1: But if you brought them into the habitable zone, you
Speaker 1: would melt those surfaces and boil off those oceans and
Speaker 1: leave yourself with just a rocky core. So moving these
Speaker 1: things to the habitable zone wouldn't necessarily.
Speaker 2: Well, let's say that we try with Mars and we
Speaker 2: wanted to make it as warm as Earth. How much
Speaker 2: would you have to move it in.
Speaker 1: Well, given the current atmosphere, you'd have to have Mars
Speaker 1: be closer to the Sun than Earth because Mars can't
Speaker 1: hang on to the heat. But if you just wanted
Speaker 1: to move Mars like near the Earth's orbit so that
Speaker 1: it was in the same zone it was easier to
Speaker 1: go back and forth, which might make terraforming and building
Speaker 1: an atmosphere easier as well. Then you'd need to do
Speaker 1: what's called a Homan transfer, which is a way to
Speaker 1: like change orbits. This is what space ships do. For example,
Speaker 1: if they're orbiting high and they want to go low.
Speaker 1: Orf they're orbiting low and they want to go high.
Speaker 1: It's a classic way to change your orbit by firing
Speaker 1: your rocket thrusters.
Speaker 2: How does it work? Do you have to like accelerate
Speaker 2: or just move away from the Sun or towards the Sun?
Speaker 2: How does that work?
Speaker 1: So there's a zillion different ways you could do it,
Speaker 1: but the Homan transfer is the one that requires the
Speaker 1: least energy, and it definitely requires some force, some acceleration.
Speaker 1: Imagine you're in a circular orbits, you have a particular
Speaker 1: velocity and a particular radius, and that's all aligned and nice.
Speaker 1: And now you want to be in a different circular orbit,
Speaker 1: maybe larger, maybe smaller. What you need to do is
Speaker 1: change to an elliptical orbit. So you fire your thrusters,
Speaker 1: so you move out of your circular orbit into an
Speaker 1: elliptical orbit. Elliptical orbit, because an ellipse doesn't have a
Speaker 1: fixed radius, right, A circle is a fixed radius. You're
Speaker 1: always the same distance from the Sun or whatever. An
Speaker 1: ellipse you get closer sometimes and further other times. So
Speaker 1: you go on this elliptical orbit temporarily, and then when
Speaker 1: you get to the radius you want, you fire your
Speaker 1: rockets again to put yourself back into a circular orbit
Speaker 1: at that new radius. So it's two firings of your rocket,
Speaker 1: two accelerations, two delta v's as they call them in
Speaker 1: the space business.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, So you wouldn't have to fire your
Speaker 2: rockets or push the planet the hallway. You just give
Speaker 2: it like a one initial push, and then later when
Speaker 2: you're further where you want to be, you give it
Speaker 2: another push.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And in the case where you want to get closer
Speaker 2: to the Sun. You're talking about out slowing down the planet, right.
Speaker 1: You want to slow it down. You also have to
Speaker 1: change its direction, right, because an elliptical orbit operates differently
Speaker 1: from a circular orbit, So you want to change your
Speaker 1: whole vector, not just the magnitude.
Speaker 2: But yeah, okay, so we'd have to slow down Mars.
Speaker 2: And then once it gets closer to Earth, or maybe
Speaker 2: even beyond Earth or it's orbit, then you want to
Speaker 2: slow it down some more.
Speaker 1: Well, things in the inner Solar System orbit at a
Speaker 1: higher velocity than things in the outer Solar System, and
Speaker 1: that's just basic circular motion. So for example, Earth is
Speaker 1: moving at thirty kilometers per second relative to the Sun
Speaker 1: and Mars is moving at twenty four kilometers per second
Speaker 1: relative to the Sun. And that doesn't depend on mass,
Speaker 1: It just depends on radius. At every radius is a
Speaker 1: certain velocity you need in order to move in a
Speaker 1: circular orbit. In the end, you'd have to speed Mars
Speaker 1: up in order to get it to move at the Earth's.
Speaker 2: Orbit, all right, So then once you're in the closer
Speaker 2: orbit to the Sun, then you'll eat in a stable orbit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And so it did the calculation for like,
Speaker 1: how much of a kick would you need to give
Speaker 1: Mars in order to accomplish this? And so initially, to
Speaker 1: move Mars into an elliptical orbit, you have to change
Speaker 1: its velocity by like two and a half kilometers per second,
Speaker 1: which is not a small amount. I mean, Mars is
Speaker 1: currently going like twenty four kilometers per second, so it's
Speaker 1: like more than ten percent of the speed of Mars.
Speaker 1: And then you're in the elliptical orbit. And then to
Speaker 1: kick it back into a circular orbit, you have to
Speaker 1: give it a delta v of almost three kilometers per second.
Speaker 1: And so those are the two kicks that you have
Speaker 1: to give Mars in order to change its orbit to
Speaker 1: have the same radius as the Earth's orbit.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, So it sort of sounds like it's going
Speaker 2: to be hard, right because you have to slow it
Speaker 2: down by ten percent of a whole giant planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And it's fascinating because these numbers don't depend
Speaker 1: on mass, Like it's the same for a proton as
Speaker 1: it is for a planet when you're talking in terms
Speaker 1: of delta v. But then when you think about it
Speaker 1: in terms of energy, right, the energy is like one
Speaker 1: half mv squared. Then the mass really does affect it.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot more energy to change the orbit
Speaker 1: of a planet relative to a proton, and these planets
Speaker 1: just have so much mass. Even Mars, which is kind
Speaker 1: of small, has like an unfathomable amount of stuff, and
Speaker 1: so to move Mars from one orbit to the other
Speaker 1: would take like ten to the thirty one jewels.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a lot of jewels. What would that mean, Like,
Speaker 2: could you use rockets to you know, slow yourself down?
Speaker 2: How would you even slow down a planet?
Speaker 1: This is a huge amount of energy, like orders of magnitude,
Speaker 1: much more than humanity produces and uses every year, So
Speaker 1: you'd need something crazy. You basically have to build like
Speaker 1: a rocket and attach it to the planet and drive
Speaker 1: the planet like a spaceship. So the simplest way to
Speaker 1: do this is to like dig stuff out of the
Speaker 1: planet and launch it into space. If you could pick
Speaker 1: up a rock and throw it into space so it
Speaker 1: doesn't like come back to the planet reaches escape velocity,
Speaker 1: then effectively that's giving the whole planet a little push,
Speaker 1: right because by conservation momentum, the rock goes one way,
Speaker 1: the planet goes the other way. Now that's a really
Speaker 1: tiny little push because it's just a little rock. But
Speaker 1: if you keep doing it, and you do a lot
Speaker 1: of it, and you push those rocks really really fast,
Speaker 1: then effectively you are pushing the planet. So if you
Speaker 1: build something which like dig stuff out of Mars and
Speaker 1: throws it into space, that's essentially a rocket attached to Mars.
Speaker 1: And that's how you could do it.
Speaker 2: Couldn't you just use rockets.
Speaker 1: Like build rockets and just point them to the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically build them upside that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, you can do that. But then where you're
Speaker 1: going to get all the fuel? Right, The thing is
Speaker 1: you need an enormous amount of energy, and so you
Speaker 1: might as well take the propulsion from the planet itself.
Speaker 1: This an incredible amount. Like, in order to do this
Speaker 1: on Mars and achieve this kind of transfer, you just
Speaker 1: dig out a trillion kilograms of material and eject it
Speaker 1: into space at ninety nine percent of the speed of
Speaker 1: life light every single day for almost five thousand years.
Speaker 2: WHOA, that sounds crazy. So this is using your like
Speaker 2: scooping up dirt and throw it in into space scheme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we haven't even talked about, like how do
Speaker 1: you accomplish getting dirt to ninety nine percent the speed
Speaker 1: of light.
Speaker 2: Well, could you you just use like atomic bombs or
Speaker 2: something you know, I'm thinking of like a rocket that
Speaker 2: uses nuclear fission.
Speaker 1: Maybe you might want to use fission or fusion as
Speaker 1: a way to accelerate this stuff. But you can need
Speaker 1: some propellant, right, you need to change the momentum of
Speaker 1: the planet, which means you need to eject something from it.
Speaker 1: The other thing you could do is like solar power, right,
Speaker 1: try to use that somehow. But either way, it's just
Speaker 1: an overwhelming amount of energy, something that humanity you can
Speaker 1: even conceive of producing. Not to mention like wrestling into
Speaker 1: this crazy scheme.
Speaker 2: Because you need ten to the thirty one jewels, But like,
Speaker 2: how much does this an an atomic bomb give off?
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to get a sense of, like is
Speaker 2: it thirty thousandfar bombs or thirty basillion?
Speaker 1: Yeah, atomic are pretty impressive, but they give off order
Speaker 1: of magnitude like ten to the twelve, ten to the
Speaker 1: thirteen jewels, and we need ten to the thirty one.
Speaker 1: So we're talking like, you know, ten to the nineteen
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs.
Speaker 2: Well, so that's one followed by nineteen zero number of
Speaker 2: nuclear bombs.
Speaker 1: Exactly so pretty impractical. Another way to do this maybe
Speaker 1: is to try to take advantage of other things in
Speaker 1: the Solar System that have energy in them, you know,
Speaker 1: things like asteroids and comets. These things have a vast
Speaker 1: amount of gravitational energy as they come towards the inner
Speaker 1: Solar System, they're moving with very high velocity, and we
Speaker 1: often are using the gravity of other things in the
Speaker 1: Solar System to navigate, like when we send spacecraft out
Speaker 1: there where you slingshot them around Jupiter or this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So if you could somehow direct comets from
Speaker 1: the Ord Cloud or the Kuiper Belt to rain down
Speaker 1: and pass near Mars, each one of them would give
Speaker 1: Mars a little bit of a tug. If you did
Speaker 1: a gravitational slingshot using comets, it would change the trajectory
Speaker 1: of the comet and the planet. So if you did
Speaker 1: that enough times, you could change the trajectory of the
Speaker 1: planet enough to accomplish the same maneuver. But it would
Speaker 1: still take a lot of comets.
Speaker 2: WHA, Yeah, it sounds like you're just making it more
Speaker 2: complicated because you still have to spend all that energy
Speaker 2: to move the comets to get out there. To the
Speaker 2: commets and then move them.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think it would take that much energy
Speaker 1: to move the comets because you're using the energy of
Speaker 1: the Sun. You just take the comment, give it a
Speaker 1: little nudge so it falls out of orbit. You know,
Speaker 1: they're moving pretty slow that far out, and so it
Speaker 1: doesn't take a big nudge to get them to fall
Speaker 1: towards the Inner Solar System, and then they gather a
Speaker 1: lot of energy as they're coming in. Then you take
Speaker 1: advantage of it when they're zipping by. But you know
Speaker 1: that's dangerous for other reasons, like you make a miscalculation
Speaker 1: and boom, a comet hits the Earth and it's all over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then we'll really need to move to another planet exactly.
Speaker 1: So, Lydia a great question. I don't think it's really
Speaker 1: practical anytime in the near future, but I hope somebody
Speaker 1: figures it out.
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 2: It sounds like maybe it's easier just to terra form Mars,
Speaker 2: so that becomes warmer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a whole episode about how you might
Speaker 1: do that. It's very challenging and quite impractical. Maybe less
Speaker 1: impractical than moving the planet, it's still very very difficult.
Speaker 2: I see. All right, Well, maybe the solution is just
Speaker 2: to hire Marie Conda to come clean up our planet
Speaker 2: and then nobody will want to move.
Speaker 1: That's right, Lydia, and I hope you clean up your room.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Lydia's parents, you're welcome. All right, Well, thank
Speaker 2: you Lydia for that awesome question. Now let's get to
Speaker 2: our other questions of the day. We have a question
Speaker 2: about the Higgs field and about particle colliders, so let's
Speaker 2: get to those. But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2: All right, we're answering listener questions here today, and our
Speaker 2: next question comes from Mark was a question about the
Speaker 2: Higgs field.
Speaker 5: Hey, daniel Le Jorge, I'm back with a serious question.
Speaker 5: Just as I sort of feel confident that I'm building
Speaker 5: a mental map, at least at the most primitive level,
Speaker 5: of how this quantum stuff works. This Higgs Boston is
Speaker 5: I don't understand how does a field lend mass to
Speaker 5: other fields?
Speaker 1: What is it? In part?
Speaker 5: If mass is like what potential energy you're gathered?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the question. Where is the mass coming from?
Speaker 5: Then it just seems like we're at another level of
Speaker 5: incomprehensibility here.
Speaker 1: What how is it transferring mass?
Speaker 2: All right? A pretty massive question here about basically, how
Speaker 2: does the Higgs field work, How does it give mass
Speaker 2: other particles?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a really good question, a really deep question, and
Speaker 1: one that we've been sort of probing in several different
Speaker 1: episodes on the podcast, trying to give people an intuition
Speaker 1: for how this works.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess maybe let's go get back to basics.
Speaker 2: So the Higgs field is something that was proven to
Speaker 2: exist about ten years ago, and in the media you
Speaker 2: always hear that it's the field and the particle that
Speaker 2: gives other particles their maths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And maybe we should start with the concept
Speaker 1: of a field because this is a little bit mysterious
Speaker 1: for people. I mean, particles are something we can sort
Speaker 1: of imagine. We think of them as tiny specs of
Speaker 1: stuff explaining the microscopic world. You see their traces in
Speaker 1: cloud chambers or particle detectors. But fields are a little
Speaker 1: bit more in direct We don't ever see fields directly,
Speaker 1: and we say that particles move through fields and particles
Speaker 1: are excitations of fields. And field is just like a
Speaker 1: number that you put everywhere in space, like the Higgs field,
Speaker 1: for example. It's just a number. It has a value here,
Speaker 1: has a value there, it has a value somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But those values aren't just random and arbitrary. There's mathematics
Speaker 1: that describe how those values relate to each other and
Speaker 1: how those values change in time. The same way. It's
Speaker 1: like if you have a sheet, one that you might
Speaker 1: put on your bed and you wave it in the air. Right,
Speaker 1: waves move through that sheet, and the same way waves
Speaker 1: can move through the Higgs field or any other kind
Speaker 1: of field.
Speaker 2: Right. Right. But I guess maybe a question is like
Speaker 2: our fields physical things or just sort of like mathematical
Speaker 2: conveniences that physicists use in their equations, meaning like if
Speaker 2: you have a field but no particles in it, is
Speaker 2: that field there?
Speaker 1: Nobody knows the answer to that question, man, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the mainstream view is that fields are the
Speaker 1: fundamental building blocks of the universe as we know so far.
Speaker 1: We don't know what they're made out of, and we
Speaker 1: think of particles as emerging from fields. There are these
Speaker 1: special ripples in the fields. They move in this special way.
Speaker 1: There's something that comes out of the fields, But nobody
Speaker 1: really knows that the fields are there, or if they're
Speaker 1: just something we think about. To answer your second question,
Speaker 1: in our current conception. If you believe fields are there,
Speaker 1: then they're still there with no particles in them. Right,
Speaker 1: They exist everywhere in space and they can never go
Speaker 1: down all the way to zero because they're quantum, so
Speaker 1: they're always fuzzing and frothing a tiny little bit. But
Speaker 1: whether fields are really there, like when we're not looking
Speaker 1: at them, is not a science question. It's a philosophy question.
Speaker 1: It's when you can't test because it requires answering the
Speaker 1: question what happens when you don't look, And to do
Speaker 1: science you have to look. Hmm.
Speaker 2: But I guess you know we talked about and I
Speaker 2: know you said that fields have like an energy to them.
Speaker 2: So if they have an energy to them, doesn't that
Speaker 2: mean that they sort of exist when you're not looking.
Speaker 1: Well, we describe them as existing and having energy, That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they are there, that they are real.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no way to interact with a field
Speaker 1: directly and to like measure it. You know, you can
Speaker 1: see this effect on other stuff, but you can't actually
Speaker 1: measure them directly, even if you do ascribe energy to it.
Speaker 1: But the energy in the field is a crucial concept
Speaker 1: for getting an intuition for like how this all works
Speaker 1: because what's happening in the field when it's oscillating is
Speaker 1: sometimes it's oscillating in a way that moves like way
Speaker 1: you wiggle your sheet and a ripple moves through it.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it can also oscillate in place, and what's
Speaker 1: happening there is that the field is wiggling sort of
Speaker 1: the same way that like a ball trapped in a well,
Speaker 1: if there isn't any friction, can go up and down forever.
Speaker 1: It's switching between like kinetic energy it's moving fast to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the well, and potential energy. It's not moving,
Speaker 1: but it still has energy of location. When it's at
Speaker 1: the top of the well. Put a ball in a
Speaker 1: little well, it can oscillate around that forever. Fields can
Speaker 1: do that too. They can sort of oscillate in place
Speaker 1: like a little standing wave, and that's where their mass
Speaker 1: comes from.
Speaker 2: Like the whole field, or just like in a little spot.
Speaker 1: At any point these fields can do that. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the electron field can be mostly empty and then in
Speaker 1: one spot it can be doing this special oscillation. And
Speaker 1: that's what an electron is. It's this special oscillation of
Speaker 1: the electron field. It's got some energy, and it's oscillating
Speaker 1: in this stable way. And some fields can do this,
Speaker 1: like the electron field can do this. They can just
Speaker 1: oscillate in place, and that's what we call an electron,
Speaker 1: and that's an electron at rest. And fields that can
Speaker 1: do this are fields that have mass. Like the photon field,
Speaker 1: it can only oscillate in the way the ripples move.
Speaker 1: It can never oscillate in place. Right, The electromagnetic field
Speaker 1: can't make you a photon that's just sitting there because
Speaker 1: photons don't have mass, and so in order to do
Speaker 1: this thing, to oscillate in place, they have to have mass.
Speaker 2: Oh well, that's sort of another philosophical question, right, Like
Speaker 2: can an electron stay still? Like isn't it a quantum particle?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. An electron can never be
Speaker 1: located to exactly one location. What you have is like
Speaker 1: a little packet. And we talked about like how long
Speaker 1: is a particle, how wide is a particle on a
Speaker 1: recent podcast. It depends on how much uncertainty there is.
Speaker 1: And so you always have like a little neighborhood of
Speaker 1: the field that's sort of oscillating coherently, and that depends
Speaker 1: on the uncertainty in those measurements, so it's never like
Speaker 1: a dot, it's none. Think of it like a single
Speaker 1: point in the field as doing the oscillation. Think of
Speaker 1: it like a little localized packet. And the important thing
Speaker 1: to understand is that none of these fields operate independently. Right,
Speaker 1: You have a field that has some energy it's oscillating,
Speaker 1: but there are also other fields, and the fields can
Speaker 1: transfer energy back and forth. That's how, for example, the
Speaker 1: photon field and the electron field, energy can slide between them,
Speaker 1: Photons can turn into electrons and positrons, or photons can
Speaker 1: push on electrons, for example. In the same way, the
Speaker 1: Higgs field interacts with all of these fields and changes
Speaker 1: how they wiggle, and then changing how they wiggle it
Speaker 1: gives them mass. It gives some of these fields the
Speaker 1: capacity to do this wiggle in place thing, which is
Speaker 1: what gives those particles mass.
Speaker 2: I think you're getting to Mark's question now, which is
Speaker 2: that like, how exactly does that happen? It seems like
Speaker 2: you sort of said it this both ways, like you
Speaker 2: need mass for it to stay in place, or it
Speaker 2: can only stay in place if you give it mass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, So go back to thinking about the ball
Speaker 1: in the well. The ball in the well moves in
Speaker 1: a certain way because it has mass. Right now, if
Speaker 1: the ball didn't have mass, it would operate very differently,
Speaker 1: like it wouldn't feel the same gravitational potential energy, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't oscillate in the well that way. So imagine you
Speaker 1: took a ball without mass and you added some special
Speaker 1: magic force that changed the way the ball moved. So
Speaker 1: now it moves exactly the same way it would if
Speaker 1: it did have mass. Okay, so every time the ball
Speaker 1: is moving, you give it a little special push to
Speaker 1: change its direction so that it moves exactly the same
Speaker 1: way it did as if it had mass. That's what
Speaker 1: the Higgs field is doing. It's taking particles that naturally
Speaker 1: don't have mass. The electron wouldn't have any mass without
Speaker 1: Higgs field and changing the way it moves in exactly
Speaker 1: the same way that you would expect if the electron
Speaker 1: field had its own mass by itself. That's why we
Speaker 1: say it gives the electron mass because it changes the
Speaker 1: way the electron field wiggles and precisely the way it
Speaker 1: would if the electron had its own mass. So the
Speaker 1: mass comes from the Higgs field, and the interaction between
Speaker 1: the Higgs field and the electron field is not inherent
Speaker 1: in the electron field itself.
Speaker 2: Meaning I guess I got a little confused with your
Speaker 2: ball analogy because now I'm thinking, like the ball has
Speaker 2: mass or what. But it seemed interesting to think about that.
Speaker 2: An electron is just a standing wiggle in the electron field,
Speaker 2: and you're saying that because of the way that the
Speaker 2: electron field and the Higgs field interact, then that wiggle
Speaker 2: can stay in place. Is that kind of what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So for the electron field to wiggle in place,
Speaker 1: it needs to be able to trade kinetic energy for
Speaker 1: potential energy and back to kinetic energy and then back
Speaker 1: to back to potential energy. That's what the wiggle is, right,
Speaker 1: And in order to do that, it needs to be
Speaker 1: able to have potential energy, and that's what the Higgs
Speaker 1: field gives it. Interactions between the electron field and the
Speaker 1: Higgs field create a potential well for the electron which
Speaker 1: lets it oscillate.
Speaker 2: In place, like it gives it a place for the
Speaker 2: energy to go to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it can go from kinetic to potential and
Speaker 1: then back, whereas a photon field is like just kinetic energy.
Speaker 1: It's always flying through space that doesn't slosh back into
Speaker 1: potential energy and then kinetic energy and potential energy and
Speaker 1: kinetic energy.
Speaker 2: Well, let me recap. Maybe what you're saying is that
Speaker 2: in order for the electron field to wiggle in place
Speaker 2: and therefore have an electron instead of need something to
Speaker 2: suck some energy out of it kind of in place.
Speaker 2: Otherwise we'll just go somewhere, we'll take off.
Speaker 1: You could still have an electron, it would be massless. Right,
Speaker 1: in order to have an electron at rest, it has
Speaker 1: to have mass, and so you need something to change
Speaker 1: how the electron is oscillating. It's not exactly taking the
Speaker 1: energy out of the electron field. It's just creating potential
Speaker 1: energy for the electron. You know. Imagine, for example, a
Speaker 1: kid on a swing right, in order for the kid
Speaker 1: to swing back and forth, to be the swing there
Speaker 1: pushing them back as they move. Without the swing, the
Speaker 1: kid just flies off. So the Higgs field is sort
Speaker 1: of like the swing that keeps the kid oscillating back
Speaker 1: and forth rather than just flying off.
Speaker 2: It pushes the electron wiggle to stay in place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And in another universe where you didn't have
Speaker 1: a Higgs field, and you had an electron field that
Speaker 1: actually had mass on its own, it would wiggle in
Speaker 1: exactly the same way.
Speaker 2: Are there things that have mass on their own?
Speaker 1: There are none in our universe. We don't think particles
Speaker 1: like that can exist because they would break some of
Speaker 1: the other laws of particle physics, some of the symmetries
Speaker 1: that we think are held. That's why you need something
Speaker 1: like the Higgs field to give these particles mass.
Speaker 2: Ah interesting, And I guess, just to be clear, you
Speaker 2: need the Higgs field to give things resting mass, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, resting mass is the only kind of mass we
Speaker 1: think about. There's this concept called relativistic mass, which is
Speaker 1: really just a confusing way to think about energy. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't think about things gaining mass as they go faster.
Speaker 1: Mass to be an invarying quantity, the same as you
Speaker 1: would measure at rest.
Speaker 2: But I guess this idea that you know a lot
Speaker 2: of our mass that we have in our bodies comes
Speaker 2: from the energy doesn't necessarily come from particles. It comes
Speaker 2: from the trapped energy between the particles. That's a different
Speaker 2: kind of mass, right, Or does that mass also comes
Speaker 2: from the Higgs field.
Speaker 1: Oh no, great point. You're right, this is not the
Speaker 1: only way to get mass, right, Mass in general comes
Speaker 1: from internal stored energy. What we've been describing is like
Speaker 1: how the electron gets internal stored energy, is that oscillates
Speaker 1: in place. That comes from the Higgs field. Quarks do
Speaker 1: the same thing. Quarks get energy from the Higgs field.
Speaker 1: But you put three quarks together into a proton that
Speaker 1: has much more mass than the mass of the individual quarks,
Speaker 1: and that's because those quarks now have a little bounce state.
Speaker 1: The proton is like a little box keeping them oscillating
Speaker 1: in place, and that energy comes from the strong force
Speaker 1: creating that box, not from the Higgs field. And that's
Speaker 1: most of the mass of the proton comes from the
Speaker 1: energy of the bonds between the quarks, this little bowl
Speaker 1: that the quark live in that we call the proton.
Speaker 1: So most of the mass in your bodies comes actually
Speaker 1: from these bounds created by the strong force that give
Speaker 1: the proton internal stored energy. And that's really where mass
Speaker 1: comes from, any kind of internal stored energy, not energy
Speaker 1: of motion, energy at rest, internal stored energy.
Speaker 2: So then the Higgs field is responsible for some of
Speaker 2: our mass. But not all of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really a tiny, tiny fraction, because quarks have almost
Speaker 1: no mass. Almost all of your mass comes from the
Speaker 1: mass of protons and neutrons, which is overwhelmingly from the
Speaker 1: strong force.
Speaker 2: So when they say, like the Higgs field and the
Speaker 2: Higgs boson gives particles their mass, it's maybe not as
Speaker 2: grand deal as of a statement as it may sound
Speaker 2: to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I mean, without the Higgs field, all the
Speaker 1: fundamental particles would have no mass, and then nothing would
Speaker 1: be possible, like electrons would fly out of orbits at
Speaker 1: the speed of light, all this kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: you're right, most of the mass in the universe doesn't
Speaker 1: come directly from the Higgs field.
Speaker 2: Where does it come from, Daniel?
Speaker 1: Most of the mass in protons comes from the strong force, right.
Speaker 1: It gives internal stored energy to the proton, and that's
Speaker 1: what gives us mass. A deeper question is like, well,
Speaker 1: all right, you're talking about mass, but why is inertial
Speaker 1: mass a thing? Anyway? Why is internal stored energy change
Speaker 1: how much force it takes to get some acceleration? And
Speaker 1: that's a really deep.
Speaker 2: Question, that's what I mean. Yeah, that's still a big unknown.
Speaker 1: Right, still a big unknown. You know, why do we
Speaker 1: even have a inertia?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Like why are heavier? Or at the same time,
Speaker 2: why are more energetic things harder to move?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: We don't know that, right, nobody knows that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we describe that using general relativity, but we don't
Speaker 1: have an answer for like why in the same way that,
Speaker 1: like general relativity describes that space does get curbed in
Speaker 1: the presence of mass, but doesn't really tell us like
Speaker 1: why does that happen? What is the mechanism for it
Speaker 1: underlying it? To understand that, we'd need to have some
Speaker 1: deeper level theory that explains like what space is, but
Speaker 1: we have no idea yet, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Or maybe we could just move to a universe
Speaker 2: in which people have figured it out.
Speaker 6: Let's just take a big rocket, put U haul, we
Speaker 6: get a U haul, we'll put pack all the physicists
Speaker 6: into it and then and then just ship into a
Speaker 6: more knowledgeable universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or just more knowledgeable solar system even, you know,
Speaker 1: to go to another universe, let's just go visit the
Speaker 1: Aliens and go to their physics school and learn how
Speaker 1: this all works.
Speaker 2: Unless they're also on the move, in which case you
Speaker 2: might get there and then nobody's there.
Speaker 1: We missed the party, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you missed the main course, which might have might
Speaker 2: be you if there are aliens involved. All right, well,
Speaker 2: I think that answers a question for Mark, which is
Speaker 2: just sort of like, how does the Higgs field work?
Speaker 2: And it sounds like it's mainly about the interaction between
Speaker 2: the Higgs field and the electron field allowing it to
Speaker 2: wiggle in place, which is what looks like mass.
Speaker 1: That's right, And if you want a deep intuition into
Speaker 1: what fields are and how.
Speaker 2: This all works, then it's not possible.
Speaker 1: So then I really recommend Matt Stressler's book Waves In
Speaker 1: an Impossible See, which starts from almost nothing, uses almost
Speaker 1: no math, and gives you a really deep intuition for fields.
Speaker 2: All right, well, thank you Mark for that question. Now
Speaker 2: let's get to our last question of the day, and
Speaker 2: it's about Daniel's future career. It seems about the particle
Speaker 2: collider at CERN, so let's dig into that. But first
Speaker 2: let's take another quick break where we're talking about listener
Speaker 2: questions here today, and our last question comes from Bill
Speaker 2: comes from Union City, California.
Speaker 4: Hi, Daniel and Jorge. This is a. Bill Quirk, a
Speaker 4: retired astrophysicists living in Union City, California. I'm curious what's
Speaker 4: going to happen now at CERN and the other large
Speaker 4: particle colliders now that you haven't found the supersymmetric particles.
Speaker 4: What are people going to be looking at? What possible
Speaker 4: discoveries can this lead to? Daniel, I don't understand how
Speaker 4: you can understand so many different things you and explain
Speaker 4: them so well. Thanks for everything, enjoy the show very much.
Speaker 1: Bye.
Speaker 2: All right, great question from Bill. So CERN is the
Speaker 2: big facility outside of Geneva where the large hadron collider is,
Speaker 2: and I think Bill is asking what's going to happen
Speaker 2: to it? You know, there was a lot of fanfare
Speaker 2: about ten fifteen years ago about the Higgs boson, but
Speaker 2: not a lot of news since then. What are the
Speaker 2: plans for it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the plans are to keep running it because though
Speaker 1: we haven't found anything after the Higgs boson, there are
Speaker 1: still lots of possibilities for discoveries. Bill mentions super symmetric particles.
Speaker 1: These are particles that a lot of physicists hoped to
Speaker 1: discover shortly after finding the Higgs, but we haven't seen
Speaker 1: any of them, which has been a bit of a disappointment.
Speaker 2: Like have you ruled them out totally like we've given
Speaker 2: up or is there still a possibility or do most
Speaker 2: physicists things they don't exist?
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit of all of that. Sort of
Speaker 1: we can't ever rule out something exists because it could
Speaker 1: exist but just be really really rare, like if it
Speaker 1: only happens once every twenty years in our collider and
Speaker 1: we only run the collider for one year, we can't
Speaker 1: rule it out. It could also be really really heavy,
Speaker 1: like maybe our collider doesn't have enough energy to make it.
Speaker 1: So all we can do is we can rule out
Speaker 1: low mass stuff that we could make that isn't rare,
Speaker 1: And so it's sort of a statistical statement. The longer
Speaker 1: we run the collider, the more we can rule out
Speaker 1: rare stuff, and the higher the energy the collider, the
Speaker 1: more we can rule out heavy stuff. So we're always
Speaker 1: just ruling out like a fraction of that space that
Speaker 1: I said. A lot of physicists claimed that nature really
Speaker 1: wanted very common, very low mass supersymmetric particles, and those
Speaker 1: people were wrong. A lot of the fields has moved
Speaker 1: on from supersymmetry they're sort of given up on it,
Speaker 1: But there's also a lot of diehards that really believe
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 2: And they believe that maybe they're there, but they're just
Speaker 2: heavier or rarer than we thought before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe we're just looking for them wrong, and
Speaker 1: so they don't appear the way that we expected, and
Speaker 1: we need to look for them in new interesting ways.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're hidden in certain ways and we can reveal
Speaker 1: them if we're clever enough. So there's definitely a lot
Speaker 1: of people looking for supersymmetry. And realize also that the
Speaker 1: LEDC has been running for fifteen years or so. It's
Speaker 1: going to run for another fifteen but the rate at
Speaker 1: which the collisions happens increases very quickly. But most of
Speaker 1: the collisions we're ever going to see are in the future.
Speaker 1: That's because we get better and better operating the machine,
Speaker 1: so we can have more collisions per second as time
Speaker 1: goes on. So we've seen like one percent of the
Speaker 1: data where ever ever going to see from the machine.
Speaker 1: Most of the data is still in the future, and
Speaker 1: so it could be that that future data reveals something
Speaker 1: like supersymmetry or something else interesting.
Speaker 3: MMM.
Speaker 2: So to answer Bill's question, that's sort of part of
Speaker 2: the plan. The plan is for the Large Hydron Collider
Speaker 2: to just keep u smashing particles for another fifteen years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, for about another fifteen years. And we're not
Speaker 1: just looking for supersymmetry. We're also looking for all sorts
Speaker 1: of other stuff. We're looking for things we didn't necessarily anticipate,
Speaker 1: because you know, you land on Mars, you don't just
Speaker 1: look for cats and dogs and people. You look for
Speaker 1: any kind of life. So we're trying to broadly imagine,
Speaker 1: like what new particles might be out there that we
Speaker 1: didn't imagine or that are really weird and crazy. And
Speaker 1: one of my favorite example is actually Bill's last name.
Speaker 1: There's a theory of a particle called a quirk, not
Speaker 1: a quirk, but a quirk with an eye just like Bill. WHOA.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting coincidence.
Speaker 1: It is really a fun coincidence.
Speaker 2: I mean it sounds like, if you just want to
Speaker 2: find a quirk, just good call Bill.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's a really quirky theory and it predicts particles
Speaker 1: that look very different from anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 1: They were sort of move in a really weird way
Speaker 1: in our detector, and so far the way we've analyzed
Speaker 1: the data, we wouldn't be able to see these quirks,
Speaker 1: and so my group and a bunch of other people
Speaker 1: are starting to go back and analyze data to see
Speaker 1: if we can find evidence for these quirks. So that's
Speaker 1: just one example, but there could be stuff in the
Speaker 1: data we've taken already that we haven't found yet because
Speaker 1: we haven't figured out how to look for it yet.
Speaker 1: Some of the stuff is trickier to look for than
Speaker 1: your standard electrons and muons and this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So as we develop new techniques, we might be able
Speaker 1: to discover things in existing data, not just wait for
Speaker 1: more data.
Speaker 2: I see. Well, since you mentioned that, maybe give people
Speaker 2: a quick three minute explanation of what is a quirk,
Speaker 2: because I don't think we've talked about it before, have we?
Speaker 1: No, we have not. Yeah, a quirk is like a quark,
Speaker 1: but it has a different kind of force. It's like
Speaker 1: a new version of the strong force, and quirks are
Speaker 1: much heavier than quarks. And you produce two quarks at
Speaker 1: the particle collider. What happens is that the strong force
Speaker 1: doesn't like them being far apart, so it creates a
Speaker 1: bunch of new quarks out of that energy. For quirks,
Speaker 1: that's not possible because quirks are too massive, So the
Speaker 1: universe can't turn that energy into new quirks because there
Speaker 1: isn't enough energy to make quarks because their mass is higher.
Speaker 1: And so what that means is that you have these
Speaker 1: two particles that now fly apart from each other and
Speaker 1: they still have that great energy between them, which means
Speaker 1: they wiggle in really weird ways. Rather than just flying
Speaker 1: through a magnetic field like a charge particle, they oscillate
Speaker 1: inside the detector, which is really a challenge for our
Speaker 1: current data analysis pipeline to discover.
Speaker 2: So then that's sort of the answer for bills that
Speaker 2: you're a large hundred collider is going to keep running
Speaker 2: and you're looking for I guess rarer or harder to
Speaker 2: find particles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people are also developing techniques to look for
Speaker 1: things that are completely unexpected, like running machine learning based
Speaker 1: anomaly detection algorithms to see if there's anything just like
Speaker 1: really weird in the data. So we're going to keep
Speaker 1: mine in this data hoping to make discoveries.
Speaker 2: And you're also trying to make antimatter right and stuff
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Well, in a particle collider, you can make basically anything
Speaker 1: that the universe is capable of. You smash those protons
Speaker 1: together and eventually you make everything on nature's menu. And
Speaker 1: we often make antimatter. We're hoping we might even make
Speaker 1: like dark matter and be able to detect it in
Speaker 1: our collider, all sorts of stuff. There are other experiments
Speaker 1: that'scern not the collider, that do things like make anti
Speaker 1: hydrogen and study its behavior.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see now, are there plans to make more colliders,
Speaker 2: bigger colliders, or to expand the current collider?
Speaker 1: Yes, all of those. We just finished put it together
Speaker 1: like a ten year plan for particle physics, and there's
Speaker 1: some interesting proposals. Some people think that when the large
Speaker 1: Hadren collider is done running, we should build a bigger
Speaker 1: circular collider, and so this would involve like a larger
Speaker 1: tunnel under Geneva. And because it's bigger, you could have
Speaker 1: more energy in it. You're limited by like the strength
Speaker 1: of the magnets that you need to curve the particles
Speaker 1: around in that if you can't make your magnets stronger,
Speaker 1: you can just make the circle bigger and then you
Speaker 1: can get your particles moving faster with the same magnets,
Speaker 1: So that's one possibility.
Speaker 2: So you can make particles go at point nine nine
Speaker 2: nine nine nine nine nine nine the speed of light
Speaker 2: instead of point nine nine nine nine nine nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, currently the collider explores up to about thirteen
Speaker 1: and a half terra electron volts trillion electron volts, and
Speaker 1: this new one would go up to fifty or one
Speaker 1: hundred terra electron volts. And that doesn't sound like that
Speaker 1: big a jump, but that's like multiplying by four or
Speaker 1: eight the sort of entire energy range we've ever explored.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like landing on eight new Earth like
Speaker 1: planets simultaneously. It's an enormous range that we could use
Speaker 1: to discover something.
Speaker 2: So how many dines does that give us in terms
Speaker 2: of the how fast we can explain particles at a
Speaker 2: percentage at the speed of light?
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't even know.
Speaker 2: A lot of nines, half a nine, three nines.
Speaker 1: We don't even think about it in terms of velocity
Speaker 1: because it's a crazy asymptopic quantity. We just think in
Speaker 1: terms of energy. That's right.
Speaker 2: You don't want to think that each nine cause about
Speaker 2: ten billion bills.
Speaker 1: I don't like to think about that. No, but these
Speaker 1: colliders would be very expensive because you've got to drill
Speaker 1: the tunnel, you've got to build the magnets. The whole
Speaker 1: thing is expensive. It's tens of billions. And a competitor
Speaker 1: on the international scene is China. China is proposing to
Speaker 1: maybe build one of these colliders over there. They think
Speaker 1: they have the money, and they are ramping up very
Speaker 1: quickly in terms of particle physics in their universities, and
Speaker 1: I think they would like to be the leader in
Speaker 1: particle physics in the world. So there's two big competing
Speaker 1: proposals there, one from CERN, one from China, and then
Speaker 1: there's a dark horse, which is saying, hey, maybe we
Speaker 1: shouldn't be colliding protons or electrons, let's try colliding something else.
Speaker 2: What what else can you collide?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a really fun proposal for a muon collider.
Speaker 1: Muons are just like heavy versions of electrons.
Speaker 2: They're not hadrons.
Speaker 1: They're not hadrons to know, they're fundamental particles, and they're
Speaker 1: really hard to use because they don't last very long.
Speaker 1: Like electrons are stable they last forever, but muons last
Speaker 1: a few microseconds and so it's hard to get them
Speaker 1: in a collider and keep them going and all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. You might wonder like, well, why bother. Well,
Speaker 1: the answer is to have more mass than electrons do,
Speaker 1: and so colliding muons gives you more Higgs bosons than
Speaker 1: colliding electrons because higgs boson interacts with particles that have mass, right,
Speaker 1: it interacts more with particles that have more mass. So
Speaker 1: when you smash two muons together, you have a much
Speaker 1: higher chance of making a Higgs boson than when you
Speaker 1: smash two electrons together. So the muon collider is what
Speaker 1: they call a Higgs factory. It would produce oodles and
Speaker 1: oodles of Higgs bosons and allow us to study it
Speaker 1: in great detail.
Speaker 2: To answer I guess what question?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, good point. I mean, the Higgs boson
Speaker 1: was discovered and it acts the way we expect, but
Speaker 1: it might be that it's not quite the Higgs boson
Speaker 1: we expected. It could have some weird new properties. And
Speaker 1: one way to make discoveries is to like measure all
Speaker 1: the properties of the Higgs boson, its mass, its spin,
Speaker 1: it's precise interactions with all the other particles, really really accurately,
Speaker 1: and see if it lines up with our predictions, and
Speaker 1: if it doesn't, that's a hint that there's something new
Speaker 1: going on, some new particles or feels out there that
Speaker 1: are messing up our calculations.
Speaker 2: All right, now, Daniel, since technically you are employed by CERN,
Speaker 2: do we need to give a sponsored content warning here?
Speaker 1: I am actually not technically employed by CERN. I'm employed
Speaker 1: with the University of California, though I do my research
Speaker 1: at CERN, and I'm certainly very heavily biased here that
Speaker 1: I think this stuff is a lot of fun. It's
Speaker 1: tens of billions of dollars, so whether or not governments
Speaker 1: want to spend that money is a very political question. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think we should spend lots more money on science,
Speaker 1: not just particle physics, but astrophysics and condensed matter physics
Speaker 1: and maybe even chemistry. So I'm all in favor.
Speaker 2: Of it, right right, but not philosophy.
Speaker 1: Definitely more money for philosophy. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: call that science or not. That's a philosophy question.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, great questions here today. Thanks for our
Speaker 2: question askers for sending in their questions.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody who thinks about the universe, wonders about
Speaker 1: it and tunes into the podcast, hoping to gain some ununderstanding.
Speaker 1: We really love hearing your thoughts and answering your questions.
Speaker 2: Do you hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: See you next time.
Speaker 1: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social
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Speaker 1: and now TikTok. Thanks for listening and remember that Daniel
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio.
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