Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul decant uh Null is a way for the moment,
Speaker 1: but will return soon as long as time still works
Speaker 1: the way that we conventionally understand it. Most importantly, you
Speaker 1: are you that makes this stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. And I will get rid of this pun
Speaker 1: at the very top, because Matt and our super producer
Speaker 1: Paul are already so tired of hearing me say it.
Speaker 1: Today's title is should we be Concerned? Yes, concerned? And
Speaker 1: for some reason, ce er N is capitalized in that title,
Speaker 1: and that reason is that we're talking about an organization that,
Speaker 1: if you are like most human beings on this planet
Speaker 1: now with an Internet connection, you have heard of CERN.
Speaker 1: It's an organization that has constructed something that you may
Speaker 1: have also heard of called the Large Hadron Collider. Yes, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider. That's what it's most well known for.
Speaker 1: It And yeah, that wasn't you know, was it best
Speaker 1: for us to just get that point out? And I
Speaker 1: think we had to, But I'm also in love with
Speaker 1: the title. So okay, well, I promise I won't I
Speaker 1: won't push it too much. Yes, you you probably remember
Speaker 1: hearing for years now about CERN and the large Hadron Collider,
Speaker 1: and you've probably seen some frankly garbage explanations on mainstream
Speaker 1: news about how that works in non mainstream news and
Speaker 1: probably in non mainstream news as well. And uh, you
Speaker 1: have hopefully also checked out some wonderful, in depth explanations
Speaker 1: about what this thing is and what it does, and
Speaker 1: will address some of that as well. But first we
Speaker 1: want to establish the certain is responsible for much more
Speaker 1: than a single, incredibly significant series of experiments. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: essentially responsible for the creation of what we know as
Speaker 1: the Worldwide Web, that WWW that you type in sometimes
Speaker 1: when you're using a computer, you're a lot of times
Speaker 1: not on your phone. Uh, yeah, it did that in right. Yes.
Speaker 1: The Web was originally conceived by Tim Berners Lee, and
Speaker 1: it was developed to meet this demand for automatic information
Speaker 1: sharing between scientists and universities and institutes around the world.
Speaker 1: Just the thing we always talk about in the past.
Speaker 1: If you're a scientist and you're working on some research,
Speaker 1: you just have your research and what was written down
Speaker 1: and you have access to and if you can send
Speaker 1: that information that you're working on immediately to everybody else
Speaker 1: and you can get everybody else's changing the game. And
Speaker 1: so this really helped research at the time when it
Speaker 1: had a sort of rarefied or very specific set of
Speaker 1: users and a specific set of desires. And of course
Speaker 1: they all said, we this is great. We should do
Speaker 1: this with everything, and we should have everyone check it out.
Speaker 1: What could go wrong? Yeah, it'll be fine, right, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, now now the Internet is what it is,
Speaker 1: which is also changing. And I just want to go
Speaker 1: on record here there's nothing to it today's episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: and saying that as a personal opinion, any any ideologies
Speaker 1: or politics aside. Uh, the fccs decision to sell the
Speaker 1: American people down the river is just that a massive
Speaker 1: trail and it's going to be terrible. Yeah. The day
Speaker 1: prior to recording this episode, the FCC voted to strike
Speaker 1: down the net neutrality rules that were put in place
Speaker 1: on to the Obama administration, and that essentially the Internet
Speaker 1: has been functioning on for its the entire existence just
Speaker 1: being open and access to information is just for anybody
Speaker 1: who has a connection. And I would be really curious
Speaker 1: to see whether you or Paul or Noel uh support
Speaker 1: the f c c S. I guess they would call
Speaker 1: it a quote unquote decision for the quote unquote good
Speaker 1: because it's rare that I'm going to be so open
Speaker 1: with an opinion about this thing. But if you, if
Speaker 1: you have kids, you should be concerned because we often
Speaker 1: hear from organizations around the world about the dangers of
Speaker 1: inequality in an economic sense. But history has proven, and
Speaker 1: sadly the future will prove that an inequality of access
Speaker 1: to information is at least as dangerous as lack of
Speaker 1: access to the coupon system we practice today. Okay, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm doing like hot takes left right on a good note, Matt.
Speaker 1: When we were looking at some of this background for
Speaker 1: certain it made me recall another another series that you
Speaker 1: and I used to do, Stuff of Genius. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: did do stuff of genius for a while there. We
Speaker 1: looked at inventors that were lesser known and the cool
Speaker 1: things that they created that have shaped our world and civilization.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, it's an animated show. Yeah, animated
Speaker 1: on Final Cut Pro seven what photoshop by Matt Mattman
Speaker 1: Frederick mostly Tyler Klang. And if you if you do
Speaker 1: some digging, you can find episodes that Matt did the
Speaker 1: voice work on as well. Right, are they still out there?
Speaker 1: You can find them somewhere. Yeah, they exist. So do
Speaker 1: check out stuff of Genius and let us let us
Speaker 1: know what you think because we had we had a
Speaker 1: lot of fun doing that one. And don't forget the
Speaker 1: coolest stuff on the planet, which was Matt who don't
Speaker 1: ever search for that? Okay, it's too late. Next, next,
Speaker 1: the first website at CERN, Yes, exactly what you want
Speaker 1: to talk about instead of coolest stuff on the planet. Well,
Speaker 1: next was the computer, right Tim berners Lee, the gentleman
Speaker 1: who was working with CERN. He created this first website
Speaker 1: which was essentially about the web itself. This is how
Speaker 1: you use this service. These are all the things you
Speaker 1: need to do to access other people's documents, how to
Speaker 1: set up your own server. It's like in f a Q. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It was the world's first website. Yes. So the next
Speaker 1: machine and that is Capital in Little e Capital xpital
Speaker 1: t is still at certain. Isn't that correct? Yeah, really
Speaker 1: cool And uh, it's been there for so long, it's
Speaker 1: really neat that in Certain actually reinstated the website, the
Speaker 1: original first website, to its original address and you can
Speaker 1: go there right now if you want to to check
Speaker 1: it out. Check it out today, folks. And that website
Speaker 1: is info dot c r N dot c H. Check
Speaker 1: it out. And and Paul, what we're talking about that
Speaker 1: is there sort of a retro sci fi music que
Speaker 1: you could throw in perfect he's so good at that,
Speaker 1: you are so good at that, Paul so certain has
Speaker 1: done a ton of things throughout the years. We mentioned
Speaker 1: this already. We talked about the first website, awesome. We
Speaker 1: talked about the collider to large Hadron collider that they
Speaker 1: will get into later. There are other things that they
Speaker 1: discovered through experimentation, things like things that I don't fully
Speaker 1: understand I just to be honest with you, um, things
Speaker 1: like w n Z bosons that I, you know, sure,
Speaker 1: I think I kind of understand what that means, but
Speaker 1: not really. And before that, they discovered neutral currents in
Speaker 1: this thing called the gargamel bubble chamber, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a villain of some sort, but you know, that's that's fine.
Speaker 1: Gargamel from the Smurfs, right, Gargamel wasn't gargamel bad in
Speaker 1: the Smurfs, The character Gargamell was bad. Yes, Uh, like
Speaker 1: Gargamell itself was a heavy liquid bubble chamber detector that
Speaker 1: was operating for nine years in the seventies. It was
Speaker 1: trying to detect neutrinos and anti neutrinos and it found
Speaker 1: neutral currents. And it found neutral currents. Yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course we're we're not physicists, though most people are not
Speaker 1: as it turns out, but we do know that we
Speaker 1: we do have a grasp of some of the experiments
Speaker 1: that CERN has conducted. And what's important to note is
Speaker 1: that it's not just the large hit John Collider. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also created anti hydrogen atoms, which, again, as a
Speaker 1: non physicist, to me that, you know, my thought is,
Speaker 1: why would you do that? Why? Why would you We're
Speaker 1: family shows, so I will say, why would you fuss
Speaker 1: with things that we're fine? You know what I mean? Well,
Speaker 1: because we have to find out Ben, that's what science
Speaker 1: and all this is all about. We just got to
Speaker 1: know um smarter people than I need to know. And
Speaker 1: Matt according to numerous people, CERN may be responsible for
Speaker 1: much much much so, much more so, much more, and
Speaker 1: will explore the fact acts surrounding CERN after a word
Speaker 1: from our sponsors, and we're back Matt. Earlier, when we
Speaker 1: were off air, you and I talked about when to
Speaker 1: just explain what CERN was, and you were completely right,
Speaker 1: my old friend. We should have done it at the
Speaker 1: top of the show. I don't, I don't know if
Speaker 1: we're right. I see there's a bit of a an
Speaker 1: elongation that it's just keeping you on the edge of
Speaker 1: your seat, like, what is CERN? It turns out that
Speaker 1: CERN is an acronym for the Council Open polary Chech Nuclear,
Speaker 1: which I am not pronouncing very well. Oa. What does
Speaker 1: that mean in English? It means the European Organization for
Speaker 1: Nuclear Research. And as we as we said before, it's
Speaker 1: most well known for its massive thing called a large
Speaker 1: hadron collider. It is not an ironic name. It's not,
Speaker 1: you know, like a little John sort of moniker. It's
Speaker 1: it's describing a massive particle accelerator. And you, like many people,
Speaker 1: friends and neighbors, listeners, um demons and angels out there
Speaker 1: in the audience, maybe wondering what the heck is a
Speaker 1: particle accelerator. We're very glad you asked. So. Essentially, it's
Speaker 1: a machine that speeds up with using magnets, giant magnets
Speaker 1: that were they're like nineteen hundred tons or more tons.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what. It's huge, these giant magnets,
Speaker 1: they speed up and increase the energy of a beam
Speaker 1: of particles, and they generate these electric fields that accelerate
Speaker 1: these particles. It just basically continue to accelerate them going
Speaker 1: around a large loop, and the magnetic fields that they
Speaker 1: have surrounding kind of the track that they send these
Speaker 1: particles around. It's just it's accelerating them and steering them
Speaker 1: and focusing them down into a tiny little beam and
Speaker 1: then they smash them together. Tight. Yeah, I told you
Speaker 1: about this right have. Accidentally I've been falling into this scene.
Speaker 1: You know how, sometimes words, just as concepts are, are
Speaker 1: mimetic entities of a type, and sometimes slang from the
Speaker 1: past or from a different language just sort of gets
Speaker 1: stuck in your mind like a splinter in your finger. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so tight has been stuck in my head and
Speaker 1: I am trying to tamp it down. But that was
Speaker 1: an excellent explanation that was Okay, I think we got
Speaker 1: through it. So there are a couple of different types
Speaker 1: of these accelerators that have been used and built in
Speaker 1: the past. One of them is a linear accelerator or
Speaker 1: a linear accelerator, and that's where a beam of particles
Speaker 1: travels essentially in a straight line. I mean it makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: linear from one end to the other end. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: with these you can have maybe two of them that
Speaker 1: are on either side of this line, and you shoot
Speaker 1: the beams at each other and they hit in the center,
Speaker 1: and that's when you're doing your experimentation, right at that
Speaker 1: center point where they're colliding. Yeah, that makes sense. Then
Speaker 1: you got these circular accelerators like the large hydron collider
Speaker 1: that have this ring essentially a circle of sorts that
Speaker 1: they the particles just travel around this thing, accelerating, accelerating,
Speaker 1: just getting faster and faster and faster and faster. They
Speaker 1: reach a point where it's getting pretty close to stuff
Speaker 1: we would observe with what we believe to be the
Speaker 1: big bang, and they smash them together, and that that
Speaker 1: point of smashing is where they do their major testing
Speaker 1: smash point. Yeah, it's a smash point. It's pretty tight.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I've spread I've spread the my my linguistic
Speaker 1: disease to you, and I apologize. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: speaking of segways, Certain built the large Hadron Colyder. It's
Speaker 1: not only seven kilometers in length. It is a It
Speaker 1: is a circular accelerator, as Matt described earlier. Uh, it
Speaker 1: is also the world's most powerful accelerator as we record
Speaker 1: this now at the very end of it has a
Speaker 1: it has the super conducting magnets, and it has a
Speaker 1: number of other ancillary structures built to accelerate the energy
Speaker 1: of the particles along the way and inside the accelerator
Speaker 1: there are these two high energy beams, particle beams that
Speaker 1: are traveling it close to the speed of light before
Speaker 1: they finally hit one another. It's crazy to think about
Speaker 1: so cool that we could even achieve that it is.
Speaker 1: It's astonishing just to be frank with you and and
Speaker 1: being in since I'm being since here in that point um.
Speaker 1: The beams travel in opposite directions in separate pipes separate
Speaker 1: beam pipes, which is the phrase that Certain uses beam
Speaker 1: beam pipes. The tubes are kept at an ultra high vacuum.
Speaker 1: They're guided around by the magnetic field produced by those
Speaker 1: superconductive magnets. And the electromagnets themselves are built from these
Speaker 1: coils of a cable that virtually conducts electricity without resistance
Speaker 1: or loss of energy. So these are very, very efficient.
Speaker 1: And to make these magnets, these super cool magnets that
Speaker 1: are super cool on several levels, right right, Uh, what
Speaker 1: do you have to do? Well? It has to be
Speaker 1: the environment has to be extremely cold. The magnets themselves
Speaker 1: have to be crazy cold. It requires the magnets ben
Speaker 1: get have two hundred and seventy one point three degrees celsius. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a temperature colder than outer space. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: on a spacewalk as an astronaut. It is colder in
Speaker 1: these supermagnets, or these these supermagnets are colder than you
Speaker 1: would be if you were standing outside in outer space.
Speaker 1: So two hundred and seventy one degree celsius is about
Speaker 1: five hundred and nineteen point eight degrees fahrenheit. So it's
Speaker 1: minus that minus that, which which is insane but is
Speaker 1: the nature of the business in the LHC. I guess
Speaker 1: we can start calling it that now. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we know it well enough that the LHC was
Speaker 1: designed for a couple of different things, but one of
Speaker 1: its primary purposes was to prove the existence of something
Speaker 1: called the Higgs bosun. And I can tell you what
Speaker 1: it is real briefly if you want, Yeah, please you.
Speaker 1: I would love to know. All right, So there is
Speaker 1: the god particle. It has been called the God particle.
Speaker 1: And you and I would hang out and wonder whether
Speaker 1: this would lead to the end of the world because
Speaker 1: we received emails about this plenty. We're going to borrow
Speaker 1: some quotes from an excellent article called what exactly is
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson available at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: by an author named Jonathan at Mary. So to understand
Speaker 1: what the Higgs boson is, we need to examine the
Speaker 1: theories describing the way the cosmos works. And we'll call
Speaker 1: it the standard model. Also not an ironic name. Sounds good.
Speaker 1: So here's the gist of the standard model when it
Speaker 1: comes to us comes to our species around the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. The idea is that the entire universe, everything
Speaker 1: you know, and everything you or your friends will ever encounter,
Speaker 1: or your ancestor or your descendants. Capitally, everything is ultimately
Speaker 1: made up of twelve different sorts of particles of matter
Speaker 1: and four forces. In the twelve particles, you will encounter
Speaker 1: six things called quarks and six things called leptons. Quarks
Speaker 1: are what comprise protons and neutrons, while the things we
Speaker 1: call leptons include electrons and the electron neutrino. Scientists think
Speaker 1: that you cannot break leptons and quarks into smaller particles.
Speaker 1: So far, so we've got those twelve particles, and then
Speaker 1: we have four forces that sort of captain planet together
Speaker 1: to make the universe run. Yeah, and that's gravity, which
Speaker 1: you're probably aware of going up and going down, but
Speaker 1: there's more to it than that electromagnetic force that's what
Speaker 1: you see in magnets. Then you've got strong and weak forces,
Speaker 1: and these are more of the nuclear forces, um that
Speaker 1: have to do with the way adams interact. It gets
Speaker 1: a little intense when you're getting down into those forces
Speaker 1: and trying to truly understand them. And that's why being
Speaker 1: a particle physicist is a high paying job and a
Speaker 1: demanding one, right and a very important one. So we've
Speaker 1: got those, let's let's focus on those four fundamental forces.
Speaker 1: Scientists believe that each of those forces the mat just named,
Speaker 1: have a corresponding carrier particle, which they call a boson
Speaker 1: b O, S, O, N, that acts upon matter. And
Speaker 1: there's a cool analogy in here. Some physicists have described
Speaker 1: to bosons as weights anchored by mysterious rubber bands to
Speaker 1: the matter particles that generate them. So we can think
Speaker 1: of particles constantly snapping back out of existence in an instant,
Speaker 1: yet equally capable of becoming entangled with other rubb or
Speaker 1: bands attached to other boson's. Yeah, this is easy to
Speaker 1: understand stuff. I feel like you're I guess this is
Speaker 1: It's just it's very It's just difficult stuff to wrap
Speaker 1: your head around. That's all because they were also describing
Speaker 1: the movement of matter through the universe rights and the forces,
Speaker 1: the forces acting upon that matter, and the rules of
Speaker 1: the road for those forces. If they are like chess
Speaker 1: pieces that can only move in certain directions. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: so that's what they're looking for. And they've been trying
Speaker 1: to do this for a while, right, Yes, they have been.
Speaker 1: Let's travel all the way back to nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: to the sixth section the sixth session of the Certain Council,
Speaker 1: which took place in Paris, m from June twenty nine
Speaker 1: to July one. The convention established the organization was signed.
Speaker 1: They were subject to ratification by twelve different states. That
Speaker 1: can mention was gradually ratified by the founding member states.
Speaker 1: We're talking Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia
Speaker 1: and your Slavia. So one one thing that's interesting about
Speaker 1: this is that conspiracy theories or or fringe researchers see
Speaker 1: this international cooperation as very strong, circumstantial evidence. That's something.
Speaker 1: Oh I was going to say that something's rotten in Denmark,
Speaker 1: but Shakespeare side, that doesn't imply. But that's the you know,
Speaker 1: some people distrust that level of geopolitical cooperation. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: many different governing entities having their hands in this, got it?
Speaker 1: Or you know, it could just be humans working together
Speaker 1: to do the coolest experiments possible. I really appreciate that point, Matt,
Speaker 1: and I hope that's the case. I was just going
Speaker 1: to argue that it was probably two weeks spensive for
Speaker 1: each of those countries to afford on their own. But yeah,
Speaker 1: shadowy cabral interested scientists, vultronning together, everybody figuring out how
Speaker 1: to foot the bill. Regardless. On the seventeenth of May
Speaker 1: and nineteen fifty four, they first broke Earth and Geneva
Speaker 1: officials were watching members of the Certain staff we're watching.
Speaker 1: Construction continues until September of the same year and CERN
Speaker 1: officially comes into being located there in Switzerland. And today
Speaker 1: you can find CERTAIN. It's still the same place. You
Speaker 1: can view it on Google Earth. It's gigantic. It's based
Speaker 1: in a suburb near Geneva on the border between France
Speaker 1: and Switzerland. And currently it has twenty two members eights. Uh.
Speaker 1: The United States is not a full member of CERN. Nope,
Speaker 1: Israel is the only non European full member of CERN.
Speaker 1: It has expanded from twelve to twenty two members states.
Speaker 1: And in addition to the large hydron collider, these physicists,
Speaker 1: that these engineers, some of the smartest people in the world,
Speaker 1: are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're studying the basic the basic pieces of matter, the
Speaker 1: things that are the building blocks that create this table
Speaker 1: and these hands handsund Yeah, it's it's like we said,
Speaker 1: we keep reiterating, it's incredibly cool. They're talking about colliding
Speaker 1: you know, particles. That's what they do. They hang around
Speaker 1: all day, they speed up particles to the speed of
Speaker 1: light almost, and they smash them together and they see
Speaker 1: what happens. Because without this sort of technology, physicists would
Speaker 1: ultimately be participating in thought experiments, right. Yeah, And a
Speaker 1: lot of it still is thought experiments that they're trying
Speaker 1: to prove one way or the other by to to
Speaker 1: transform a guess into observable science. Right. And one of
Speaker 1: the really interesting things that you noted earlier, Matt as
Speaker 1: you said, this is for me where science becomes magic.
Speaker 1: This is like my Arthur C. Clerk threshold. Without directly
Speaker 1: observable science at the very edges of theoretical science, what
Speaker 1: what we encounter is is very close to mysticism or
Speaker 1: or articles of faith. If you're a world expert on something,
Speaker 1: your best guests automatically becomes leading theory exactly and at
Speaker 1: is ultimately what they're testing at certain it's the fundamental
Speaker 1: laws of nature that govern all matter and all existence,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these are you know, they're testable
Speaker 1: and provable to a certain extent, but then when you
Speaker 1: get deeper and deeper and deeper down into the sub
Speaker 1: atomic and then even deeper levels, it's harder to know
Speaker 1: what is real and what's not. And that's why certain
Speaker 1: is so important. Furthermore, that's why certain from many people
Speaker 1: it's so frightening. Yes, get into something a little stranger
Speaker 1: after a word from our sponsor that I have to
Speaker 1: ask you because you and I were working together years
Speaker 1: and years ago when a lot of news about the
Speaker 1: large Hadron collider and the search for the Higgs boson
Speaker 1: popped up in the mainstream. Well, what was your experience
Speaker 1: like hearing that news? And as we were learning about
Speaker 1: this around the time, the website dig was pretty big,
Speaker 1: and I would go there all the time and they
Speaker 1: would have updates essentially UM, and I would watch news
Speaker 1: conferences that were live with updates from cern about you know,
Speaker 1: they're getting the UM. The LHC is preparing to run
Speaker 1: some tests, but they're having some issues with some of
Speaker 1: the magnets. UM, let's see. I would watch with bated
Speaker 1: breath with some of these press conferences where they're going
Speaker 1: to announce something, and nothing came for a long time,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing official about the Higgs boson um. But
Speaker 1: then when it did, I think it's still so out
Speaker 1: there beyond my understanding that it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: wrap my head around it. But I remember being excited
Speaker 1: knowing that we at least had a better grasp on
Speaker 1: whatever this field is, this Higgs field that connects all matter.
Speaker 1: That made me really excited. Yeah, and it's it's amazing
Speaker 1: too believe that something some of the most intelligent people
Speaker 1: in the world have been essentially guessing at for so
Speaker 1: long turned out to be a real thing. There's this
Speaker 1: sort of um once the phrase used bated breath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that perfectly encapsulates it, because you know, there's
Speaker 1: this there's this immense relief that every person encounters when
Speaker 1: it turns out that the universe obeys something we can
Speaker 1: understand for a moment, because there's a certain amount of
Speaker 1: certainty that you can get from that. But you know, simultaneously,
Speaker 1: as we're reading about this, we're hearing about it. Updates
Speaker 1: are coming, we're also making this show, the video portion
Speaker 1: of this show at this time, and we are you know,
Speaker 1: we are getting letters We're getting people tweeting at us
Speaker 1: and everything, telling us about all of the things that
Speaker 1: CERN is doing and the large Handron collider that are
Speaker 1: going to essentially and humanity or destroy the planet in
Speaker 1: some way or at least cause havoc. Right, yes, So,
Speaker 1: Over the years leading to and after its construction, certain
Speaker 1: became the subject of numerous strange rumors, conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 1: some would argue, uh, legitimate worries. So what gives. I
Speaker 1: remember several of the several of the things we received,
Speaker 1: many of which were very in depth, and one of
Speaker 1: the ones that you brought up recently we were doing
Speaker 1: research for this episode was the story of the time
Speaker 1: traveling Sabbature. Oh yeah, so okay, in the days leading
Speaker 1: up to the first proof of the Higgs boson, which
Speaker 1: is two thousand twelve the exact date. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: find it, but we uh. I remember reading that there
Speaker 1: were a lot of issues with the collider itself. There
Speaker 1: was some malfunctioning occurring. I think there was something with birds,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find it when I looked again, but
Speaker 1: I thought something occurred with birds. They started, uh, they
Speaker 1: started speaking Aramaic and their eyes were bleeding. That was
Speaker 1: the major part of it. But but there were there
Speaker 1: are a bunch of small issues that were occurring, and
Speaker 1: then parts of the collider, parts of the magnet, one
Speaker 1: of the magnets wouldn't function correctly, so they kept putting
Speaker 1: off and putting off and putting off the ability to
Speaker 1: actually do this testing and then run all of the
Speaker 1: diagnostics on the testing that you need to analyze the
Speaker 1: data that you get back, because that's where you actually
Speaker 1: find out if you found the Higgs Boson particle. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the experiments are happening, when it's end media arrests,
Speaker 1: they have no I mean, you can tell if things
Speaker 1: are working, yes, but it takes some rigorous analysis afterwards
Speaker 1: to find what you found. Supercomputers to go all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at all this data for a couple
Speaker 1: of months. Yeah. Um. But as we're saying, the idea
Speaker 1: was that perhaps there was some time traveler who had
Speaker 1: come back to two thousand, two thousand twelve to sabotage
Speaker 1: the large Hadron collider because it's something terrible was going
Speaker 1: to happen in the immediate future because of these experiments.
Speaker 1: So this benevolent time traveler traveler just sabotaged the magnets.
Speaker 1: He brought some birds in, apparently to mess things up,
Speaker 1: the weird birds that speak languages they shouldn't know, having
Speaker 1: fun with I gotcha, I'm following you. Well. The the
Speaker 1: idea there is is fascinating because it's one of the
Speaker 1: biggest tropes of time travel, the belief that um, someone
Speaker 1: would come from a possible future to prevent that future
Speaker 1: occurring in the various ways in which that quickly becomes
Speaker 1: a mind boggling paradox. Stephen King has a novel called
Speaker 1: in which a character attempts to This is not much
Speaker 1: of a spoiler. A character attempts to prevent the assassination
Speaker 1: of President Kennedy because he's stuck in a time loop
Speaker 1: on that day, or he's chosen to enter a time
Speaker 1: loop accidentally, and he's just the groundhog days the assassination essentially,
Speaker 1: so he has one. One thing that really stuck out
Speaker 1: for me in the in the concept or the language
Speaker 1: of the book, is the phrase the past is obdurate,
Speaker 1: meaning that in in the book it is or in
Speaker 1: this universe, in this story, it is possible to make
Speaker 1: small changes, right. We can we can put a coffee
Speaker 1: cup on the left side of a desk versus the right,
Speaker 1: and the world spends as will. But that to enact
Speaker 1: a larger change, like causing or preventing the death of
Speaker 1: a of a person who for a moment was a
Speaker 1: hinge upon which humanity human civilization swung, that becomes a
Speaker 1: bigger order, uh much larger bag of badgers, and it
Speaker 1: is either impossible or incredibly dangerous to do so. So
Speaker 1: with that kind of internal logic, which again I'm completely
Speaker 1: plagiarizing from a completely fictional book. Um in this in
Speaker 1: this internal logic, then if a time traveler is attempting
Speaker 1: to prevent something incre reredibly important, whether incredibly good incredibly bad,
Speaker 1: then it would be a huge shift and it would
Speaker 1: be a problem. But then we also have to think,
Speaker 1: if somebody had the benefit of retrospect, right, couldn't they
Speaker 1: travel back to the nineteen fifties and prevent Scern from
Speaker 1: being built. That's probably smarter, you know, but somebody was
Speaker 1: going to build it at some point. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: prevented that one. You gotta think maybe a group of
Speaker 1: scientists here in the United States, working with Canada and Mexico,
Speaker 1: created our version of the LHC. We almost did, didn't we? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but you know it's tough. It's that whole weird
Speaker 1: butterfly fact thing where somebody, and especially the idea of
Speaker 1: science itself, somebody somewhere is going to try it. And
Speaker 1: if we if we treat this as a thought experiment,
Speaker 1: one thing that is baffling and and and look, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, most most people nowadays do not believe in
Speaker 1: some sort of physical on linear time travel. Right. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing, whether you believe in this idea or not.
Speaker 1: The weirdest and for me, most disturbing aspect of this
Speaker 1: entire concept is that if a time traveler did change something,
Speaker 1: we would have no idea because our reality would just
Speaker 1: move along. It may have already happened numerous times, right,
Speaker 1: And you and I feel like we have been doing
Speaker 1: this show together for a number of years, But have
Speaker 1: we Who was actually sitting here before the timeline changed? Oh? Dude,
Speaker 1: I think it was I think it was me, But
Speaker 1: but was it? I don't know? Oh? Oh wait, who's that?
Speaker 1: Oh it's just Paul. Okay, you're staring Matt Is. Matt
Speaker 1: is staring at super producer Paul seeing if he can
Speaker 1: get a reaction from him. Did you get what I
Speaker 1: was looking at? You? Like, Paul, he's got that poker face.
Speaker 1: Wow that Oh well, we've got eyebrow lifted. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna move on. I am still paying
Speaker 1: for that punt at the top. Full disclosure. Our Christmas
Speaker 1: holiday party was last night, so all of us, you know,
Speaker 1: we we got down. So yeah, this morning we're recording this.
Speaker 1: We're all a little loopy. I think I think that's
Speaker 1: all right. We're having a good time in here, especially Paul,
Speaker 1: he's having the best time. So speaking of time travel, Uh,
Speaker 1: John Tetur, if you are listening, please feel free to
Speaker 1: clue us in on what may or may not be
Speaker 1: happening at certain if there's any non linear time travel involved.
Speaker 1: And John t Door, since you are one of the
Speaker 1: most famous alleged time travelers in our day and age,
Speaker 1: we would love to invite you to our holiday party
Speaker 1: that occurs yesterday. Oh, there were some people I didn't
Speaker 1: know there. Yeah, there were a lot of people I
Speaker 1: didn't know there. I guess they're wearing it disguys for
Speaker 1: that thing. Uh, this is just this is just one
Speaker 1: of the conspiracy theories or fringe beliefs about certain other stuff.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, is even stranger. One story involves
Speaker 1: human sacrifice. Yeah. A video showed up online in of
Speaker 1: what appeared to be human sacrifice occurring in the Geneva
Speaker 1: facility of certain Um. It looked like some kind of
Speaker 1: occult ritual. Um, there was a mock human sacrifice that occurred.
Speaker 1: You can watch the video. You can see at least
Speaker 1: parts of it online. The Guardian has a great rite
Speaker 1: up on it if you just type some of those
Speaker 1: search words in. Um, it looks like a woman gets
Speaker 1: stabbed by these people wearing rock cloaks, black robes, and
Speaker 1: it's conducted in front of a large statue of Eva,
Speaker 1: the Hindu deity. Yeah. Um, it looks intense, let's say that.
Speaker 1: But according to the Guardian and some of the sources
Speaker 1: they used, it appears to be at least not genuine,
Speaker 1: like nobody actually got hurt. It appears to be just
Speaker 1: some people goofing around. At least that's the official thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Bohemian Grove is just a summer camp. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: uh huh, yeah, I'm sure and sure that's what a
Speaker 1: spokesperson for Bohemian Grove has said, Okay, look, this was
Speaker 1: probably a prank. Bohemian Grove is real. Uh, these a
Speaker 1: Certain spokeswoman told UH told the French press agency that
Speaker 1: this these scenes were filmed on our premises, but without
Speaker 1: official permission or knowledge. Certain does not condone this type
Speaker 1: of spoof, which can give rise to misunderstandings about the
Speaker 1: scientific nature of our work. Yeah, and it should be
Speaker 1: known that the people responsible for pulling the prank did
Speaker 1: have access badges, so they were there. It's not like
Speaker 1: they didn't have permission to be on the campus. So
Speaker 1: people who really did work at Certain at least faked
Speaker 1: a human sacrifice. Yes, that's that's true. Yes, right, at
Speaker 1: the very least they faked it for somebody's music video
Speaker 1: or student film. I'm assuming I would like to see
Speaker 1: the final product. Or they stab some Yep, yep, that's
Speaker 1: what she into. Two things pretty much. Here's another one. Earthquakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: manufactured earthquakes, not purposely manufactured. But but I mean, let's
Speaker 1: say accidentally man made. Right. Yeah. The idea is that
Speaker 1: perhaps the LHC is causing earthquakes unbeknownst or it's like
Speaker 1: a side it's a side effect of some of the
Speaker 1: LHC testing that the scientists didn't expec The idea came
Speaker 1: from a couple of different places, including a YouTube channel
Speaker 1: called bp earth Watch. So CERN had an experiment called Awake,
Speaker 1: and it was exploring the use of plasma as an
Speaker 1: accelerant for particles, right to send particles over a distance
Speaker 1: and have them retain high energy right under accelerate particles
Speaker 1: to high energies over a distance, and one of the
Speaker 1: experiments involved sending plasma from the LHC underground for two
Speaker 1: fifty miles to the Grand Sasso Nuclear Physics Laboratory in Italy.
Speaker 1: And for people who believe this theory, well, the argument
Speaker 1: is this that CERNS experiments, specifically Awake, sending plasma right
Speaker 1: underground through these long distances somehow triggered earthquakes of varying
Speaker 1: strength and significance. The argument here it seems to dwell
Speaker 1: on their interpretation of maps essentially, and it's not it's
Speaker 1: not completely out of bounds, because we do know, for instance,
Speaker 1: that at HARP before HARP shut its doors and they
Speaker 1: were exciting the ionosphere, right, so we do know that
Speaker 1: there can be large scale effects. But you know, if
Speaker 1: but if people are causing earthquakes. Here's the first question
Speaker 1: anybody would ask if they were being skeptical. If people
Speaker 1: found out they were doing something that was causing earthquakes,
Speaker 1: why the hell would they do it? Surely they wouldn't
Speaker 1: keep doing it. Yeah, there's there's no way that people
Speaker 1: who manufacture earthquakes and know that they're doing it, we
Speaker 1: keep doing it. The motive is just not there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the motive is not there. I mean you you wouldn't
Speaker 1: continue testing nuclear weapons underground if it caused earthquakes. Oh
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, that totally does it. That is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point because in the DPRK a k
Speaker 1: A North Korea, underground nuclear testing does in fact cause earthquakes.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and another example would be, you know, if
Speaker 1: you were shooting some kind of hydraulic mixture of chemicals
Speaker 1: into the ground to break up the rocks so you
Speaker 1: could get more oil out. Uh, and it just happened
Speaker 1: to cause earthquakes, you wouldn't do that anymore. Oh fracking, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, we're doing that too. Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: guess we're causing like two two versions of man made earthquakes.
Speaker 1: So the idea that certain would be causing earthquake, while
Speaker 1: not scientifically valid, is not outside the realm of ridiculous
Speaker 1: actions by human beings. You know what feels a bit
Speaker 1: outside that realm, but is so awesome. I want it
Speaker 1: to be true that that same experiment that was being
Speaker 1: performed at LHC awake, perhaps it was creating a portal,
Speaker 1: or the whole point of it was to create a
Speaker 1: portal to another dimension and or a wormhole across the universe.
Speaker 1: How cool would that be? Because there are a lot
Speaker 1: there are several YouTube channels that you can find videos
Speaker 1: of people purporting that that's what occurred. There's some videos
Speaker 1: of intense storms occurring above the LHC with just intense
Speaker 1: lightning going on, and uh. The belief there is that
Speaker 1: they opened a portal either to the underworld i e. Satan,
Speaker 1: or just to you know, an extraterrestrial planet somewhere sort
Speaker 1: of like upside down. Yeah, a dimension slightly tilted to
Speaker 1: the left. Man. Yeah, that's cool, man, sign me up.
Speaker 1: I'll go to another dimension. I'll go I'll go to
Speaker 1: the missed world in that other Stephen King's story. I'll
Speaker 1: badly travel to the upside down the Missed world seems
Speaker 1: pretty scary. I don't think I would last long um
Speaker 1: where I'd give it a go. All right, yeah man,
Speaker 1: yeah man, here for a good time, not a long time. Okay,
Speaker 1: explain something to me. Does the Missed and this is
Speaker 1: kind of a spoiler, and just stop listening if you
Speaker 1: don't want to. We're past the statute man, just five
Speaker 1: years established that. So in the mist is it an
Speaker 1: actual dimension that's being breached or that is coming into
Speaker 1: our dimension? Or is it just something that affects the mind.
Speaker 1: Because I started watching the show that's based on The
Speaker 1: Missed and it seems to have a completely different understanding
Speaker 1: of what it is than what I thought it was.
Speaker 1: I believe the answer is found in the problem a
Speaker 1: lot of producers have when they're adapting something to television, right,
Speaker 1: which is inevitably, if a show runs long enough, it
Speaker 1: dilutes into a soap proper esque sort of thing about
Speaker 1: people's relationships. Yeah, oh, walking Dead, right? Walking Dead is
Speaker 1: like a soap opera where everybody says everyone else's name
Speaker 1: five times in a paragraph, and occasionally a zombie shows
Speaker 1: up and you know they're Look, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who love the show, and I think zombies
Speaker 1: are really cool monsters in Atlanta and Atlanta. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a hometown show and there's some amazing acting
Speaker 1: and it is just not for me. But I think
Speaker 1: that's why the mist happens there. And to answer your question,
Speaker 1: in the story, the miss, there's a thing. Somebody correct
Speaker 1: me right in and correct me if I'm if I
Speaker 1: get this wrong, But there's a there's a secret government project, right,
Speaker 1: maybe Project Arrowhead or something. It's rather vague. And what
Speaker 1: they ultimately do is they open a hole into this
Speaker 1: dimension from which this mist pours out, and the mist
Speaker 1: sort of functions as the natural environment for the creatures
Speaker 1: from this dimension, which are all aggressive and kind of
Speaker 1: dumb and monstrous and they hate you. And some of
Speaker 1: them are huge, yes, and some are in like the
Speaker 1: size of a large dinosaur. It's so cool. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: cool too. I'm sorry I started to get into much
Speaker 1: of that. But the thought of that occurring because of
Speaker 1: the LHC, I think I wonder if that picture gets
Speaker 1: overlaid sometimes for people they imagine something like that occurring
Speaker 1: at l AC. Yeah, exactly. There's there's this other idea
Speaker 1: that you introduced me to about asteroids, that the LHC
Speaker 1: could generate a magnetic field that could somehow pull an
Speaker 1: asteroid towards Earth if the iron content of the rock
Speaker 1: was high enough. Yeah, this one doesn't hold much water,
Speaker 1: just because of the science involved and how strong of
Speaker 1: an electromagnetic field you know, is actually being created at
Speaker 1: the LHC, and how strong that would have to be
Speaker 1: to have any effect on anybody that's you know, outside
Speaker 1: of our atmosphere. However, one thing that really could happen, Oh,
Speaker 1: the one thing. Black holes, Black freaking holes, the scariest
Speaker 1: thing that exists in our universe in my opinion, the
Speaker 1: LHC could legitimately, in theory, produce miniature black holes, which
Speaker 1: miniature which still function as black holes. Uh. And scientists
Speaker 1: readily admit this. Yes, we've got a statement from a
Speaker 1: CERN spoke sman and this comes from Express dot code
Speaker 1: dot UK quote. Although powerful for an accelerator, the energy
Speaker 1: reached in the LHC is modest by nature's standards. Cosmic rays,
Speaker 1: particles produced by events in outer space, collide with particles
Speaker 1: in the Earth's atmosphere at much greater energies than those
Speaker 1: of the LHC. These cosmic rays have been bombarding the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere as well as other astronomical bodies. Since the
Speaker 1: bodies were formed with no harmful consequences, these planets and
Speaker 1: stars have stayed intact despite these higher energy collisions over
Speaker 1: billions of years. The LHC will not generate black holes
Speaker 1: in the cosmological sense. However, some theories suggests that the
Speaker 1: formation of tiny quantum black holes maybe possible. The observation
Speaker 1: of such an event would be thrilling in terms of
Speaker 1: our understanding of the universe and would be perfectly safe unquote.
Speaker 1: So don't you feel better because because you know, there
Speaker 1: are other people who argue that the risk of operating
Speaker 1: the LHC disproportionately outweighs anything um any benefits science might
Speaker 1: gain from experiments. And this is from another spokesperson for
Speaker 1: now fit's called lc Defense dot org. It is not
Speaker 1: possible to know what the outcome of the experiments will be,
Speaker 1: but even certain scientists concede there's a real possibility of
Speaker 1: creating destructive theoretical anomalies such as miniture black holes. Right
Speaker 1: and for people who are concerned about this, uh, they
Speaker 1: believe these events have the potential to fundamentally alter matter
Speaker 1: and destroy the planet because a miniature black hole would
Speaker 1: be trapped in Earth's gravitational field and over seconds to
Speaker 1: hours interact acquire more mass, and if the theoretical process
Speaker 1: of hockey and radiation doesn't work as predicted or as
Speaker 1: quickly as predicted, than the black hole might stick around.
Speaker 1: The thing that people say is if these theoretical tiny
Speaker 1: entities quantum black holes were created, they would wink out
Speaker 1: of existence almost instantaneously to human observers. Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 1: You would pretty much only know by observing the data afterwards. Um,
Speaker 1: And you know, it is really interesting. Certain scientists say
Speaker 1: that this kind of miniature black hole or quantum black
Speaker 1: hole could have effects on other dimensions, which sounds really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. So even though it's only a blipment
Speaker 1: of existence in our three dimensional world, well I guess
Speaker 1: four dimensions with time, but it could have effects further
Speaker 1: on the dimensional scale, which is fascinating, especially if you
Speaker 1: think about, you know, multiverse theory with the idea that
Speaker 1: there we exist on a plane much like a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. Thinking all these pieces of paper stacked together,
Speaker 1: and you create a quantum black hole in the top
Speaker 1: piece of paper, let's just say that's where we exist.
Speaker 1: Some first, somehow that quantum black hole would go all
Speaker 1: the way through or at least some of the way
Speaker 1: through the rest of the papers that are stacked up together,
Speaker 1: So you could cause a disturbance theoretically across all of
Speaker 1: the multiverse. Which sounds like a bad idea. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a strange idea. It uh. It gets us to
Speaker 1: where today's episode concludes. Because old friend, we are on
Speaker 1: the bleeding edge of science, and right now as we
Speaker 1: record this, it's coming out in eighteen but we're at
Speaker 1: the very end the twilight hour of and we know
Speaker 1: that discoveries are being made, right, they're being worked towards
Speaker 1: that will fundamentally change our understanding of the universe and
Speaker 1: possibly our understanding of our own inner workings. And at
Speaker 1: this point it is something you're telling me off air.
Speaker 1: It's all theoretical, yeah, the good, the bad, it's all
Speaker 1: theoretical on those tiny, tiny scales that we can barely observe.
Speaker 1: And all we can do is try and discover more
Speaker 1: by experimenting. And I think that's the right way to go.
Speaker 1: We just, I would say, just humans, we have to
Speaker 1: be very, very careful of that doing it because we
Speaker 1: can rather than we need to understand. It's just so
Speaker 1: dangerous that some of that's in those levels. It feels
Speaker 1: so dangerous. Yeah, you know, and I I respect where
Speaker 1: you're coming from, but you know that I'm fundamentally different
Speaker 1: in that regard, and maybe that's why we get along
Speaker 1: so well. So we are going to call it a day.
Speaker 1: Yet again, we have recorded an episode without the world
Speaker 1: ending in this timeline, at least, the strangest things we
Speaker 1: have discovered are that miniature black holes are a real
Speaker 1: thing that cern can create that is not hogwash. Uh,
Speaker 1: that people do manufacture earthquakes and everybody's just pretending that's
Speaker 1: a normal thing. It is not, and it's terrible. It's
Speaker 1: worth the future. Historians will see it on the same
Speaker 1: level as people committing human sacrifice because they're afraid the
Speaker 1: sun won't go up. Money is a religion, so we
Speaker 1: also know, speaking of human sacrifice, that people who worked
Speaker 1: at certain are at least doing some weird theater stuff.
Speaker 1: And the thing again that I find most bizarre about
Speaker 1: this is if there were a time traveling saboture or
Speaker 1: group of saboteurs, we would have no idea. So what
Speaker 1: do you think of the experiments going on at certain Yes?
Speaker 1: And why do you think it's become this subject of
Speaker 1: such strange accusations over time? Is it just because of
Speaker 1: the curiosities and the unknowns for minds like myself which
Speaker 1: don't fully grasp what's going on? Or is it because
Speaker 1: there really is something going on a little a little
Speaker 1: fuzzy is yeah? Is certain creating fuzzy timelines? Right? Is
Speaker 1: the Mandela effect just a ripple of cern the guys
Speaker 1: over there again? Yes? Yeah, you know Paul? Okay, you
Speaker 1: remember me? Right? My name is Phil, Yeah, I know, Billy.
Speaker 1: We've been working together for years making sure well, Mike
Speaker 1: and I are going to call it a day, all right,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. Everybody. We hope
Speaker 1: that you are having a wonderful start to new your
Speaker 1: new year, and we'd like to hear from you. We
Speaker 1: especially if you are a physicist. We would love to
Speaker 1: hear your best analogy for the Higgs Boson and the
Speaker 1: way Boson's function upon these forces. Right, And you can
Speaker 1: find us on Instagram, You can find us on Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can find us on Facebook. You can find every
Speaker 1: show we have ever done on our website Deep Stuff.
Speaker 1: They don't want you to know dot com. And if
Speaker 1: you don't want to find us on social media, you
Speaker 1: just want to get to us directly, you can write
Speaker 1: to us. We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com