WEBVTT - Physics Experiments 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:11.479 Man made black holes, low energy vacuum bubbles, strange lits. 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:14.880 These are some of the ways that an ill conceived 0:00:15.000 --> 0:00:20.480 physics experiment could pose an existential risk, not just for humanity, 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:24.840 but for all life on Earth and possibly for every 0:00:24.880 --> 0:00:29.960 atom in the universe if things go particularly badly. Physics 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:33.080 experiments seem like an unlikely place to find a clutch 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:37.479 of existential risks, but it makes sense. Really. There are 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:40.640 no other branches of science that explores the places where 0:00:40.720 --> 0:00:44.160 something is magic. Is accidentally creating a tiny black hole 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:49.240 could happen. Physics is the purest branch of science. Back 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.599 in the thirties, physicist Ernest Rutherford put it something like 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:58.600 all science is either physics or stamp collecting. Physics, in 0:00:58.680 --> 0:01:02.400 particularly particle physics, is the place where the leading edge 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:06.440 of science explores new frontiers of the universe. It's as 0:01:06.480 --> 0:01:09.839 literal as that. But we are still at an early 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:13.440 spot in our understanding of particle physics, in the place 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.600 in human history where you and I live. Now, those 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:20.280 forays by the leading edge of science are blind pokes 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.640 in the dark, and we face a dilemma because of this. 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.600 We can't understand the universe without poking at it, but 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.399 we can't really say if poking at it is safe 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.840 until we poke it. The idea that particle physics could 0:01:35.920 --> 0:01:39.280 end the world sounds like nothing more than paranoid fantasy, 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:42.759 born from something like fear of science and it's big, 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:47.760 hulking machines that blast invisible particles into one another, but 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:51.600 concerned that dangerous exotic stuff could be created inside a 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:56.640 particle collider come from the physics community itself. Physicists are 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.840 aware that they know enough about physics to build machines 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:03.320 that can simulate nature, but don't know enough to say 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:07.720 for certain just what will happen inside those machines. We 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:10.720 don't know enough to know that those experiments were running 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:15.440 are existentially safe, but we're doing them, pushing the envelope 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:20.160 anyway and hoping for the best. To understand how things 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:24.160 like low energy vacuum bubbles and man made microscopic black 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.240 holes could accidentally be made here on Earth, you have 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:29.920 to know a few things about physics first, and I 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.919 will tell you everything you need to know. To start, 0:02:33.440 --> 0:02:35.079 I'll need you to hold your hand up in front 0:02:35.120 --> 0:02:41.919 of your face. I want you to focus on, say, 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:44.280 the back of your hand. Hold it up in front 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.040 of you. Gaze upon it, kind of lose yourself in it. 0:02:49.080 --> 0:02:52.560 Let your eyes come in and out of focus, so 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:56.320 that your hand becomes the only thing in the world. Now, 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.080 find some little spot on your hand and focus on it. 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:02.920 Let your self be drawn into that spot, drawn into 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:06.520 your hand. As you travel into that tiny point on 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:11.160 your hand, you will grow smaller and smaller and smaller, 0:03:12.160 --> 0:03:15.280 so that you can pass easily through your own skin, 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:21.440 past your bone, and into your veins, further and further inward, 0:03:21.919 --> 0:03:26.240 growing smaller as you descend, shrinking through your blood and 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:30.320 plunging into one of the giant, gummy disc red blood 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.880 cells in it, growing smaller and smaller, so that you 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:38.680 pass right through the cell walls untouched, smaller and smaller 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.600 among the galaxy of a hundred and twenty trillion atoms 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:46.040 that make up a single red blood cell. Plunging into 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:52.160 the electric cloud that envelops one single fuzzy oxygen atom, 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:54.960 you are surrounded by the electrical field, like a fog 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:59.080 that encapsulates the nucleus and binds the electrons to it 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:03.480 A million miles away. Here inside the atom, you will 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:08.280 learn the truth of the universe. Everything looks different than 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.680 what you've always learned in school. There is no atomic 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.960 solar system, with the nucleus as the sun and the 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:19.160 electrons like planets in orbit. The electrons are everywhere and 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:22.920 yet nowhere at once and at the center. There is 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:27.279 no proton, no neutron. There are no particles like tiny 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.080 pieces of matter, like crumbs of the universe. There are 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:36.159 only vibrations of energy. These are the true building blocks 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:39.800 of the universe, the corks and the gluons and all 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:42.880 of the other elementary particles that make up everything that 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:47.039 the material world is built from. You are here in 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:51.560 the quantum world, and now that you look around, you 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:56.040 see that there are vibrations everywhere. All around you, you 0:04:56.080 --> 0:04:59.800 see fields of different kinds of energy passing through each other, 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:04.200 interacting with one another. And within those energy fields are 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:11.120 countless moving, pulsating vibrations. Look back upward, now up from 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.160 your place in the quantum field, pass the atoms to 0:05:14.240 --> 0:05:17.080 the cells and out of your hand. Look up to 0:05:17.120 --> 0:05:19.680 your own face and to the sky and the sun 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:24.000 behind you. All of those things, you, the sky, the 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:29.640 sun are made up of spectacularly complex arrangements constructed from 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:35.320 the energetic vibrations of complimentary force fields, entangled by irresistible 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:39.040 forces until time runs its course for them and their 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.320 arrangement collapses when they break down and travel along their 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.560 fields until they are attracted into some new arrangement. From 0:05:47.560 --> 0:05:50.040 a frog as it dies, to the algae of a 0:05:50.120 --> 0:05:53.599 pond that decomposing, to the belly of a fish, to 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.080 the mouth of a mother, to the iris of a 0:05:56.120 --> 0:06:00.520 newborn child. The cycle of life and death is nothing 0:06:00.560 --> 0:06:04.000 more than the movement of energy along a universe of 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:09.880 force fields. You can see now that everything, every site 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:14.040 you've ever seen, everything you've ever touched, everything you've ever 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:19.240 smelled or tasted, every emotion you've ever felt, all of 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.880 it is made from the interaction of the energy fields 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.760 that make up our universe. Even you, you can see 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.119 now that you are a bundle of discrete vibrations held 0:06:30.160 --> 0:06:34.039 together by attractive forces in the hyperlocal area of the 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:37.680 universe that until a few moments ago you always thought 0:06:37.720 --> 0:06:41.120 of as your body. Pinch your thumb and your index 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:44.880 finger together tightly. The sensation of pressure that you feel, 0:06:45.480 --> 0:06:49.840 there's nothing more than the electromagnetic force pushing back against itself. 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:54.720 Physicists have known all of this for more than a century, 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:57.880 and now you see the true nature of the universe. 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:11.160 Every thing is energy. All of the vibrations in the universe, 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:13.880 and so all of the matter in the universe are 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.480 remnants of the energy left over from the Big Bank. 0:07:17.200 --> 0:07:20.200 Almost every vibration unleashed, and the first trillions of a 0:07:20.280 --> 0:07:23.680 second after the Big Bank came in equal and opposite pairs, 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:27.240 and they canceled each other out. They annihilated each other, 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:32.800 almost all of them, but not all. This is Don Lincoln. 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.800 He's a physicist at Fermi Lap near Chicago. Very early 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:40.080 on in the universe, there was some asymmetry, some little 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:43.200 difference between the two of them. And what happened is 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:48.000 there was a very slightly larger number of matter vibrations 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:52.520 than antimatter vibrations, something to the tune of three billion 0:07:52.840 --> 0:07:56.440 to three billion and one. And then the three billions 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.480 canceled and the one was left over. And that's the 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.800 matter of abrations that are left that make up the 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.440 what we see now in our universe. Why there is 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:09.680 something and not nothing is one mystery that particle physicists 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.560 have run across while plumbing the void. Another is exactly 0:08:13.640 --> 0:08:18.240 where our universe came from. It's looking increasingly likely that 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:21.800 there was nothing that came before that our universe erupted 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.360 randomly from an aberration in an energy field, like a 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.280 bubble of steam rising in a pot of boiling water, 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:32.319 and in fact, the basis of a theory by physicist 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:37.800 Roger Penrose from Oxford University called conformal cyclic cosmology, says 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.400 that this is just the way that universes are formed. 0:08:41.000 --> 0:08:45.800 One bubbles up, lives, dies, and leaves nothing behind but 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:47.960 the remnants of the black holes that formed in it, 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:51.160 which are scooped up in the structure of the next 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.720 universe that bubbles up to replace the old one. To 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:58.120 us living in this universe, such a process would take 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.560 the longest scales of time a man tenable, but to 0:09:01.640 --> 0:09:05.600 someone with a different perspective of time, perhaps watching universes 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:09.240 bubble up, collapse, and bubble up again might be like 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:13.080 watching a pot of water simmer. All of this is 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:16.200 to say that if our universe arose from an aberration 0:09:16.240 --> 0:09:18.760 in an energy field, or from the remnants of the 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:22.680 collapsed universe that came before ours, then it could happen again. 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:27.160 Our universe could be reborn in a different form within 0:09:27.240 --> 0:09:31.240 itself and from a closer look at the Higgs field, 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:35.080 it appears that it's constantly trying to do just that. 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.040 One of the energy fields that make up our universe 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.800 is the Higgs field. It is the field that gives 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:52.880 mass to other energetic vibrations. Without the Higgs field, nothing 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.199 would have mass, which means that the Higgs field is 0:09:56.240 --> 0:09:59.320 the energy field that allows you and all other matter 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:03.920 in the universe to physically exist. Without mass, there cannot 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.360 be matter to be bound together, and without matter, there 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.880 cannot be chemistry, which binds that matter together and creates 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.400 new forms of matter. And so without chemistry there can 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:18.240 be no life, which means without the Higgs field, there 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.880 can be no life, which is one reason the Higgs boson. 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.199 The particle that carries the energy of the Higgs field 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.760 and interacts with other particles, is called the God particle. 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.120 The other reason is that God particle was originally short 0:10:33.200 --> 0:10:36.600 for the God damned particle, which is what physicists called 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.360 it because it eluded them for so long. It seems 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:42.640 a bit heavy, but think of mass is just another 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.160 property that a vibration can have, like how a ball 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.199 can be read, round and bouncy all at the same time. 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:53.800 When you know what properties of ball has, you can 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.840 predict what it will do in any given situation. Like 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:58.959 if you drop the ball, you can say that it 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.000 will probably bounce a couple of times and then roll away. 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:05.480 And since it's red and round, you know what to 0:11:05.520 --> 0:11:07.800 look for when you go try to find it in 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:11.600 the grass to get it again. The same goes for 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:16.800 sub atomic particles too. Their properties, like their electrical charge 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.920 and their mass, let physicists predict how particles will interact 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:25.440 with particles from other energy fields. And since everything is energy, 0:11:25.920 --> 0:11:30.240 if you can understand how every energetic particle interacts, you 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:36.439 can understand everything. And since Einstein showed the world with 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:40.640 his E equals MC squared equation that mass and energy 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:44.160 or just two sides of the same equal sign, you 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:46.680 can just look at mass like it's just another type 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:51.960 of energy, which it is. When a vibration arises, let's 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:55.240 say a cork from the cork field, it interacts with 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.600 the boson from the Higgs field, almost like it's coded 0:11:58.600 --> 0:12:02.240 by it. And now that cork has mass, so it 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.400 can be acted on by other fields like the gravity field. 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.439 These fields, the cork field, the gravity field, the Higgs field, 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.000 all of the fields, they are everywhere, at every point 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:17.080 in the universe. The Higgs is the only field that 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.360 can give mass to other vibrations, and it has another 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.400 unique property too. It is the only field that still 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:28.280 has an energy when it's turned down to zero, which 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:31.800 is surprising. If you could turn down all of the 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.040 energy fields in the universe to zero on some master 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:38.520 universe style, there would be no electrons at all in 0:12:38.559 --> 0:12:42.920 the electron field, no corks, no glue ons, all of 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:47.360 the energetic vibrations would cease, and yet energy would still 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:50.880 persist in the Higgs field. It's like if you turn 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:53.920 down the volume on this show to zero, yet you 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.040 could still make out faint pops and crackles in your headphones. 0:12:57.679 --> 0:12:59.640 It would lead you to believe that there was some 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:03.960 setting below zero that you could turn the volume down to. Well. 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:07.319 Physicists have arrived at the same conclusion about the Higgs field, 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.360 but this opens up an unsettling possibility. If the Higgs 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:16.120 field isn't currently at its lowest energy state, and the 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.520 Higgs field is what gives matter mass, then if the 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:23.120 Higgs field ever slipped into that lowest energy statement, the 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:27.760 mass of everything in our universe would suddenly change. In 0:13:27.800 --> 0:13:33.000 other words, we would all disintegrate. This is theoretical physicist 0:13:33.040 --> 0:13:36.240 Ben Schlayer from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.760 Particle physics and the corresponding chemistry would be suddenly very different, 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:44.560 and in particular, matter would no longer be at the 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:48.240 right size. The different sizes of the atoms that make 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:51.800 up matter are based on the distance between the electrons 0:13:51.840 --> 0:13:54.520 and the outer periphery and the nucleus at the center. 0:13:55.480 --> 0:14:00.920 If electron suddenly got heavier, adams would shrink into smaller size, 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:05.080 which means everything in our universe would suddenly shrink. All 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.560 of the matter around us would suddenly find itself unstable 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.600 to a great shrinking, and as it shrank, it would 0:14:11.600 --> 0:14:15.360 give off a huge amount of electromagnetic energy. So they'd 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:17.719 be an explosion of X rays and that would be 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:22.440 a pretty violent event. Two theoretical physicists, Sidney Coleman Frank 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:28.000 DeLucia determined back in that this new lower energy state 0:14:28.040 --> 0:14:31.800 of the universe would not support chemistry, which means that 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:34.360 life would not have the chance to re evolve in 0:14:34.400 --> 0:14:38.280 this new version of our universe. They called this vacuum 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:42.680 decay and said that it was the ultimate ecological catastrophe. 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.720 But things can actually get worse from there because the 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.160 shrunken universe is denser than it was before. That means 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:54.000 gravity acts on all of the mass throughout the universe 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:59.240 more forcefully, too, so that vacuum bubbles outward. Expansion will 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:04.360 eventually be and then reversed as it's pulled backward, returning 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:08.120 to where it started, like an implosion, forcing all matter 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:13.040 into an infinitely dense, infinitely tiny ball, possibly the very 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:16.840 same place where our universe started from. This is called 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.320 the Big crunch. It's the antithesis of the Big Bang. 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:24.200 Spacetime ends and the universe ends. In a big crunch, 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:31.120 it would be like our universe never happened. That the 0:15:31.160 --> 0:15:34.320 Higgs field has balanced between its current state and the 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:38.000 lower energy version of itself means that it poses a 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:42.160 natural existential risk to us. If it moved into that 0:15:42.240 --> 0:15:45.400 lower energy state, that would be it for not just 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.240 human existence, but for everything in the universe. So the 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:54.880 Higgs field actually poses a universal existential risk for now 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.240 and for the foreseeable future. At least, the Higgs field 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.920 is in a state called meta stable. The good analogy 0:16:02.040 --> 0:16:04.360 is a puddle in a valley at the bottom of 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.240 the hill. On the other side of the hill, say 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:10.480 there's an even lower valley, and the Higgs puddle would 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:13.560 be happy to settle into that lower one. But it 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:16.600 would take a tremendous amount of energy for the puddle 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.600 to move itself up the hill to the other side, 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.000 energy that the puddle doesn't have, so the Higgs field 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:27.720 won't be moving up the hill. But there's another way 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:31.680 that it could slide into that lower energy state. Unnervingly, 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:35.560 the Higgs is constantly trying to tunnel through that metaphorical 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.360 hill to get to the lower valley on the other side, 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:42.440 and this attempt to tunnel through comes in the form 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:47.200 of indescribably small pockets of this other lower energy version 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.920 of the Higgs field that at every moment bubble up 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.800 from it like a simmering pot. But these lower energy 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.520 Higgs bubbles are too weak to overcome the external pressure 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.560 or universe exerts on them, so they wink out of 0:17:00.600 --> 0:17:04.919 existence just as fast as they arise. The trouble is 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:08.040 that if one of those lower energy bubbles ever does 0:17:08.080 --> 0:17:11.160 manage to stick around long enough to stabilize and grow, 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:15.320 it would swallow our universe and bring about that vacuum 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:19.680 decay that Coleman and DeLucia wrote about and disintegrate our 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:23.800 version of the universe. It would be a big crunching deal, 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:28.680 you could say, But probability is on our side. Under 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.480 normal circumstances, the chances of one of those lower energy 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.520 version bubbles growing are so low it's not expected to 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.679 happen over the estimated lifetime of our universe, so we 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:44.600 appear to be in the clear again. Though that's under 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:50.560 normal circumstances. We humans have a tendency to alter normal circumstances, 0:17:51.280 --> 0:17:53.679 and there's a way that the Higgs field campose an 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:58.800 anthropogenic existential threat. A vacuum bubble could grow with the 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:02.639 help of a microscopic black hole, which we might actually create. 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:19.240 Inside one of our particle colliders. Here on Earth, m 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:29.440 about a hundred meters beneath the countryside where Switzerland juts 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:33.520 up from the southeast into France. Above sits the Large 0:18:33.680 --> 0:18:38.960 Hadron Collider, the largest highest energy particle collider in the world. 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:43.879 Hadron is a name for sub atomic particles like protons 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:47.439 and neutrons that are made up of quarks and gluons. 0:18:47.800 --> 0:18:52.120 Those energetic vibrations that make up matter. If you could 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.840 go inside the LHC reduce yourself back again to the 0:18:55.920 --> 0:19:00.800 scale of those energetic vibrations, you would see something spectacular. 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:06.240 The protons in the Large Hadron Collider are created by 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:09.720 passing a laser through a cloud of hydrogen gas, which 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:14.640 breaks the atoms apart. Those stripped protons are directed into 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.480 the LHC's vacuum tubes by an electrical current, and they're 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.200 separated into two beams that are kept apart and sent 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:27.160 in opposite directions around the elliptical collider. Over the course 0:19:27.200 --> 0:19:31.520 of days, the beams are accelerated until they reach unimaginably 0:19:31.600 --> 0:19:38.080 fast speeds point nine nine nine one percent the speed 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:41.359 of light, where a single proton can make the trip 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.200 around the seventeen mile circumference of the collider more than 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:50.200 eleven thousand times in a single second. At these speeds, 0:19:50.440 --> 0:19:53.480 the protons carry with them as much as five trillion 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:58.080 electron volts of energy, an extraordinary amount for something so small. 0:19:58.680 --> 0:20:02.160 It's like a mosquito with the kinetic energy of a planet. 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.160 When the beams are at their highest speeds, they're directed 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:09.040 into each other so that they cross inside of one 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:14.600 of the collider's enormous sensitive detectors. Every second a billion 0:20:14.640 --> 0:20:18.600 collisions take place, and the energy from those impacts turns 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:22.600 into mass, which creates particles for just a fleeting moment 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.679 that we're around right after the Big Bang. So the 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.639 LHC is a way to rewind nature, to study its origins. 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:34.520 To me, it's like I think of using particle colliders 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:37.359 to understand the universe as an exploration. We're like looking 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:39.240 for new stuff and you never know what you find. 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:42.879 You know, this is particle physicist Daniel Whiteson from the 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:46.760 University of California, Irvine, And one strategy we have to 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:49.600 understand these things is just to look for patterns among 0:20:49.640 --> 0:20:52.359 the particles. And the way to look for patterns is 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:54.600 to see more of them. That's the goal of using 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.920 the LHC to explore the universe. We want to find 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:01.400 more particles, get more clues, see sort of a larger 0:21:01.480 --> 0:21:05.639 window into the reality that we're seeing currently, and hopefully 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.920 get some insight. The Large Hadron Collider was first brought 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:13.080 online in two thousand nine after decades of planning and construction, 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:15.920 and it woke up in a world where the field 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:20.159 of particle physics had hit a wall. The LHC was 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:23.760 designed to break through that wall. It was designed, you 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:31.600 could say, to break physics. The work of particle physics 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:34.880 can be divided between two groups. On the one hand, 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:37.720 you have theoretical physicists. They come up with all the 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:41.040 ideas about how the universe might work, and on the 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:45.080 other hand, you have experimental physicists who test those ideas 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:48.639 in machines like the Large Hadron Collider. The work of 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.399 these two groups forms in aura borros, the mythical snake 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:56.640 that eats its own tail. The experimental physicists find support 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:01.040 for the theoretical physicist theories, or they say that they're wrong. 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:05.440 The experimental physicists also come up with new data that 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:09.479 the theoreticians can use to create entirely new theories that 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:14.000 the experimental physicists can then test. As a deeper understanding 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:20.400 of particle physics develops, the snake grows fatter. In the nineties, 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:25.119 sixties and seventies, the theoretical physicists dropped a huge amount 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.360 of new work on the desk of the experimental physicists. 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:33.240 A group of theoreticians wrote down everything science knew about 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.000 the quantum world and What they came up with is 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:39.320 a set of formulae known as the Standard Model of 0:22:39.400 --> 0:22:43.680 particle physics. Over the decades, the Standard Model has been 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:48.600 proven correct again and again. The Standard Model does a 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.439 really good job at describing the particles that exist in 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:54.919 the quantum world and the forces that govern them. The 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:58.880 strong nuclear force binds protons and neutrons into the nucleus 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:02.320 of an atom. The weak nuclear force causes atoms to 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:07.520 decay over time. The electromagnetic force binds atoms together into 0:23:07.600 --> 0:23:10.600 higher structures like you and meat, and the sun, and 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:15.000 mosquitoes and red blood cells. Every particle that the Standard 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:18.879 Model predicted should exist by now has been discovered. It is, 0:23:18.920 --> 0:23:23.240 as scientists put it, an extremely reliable model to describe 0:23:23.240 --> 0:23:26.720 the quantum world. The last of the bunch was the 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:30.560 Higgs boson, which the LHC found in two thousand twelve, 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:36.280 and with that discovery the experimental physicists exhausted the theoreticians 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:40.399 standard model. But as good as the Standard Model is, 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:44.320 as reliable as it is, it's been incomplete from the 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:49.840 very beginning. It has no place for gravity, and vice versa. 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:55.119 With Einstein's famous theory of relativity. It's proven extremely reliable 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:58.399 at describing how gravity governs the interaction of large scale 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:03.480 things like people and planets. But the other three fundamental forces, 0:24:03.480 --> 0:24:07.440 electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces don't fit 0:24:07.480 --> 0:24:11.240 into the equation partum field theory. It really doesn't deal 0:24:11.680 --> 0:24:14.720 with the universe as a whole, and it's well known 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:18.280 that general relativity does not merge in mill well with 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:21.679 a quantum realm. So what physics has on its hands 0:24:21.680 --> 0:24:25.240 are the standard model and the theory of relativity too 0:24:25.440 --> 0:24:30.119 totally accurate but totally incomplete pictures of the universe that 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:34.119 won't fit together to form a cohesive whole. It's almost 0:24:34.200 --> 0:24:38.680 like they repel one another. Particle. Physicists built the large 0:24:38.680 --> 0:24:42.240 hay Drown Collider to figure out why that is. They 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:46.120 hope that the incredibly high energy collisions will produce new 0:24:46.160 --> 0:24:49.920 particles that don't fit into the standard model to show 0:24:49.920 --> 0:24:53.800 where physics should start looking next. One of the biggest 0:24:53.840 --> 0:24:57.399 mysteries of all that physicists are hoping to solve is 0:24:57.480 --> 0:25:00.680 why gravity is so weak compared to the other three 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:05.560 fundamental forces. It's strange. Gravity is the force that keeps 0:25:05.600 --> 0:25:09.400 planets in orbit around massive stars and can catch light 0:25:09.480 --> 0:25:12.120 by the ankles and prevent it from escaping a black hole. 0:25:12.920 --> 0:25:16.280 Yet the other three forces are stronger, and you can 0:25:16.280 --> 0:25:18.720 see this for yourself if you just lay a paper 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:22.200 clip on a countertop and hold a regular old refrigerator 0:25:22.240 --> 0:25:25.480 magnet over it. As you bring the magnet closer, the 0:25:25.520 --> 0:25:28.800 paper clip will eventually rise to meet and stick to it. 0:25:29.520 --> 0:25:32.880 What you've just seen is the electromagnetic force and that 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:37.800 tiny magnet overcoming the gravitational force exerted by the entire 0:25:37.920 --> 0:25:44.600 mass of planet Earth. Like I said, strange. To make 0:25:44.640 --> 0:25:47.560 sense of this, and to unify relativity in the standard 0:25:47.600 --> 0:25:51.399 model into a theory of everything, some physicists have taken 0:25:51.440 --> 0:25:55.760 to adding new dimensions to our universe. Some models see 0:25:55.760 --> 0:25:59.920 our four dimensional world of length, with height and time 0:26:00.680 --> 0:26:04.760 as just a tiny membrane floating within an infinitely larger 0:26:04.840 --> 0:26:09.320 fifth dimension that we can't sense, called the bulk. Others 0:26:09.359 --> 0:26:12.600 include as many as eleven total dimensions, most of which 0:26:12.640 --> 0:26:16.760 are curled up into extremely tiny coils at the corners 0:26:16.920 --> 0:26:21.160 of every point in the fabric of spacetime. These models 0:26:21.200 --> 0:26:24.679 explain why gravity is so weak by allowing it to 0:26:24.960 --> 0:26:29.560 spread across all of the dimensions. The other three forces, 0:26:29.560 --> 0:26:33.159 like us are trapped within our four D world, but 0:26:33.240 --> 0:26:36.439 gravity is not. And if we could sense all five 0:26:36.640 --> 0:26:40.160 or eleven, or however many dimensions there are, we would 0:26:40.240 --> 0:26:43.400 see that gravity has the same strength as the other 0:26:43.400 --> 0:26:47.040 three forces. It just seems weak to us because it's 0:26:47.080 --> 0:26:51.880 diluted by comparison inside our four D world. So one 0:26:51.880 --> 0:26:55.240