Speaker 1: Technology with tech Stuff from stuff works dot com. Hey there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to text Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm a senior writer with how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: and tech Stuff is the podcast where we look at
Speaker 1: all things technological in existence, try to understand how they
Speaker 1: work and why are they important or are they no
Speaker 1: longer important or were they never important? Today, there's a
Speaker 1: really important one, and in fact, we've done an episode
Speaker 1: about this very topic. Back in two thousand twelve, tech
Speaker 1: Stuff did an episode about the Large Hadron Collider and
Speaker 1: a lot has happened in those five years since that podcast,
Speaker 1: so I thought it would be good to revisit the topic. Plus,
Speaker 1: some of my coworkers had a chance to chat with
Speaker 1: some scientists from the LHC at mog Festen. I'm incredibly
Speaker 1: envious of that and I'm going to include some excerpts
Speaker 1: from those interviews in this episode, and they're pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: So what is the Large Hadron Collider? What is this
Speaker 1: LHC thing? Well, what's a particle accelerator, which means it
Speaker 1: uses forces to accelerate subatomic particles two speeds approaching the
Speaker 1: speed of light. The LHC design allows for two streams
Speaker 1: to accelerate in opposite directions, each looping around the massive
Speaker 1: facility millions of times per second until the two beams
Speaker 1: of particles converge at one of four collision points. They're
Speaker 1: the particles collide with such force that they annihilate each other,
Speaker 1: and we look at the reaction to learn more about
Speaker 1: the fundamental nature of the universe. That's the short version.
Speaker 1: Now let's dive into a longer one. Now, first, what
Speaker 1: the heck is a hadron? Well, technically, it's a particle
Speaker 1: that has made up of quirks, antiquarks, and gluons. Oh,
Speaker 1: our definition has raised the need for more definitions. Alright,
Speaker 1: So a quirk is the sound made by a dirk.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I stole that joke from a book
Speaker 1: called Science Made Stupid, which as a kid I thought
Speaker 1: was the pinnacle of humor. A quirk is actually a
Speaker 1: family of elementary particles that come in different pairs, So
Speaker 1: you could have an up quirk and a down cork.
Speaker 1: These paired quarks have a similar mass but different charges.
Speaker 1: Quirks are bound by the strong nuclear force, which is
Speaker 1: the strongest of the four fundamental forces in the universe,
Speaker 1: and the other three are the weak nuclear force, the
Speaker 1: electro magnetic force, and gravity. While the strong nuclear force
Speaker 1: is the strongest of the four fundamental forces, it also
Speaker 1: operates across the smallest distances, so it's a very strong force,
Speaker 1: but only at distances that are on the subatomic scale.
Speaker 1: An antiquark is the antiparticle component of a cork. Everything
Speaker 1: turns into another. Call for a definition, So an antiparticle
Speaker 1: is one that is identical to a subatomic particle in mass,
Speaker 1: but opposite to it in electric and magnetic properties. When
Speaker 1: these two otherwise idea nicle subatomic particles encounter one another,
Speaker 1: a particle and its antiparticle, they annihilate each other. If
Speaker 1: you've heard about matter and antimatter, it's that concept. When
Speaker 1: our universe formed, for some reason, there was a teen
Speaker 1: c tiny bit more matter than there was anti matter.
Speaker 1: If the two had been equal, they would have annihilated
Speaker 1: each other and we wouldn't have you know, movie theaters
Speaker 1: and caso and stars and stuff. So an antiquark is
Speaker 1: the antiparticle two quarks. But what are gluons. Well, these
Speaker 1: are neutral, massless particles that are forced carrying particles. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they are called messenger particles of the strong nuclear force,
Speaker 1: and there are eight different types of gluons, so you're gluons.
Speaker 1: Quarks and antiquarks are bound together to create certain subatomic
Speaker 1: particles like protons and neutrons. There are lots of them
Speaker 1: in every sub atomic particle, like a countless number of them,
Speaker 1: and number is constantly changing. Within a proton, for example,
Speaker 1: there's a shorthand and somewhat misleading statement that protons are
Speaker 1: made up of two up quarks and one down quirk.
Speaker 1: But that sounds like there's just three quarks and a proton.
Speaker 1: Nothing can be further from the truth. There are zillions
Speaker 1: of quarks inside a proton. The shorthand actually means there
Speaker 1: are two more up quarks, then there are up anti
Speaker 1: quarks and one more down quirk than down anti quarks.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of a microcosm of a well, I
Speaker 1: guess the macro cosm of the cosmos itself. Remember when
Speaker 1: I said there were you know, if there were equal
Speaker 1: amounts matter and anti matter, everything would be annihilated. Well,
Speaker 1: there you go. Theoretical physicist Matt Strassler has a great
Speaker 1: article about this that makes it easier to understand and
Speaker 1: in that article. He explains that a proton consists of
Speaker 1: these uncountable elementary particles with gluon's moving around at near
Speaker 1: the speed of light, sometimes appearing or disappearing. And he says,
Speaker 1: your hydrogen atom, which consists of a relatively stationary proton
Speaker 1: as the nucleus and a single electron zipping around it
Speaker 1: speeds far below the speed of light, is a peaceful
Speaker 1: example of balance compared to what's going on inside of
Speaker 1: a proton. And then he uses this analogy which I
Speaker 1: love so much I have to quote it directly. He says,
Speaker 1: in short, atoms are too protons as a pod to
Speaker 1: do in a delicate ballet is to a dance floor
Speaker 1: crowded with drunk twenty something's bouncing and flailing to a
Speaker 1: dj That that image really works for me. Particle accelerators
Speaker 1: like the LHC smash open subatomic particles like protons to
Speaker 1: study these elementary particles and their behaviors, as well as
Speaker 1: to suss out the fundamental secrets of the universe. So
Speaker 1: I started off this whole rabbit hole by asking the
Speaker 1: question what is a hadron? Well, hadrons include not only protons,
Speaker 1: but also neutron, pion plus articles, kon plus articles, and
Speaker 1: other stuff that's more exotic than your basic atomic science
Speaker 1: class typically covers. The commonality between all of these particles
Speaker 1: is that they are made up of some combination of quarks, antiquarks,
Speaker 1: and gluons, and the nature of that combination determines what
Speaker 1: sort of particles they are and thus their physical properties.
Speaker 1: The Large Hadron Collider's mission is to smash these sorts
Speaker 1: of particles apart, violently and at great speeds. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's look at some history of how the LHC
Speaker 1: came to be, and then we'll look at how it
Speaker 1: do what it do. In n four, the European Committee
Speaker 1: for Future Accelerators met with CERN to discuss a new
Speaker 1: particle accelerator facility. And CERTAIN is an amazing organization. You
Speaker 1: may recall that Tim berners Lee, who is credited as
Speaker 1: being the father of the Worldwide Web, he created that
Speaker 1: first web page for CERN. He was working for CERN.
Speaker 1: So CERTAIN has had a very important role in technology
Speaker 1: for years, and it's gone well outside of just the
Speaker 1: realm of particle physics. And I can't believe I used
Speaker 1: the sentence just the realm of particle physics. So this
Speaker 1: new facility they started to talk about was an idea
Speaker 1: for a new collider. The event's name itself was the
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider in the l EP Tunnel. That was
Speaker 1: what they called it, the Large Hadron Collider in the
Speaker 1: l EP Tunnel. L EP is an acronym for the
Speaker 1: Large Electron Positron Collider. I'm sure you know. An electron
Speaker 1: is the negatively charged subatomic particle that typically orbits an
Speaker 1: atomic nucleus. It's also the basis for electricity, but you've
Speaker 1: heard me talk about that enough recently, I'm sure. A
Speaker 1: positron is a subatomic particle that has the same mass
Speaker 1: as an electron, but has a positive charge, not a
Speaker 1: negative one. The magnitude of that charge is numerically the
Speaker 1: same as an electrons negative charge, except we're talking positive
Speaker 1: instead of negative with positrons. It is therefore the antiparticle
Speaker 1: to an electron. Unlike protons, which are a type of hadron,
Speaker 1: electrons and positrons are fundamental particles that cannot be split
Speaker 1: into any smaller particles. They interact through the weak nuclear force,
Speaker 1: not the strong nuclear force. This puts them in a
Speaker 1: category of subatomic particles called leptons. This also includes stuff
Speaker 1: like muons, electron neutrinos, and various antiparticles. The Large Electron
Speaker 1: Positron Collider became the largest electron positron accelerator ever built.
Speaker 1: Planning for the twenty seven kilometer circumference tunnel began back
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty three and construction ended in nineteen Digging
Speaker 1: the tunnel took three years, using three tunnel boring machines.
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about those in that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: episode about the hyperloop and the boring company. Those tunnel
Speaker 1: digging devices are pretty slow. A snail is faster. The
Speaker 1: l EP itself was commissioned in July nine, with the
Speaker 1: first beams circulating on Bastille Day of that year. That's
Speaker 1: July fourteenth, in case you aren't up on your French history.
Speaker 1: The first collisions allowed scientists to produce and observe z bosons.
Speaker 1: So now we have another question. One the sam hill
Speaker 1: is a boson? Well, at first I thought a boson
Speaker 1: was the sailor who was in charge of equipment and
Speaker 1: crew aboard a ship. But as it turns out, that's
Speaker 1: a bow sun, which is actually spelled like boat swain,
Speaker 1: and that has nothing to do with particle physics, unless
Speaker 1: you're talking about very tiny boats, Noah. Boson is another
Speaker 1: type of sub atomic particle that has a spin that
Speaker 1: has a quantum number of either zero or an integral number.
Speaker 1: Does that clear it up all right? Well, this might
Speaker 1: be more helpful. According to Einstein's work, all particles in
Speaker 1: existence fall into two broad categories. They are either fermions
Speaker 1: or they are boson. This is all based off of math.
Speaker 1: By the way, Einstein's math only really works if this
Speaker 1: supposition holds true, and so far it seems to be so.
Speaker 1: Bosons include particles that can all do the same thing
Speaker 1: at the same time. For example, a photon is a
Speaker 1: type of boson. You can make photons line up in
Speaker 1: a specific direction in a specific phase, and you can
Speaker 1: create a laser beam with a precise wavelength of color.
Speaker 1: All the photons within that laser beam are behaving in
Speaker 1: the exact same way. Fermions cannot do the same thing
Speaker 1: in the same place. Electrons are a type of fermion.
Speaker 1: They cannot orbit an atom in exactly the same way.
Speaker 1: You can't have two electrons orbiting the atom exactly the
Speaker 1: same way. Fermions include charged leptons such as the electrons
Speaker 1: and positrons I just talked about. Bosons include the force
Speaker 1: carrying particles as well as the Higgs particle. More about
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson in a little bit. Okay, so the
Speaker 1: Z bosons and the W bosons are responsible for the
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force. Later, the l e P was souped
Speaker 1: up so that they could produce pairs of W bosons.
Speaker 1: For eleven years, scientists use the l e P to
Speaker 1: learn more about these mysterious particles, producing them in the millions.
Speaker 1: On November two, two thousand, the l EP shut down
Speaker 1: for the last time, to be dismantled. In its place
Speaker 1: would be the Large Hadron Collider. While the l EP
Speaker 1: project was still in action, other groups were forming to
Speaker 1: create the teams and facilities that would be attached to
Speaker 1: the l h C. One of those was Atlas A
Speaker 1: t l A S. Atlas is a detector that captures
Speaker 1: information from proton proton collisions. It would become one of
Speaker 1: four collision detectors along the path of the LHC. It
Speaker 1: and the CMS detector are the biggest of the experiments
Speaker 1: running on the Large Hadron Collider. There's also alice A,
Speaker 1: l I C E and l h C B detectors
Speaker 1: that look at more specific phenomena. They sit in big
Speaker 1: caverns along the LHC ring underground, but in this timeline
Speaker 1: we're talking about, they were still just ideas. At that point,
Speaker 1: the LHC itself had not yet been approved and the
Speaker 1: l e P was still in operation. The CERN Council
Speaker 1: would approve the LHC project in December nine. In October,
Speaker 1: the project leaders published the LHC Conceptual Design Report, which
Speaker 1: included the idea of these four detectors and their arrangement
Speaker 1: around the perimeter of the LHC ring. CMS and ATLAS
Speaker 1: would both get official approval in January. The following month,
Speaker 1: ALICE would get the nod That happened on Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: Happy Valentine's Day. Alice. LHC B would be approved on September.
Speaker 1: There are other experiments connected to the LHC with scientific
Speaker 1: instruments that are near the big detectors and that look
Speaker 1: at specific phenomena, but the four detectors are what most
Speaker 1: people are familiar with if they know anything about the LHC.
Speaker 1: That is two years after the LP shut down, so
Speaker 1: this would be two thousand two. The ATLAS cavern was completed.
Speaker 1: Atlas is the largest in volume of all the detectors
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. We had a team of producers meet
Speaker 1: with scientists who work with the large hadron colliders, specifically
Speaker 1: with the Atlas project. One of those scientists is Stephen Goldfarb.
Speaker 1: Here's how he explained Atlas's role in the LHC SO.
Speaker 1: Atlas is is one of four large detectors that sits
Speaker 1: at the collision points on large hadron collider. Large hadron
Speaker 1: collider brings protons around and accelerates them and has them
Speaker 1: collide at four different places. You surround those places with detectors.
Speaker 1: Atlas is the largest in volume of these detectors. It's
Speaker 1: about a half of a football field in length to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of the size, and packed full
Speaker 1: of sophisticated equipment. It's one of the most complex devide
Speaker 1: is I think ever constructed. About a hundred more than
Speaker 1: a hundred million different channels of information come out of
Speaker 1: this thing. Its rule is if if you like an analogy.
Speaker 1: Is perhaps the strongest lens on a microscope that's ever
Speaker 1: been built. It's to look into nature and to try
Speaker 1: to understand what we're made out of what are the
Speaker 1: fundamental components of of of matter and then to understand
Speaker 1: the rules around that. And we're making some big steps forward,
Speaker 1: but we still have some major questions to try to answer.
Speaker 1: Now we've got a lot more to say about the LHC,
Speaker 1: but before we dive into the rest of it, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. We're back now.
Speaker 1: These detectors have to capture information coming from a sub
Speaker 1: atomic scale. Those collisions often will create situations that will
Speaker 1: blip out of existence in just just a moment a
Speaker 1: fraction of a second, so the measurements have to be
Speaker 1: not only precise, but also happen faster than I can
Speaker 1: even imagine. That also means that every observation generates an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of data. So the challenges with the LHC
Speaker 1: aren't just with the physics of getting streams of sub
Speaker 1: atomic particles accelerated to near the speed of light and
Speaker 1: then making them smash together. It's also a lot of
Speaker 1: sorting and analyzing data to find meaningful information hidden in
Speaker 1: those collisions. So it's a monumental amount of work. Back
Speaker 1: to the timeline, the CMS team finished the cavern for
Speaker 1: their detector in two thousand five. Two years later, the
Speaker 1: last of the LHC's super conducting magnets were locked into place.
Speaker 1: Those would be dipole magnets, and this particular one was
Speaker 1: dipole magnet number one thousand, two hundred thirty two. After
Speaker 1: each magnet made the journey down that through the shaft
Speaker 1: to the level of the tunnel one feet below the surface,
Speaker 1: they were loaded into a special vehicle that would take
Speaker 1: them to their destination at a blistering three kilometers per hour.
Speaker 1: You had to go super slow so that you don't
Speaker 1: end up damaging these delicate and enormous pieces of machinery.
Speaker 1: These magnets are are huge. The LHC wasn't ready to
Speaker 1: begin warming up until two thousand eight. At ten a
Speaker 1: m September two thousand eight, the LHC fired a beam
Speaker 1: of protons around the ring for the first time. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: on September nine, two thousand eight, a fault in the
Speaker 1: electrical bus connection between a dipole and a quadruple caused
Speaker 1: some mechanical damage and released some liquid helium from the system.
Speaker 1: This set work on the LHC back by about a year.
Speaker 1: On April thirty, two thousand nine, the final replacement magnet,
Speaker 1: the fifty third replacement magnet, was lowered down to complete
Speaker 1: the repair work from the September two thousand eight accident.
Speaker 1: November two thousand nine saw particle beams again traveling down
Speaker 1: the LHC path. The LHC conducted collision experiments through November
Speaker 1: and into December two thousand nine. It then shut down
Speaker 1: for the winter, which the LHC does every year in
Speaker 1: order to conserve some energy. And during those first collision experiments,
Speaker 1: scientists were working with collisions on the scale of two
Speaker 1: point three six t e V. T e V stands
Speaker 1: for terra electron volts. An electron volt is a unit
Speaker 1: of energy equal to one point six time ten to
Speaker 1: the power of negative nineteen jewels. It's equal to the
Speaker 1: charge of a single electron moving across an electric potential
Speaker 1: difference of one vault, which you know that sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot, and on a sub atomic scale it is.
Speaker 1: But to give you an idea of what kind of
Speaker 1: energy we're talking about, a mosquito flapping its wings is
Speaker 1: the kinetic energy equivalent of about one terra electron voult,
Speaker 1: so two point three six tera electron volts on the
Speaker 1: macro scale is incredibly tiny. November two thousand nine also
Speaker 1: saw one of the stories that got a lot of
Speaker 1: circulation in the early days of the LHC, which was
Speaker 1: the system shut down due to a bread eating bird. Now,
Speaker 1: the way the story was reported was that the power
Speaker 1: supply to the LHC got frazzled, and when engineers went
Speaker 1: to check where these connections might have shorted out to
Speaker 1: see what the problem was, they found a bird eating
Speaker 1: bread over a power circuit. Crumbs supposedly caused the problem.
Speaker 1: According to CERN, however, this wasn't necessarily the problem. It
Speaker 1: might have contributed to the issue, but they don't really know.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter was that the power site, uh,
Speaker 1: there were some feathers, there was some bread, and that
Speaker 1: was about all they could really say for sure. Power
Speaker 1: was restored and the LHC experienced only a minor delay.
Speaker 1: In February, the LHC began to circulate beams in preparation
Speaker 1: for more collision experiments in the spring, culminating in two
Speaker 1: three point five terra electron volt proton beams circulating by March.
Speaker 1: This eventually allowed ATLAS to capture information from seven terra
Speaker 1: electron volt center of mass energy collisions for the first time.
Speaker 1: Skip ahead to December, when researchers at the LHC had
Speaker 1: begun to tune into data that could potentially prove the
Speaker 1: existence of the at that time purely hypothetical Higgs Boson particle.
Speaker 1: The Higgs boson is a particle that explains why mass exists,
Speaker 1: as in, why does matter have mass? To dive into
Speaker 1: more detail about this would require someone far better versed
Speaker 1: in quantum mechanics than i am. In two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: on July four, scientists that the CMS and ATLAS detectors
Speaker 1: confirmed the discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs
Speaker 1: Boson hypothesis. Atlas scientist Kate Shaw talks about that experience
Speaker 1: so well. The classic story with Atlas is of course
Speaker 1: the discovery of the Higgs boson. So this is really
Speaker 1: one of our miles staying discoveries we've made. And this
Speaker 1: is a long story of over fifty years of fifty
Speaker 1: years old. So it began with us trying to describe
Speaker 1: the universe. There was a big problem where we didn't
Speaker 1: understand why some particles had mass and other ones didn't.
Speaker 1: And so some theorists at the time, including Peter Hicks
Speaker 1: Um made a prediction of a way that these particles
Speaker 1: can have mass, and they said, if it's true, then
Speaker 1: there should be this thing called a h exsposon. Now
Speaker 1: at the time they said, don't even try to look
Speaker 1: for this because it's too difficult, it's too rare, you'll
Speaker 1: never find it. Do not invest in, you know, accelerators
Speaker 1: to do this. But fifty years later, we have the
Speaker 1: technology and know how to make these fantastic particle accelerators,
Speaker 1: and we've been able to find the Higgs boson. We
Speaker 1: found it in two thousand and twelve. And that's a
Speaker 1: fantastic thing that these things were just were predicted fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, and only now are we actually able to
Speaker 1: find and prove these theorists correct. In February, the LHC
Speaker 1: ended its first run of experiments and shut down to
Speaker 1: undergo adjustments for more powerful experiments in the future. The
Speaker 1: estimated downtime was that approximately two years. On June three,
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen, the LHC came back online, conducting collisions
Speaker 1: at an energy level of thirteen terror electron volts, much
Speaker 1: greater than any particle accelerator ever before. Now I've talked
Speaker 1: about what's going on generally speaking with the LHC, but
Speaker 1: how does it work specifically. For one thing, all those
Speaker 1: magnets have to be really efficient. To maximize efficiency, the
Speaker 1: LHC uses liquid helium to cool components to just a
Speaker 1: hair above absolute zero kelvin. Zero kelvin represents zero molecular movement.
Speaker 1: The molecular movement is essentially heat, so we're talking very
Speaker 1: very very cold here, colder than space. Even had that temperature,
Speaker 1: you can get super conductivity, in which a conductor is
Speaker 1: perfectly efficient and loses no energy as heat. There's no
Speaker 1: resistance in a superconductor. This is why power allages are
Speaker 1: a really big problem for the LHC. The power goes
Speaker 1: out and the system begins to warm up as liquid
Speaker 1: helium stop stops circulating through the system. If it heats
Speaker 1: up enough, it loses its super conductivity, and you have
Speaker 1: to wait until you've cooled it back down to that
Speaker 1: hair above absolute zero before you can begin again. They
Speaker 1: actually use liquid nitrogen to cool it down a certain amount,
Speaker 1: but liquid nitrogen isn't cold enough, so that's why they
Speaker 1: have to go to liquid helium. After it's been cooled down.
Speaker 1: To a certain threshold. So here's how getting those collisions
Speaker 1: to happen works. First, you start with some hydrogen atoms.
Speaker 1: The standard hydrogen atom consists of a single proton and
Speaker 1: a single electron that's orbiting that proton nucleus. Then you
Speaker 1: strip the electron away from the hydrogen atom. That leaves
Speaker 1: you with protons, those positively charged sub atomic particles. The
Speaker 1: protons enter the line act two L I N A
Speaker 1: C two. This is a machine that organizes protons into
Speaker 1: beams and fires them into an accelerator called the PS booster.
Speaker 1: The PS booster uses radio frequency cavities to accelerate the protons,
Speaker 1: so it's an electric field that pushes the protons to
Speaker 1: increasingly higher speeds. Because you've got a charged particle, you
Speaker 1: can use the opposite charge to pull the particle toward it,
Speaker 1: or a similar charge to push the particle away. So
Speaker 1: you just use that to increase the speed of that
Speaker 1: particle as it travels around this particular part of the accelerator.
Speaker 1: Magnets are there to make sure the protons stay on
Speaker 1: the right path. The magnetic fields kind of act as
Speaker 1: bumper rails for the protons. When these beams hit the
Speaker 1: correct energy level as determined by the experiment. They pass
Speaker 1: from the PS booster into another accelerator called the super
Speaker 1: Proton syncotron, which I was pretty sure was a Decepticon
Speaker 1: robot in one of those Michael Bay movies. The beams
Speaker 1: continue to accelerate and the protons separate into bunches. So
Speaker 1: think of groups of protons traveling a circular path, picking
Speaker 1: up speed constantly with other packs of protons right in
Speaker 1: front and right behind them, and each bunch is pretty big.
Speaker 1: I'm talking one point one times ten to the eleventh
Speaker 1: power of protons with two thousand, eight hundred eight bunches
Speaker 1: per beam. Once this beam hits the next threshold and
Speaker 1: energy levels, the SPS then injects it into the actual
Speaker 1: l h C. The beams divide into two. One beam
Speaker 1: travels around the kilometer circumference clockwise and the other one
Speaker 1: goes witter shans, which, as you all know, is my
Speaker 1: favorite synonym for counter clockwise. Now I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: how this works and what comes out of it in
Speaker 1: just a second, but first let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Alright, So those two beams, which
Speaker 1: have already been accelerated through a couple of different prior
Speaker 1: accelerators before going into the LHC. They enter the LHC,
Speaker 1: they're going in opposite directions, and after about twenty more
Speaker 1: minutes of excel A rating, at which point the two
Speaker 1: beams are going just a fraction below the speed of light,
Speaker 1: powerful magnets aim the bunches to converge at collision points. Now,
Speaker 1: protons are very very tiny. They are sub atomic particles,
Speaker 1: and it is super challenging to make sure you get
Speaker 1: two to collide with each other. That's why you have
Speaker 1: bunches with so many protons per bunch to help make
Speaker 1: sure the collisions actually happen. As an analogy, imagine that
Speaker 1: you are inside a an indoor stadium and you have
Speaker 1: a super bouncy ball, and you are at one end
Speaker 1: of a football field. You have a buddy with a
Speaker 1: super bouncy ball who is standing at the other end
Speaker 1: of the football field, and both you and your buddy
Speaker 1: are blindfolded, and you're both told to throw your super
Speaker 1: bouncy balls where you think the other person is with
Speaker 1: the aim of having those two balls collide in mid air.
Speaker 1: Will those bouncy balls collide? Probably not, And even this
Speaker 1: analogy doesn't give you a sense of scale of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. When we're chatting about protons, this would
Speaker 1: be this would be incredibly tightly controlled in the proton
Speaker 1: world if we were to take it at scale. So
Speaker 1: it's really hard to make sure you get these sub
Speaker 1: atomic particles to collide with one another. The precision of
Speaker 1: the system, coupled with the number of protons helps make
Speaker 1: sure that there are enough collisions to make the experiment worthwhile,
Speaker 1: and we're talking on the level of six hundred million
Speaker 1: collisions per second. Upon colliding protons behave in very interesting ways,
Speaker 1: sometimes in ways that are hard to get your mind around.
Speaker 1: Kate Shaw explains, I think there's many concepts and particle
Speaker 1: physics that I find very difficult to explain. Um. I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that I think is always
Speaker 1: vital to communicate and always is difficult is the fact
Speaker 1: that when we are doing partial collisions in the Large
Speaker 1: Headland Collider, we're not just colliding protons together and they
Speaker 1: crash and you see what's inside of them. It's you know,
Speaker 1: if you imagine throwing together to bowling bulls high energy,
Speaker 1: you can imagine they break apart and you can see
Speaker 1: what's inside of them. But with the large hat on collider,
Speaker 1: we're colliding things together and the particles annihilate one another.
Speaker 1: So these particles that are made of mass annihilate one another,
Speaker 1: turn into energy, and then turn into different type of
Speaker 1: mass um and then we study that. So it's like
Speaker 1: cliding apples together and getting bananas out. So this is
Speaker 1: always a complicated thing to an expect to explain, and
Speaker 1: a really kind of intrinsic part of what we do.
Speaker 1: There are some things the LHC might uncover but hasn't yet,
Speaker 1: such as evidence of extra dimensions or some observable proof
Speaker 1: of dark matter. In the process of searching for these things,
Speaker 1: scientists may create some stuff that makes some people unjustifiably nervous,
Speaker 1: like a micro black hole. And while the LHC could
Speaker 1: create a micro black hole as a result of a
Speaker 1: high powered collision, it's not the same sort of cosmic
Speaker 1: boogeyman that serves as a major device in various science
Speaker 1: fiction films. Stephen Goldfarb explains, now that got a lot
Speaker 1: of people very excited they're going to produce a black hole. Well,
Speaker 1: a micael black hole is something which has the energy
Speaker 1: of a mosquito, and it will always have the energy
Speaker 1: of a mosquito, and so it's something which will be
Speaker 1: produced and it will disappear instantly, and we can measure that.
Speaker 1: So one way that helps to get this concept home
Speaker 1: to everyone that what we're doing is at very low energy,
Speaker 1: yet it's something that's It's interesting is that Mother Nature,
Speaker 1: uh from charge particles produced by the Sun colliding with
Speaker 1: her upper atmosphere, has already done the l h C
Speaker 1: all of the collisions that we'll do in the l
Speaker 1: a C about ten thousand times before, and things are
Speaker 1: pretty much okay here on Earth. In July two thou seventeen,
Speaker 1: researchers at the LHC announced that experiments had uncovered a
Speaker 1: new part call and it consists of two charm quirks
Speaker 1: and one up cork. Keeping in mind the same rules
Speaker 1: we mentioned before that in fact, there are zillions of
Speaker 1: quirks there, but we're talking about the number of quarks
Speaker 1: that exceed the number of their respective antiparticles. What makes
Speaker 1: this particular new particle interesting is that it has two
Speaker 1: so called heavy quarks, those being the charm corks. Other
Speaker 1: particles of the barry On family have at most one
Speaker 1: heavy quirk, and there's talk of this new particle giving
Speaker 1: us a deeper understanding into the nature of the strong
Speaker 1: nuclear force. The new particle's name is sigh c C
Speaker 1: plus plus, but I think we should just call it Larry.
Speaker 1: Before I sign off, I want to talk about some fun,
Speaker 1: goofy stuff about the LHC, or really about people thinking
Speaker 1: about the LHC. The black hole story made some people
Speaker 1: flip out, hypothesizing that the collisions that the LHC could
Speaker 1: potentially destroy the world and create a black hole that
Speaker 1: would in our solar system into a waste land. There's
Speaker 1: even a cute little gift that shows the area outside
Speaker 1: of the large Hadron collider suddenly collapsing in on itself.
Speaker 1: But as Stephen Goldfar mentioned, that's not realistic. Collisions on
Speaker 1: the order of what happened at the LHC happened all
Speaker 1: the time in nature, so there's no reason to fear
Speaker 1: them here on Earth. If they really were that catastrophic,
Speaker 1: we never would have made it this far. Earth would
Speaker 1: have been destroyed long before any advanced life could have evolved.
Speaker 1: So that's a relief. But then there's the other story.
Speaker 1: This is the one I love because it's so goofy.
Speaker 1: This was a hypothesis which may or may not have
Speaker 1: simply just been a joke that the LHC itself was
Speaker 1: manipulating time so that it could not be turned on
Speaker 1: to cause massive amounts of harm. You know, we had
Speaker 1: that early problem with the LHC in which liquid helium
Speaker 1: was spreading throughout the system and they had to shut
Speaker 1: it all down, And then there was the bread being
Speaker 1: dropped by a bird. The hypothesis said that all of
Speaker 1: this was evidence of temporal tampering. Has some sort of
Speaker 1: entity from the future, perhaps an agent formed by the
Speaker 1: LHC itself was sent back in time to prevent the
Speaker 1: LHC from ever firing. So I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: a future saboteur would be a little more practical than
Speaker 1: this whole bird bred story. The LHC has been operating
Speaker 1: for years now, so clearly, if the temporal hooligans were
Speaker 1: involved at all, they've knocked it off by now, which
Speaker 1: is good. There's science to be done and making a
Speaker 1: note here huge success. As for why some LHC folks
Speaker 1: were at mog Fest, will not only is mog Fest
Speaker 1: concerned about technology and science. In addition, to music, but
Speaker 1: you can actually find quite a few bands that have
Speaker 1: formed at the LHC. There are a lot of musicians
Speaker 1: who are also scientists or engineers or data analysts, and
Speaker 1: they have often played together in various groups. So I reckon,
Speaker 1: then you check out the LHC music scene, because you
Speaker 1: might not just learn something, you might also get the
Speaker 1: boogie down that wraps it up for this update on
Speaker 1: the large Hadron Collider. I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: you guys about any topics you would like me to
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