1 00:00:06,680 --> 00:00:11,479 Speaker 1: Man made black holes, low energy vacuum bubbles, strange lits. 2 00:00:12,480 --> 00:00:14,880 Speaker 1: These are some of the ways that an ill conceived 3 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:20,480 Speaker 1: physics experiment could pose an existential risk, not just for humanity, 4 00:00:20,560 --> 00:00:24,840 Speaker 1: but for all life on Earth and possibly for every 5 00:00:24,880 --> 00:00:29,960 Speaker 1: atom in the universe if things go particularly badly. Physics 6 00:00:29,960 --> 00:00:33,080 Speaker 1: experiments seem like an unlikely place to find a clutch 7 00:00:33,120 --> 00:00:37,479 Speaker 1: of existential risks, but it makes sense. Really. There are 8 00:00:37,520 --> 00:00:40,640 Speaker 1: no other branches of science that explores the places where 9 00:00:40,720 --> 00:00:44,160 Speaker 1: something is magic. Is accidentally creating a tiny black hole 10 00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:49,240 Speaker 1: could happen. Physics is the purest branch of science. Back 11 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:52,599 Speaker 1: in the thirties, physicist Ernest Rutherford put it something like 12 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:58,600 Speaker 1: all science is either physics or stamp collecting. Physics, in 13 00:00:58,680 --> 00:01:02,400 Speaker 1: particularly particle physics, is the place where the leading edge 14 00:01:02,440 --> 00:01:06,440 Speaker 1: of science explores new frontiers of the universe. It's as 15 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:09,839 Speaker 1: literal as that. But we are still at an early 16 00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:13,440 Speaker 1: spot in our understanding of particle physics, in the place 17 00:01:13,480 --> 00:01:16,600 Speaker 1: in human history where you and I live. Now, those 18 00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:20,280 Speaker 1: forays by the leading edge of science are blind pokes 19 00:01:20,319 --> 00:01:23,640 Speaker 1: in the dark, and we face a dilemma because of this. 20 00:01:24,720 --> 00:01:28,600 Speaker 1: We can't understand the universe without poking at it, but 21 00:01:28,680 --> 00:01:31,399 Speaker 1: we can't really say if poking at it is safe 22 00:01:31,880 --> 00:01:35,840 Speaker 1: until we poke it. The idea that particle physics could 23 00:01:35,920 --> 00:01:39,280 Speaker 1: end the world sounds like nothing more than paranoid fantasy, 24 00:01:39,600 --> 00:01:42,759 Speaker 1: born from something like fear of science and it's big, 25 00:01:42,840 --> 00:01:47,760 Speaker 1: hulking machines that blast invisible particles into one another, but 26 00:01:47,880 --> 00:01:51,600 Speaker 1: concerned that dangerous exotic stuff could be created inside a 27 00:01:51,600 --> 00:01:56,640 Speaker 1: particle collider come from the physics community itself. Physicists are 28 00:01:56,640 --> 00:01:59,840 Speaker 1: aware that they know enough about physics to build machines 29 00:01:59,840 --> 00:02:03,320 Speaker 1: that can simulate nature, but don't know enough to say 30 00:02:03,360 --> 00:02:07,720 Speaker 1: for certain just what will happen inside those machines. We 31 00:02:07,760 --> 00:02:10,720 Speaker 1: don't know enough to know that those experiments were running 32 00:02:10,960 --> 00:02:15,440 Speaker 1: are existentially safe, but we're doing them, pushing the envelope 33 00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:20,160 Speaker 1: anyway and hoping for the best. To understand how things 34 00:02:20,200 --> 00:02:24,160 Speaker 1: like low energy vacuum bubbles and man made microscopic black 35 00:02:24,200 --> 00:02:27,240 Speaker 1: holes could accidentally be made here on Earth, you have 36 00:02:27,320 --> 00:02:29,920 Speaker 1: to know a few things about physics first, and I 37 00:02:29,960 --> 00:02:32,919 Speaker 1: will tell you everything you need to know. To start, 38 00:02:33,440 --> 00:02:35,079 Speaker 1: I'll need you to hold your hand up in front 39 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:41,919 Speaker 1: of your face. I want you to focus on, say, 40 00:02:41,960 --> 00:02:44,280 Speaker 1: the back of your hand. Hold it up in front 41 00:02:44,280 --> 00:02:48,040 Speaker 1: of you. Gaze upon it, kind of lose yourself in it. 42 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:52,560 Speaker 1: Let your eyes come in and out of focus, so 43 00:02:52,639 --> 00:02:56,320 Speaker 1: that your hand becomes the only thing in the world. Now, 44 00:02:56,440 --> 00:02:59,080 Speaker 1: find some little spot on your hand and focus on it. 45 00:02:59,639 --> 00:03:02,920 Speaker 1: Let your self be drawn into that spot, drawn into 46 00:03:02,960 --> 00:03:06,520 Speaker 1: your hand. As you travel into that tiny point on 47 00:03:06,560 --> 00:03:11,160 Speaker 1: your hand, you will grow smaller and smaller and smaller, 48 00:03:12,160 --> 00:03:15,280 Speaker 1: so that you can pass easily through your own skin, 49 00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:21,440 Speaker 1: past your bone, and into your veins, further and further inward, 50 00:03:21,919 --> 00:03:26,240 Speaker 1: growing smaller as you descend, shrinking through your blood and 51 00:03:26,320 --> 00:03:30,320 Speaker 1: plunging into one of the giant, gummy disc red blood 52 00:03:30,360 --> 00:03:33,880 Speaker 1: cells in it, growing smaller and smaller, so that you 53 00:03:33,919 --> 00:03:38,680 Speaker 1: pass right through the cell walls untouched, smaller and smaller 54 00:03:39,200 --> 00:03:42,600 Speaker 1: among the galaxy of a hundred and twenty trillion atoms 55 00:03:42,640 --> 00:03:46,040 Speaker 1: that make up a single red blood cell. Plunging into 56 00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:52,160 Speaker 1: the electric cloud that envelops one single fuzzy oxygen atom, 57 00:03:52,160 --> 00:03:54,960 Speaker 1: you are surrounded by the electrical field, like a fog 58 00:03:55,280 --> 00:03:59,080 Speaker 1: that encapsulates the nucleus and binds the electrons to it 59 00:03:59,200 --> 00:04:03,480 Speaker 1: A million miles away. Here inside the atom, you will 60 00:04:03,560 --> 00:04:08,280 Speaker 1: learn the truth of the universe. Everything looks different than 61 00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:11,680 Speaker 1: what you've always learned in school. There is no atomic 62 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:14,960 Speaker 1: solar system, with the nucleus as the sun and the 63 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:19,160 Speaker 1: electrons like planets in orbit. The electrons are everywhere and 64 00:04:19,240 --> 00:04:22,920 Speaker 1: yet nowhere at once and at the center. There is 65 00:04:22,960 --> 00:04:27,279 Speaker 1: no proton, no neutron. There are no particles like tiny 66 00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:31,080 Speaker 1: pieces of matter, like crumbs of the universe. There are 67 00:04:31,080 --> 00:04:36,159 Speaker 1: only vibrations of energy. These are the true building blocks 68 00:04:36,200 --> 00:04:39,800 Speaker 1: of the universe, the corks and the gluons and all 69 00:04:39,839 --> 00:04:42,880 Speaker 1: of the other elementary particles that make up everything that 70 00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:47,039 Speaker 1: the material world is built from. You are here in 71 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:51,560 Speaker 1: the quantum world, and now that you look around, you 72 00:04:51,640 --> 00:04:56,040 Speaker 1: see that there are vibrations everywhere. All around you, you 73 00:04:56,080 --> 00:04:59,800 Speaker 1: see fields of different kinds of energy passing through each other, 74 00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:04,200 Speaker 1: interacting with one another. And within those energy fields are 75 00:05:04,320 --> 00:05:11,120 Speaker 1: countless moving, pulsating vibrations. Look back upward, now up from 76 00:05:11,160 --> 00:05:14,160 Speaker 1: your place in the quantum field, pass the atoms to 77 00:05:14,240 --> 00:05:17,080 Speaker 1: the cells and out of your hand. Look up to 78 00:05:17,120 --> 00:05:19,680 Speaker 1: your own face and to the sky and the sun 79 00:05:19,760 --> 00:05:24,000 Speaker 1: behind you. All of those things, you, the sky, the 80 00:05:24,120 --> 00:05:29,640 Speaker 1: sun are made up of spectacularly complex arrangements constructed from 81 00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:35,320 Speaker 1: the energetic vibrations of complimentary force fields, entangled by irresistible 82 00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:39,040 Speaker 1: forces until time runs its course for them and their 83 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:43,320 Speaker 1: arrangement collapses when they break down and travel along their 84 00:05:43,360 --> 00:05:47,560 Speaker 1: fields until they are attracted into some new arrangement. From 85 00:05:47,560 --> 00:05:50,040 Speaker 1: a frog as it dies, to the algae of a 86 00:05:50,120 --> 00:05:53,599 Speaker 1: pond that decomposing, to the belly of a fish, to 87 00:05:53,720 --> 00:05:56,080 Speaker 1: the mouth of a mother, to the iris of a 88 00:05:56,120 --> 00:06:00,520 Speaker 1: newborn child. The cycle of life and death is nothing 89 00:06:00,560 --> 00:06:04,000 Speaker 1: more than the movement of energy along a universe of 90 00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:09,880 Speaker 1: force fields. You can see now that everything, every site 91 00:06:09,920 --> 00:06:14,040 Speaker 1: you've ever seen, everything you've ever touched, everything you've ever 92 00:06:14,080 --> 00:06:19,240 Speaker 1: smelled or tasted, every emotion you've ever felt, all of 93 00:06:19,279 --> 00:06:22,880 Speaker 1: it is made from the interaction of the energy fields 94 00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:26,760 Speaker 1: that make up our universe. Even you, you can see 95 00:06:26,800 --> 00:06:30,119 Speaker 1: now that you are a bundle of discrete vibrations held 96 00:06:30,160 --> 00:06:34,039 Speaker 1: together by attractive forces in the hyperlocal area of the 97 00:06:34,160 --> 00:06:37,680 Speaker 1: universe that until a few moments ago you always thought 98 00:06:37,720 --> 00:06:41,120 Speaker 1: of as your body. Pinch your thumb and your index 99 00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:44,880 Speaker 1: finger together tightly. The sensation of pressure that you feel, 100 00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:49,840 Speaker 1: there's nothing more than the electromagnetic force pushing back against itself. 101 00:06:51,440 --> 00:06:54,720 Speaker 1: Physicists have known all of this for more than a century, 102 00:06:55,279 --> 00:06:57,880 Speaker 1: and now you see the true nature of the universe. 103 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:11,160 Speaker 1: Every thing is energy. All of the vibrations in the universe, 104 00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:13,880 Speaker 1: and so all of the matter in the universe are 105 00:07:13,960 --> 00:07:16,480 Speaker 1: remnants of the energy left over from the Big Bank. 106 00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:20,200 Speaker 1: Almost every vibration unleashed, and the first trillions of a 107 00:07:20,280 --> 00:07:23,680 Speaker 1: second after the Big Bank came in equal and opposite pairs, 108 00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:27,240 Speaker 1: and they canceled each other out. They annihilated each other, 109 00:07:28,440 --> 00:07:32,800 Speaker 1: almost all of them, but not all. This is Don Lincoln. 110 00:07:33,080 --> 00:07:36,800 Speaker 1: He's a physicist at Fermi Lap near Chicago. Very early 111 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:40,080 Speaker 1: on in the universe, there was some asymmetry, some little 112 00:07:40,160 --> 00:07:43,200 Speaker 1: difference between the two of them. And what happened is 113 00:07:43,720 --> 00:07:48,000 Speaker 1: there was a very slightly larger number of matter vibrations 114 00:07:48,040 --> 00:07:52,520 Speaker 1: than antimatter vibrations, something to the tune of three billion 115 00:07:52,840 --> 00:07:56,440 Speaker 1: to three billion and one. And then the three billions 116 00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:59,480 Speaker 1: canceled and the one was left over. And that's the 117 00:07:59,520 --> 00:08:02,800 Speaker 1: matter of abrations that are left that make up the 118 00:08:02,840 --> 00:08:05,440 Speaker 1: what we see now in our universe. Why there is 119 00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:09,680 Speaker 1: something and not nothing is one mystery that particle physicists 120 00:08:09,720 --> 00:08:13,560 Speaker 1: have run across while plumbing the void. Another is exactly 121 00:08:13,640 --> 00:08:18,240 Speaker 1: where our universe came from. It's looking increasingly likely that 122 00:08:18,360 --> 00:08:21,800 Speaker 1: there was nothing that came before that our universe erupted 123 00:08:21,880 --> 00:08:25,360 Speaker 1: randomly from an aberration in an energy field, like a 124 00:08:25,400 --> 00:08:28,280 Speaker 1: bubble of steam rising in a pot of boiling water, 125 00:08:29,280 --> 00:08:32,319 Speaker 1: and in fact, the basis of a theory by physicist 126 00:08:32,400 --> 00:08:37,800 Speaker 1: Roger Penrose from Oxford University called conformal cyclic cosmology, says 127 00:08:37,840 --> 00:08:40,400 Speaker 1: that this is just the way that universes are formed. 128 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:45,800 Speaker 1: One bubbles up, lives, dies, and leaves nothing behind but 129 00:08:45,880 --> 00:08:47,960 Speaker 1: the remnants of the black holes that formed in it, 130 00:08:48,559 --> 00:08:51,160 Speaker 1: which are scooped up in the structure of the next 131 00:08:51,240 --> 00:08:54,720 Speaker 1: universe that bubbles up to replace the old one. To 132 00:08:54,920 --> 00:08:58,120 Speaker 1: us living in this universe, such a process would take 133 00:08:58,160 --> 00:09:01,560 Speaker 1: the longest scales of time a man tenable, but to 134 00:09:01,640 --> 00:09:05,600 Speaker 1: someone with a different perspective of time, perhaps watching universes 135 00:09:05,640 --> 00:09:09,240 Speaker 1: bubble up, collapse, and bubble up again might be like 136 00:09:09,280 --> 00:09:13,080 Speaker 1: watching a pot of water simmer. All of this is 137 00:09:13,120 --> 00:09:16,200 Speaker 1: to say that if our universe arose from an aberration 138 00:09:16,240 --> 00:09:18,760 Speaker 1: in an energy field, or from the remnants of the 139 00:09:18,880 --> 00:09:22,680 Speaker 1: collapsed universe that came before ours, then it could happen again. 140 00:09:23,480 --> 00:09:27,160 Speaker 1: Our universe could be reborn in a different form within 141 00:09:27,240 --> 00:09:31,240 Speaker 1: itself and from a closer look at the Higgs field, 142 00:09:32,040 --> 00:09:35,080 Speaker 1: it appears that it's constantly trying to do just that. 143 00:09:42,600 --> 00:09:45,040 Speaker 1: One of the energy fields that make up our universe 144 00:09:45,120 --> 00:09:47,800 Speaker 1: is the Higgs field. It is the field that gives 145 00:09:47,840 --> 00:09:52,880 Speaker 1: mass to other energetic vibrations. Without the Higgs field, nothing 146 00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:56,199 Speaker 1: would have mass, which means that the Higgs field is 147 00:09:56,240 --> 00:09:59,320 Speaker 1: the energy field that allows you and all other matter 148 00:09:59,360 --> 00:10:03,920 Speaker 1: in the universe to physically exist. Without mass, there cannot 149 00:10:03,920 --> 00:10:07,360 Speaker 1: be matter to be bound together, and without matter, there 150 00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:10,880 Speaker 1: cannot be chemistry, which binds that matter together and creates 151 00:10:10,880 --> 00:10:14,400 Speaker 1: new forms of matter. And so without chemistry there can 152 00:10:14,440 --> 00:10:18,240 Speaker 1: be no life, which means without the Higgs field, there 153 00:10:18,240 --> 00:10:21,880 Speaker 1: can be no life, which is one reason the Higgs boson. 154 00:10:22,440 --> 00:10:25,199 Speaker 1: The particle that carries the energy of the Higgs field 155 00:10:25,240 --> 00:10:28,760 Speaker 1: and interacts with other particles, is called the God particle. 156 00:10:29,840 --> 00:10:33,120 Speaker 1: The other reason is that God particle was originally short 157 00:10:33,200 --> 00:10:36,600 Speaker 1: for the God damned particle, which is what physicists called 158 00:10:36,600 --> 00:10:40,360 Speaker 1: it because it eluded them for so long. It seems 159 00:10:40,360 --> 00:10:42,640 Speaker 1: a bit heavy, but think of mass is just another 160 00:10:42,679 --> 00:10:46,160 Speaker 1: property that a vibration can have, like how a ball 161 00:10:46,320 --> 00:10:50,199 Speaker 1: can be read, round and bouncy all at the same time. 162 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:53,800 Speaker 1: When you know what properties of ball has, you can 163 00:10:53,880 --> 00:10:56,840 Speaker 1: predict what it will do in any given situation. Like 164 00:10:56,920 --> 00:10:58,959 Speaker 1: if you drop the ball, you can say that it 165 00:10:59,000 --> 00:11:02,000 Speaker 1: will probably bounce a couple of times and then roll away. 166 00:11:02,800 --> 00:11:05,480 Speaker 1: And since it's red and round, you know what to 167 00:11:05,520 --> 00:11:07,800 Speaker 1: look for when you go try to find it in 168 00:11:07,840 --> 00:11:11,600 Speaker 1: the grass to get it again. The same goes for 169 00:11:11,720 --> 00:11:16,800 Speaker 1: sub atomic particles too. Their properties, like their electrical charge 170 00:11:16,800 --> 00:11:20,920 Speaker 1: and their mass, let physicists predict how particles will interact 171 00:11:20,960 --> 00:11:25,440 Speaker 1: with particles from other energy fields. And since everything is energy, 172 00:11:25,920 --> 00:11:30,240 Speaker 1: if you can understand how every energetic particle interacts, you 173 00:11:30,280 --> 00:11:36,439 Speaker 1: can understand everything. And since Einstein showed the world with 174 00:11:36,520 --> 00:11:40,640 Speaker 1: his E equals MC squared equation that mass and energy 175 00:11:41,080 --> 00:11:44,160 Speaker 1: or just two sides of the same equal sign, you 176 00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:46,680 Speaker 1: can just look at mass like it's just another type 177 00:11:46,720 --> 00:11:51,960 Speaker 1: of energy, which it is. When a vibration arises, let's 178 00:11:51,960 --> 00:11:55,240 Speaker 1: say a cork from the cork field, it interacts with 179 00:11:55,280 --> 00:11:58,600 Speaker 1: the boson from the Higgs field, almost like it's coded 180 00:11:58,600 --> 00:12:02,240 Speaker 1: by it. And now that cork has mass, so it 181 00:12:02,280 --> 00:12:05,400 Speaker 1: can be acted on by other fields like the gravity field. 182 00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:09,439 Speaker 1: These fields, the cork field, the gravity field, the Higgs field, 183 00:12:09,640 --> 00:12:13,000 Speaker 1: all of the fields, they are everywhere, at every point 184 00:12:13,040 --> 00:12:17,080 Speaker 1: in the universe. The Higgs is the only field that 185 00:12:17,120 --> 00:12:20,360 Speaker 1: can give mass to other vibrations, and it has another 186 00:12:20,440 --> 00:12:24,400 Speaker 1: unique property too. It is the only field that still 187 00:12:24,440 --> 00:12:28,280 Speaker 1: has an energy when it's turned down to zero, which 188 00:12:28,320 --> 00:12:31,800 Speaker 1: is surprising. If you could turn down all of the 189 00:12:31,920 --> 00:12:35,040 Speaker 1: energy fields in the universe to zero on some master 190 00:12:35,280 --> 00:12:38,520 Speaker 1: universe style, there would be no electrons at all in 191 00:12:38,559 --> 00:12:42,920 Speaker 1: the electron field, no corks, no glue ons, all of 192 00:12:42,960 --> 00:12:47,360 Speaker 1: the energetic vibrations would cease, and yet energy would still 193 00:12:47,400 --> 00:12:50,880 Speaker 1: persist in the Higgs field. It's like if you turn 194 00:12:50,960 --> 00:12:53,920 Speaker 1: down the volume on this show to zero, yet you 195 00:12:53,920 --> 00:12:57,040 Speaker 1: could still make out faint pops and crackles in your headphones. 196 00:12:57,679 --> 00:12:59,640 Speaker 1: It would lead you to believe that there was some 197 00:12:59,760 --> 00:13:03,960 Speaker 1: setting below zero that you could turn the volume down to. Well. 198 00:13:04,120 --> 00:13:07,319 Speaker 1: Physicists have arrived at the same conclusion about the Higgs field, 199 00:13:08,440 --> 00:13:12,360 Speaker 1: but this opens up an unsettling possibility. If the Higgs 200 00:13:12,440 --> 00:13:16,120 Speaker 1: field isn't currently at its lowest energy state, and the 201 00:13:16,200 --> 00:13:19,520 Speaker 1: Higgs field is what gives matter mass, then if the 202 00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:23,120 Speaker 1: Higgs field ever slipped into that lowest energy statement, the 203 00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:27,760 Speaker 1: mass of everything in our universe would suddenly change. In 204 00:13:27,800 --> 00:13:33,000 Speaker 1: other words, we would all disintegrate. This is theoretical physicist 205 00:13:33,040 --> 00:13:36,240 Speaker 1: Ben Schlayer from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. 206 00:13:36,679 --> 00:13:40,760 Speaker 1: Particle physics and the corresponding chemistry would be suddenly very different, 207 00:13:41,160 --> 00:13:44,560 Speaker 1: and in particular, matter would no longer be at the 208 00:13:44,679 --> 00:13:48,240 Speaker 1: right size. The different sizes of the atoms that make 209 00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:51,800 Speaker 1: up matter are based on the distance between the electrons 210 00:13:51,840 --> 00:13:54,520 Speaker 1: and the outer periphery and the nucleus at the center. 211 00:13:55,480 --> 00:14:00,920 Speaker 1: If electron suddenly got heavier, adams would shrink into smaller size, 212 00:14:01,360 --> 00:14:05,080 Speaker 1: which means everything in our universe would suddenly shrink. All 213 00:14:05,080 --> 00:14:08,560 Speaker 1: of the matter around us would suddenly find itself unstable 214 00:14:08,640 --> 00:14:11,600 Speaker 1: to a great shrinking, and as it shrank, it would 215 00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:15,360 Speaker 1: give off a huge amount of electromagnetic energy. So they'd 216 00:14:15,400 --> 00:14:17,719 Speaker 1: be an explosion of X rays and that would be 217 00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:22,440 Speaker 1: a pretty violent event. Two theoretical physicists, Sidney Coleman Frank 218 00:14:22,480 --> 00:14:28,000 Speaker 1: DeLucia determined back in that this new lower energy state 219 00:14:28,040 --> 00:14:31,800 Speaker 1: of the universe would not support chemistry, which means that 220 00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:34,360 Speaker 1: life would not have the chance to re evolve in 221 00:14:34,400 --> 00:14:38,280 Speaker 1: this new version of our universe. They called this vacuum 222 00:14:38,320 --> 00:14:42,680 Speaker 1: decay and said that it was the ultimate ecological catastrophe. 223 00:14:44,200 --> 00:14:47,720 Speaker 1: But things can actually get worse from there because the 224 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:51,160 Speaker 1: shrunken universe is denser than it was before. That means 225 00:14:51,200 --> 00:14:54,000 Speaker 1: gravity acts on all of the mass throughout the universe 226 00:14:54,040 --> 00:14:59,240 Speaker 1: more forcefully, too, so that vacuum bubbles outward. Expansion will 227 00:14:59,240 --> 00:15:04,360 Speaker 1: eventually be and then reversed as it's pulled backward, returning 228 00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:08,120 Speaker 1: to where it started, like an implosion, forcing all matter 229 00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:13,040 Speaker 1: into an infinitely dense, infinitely tiny ball, possibly the very 230 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:16,840 Speaker 1: same place where our universe started from. This is called 231 00:15:16,840 --> 00:15:20,320 Speaker 1: the Big crunch. It's the antithesis of the Big Bang. 232 00:15:20,960 --> 00:15:24,200 Speaker 1: Spacetime ends and the universe ends. In a big crunch, 233 00:15:25,200 --> 00:15:31,120 Speaker 1: it would be like our universe never happened. That the 234 00:15:31,160 --> 00:15:34,320 Speaker 1: Higgs field has balanced between its current state and the 235 00:15:34,320 --> 00:15:38,000 Speaker 1: lower energy version of itself means that it poses a 236 00:15:38,120 --> 00:15:42,160 Speaker 1: natural existential risk to us. If it moved into that 237 00:15:42,240 --> 00:15:45,400 Speaker 1: lower energy state, that would be it for not just 238 00:15:45,520 --> 00:15:49,240 Speaker 1: human existence, but for everything in the universe. So the 239 00:15:49,320 --> 00:15:54,880 Speaker 1: Higgs field actually poses a universal existential risk for now 240 00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:58,240 Speaker 1: and for the foreseeable future. At least, the Higgs field 241 00:15:58,320 --> 00:16:01,920 Speaker 1: is in a state called meta stable. The good analogy 242 00:16:02,040 --> 00:16:04,360 Speaker 1: is a puddle in a valley at the bottom of 243 00:16:04,400 --> 00:16:07,240 Speaker 1: the hill. On the other side of the hill, say 244 00:16:07,320 --> 00:16:10,480 Speaker 1: there's an even lower valley, and the Higgs puddle would 245 00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:13,560 Speaker 1: be happy to settle into that lower one. But it 246 00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:16,600 Speaker 1: would take a tremendous amount of energy for the puddle 247 00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:19,600 Speaker 1: to move itself up the hill to the other side, 248 00:16:20,320 --> 00:16:24,000 Speaker 1: energy that the puddle doesn't have, so the Higgs field 249 00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:27,720 Speaker 1: won't be moving up the hill. But there's another way 250 00:16:27,800 --> 00:16:31,680 Speaker 1: that it could slide into that lower energy state. Unnervingly, 251 00:16:32,240 --> 00:16:35,560 Speaker 1: the Higgs is constantly trying to tunnel through that metaphorical 252 00:16:35,680 --> 00:16:38,360 Speaker 1: hill to get to the lower valley on the other side, 253 00:16:39,760 --> 00:16:42,440 Speaker 1: and this attempt to tunnel through comes in the form 254 00:16:42,480 --> 00:16:47,200 Speaker 1: of indescribably small pockets of this other lower energy version 255 00:16:47,240 --> 00:16:49,920 Speaker 1: of the Higgs field that at every moment bubble up 256 00:16:49,960 --> 00:16:53,800 Speaker 1: from it like a simmering pot. But these lower energy 257 00:16:53,920 --> 00:16:57,520 Speaker 1: Higgs bubbles are too weak to overcome the external pressure 258 00:16:57,640 --> 00:17:00,560 Speaker 1: or universe exerts on them, so they wink out of 259 00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:04,919 Speaker 1: existence just as fast as they arise. The trouble is 260 00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:08,040 Speaker 1: that if one of those lower energy bubbles ever does 261 00:17:08,080 --> 00:17:11,160 Speaker 1: manage to stick around long enough to stabilize and grow, 262 00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:15,320 Speaker 1: it would swallow our universe and bring about that vacuum 263 00:17:15,359 --> 00:17:19,680 Speaker 1: decay that Coleman and DeLucia wrote about and disintegrate our 264 00:17:19,840 --> 00:17:23,800 Speaker 1: version of the universe. It would be a big crunching deal, 265 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:28,680 Speaker 1: you could say, But probability is on our side. Under 266 00:17:28,720 --> 00:17:32,480 Speaker 1: normal circumstances, the chances of one of those lower energy 267 00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:36,520 Speaker 1: version bubbles growing are so low it's not expected to 268 00:17:36,560 --> 00:17:40,679 Speaker 1: happen over the estimated lifetime of our universe, so we 269 00:17:40,760 --> 00:17:44,600 Speaker 1: appear to be in the clear again. Though that's under 270 00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:50,560 Speaker 1: normal circumstances. We humans have a tendency to alter normal circumstances, 271 00:17:51,280 --> 00:17:53,679 Speaker 1: and there's a way that the Higgs field campose an 272 00:17:53,720 --> 00:17:58,800 Speaker 1: anthropogenic existential threat. A vacuum bubble could grow with the 273 00:17:58,800 --> 00:18:02,639 Speaker 1: help of a microscopic black hole, which we might actually create. 274 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:19,240 Speaker 1: Inside one of our particle colliders. Here on Earth, m 275 00:18:25,280 --> 00:18:29,440 Speaker 1: about a hundred meters beneath the countryside where Switzerland juts 276 00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:33,520 Speaker 1: up from the southeast into France. Above sits the Large 277 00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:38,960 Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, the largest highest energy particle collider in the world. 278 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:43,879 Speaker 1: Hadron is a name for sub atomic particles like protons 279 00:18:43,880 --> 00:18:47,439 Speaker 1: and neutrons that are made up of quarks and gluons. 280 00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:52,120 Speaker 1: Those energetic vibrations that make up matter. If you could 281 00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:55,840 Speaker 1: go inside the LHC reduce yourself back again to the 282 00:18:55,920 --> 00:19:00,800 Speaker 1: scale of those energetic vibrations, you would see something spectacular. 283 00:19:02,240 --> 00:19:06,240 Speaker 1: The protons in the Large Hadron Collider are created by 284 00:19:06,240 --> 00:19:09,720 Speaker 1: passing a laser through a cloud of hydrogen gas, which 285 00:19:09,800 --> 00:19:14,640 Speaker 1: breaks the atoms apart. Those stripped protons are directed into 286 00:19:14,640 --> 00:19:18,480 Speaker 1: the LHC's vacuum tubes by an electrical current, and they're 287 00:19:18,520 --> 00:19:22,200 Speaker 1: separated into two beams that are kept apart and sent 288 00:19:22,320 --> 00:19:27,160 Speaker 1: in opposite directions around the elliptical collider. Over the course 289 00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:31,520 Speaker 1: of days, the beams are accelerated until they reach unimaginably 290 00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:38,080 Speaker 1: fast speeds point nine nine nine one percent the speed 291 00:19:38,119 --> 00:19:41,359 Speaker 1: of light, where a single proton can make the trip 292 00:19:41,640 --> 00:19:45,200 Speaker 1: around the seventeen mile circumference of the collider more than 293 00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:50,200 Speaker 1: eleven thousand times in a single second. At these speeds, 294 00:19:50,440 --> 00:19:53,480 Speaker 1: the protons carry with them as much as five trillion 295 00:19:53,600 --> 00:19:58,080 Speaker 1: electron volts of energy, an extraordinary amount for something so small. 296 00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,160 Speaker 1: It's like a mosquito with the kinetic energy of a planet. 297 00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:06,160 Speaker 1: When the beams are at their highest speeds, they're directed 298 00:20:06,200 --> 00:20:09,040 Speaker 1: into each other so that they cross inside of one 299 00:20:09,080 --> 00:20:14,600 Speaker 1: of the collider's enormous sensitive detectors. Every second a billion 300 00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:18,600 Speaker 1: collisions take place, and the energy from those impacts turns 301 00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:22,600 Speaker 1: into mass, which creates particles for just a fleeting moment 302 00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:26,679 Speaker 1: that we're around right after the Big Bang. So the 303 00:20:26,800 --> 00:20:30,639 Speaker 1: LHC is a way to rewind nature, to study its origins. 304 00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:34,520 Speaker 1: To me, it's like I think of using particle colliders 305 00:20:34,520 --> 00:20:37,359 Speaker 1: to understand the universe as an exploration. We're like looking 306 00:20:37,400 --> 00:20:39,240 Speaker 1: for new stuff and you never know what you find. 307 00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:42,879 Speaker 1: You know, this is particle physicist Daniel Whiteson from the 308 00:20:42,960 --> 00:20:46,760 Speaker 1: University of California, Irvine, And one strategy we have to 309 00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,600 Speaker 1: understand these things is just to look for patterns among 310 00:20:49,640 --> 00:20:52,359 Speaker 1: the particles. And the way to look for patterns is 311 00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:54,600 Speaker 1: to see more of them. That's the goal of using 312 00:20:54,800 --> 00:20:57,920 Speaker 1: the LHC to explore the universe. We want to find 313 00:20:57,920 --> 00:21:01,400 Speaker 1: more particles, get more clues, see sort of a larger 314 00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:05,639 Speaker 1: window into the reality that we're seeing currently, and hopefully 315 00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:08,920 Speaker 1: get some insight. The Large Hadron Collider was first brought 316 00:21:08,960 --> 00:21:13,080 Speaker 1: online in two thousand nine after decades of planning and construction, 317 00:21:13,800 --> 00:21:15,920 Speaker 1: and it woke up in a world where the field 318 00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:20,159 Speaker 1: of particle physics had hit a wall. The LHC was 319 00:21:20,240 --> 00:21:23,760 Speaker 1: designed to break through that wall. It was designed, you 320 00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:31,600 Speaker 1: could say, to break physics. The work of particle physics 321 00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:34,880 Speaker 1: can be divided between two groups. On the one hand, 322 00:21:34,880 --> 00:21:37,720 Speaker 1: you have theoretical physicists. They come up with all the 323 00:21:37,760 --> 00:21:41,040 Speaker 1: ideas about how the universe might work, and on the 324 00:21:41,080 --> 00:21:45,080 Speaker 1: other hand, you have experimental physicists who test those ideas 325 00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:48,639 Speaker 1: in machines like the Large Hadron Collider. The work of 326 00:21:48,680 --> 00:21:52,399 Speaker 1: these two groups forms in aura borros, the mythical snake 327 00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:56,640 Speaker 1: that eats its own tail. The experimental physicists find support 328 00:21:57,000 --> 00:22:01,040 Speaker 1: for the theoretical physicist theories, or they say that they're wrong. 329 00:22:02,080 --> 00:22:05,440 Speaker 1: The experimental physicists also come up with new data that 330 00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:09,479 Speaker 1: the theoreticians can use to create entirely new theories that 331 00:22:09,560 --> 00:22:14,000 Speaker 1: the experimental physicists can then test. As a deeper understanding 332 00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:20,400 Speaker 1: of particle physics develops, the snake grows fatter. In the nineties, 333 00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:25,119 Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, the theoretical physicists dropped a huge amount 334 00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:28,360 Speaker 1: of new work on the desk of the experimental physicists. 335 00:22:29,320 --> 00:22:33,240 Speaker 1: A group of theoreticians wrote down everything science knew about 336 00:22:33,240 --> 00:22:36,000 Speaker 1: the quantum world and What they came up with is 337 00:22:36,040 --> 00:22:39,320 Speaker 1: a set of formulae known as the Standard Model of 338 00:22:39,400 --> 00:22:43,680 Speaker 1: particle physics. Over the decades, the Standard Model has been 339 00:22:43,720 --> 00:22:48,600 Speaker 1: proven correct again and again. The Standard Model does a 340 00:22:48,600 --> 00:22:51,439 Speaker 1: really good job at describing the particles that exist in 341 00:22:51,440 --> 00:22:54,919 Speaker 1: the quantum world and the forces that govern them. The 342 00:22:55,000 --> 00:22:58,880 Speaker 1: strong nuclear force binds protons and neutrons into the nucleus 343 00:22:58,880 --> 00:23:02,320 Speaker 1: of an atom. The weak nuclear force causes atoms to 344 00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:07,520 Speaker 1: decay over time. The electromagnetic force binds atoms together into 345 00:23:07,600 --> 00:23:10,600 Speaker 1: higher structures like you and meat, and the sun, and 346 00:23:10,680 --> 00:23:15,000 Speaker 1: mosquitoes and red blood cells. Every particle that the Standard 347 00:23:15,000 --> 00:23:18,879 Speaker 1: Model predicted should exist by now has been discovered. It is, 348 00:23:18,920 --> 00:23:23,240 Speaker 1: as scientists put it, an extremely reliable model to describe 349 00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,720 Speaker 1: the quantum world. The last of the bunch was the 350 00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:30,560 Speaker 1: Higgs boson, which the LHC found in two thousand twelve, 351 00:23:31,080 --> 00:23:36,280 Speaker 1: and with that discovery the experimental physicists exhausted the theoreticians 352 00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:40,399 Speaker 1: standard model. But as good as the Standard Model is, 353 00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:44,320 Speaker 1: as reliable as it is, it's been incomplete from the 354 00:23:44,440 --> 00:23:49,840 Speaker 1: very beginning. It has no place for gravity, and vice versa. 355 00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:55,119 Speaker 1: With Einstein's famous theory of relativity. It's proven extremely reliable 356 00:23:55,240 --> 00:23:58,399 Speaker 1: at describing how gravity governs the interaction of large scale 357 00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:03,480 Speaker 1: things like people and planets. But the other three fundamental forces, 358 00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:07,440 Speaker 1: electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces don't fit 359 00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,240 Speaker 1: into the equation partum field theory. It really doesn't deal 360 00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,720 Speaker 1: with the universe as a whole, and it's well known 361 00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:18,280 Speaker 1: that general relativity does not merge in mill well with 362 00:24:18,359 --> 00:24:21,679 Speaker 1: a quantum realm. So what physics has on its hands 363 00:24:21,680 --> 00:24:25,240 Speaker 1: are the standard model and the theory of relativity too 364 00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:30,119 Speaker 1: totally accurate but totally incomplete pictures of the universe that 365 00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:34,119 Speaker 1: won't fit together to form a cohesive whole. It's almost 366 00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:38,680 Speaker 1: like they repel one another. Particle. Physicists built the large 367 00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:42,240 Speaker 1: hay Drown Collider to figure out why that is. They 368 00:24:42,280 --> 00:24:46,120 Speaker 1: hope that the incredibly high energy collisions will produce new 369 00:24:46,160 --> 00:24:49,920 Speaker 1: particles that don't fit into the standard model to show 370 00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:53,800 Speaker 1: where physics should start looking next. One of the biggest 371 00:24:53,840 --> 00:24:57,399 Speaker 1: mysteries of all that physicists are hoping to solve is 372 00:24:57,480 --> 00:25:00,680 Speaker 1: why gravity is so weak compared to the other three 373 00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:05,560 Speaker 1: fundamental forces. It's strange. Gravity is the force that keeps 374 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:09,400 Speaker 1: planets in orbit around massive stars and can catch light 375 00:25:09,480 --> 00:25:12,120 Speaker 1: by the ankles and prevent it from escaping a black hole. 376 00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,280 Speaker 1: Yet the other three forces are stronger, and you can 377 00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:18,720 Speaker 1: see this for yourself if you just lay a paper 378 00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:22,200 Speaker 1: clip on a countertop and hold a regular old refrigerator 379 00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,480 Speaker 1: magnet over it. As you bring the magnet closer, the 380 00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,800 Speaker 1: paper clip will eventually rise to meet and stick to it. 381 00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,880 Speaker 1: What you've just seen is the electromagnetic force and that 382 00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:37,800 Speaker 1: tiny magnet overcoming the gravitational force exerted by the entire 383 00:25:37,920 --> 00:25:44,600 Speaker 1: mass of planet Earth. Like I said, strange. To make 384 00:25:44,640 --> 00:25:47,560 Speaker 1: sense of this, and to unify relativity in the standard 385 00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:51,399 Speaker 1: model into a theory of everything, some physicists have taken 386 00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:55,760 Speaker 1: to adding new dimensions to our universe. Some models see 387 00:25:55,760 --> 00:25:59,920 Speaker 1: our four dimensional world of length, with height and time 388 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:04,760 Speaker 1: as just a tiny membrane floating within an infinitely larger 389 00:26:04,840 --> 00:26:09,320 Speaker 1: fifth dimension that we can't sense, called the bulk. Others 390 00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:12,600 Speaker 1: include as many as eleven total dimensions, most of which 391 00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:16,760 Speaker 1: are curled up into extremely tiny coils at the corners 392 00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:21,160 Speaker 1: of every point in the fabric of spacetime. These models 393 00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:24,679 Speaker 1: explain why gravity is so weak by allowing it to 394 00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:29,560 Speaker 1: spread across all of the dimensions. The other three forces, 395 00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:33,159 Speaker 1: like us are trapped within our four D world, but 396 00:26:33,240 --> 00:26:36,439 Speaker 1: gravity is not. And if we could sense all five 397 00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:40,160 Speaker 1: or eleven, or however many dimensions there are, we would 398 00:26:40,240 --> 00:26:43,400 Speaker 1: see that gravity has the same strength as the other 399 00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:47,040 Speaker 1: three forces. It just seems weak to us because it's 400 00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:51,880 Speaker 1: diluted by comparison inside our four D world. So one 401 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,240 Speaker 1: way that physicists are hoping that the LHC breaks physics 402 00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,679 Speaker 1: is by revealing the presence of other dimensions. And a 403 00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:02,600 Speaker 1: really good way to demonstrate that there are other dimensions 404 00:27:03,000 --> 00:27:07,080 Speaker 1: would be to create a microscopic black hole. Those aren't 405 00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:16,439 Speaker 1: supposed to exist in our four D world until the 406 00:27:16,480 --> 00:27:19,440 Speaker 1: idea came along that's such a thing as microscopic black 407 00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:23,000 Speaker 1: holes could exist. We used to think that we understood 408 00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:26,000 Speaker 1: black holes pretty well. It was sort of a golden 409 00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:30,160 Speaker 1: age of black hole understanding. We learned over time that 410 00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:35,680 Speaker 1: black holes were gaping, all consuming, horrific abominations in space time, 411 00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:39,480 Speaker 1: with masses so huge that they boggle the mind. Sure, 412 00:27:40,119 --> 00:27:44,000 Speaker 1: but we could feel good about them. We understood them, 413 00:27:44,040 --> 00:27:46,880 Speaker 1: and we were here, and they were a way out there. 414 00:27:47,680 --> 00:27:50,200 Speaker 1: They had no way to touch our world, let alone 415 00:27:50,280 --> 00:27:54,159 Speaker 1: end it. From studying them, we found that black holes 416 00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:58,560 Speaker 1: were created when some incredibly massive star far larger than 417 00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:02,199 Speaker 1: our Sun, exhaust at its fuel and collapsed under an 418 00:28:02,280 --> 00:28:06,800 Speaker 1: unimaginable force of gravity into an infinitely dense, smaller version 419 00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:10,679 Speaker 1: of itself that actually pushed a bottomless pit in the 420 00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:14,560 Speaker 1: fabric of time and space. Encircling the rim of this 421 00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:18,560 Speaker 1: black hole is the event horizon, the threshold where the 422 00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:22,679 Speaker 1: gravitational poll is so strong that anything crossing it is 423 00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:26,080 Speaker 1: doomed to be forever trapped inside the black hole, torn 424 00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:31,360 Speaker 1: apart by the unimaginable gravity with it. Over time, we 425 00:28:31,400 --> 00:28:35,280 Speaker 1: began to notice black holes everywhere we could detect them, 426 00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,720 Speaker 1: ripping apart nearby stars, pulling them into a ring of 427 00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:42,479 Speaker 1: hot gas, and circling the event horizon like water around 428 00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:45,680 Speaker 1: a drain. We began to find them at the center 429 00:28:45,680 --> 00:28:50,560 Speaker 1: of galaxies, including our own Milky Way, which nourishes a monstrous, 430 00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:55,120 Speaker 1: supermassive black hole the size of four million of our sons. 431 00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,240 Speaker 1: We saw that black holes could cannibalize other black holes, 432 00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:03,760 Speaker 1: which forms even larger black holes, and perhaps the fate 433 00:29:03,800 --> 00:29:06,960 Speaker 1: of our universe was to one day be swallowed into 434 00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:10,040 Speaker 1: one giant black hole made up of every black hole 435 00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:15,320 Speaker 1: that's ever existed in every universe that's ever existed, But 436 00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:18,480 Speaker 1: like any good golden age, this one was not meant 437 00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:21,840 Speaker 1: to last. It ran from the time black holes were 438 00:29:21,840 --> 00:29:25,920 Speaker 1: predicted in Einstein's theory of relativity in nineteen fifteen until 439 00:29:25,920 --> 00:29:29,480 Speaker 1: about the mid seventies, when a not yet world famous 440 00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:34,600 Speaker 1: physicist named Stephen Hawking proposed some ideas about black holes 441 00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:37,480 Speaker 1: that suggested that maybe we didn't understand them so well 442 00:29:37,520 --> 00:29:42,600 Speaker 1: after all. For starters, Hawking and his colleagues proposed that 443 00:29:42,680 --> 00:29:45,080 Speaker 1: black holes didn't have to be made of something as 444 00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:49,240 Speaker 1: big as a star. Black holes could actually be incredibly tiny. 445 00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:54,400 Speaker 1: This was news. It's true that anything with mass can 446 00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:56,920 Speaker 1: be turned into a black hole if it's made dense enough. 447 00:29:57,520 --> 00:29:59,680 Speaker 1: If the Earth were condensed to do a black hole, 448 00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:02,719 Speaker 1: it would have an event horizon about as big around 449 00:30:02,760 --> 00:30:07,400 Speaker 1: as your index fingernail. But as far as physicists understand it, 450 00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:10,840 Speaker 1: the Earth could never actually become a black hole because 451 00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:14,440 Speaker 1: it simply doesn't have enough mass for gravity to collapse 452 00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:19,480 Speaker 1: it into that infinite density. It takes a truly sincerely 453 00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:23,600 Speaker 1: massive object like an enormous star to undergo that sort 454 00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:28,560 Speaker 1: of transformation. What Stephen Hawking and his colleagues realized back 455 00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,600 Speaker 1: in the seventies is that there are actually times in 456 00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:35,880 Speaker 1: the universe's distant past, say within trillions of a second 457 00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:40,720 Speaker 1: after the Big Bang, when everything was much much denser, 458 00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:45,200 Speaker 1: and so during this time, something with a mass like 459 00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:48,360 Speaker 1: the Earth's could have collapsed into a black hole back then, 460 00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:53,880 Speaker 1: and much much smaller things could have two, maybe even particles. 461 00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:59,160 Speaker 1: Hawking called these hypothetical particle sized black holes that may 462 00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:03,000 Speaker 1: have formed in the very early universe primeval black holes. 463 00:31:03,920 --> 00:31:08,600 Speaker 1: Today people call them microscopic black holes. In addition to 464 00:31:08,640 --> 00:31:11,240 Speaker 1: his theory that such a thing as very tiny black 465 00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:14,880 Speaker 1: holes could possibly exist, there was another thing that Hawking 466 00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:18,320 Speaker 1: realized that brought our golden age of understanding black holes 467 00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:23,120 Speaker 1: to an abrupt end. It was actually possible for them 468 00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:26,440 Speaker 1: to spit matter out. He said this was news too. 469 00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:29,680 Speaker 1: Our understanding of black holes at the time was that 470 00:31:29,720 --> 00:31:35,680 Speaker 1: they did nothing but consume, ceaselessly, growing eternally. The idea 471 00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,800 Speaker 1: that they could spit stuff back out was pretty revolutionary. 472 00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:43,800 Speaker 1: The idea that black holes could actually radiate energy came 473 00:31:43,840 --> 00:31:48,520 Speaker 1: to be called appropriately Hawking radiation, and Hawking showed that 474 00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:52,760 Speaker 1: a black hole could emit photons and gravitons, the particles 475 00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:58,760 Speaker 1: that carry electromagnetic energy and gravitational energy, respectively. Normally, these 476 00:31:58,760 --> 00:32:01,720 Speaker 1: particles don't have matt mass, they don't interact with the 477 00:32:01,760 --> 00:32:05,480 Speaker 1: Higgs field. But what Hawking figured out is that the 478 00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:09,520 Speaker 1: less massive a black hole is, the hotter the temperature 479 00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:13,200 Speaker 1: of the radiation that it spits out, which means a 480 00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:16,960 Speaker 1: very very tiny, microscopic black hole with a very very 481 00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:21,920 Speaker 1: small mass would actually have extremely hot radiation because its 482 00:32:21,920 --> 00:32:25,680 Speaker 1: mass is so small that radiation could be hot enough. 483 00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:30,360 Speaker 1: Hawking realized that the photons and gravitons the black hole 484 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:35,560 Speaker 1: spit out could actually have mass themselves. And here's why 485 00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:39,760 Speaker 1: temperature is a measure of heat. Heat is a form 486 00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:45,200 Speaker 1: of energy, so high temperature means high energy. And since 487 00:32:45,320 --> 00:32:48,280 Speaker 1: mass and energy are two sides of the same coin, 488 00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:53,760 Speaker 1: E equals mc squared. Remember, mass and energy are theoretically interchangeable, 489 00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:59,440 Speaker 1: which means that heat can be translated into mass. Another 490 00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:01,640 Speaker 1: way you could put it is that if the energy 491 00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:04,560 Speaker 1: of a normally massless particle like a photon or a 492 00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:08,560 Speaker 1: graviton has a high enough energy, it will interact with 493 00:33:08,600 --> 00:33:12,000 Speaker 1: the Higgs field and get coated with mass, and a 494 00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:16,800 Speaker 1: microscopic black hole could produce photons and gravitons with energies 495 00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:21,040 Speaker 1: that high. If Hawking was correct, then that means that 496 00:33:21,200 --> 00:33:24,720 Speaker 1: over time a tiny black hole could actually lose mass 497 00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:28,560 Speaker 1: itself as it spit out photons and gravitons with their 498 00:33:28,600 --> 00:33:32,240 Speaker 1: own mass, and at some point, when the microscopic black 499 00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:36,120 Speaker 1: hole lost enough mass, it would wink right out of existence. 500 00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:40,800 Speaker 1: Black Holes aren't supposed to do this. It seems we 501 00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,120 Speaker 1: didn't understand black holes nearly as well as we thought 502 00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:47,000 Speaker 1: we did. Are comfortable Golden Age came to an end. 503 00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:56,600 Speaker 1: It's about here where the story begins of how cern, 504 00:33:56,920 --> 00:33:59,760 Speaker 1: which actively messes with the mass and energy of particles, 505 00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:03,320 Speaker 1: took up a long time quest to prove that it's 506 00:34:03,400 --> 00:34:08,800 Speaker 1: large hadron collider won't do humanity. Actually, wait, it begins 507 00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:12,760 Speaker 1: a little before the LHC came along. The story really starts. 508 00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:19,040 Speaker 1: In that year was, as far as anybody knows, the 509 00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:23,000 Speaker 1: first time anyone seriously raised the idea that a particle 510 00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:27,680 Speaker 1: collider might be able to end the world. Scientific American 511 00:34:27,719 --> 00:34:31,359 Speaker 1: Magazine published a letter from a reader who wasn't so 512 00:34:31,440 --> 00:34:35,440 Speaker 1: sure that the relativistic heavy ion Collider at the Brookhaven 513 00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:39,920 Speaker 1: National Lab in New York nicknamed the Rick, was entirely safe. 514 00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,920 Speaker 1: The reader was concerned that the rick might produce a 515 00:34:44,040 --> 00:34:47,520 Speaker 1: microscopic black hole, the kind of thing that Hawking proposed, 516 00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:52,640 Speaker 1: when particles collided inside of it. Scientific American published the 517 00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:56,120 Speaker 1: reader's letter along with a response by a physicist named 518 00:34:56,160 --> 00:35:00,200 Speaker 1: Frank will Check, and will Check pointed out classical six 519 00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:03,520 Speaker 1: doesn't allow for microscopic black holes to exist at all. 520 00:35:04,040 --> 00:35:07,759 Speaker 1: That's point one. Point two was that even if the 521 00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:12,520 Speaker 1: theories that include additional dimensions, theories that are beyond classical 522 00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:16,000 Speaker 1: physics and actually do allow for microscopic black holes to exist, 523 00:35:16,520 --> 00:35:19,400 Speaker 1: if those additional dimensional theories turn out to be true, 524 00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,040 Speaker 1: the energies of the particle collisions in the rick were 525 00:35:23,080 --> 00:35:26,959 Speaker 1: still far too low to actually create a microscopic black hole. 526 00:35:27,440 --> 00:35:31,240 Speaker 1: So no worries, Well, there was one worry. At least. 527 00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:34,880 Speaker 1: Will Check did mention that it was much more likely 528 00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:38,120 Speaker 1: the Rick could produce an exotic type of matter called 529 00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:43,279 Speaker 1: a strangelet. Strangelets are heavy particles made of smaller vibrations 530 00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:47,920 Speaker 1: called strange quarks. Despite their heavier size, they're actually lower 531 00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:52,160 Speaker 1: energy than typical strange quarks, which means that the universe 532 00:35:52,160 --> 00:35:55,960 Speaker 1: would prefer them over strange corps. It's just that strangelets 533 00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,759 Speaker 1: tended as all very quickly because of their higher mass. 534 00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:02,839 Speaker 1: The concern over strangelets is that if one of them 535 00:36:02,920 --> 00:36:06,640 Speaker 1: didn't dissolve into elementary particles, it could conceivably set off 536 00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:10,759 Speaker 1: a chain reaction, lowering the energy but increasing the mass 537 00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:14,040 Speaker 1: of the matter that makes up Earth, converting our planet 538 00:36:14,239 --> 00:36:18,120 Speaker 1: and everything on it, including us, into a massive, inert 539 00:36:18,520 --> 00:36:23,120 Speaker 1: dead bulk. Will checks offhand comment at the end of 540 00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:26,560 Speaker 1: his reply set off a separate, years long tangent of 541 00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:30,360 Speaker 1: uneasiness and investigation into strangelets and whether they have the 542 00:36:30,400 --> 00:36:34,399 Speaker 1: goods to pose in existential risk themselves. But at least 543 00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:38,440 Speaker 1: the microscopic black hole terror was put to bed, or 544 00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:42,520 Speaker 1: so it seemed. The terribly disconcerting idea of a man 545 00:36:42,560 --> 00:36:45,719 Speaker 1: made black hole has a habit of winking into existence 546 00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:49,680 Speaker 1: again and again. A couple of years after the Scientific 547 00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:53,560 Speaker 1: American readers black hole question was asked and answered, the 548 00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:57,720 Speaker 1: looming specter of a potentially world ending black hole created 549 00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:01,480 Speaker 1: in a particle collider rose again, like a new universe 550 00:37:01,600 --> 00:37:05,360 Speaker 1: rising to replace an old one. This time the collider 551 00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:09,040 Speaker 1: in question was the Large Hadron Collider, which was beginning 552 00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:13,080 Speaker 1: to be assembled in Europe. This time around, the fears 553 00:37:13,120 --> 00:37:17,120 Speaker 1: weren't quite so unfounded, because the energies of the collisions 554 00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:20,279 Speaker 1: in the Large Hadron Collider are an order of magnitude 555 00:37:20,320 --> 00:37:24,200 Speaker 1: higher than the ricks, high enough, in fact, that if 556 00:37:24,239 --> 00:37:28,200 Speaker 1: any of those multidimensional theories are correct, the LHC should 557 00:37:28,239 --> 00:37:32,640 Speaker 1: be fully capable of producing microscopic black holes inside of it. 558 00:37:32,760 --> 00:37:35,800 Speaker 1: So capable, in fact, that a two thousand one paper 559 00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:40,160 Speaker 1: by physicists Stephen Gettings called the LHC a black hole 560 00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:44,319 Speaker 1: factory and calculated that it could produce a microscopic black 561 00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:49,359 Speaker 1: hole every second it's proton beams were crossed. Now it's 562 00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,520 Speaker 1: here where CERN began its long standing quest to prove 563 00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:55,960 Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider is safe. On the one hand, 564 00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,240 Speaker 1: the idea that the LHC might be able to break 565 00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:01,680 Speaker 1: open the current understanding of the universe and point theoretical 566 00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:05,520 Speaker 1: physicists in a clear new direction is intensely exciting for 567 00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:09,480 Speaker 1: the particle physics community. But on the other hand, CERN 568 00:38:09,680 --> 00:38:13,000 Speaker 1: was much less excited about the idea of everybody else 569 00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,120 Speaker 1: seeing their machine as a black hole factory that could 570 00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:19,880 Speaker 1: end the world. And it's pretty easy to understand why 571 00:38:20,200 --> 00:38:23,360 Speaker 1: the funding for certain at any given point is precarious 572 00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:27,240 Speaker 1: enough under the best of circumstances, they count on public 573 00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:31,000 Speaker 1: funds from multiple nations and work under the threat of 574 00:38:31,040 --> 00:38:34,640 Speaker 1: those funds drying up at any time, and the stakes 575 00:38:34,680 --> 00:38:38,720 Speaker 1: for keeping the Large Hadron Collider funded are very high. 576 00:38:39,200 --> 00:38:42,960 Speaker 1: This is law professor Eric Johnson, who has written extensively 577 00:38:43,160 --> 00:38:46,759 Speaker 1: on the risks that come along with high energy physics experiments. 578 00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:50,480 Speaker 1: It's really hard to downplay the amount of money and 579 00:38:50,520 --> 00:38:54,640 Speaker 1: the amount of professional lives that are involved with the 580 00:38:54,760 --> 00:38:59,560 Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider. Uh. CERN is a multibillion dollar institution. 581 00:39:00,320 --> 00:39:02,920 Speaker 1: UH there's thousands of people who work there and in 582 00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,280 Speaker 1: the field of particle physics. In the field of particle physics, 583 00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:09,919 Speaker 1: there really aren't It's not like everyone's off doing their 584 00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:13,839 Speaker 1: own experiments. Particle physics tends to be dominated by the 585 00:39:13,880 --> 00:39:17,120 Speaker 1: big collider of the day and the data that it's producing. 586 00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:22,240 Speaker 1: And if that collider doesn't come online, then there's nothing 587 00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:25,480 Speaker 1: to study for a whole lot of people. Protecting certains 588 00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:27,840 Speaker 1: enterprise is made all the more difficult by the fact 589 00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:31,120 Speaker 1: that what it is doing is pure science. There's no 590 00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:34,520 Speaker 1: obvious research and development that can be turned into useful 591 00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:37,560 Speaker 1: products that the nations involved can expect to make back 592 00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,879 Speaker 1: some of their investment with instead. The LHC is as 593 00:39:42,000 --> 00:39:45,800 Speaker 1: unadulterated as scientific experiment as you will find on Earth. 594 00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:49,560 Speaker 1: It was designed and built solely so that we can 595 00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:53,680 Speaker 1: better understand the universe in our place within it. A genuine, 596 00:39:54,000 --> 00:39:58,799 Speaker 1: noble public good to benefit all humankind. It can be 597 00:39:58,840 --> 00:40:02,080 Speaker 1: tough to make money off of else. That is not 598 00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:05,280 Speaker 1: to say that the Large Hadron Collider hasn't already produced 599 00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:09,160 Speaker 1: dividends well beyond physics. You could argue and plenty do. 600 00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:12,120 Speaker 1: That's certain paid for itself many times over. Back in 601 00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:15,520 Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties, when one of its computer scientists, 602 00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:19,400 Speaker 1: a British man named Tim berners Lee, created a method 603 00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,320 Speaker 1: for linking text files so that they could be shared 604 00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:28,360 Speaker 1: universally over computer networks. Burners Lee called it the Worldwide Web, 605 00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:33,319 Speaker 1: so that it could protect its funding, calm fears among 606 00:40:33,360 --> 00:40:37,319 Speaker 1: the non scientific public, discover whether the LHC actually is 607 00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:41,120 Speaker 1: an existential threat or all of those things. CERN took 608 00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:44,560 Speaker 1: up its quest to demonstrate that the Large Hadron Collider 609 00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,080 Speaker 1: will not doom humanity, who would be a long and 610 00:40:49,160 --> 00:40:54,400 Speaker 1: circuitous route so at that point cern couldn't rely on 611 00:40:54,680 --> 00:40:58,240 Speaker 1: the not having enough power to produce black Hall's argument 612 00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:02,920 Speaker 1: for safety, and they they acknowledge the need for a 613 00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:08,239 Speaker 1: new examination of hazards, and uh they went back and 614 00:41:08,480 --> 00:41:12,480 Speaker 1: did some new work on that, and then they said 615 00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:18,000 Speaker 1: in two thousand three that Hawking radiation will ensure that 616 00:41:18,080 --> 00:41:21,759 Speaker 1: any black hole that's produced will evaporate almost as soon 617 00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,880 Speaker 1: as it's produced, so that that will be safe. Because 618 00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,520 Speaker 1: any microscopic black holes the colliding particles inside the LHC 619 00:41:29,719 --> 00:41:34,439 Speaker 1: might manufacture would have extremely small masses. Hawking radiation says 620 00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:37,520 Speaker 1: that they would emit particles and lose their mass at 621 00:41:37,520 --> 00:41:43,080 Speaker 1: a blinding speed, winking out of existence instantaneously. Just how 622 00:41:43,120 --> 00:41:46,440 Speaker 1: fast that would happen, called the rate of decay, would 623 00:41:46,440 --> 00:41:50,240 Speaker 1: be a fraction of a fraction of a second, something 624 00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:54,839 Speaker 1: like ten to the negative power of a second, a 625 00:41:54,840 --> 00:41:59,880 Speaker 1: decimal point, followed by zeros, and then finally all the 626 00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:04,320 Speaker 1: way down in the position a single one that fraction 627 00:42:04,360 --> 00:42:09,440 Speaker 1: of a second. In this unimaginably short time, the microscopic 628 00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:12,360 Speaker 1: black hole would have no chance to absorb any matter 629 00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:17,040 Speaker 1: and grow larger. On this infantism le small scale matter 630 00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:20,799 Speaker 1: is just too few and far between, so the microscopic 631 00:42:20,800 --> 00:42:22,960 Speaker 1: black hole would be gone before we knew it was 632 00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:26,799 Speaker 1: ever there, but it would leave telltale traces behind that 633 00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:30,279 Speaker 1: the LHC's detectors could find and show the world that 634 00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:34,279 Speaker 1: there are dimensions beyond our own. But this argument that 635 00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:38,440 Speaker 1: suggests the Large Hadron Collider is safe comes with some baggage. 636 00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:42,040 Speaker 1: Between the time that the research began on the safety 637 00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:46,120 Speaker 1: paper and when CERN released it, the physics community's faith 638 00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:50,360 Speaker 1: in the existence of Hawking radiation was shaken. In the 639 00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:54,480 Speaker 1: early two thousands, the trickle of papers began to question it. 640 00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,879 Speaker 1: It wasn't disproven, just question enough to erode it as 641 00:42:58,920 --> 00:43:01,520 Speaker 1: the kind of thing that CERN could fet the survival 642 00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:06,759 Speaker 1: of the planet on. So CERN looked for another way 643 00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,560 Speaker 1: to show the Large Hadron Collider was safe, and this 644 00:43:09,640 --> 00:43:16,680 Speaker 1: time they settled on cosmic rays. Cosmic rays aren't exactly 645 00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:20,600 Speaker 1: what they sound like. They're actually tiny energetic particles that 646 00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:24,560 Speaker 1: travel at incredibly fast speeds through space and smash into 647 00:43:24,600 --> 00:43:29,440 Speaker 1: other particles, creating a spectacular cascade of energy converted temporarily 648 00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:32,239 Speaker 1: into mass. And if this sounds a lot like the 649 00:43:32,280 --> 00:43:36,400 Speaker 1: collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider, you're absolutely right. A 650 00:43:36,480 --> 00:43:41,040 Speaker 1: particle collider is, if anything, a laboratory for stimulating cosmic 651 00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:44,960 Speaker 1: ray collisions, and because they're so similar, means that since 652 00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:48,400 Speaker 1: cosmic rays bombard everything in the universe all the time 653 00:43:48,719 --> 00:43:51,520 Speaker 1: and have for billions of years, then the fact that 654 00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:56,239 Speaker 1: the universe still exists proves that even if particle collisions 655 00:43:56,280 --> 00:44:00,799 Speaker 1: can create microscopic black holes, that microscopic black holes must 656 00:44:00,840 --> 00:44:06,799 Speaker 1: be harmless, because again, the universe continues to exist. That 657 00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:09,719 Speaker 1: is the cosmic ray argument, and it's the second thing 658 00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,960 Speaker 1: that's certain pinned the safety of the Large Hadron Collider too. 659 00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:17,200 Speaker 1: But there's a problem with the cosmic ray argument as well. 660 00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:22,319 Speaker 1: Cosmic rays aren't exactly like particle collisions inside the Large 661 00:44:22,360 --> 00:44:26,040 Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, and exactness is kind of important when you're 662 00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:28,640 Speaker 1: trying to show the world that your machine won't bring 663 00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:32,520 Speaker 1: about the end of the universe. Cosmic rays travel at 664 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:36,000 Speaker 1: high speeds, yes, but the particles that the cosmic rays 665 00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:40,359 Speaker 1: smash into, say particles in the Earth's atmosphere, are just 666 00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:44,640 Speaker 1: kind of hanging out there. They're relatively stationary, which means 667 00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,600 Speaker 1: that the collisions are a lot like rear end collision 668 00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:52,480 Speaker 1: and most importantly, in a rear end collision, the momentum 669 00:44:52,520 --> 00:44:56,080 Speaker 1: of the faster vehicle or particle carries it and the 670 00:44:56,160 --> 00:45:00,440 Speaker 1: other vehicle or particle careening off in some direction away 671 00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:04,600 Speaker 1: from the site of the crash. This is important because 672 00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:08,240 Speaker 1: it means that if cosmic rays do produce microscopic black holes, 673 00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,799 Speaker 1: the momentum of the crash would carry the microscopic black 674 00:45:11,840 --> 00:45:15,600 Speaker 1: holes away from the collision to most likely they'd pass 675 00:45:15,680 --> 00:45:20,040 Speaker 1: harmlessly through Earth and right out into outer space. The 676 00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:23,720 Speaker 1: problem is in a particle collider, the collisions are different. 677 00:45:24,280 --> 00:45:27,239 Speaker 1: They're less like rear end collisions and more like head 678 00:45:27,280 --> 00:45:30,879 Speaker 1: on collisions, and then a head on collision, the two 679 00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:35,399 Speaker 1: particles cancel one another's momentum out when they collide, they 680 00:45:35,400 --> 00:45:39,080 Speaker 1: don't go anywhere. The upshot of all of this is 681 00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:42,840 Speaker 1: that a microscopic black hole produced by the collision wouldn't 682 00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:46,120 Speaker 1: go careening off away from the impact and into outer space. 683 00:45:46,640 --> 00:45:50,920 Speaker 1: It would be stationary. It would stay put, which means 684 00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,520 Speaker 1: that it would stay put here on Earth. That is 685 00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:57,840 Speaker 1: a problem because if we've already thrown out the idea 686 00:45:57,880 --> 00:46:01,000 Speaker 1: of hawking radiation, and along with it, the concept that 687 00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:04,120 Speaker 1: a microscopic black hole would simply wink right out of 688 00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:07,319 Speaker 1: existence if it was created, then that means that if 689 00:46:07,360 --> 00:46:10,719 Speaker 1: we do create a microscopic black hole in a particle collider, 690 00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:14,359 Speaker 1: it would hang around here on Earth, which means that 691 00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:17,839 Speaker 1: it could possibly grow, which means that it actually might 692 00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:22,800 Speaker 1: pose an existential threat to us. As far as safety 693 00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:27,480 Speaker 1: arguments go, this is decidedly not reassuring, especially considering the 694 00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:30,840 Speaker 1: idea of the two thousand one paper by Stephen Gettings 695 00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:33,760 Speaker 1: that said that the LHC is a black hole factory. 696 00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:38,520 Speaker 1: If that paper was correct, then a new, stable, earthbound 697 00:46:38,600 --> 00:46:42,840 Speaker 1: microscopic black hole is created inside the collider every second 698 00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:48,000 Speaker 1: it's proton beams are crossed. So certain looked again for 699 00:46:48,040 --> 00:46:52,120 Speaker 1: a new way to show that LHC was existentially safe. 700 00:46:53,200 --> 00:46:55,680 Speaker 1: What they needed was something out there in the cosmos 701 00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:59,279 Speaker 1: that was dense enough to have a gravitational pull that 702 00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:02,759 Speaker 1: could hang to do a microscopic black hole. Something that 703 00:47:02,800 --> 00:47:06,759 Speaker 1: could do that would show again simply by existing, that 704 00:47:06,920 --> 00:47:10,920 Speaker 1: microscopic black holes really are harmless. It would show that 705 00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:14,439 Speaker 1: even if the Large Hadron Collider produced a microscopic black 706 00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:17,560 Speaker 1: hole and the Earth hung onto it, there's still no 707 00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:21,960 Speaker 1: cause for concern. It was basically cosmic ray argument two 708 00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:25,600 Speaker 1: point out, and CERN finally found what they were looking 709 00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:32,960 Speaker 1: for in white dwarf stars. A white dwarf is a 710 00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:36,160 Speaker 1: star that's run out of fuel and has partially collapsed, 711 00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:40,320 Speaker 1: so it becomes far denser and exerts a much stronger 712 00:47:40,360 --> 00:47:44,799 Speaker 1: gravity on things around it, definitely more than Earth's gravity. 713 00:47:45,200 --> 00:47:48,480 Speaker 1: So any microscopic black holes that a rear end cosmic 714 00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:51,480 Speaker 1: ray collision could produce would still be stuck in the 715 00:47:51,520 --> 00:47:56,080 Speaker 1: star that wouldn't careen off into outer space. And since 716 00:47:56,080 --> 00:47:59,720 Speaker 1: white dwarfs are bombarded with those cosmic rays, and since 717 00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:03,120 Speaker 1: they enough gravity that they could trap a microscopic black hole, 718 00:48:03,960 --> 00:48:07,320 Speaker 1: then the fact that they continue to exist strongly suggests 719 00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,840 Speaker 1: that microscopic black holes are not a danger. That is 720 00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:16,040 Speaker 1: to say, again, if microscopic black holes even exist. Based 721 00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:19,759 Speaker 1: on astronomical measurements of white dwarfs, CERN found eight of 722 00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:23,160 Speaker 1: them that, in their opinion, were dense enough and old 723 00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:27,000 Speaker 1: enough to sufficiently demonstrate the safety of the large Hadron 724 00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:30,880 Speaker 1: collider certain issue of paper, and it was followed by 725 00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:35,040 Speaker 1: another paper that concluded the first paper was sound, and 726 00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:38,319 Speaker 1: they circulated both papers to the physics community, which in 727 00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,880 Speaker 1: turn provided CERN with quotes about just how sound the 728 00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:45,120 Speaker 1: conclusions of the papers are and just how utterly safe 729 00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:48,720 Speaker 1: they show the LHC to be. Certain included these quotes 730 00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:53,920 Speaker 1: on their website, and that's where things stand today. Classical physics, 731 00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:57,719 Speaker 1: which represents our current understanding of physics, doesn't allow for 732 00:48:57,840 --> 00:49:02,000 Speaker 1: microscopic black holes to form in the place. But even 733 00:49:02,000 --> 00:49:05,440 Speaker 1: if those microscopic black holes could form, so long as 734 00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:08,840 Speaker 1: those eight white dwarfs exist in the sky, Certain is 735 00:49:08,840 --> 00:49:11,319 Speaker 1: willing to bet the whole farm on the safety of 736 00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:17,120 Speaker 1: the LHC. But with physics, our understanding has a way 737 00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:20,960 Speaker 1: of changing. The whole idea of particle physics is to 738 00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:25,319 Speaker 1: discover new things. Particle physics works at the leading edge 739 00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,680 Speaker 1: of human knowledge, at the leading edge of theory. That's 740 00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:30,120 Speaker 1: the whole point of it is to be out there 741 00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:33,840 Speaker 1: trying to figure out something new. So it does evolve 742 00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:37,360 Speaker 1: all the time. And I think it would be naive 743 00:49:37,600 --> 00:49:42,319 Speaker 1: to say that right now this year, we've arrived at 744 00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:44,840 Speaker 1: a point where the theory is not going to change, 745 00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:47,440 Speaker 1: or the assumptions are not going to change, so that 746 00:49:47,520 --> 00:49:51,920 Speaker 1: we can feel satisfied that whatever conclusion particle physicists have 747 00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:56,480 Speaker 1: today about the safety of a particle accelerator that that's 748 00:49:56,520 --> 00:50:12,440 Speaker 1: not going to change m M. By now, you might 749 00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:15,759 Speaker 1: be asking yourself exactly how might a black hole be 750 00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:19,239 Speaker 1: created inside the large Hadron collider? Well, that is an 751 00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:23,160 Speaker 1: excellent question. When you take a little tiny particle like 752 00:50:23,200 --> 00:50:26,680 Speaker 1: a proton, and accelerated to almost the speed of light, 753 00:50:27,120 --> 00:50:30,600 Speaker 1: something very peculiar happens to it. The little amount of 754 00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:33,919 Speaker 1: mass that it has starts to grow, and as its 755 00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:37,440 Speaker 1: mass grows, the stronger the gravity acting on it grows too. 756 00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,280 Speaker 1: A very fast particle accelerated in the Large Hadron Collider 757 00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:46,160 Speaker 1: begins to grow enough mass that it warps the fabric 758 00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:50,440 Speaker 1: of spacetime around it. This warping has the effect of 759 00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:54,560 Speaker 1: concentrating gravity, and in the minute fraction of a moment 760 00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:59,600 Speaker 1: before two extremely fast moving particles collide, they're bent gravity's 761 00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:04,560 Speaker 1: over lap and concentrate gravity even further. The sum of 762 00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:08,279 Speaker 1: all these parts amounts to an unusual amount of mass 763 00:51:08,320 --> 00:51:13,480 Speaker 1: and extremely high gravity concentrated within a very very tiny area. 764 00:51:14,520 --> 00:51:18,080 Speaker 1: All of this together could produce a microscopic black hole. 765 00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:25,279 Speaker 1: Because it would lack the kind of escape velocity that 766 00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:28,399 Speaker 1: a cosmic ray might give it. The microscopic black hole 767 00:51:28,400 --> 00:51:31,040 Speaker 1: would be held fast by the gravity exerted by the 768 00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,520 Speaker 1: Earth's mass. About every half hour, the microscopic black hole 769 00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:39,080 Speaker 1: would oscillate between the LHC and a point on the 770 00:51:39,120 --> 00:51:41,840 Speaker 1: opposite side of the world, somewhere off the coast of 771 00:51:41,880 --> 00:51:46,040 Speaker 1: New Zealand, and back inside the Earth. The black hole 772 00:51:46,040 --> 00:51:50,160 Speaker 1: would grow over time, but exactly how long that process 773 00:51:50,200 --> 00:51:53,840 Speaker 1: would take depends, as does everything, it seems like, on 774 00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:57,480 Speaker 1: the correctness of one of the unifying theories that combine 775 00:51:57,520 --> 00:52:02,320 Speaker 1: relativity with the standard model. One of the things that's 776 00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:06,560 Speaker 1: so unsettling about the idea of Hawking radiation, the theory 777 00:52:06,560 --> 00:52:08,920 Speaker 1: that a microscopic black hole will wink right out of 778 00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:12,240 Speaker 1: existence just as fast as it's created, is that whether 779 00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:16,560 Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking was right or wrong, microscopic black holes still 780 00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:21,000 Speaker 1: pose an existential risk. If Hawking was wrong and there 781 00:52:21,080 --> 00:52:24,520 Speaker 1: is no such thing as Hawking radiation, then a microscopic 782 00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,920 Speaker 1: black hole could stick around and slowly eat the world. 783 00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:31,040 Speaker 1: What would a black hole eating the Earth from the 784 00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,240 Speaker 1: inside out look like, Well, it's hard not to imagine 785 00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:37,560 Speaker 1: a microscopic black hole growing in the Earth's core until 786 00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:40,279 Speaker 1: it emerged on the planet's surface, kind of popping out 787 00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:45,120 Speaker 1: as a gaping bottomless pit that some hapless person wandering 788 00:52:45,120 --> 00:52:48,879 Speaker 1: through the woods might accidentally stumble into. But this isn't 789 00:52:48,920 --> 00:52:51,920 Speaker 1: what it would look like at all. Remember, if the 790 00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:54,840 Speaker 1: Earth itself could be compressed into a black hole, it 791 00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:57,880 Speaker 1: would have an event horizon just about a centimeter in diameter, 792 00:52:58,680 --> 00:53:01,799 Speaker 1: So any microscopic black hole that consumed all of the 793 00:53:01,800 --> 00:53:05,400 Speaker 1: Earth's mass would have an event horizon about the same size. 794 00:53:06,400 --> 00:53:09,440 Speaker 1: A microscopic black hole then would never pop up on 795 00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:13,759 Speaker 1: Earth's surface. It would still be unnoticeably tiny as it 796 00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:18,000 Speaker 1: tore the planet apart. Plus, let's not forget we couldn't 797 00:53:18,040 --> 00:53:21,520 Speaker 1: see it anyway, being a black hole, like couldn't escape it, 798 00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:24,719 Speaker 1: so it couldn't reflect off the black hole's surface, which 799 00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:28,480 Speaker 1: would make the microscopic black hole both tiny and invisible. 800 00:53:29,880 --> 00:53:32,360 Speaker 1: But we would be able to clearly see the effects 801 00:53:32,360 --> 00:53:36,239 Speaker 1: it had as it tore our planet apart. One of 802 00:53:36,239 --> 00:53:38,560 Speaker 1: the defining traits of a black hole is, of course, 803 00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:42,520 Speaker 1: the intense gravitational pull that it exerts on matter around it. 804 00:53:43,239 --> 00:53:47,040 Speaker 1: Black Holes are capable of pulling matter literally apart, and 805 00:53:47,120 --> 00:53:51,000 Speaker 1: as it does, it releases enormous amounts of energy. That 806 00:53:51,120 --> 00:53:55,240 Speaker 1: violence produces extremely high temperatures and all of that hot 807 00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:59,400 Speaker 1: torn apart matter becomes trapped in an orbit around the 808 00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:03,680 Speaker 1: black hole. Eventually that matter falls past the event horizon, 809 00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:09,120 Speaker 1: unable to escape. Particles that the microscopic black hole encounters 810 00:54:09,120 --> 00:54:12,480 Speaker 1: in the quantum world would be among its first victims. 811 00:54:12,960 --> 00:54:15,680 Speaker 1: But as it grows over time, the black hole would 812 00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:19,759 Speaker 1: eventually get big enough to devour whole atoms. And as 813 00:54:19,800 --> 00:54:24,319 Speaker 1: the black hole grows, so too will its strength. The 814 00:54:24,400 --> 00:54:27,200 Speaker 1: more it increases in mass, the more of the Earth 815 00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:30,799 Speaker 1: it will draw into it, pulling Earth apart and into 816 00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:34,160 Speaker 1: that gaseous stew of hot matter that circles around it. 817 00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:38,680 Speaker 1: Over time, the magma, the bedrock, the soil, the lakes, 818 00:54:39,080 --> 00:54:42,759 Speaker 1: the very planet itself would be pulled apart. There would 819 00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:45,080 Speaker 1: be no place left for life to live on Earth, 820 00:54:45,840 --> 00:54:48,919 Speaker 1: which would be a moot point anyway, since every bit 821 00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:52,280 Speaker 1: of life on Earth would be pulled apart as irresistibly 822 00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:56,600 Speaker 1: as the planet itself, drawn into that roiling circle of 823 00:54:56,640 --> 00:55:00,480 Speaker 1: plasma around the black hole, which would slowly feed on 824 00:55:00,520 --> 00:55:16,680 Speaker 1: our planet for a very long time. Under classical physics, 825 00:55:16,719 --> 00:55:18,600 Speaker 1: the time it would take for a tiny black hole 826 00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:21,960 Speaker 1: produced in the LHC to gain enough mass to become 827 00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:25,040 Speaker 1: a threat to life on Earth is longer than the 828 00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:28,120 Speaker 1: current age of the universe, more than thirteen billion years, 829 00:55:29,160 --> 00:55:33,120 Speaker 1: but that time shortens dramatically when new dimensions are added. 830 00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:38,120 Speaker 1: The additional dimensions allow for stronger gravity on those quantum scales, 831 00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:41,560 Speaker 1: which would allow a microscopic black hole to attract and 832 00:55:41,640 --> 00:55:46,279 Speaker 1: consumed particles early in its life much more quickly. Such 833 00:55:46,280 --> 00:55:48,960 Speaker 1: a black hole could destroy the Earth in as little 834 00:55:49,000 --> 00:55:52,360 Speaker 1: as three hundred thousand years, which is a bit alarming 835 00:55:52,840 --> 00:55:56,719 Speaker 1: considering the possibility the LHC has been creating a microscopic 836 00:55:56,760 --> 00:56:00,160 Speaker 1: black hole every second it's been colliding protons to as 837 00:56:00,160 --> 00:56:04,000 Speaker 1: it came online back in two thousand nine. Humanity might 838 00:56:04,040 --> 00:56:06,319 Speaker 1: still very much place a high value on our home 839 00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,360 Speaker 1: planet a few hundred thousand years from now, and prefer 840 00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:13,480 Speaker 1: that it continued to exist. It's probably a good bet 841 00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:16,560 Speaker 1: that our descendants would not want the planet ruined by 842 00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:21,360 Speaker 1: haphazard physics experiments conducted by their ancestors. I imagine the 843 00:56:21,360 --> 00:56:23,840 Speaker 1: rest of life on Earth would have similar feelings on 844 00:56:23,880 --> 00:56:30,719 Speaker 1: the matter too. But what if Hawking was right and 845 00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:34,839 Speaker 1: microscopic black holes do evaporate, It could still pose an 846 00:56:34,840 --> 00:56:39,640 Speaker 1: existential threat because in evaporating microscopic black hole could give 847 00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:42,440 Speaker 1: a low energy vacuum bubble from the Higgs field just 848 00:56:42,560 --> 00:56:45,800 Speaker 1: the boost it needs to grow and ruin the universe. 849 00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:48,880 Speaker 1: If we can rewind back to the moment in the 850 00:56:49,000 --> 00:56:51,960 Speaker 1: LHC when those two particles collided head to head at 851 00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:56,640 Speaker 1: amazing speeds and they're concentrated gravity overlapped, Let's say that 852 00:56:56,680 --> 00:56:59,400 Speaker 1: the microscopic black hole they produced didn't grow up to 853 00:56:59,480 --> 00:57:03,400 Speaker 1: tear Earth apart, but instead it evaporated, just as Stephen 854 00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:08,680 Speaker 1: Hawking predicted. As it evaporated, it could become the nucleus 855 00:57:08,719 --> 00:57:11,960 Speaker 1: for a low energy vacuum bubble to grow, in a 856 00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:14,800 Speaker 1: very similar way to how tiny impurities in a metal 857 00:57:14,840 --> 00:57:18,120 Speaker 1: pot become the places where water can undergo a phase 858 00:57:18,120 --> 00:57:22,320 Speaker 1: transition from liquid to gas within itself. This is what 859 00:57:22,400 --> 00:57:26,080 Speaker 1: we call forming a bubble. An evaporating black hole could 860 00:57:26,080 --> 00:57:29,240 Speaker 1: serve as a nucleation site for the Higgs field to 861 00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:33,040 Speaker 1: undergo a transition from its current state to the lower 862 00:57:33,160 --> 00:57:38,200 Speaker 1: energy version of itself, which again would bring about vacuum decay, 863 00:57:38,240 --> 00:57:42,920 Speaker 1: the ultimate ecological catastrophe, which, again, at the risk of 864 00:57:42,960 --> 00:57:46,320 Speaker 1: restating the obvious, would be very bad for the current 865 00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:50,520 Speaker 1: arrangement of our energetic vibrations. This would not take a 866 00:57:50,560 --> 00:57:53,640 Speaker 1: few hundred thousand years to notice. It would happen so 867 00:57:53,720 --> 00:58:00,160 Speaker 1: fast that we likely wouldn't notice we just suddenly be gone. 868 00:58:02,160 --> 00:58:06,160 Speaker 1: So we have then at least two possible catastrophic outcomes 869 00:58:06,440 --> 00:58:10,160 Speaker 1: from the creation of man made microscopic black holes here 870 00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:13,919 Speaker 1: on Earth. And what's unsettling about them is that there's 871 00:58:13,960 --> 00:58:18,280 Speaker 1: a catastrophe for each possibility. Where Stephen Hawking was either 872 00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:21,720 Speaker 1: right about evaporating black holes or where he was wrong. 873 00:58:22,680 --> 00:58:34,680 Speaker 1: Take your pick. One day in two thousand and eight, 874 00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:37,480 Speaker 1: a bird that lived in the countryside along the border 875 00:58:37,520 --> 00:58:41,440 Speaker 1: between Switzerland and France found itself a bit of crusty bread. 876 00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:46,080 Speaker 1: Around that same time, one of the electrical supply stations 877 00:58:46,360 --> 00:58:50,000 Speaker 1: that cools the Large Hadron collider's magnets with liquid helium 878 00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:54,880 Speaker 1: suddenly went offline. When workers went to investigate, they found 879 00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:59,040 Speaker 1: a bit of crusty bread and some feathers. The press 880 00:58:59,080 --> 00:59:02,640 Speaker 1: reported on it, took liberties with it, and that story 881 00:59:02,720 --> 00:59:07,680 Speaker 1: grew to enormous proportions. Words spread that a single bird 882 00:59:07,720 --> 00:59:11,080 Speaker 1: with some baguette had knocked out the Large Hadron Collider, 883 00:59:11,600 --> 00:59:16,320 Speaker 1: the fastest and largest particle collider on Earth. A pair 884 00:59:16,360 --> 00:59:21,400 Speaker 1: of theoretical physicists named Hulger Nielsen and Massao Ninomia had 885 00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:24,720 Speaker 1: been taking note of the accidents in weird setbacks like 886 00:59:24,800 --> 00:59:27,760 Speaker 1: this that plague the LHC as it was being built. 887 00:59:28,720 --> 00:59:32,320 Speaker 1: They had come to believe that something, possibly God, was 888 00:59:32,440 --> 00:59:36,720 Speaker 1: reaching back from the future two sabotage the Large Hadron 889 00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:41,320 Speaker 1: Collider and prevent it from ever reaching full power. It 890 00:59:41,480 --> 00:59:45,439 Speaker 1: might mean that the LHC would create something, the physicists said, 891 00:59:45,880 --> 00:59:49,480 Speaker 1: that could destroy the universe. They took the bird in 892 00:59:49,520 --> 00:59:54,840 Speaker 1: the baguette as further evidence for their hypothesis. Nielsen and 893 00:59:54,960 --> 00:59:58,920 Speaker 1: Ninomia proposed issuing a challenge to the future to determine 894 00:59:58,960 --> 01:00:01,360 Speaker 1: if we should shut down the Large Hadron Collider and 895 01:00:01,400 --> 01:00:05,760 Speaker 1: abandon it forever. We could present the LHC with some 896 01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:10,200 Speaker 1: luck of the draw, maybe something like ten million cards, 897 01:00:10,360 --> 01:00:13,800 Speaker 1: all of them hearts, except one, just a single spade. 898 01:00:14,560 --> 01:00:16,800 Speaker 1: And if we asked the Large Hadron Collider to pick 899 01:00:16,840 --> 01:00:19,680 Speaker 1: a card, and the Large Hadron Collider picked that one 900 01:00:19,720 --> 01:00:24,880 Speaker 1: single spade, an extraordinarily unlikely event, then the particle physics 901 01:00:24,880 --> 01:00:27,920 Speaker 1: community should take it as a sign that the future 902 01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:32,360 Speaker 1: was communicating a warning to us. Sir, never took the 903 01:00:32,360 --> 01:00:36,920 Speaker 1: physicists up on their card draw proposal. Nielsen and Ninomia 904 01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:40,160 Speaker 1: suspected that the future was trying to prevent the Large 905 01:00:40,160 --> 01:00:44,040 Speaker 1: Hadron Collider from creating a Higgs boson, that particle that 906 01:00:44,120 --> 01:00:48,320 Speaker 1: gives everything that has mass mass. It was widely hoped. 907 01:00:48,800 --> 01:00:51,000 Speaker 1: In fact, it was largely the reason it was built 908 01:00:51,360 --> 01:00:55,000 Speaker 1: that the LHC would produce the Higgs boson, which again 909 01:00:55,080 --> 01:00:58,520 Speaker 1: was the last undiscovered particle predicted by the standard model. 910 01:00:59,440 --> 01:01:02,400 Speaker 1: And in two thousand and twelve, the Large Hadron's computers 911 01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:05,480 Speaker 1: found something that had been created for a fraction of 912 01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:08,560 Speaker 1: a fraction of a second inside the collider that fit 913 01:01:08,640 --> 01:01:12,760 Speaker 1: the parameters for the Higgs boson. There was no catastrophe, 914 01:01:13,400 --> 01:01:16,520 Speaker 1: The world didn't end, and to an extent, the discovery 915 01:01:16,520 --> 01:01:19,920 Speaker 1: of the Higgs frustrated physicists even more since it further 916 01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:24,000 Speaker 1: supported the stubbornly accurate Standard model they've been hoping to break. 917 01:01:25,440 --> 01:01:28,680 Speaker 1: But finding reassurance in the survival of the universe after 918 01:01:28,720 --> 01:01:31,520 Speaker 1: the successful creation of the Higgs boson in the LHC 919 01:01:32,320 --> 01:01:36,880 Speaker 1: is actually a logical fallacy. Specifically, it produces what's called 920 01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:40,480 Speaker 1: the normalcy bias. We tend to assume that because no 921 01:01:40,640 --> 01:01:45,200 Speaker 1: catastrophe has befallen us, yet none will. It's the same 922 01:01:45,240 --> 01:01:48,600 Speaker 1: false belief that drives investors to buy stock based on 923 01:01:48,680 --> 01:01:52,880 Speaker 1: past performance. But any financial advisor worth their salt will 924 01:01:52,880 --> 01:01:55,520 Speaker 1: tell you there is no certainty about the future to 925 01:01:55,600 --> 01:01:58,960 Speaker 1: be found in the past, and so too will a 926 01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:02,600 Speaker 1: particle physicist tell you that. One of the tenets of 927 01:02:02,680 --> 01:02:07,120 Speaker 1: quantum physics is that there is no such thing as certainty. 928 01:02:07,440 --> 01:02:14,280 Speaker 1: We are incapable of certainty. Instead, particle physicists deal improbability. 929 01:02:15,400 --> 01:02:18,280 Speaker 1: As one certain physicist explained it to me, you can, 930 01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:21,040 Speaker 1: for example, take the number of times that a car's 931 01:02:21,040 --> 01:02:24,840 Speaker 1: engine has ever been started and calculate the probability that 932 01:02:24,920 --> 01:02:27,680 Speaker 1: the next time you start your car it won't create 933 01:02:27,720 --> 01:02:31,480 Speaker 1: a chain reaction that ignites Earth's atmosphere. What you have, 934 01:02:31,600 --> 01:02:34,120 Speaker 1: then is what's called the lower bound probability that it 935 01:02:34,160 --> 01:02:38,960 Speaker 1: would happen in an odd, roundabout way. When cars were 936 01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:42,520 Speaker 1: first invented, they actually had a higher probability of igniting 937 01:02:42,560 --> 01:02:46,960 Speaker 1: the atmosphere compared to cars today, simply because fewer cars 938 01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:50,400 Speaker 1: had ever been turned over back then. The large Hadron 939 01:02:50,440 --> 01:02:54,320 Speaker 1: collider is in a similar position with the LHC. We 940 01:02:54,400 --> 01:02:57,280 Speaker 1: simply have a smaller data set from the fewer times 941 01:02:57,280 --> 01:03:01,240 Speaker 1: that it's been turned on. This is in a perfect analogy, 942 01:03:01,280 --> 01:03:04,840 Speaker 1: though there aren't any quantum theories that suggest a car 943 01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:08,080 Speaker 1: could ignite the atmosphere, like there are that suggests the 944 01:03:08,200 --> 01:03:11,480 Speaker 1: LHC might be capable of creating a black hole or 945 01:03:11,520 --> 01:03:15,480 Speaker 1: a strange lit But ironically, the more times we press 946 01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:19,520 Speaker 1: our luck and run the LHC, the lower the probability 947 01:03:19,560 --> 01:03:24,040 Speaker 1: that something terrible will happen. Get the thing is, no 948 01:03:24,040 --> 01:03:26,760 Speaker 1: matter how many times we run the Large Hadron Collider, 949 01:03:27,160 --> 01:03:30,760 Speaker 1: we will never be certain that something terrible won't happen. 950 01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:34,560 Speaker 1: This is the curse of the universe that quantum physics 951 01:03:34,560 --> 01:03:40,760 Speaker 1: carries with it. We are doomed to uncertainty. Eight white 952 01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:44,280 Speaker 1: dwarfs still hang in the sky, but we still can't 953 01:03:44,280 --> 01:03:46,160 Speaker 1: be certain that one of them won't begin to come 954 01:03:46,200 --> 01:03:50,840 Speaker 1: apart tomorrow from the microscopic black hole growing within it. 955 01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:58,680 Speaker 1: It's a matter of faith, faith, and probabilities when it 956 01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:03,040 Speaker 1: comes to the existential safety of physics. Uncertainty curses. All 957 01:04:03,080 --> 01:04:07,280 Speaker 1: of us physicists face a dilemma when they talk about 958 01:04:07,320 --> 01:04:09,600 Speaker 1: the safety of their work to people like you and me. 959 01:04:09,760 --> 01:04:13,520 Speaker 1: The general public. If they speak openly about it, they 960 01:04:13,560 --> 01:04:16,439 Speaker 1: may cause a panic and possibly even undermine their own 961 01:04:16,440 --> 01:04:20,280 Speaker 1: field of research. If they don't, they appear like they're 962 01:04:20,360 --> 01:04:24,840 Speaker 1: hiding something. Here's physicist Daniel Whiteson again. And I think 963 01:04:24,840 --> 01:04:28,080 Speaker 1: the reason is that they don't believe that there's a 964 01:04:28,080 --> 01:04:31,440 Speaker 1: lot of and that there's a lot of numerous e 965 01:04:32,000 --> 01:04:35,880 Speaker 1: in the public and in journalism, and that a nuanced 966 01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:40,320 Speaker 1: position where you're saying, um, there's no none of the 967 01:04:40,520 --> 01:04:45,080 Speaker 1: threats we understand are significant. However, there's a possibility of 968 01:04:45,080 --> 01:04:47,160 Speaker 1: a thing we don't know that we hadn't considered that 969 01:04:47,280 --> 01:04:50,680 Speaker 1: could of course destroy the world, but you know that's 970 01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:55,400 Speaker 1: unlikely and unknowable and so not something to consider. That 971 01:04:55,480 --> 01:04:57,880 Speaker 1: kind of nuanced position, I think it is very difficult 972 01:04:57,920 --> 01:05:01,480 Speaker 1: to convey. So physicis systs may decide that the general 973 01:05:01,520 --> 01:05:05,720 Speaker 1: public can't really understand probabilities, and we'll stop hedging when 974 01:05:05,760 --> 01:05:08,840 Speaker 1: they speak about the safety of their work, erasing those 975 01:05:08,840 --> 01:05:13,760 Speaker 1: remote possibilities of catastrophe and presenting a full certainty that 976 01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:17,000 Speaker 1: particle physics is perfectly safe, that there is no risk. 977 01:05:18,360 --> 01:05:22,040 Speaker 1: This is a dangerous position when it inevitably comes out 978 01:05:22,080 --> 01:05:24,840 Speaker 1: that there is in fact a risk and that scientists 979 01:05:24,840 --> 01:05:27,800 Speaker 1: are well aware of it. Trust is lost in the 980 01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:32,080 Speaker 1: very people who carry out existentially risky experiments, and the 981 01:05:32,120 --> 01:05:36,439 Speaker 1: most sensational and unfounded stories start to gain traction among 982 01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:41,040 Speaker 1: the general public. And it's also directly a dangerous position 983 01:05:41,240 --> 01:05:45,160 Speaker 1: as far as existential risks go, because existential risks are 984 01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:48,400 Speaker 1: by definition remote. They are the risks that get erased 985 01:05:48,840 --> 01:05:52,480 Speaker 1: when physicists speak with certainty about the safety of their work. 986 01:05:53,360 --> 01:05:57,120 Speaker 1: But as you know by now, those same existential risks 987 01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:00,520 Speaker 1: are the ones that can erase humanity should the ability 988 01:06:00,600 --> 01:06:06,720 Speaker 1: surrounding an experiment suddenly skew towards the remote Unexpectedly. Pretending 989 01:06:06,720 --> 01:06:09,640 Speaker 1: those risks are not there is the most dangerous route 990 01:06:09,640 --> 01:06:16,360 Speaker 1: we can take. But scientists who do have the integrity 991 01:06:16,400 --> 01:06:18,880 Speaker 1: to admit that they can't be certain their field doesn't 992 01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:23,640 Speaker 1: pose existential risks frequently find that they're misquoted or misrepresented 993 01:06:23,640 --> 01:06:26,920 Speaker 1: in the media, which can lead to them being ostracized 994 01:06:27,160 --> 01:06:29,840 Speaker 1: by their colleagues for stirring up problems for the field. 995 01:06:30,760 --> 01:06:33,840 Speaker 1: So they may become defensive, which is never good for 996 01:06:33,960 --> 01:06:37,760 Speaker 1: keeping lines of communication open. But I think the experience 997 01:06:37,800 --> 01:06:40,880 Speaker 1: of a lot of scientists is that they say Oh, 998 01:06:40,960 --> 01:06:44,000 Speaker 1: that's very unlikely, but of course possible. And then they 999 01:06:44,040 --> 01:06:46,800 Speaker 1: read an article where they say certain scientists says end 1000 01:06:46,800 --> 01:06:50,280 Speaker 1: of the world possible, you know, and so it's it's um, 1001 01:06:50,320 --> 01:06:52,720 Speaker 1: I think you're right that they're defensive, but I think 1002 01:06:52,800 --> 01:06:56,920 Speaker 1: that comes from some experience and some caution about the 1003 01:06:57,040 --> 01:06:59,880 Speaker 1: level of the discourse in the public arena. It is 1004 01:07:00,040 --> 01:07:02,200 Speaker 1: with this in mind that CERTAIN is to be commended 1005 01:07:02,240 --> 01:07:05,200 Speaker 1: for working to show that the large Hadron collider is 1006 01:07:05,240 --> 01:07:08,520 Speaker 1: a safe machine, even considering that it was a reactive 1007 01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:12,520 Speaker 1: procedure rather than a proactive one. CERTAIN is a great institution, 1008 01:07:12,720 --> 01:07:15,480 Speaker 1: and one thing that I admire so much about them 1009 01:07:15,560 --> 01:07:18,200 Speaker 1: is how open they are. And much of what I 1010 01:07:18,280 --> 01:07:20,600 Speaker 1: was able to do in my research is thanks to 1011 01:07:20,680 --> 01:07:24,120 Speaker 1: them being very open. They're very very open in terms 1012 01:07:24,160 --> 01:07:27,800 Speaker 1: of sharing their data, sharing their papers, being accessible in 1013 01:07:27,920 --> 01:07:30,880 Speaker 1: terms of talking to them. That's part of what makes 1014 01:07:30,920 --> 01:07:34,400 Speaker 1: me admire them so much as an academic myself. I 1015 01:07:34,440 --> 01:07:37,800 Speaker 1: just think that that's a great model for building and 1016 01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:41,960 Speaker 1: sharing knowledge, and it's to their credit that they have 1017 01:07:42,200 --> 01:07:45,680 Speaker 1: looked at these issues with a great deal of transparency. 1018 01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:49,640 Speaker 1: It is extremely important that the physics community follows CERN's 1019 01:07:49,720 --> 01:07:52,560 Speaker 1: lead and its willingness to investigate the safety of its 1020 01:07:52,560 --> 01:07:56,000 Speaker 1: work has their experiments grow more and more powerful in 1021 01:07:56,040 --> 01:08:01,400 Speaker 1: the future. There's a different interpretation to the cosmic ray argument, 1022 01:08:01,520 --> 01:08:05,160 Speaker 1: a more nihilistic one. It says that the presence of 1023 01:08:05,240 --> 01:08:09,360 Speaker 1: cosmic rays doesn't prove that particle colliders are safe. It 1024 01:08:09,480 --> 01:08:12,040 Speaker 1: just shows that our particle colliders can't make anything more 1025 01:08:12,080 --> 01:08:15,440 Speaker 1: precarious than they already are. Turning on a particle collider 1026 01:08:16,040 --> 01:08:20,120 Speaker 1: is safe because we can't turn cosmic rays off, so 1027 01:08:20,400 --> 01:08:22,280 Speaker 1: we're not going to be causing any new danger by 1028 01:08:22,280 --> 01:08:25,000 Speaker 1: turning them on. But what about some decades or a 1029 01:08:25,040 --> 01:08:28,559 Speaker 1: century from now, when our experiments begin to reach levels 1030 01:08:28,600 --> 01:08:33,000 Speaker 1: that exceed cosmic rays. If the Large Hadron Collider is 1031 01:08:33,040 --> 01:08:36,640 Speaker 1: an early incarnation of a long line of particle colliders 1032 01:08:36,680 --> 01:08:39,840 Speaker 1: to come, as physicists hope, there will likely be a 1033 01:08:39,880 --> 01:08:43,519 Speaker 1: point where the energies of future colliders rub up against 1034 01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:47,519 Speaker 1: and then eventually exceed, the energies of cosmic rays, the 1035 01:08:47,600 --> 01:08:50,720 Speaker 1: very same cosmic rays that we use today as some 1036 01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:54,679 Speaker 1: sort of proof that our colliders are safe. And over time, 1037 01:08:54,880 --> 01:08:57,880 Speaker 1: as physicists develop a greater mastery over the rules of 1038 01:08:57,920 --> 01:09:02,880 Speaker 1: our universe, particle colliders may transition into laboratories that physicists 1039 01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:05,639 Speaker 1: use to bend the laws of physics to their will. 1040 01:09:06,800 --> 01:09:10,280 Speaker 1: Those nearly blind pokes and prods into the darkness of 1041 01:09:10,320 --> 01:09:14,439 Speaker 1: our understanding that physicists today carry out are providing the 1042 01:09:14,479 --> 01:09:17,639 Speaker 1: body of knowledge that physicists to come in the future 1043 01:09:17,960 --> 01:09:21,479 Speaker 1: will build upon. And if humanity can survive our infro 1044 01:09:21,600 --> 01:09:24,880 Speaker 1: to physics, a tremendous amount of promise lies in store 1045 01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:28,479 Speaker 1: for us from it. An odd thing about the universe 1046 01:09:28,760 --> 01:09:32,000 Speaker 1: has been bothering physicists for a while now, and it's 1047 01:09:32,000 --> 01:09:35,560 Speaker 1: something that the discovery of the Higgs didn't help. It 1048 01:09:35,640 --> 01:09:38,360 Speaker 1: seems more and more that our universe appears to be 1049 01:09:38,520 --> 01:09:44,520 Speaker 1: finely tuned to allow for life to exist. The Higgs field, gravity, 1050 01:09:44,760 --> 01:09:47,559 Speaker 1: all of it is right within the narrow bounds that 1051 01:09:47,600 --> 01:09:52,200 Speaker 1: allow for atoms, chemistry, and life. When the Higgs boson 1052 01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:55,519 Speaker 1: was finally founded two thousand twelve, it appeared right in 1053 01:09:55,560 --> 01:09:58,960 Speaker 1: the very middle of where it was predicted, as perfectly 1054 01:09:59,000 --> 01:10:03,439 Speaker 1: finely tuned as the rest of the fundamental particles. One 1055 01:10:03,479 --> 01:10:07,080 Speaker 1: answer to the strange situation is that our universes finally 1056 01:10:07,120 --> 01:10:11,240 Speaker 1: tuned for life simply because of random chance. There's a 1057 01:10:11,240 --> 01:10:14,760 Speaker 1: remarkable implication of string theory, one of those theories that 1058 01:10:14,800 --> 01:10:19,160 Speaker 1: seeks to unify gravity with the quantum forces. String theory 1059 01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:21,640 Speaker 1: says that if you take all of the particles and 1060 01:10:21,800 --> 01:10:25,240 Speaker 1: forces and dimensions that the theory predicts, you can come 1061 01:10:25,320 --> 01:10:29,880 Speaker 1: up with ten to the five power different possible combinations 1062 01:10:29,920 --> 01:10:33,800 Speaker 1: among them. If you consider each of those combinations as 1063 01:10:33,800 --> 01:10:37,080 Speaker 1: a set of rules for a potential universe, including the 1064 01:10:37,120 --> 01:10:41,200 Speaker 1: combination that governs our own universe, then you have as 1065 01:10:41,240 --> 01:10:46,000 Speaker 1: many possible universes as ten to the five power. Our 1066 01:10:46,120 --> 01:10:48,800 Speaker 1: universe just so happens to be one with the combination 1067 01:10:48,880 --> 01:10:52,479 Speaker 1: of those dimensions and particles and forces that allow for life. 1068 01:10:53,800 --> 01:10:57,280 Speaker 1: That's the basis of what's called the anthropic principle. The 1069 01:10:57,400 --> 01:11:00,400 Speaker 1: kind of universe where life could evolved is the only 1070 01:11:00,439 --> 01:11:03,639 Speaker 1: type where we would find ourselves wondering about why things 1071 01:11:03,680 --> 01:11:07,400 Speaker 1: seem so finely too fine tuning may really not mean 1072 01:11:07,439 --> 01:11:12,000 Speaker 1: anything at all. By learning about the reality of our universe, 1073 01:11:12,520 --> 01:11:16,160 Speaker 1: physicists will answer questions like this, and when they do, 1074 01:11:16,800 --> 01:11:20,160 Speaker 1: they will be able to do amazing things like predict 1075 01:11:20,200 --> 01:11:25,240 Speaker 1: anything that could possibly happen with absolute accuracy, and perhaps 1076 01:11:25,320 --> 01:11:29,160 Speaker 1: future physicists will learn to construct new universes within their 1077 01:11:29,160 --> 01:11:33,519 Speaker 1: particle colliders grow them from seat. Exactly how we may 1078 01:11:33,640 --> 01:11:36,320 Speaker 1: someday be able to do this has already been roughly 1079 01:11:36,360 --> 01:11:39,479 Speaker 1: sketched out, and now the data must catch up to 1080 01:11:39,520 --> 01:11:48,400 Speaker 1: the theories. To some people physicists creating new universes where 1081 01:11:48,439 --> 01:11:52,360 Speaker 1: life might arise organically, it's actually a dreary sad idea. 1082 01:11:53,320 --> 01:11:55,960 Speaker 1: Any universe we might create in the lab would almost 1083 01:11:55,960 --> 01:11:58,800 Speaker 1: certainly have its own space time, and so it would 1084 01:11:58,800 --> 01:12:02,719 Speaker 1: be totally detached from our own universe, And so those 1085 01:12:02,760 --> 01:12:06,680 Speaker 1: physicists who created that universe would have no way to 1086 01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:10,759 Speaker 1: alleviate the profound suffering that life in that other universe 1087 01:12:10,880 --> 01:12:14,680 Speaker 1: might experience. To people who believe that the purpose of 1088 01:12:14,720 --> 01:12:18,639 Speaker 1: life is to reduce suffering, creating a universe like this 1089 01:12:19,080 --> 01:12:22,960 Speaker 1: would be a profoundly irresponsible act by a creator God 1090 01:12:23,320 --> 01:12:30,479 Speaker 1: with no power to interview. But there is also a 1091 01:12:30,520 --> 01:12:34,160 Speaker 1: tremendous amount of promise in the idea of lap grown universes. 1092 01:12:35,040 --> 01:12:38,960 Speaker 1: Perhaps we will be the life that populates them. Perhaps 1093 01:12:39,080 --> 01:12:42,240 Speaker 1: future humans will be able to grow new universes to 1094 01:12:42,280 --> 01:12:48,120 Speaker 1: move into when our universe begins to expire. Perhaps, unbeknownst 1095 01:12:48,160 --> 01:12:51,240 Speaker 1: to us, those physicists of the future will be carrying 1096 01:12:51,240 --> 01:12:54,559 Speaker 1: out the same kind of experiments that produced our universe, 1097 01:12:55,880 --> 01:13:00,280 Speaker 1: or perhaps they will be creating our universe. For phaps, 1098 01:13:00,320 --> 01:13:02,920 Speaker 1: that is how we will make our escape back to 1099 01:13:02,960 --> 01:13:12,680 Speaker 1: the beginning. Perhaps that's what we've always done. On the 1100 01:13:12,720 --> 01:13:15,360 Speaker 1: next episode of the End of the World with Josh Clark, 1101 01:13:16,560 --> 01:13:20,680 Speaker 1: the future is what's called a transgenerational global commons. We 1102 01:13:20,760 --> 01:13:23,799 Speaker 1: share it not just with everyone alive today, but everyone 1103 01:13:23,880 --> 01:13:26,519 Speaker 1: to come as well. And for the first time in 1104 01:13:26,640 --> 01:13:28,960 Speaker 1: human history, it is in the power of those of 1105 01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:33,880 Speaker 1: us alive to save it or destroy it permanently. And now, 1106 01:13:33,920 --> 01:13:36,400 Speaker 1: if you think about what the existential risk mitigation is, 1107 01:13:36,680 --> 01:13:39,960 Speaker 1: not all that is it the global public good existential 1108 01:13:40,080 --> 01:13:43,720 Speaker 1: risk mitigation, but it's also of transgenerational public good. But 1109 01:13:43,840 --> 01:13:46,760 Speaker 1: to take on the existential risks we face, we will 1110 01:13:46,800 --> 01:13:49,640 Speaker 1: have to overcome our own worst impulses.