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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how much did the last particle accelerator cost?

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Speaker 1: The LHC had a price tag of about ten billion dollars? Oh?

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Speaker 1: Is that it? And how much will the next one cost?

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Speaker 1: Something like fifty to one hundred billion, depending on the design.

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Speaker 1: Fifty to one hundred you can narrow it down a

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Speaker 1: little bit. It's a fifty billion dollars difference there, and

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Speaker 1: we'd be happy with fifty billion, thank you very much.

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Speaker 1: I guess who's going to pay for it? We were

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Speaker 1: going to send a request to the cartoonists of the world.

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Speaker 1: You want cartoonists to pay for physics? You'd be the

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Speaker 1: other way around. I feel like I guess we are

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Speaker 1: constantly violating the laws of physics in cartoons, so why

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Speaker 1: would you pay us? You guys are just rolling in it,

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Speaker 1: aren't you? Rolling in? Some But maybe you should scale

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Speaker 1: down your ambitions so it's not as expensive. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we want to solve the deepest mysteries of the universe.

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Speaker 1: How do you scale down those ambitions? Isn't that kind

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Speaker 1: of your job? Things? Putting things into perspective, shrinking down

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Speaker 1: thanks to the quantum level, and I want to scale

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Speaker 1: our ten billion dollar budget to one hundred billion dollars

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Speaker 1: in quantum coins or what in bitcoins or cue bitcoins.

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Speaker 1: There's definitely a lot of uncertainty in whether we'll ever

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Speaker 1: get that money, both the scam and legit kind of currency.

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Speaker 1: Hi am Jorhemakirtiness and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at

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Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I want all the science projects to

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Speaker 1: get more money, really all of them. I'm sure there

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Speaker 1: are some science projects you're like, M, I don't know

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Speaker 1: if we should do that. As long as they qualify

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Speaker 1: as science projects, I think we should invest in them.

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Speaker 1: You know, the big government funding agencies. They get inundated

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Speaker 1: in proposals every year, and a lot of them are

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Speaker 1: really good ideas that they have to say no too

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Speaker 1: because they don't have enough money. Yeah, that is pretty sad.

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Speaker 1: There should be more money for science, right. Science is

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Speaker 1: usually good, usually right, and your also are pretty good

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Speaker 1: at doing something good. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're

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Speaker 1: studying the mating patterns of ducks or the formation of

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Speaker 1: the Earth or what's inside black hole. You are feeding

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Speaker 1: the curiosity of humanity, and history shows us that that

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Speaker 1: is a good investment. So sometimes people pitch scientists against

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Speaker 1: other scientists, saying like who should get this money? But

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Speaker 1: I think we should all get the money, even the cartoonists.

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Speaker 1: The science of cartoons. I guess that's a different agency

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Speaker 1: in the government. But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel

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Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio in

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Speaker 1: which we use science to try to push back the

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Speaker 1: boundaries of human ignorance. We are amazed at this incredible

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Speaker 1: and wonderful and beautiful universe that we find ourselves in,

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Speaker 1: but we want to do more than just appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: We want to understand it. We want to decode its

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Speaker 1: mysteries and explain all of them to you. That's right.

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Speaker 1: It is a pretty amazing universe. And if you invest

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Speaker 1: in our of your time here with us today, we

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Speaker 1: hopefully we'll give your returns in terms of you understanding

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Speaker 1: how things work and appreciating this amazing and beautiful cosmos

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Speaker 1: that we live in. That's right. Although you're welcome to

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Speaker 1: invest more than just an hour of your time. Send

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Speaker 1: us some cash, no problem. Do you take bitcoins or

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Speaker 1: cue bitcoins, Hey, I'll take any donations from my science

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Speaker 1: absolutely make out a check just too expressive, Daniel. Have

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Speaker 1: you thought of maybe if you reduce your prices, people

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Speaker 1: will invest more in it. I would love to make

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Speaker 1: science cheaper. You know, something that limits our understanding the

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Speaker 1: universe is really just how much money we spend on it.

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Speaker 1: It's like we're in the science candy store and we

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Speaker 1: just have pennies in our pockets. But if we could

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Speaker 1: figure out a way and make it all cheaper than wow,

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Speaker 1: we could just buy more secrets of the universe. What

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Speaker 1: a day that would be. Yeah, it sounds awesome, although

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Speaker 1: they say it all starts with the individuals, Daniel. So

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Speaker 1: you know, should we tell your university to cut your

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Speaker 1: salary so I should do half as much physics? Well,

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Speaker 1: you know you could do twice as much for half

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Speaker 1: the price. Yeah, and then I'll eat half as much. Right, Sorry, kids,

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Speaker 1: you're not eating today. It's a Tuesday, and it's for science,

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Speaker 1: so you could do it too. For Yeah, you could

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Speaker 1: do a hunger experiment and also make size cheaper. For

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Speaker 1: you know, the mating patterns of certain animals in certain places.

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Speaker 1: Sounds like we could learn a lot, but learn we

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Speaker 1: do aim to do here on the podcast and so

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Speaker 1: there's the rest of humanity in terms of understanding the universe,

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Speaker 1: from the immense galaxies out there floating in space to

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Speaker 1: the tiny little particles that make up your body and

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Speaker 1: everything that you touch on an everyday basis. That's right,

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Speaker 1: and we have a few ways of understanding the universe.

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Speaker 1: One thing we can do is just look out into

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Speaker 1: the universe and find interesting stuff that's happening and try

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Speaker 1: to learn from it. That's what astrophysicists have to do,

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Speaker 1: because as much as they want to shoot black holes

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Speaker 1: at each other, they don't have a black hole collider,

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Speaker 1: so they have to wait for nature to set up

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Speaker 1: and do it for them. The other approach, of course,

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Speaker 1: is to try to create the conditions we want to

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Speaker 1: study here on Earth, to set up the experiments that

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Speaker 1: might force the universe to reveal one of its secrets

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Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, and one of those strategies is to

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Speaker 1: basically smash things together, is to collide tiny little particles

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Speaker 1: and kind of see how you can break them. I

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Speaker 1: guess that's kind of what you're trying to do, right,

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Speaker 1: is you're trying to break little particles. Yeah, we are

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Speaker 1: trying to break little particles. Essentially, we are trying to

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Speaker 1: create new conditions that reveal the laws of physics. You know,

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Speaker 1: we have a lot of experience with sort of slow

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Speaker 1: moving cold stuff like baseballs flying through the air or

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Speaker 1: things swimming through the ocean. Things aren't moving very very fast,

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Speaker 1: they don't have a whole lot of energy. So we

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Speaker 1: think we understand that kind of physics. But we want

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Speaker 1: to understand the physics of the whole universe. We want

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Speaker 1: to understand what happens when you push things really really far,

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Speaker 1: when you get really really small. And in order to

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Speaker 1: do that, we have to create those conditions. So we

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Speaker 1: smash tiny particles together to make these really dense little

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Speaker 1: blobs of energy that we hope reveal what the sort

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Speaker 1: of underlying truths of the universe is. I guess, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you're not really trying to break particles. You're trying to

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Speaker 1: kind of smush them together and then see what the

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Speaker 1: universe does with that smooth the energy. Yeah, when particles

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Speaker 1: get really close together, they interact, and that interaction can

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Speaker 1: create new kinds of particles. One of the most amazing

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Speaker 1: things about particle collisions is that it's not like chemistry.

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Speaker 1: When you're doing chemistry, you combine like H two and

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Speaker 1: O two to make water. All the bits that went

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Speaker 1: in just get rearranged. Right, Every hydrogen nucleus that was

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Speaker 1: there is still there. Every oxygen atom that was there

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Speaker 1: is still there. But when we do particle collisions, that's

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Speaker 1: not what happens. What comes out of the collisions, it's

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Speaker 1: not just like a rearrangement of the bits that went

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Speaker 1: in like some big Lego project. Those particles that go

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Speaker 1: into the collisions, they get literally annihilated and turned into

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Speaker 1: new kinds of matter. So we're not doing chemistry. We're

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Speaker 1: doing alchemy. Although that's kind of what you think is happening, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: you don't know, you're not quite sure. Maybe inside of

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Speaker 1: those little tiny particles are tiny little strength that do

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Speaker 1: get kind of rearranged like legos. Isn't that a possibility? Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: that's right. There are many layers to our picture of

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Speaker 1: the universe. Currently, we think about the particles that are

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Speaker 1: interacting those quarks and the electrons as if they are

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Speaker 1: fundamental objects. But it certainly might be that they are emerging,

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Speaker 1: that there are combinations of even smaller things, and so

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Speaker 1: then what it means to annihilate that particle is in fact,

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Speaker 1: to break it into its smaller components, which then can

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Speaker 1: rearrange themselves. But if we can do that, then we

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Speaker 1: hope to smash those components together and maybe annihilate them,

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Speaker 1: and eventually we think when you get down to the

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Speaker 1: universe and its most basic building block, what you're really

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Speaker 1: doing is annihilation of fundamental objects. So you're an annihilist

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Speaker 1: at heart, you're an annihilist physicist, I am an annihilist, absolutely, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you subscribe to annihilism. Hey, at least it's an ethos, right,

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Speaker 1: you should come up with your own kind of a

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Speaker 1: punk rock music for that. But smashing these things together,

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Speaker 1: I guess it's one thing that you can learn how

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Speaker 1: things work, because I guess when things are that small,

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Speaker 1: you can't take a pair of tweezers and pry them open, right, Like,

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Speaker 1: That's kind of the only way you can really see

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Speaker 1: what's inside of some of these fundamental particles. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: you really put your finger there on what we're trying

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Speaker 1: to do. We're trying to see inside these particles. I mean,

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Speaker 1: from one perspective, you could say you're annihilating them. From

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Speaker 1: another perspective, you could say you're tearing them open. You're

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Speaker 1: destroying the arrangement of whatever the smaller bits are, that

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Speaker 1: is the electron or the quark. In the end, what

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Speaker 1: we're trying to do is pull them apart, and fundamentally,

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Speaker 1: it's not that different from using tweezers. What do tweezers do.

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Speaker 1: They apply a lot of force in one's very specific

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Speaker 1: energy in order to break some bonds, and that's exactly

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Speaker 1: what we're trying to do with these particles. We smash

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Speaker 1: one proton against the other one, hoping that the high

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Speaker 1: energy that the proton has will smash open the other proton,

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Speaker 1: revealing what's inside of it, and maybe even the quark

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Speaker 1: smashing together will reveal what's inside of them. Well, smashing

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Speaker 1: you have been doing at the Large Hadron collider or

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Speaker 1: you were right now you have sort of an appointment there,

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Speaker 1: that's right. My main research program when I'm not gooving

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Speaker 1: off doing podcasts or other projects, is annihilating protons at

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Speaker 1: the Large Hadron collider. I'm remember the Atlas experiment, which

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Speaker 1: has built a huge electronic device which wraps around the

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Speaker 1: point of collisions to take pictures of all the particles

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Speaker 1: that fly out and try to learn things about what

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Speaker 1: happened in all of those collisions. Yeah, And the whole

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Speaker 1: point of the accelerator is to basically accelerate particles. You're

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Speaker 1: speeding up the particles from standing still to almost at

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Speaker 1: the speed of light, or at least at a very

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Speaker 1: high velocity, and then you smash it together to get

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Speaker 1: higher and higher energies. But I guess maybe the problem

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Speaker 1: is that the LHC is kind of showing its age

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Speaker 1: now a little bit. Yeah, that's right. The LHC is big,

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Speaker 1: and it's powerful, and it was expensive, but it's also

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Speaker 1: limited in its ability. The way we talk about these

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Speaker 1: accelerators is basically by quoting their top speed the most

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Speaker 1: energy that we can put into the particles that we're

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Speaker 1: smashing together. The reason that that's the most interesting number,

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Speaker 1: the one that really tells us like the discovery potential

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Speaker 1: of this device, is because it limits the kind of

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Speaker 1: things that it can create. Like, you take those two particles,

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Speaker 1: you smash them together. What else can you make? Well,

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Speaker 1: you might be able to have two other electrons come out,

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Speaker 1: or two other quarks, or something else we already know about.

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Speaker 1: But if you have enough energy, you might be able

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Speaker 1: to build something new. Something we haven't seen before because

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Speaker 1: it requires more energy density than typically exists in the universe.

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Speaker 1: So the more energy you have in your collider, the

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Speaker 1: more you have access to like Nature's hidden menu of particles,

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Speaker 1: things that can exist in the universe but don't typically

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Speaker 1: because there aren't the conditions to make them. So the

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Speaker 1: LATEC is big and it's powerful, but it doesn't have

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Speaker 1: infinite energy. Yeah. Well, at the time it was built,

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Speaker 1: it did sort of break I mean, it definitely broke

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Speaker 1: new ground in terms of how much energy you could

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Speaker 1: get in an experiment. But I guess you random LAC

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Speaker 1: and it found the exploson and all these amazing discoveries,

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Speaker 1: and now you're kind of thinking about what's next, how

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Speaker 1: can we get more energy? Yeah, we're always thinking about

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Speaker 1: what's next. The collider that came just before the LATEC

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Speaker 1: was just outside Chicago is the Tevatron about two terra

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Speaker 1: electron volts and the Large Hadron Collider has about thirteen

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Speaker 1: tera electron volts. And that's a big jump, right, that's

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Speaker 1: like almost a factor of seven in terms of the

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Speaker 1: territory we could explore and imagine, for example, multiplying the

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Speaker 1: territory you've explored by a factor of seven. If you're

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Speaker 1: in the field of like geology or planetary astronomy, you've

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Speaker 1: only ever looked at Earth, and now you can simultaneously

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Speaker 1: land on seven new planets all at the same time

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Speaker 1: and see what's there and learn all about it. So

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Speaker 1: when we turned on the Large Hadron Collider, it's like

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Speaker 1: we multiplied by a factor of seven the sort of

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Speaker 1: size of the particle universe that we were able to

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Speaker 1: explore and to look at, and we didn't know what

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Speaker 1: was there. Every time we do these kinds of explorations,

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Speaker 1: there could be huge surprises waiting for us, or sort

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Speaker 1: of nothing. And as you say, we found the Higgs boson,

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Speaker 1: but we've been running for quite a few years and

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Speaker 1: we haven't found anything else since then. Now we're wondering, like, hmm,

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Speaker 1: what's around the next corner if we crack open another

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Speaker 1: energy range, will there be for easy discoveries waiting for us,

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Speaker 1: or just more dust and rubble. Yeah, So the LC

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Speaker 1: sort of got you to a certain level, which was amazing,

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Speaker 1: But I guess you feel like you've already explored this level.

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Speaker 1: You've looked into every corner of this energy level, and

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Speaker 1: you're kind of feeling like there's nothing else here. That's

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Speaker 1: a very delicate political question as we seek approval for

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Speaker 1: running the large changer on cloder for another fifteen years,

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Speaker 1: because we're trying to make the science case that running

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Speaker 1: it for a lot longer can look for really rare

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Speaker 1: particles that maybe we missed in sort of the first scoop.

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Speaker 1: So we're sort of going in two directions at once.

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Speaker 1: One group of people is like, let's run this thing

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Speaker 1: for as long as possible and maybe look for really

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Speaker 1: rare stuff we might have missed, and the other group

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Speaker 1: is looking towards the future and saying, can we build

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Speaker 1: the next one? Can we plan now for the super LHC?

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Speaker 1: The super LHC nice sounds like a like a superhero. Well,

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Speaker 1: I guess the problem is that the LC was it's big,

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Speaker 1: and it was a little expensive. But now if you

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Speaker 1: want to get into higher energies, it gets even bigger

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Speaker 1: and more expensive, right with the same technology it does. Basically,

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Speaker 1: the only thing that limits us from building a bigger accelerator,

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Speaker 1: or from having built one instead of the LATEC is money.

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Speaker 1: The cost of the accelerator just scales with the size,

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Speaker 1: sort of like building a highway. It's like a million

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Speaker 1: dollars per mile. More miles means some more millions of dollars.

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Speaker 1: So you want more energy, you've got to build a

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Speaker 1: bigger collider, which costs more money. And so now people

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Speaker 1: are wondering, like, should we just spend ten times as

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Speaker 1: much money on a super duper version of this or

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Speaker 1: should we figure out a cheaper way to do it? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because I guess, first of all, you'll know that I say,

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Speaker 1: with the existing technology, it's going to be a bigger

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Speaker 1: and more expensive and also I don't think most scientists

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Speaker 1: are going to cut their salary and have it makes

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Speaker 1: a cheaper endeavor. So I guess, like you said, we

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Speaker 1: have to start looking at maybe new technologies. So today

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Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question, is there

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Speaker 1: a better way to accelerate particles? I guess that you've

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Speaker 1: been using one way to accelerate particles all this time

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Speaker 1: or several ways. Right, We've been accelerating particles since about

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Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and we've had a series of sort

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Speaker 1: of technological revolutions. People come up with a new idea

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Speaker 1: to make them more powerful, and we get like a

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Speaker 1: big jump in energy we're sort of at the end

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Speaker 1: of one of those cycles. We've been doing it the

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Speaker 1: same way for a few decades now, and we can

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Speaker 1: get sort of like little incremental increases without just making

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Speaker 1: it bigger, and so it sort of feels like about

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Speaker 1: the time that we need to jump to the next

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Speaker 1: technology and figure out like a whole new way to

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Speaker 1: do this kind of thing. Yeah, like, if maybe the

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Speaker 1: engineers figure out a better way to get particles moving,

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Speaker 1: you could maybe make accelerators that are at the same

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Speaker 1: energy or more but a lot cheaper, right, That's the

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Speaker 1: whole point, And maybe eventually you'll just have it on

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Speaker 1: your phone. Eventually there's an app for that, perhaps for

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Speaker 1: shooting lightspeed particles from your phone. That seems usable. Well,

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Speaker 1: you do have a light speed accelerator on your phone

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Speaker 1: right now, I mean you have a flashlight literally shoots

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Speaker 1: out particles at light speed. Unfortunately not high enough energy

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Speaker 1: to do any interesting physics. But yeah, the dream is like,

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Speaker 1: instead of having to collaborate with five thousand people from

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Speaker 1: all over the world on a ten billion dollar project,

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Speaker 1: why can't I just build this thing on a tabletop

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Speaker 1: in my own basement or in my lab here at

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Speaker 1: you see Irvine for two hundred thousand dollars or something

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Speaker 1: and run my own experiments. Why can't everybody have their

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Speaker 1: own plank scale particle collider to explore the nature of

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Speaker 1: the universe? Well, I can't, and why shouldn't have? But

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Speaker 1: that's not the topic today. The topic is can that happen? Like,

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Speaker 1: can you imagine a future where you can have a

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Speaker 1: particle collider that's as powerful as the LHC, which is huge,

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Speaker 1: which is several kilometers along and underground. Can you maybe

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Speaker 1: have that in like a little box in your basement.

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Speaker 1: It's such a dream. I mean, imagine all of the

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Speaker 1: secrets we could learn, those secrets that are just out

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Speaker 1: there waiting for us if we only have the technology

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Speaker 1: to crack them open. It's like we're in a room

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Speaker 1: surrounded by locked boxes and we just don't have the

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Speaker 1: key to any of them. You need engineers to save

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Speaker 1: users say, we definitely do need the engineers working closely

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Speaker 1: with a physicist to figure this all out. Well, it's

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Speaker 1: usually we were wondering how many people have thought about

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Speaker 1: this question of whether or not there's maybe a better

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Speaker 1: way to accelerate particles. So thank you to everybody who

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Speaker 1: answers these questions for the podcast to give us a

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Speaker 1: sense for what people are thinking and what they already know.

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Speaker 1: If you'd like to participate for a future episode, please

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Speaker 1: don't be shy. Right to meet two questions at Daniel

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Speaker 1: Nhorge dot com. So think about it for a second.

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Speaker 1: Do you think there's a better way to accelerate particles.

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Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. My understanding of current

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Speaker 1: method is that we apply electromagnetic field to accelerate a particle,

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Speaker 1: and then they are propelled in high velocities in a tunnel.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there is any other way that

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Speaker 1: this could be done. There must be, of course, but

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Speaker 1: I don't think it will be that control and this

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Speaker 1: might be more physical when I have no clue how

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Speaker 1: that can be done well right away, I think about

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Speaker 1: the fact that particles go to incredible speeds when they're

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Speaker 1: orbiting a black hole in the ucretion disk. So maybe

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Speaker 1: gravity would be a better way to accelerate particles. I

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Speaker 1: just have no idea how we would go about doing that.

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Speaker 1: I think a better way to accelerate particles might be

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Speaker 1: to give it more energy or like heat, because if

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Speaker 1: you have a lot of energy you're going to be

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Speaker 1: moving fast. It also works the same way with heat,

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Speaker 1: because like if you're cold, you don't want to move,

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Speaker 1: you stay in the same place. I suppose if you

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Speaker 1: could get yourself a mini black hole and rip the

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Speaker 1: particles around the event horizon, they might speed up pretty good.

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Speaker 1: I was wondering when I asked these questions, what if

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Speaker 1: somebody actually came up with some super genius way to

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Speaker 1: do this, would I end up like collaborating with them,

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Speaker 1: or like, would they get the patent for it? I

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Speaker 1: mean it could have been Thorny whoa like would you

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Speaker 1: have to pay them as some of your salary? That

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Speaker 1: would be such a difficult question. I'd hire them on

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Speaker 1: the spot. Absolutely. There are some pretty interesting ideas here.

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Speaker 1: I think maybe there are, you know, maybe the next

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Speaker 1: big idea. It wasn't one of those answers. You think

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Speaker 1: the mini black hole is the solution of the problem. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: First build a super collider to create mini black holes.

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Speaker 1: Then use those mini black holes to accelerate particles. It's

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Speaker 1: like a bootstrap. Yeah yeah. Or gravity. That was kind

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Speaker 1: of an interesting idea. I mean, we use gravity all

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Speaker 1: the time to accelerate spacecraft, right, We definitely do use gravity, absolutely,

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Speaker 1: and gravity does accelerate particles like particles fall towards the

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Speaker 1: Earth all the time. They're called cosmic rays, and they

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Speaker 1: actually do achieve super high energies and create massive collisions

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Speaker 1: in the atmosphere that physicists study and used to try

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Speaker 1: to understand how particles interact and what it all means.

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Speaker 1: But those are a little more difficult to control. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: it's an interesting question. How do we accelerate particles faster, cheaper,

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Speaker 1: and better? I guess cheaper, faster better? Isn't that the

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Speaker 1: goal of any industry exactly? And then making an app

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Speaker 1: how do we do physics cheaper, faster, bet Well, maybe

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Speaker 1: a step us through here, how do we currently accelerate particles?

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Speaker 1: Like how does the LHC exactly? How does it get

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Speaker 1: particles moving so fast? Well, I don't know if that

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Speaker 1: pun was intended or not, but we currently use electrical

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Speaker 1: currents to accelerate particles. Yes, that was totally on purpose.

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Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to app anything up or anything. I'm

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Speaker 1: just trying to be a positive, reinforcing partner on the podcast. Yes,

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Speaker 1: I'm just I'm also just trying to you know, kind

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Speaker 1: of work the field here. This is why we don't

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Speaker 1: charge for this podcast. Let's stop with the electrifinally terrible

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Speaker 1: punts here, Let's get down in nuts and bolts. How

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Speaker 1: are those nuts and bolts put together? In the LHC

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Speaker 1: moving past our magnetic senses of humor. Essentially, we can

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Speaker 1: only accelerate charged particles, and the reason is that we

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Speaker 1: use electric fields in order to do it. Electric fields

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Speaker 1: can tug on charge particles. That's essentially what they are.

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Speaker 1: And so the basics is, you want a particle moving fast,

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Speaker 1: you put it in an electric field. The voltage there

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Speaker 1: will accelerate the particle in one direction. That's like the

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Speaker 1: super basic initial version of a particle accelerator. Meaning basically

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Speaker 1: you set up like a magnet, right, and then you

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Speaker 1: have the magnet attract charge particles, and then that gets

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Speaker 1: the moving. Well, we do have magnets, but magnets actually

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Speaker 1: cannot accelerate particles. They can only bend them. They can

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Speaker 1: change their direction, but they can't speed them up. But

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Speaker 1: an electric field can actually accelerate something. And so, for example,

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Speaker 1: the old televisions that people used to watch, the ones

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Speaker 1: that are not flat screens, had an electron accelerator in

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Speaker 1: the back of them. Met a little gun that would

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Speaker 1: accelerate electrons across an electric field and shoot it at

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Speaker 1: the back of the screen, and that's what actually made

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Speaker 1: the images. So everybody used to have their own little

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Speaker 1: particle accelerator in their house shooting into their brains extray night,

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Speaker 1: and that uses an electric field. It's basically a cathode tube.

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Speaker 1: We have a voltage applied and it boils electrons off

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Speaker 1: of one of the nodes and towards the other one.

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Speaker 1: But I guess what I'm saying, it basically works like

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Speaker 1: a magnet, right, cathay tube is basically you're using magnetism

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Speaker 1: to move the electrons along. Yeah, I mean you're using

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Speaker 1: electromagnetism more generally, using the electric field to accelerate it,

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Speaker 1: and then you had a magnet in order to steer

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Speaker 1: the electrons. So yeah, absolutely, it's all electromagnetism. And that's why,

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Speaker 1: for example, we have proton accelerators and electron accelerators. We

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Speaker 1: don't have neutron accelerators or neutral atom accelerators because things

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Speaker 1: have to have a charge in order for an electric

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Speaker 1: field to push on them. Yeah, I guess just kind

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Speaker 1: of generally, that's how things push and pull most of

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Speaker 1: the time you're here on Earth, right, Like when I

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Speaker 1: pick up a glass of water, or when you push

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Speaker 1: on the door, you're really using electromagnetic forces to push

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Speaker 1: those things. Yeah, that's absolutely right. A baseball is tugged

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Speaker 1: by gravity, but most of the interactions you have are

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Speaker 1: really electromagnetic interactions. The electrons that the tip of your

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Speaker 1: finger are pushing against the electrons in the wall and resisting.

428
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:48,720
Speaker 1: That's why things seem to be solid, because the forces

429
00:21:48,880 --> 00:21:52,400
Speaker 1: that fill the space between the tiny little particles, that's

430
00:21:52,400 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 1: what gives volume volume, and so that's what constructs our world. Absolutely,

431
00:21:57,240 --> 00:22:00,640
Speaker 1: it would be a very very different world without electromagnetic force. Yeah,

432
00:22:00,720 --> 00:22:02,919
Speaker 1: you just made me realize, like all the neutrons in

433
00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:05,200
Speaker 1: our bodies and the objects around is, we're not really

434
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,440
Speaker 1: pushing them directly, right, Like, it's more like our electrons

435
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:10,960
Speaker 1: are pushing the electrons and those atoms, and those electrons

436
00:22:10,960 --> 00:22:14,240
Speaker 1: are pushing the protons in the nucleus, and then those

437
00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:16,439
Speaker 1: are the ones that are pushing on the neutrons inside

438
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:18,840
Speaker 1: of atoms. Yeah, the protons and the neutrons stick together

439
00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:21,960
Speaker 1: using the strong force, and so that's what clumps them together. Yeah,

440
00:22:21,960 --> 00:22:24,080
Speaker 1: it's all a big dance of the forces we've discovered

441
00:22:24,080 --> 00:22:26,360
Speaker 1: to make the world that we know and love. All right, well,

442
00:22:26,359 --> 00:22:29,000
Speaker 1: that's the basic way that hilleriors work right now is

443
00:22:29,080 --> 00:22:31,920
Speaker 1: using electromagnetic fields. Let's get into a little bit more

444
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:34,960
Speaker 1: detail about that and then also talk about maybe new

445
00:22:34,960 --> 00:22:37,919
Speaker 1: ways that we can get particles going for better and

446
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,200
Speaker 1: more powerful colliders. But first let's take a quick break.

447
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:57,000
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about new accelerator technologies here, but

448
00:22:57,119 --> 00:22:59,920
Speaker 1: first we're talking about old accelerator technologies. And you said,

449
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:03,280
Speaker 1: we've had this old technology sins the fifties, right or

450
00:23:03,280 --> 00:23:06,879
Speaker 1: fifties or thirties. So the very first accelerators were like

451
00:23:06,960 --> 00:23:09,640
Speaker 1: in the thirties and the forties. They got more powerful

452
00:23:09,680 --> 00:23:12,200
Speaker 1: in the fifties, which is what heralded like the era

453
00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:15,440
Speaker 1: of the particle zoo, as people were smashing particles together

454
00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:18,199
Speaker 1: at higher energies and discovering all sorts of stuff. But

455
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:21,080
Speaker 1: it basically started with just accelerating things over a gap,

456
00:23:21,160 --> 00:23:24,560
Speaker 1: and then people tried to reuse that gap multiple times.

457
00:23:24,600 --> 00:23:26,880
Speaker 1: So like you know, if you go across that gap,

458
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:28,880
Speaker 1: you speed up. Can we go across that gap more

459
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:32,560
Speaker 1: than once. So they had accelerators called cyclotrons, where a

460
00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:34,800
Speaker 1: particle would go in a circle and go across the

461
00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 1: gap multiple times. They had singotrons where you got even

462
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:40,360
Speaker 1: more sophisticated and you would try to like sync up

463
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:42,399
Speaker 1: the energy in the gap with when the particle was

464
00:23:42,440 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: going faster and faster. And so I think the basic

465
00:23:45,160 --> 00:23:47,479
Speaker 1: idea is that if you have an electron, First of all,

466
00:23:47,520 --> 00:23:49,439
Speaker 1: you sort of create an electron and you kind of

467
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:53,040
Speaker 1: put it out there in space in the air by itself,

468
00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:55,879
Speaker 1: and then you basically hold a positive electric charge ahead

469
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:58,919
Speaker 1: of it basically or a negative charge behind it, and

470
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:02,320
Speaker 1: then that electro magnetic repulsion or attraction then moves your

471
00:24:02,320 --> 00:24:04,880
Speaker 1: electron forward, and that's how you get it going. Yeah,

472
00:24:04,880 --> 00:24:06,840
Speaker 1: that's basically how you do it. And you can imagine

473
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:09,360
Speaker 1: doing that with like a battery. For example, a battery

474
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:12,719
Speaker 1: can create that kind of voltage difference between two plates

475
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:15,280
Speaker 1: by shuttling the electrons from one side to the other,

476
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: so that if you put an electron in the gap there,

477
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:20,560
Speaker 1: it will get pushed towards the lower voltage and that's

478
00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:24,160
Speaker 1: what the acceleration is. So essentially you arrange the charges

479
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: to give you an electric field to push on an

480
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:28,880
Speaker 1: electron and that will accelerate it. Yeah, like you said,

481
00:24:28,920 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 1: like in a battery, Like a battery will maybe concentrate

482
00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 1: the electrons and a coil or a wire or plate

483
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 1: towards the back, and then that will push your single

484
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:39,760
Speaker 1: electron forward. But there's only kind of so much that

485
00:24:39,920 --> 00:24:42,080
Speaker 1: you can push it, right doing it that way, Yeah,

486
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:43,800
Speaker 1: there's only so much you can push it. You can

487
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:47,080
Speaker 1: try to pump a lot of energy into that electric field,

488
00:24:47,119 --> 00:24:49,679
Speaker 1: but eventually things will break down. Like if you have

489
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:52,240
Speaker 1: two pieces of metal and you put a really strong

490
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:55,920
Speaker 1: electric field across them, Eventually it will pull the electrons

491
00:24:56,040 --> 00:24:59,399
Speaker 1: out of that metal and break down the electric field.

492
00:24:59,560 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: And then what you do is once the electron gets going,

493
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: then you use another electric field up ahead to accelerate

494
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 1: it even more. Yeah. So, because you can't put an

495
00:25:07,560 --> 00:25:10,040
Speaker 1: infinite amount of energy into a single one of these

496
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,440
Speaker 1: sort of like little accelerators, because it'll break down the

497
00:25:13,520 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 1: way like lightning is like a breakdown of the voltage

498
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:19,199
Speaker 1: between the air and the ground. Then you stack them up,

499
00:25:19,240 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: you say, well, I'm gonna have one and then might

500
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:22,600
Speaker 1: have another one that might have another one that might

501
00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:24,720
Speaker 1: have another one you just sort of like line these

502
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 1: things up so that each one gives your electron a

503
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:29,280
Speaker 1: little bit of a push. Yeah, And I guess initially

504
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 1: in the fifties they would use they would put these

505
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: in a straight line, right, Like you accelerate an electron

506
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 1: with one accelerator, and then the next one picks it

507
00:25:37,840 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: up and accelerate it even more, and you sort of

508
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: like a tunnel or a gun or like the barrel

509
00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: of a rifle, and that gets your electrons going even faster. Exactly.

510
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of a wrinkle there though, because

511
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 1: what happens when your electron passes a sort of negative

512
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 1: potential plate of the first one, is it wants to

513
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:57,520
Speaker 1: slow down. If you imagine like a bunch of positive

514
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: charges there that are pulling the electron towards that first plate,

515
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:03,399
Speaker 1: what happens when it passes it, Now those positive charges

516
00:26:03,440 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 1: are pulling it back. And so people develop these really

517
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 1: fancy techniques to oscillate the voltage across those plates so

518
00:26:11,040 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: that when the particles moving towards it pulling it towards it,

519
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 1: and then just as it passes it flips the charges

520
00:26:16,320 --> 00:26:19,440
Speaker 1: and pushes it away. So we have these like RF

521
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:22,520
Speaker 1: cavities they're called. With these oscillating fields, there are time

522
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:25,400
Speaker 1: perfectly to speed the particles up and then avoid slowing

523
00:26:25,400 --> 00:26:28,200
Speaker 1: them down. And as you say, the strategy to making

524
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:31,439
Speaker 1: them bigger and longer and faster is just to stack

525
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 1: them up to make a big tunnel and put a

526
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:35,879
Speaker 1: bunch of these in there. Yeah, that's how they did

527
00:26:35,920 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 1: it initially. But then at some point they figured out

528
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,639
Speaker 1: that you can get even more acceleration by having the

529
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:44,400
Speaker 1: particles going a circle and basically go through this accelerating

530
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: part multiple times, and then they can go faster and

531
00:26:47,040 --> 00:26:49,639
Speaker 1: faster and faster each time. Yeah. So the one design

532
00:26:49,680 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: of the accelerator is called a linear accelerator. There's one

533
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:54,880
Speaker 1: like that at Stanford, there's one like that in Germany.

534
00:26:54,960 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: We just shoot them down a tunnel. It's a one go.

535
00:26:57,240 --> 00:26:59,040
Speaker 1: You speed them up, you get them to as fast

536
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:00,879
Speaker 1: as you can, and then them at the end. But

537
00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:03,879
Speaker 1: another strategy is to reuse the tunnel by having a

538
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:05,959
Speaker 1: go in a circle. And so as you say, you

539
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:07,880
Speaker 1: have like something that gives it a kick, and then

540
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: you have something that bends it, and you have something

541
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:10,880
Speaker 1: it gives it a kick, and then you have something

542
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,480
Speaker 1: that bends it, and so the large hadron colliders like that.

543
00:27:13,560 --> 00:27:15,960
Speaker 1: It's a big circle and the particles move around a

544
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 1: tunnel and there's segments that push it and then segments

545
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:22,320
Speaker 1: that bend it using very powerful magnets bend it, you mean,

546
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:25,600
Speaker 1: like as in they make the particles kind of go

547
00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:27,439
Speaker 1: right a little bit and then then makes them go

548
00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,320
Speaker 1: in a circle. Yeah. So the particles move not actually

549
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:33,040
Speaker 1: in a perfect circle, because they move in straight lines

550
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: through the little mini accelerator segments and then they bend

551
00:27:36,280 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 1: through the magnets. So it's more like a really big

552
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,840
Speaker 1: polygon with a bunch of straight sides. Yeah, I guess

553
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:44,520
Speaker 1: the difference it's sort of like the between a sling shot,

554
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 1: like you pull back and then you let go and

555
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:50,120
Speaker 1: the rover bands throw the rock forward or whatever you're

556
00:27:50,119 --> 00:27:52,600
Speaker 1: trying to shoot and using a sling where you like

557
00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:54,680
Speaker 1: put the rock in a little sling and then you

558
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: spin and spin and spin, and each time you spin

559
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:58,399
Speaker 1: it you make it go faster and then at some

560
00:27:58,480 --> 00:28:00,199
Speaker 1: point you let it go, you know. Or if going

561
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,399
Speaker 1: to use like kid analogies, it's like the difference between

562
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 1: a slide. You start at the top and you go

563
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:06,200
Speaker 1: fast and you hit the bottom or a merry go

564
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:08,800
Speaker 1: round where your friend can keep pushing it faster and

565
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:11,399
Speaker 1: faster and faster, and you're going around faster and faster

566
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:13,960
Speaker 1: until you both throw up. And that's really what particle

567
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:16,159
Speaker 1: physics is all about, right, throwing up what's inside of

568
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: the fundamental particles. Yeah, we're exploring the vomit frontier in

569
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:23,919
Speaker 1: the end, it's right, your vomit physicists, nihilist vomiting physics.

570
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 1: And that's basically the technology. The large hadron collider is

571
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 1: pushing bend, pushing bend, push in bend. And what limits

572
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: the large hadron collider is essentially the size of the tunnel.

573
00:28:32,480 --> 00:28:34,159
Speaker 1: Building that kind of tunnel and filling it with all

574
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: that technology is expensive. But in order to get fast,

575
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: you gotta go big. Well, maybe to talk a little

576
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: bit about why it needs to be bigger, it's because

577
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: of the limitations in the magnets that bend the path

578
00:28:46,440 --> 00:28:49,880
Speaker 1: of the particles. Right, Like, if you can get stronger

579
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: magnets are a better way to kind of curve the

580
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: path of these particles, then you could have the same

581
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: circle but just have the particles go faster in it. Yeah,

582
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:00,959
Speaker 1: if you had stronger magnet that could bend them more

583
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 1: effectively at the same speed. Then, yeah, you could have

584
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:06,840
Speaker 1: a smaller circle, which means you could reuse the same

585
00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 1: linear accelerating segments at the same magnets more times. Right,

586
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 1: So it would go around more times to get to

587
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: the same speed. But you could build a smaller device

588
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:19,120
Speaker 1: instead of time to be like tens of kilometers around. Right,

589
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 1: this tunnel, the large change on collider is filled with

590
00:29:21,680 --> 00:29:24,640
Speaker 1: tens of kilometers of these things. Right, it's not a

591
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: small device. But if the magnets were more powerful and

592
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: you could bend it, then you could basically shrink the

593
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: size of that circle and the whole thing would be

594
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: smaller and cheaper, right, Because I guess the problem is

595
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: that the faster the particles go, the harder it is

596
00:29:37,560 --> 00:29:39,400
Speaker 1: to get them to go in a circle. Right, Because

597
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: the fasters are going the kind of more I guess

598
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: entrifical the force you need to kind of keep them

599
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 1: in a circle. Yeah, you need strong magnets to move

600
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: very high speed particles and a circle. It's a centripetal

601
00:29:49,880 --> 00:29:52,840
Speaker 1: force towards the center that keeps something moving in a circle,

602
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: the same way the Earth moves around the Sun because

603
00:29:56,080 --> 00:29:58,840
Speaker 1: of the force of gravity pulling it towards the Sun.

604
00:29:59,320 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: So we can make these particles kind of like orbit

605
00:30:02,040 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: the center of the collider using these magnets to bend

606
00:30:05,040 --> 00:30:08,000
Speaker 1: their path to provide that same kind of force, And

607
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: if we could provide a stronger force, we could bend

608
00:30:10,120 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 1: them in a tighter circle. Yeah. So like right now,

609
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 1: you probably could accelerate the particles faster, like you can't

610
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: make them go faster, but you wouldn't be able to

611
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:21,280
Speaker 1: basically control them. Like if you accelerated them any faster,

612
00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:24,080
Speaker 1: they would basically go off the rails kind of right,

613
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 1: Like they would start hitting the walls of your collider

614
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:28,760
Speaker 1: and that would burn them up, and then you'd poke

615
00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:30,680
Speaker 1: a hole in your tup tunnel and then the whole

616
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:33,560
Speaker 1: thing goes That's right. We're limited either by the magnet

617
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: technology or by the size of the tunnel. Like we

618
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:38,960
Speaker 1: can make the tunnel bigger with the same magnets and

619
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:41,680
Speaker 1: then we could get the higher energy, or we could

620
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: make the tunnel smaller with stronger magnets to get to

621
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: the same energy. But if we had the same tunnel

622
00:30:47,480 --> 00:30:49,760
Speaker 1: and we just whizzed them around more and kept pushing

623
00:30:49,760 --> 00:30:51,880
Speaker 1: on them. Then eventually we would not be able to

624
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:54,440
Speaker 1: contain them using our magnets. It would just slam into

625
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,520
Speaker 1: the wall. So if you increase the energy, do you

626
00:30:56,520 --> 00:30:59,120
Speaker 1: have someone down there at the basement going she kind

627
00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 1: of take any more cut? Yeah, that's a specific job, absolutely,

628
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:09,000
Speaker 1: and you have to hire a scotchman from your collaboration

629
00:31:09,080 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: to do that one. No, we prefer Panamanians to do

630
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:13,720
Speaker 1: a Scottish accent. Actually, oh yeah, that's just as good.

631
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 1: No comment for our Scottish listeners. But our magnet technology

632
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. I mean, we have super conducting magnets

633
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,480
Speaker 1: down there. We're really pushing the limits of what magnets

634
00:31:27,520 --> 00:31:30,760
Speaker 1: can do. And so one way we could improve particle

635
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:34,360
Speaker 1: colliders is to make some breakthrough in magnet technology to

636
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:38,360
Speaker 1: make these things more powerful and smaller or cheaper. What's

637
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: the limitation, I guess is it just that the magnets.

638
00:31:41,000 --> 00:31:43,680
Speaker 1: You're already running as much current as you can through

639
00:31:43,720 --> 00:31:46,160
Speaker 1: these magnets or what, Yeah, we're running as much current

640
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,280
Speaker 1: as we can without them breaking down. They're already cooled

641
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: down to a few degrees Calvin. So we can take

642
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:54,320
Speaker 1: advantage of their super conducting nature, which means if we

643
00:31:54,360 --> 00:31:57,240
Speaker 1: get super duper strong magnets out of our current and

644
00:31:57,320 --> 00:31:59,840
Speaker 1: they don't like heat up and distort. Maybe you remember that,

645
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:01,880
Speaker 1: and we turned on the large hende On collider. There

646
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 1: was a disaster in two thousand and nine, just a

647
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:06,720
Speaker 1: few months in, and some of the liquid helium that

648
00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,280
Speaker 1: was keeping this thing cool sprayed out everywhere and the

649
00:32:09,280 --> 00:32:11,240
Speaker 1: whole thing warmed up, and it was a big disaster.

650
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 1: So these things are not easy to operate and to

651
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: keep functional. One of the many ways that the beam

652
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: can go wrong is something we call a quench, when

653
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 1: one of the magnets basically fails and the beam just

654
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 1: like gets dumped into the rock. And so we're really

655
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:28,200
Speaker 1: operating at the limit of magnet technology. All right, Well,

656
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:30,239
Speaker 1: then I guess the idea is that is there like

657
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 1: a revolutionary new technology or a totally different way of

658
00:32:34,120 --> 00:32:37,160
Speaker 1: doing the whole particle accelerating thing that could maybe like

659
00:32:37,480 --> 00:32:40,640
Speaker 1: let you get away with faster velocities without having these

660
00:32:40,760 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 1: gigantic tunnels and these superconducting magnets. Oh there is, and

661
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:47,680
Speaker 1: I'm dying to talk about it. Well, steps through this, Danuel.

662
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 1: What is this amazing technology called and how does it work?

663
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: So the idea is, instead of making the magnet stronger,

664
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,560
Speaker 1: can we make the accelerator part much more powerful? Can

665
00:32:57,600 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: we accelerate particles to much higher energies over a shorter distance.

666
00:33:01,560 --> 00:33:04,600
Speaker 1: I remember before the limitation was that we couldn't have

667
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 1: strong enough electric fields across two metal plates because it

668
00:33:08,400 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 1: would like make a breakdown between those plates. Remember that

669
00:33:11,880 --> 00:33:14,560
Speaker 1: right now, in our colliders, these particles are accelerated through

670
00:33:14,560 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: a vacuum. So between those plates, it's not like air,

671
00:33:17,360 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: So you're not getting like ionization of the air the

672
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:22,080
Speaker 1: way you do when you have like static electricity or

673
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:25,120
Speaker 1: lightning jumping from the ground to the earth. It's really

674
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: a pure breakdown of the metal, right You're like pulling

675
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 1: the electrons off of the metal. And so in order

676
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: to avoid this breakdown, people are thinking, well, maybe we

677
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: shouldn't have a vacuum, Maybe we should fill that with

678
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 1: something in order to avoid a breakdown. And so one

679
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:42,280
Speaker 1: idea is to use a plasma instead of having a vacuum.

680
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:43,760
Speaker 1: So let me see if I get this straight. It's

681
00:33:43,800 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 1: sort of like the same technology where you have plates,

682
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 1: like metal plates, and in these plates you basically like

683
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 1: run a current through them, so that you kind of

684
00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:54,440
Speaker 1: make a magnet basically, but now the twist is and

685
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 1: instead of having it in a vacuum, you put it

686
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:59,120
Speaker 1: inside of a plasma. That's right, We use a plasma

687
00:33:59,120 --> 00:34:01,560
Speaker 1: instead of having a vacuum. But now we don't have

688
00:34:01,640 --> 00:34:05,760
Speaker 1: the external electric field provided by some plates. Now we

689
00:34:05,840 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: use the plasma itself to generate the electric fields internally.

690
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:12,840
Speaker 1: So wait, there's no plates, there's no plates at all. No,

691
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:15,960
Speaker 1: but we think that it's possible to generate much stronger

692
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 1: electric fields within the plasma than it is between two

693
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: metal plates and a vacuum. Okay, so you use the

694
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 1: plasma as the plate kind of m exactly. And so

695
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,880
Speaker 1: you take this plasma and you like zap it with

696
00:34:27,960 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: a laser, which rearranges all the charges within the plasma

697
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 1: in such a way to create very strong electric fields

698
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: inside the plasma that can then be used to accelerate particles.

699
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:41,520
Speaker 1: That's the basic idea. So what would this look like

700
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:44,640
Speaker 1: A like a tube basically kind of or a tunnel

701
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:48,120
Speaker 1: filled with plasma, and then you're shooting lasers into this

702
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:52,400
Speaker 1: to create kind of like variations in the electric fields

703
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 1: inside of the plasma. Exactly. Remember that a plasma is

704
00:34:55,480 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: just really hot gas. Like you take hydrogen hydrogen as

705
00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:01,560
Speaker 1: a proton and electron. The electron is happily orbiting of

706
00:35:01,560 --> 00:35:03,880
Speaker 1: the nucleus the proton, and if you give that electron

707
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:06,239
Speaker 1: more energy, it goes up an energy level sort of

708
00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: larger orbital radius, and you keep doing that, eventually the

709
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 1: electron goes free. And so that's what a plasma is.

710
00:35:11,840 --> 00:35:14,960
Speaker 1: The electrons have so much energy that they're not bound

711
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:18,560
Speaker 1: anymore to the protons. So it's a charged gas, right.

712
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: It has positive and negative charges all flowing around in it,

713
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:25,280
Speaker 1: unlike neutral hydrogen, which is you know, protons and electrons

714
00:35:25,320 --> 00:35:28,480
Speaker 1: bound tightly together, so they're effectively neutral. So this plasma

715
00:35:28,600 --> 00:35:33,280
Speaker 1: is like microscopically charged, but typically it's like macroscopically neutral.

716
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: You take like a big chunk of it as the

717
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 1: same number of electrons and protons, but you can induce

718
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 1: waves in it. You can like pull on the electrons

719
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 1: or zap all the electrons, get them to move in

720
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:47,839
Speaker 1: one direction, which will create an electric field within the plasma,

721
00:35:47,960 --> 00:35:50,800
Speaker 1: like you create you're creating a current of electrons inside

722
00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 1: of the plasma. Is that what you mean? What you

723
00:35:52,400 --> 00:35:55,399
Speaker 1: actually do is create like a wake field inside of it,

724
00:35:55,719 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 1: so it's not literally a current, but yeah, you're creating

725
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:01,440
Speaker 1: like these waves of electrons through the plasma. They're like

726
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,480
Speaker 1: density waves where the electrons are like wiggling, and that

727
00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:08,680
Speaker 1: creates electromagnetic fields which you can then use to accelerate particles.

728
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 1: So you have this tube, as you said, of plasma,

729
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:12,839
Speaker 1: and you use zap it with the laser and you

730
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:17,319
Speaker 1: choose the laser frequency just right to excite oscillations in

731
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 1: the electrons in the plasma to create this wake field,

732
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:22,800
Speaker 1: and then you dump your particle into it and it

733
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:25,759
Speaker 1: sort of like surfs along this electromagnetic field that you've

734
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: created with your laser, and it gets shot at the end,

735
00:36:28,719 --> 00:36:32,399
Speaker 1: going much much faster. Interesting, all right, well, maybe take

736
00:36:32,400 --> 00:36:34,120
Speaker 1: a step a little bit of a step back here.

737
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: How does the laser cause the electrons to form into waves?

738
00:36:39,840 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 1: Like do electrons interact with photons? Is that the idea

739
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:45,640
Speaker 1: electrons do interact with photons, and so lasers are just

740
00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:48,600
Speaker 1: like a great way to dump energy into the plasma.

741
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 1: And typically you can think about a plasma as like

742
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,360
Speaker 1: a bunch of individual particles. You know, you have protons,

743
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 1: you have electrons that have charges, so they can interact

744
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 1: with photons and fields and all this stuff. But that's

745
00:36:57,960 --> 00:37:00,359
Speaker 1: a little bit of a nightmare because there're so many

746
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: of them. It just seems like a buzzing chaos. But

747
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:05,360
Speaker 1: you can also think about the plasma sort of like

748
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:09,319
Speaker 1: collectively and think about the collective motion of the electrons.

749
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,839
Speaker 1: So plasmas have like tiny, little local behavior, but they

750
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:16,799
Speaker 1: also have sort of like long distance collective behavior. You

751
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: can get plasmas to do things like have waves moving

752
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:22,440
Speaker 1: through them, And so if you dump a laser beam

753
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:24,799
Speaker 1: into it with the right frequency and you can sort

754
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:26,799
Speaker 1: of excite it to do these waves the same way

755
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:29,040
Speaker 1: you can if you like slap your hand against the

756
00:37:29,080 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: surface of a lake and do it at the right frequency,

757
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:34,840
Speaker 1: you can get the lake to produce these waves. But

758
00:37:34,960 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 1: I guess the main mechanism is that it's interacting with

759
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:40,239
Speaker 1: the electrons, because I guess light doesn't interact with the protons.

760
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 1: The light does interact with the protons as well, right,

761
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:45,600
Speaker 1: protons are also charged, but remember protons are much more

762
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 1: massive than electrons, and so the same energy doesn't accelerate

763
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,719
Speaker 1: those protons to move as much. So this whole thing

764
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:56,040
Speaker 1: happens really really fast. Basically before the protons can sort

765
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:58,080
Speaker 1: of get out of bed. The electrons have this big

766
00:37:58,120 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: wave that passes through them, and the protons are like

767
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:02,399
Speaker 1: what sort of like me? And in this podcast right now?

768
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's react to that laser a

769
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:08,239
Speaker 1: bit of knowledge there, and let's dig a little bit

770
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:10,319
Speaker 1: more into this effect than how you can use it

771
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 1: to axillary particles, maybe faster than the Large Hadron collider.

772
00:38:14,560 --> 00:38:29,160
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, we're

773
00:38:29,160 --> 00:38:32,120
Speaker 1: talking about a new way to killary particles that is

774
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 1: maybe faster and cheaper and better than the current technology

775
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: which is at the Large Hadron Collider. And so this

776
00:38:39,760 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 1: technology involves using a plasma. So you have a plasma,

777
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: which is like a gas where all of the atoms

778
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: have been broken down into single electrons and maybe protons

779
00:38:51,080 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: or at least clumps of protons, and so you have

780
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,799
Speaker 1: the soup of all this stuff floating around that has

781
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:58,359
Speaker 1: a charge, and then you shoot a laser into it.

782
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:02,480
Speaker 1: And somehow that laser cites things, or maybe it causes

783
00:39:02,520 --> 00:39:06,200
Speaker 1: electrons to clump or to scatter. What exactly is happening there.

784
00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 1: It causes the electrons to wiggle, It creates like a

785
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:12,399
Speaker 1: wave of the electrons moving through the plasma, and again

786
00:39:12,440 --> 00:39:15,840
Speaker 1: you choose it very specifically the laser pulsed length to

787
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 1: be resonant with the modes of the plasma. Everything that

788
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:21,480
Speaker 1: can wiggle, everything we can describe in terms of like

789
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:25,319
Speaker 1: wave physics has resonant frequencies, the way, for example, your

790
00:39:25,320 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 1: shower is really good and amplifying certain frequencies when you're

791
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:32,360
Speaker 1: singing and not others, or guitar strings like to oscillate

792
00:39:32,360 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 1: at certain frequencies and not others. They're resonant frequencies in

793
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:37,920
Speaker 1: the same way that like a laser is made use

794
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: a resonant cavity. And so the equations of the motion

795
00:39:41,400 --> 00:39:45,280
Speaker 1: of the electrons who the plasma allow for certain frequencies

796
00:39:45,560 --> 00:39:48,680
Speaker 1: of collective motion where the electrons will like slash back

797
00:39:48,719 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 1: and forth all together. Instead of getting like a bunch

798
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:53,799
Speaker 1: of individual electrons doing their own thing, you get this

799
00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:57,239
Speaker 1: like collective behavior of all the electrons if you push

800
00:39:57,239 --> 00:39:58,920
Speaker 1: it the right way, sort of like pushing your kid

801
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:01,640
Speaker 1: on a swing right shit the right frequency, and your

802
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:03,880
Speaker 1: kids can get going really really fast. You push it

803
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 1: like random times, then you're going to get like chaotic

804
00:40:06,400 --> 00:40:08,239
Speaker 1: motion in the swing. And I guess that's what the

805
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:11,440
Speaker 1: light is doing. Like the full time will hit electrons

806
00:40:11,440 --> 00:40:15,040
Speaker 1: in a certain way, and because of the frequency, does

807
00:40:15,040 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 1: it in different ways in different locations. And that's how

808
00:40:17,640 --> 00:40:20,040
Speaker 1: you create the wave inside of the plasma exactly. And

809
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:22,480
Speaker 1: so in order to do this you need laser pulses.

810
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:24,879
Speaker 1: You're not just like shining a bright laser beam into

811
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,439
Speaker 1: this thing and heating up all the electrons. You're doing

812
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: laser pulses so that you have like laser pulses at

813
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: different locations through the plasma at the same time. So

814
00:40:34,120 --> 00:40:37,279
Speaker 1: those pulse lengths and the pulse timings have to be

815
00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: just right to excite this motion in the plasma, like

816
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: push on the right electrons at the right moment across

817
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,839
Speaker 1: the plasma to get this thing going. I guess it's

818
00:40:45,840 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: sort of like you said, it's like having a pool

819
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: and then you have kind of like a wave maker

820
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: in the backack, like one of those pool and those

821
00:40:52,880 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 1: water parks. Right, You're like you're using the laser to

822
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:57,759
Speaker 1: create waves in the pool, and then you're sort of

823
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:00,239
Speaker 1: dropping like a little kid in the life preserver. Hey,

824
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 1: we'll get pushed by the waves to the shallow end.

825
00:41:02,760 --> 00:41:04,880
Speaker 1: That's kind of the idea, right, that's the idea. And

826
00:41:04,920 --> 00:41:07,920
Speaker 1: the reason this works better than the previous approach of

827
00:41:08,040 --> 00:41:10,680
Speaker 1: just having like two metal plates and an electric field

828
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,319
Speaker 1: across them is because you can have much much stronger

829
00:41:13,360 --> 00:41:17,520
Speaker 1: electric fields in a plasma without anything breaking down. Basically,

830
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,319
Speaker 1: the plasma is already broken down, right, there's nothing else

831
00:41:20,440 --> 00:41:22,960
Speaker 1: to break down, so, like there's no limit to how

832
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 1: much you can bunch electrons together or something within a

833
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:29,200
Speaker 1: plasma or there maybe the kind is right is in there,

834
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: Like you can't bunch electrons infinitely. You can't bunch it infinitely,

835
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 1: but you can dump a lot of energy into this plasma.

836
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:38,040
Speaker 1: And the cool thing is your laser beam doesn't have

837
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,520
Speaker 1: to have as much energy sort of per photon. You

838
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 1: can just do a lot of photons to end up

839
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:44,719
Speaker 1: with a lot of energy. So you don't need to

840
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 1: already have a super high energy laser to create a

841
00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 1: super high energy particle beam. You can use a high

842
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: intensity laser to dump a lot of energy into the

843
00:41:54,520 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: plasma which creates these fields, and then accelerate the particles

844
00:41:58,280 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 1: to very high energy. Now, which particles are you accelerating

845
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:04,880
Speaker 1: then the electrons in the plasma or the protons in

846
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 1: the plasma or are you trying to accelerate something else? Neither, right,

847
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: So then you dump in a particle bunch that you're

848
00:42:10,040 --> 00:42:13,839
Speaker 1: trying to accelerate, and they move through the plasma following

849
00:42:13,880 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: this wake, following the wake of these electrons, and they're

850
00:42:17,040 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: sort of like the surfers. Wouldn't you be accelerating protons too?

851
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 1: Aren't protonons part of the soup? Like how do you

852
00:42:22,600 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 1: you know, like if you have a soup with a wave,

853
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:26,360
Speaker 1: they sort of like in our pool analogy, or you

854
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: have a WaveMaker in the back and you're trying to

855
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: accelerate a drop of water you dump into it. So

856
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 1: the protons in the plasma don't get accelerated because they

857
00:42:34,920 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: don't respond on this time scale. The whole thing happens

858
00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:39,239
Speaker 1: like too fast for them to even get moving. The

859
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:41,719
Speaker 1: electrons in the plasma they do get excited, and you

860
00:42:41,760 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 1: do get this wave through the plasma, and then you

861
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:47,640
Speaker 1: have a third bunch which sort of rides that electric wave.

862
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:51,120
Speaker 1: The wake of that electron wave is a very high

863
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:54,479
Speaker 1: gradient electric field which you will accelerate a particle that's

864
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: put in just the right location and velocity the same

865
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 1: way as surfer needs to catch a wave to ride it,

866
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:02,960
Speaker 1: they need to be in the right spot and already

867
00:43:03,040 --> 00:43:06,319
Speaker 1: going at the right speed. That's why the surfer rides

868
00:43:06,360 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 1: the wave. But the other things are left behind. And

869
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:11,919
Speaker 1: so you have this like third group which rides that wake,

870
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:14,839
Speaker 1: sort of like the surfer on the wave right, right,

871
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,839
Speaker 1: but except that the surfer is made out of water too. Yes,

872
00:43:18,000 --> 00:43:20,440
Speaker 1: in this case, the surfer is made out of matter.

873
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 1: The waves are made out of matter, right. It's just

874
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:25,719
Speaker 1: a question of where you are and how fast you're

875
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: already going. And so if you're in the right location,

876
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:31,359
Speaker 1: if it's timed just right, then you're riding that wave

877
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,680
Speaker 1: and you're constantly getting accelerated, whereas electrons in these waves

878
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:36,919
Speaker 1: are sort of slashing back and forth. I guess maybe

879
00:43:36,960 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 1: what's confusing me is that I feel like if you

880
00:43:39,160 --> 00:43:41,760
Speaker 1: drop a bunch of electrons into an electron soup, they'll

881
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:44,840
Speaker 1: just get, you know, absorbed by the soup. You know.

882
00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:47,360
Speaker 1: But maybe the right way to think about it is

883
00:43:47,400 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: more like you have this wave pool. You're making the waves,

884
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 1: and then you shoot. There's a jet of water in

885
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: the back that's shooting it towards the shallow end, and

886
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 1: somehow it kind of gets an extra busive speed by

887
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 1: the waves. If you just dropped electrons into any random

888
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:06,920
Speaker 1: spot in the plasma, they would become part of the plasma.

889
00:44:07,040 --> 00:44:09,640
Speaker 1: But if you set up this wave and then inject

890
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:13,279
Speaker 1: particles at the right place with the right speed, they

891
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,320
Speaker 1: can ride the wave generated by the plasma without becoming

892
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:19,839
Speaker 1: part of the plasma. All right, that's the technology. It's

893
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:23,360
Speaker 1: using plasma. But plasma is kind of tricky, right, Plasma

894
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: is super duper hot and it's really hard to contain,

895
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:28,879
Speaker 1: and you also need maggots to contain plasma. So how

896
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:31,439
Speaker 1: well does this technology work? Well, it works really really

897
00:44:31,480 --> 00:44:34,800
Speaker 1: well so far. It's taken decades. Like the original ideas

898
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,280
Speaker 1: are from like the fifties, and then in the seventies

899
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:39,640
Speaker 1: people started working in the first prototypes. It was actually

900
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:41,719
Speaker 1: here at you see Irvine and a guy named Norm

901
00:44:41,800 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 1: Rustoker who pioneered this technology together with his grand student

902
00:44:46,120 --> 00:44:49,560
Speaker 1: Toshiki Tajima. But they were limited by the laser technology.

903
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,560
Speaker 1: You need like really really fast pulses. And then in

904
00:44:52,600 --> 00:44:56,680
Speaker 1: the nineties people developed like super ultra fast sync lasers

905
00:44:56,800 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 1: and that's when the first demonstration was performed. But by

906
00:44:59,800 --> 00:45:01,760
Speaker 1: now people have been doing it all over the world,

907
00:45:01,800 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 1: and they've been able to create these little accelerators that

908
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: can accelerate particles to very high speeds over short distances.

909
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:11,319
Speaker 1: And we typically measure this in terms of like how

910
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,359
Speaker 1: much energy can you dump into a particle per centimeter, right,

911
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 1: because you want to accelerate a particle and you don't

912
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:19,400
Speaker 1: want to have to take a mile or two miles

913
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 1: to do it. And so these little plasma accelerators have

914
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:25,239
Speaker 1: been able to accelerate particles too much higher energies per

915
00:45:25,320 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: centimeter than the traditional approach, by a factor of a

916
00:45:28,840 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: hundred or a thousand. Cool. But I guess you know,

917
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: how are they overcoming the difficulties in the problem? Right?

918
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 1: Like how do you first of all maintain a plasma

919
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 1: that's pretty hard, and then how do you shoot electrons

920
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:41,800
Speaker 1: into it? And how do you get them out of

921
00:45:41,840 --> 00:45:44,880
Speaker 1: the plasma. So maintaining a plasma is not always that hard, right,

922
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: Like you have plasma in the fluorescent lights that are

923
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: above you, or it's just very dilute and so it

924
00:45:50,440 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: doesn't like destroy the glass. And you typically think about

925
00:45:54,080 --> 00:45:56,279
Speaker 1: plasmas being really hard to contain in the case of

926
00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:59,359
Speaker 1: like fusion experiments, when you need a certain density also

927
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 1: in order to act fusion. We don't want fusion happening

928
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:04,120
Speaker 1: in these plasmas, so they don't have to be actually

929
00:46:04,120 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 1: that dense. So the containment is not nearly as challenging

930
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:09,799
Speaker 1: as it is in the case of fusion experiments. You

931
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 1: can just basically have a can of the plasma and

932
00:46:12,200 --> 00:46:14,719
Speaker 1: it's all right, and that's enough to get particles going.

933
00:46:14,920 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: That's enough to get particles going. The main challenge was

934
00:46:17,480 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: really the lasers, and now they've solved that, and so

935
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: now they've really demonstrated this. They have these devices that

936
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:27,359
Speaker 1: it can actually accelerate particles to tens of GeV over

937
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 1: centimeters or tens of centimeters, which is very exciting. It's

938
00:46:31,320 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 1: exciting because it's a small amount. But you're also you're

939
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:36,680
Speaker 1: thinking ahead and you're thinking, we're going to stack these

940
00:46:36,760 --> 00:46:39,680
Speaker 1: up to get like a thousand of these to get

941
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: a terra electronvol exactly. So now the question is can

942
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: they scale Where they've done it is they've proven the

943
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,680
Speaker 1: principle that you can accelerate particles more effectively over short distances.

944
00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 1: But we're not that interested in tiny little accelerators. We

945
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:54,399
Speaker 1: still want them kind of big so we can get

946
00:46:54,400 --> 00:46:56,960
Speaker 1: to really high energies. And so the question is can

947
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,960
Speaker 1: you stack these things up? And that's where the technology

948
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: struggle is right now, because what you need to do

949
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,560
Speaker 1: is like match these things up. You need to keep

950
00:47:04,600 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 1: these things in sync. When you have the particles that

951
00:47:06,440 --> 00:47:09,200
Speaker 1: you're accelerating come out of one stage of a plasma

952
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:11,840
Speaker 1: accelerator and you want to send them into the next one,

953
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:14,319
Speaker 1: then you have to like time the laser pulses in

954
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:18,080
Speaker 1: that next plasma accelerator perfectly, so like your little bunch

955
00:47:18,120 --> 00:47:20,919
Speaker 1: of accelerating particles hit just the right part of the wave,

956
00:47:21,239 --> 00:47:23,879
Speaker 1: otherwise everything's lost. And in order to get that all

957
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:27,440
Speaker 1: that timing just perfectly in sync is very very challenging.

958
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:29,279
Speaker 1: So what they've been able to do is match a

959
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:33,200
Speaker 1: couple of stages, maybe up to like five stages, but

960
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 1: nobody's confident that they can do it for like a

961
00:47:35,560 --> 00:47:37,839
Speaker 1: hundred or a thousand, which is the kind of thing

962
00:47:37,840 --> 00:47:40,040
Speaker 1: you would need to do to really get to like

963
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:43,800
Speaker 1: physics level accelerators where we can start answering deep questions

964
00:47:43,800 --> 00:47:46,640
Speaker 1: about the universe. So we're maybe still kind of far

965
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:49,879
Speaker 1: away because you would need to be able to sink

966
00:47:49,960 --> 00:47:53,360
Speaker 1: and stack you're like, you're saying hundreds of these in

967
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:55,480
Speaker 1: a row or maybe one in a circle. Is the

968
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:57,080
Speaker 1: idea to put them all in a row and for

969
00:47:57,160 --> 00:48:00,920
Speaker 1: a straight accelerator or to maybe replace its lerators at

970
00:48:00,920 --> 00:48:03,400
Speaker 1: the LC. It depends on what you want to accelerate.

971
00:48:03,680 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: For electrons, you can't really accelerate them in the circle

972
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:09,720
Speaker 1: because when you bend electrons in a circle, they radiate

973
00:48:09,719 --> 00:48:13,680
Speaker 1: away photons and they'll lose their energy really really fast. Protons, however,

974
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:15,600
Speaker 1: you can accelerate them in a circle, and because they

975
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:18,000
Speaker 1: have more masks, they tend to radiate less. So that's

976
00:48:18,000 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 1: why protons accelerators tend to be circles and electron accelerators

977
00:48:21,560 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 1: tend to be straight lines. So people want to do both.

978
00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:26,319
Speaker 1: They want to do straight electron accelerators and then want

979
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: to occur protons into circles to smash them together. Protons

980
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:31,880
Speaker 1: we can tend to get to higher energies because of

981
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 1: these circular colliders. I think this technology has come a

982
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 1: long way in the last few decades. It's definitely not

983
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 1: ready for prime time. Nobody's like proposing, let's build one

984
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 1: of these things in five years or in ten years.

985
00:48:42,520 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 1: But there are like larger and larger demonstration experiments being

986
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:49,879
Speaker 1: built and that are working, and lots of different ideas

987
00:48:49,920 --> 00:48:52,239
Speaker 1: that people are using to develop these things, not just

988
00:48:52,400 --> 00:48:54,600
Speaker 1: laser pulses, is ones where you drive it with a

989
00:48:54,640 --> 00:48:57,319
Speaker 1: proton beam, and all sorts of other variations. It's a

990
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:00,640
Speaker 1: very exciting area and it might be in like you know,

991
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:03,320
Speaker 1: a couple of decades that we're ready to talk about,

992
00:49:03,360 --> 00:49:07,760
Speaker 1: like building a LHC size or super LT size particle

993
00:49:07,800 --> 00:49:11,680
Speaker 1: accelerator that's significantly smaller than the other plans we have.

994
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 1: So this technology will also accilerate protons. It can also

995
00:49:15,000 --> 00:49:17,560
Speaker 1: accelerate protons, yes, but then I guess you'll run into

996
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: the same problem that you haven't in the LHC, Like

997
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: if you can make them go faster, but then you

998
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:24,480
Speaker 1: still need to man to bend them into a circle

999
00:49:24,640 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 1: or you need to build a bigger circle. Yeah, you'll

1000
00:49:26,600 --> 00:49:28,399
Speaker 1: still have that problem if you want to bend into

1001
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 1: a circle. But if you have a super duper plasma accelerator,

1002
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:33,000
Speaker 1: maybe you just get them up to super high speeds

1003
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: in a straight line, which could also work for protons.

1004
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:38,120
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's powerful enough, then you don't need

1005
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 1: to go around many many times interesting. Well, there's a

1006
00:49:41,160 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 1: lot of promise there. It sounds like it's definitely something

1007
00:49:43,560 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 1: people are hoping is around the corner, and that might

1008
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:49,160
Speaker 1: revolutionize the way we're doing particle physics, because the way

1009
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:52,640
Speaker 1: we're doing it right now definitely doesn't seem sustainable. I mean,

1010
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:55,880
Speaker 1: particle physicists are talking about the next generation of colliders

1011
00:49:55,880 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: and how it's going to cost one hundred billion dollars

1012
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 1: and I'm all for it, you know, of course, but

1013
00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:02,839
Speaker 1: I'm pretty skeptical that governments are going to pony up

1014
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:05,720
Speaker 1: that much money for another experiment. And so I'm looking

1015
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:08,840
Speaker 1: forward to, you know, the revolution that makes particle physics cheaper,

1016
00:50:08,920 --> 00:50:11,239
Speaker 1: faster better. Did I tell you every once went to

1017
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:13,759
Speaker 1: a conference for this technology? No you didn't. Did it

1018
00:50:13,800 --> 00:50:17,279
Speaker 1: accelerate your mind? Yeah? I got smashed. My brain got

1019
00:50:17,320 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 1: smashed a thousand tiny bits. All right. Well, there's a

1020
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: lot of promise in this new way of accelerating things,

1021
00:50:24,760 --> 00:50:27,280
Speaker 1: but it also sounds like there's a ton of challenges

1022
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 1: because you still have to scale these up, and you

1023
00:50:29,280 --> 00:50:32,280
Speaker 1: still have to maybe potentially bend them into a circle.

1024
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 1: Which city should we build the next giant particle collider

1025
00:50:35,200 --> 00:50:39,320
Speaker 1: on the Pasadena. Oh good, good, not South Pasadena exactly,

1026
00:50:39,400 --> 00:50:42,400
Speaker 1: always your neighbors. All right, Well, hopefully that made you

1027
00:50:42,440 --> 00:50:44,839
Speaker 1: think a little bit about how scientists are out there

1028
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:48,080
Speaker 1: trying to break things apart and trying to uncover what's

1029
00:50:48,120 --> 00:50:52,920
Speaker 1: inside of the fundamental particles that make up nature and

1030
00:50:53,480 --> 00:50:56,560
Speaker 1: matter itself. That's right, because to answer the deepest questions

1031
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:59,480
Speaker 1: in the universe, we need to develop more and more technology.

1032
00:50:59,520 --> 00:51:02,799
Speaker 1: We need better, inc more clever engineers to give us

1033
00:51:02,800 --> 00:51:05,360
Speaker 1: the tools we can use to ask these questions. And

1034
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:07,839
Speaker 1: maybe it's gonna be plasma technology, or maybe it's gonna

1035
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:11,440
Speaker 1: be something totally different that somebody else out there sinks up.

1036
00:51:11,560 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 1: We need more money or cheaper physicists, one of the two,

1037
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 1: but the skip fund the engineers. All right, Well, we

1038
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:20,560
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See you

1039
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and

1040
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For

1041
00:51:34,760 --> 00:51:39,680
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1042
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.