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Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how

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Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with

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Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in I heart radio and I love

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Speaker 1: all things tech, and today we have a very special

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Speaker 1: guest on our show, someone who has worked on really

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Speaker 1: interesting problems. Is a rare occasion that I get to

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Speaker 1: talk to someone who has experienced in high energy particle physics.

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Speaker 1: So I want to introduce to all of you, if

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Speaker 1: you haven't listened to his amazing podcast yet, Daniel Whitson.

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Speaker 1: Dr Daniel Whitson that Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks

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Speaker 1: a lot for having me on. I am so glad

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Speaker 1: to have you here now. Daniel, you are one half

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Speaker 1: of the podcast team of Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for taking time away from explaining the

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Speaker 1: universe to grace my humble show with your presence. I

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Speaker 1: greatly appreciate it. Well, thanks a lot for having me on.

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Speaker 1: You guys talk about really fascinating stuff, so it's a

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Speaker 1: pleasure to be here. It's been a pleasure listening to

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Speaker 1: your show. We'll talk a little bit more about that

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Speaker 1: towards the end of the episode, but just so that

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Speaker 1: my listeners kind of understand where you you're coming from

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Speaker 1: before we get into work with the Large Hadron Collider

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Speaker 1: and CERN and particle physics. Tell us a bit about yourself,

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Speaker 1: all right, Well, I'm devastatingly good looking, which is why

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Speaker 1: I have a podcast, and m familiar my my. The

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Speaker 1: most important thing to know about me in this context,

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Speaker 1: I guess, is that I am a high energy physicist,

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Speaker 1: which means that I'm interested in studying the universe at

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Speaker 1: the smallest scale, and I do so by smashing stuff

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Speaker 1: together at the highest energy. It's like, you know, you

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Speaker 1: want to understand how things work, take them apart, and

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Speaker 1: that basically what we do is we try to take

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Speaker 1: the whole universe apart and understand how it works. So

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Speaker 1: I'm a professor at the University of California at Irvine

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Speaker 1: that's in Orange County and m I work there, and

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Speaker 1: I work also at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva

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Speaker 1: where the actual collider is, and we have a big

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Speaker 1: team of people smashing particles together and trying to figure

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Speaker 1: out what is the smallest bit of matter and how

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Speaker 1: does it all fit together? And where, how did everything start?

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Speaker 1: And how is it going to end? And we basically

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Speaker 1: try to tackle those really big sexy questions. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: I love the way you describe that, the idea of

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Speaker 1: taking apart the very basic particles that make up stuff

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Speaker 1: and and and finding out what makes that work. It's

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Speaker 1: very relatable to all the stories of the various innovators

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Speaker 1: who got their start taking apart the various pieces of

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Speaker 1: technology they have, often to the detriment of their family,

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Speaker 1: and then learning how it works and then hopefully being

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Speaker 1: able to put it back together again. Except we're looking

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Speaker 1: at reality here, how the the very fabric that makes

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Speaker 1: up existence works. And uh I also I watched a

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Speaker 1: great presentation that you and Jorge gave in which you

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Speaker 1: talked about your book and you talked about the gaps

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Speaker 1: and scientific knowledge, and that also made me feel like

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Speaker 1: I am all a smart person, only because in the

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Speaker 1: past I have described our understanding of the universe like

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Speaker 1: we're staring through a key hole and we can only

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Speaker 1: see a little bit of the illuminated room that's beyond

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Speaker 1: the keyhole, and there's stuff and shadows, So there are

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Speaker 1: things that we don't really see, and there are elements

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Speaker 1: that are out of you and to us. That's that's

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Speaker 1: our understanding of the universe. We only see a very

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Speaker 1: narrow band of what really exists out there, and our

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Speaker 1: goal is to expand that over time. That's right, and

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Speaker 1: the most amazing thing in my perspective is that we've

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Speaker 1: only recently disc covered that we are looking through the keyhole.

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Speaker 1: I mean, for a long time we thought we were

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Speaker 1: saying everything. We thought, well, we've seen the way the

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Speaker 1: universe is now, we just need to figure out how

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Speaker 1: to explain it. We made a lot of progress and

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Speaker 1: the last fifty year, in the last twenty or fifty years,

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Speaker 1: we've discovered that there's a lot of stuff out there

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Speaker 1: that we don't have any understanding of, dark matter, dark energy,

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Speaker 1: huge chunks of the universe which completely defy our our explanation.

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Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it can't be explained. You don't have

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Speaker 1: to go to like weird woo woo crystal energy stuff.

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Speaker 1: It just means that there's a lot more science left

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Speaker 1: to do. And for me, those are wonderful moments in

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Speaker 1: the history of science when you you know, you pull

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Speaker 1: back a layer of reality and discover, oh my gosh, wow,

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Speaker 1: things are totally different from what we expected, or you know,

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Speaker 1: it turns out we were only studying the the tail

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Speaker 1: of the elephant, and we need to look at the

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Speaker 1: rest of it. And and that's exciting. Not because the

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Speaker 1: science is humbled and realizing that we don't understand everything,

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Speaker 1: that's that's a wonderful experience. It's exciting because it means

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Speaker 1: there are discoveries left to come, right. I mean that

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Speaker 1: maybe some of the most dramatic, most insightful realizations about

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Speaker 1: the nature of the universe might still be ahead of us.

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Speaker 1: I like thinking about how in the future and a

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Speaker 1: hundred years people might look back with great knowledge of

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Speaker 1: how the universe works and wonder what it was like

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Speaker 1: to be us when we lived in such ignorance, right

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Speaker 1: when we didn't know so many things about so many

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Speaker 1: basic things about the universe. Um and what you said

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Speaker 1: earlier really resonate with me about trying to figure things

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Speaker 1: out by taking them apart. I think that there's an

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Speaker 1: innate curiosity and being human. I mean, that's what makes

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Speaker 1: being human fun, it makes being being alive worth It

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Speaker 1: is that we are driven by this desire to know

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Speaker 1: to understand the things around us. So if you're the

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Speaker 1: kind of person who's like, how does a blender work?

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Speaker 1: Let me take it apart, or you know, how does

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Speaker 1: this thing in my car work? Let me look under

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Speaker 1: the hood and poke around. Then you're basically a physicist.

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Speaker 1: You're the kind of person who wants to understand things

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Speaker 1: by taking them apart, by boiling them down to the

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Speaker 1: most essential elements, and using that to explain your car,

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Speaker 1: and then also your blender, and then other things you

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Speaker 1: haven't seen. But for right, it's about learning generalizable, universal truths. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and I would also argue that the history of

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Speaker 1: of humanity has been one in which we have attempted

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Speaker 1: to explain the why things are the way they are

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Speaker 1: for for all of our history, and the as we

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Speaker 1: eliminate gaps piece by piece, and knowing that we still

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Speaker 1: have enormous gaps left to fill in, we start to

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Speaker 1: really hone in on that over time we're able to

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Speaker 1: replace things where we had the explanation of a uh.

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Speaker 1: Well though, that that's the gods battling it out in Olympus,

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Speaker 1: and that's where the thunder comes from. To know now

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Speaker 1: we have a deeper understanding to the point now where

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Speaker 1: we even are able to get a grasp on the

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Speaker 1: idea that as humans, as as we are the way

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Speaker 1: we have evolved, we have limitations in our perception. There

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Speaker 1: are things that we are capable of perceiving because we

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Speaker 1: have evolved. It is advantageous, it made sense in our environment,

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Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that's everything there is out there,

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Speaker 1: which kind of leads into discussions that I've heard about,

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Speaker 1: you know, the various dimensions that we were capable of perceiving.

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Speaker 1: Some of those obviously we can we can observe the

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Speaker 1: physical dimensions, and then once you start figuring that out,

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Speaker 1: you say, well, it may be a leap to you

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Speaker 1: to think there are so many more dimensions or potentially

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Speaker 1: more dimensions than the ones we can perceive. But we

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Speaker 1: also know that we can't see things in the infrared

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Speaker 1: or ultra violet UH wave forms. But with technology, we

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Speaker 1: can convert that into light that we can see. And

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Speaker 1: once you start looking at things like that level where

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Speaker 1: you say, oh, yeah, I guess we have developed tools

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Speaker 1: that let us go beyond our limitations in our perception,

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Speaker 1: then it kind of opens up your mind into the

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Speaker 1: idea of now I kind of understand how there can

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Speaker 1: be things like dark energy and dark matter that are

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Speaker 1: beyond our current capability of detecting it, because it took

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Speaker 1: thousands of years for us to get to the point

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Speaker 1: where we could, uh could even indirectly observe stuff like

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Speaker 1: being for red in the ultraviolet. So that's sort of

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Speaker 1: the approach I take with people as well, the idea

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Speaker 1: that it feels like you're taking a big leap when

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Speaker 1: you start going into things like particle physics, when you

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Speaker 1: start talking about quantum quantum effects, because everything seems so strange.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't it doesn't work the way the classical physics work,

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Speaker 1: and it's it feels like you're asking people to take

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Speaker 1: a leap of faith. But once you start to build

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Speaker 1: on those blocks, they say, okay, all right, now I'm

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Speaker 1: with you. Now I got it. And that kind of

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Speaker 1: brings us over to the work that we see over

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Speaker 1: at at CERN and the large Hey drunk collider. Now,

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Speaker 1: one thing I like to remind people about as well

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Speaker 1: before we get there. I thinks he's touched on a

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Speaker 1: really interesting topic there. You know, Um, I think people

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Speaker 1: have been thinking about mysteries for a long time, right,

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Speaker 1: And for a long time, the world was really mysterious.

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Speaker 1: It was obvious that there were mysteries. You could just

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Speaker 1: go outside and there were things you didn't understand. What

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Speaker 1: is lightning? Right? Um? And it's sort of it was

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Speaker 1: a common feeling that the world was mysterious, you know,

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Speaker 1: like there are more things in the heavens and earth

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Speaker 1: than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Right, it's it's

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Speaker 1: even in literature. But we've sort of lost that. I

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Speaker 1: think a lot of people these days when they walk around,

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Speaker 1: they feel like they mostly understand stuff, like, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: know how weather works. Maybe we can't predict it exactly,

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Speaker 1: but we understand the mechanism of it and gravity we

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Speaker 1: have an understanding of that. And the sense of experiencing

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Speaker 1: mystery on a daily basis is sort of gone because

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Speaker 1: science has made so much progress in explaining the various

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Speaker 1: bits around us. And I want to remind people that

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Speaker 1: the bigger questions, the larger questions questions we're asking ourselves,

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Speaker 1: like why are we here? How should we live? How?

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Speaker 1: What is the history of everything? Those questions are still

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Speaker 1: totally unanswered. And uh, And as you said, I think

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Speaker 1: is really insightful about how we don't even know what

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Speaker 1: we don't know, because there's a lot of things that

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Speaker 1: we've only recently discovered. We don't we we didn't understand

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Speaker 1: right that there's things happening around us that we're not

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Speaker 1: aware of, various kinds of particles moving, and even different

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Speaker 1: kinds of light that's invisible to us, as you said,

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Speaker 1: And there's really no limit on how much of that

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Speaker 1: there can be, right, I mean, we know certain things.

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Speaker 1: We know dark matter is invisible, we know neutrinos are invisible.

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Speaker 1: There could be other things out there that are also

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Speaker 1: invisible that we just haven't even yet discovered that they're

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Speaker 1: there through some sort of very slight hints. Right. So

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Speaker 1: the amount of discoveries left remaining in the future is enormous,

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Speaker 1: which is the kind of thing that gets me all excited. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I have a feeling, Well, first of all, I

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Speaker 1: have a feeling I'm gonna need to fly out to

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Speaker 1: California and have have like just maybe a four hour

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Speaker 1: long conversation with you, because I haven't feeling that's exactly

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Speaker 1: what's going to be needed, because I this is the

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Speaker 1: source of stuff I love to talk about, just to

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Speaker 1: anyone who will, you know, be patient enough to let

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Speaker 1: me chatter at them, let me ask you a question

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Speaker 1: that you you mentioned about how we used to explain

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Speaker 1: things in terms of gods, and I think that makes

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Speaker 1: a lot of sense because humans are good at like

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Speaker 1: identifying agency and willfulness in places where there aren't any, Right.

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Speaker 1: But there's another element to that, which is the sort

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Speaker 1: of the narrative. Right, These gods don't just have personalities

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Speaker 1: and wheels that had stories that reasons why they were

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Speaker 1: doing what they were doing. And I feel like storytelling

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Speaker 1: is a big part of who we are as a species.

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Speaker 1: And it's still even though we're not explaining things in

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Speaker 1: terms of God's it still drives our science. Like you know,

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Speaker 1: if you asked me, um, what would you do if

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Speaker 1: you knew the final answer to particle physics, Like if

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Speaker 1: you could explain the whole universe in terms of one particle, Um,

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Speaker 1: you know that, I would say, then we would want

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Speaker 1: to tell a story, right, We want to tell a

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Speaker 1: story about what that means about the universe and why

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Speaker 1: the universe? Why is the universe this way and not

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Speaker 1: way is the universe, and then we want to know,

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Speaker 1: like why that way. In the end, we're still telling

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Speaker 1: stories to ourselves about how the universe came to be

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Speaker 1: and what it means and how we should live our lives.

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Speaker 1: So it's a very human endeavor. Well, certainly, I mean,

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Speaker 1: we we call it matter, and we know about anti matter,

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Speaker 1: but we chose the optimist route right when we describe,

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Speaker 1: when we describe these things that are antithetical to one another,

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Speaker 1: and they they annihilate one another when they come into contact.

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Speaker 1: And for some reason that we don't fully understand, we

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Speaker 1: had slightly more matter than we had antimatter, and therefore

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Speaker 1: we've got stuff. I mean, if we had been pessimists,

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Speaker 1: we would call the stuff we have the antimatter, right,

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Speaker 1: So clearly there's a narrative issue there. So here, seriously,

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Speaker 1: here's the question. Then the question is do you think

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Speaker 1: if we met an alien species of physicists, do you

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Speaker 1: they be satisfied with our answers, or do you think

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Speaker 1: the kind of questions we're asking are inherently human in

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Speaker 1: some way that we don't even understand? What an excellent question. Now, obviously,

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Speaker 1: from the scientific perspective, I have to tell you that

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Speaker 1: I have a very small sample size of intelligent life

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Speaker 1: forms that I can work from. I only have the one. Really, you,

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Speaker 1: you mean you're the only intelligent life form, you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean of entire I'm talking about entire species. I

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Speaker 1: guess I'm not not only. I mean, I could get

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Speaker 1: super nihilistic and and and very egotistical and say, well,

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Speaker 1: I can only experience my own experience, and therefore I

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Speaker 1: know I'm intelligence. But I'm just granting everybody else that consideration. Um,

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Speaker 1: that's very this This gets into philosophy and then, which

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Speaker 1: I also fascinated by. But I'm a pragmatist, so eventually

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Speaker 1: I get very irritated. Um, that's an excellent question, and

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Speaker 1: and honestly, the it's one that I haven't given a

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Speaker 1: lot of consideration too, largely because I have accepted the fact,

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Speaker 1: or at least accepted the notion that any sufficiently intelligent

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Speaker 1: species that may exist somewhere else could be so very

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Speaker 1: different from what we experience that that the word alien

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Speaker 1: only begins to describe how we would uh define such

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Speaker 1: a species, And that perhaps their approach to understanding and

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Speaker 1: explaining the universe to themselves would be very different. But

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Speaker 1: it seems like it would follow a similar pattern but

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Speaker 1: I say that only because that's what that's what has

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Speaker 1: happened here. I don't have anywhere else to draw any

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Speaker 1: conclusions from. So, um, it's so hard to imagine outside

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Speaker 1: of your experience, right, It's it's very, very difficult. Yet

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Speaker 1: in science, when we discover something new, we're always describing

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Speaker 1: it in terms of the things we know. Like we

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Speaker 1: want to know what is light? Is it a little particle?

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Speaker 1: Is it a little way? Because of the things we know? Right,

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Speaker 1: when we find something that's totally new and different, we

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Speaker 1: don't even really have the words to describe it. So

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Speaker 1: imagining what it's like to be an alien scientist, I

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Speaker 1: think it's an impossible question. So yeah, and that's that's

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Speaker 1: why I posed it to you. It's why it's why

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Speaker 1: I while I find science fiction endlessly entertaining, I love

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Speaker 1: science fiction. I also always I roll my eyes a

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Speaker 1: little bit when I see the star Trek approach of

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Speaker 1: every alien race is a humanoid with slightly different bumps

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Speaker 1: on their head, and they speak English the same way. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the Universal Translator has no problem picking up what their

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Speaker 1: speech patterns are. So that like, even when you use

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Speaker 1: the Universal translator, uh, the you know, d o Sex

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Speaker 1: Macina coming in and saying, oh, yeah, this is going

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Speaker 1: to translate everything magically. You think you kind of need

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Speaker 1: a sample size, don't you, before you really get a

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Speaker 1: grasp on it. But I mean, we have a hard

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Speaker 1: enough trouble, hard enough time even on Earth sometimes understanding

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Speaker 1: human cultures from around the globe, you know, so understanding

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Speaker 1: how to interact with aliens. I think it's gonna be helpless.

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Speaker 1: Like if we ever heard a message from aliens, and

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Speaker 1: you know, even decoding it would be a huge problem

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Speaker 1: if you could even get past that. I have challenges

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Speaker 1: understanding some of my relatives, and we all speak the

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Speaker 1: same language and arguably come from the same culture. Are

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Speaker 1: you sure they all come from Earth? I mean, that

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Speaker 1: might be an explanation. I got an uncle that's questionable,

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Speaker 1: but pretty much everyone else I got a pretty good

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Speaker 1: handle on. This is This is great. This is gonna

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Speaker 1: be an eighteen partner. Guys, I'm just gonna sit here

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Speaker 1: and and and and monopolized annuals. Time for the rest

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Speaker 1: of you. Want to talk about the large Adran Collider

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Speaker 1: rather than philosophy of alien civilization, I wouldn't say. Rather,

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Speaker 1: I'll just say that my questions were about, well, you know,

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Speaker 1: there's one topic which connects them um, which is the

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Speaker 1: one way we might discover an alien civilization is by

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Speaker 1: first detecting their particle physicists. I have not heard this.

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Speaker 1: It might be if somebody's if aliens are building like

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Speaker 1: enormous particle colliders like the size of a solar system,

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Speaker 1: and we might eventually like sweep through the essentially the

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Speaker 1: pollution from that part from that particle accelerator and discover

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Speaker 1: them in that way. That would be pretty crazy way

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Speaker 1: to find an alien species, But that would be awesome

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Speaker 1: because it would it would tell us that, hey, look,

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Speaker 1: particle physics is not just a human thing, it's a

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Speaker 1: universal thing. Everyone wants to know what the universe is

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Speaker 1: made out of, and everyone's figuring it out by smashing

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Speaker 1: stuff together. So that would be pretty exciting discovery. It

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Speaker 1: is interesting I had not heard about that particul are

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Speaker 1: a kind of an idea. I've heard of, of course,

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Speaker 1: enormous constructs that could especially when you talk about things

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Speaker 1: like the Kardashov scale and you're thinking about like the

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Speaker 1: dice and sphere and that kind of stuff. These hypothetical

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Speaker 1: UM machines that would need to exist in order to

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Speaker 1: to take advantage of, say, an entire solar system's energy output,

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Speaker 1: which would be necessary to reach those higher levels of

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Speaker 1: civilization that we've heard about. But I hadn't heard about.

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Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about a particle accelery the size of

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Speaker 1: a solar system. To be perfectly honest, the large Hadron

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Speaker 1: collider is is a big enough beast for me to

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Speaker 1: try and get my mind wrapped around. I mean, they're

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Speaker 1: talking about pretty expensive. So yeah, the solar system sized

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Speaker 1: collider is going to take another level of civilization before

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Speaker 1: we can afford that kind of equipment. Yeah. Hey, guys,

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Speaker 1: this is Jonathan from the Future just breaking into Jonathan

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Speaker 1: from the past to explain that we're going to take

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Speaker 1: a quick break with our conversation with Daniel Whiteson to

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Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. So getting to the large Hadron Collider. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that would you know? And CERN as well. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people think of of CERN is just because the

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Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider got so much press a few years

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Speaker 1: ago when it was when they were preparing to bring

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Speaker 1: it up online and they were starting to stub up

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Speaker 1: the energy levels. I think a lot of people just

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Speaker 1: associated those two as being. Uh, the only real like

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Speaker 1: they CERN is just that's the agency to oversee the

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Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider. I like to remind people that CERN

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Speaker 1: is also the organization where because CERN exists, we have

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Speaker 1: a worldwide web. I mean the web started from Tim

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Speaker 1: berners Lee, who was working for CERTAIN at the time. So, uh,

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Speaker 1: I like to remind people that it's beyond that. But

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Speaker 1: let's talk a bit so. So CERN is a European agency.

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Speaker 1: That UM is a scientifically oriented agency looking into things

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Speaker 1: like these, these high energy reactions. And the large Hadron

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Speaker 1: Collider is a particle accelerator. Uh, can I give us

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Speaker 1: an overview of what the LHC is for for someone

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Speaker 1: who has heard the term but they don't really get

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Speaker 1: they don't grock it entirely, alright, Sure, UM, the large

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Speaker 1: hay Droun Collider. The basic idea is, let's figure out

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Speaker 1: what's inside matter. Let's figure out what's inside matter, and

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Speaker 1: let's do that by smashing particles together. So what you

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Speaker 1: do with the large Hadron collider the word large it

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Speaker 1: obviously just means it's really big. Hadron is a kind

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Speaker 1: of particle, and proton is the example of it. So

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Speaker 1: you could also call it the Large Proton Collider. UM.

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Speaker 1: And we take protons, which are essentially just the nucleus

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Speaker 1: of hydrogen. So you start with hydrogen gas which is

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Speaker 1: easy to get, heat it up, so the electrons boil off,

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Speaker 1: and you left with just the nucleus, which is protons.

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Speaker 1: And what we do is we give those protons a kick.

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Speaker 1: We use electromagnetic waves to push them, and we push

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Speaker 1: them faster and faster and faster and faster until they're

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Speaker 1: going about in ninety niono the speed of light. And

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Speaker 1: then we smash them into each other. And the idea is,

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Speaker 1: see what comes out, See what kind of weird mysterious

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Speaker 1: quantum mechanical magic happens to give you new kinds of

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Speaker 1: matter and new weird particles. Um. But as you said,

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Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider is so to the flagship property

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Speaker 1: flagship Experimenter, but certain is much broader than that. It's

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Speaker 1: a it's a European organization, but it's also international. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I've I've been there many summers and you sit at

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Speaker 1: a table at the restaurant and there's people speaking all

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Speaker 1: sorts of languages. You know, this Italian at this table

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Speaker 1: and Russian at that table and tie at the other table,

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Speaker 1: and Chinese over here, and you meet people from hundreds

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Speaker 1: of countries, well not hundreds, but more than a hundred countries,

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Speaker 1: and it's a it's a super international place, which is

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Speaker 1: really wonderful, and right now it really is the center

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Speaker 1: of the world and the Solar System, and you know,

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Speaker 1: maybe the galaxy in terms of particle physics. But we

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Speaker 1: do more than just the Large Hadron Collider. We also

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Speaker 1: have experiments studying the mysterious particle called the new trino.

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Speaker 1: Neutrinos are produced by the Sun and the surface of

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Speaker 1: the Earth is just bombarded with neutrinos, but they're mostly

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Speaker 1: invisible to us. They don't interact with us, but they

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Speaker 1: have a lot of really interesting properties that we don't understand.

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Speaker 1: So CERTAIN does a lot of neutrino physics as well.

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Speaker 1: Um they do cosmic ray physics, looking at weird particles

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Speaker 1: from space. They do a big variety of particle physics.

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Speaker 1: And CERTAIN has played a big role in politics as well.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you're aware, but Certain was founded

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Speaker 1: after World War Two, the idea being let's get all

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Speaker 1: the scientists of Europe to work together on projects rather

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Speaker 1: than hiding in their own labs and hating each other

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Speaker 1: and sort of like using science as this common human bridge,

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Speaker 1: like let's get connected. Let's not have our own like

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Speaker 1: individual weapons projects. Let's find something we can all work

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Speaker 1: together on in a positive way. And I think it's

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Speaker 1: really credited with tying European science together in a way

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Speaker 1: that's made it more effective. And you know, building harmonies

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Speaker 1: between nations is also good, and I know that personally

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Speaker 1: at certain I've eaten a lot of weird food from

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Speaker 1: different countries and that's helped me understand, you know, um,

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Speaker 1: why the Belgians is like horse meat and why the

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Speaker 1: Chinese eat these weird things. And it's a fun cultural

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Speaker 1: experience as well as scientific. Well yeah, and and uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, getting into some of the fun stuff. Well

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about later. But I love reading about, uh,

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Speaker 1: things that remind us that scientists are also human. I

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Speaker 1: mean it's it's easy to kind of forget from a

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Speaker 1: layman perspective. You you hear about science, and you hear

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Speaker 1: about scientists, and it tends to almost be another For

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Speaker 1: people who are not necessarily involved in science, or are

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Speaker 1: not they don't work with scientists, and so they start

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Speaker 1: to think of that as their own category of living thing.

430
00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:44,240
Speaker 1: There's a scientist kind of like doctors. There's doctors, they're scientists,

431
00:22:44,320 --> 00:22:46,760
Speaker 1: and uh, it's like that time that you meet your

432
00:22:46,760 --> 00:22:50,840
Speaker 1: middle school science teacher at the grocery store buying cereal

433
00:22:50,880 --> 00:22:53,520
Speaker 1: and you're like, what you know, breakfast, this is not.

434
00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:59,280
Speaker 1: This is not. Scientists have families and ambitions and disappointments

435
00:22:59,359 --> 00:23:02,240
Speaker 1: and and rock rock groups, as it turns out, in

436
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:05,000
Speaker 1: rock groups, and you know, ankle injuries and all the

437
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: same sort of things that people have. Absolutely, so what

438
00:23:09,200 --> 00:23:14,760
Speaker 1: experiment at the LHC did you are you working with? Specifically,

439
00:23:14,800 --> 00:23:18,520
Speaker 1: they're different because they're different ones that are associated with

440
00:23:18,600 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: different points along the LHC. As I understand it, where

441
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,680
Speaker 1: it's different essentially collision points that are looking at very

442
00:23:24,720 --> 00:23:30,360
Speaker 1: specific uh, byproducts of these high energy collisions. That's right.

443
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,720
Speaker 1: So we have two beams of protons um, one going

444
00:23:33,840 --> 00:23:35,520
Speaker 1: one way around the circle and the other going the

445
00:23:35,560 --> 00:23:38,160
Speaker 1: other way. And if somebody out there is wondering, well,

446
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:40,440
Speaker 1: why is it a circle? The reason is the circle

447
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:42,560
Speaker 1: is that it takes a while to get protons up

448
00:23:42,600 --> 00:23:44,760
Speaker 1: to high enough speed. That's what we want to do,

449
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:47,720
Speaker 1: is we want to reuse those little boosters. The circle

450
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:50,480
Speaker 1: is essentially a string of little boosters. Each one gives

451
00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 1: a little kick and gets it going faster and faster.

452
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:55,679
Speaker 1: And so if you can spin it around multiple times,

453
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:57,960
Speaker 1: that you can get it going faster and faster. It's

454
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:00,119
Speaker 1: like when your kids on the merry go round or

455
00:24:00,160 --> 00:24:02,200
Speaker 1: nothing merry around. What is that thing called the at

456
00:24:02,200 --> 00:24:04,640
Speaker 1: the playground that spins around? Yeah, I know what you're

457
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:07,760
Speaker 1: talking about. I honestly don't know the name of that either.

458
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 1: The vominator the vominator um uh and and you put

459
00:24:12,080 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: them on there and you spend it, you keep pushing,

460
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:15,440
Speaker 1: it goes faster and faster. So that's why it goes

461
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:18,000
Speaker 1: in a circle. Um. And in order to bend them

462
00:24:18,000 --> 00:24:20,439
Speaker 1: in a circle, we have these really strong magnets. So

463
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:22,800
Speaker 1: the way the collider works is it's a kick to

464
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:25,199
Speaker 1: make it faster and then a magnet to bend it

465
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: to go in a circle. And because we want to

466
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:30,359
Speaker 1: collide the protons, we actually have two of these. We

467
00:24:30,400 --> 00:24:32,840
Speaker 1: have one going one way and other than protons going

468
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:36,360
Speaker 1: the other way, and so four places around the ring

469
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:39,840
Speaker 1: we cross those beams, right, we try to collide them.

470
00:24:40,240 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: And and also it's not individual proton. It's not like

471
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:45,320
Speaker 1: we put one proton in the in one beam and

472
00:24:45,359 --> 00:24:47,199
Speaker 1: another proton the other beam, and we zoomed around. We

473
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: smashed one proton. It's really hard to get protons to

474
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:52,959
Speaker 1: hit each other because they're so small um, and so

475
00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:55,720
Speaker 1: we actually have like a little gas of protons. It's

476
00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:57,960
Speaker 1: a we call it a technical term, is a bunch

477
00:24:58,000 --> 00:25:01,439
Speaker 1: of protons, and it's in tend to some number of

478
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: protons that we passed through another gas of protons hoping

479
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:08,400
Speaker 1: to get some collisions. And so there's four places around

480
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 1: the ring that this happens, and each one is surrounded

481
00:25:11,640 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 1: by a massive set of detectors um to observe what happens.

482
00:25:15,480 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 1: Think of it like a really big digital camera. And

483
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 1: I work on one of those. And the name of

484
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:24,040
Speaker 1: the detector is the Atlas detector, which has like which

485
00:25:24,080 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 1: sets the record from maybe the worst scientific acronym ever,

486
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: because it has an acronym inside. I think Atlas stands

487
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:38,160
Speaker 1: for a large toroidal LHC apparatus. It's the most tortured

488
00:25:38,160 --> 00:25:41,600
Speaker 1: acronym ever. Anyway, Atlas surrounds one of the collision points

489
00:25:41,640 --> 00:25:44,800
Speaker 1: and we smash the protons together there and that's where

490
00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 1: the magic happens. And you might be thinking, uh, you know,

491
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:49,840
Speaker 1: if you smash protons together, all you can learn about

492
00:25:49,880 --> 00:25:52,040
Speaker 1: is what's inside protons, right the way, if you take

493
00:25:52,080 --> 00:25:55,120
Speaker 1: your blender apart, you can learn about what's inside blenders.

494
00:25:55,160 --> 00:25:57,600
Speaker 1: That's true, and we can learn about what's inside blenders,

495
00:25:57,640 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 1: but as what's inside protons um. But we can also

496
00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,679
Speaker 1: do something else because of the magic of quantum mechanics.

497
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: What happens when you collide a proton and another proton

498
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: is that the particles inside them interact. So inside a

499
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:13,679
Speaker 1: proton we have quirks of quirks and down corks, and

500
00:26:13,760 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: those quirks can interact and they can actually annihilate, which

501
00:26:16,800 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 1: means that they convert from mass from little bits of

502
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 1: stuff flying through the particle collider into energy. Okay, so

503
00:26:24,560 --> 00:26:27,520
Speaker 1: the particles are gone, the stuff that made them up

504
00:26:27,600 --> 00:26:30,640
Speaker 1: is destroyed. It's turned into energy, and then that energy

505
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 1: gets turned back into mass because a little blob of

506
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,240
Speaker 1: energy is very unstable, doesn't like they hang out very long,

507
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 1: and so it turns back into mass and it doesn't

508
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: have to turn back into the same kind of stuff

509
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,680
Speaker 1: that it's started from. So you can turn for example,

510
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:47,280
Speaker 1: two up corks. You can annihilate them together, turn them

511
00:26:47,280 --> 00:26:49,120
Speaker 1: into a ball of energy, and then they can turn

512
00:26:49,160 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 1: into muans or electrons or other weird kinds of particles,

513
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:56,280
Speaker 1: and it's not required that it's made of the same

514
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 1: stuff because the stuff has disappeared, it's been annihilated. So

515
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 1: it really is like modern day alchemy. You know, we're

516
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: turning one kind of stuff into another kind of stuff,

517
00:27:06,960 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 1: and that's magical because it means we can create any

518
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,399
Speaker 1: kind of stuff that's sort of on the universe's menu.

519
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 1: We don't have to know it's there in advance. We

520
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:20,160
Speaker 1: just pour enough energy into the collisions and eventually all

521
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,520
Speaker 1: the kinds of stuff will pop out. So it's it's

522
00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:26,680
Speaker 1: really like an exploration machine. It's like saying, what's out there,

523
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:29,680
Speaker 1: what's on Nature's list of particles? What can we make

524
00:27:29,720 --> 00:27:32,479
Speaker 1: if we put enough energy into the collider. And so

525
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: that's how we smash protons together to try to figure

526
00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: out what is the list of particles that the universe

527
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: has on the list of sort of allowed states. And

528
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:43,119
Speaker 1: that's that's what we're doing to try to get inside

529
00:27:43,119 --> 00:27:45,719
Speaker 1: into this question of what is the universe made out of?

530
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:50,480
Speaker 1: That's incredibly cool, like I've never heard it described that way.

531
00:27:50,560 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: So too, the thought of of smashing these protons together

532
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: at incredibly high energies and then you end up as

533
00:27:58,080 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 1: part of that uh at almost like the proto energy

534
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 1: that can convert into various different types of things based

535
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:09,960
Speaker 1: on possibly criteria that we don't fully understand, I mean obviously,

536
00:28:10,720 --> 00:28:12,280
Speaker 1: And those are the laws we're trying to figure out,

537
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,760
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to write down mathematical equations that

538
00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:18,719
Speaker 1: predict how often you'll see this kind of particle, how

539
00:28:18,760 --> 00:28:21,120
Speaker 1: often you see that kind of particle, And the kinds

540
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:23,800
Speaker 1: of particles that we've studied, you know, electrons and muance whatever.

541
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 1: We understand how those are made, and we can calculate

542
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 1: very precisely how often we should see them and uh

543
00:28:30,400 --> 00:28:32,320
Speaker 1: and what energies, and so that's the kind of thing

544
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 1: we study. We we understand in pretty and pretty good

545
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: detail why some particles are made and when and how often.

546
00:28:38,040 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: What we're looking for is the weird stuff, the stuff

547
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:43,680
Speaker 1: we haven't predicted, or the stuff we hadn't anticipated, or

548
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 1: you know, the things that people have predicted but we

549
00:28:46,000 --> 00:28:48,520
Speaker 1: haven't seen yet. And those things tend to be more rare,

550
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: which is why we smash the particles together so often.

551
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 1: We do it every twenty five nanoseconds, all day, all

552
00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:58,320
Speaker 1: year long. And the reason is most of the stuff

553
00:28:58,360 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: that happens is boring. We've seen it before. Occasionally, very rarely,

554
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:04,800
Speaker 1: something weird will happen and that will give us a

555
00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: clue about maybe a new kind of rare particle. So

556
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: I imagine if you're doing this that frequently with that

557
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: many protons, knowing not that all of them are are colliding,

558
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:20,160
Speaker 1: but still a good amount of them are UM and

559
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:23,720
Speaker 1: you have these four different points where they're all gathering

560
00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: data that you're you're getting getting a few zeros and

561
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 1: ones out of there. There's a lot I'm guessing a

562
00:29:29,080 --> 00:29:33,520
Speaker 1: lot of information gets generated all the time through these experiments.

563
00:29:34,080 --> 00:29:37,200
Speaker 1: It's a it's a tidal wave of data. Every time

564
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 1: we have a collision, we read out the whole detector,

565
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 1: which has a hundred million different detector channels. So it's

566
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: a massive basically digital image of the detector every every

567
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,960
Speaker 1: every twenty five nanoseconds UM and so that's pretty it's

568
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:54,000
Speaker 1: a pretty large volume of data UM and we it's

569
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:56,760
Speaker 1: so big that we can't even save it all, right.

570
00:29:56,800 --> 00:29:59,280
Speaker 1: We if we saved it all, it would take huge

571
00:29:59,280 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 1: amount of resource, says, and we wouldn't have no time

572
00:30:01,320 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: to go through it. So what we and most of

573
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:07,160
Speaker 1: it is not very interesting. Of what happens is just

574
00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: like two protons come in, they kind of bounce off

575
00:30:09,400 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: each other, two protons come out. You know, it's rare

576
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,400
Speaker 1: that you actually have them, like a deep collision that

577
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: interacts with the particles inside that makes something weird. And

578
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 1: so what we do is we have this system we

579
00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 1: call it the trigger, that makes a keep or kill

580
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:25,480
Speaker 1: decision on the fly, and it says was it interesting

581
00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:28,440
Speaker 1: enough to save? If so, then shunt it down the

582
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: down the view the wires towards the disk. If no,

583
00:30:32,600 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 1: throw it away. And so we have to make these

584
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: keep or kill decisions every twenty five nanoseconds. And when

585
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: it's gone, it's gone. It's not like it's saved to

586
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:42,560
Speaker 1: back up and you can go through it another time.

587
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: It's just we just toss it out. And so that's

588
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: a really vital system. That's actually the part that my

589
00:30:48,120 --> 00:30:51,320
Speaker 1: group works on. Is this trigger system interesting? Yeah? I

590
00:30:51,560 --> 00:30:54,840
Speaker 1: always thought when I was learning more about this, I

591
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: wrote an article about how the large Hadron collider works

592
00:30:58,120 --> 00:31:00,880
Speaker 1: as part of my work for how stuff works, And

593
00:31:01,480 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 1: while I was working on it, it struck me just

594
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: how amazing the actual apparatus is of creating these beams

595
00:31:11,120 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: and steering them and creating the collision points. And then

596
00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:19,520
Speaker 1: it occurred to me that as challenging as it is,

597
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:25,280
Speaker 1: you know, as much learning and engineering and all the

598
00:31:25,360 --> 00:31:27,800
Speaker 1: expertise that would be required to make such a thing happen.

599
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: As impressive as that is, it's it's also incredibly impressive

600
00:31:33,120 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: to think about how do you deal with the information

601
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:39,479
Speaker 1: that you generate from such a thing. It's so large,

602
00:31:39,640 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 1: and the ability to differentiate between what is interesting versus

603
00:31:44,760 --> 00:31:47,080
Speaker 1: what has already been known and therefore like this is

604
00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 1: something that we don't necessarily need to consider because it's

605
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,200
Speaker 1: this is this is like we might as well have

606
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: this etched on the side of a mountain already. We're good,

607
00:31:56,680 --> 00:32:00,400
Speaker 1: let's just concentrate this other stuff. Um. And as you

608
00:32:00,440 --> 00:32:03,480
Speaker 1: start to look at the challenges that people have with

609
00:32:03,600 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 1: big data in general, which is orders of magnitude smaller

610
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: than one is being generated at the LHC. But you

611
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: look at those challenges just like businesses who are saying like,

612
00:32:15,400 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 1: we don't even know what what data we have at

613
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 1: this point, and you think, well, that's troubling. Then you realize, well,

614
00:32:21,560 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: if we're having trouble with that, imagine the challenge of

615
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:28,960
Speaker 1: sifting through all that information to find these gems, these

616
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:34,360
Speaker 1: these indications of something unknown or not fully understood. And

617
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 1: it boggled my mind. So to me, that is one

618
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: of the the huge achievements was not just the incredible

619
00:32:43,000 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: technological triumph of building a particle accelerator as large and

620
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 1: as powerful as the LHC, but then creating the way

621
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:53,400
Speaker 1: to deal with the information that's generated as a result.

622
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people don't necessarily appreciate

623
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:01,560
Speaker 1: that or understand that because they're just thinking of, uh,

624
00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:05,520
Speaker 1: there's probably conceptualizing. You know, these these particles hitting each

625
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:08,080
Speaker 1: other really at high speed, and then there's maybe a

626
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: flash of light or something, and then there's a little

627
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:12,520
Speaker 1: squiggly line that goes off into the distance and you think, oh,

628
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: that was a cork, right. It's it's because these are

629
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,200
Speaker 1: so far outside the normal experience, it's hard to think of, well,

630
00:33:20,240 --> 00:33:22,600
Speaker 1: i'll tell you some details about it. That's actually the

631
00:33:22,880 --> 00:33:26,120
Speaker 1: part of it that I'm most interested in UM. But

632
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: first of the human side of it is that this

633
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: apparatus is so complex that everybody who participates and it's

634
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 1: you know, tens of thousands of scientists all working together.

635
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,960
Speaker 1: Certainly not my project by myself. Everybody who participates only

636
00:33:38,000 --> 00:33:40,720
Speaker 1: does a little bit. You know, the people who specialize

637
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 1: in getting the beams to go really high speed, and

638
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 1: people who specialize in focusing the beams, and people who

639
00:33:45,920 --> 00:33:49,240
Speaker 1: specialize in building the detectors that surround the beam, and

640
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 1: people who specialize in um in the trigger, and people

641
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 1: who specialize in analyzing the data. And one of the

642
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,480
Speaker 1: cool things is that you can specialize. You can say

643
00:33:57,760 --> 00:33:59,920
Speaker 1: I really like climbing around the detector with a wrench

644
00:34:00,000 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 1: and I want to spend my days doing that, or

645
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:03,720
Speaker 1: you can say, oh, I'm really interested in the data

646
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 1: reduction problem. And so we sort of get to attract

647
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:08,800
Speaker 1: all types and people who are good at different things,

648
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: and everybod gets to do the part they want rather

649
00:34:10,680 --> 00:34:13,359
Speaker 1: than having to do all of it by themselves. UM.

650
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:16,319
Speaker 1: So I think that's really fun. And the part that

651
00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 1: I'm most interested in is exactly what you were just mentioning,

652
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:21,120
Speaker 1: is how do you go from this huge pile of

653
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: data to saying things about the universe right to say,

654
00:34:24,360 --> 00:34:26,319
Speaker 1: I've got all these zeros and ones. How do I

655
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:28,640
Speaker 1: then say, oh, look, we have the Higgs boson, we

656
00:34:28,719 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 1: know it exists, or we found dark matter or something

657
00:34:31,600 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: like that. And and one of the problems is that

658
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: we don't create these particles and then like have them

659
00:34:36,680 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: in a jar. It's not like we're producing a pile

660
00:34:39,280 --> 00:34:41,200
Speaker 1: of higgs bosons and we can point them to them

661
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: and say, look, these are higgs bosons. You can tell

662
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:45,840
Speaker 1: you can touch them, or they have some weird property

663
00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:48,440
Speaker 1: or something right the way, like in condensed matter, they

664
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: can make new kinds of goo and then they can

665
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: show it to you. And then, as with strange effects

666
00:34:53,080 --> 00:34:56,359
Speaker 1: or something, the higgs bosons that we produce only last

667
00:34:56,400 --> 00:34:59,560
Speaker 1: for like ten to the minus twenty something seconds. So

668
00:34:59,640 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 1: this this picture I told you where the corks collide,

669
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: they turned into something um some energy. Then they turned

670
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 1: into a new particle. That's true, but that new particle

671
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: might only last for a really really short amount of

672
00:35:10,160 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 1: time because a lot of these particles are very heavy

673
00:35:12,040 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 1: and unstable, and they don't like to live very long,

674
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 1: unlike you know, electrons or protons which can last for

675
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,560
Speaker 1: billions or trillions of years. We don't even know. Some

676
00:35:20,640 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 1: of these particles are inherently unstable and they turn into

677
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,920
Speaker 1: other particles, and so what we see in our detector

678
00:35:26,000 --> 00:35:30,040
Speaker 1: is never direct proof of that new particle. Instead, it's

679
00:35:30,120 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: always indirect evidence. It's like, um, you came to a um,

680
00:35:35,200 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 1: it came to an intersection, and you see, you know,

681
00:35:37,840 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: shards in the ground. You see glass over here, and

682
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 1: you see steel over there, and there's a dead body

683
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:44,120
Speaker 1: over here, and you have to figure out what happened.

684
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,799
Speaker 1: It's always like that that we're we're looking at what

685
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: came out of the collision and trying to figure out

686
00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:51,360
Speaker 1: what happened in the middle. And so a lot of

687
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:54,680
Speaker 1: what we do is is really complicated statistical inference. We say,

688
00:35:54,920 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: given the data that we saw, which theory of the

689
00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:00,200
Speaker 1: universe is more likely in the theory with the Eggs

690
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 1: boson or without the Higgs boson. So most of the

691
00:36:03,160 --> 00:36:06,920
Speaker 1: actual work involved is in constructing those two hypotheses and

692
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:10,480
Speaker 1: comparing them to the data, saying how can we analyze

693
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,839
Speaker 1: the data, how can we um you know, plow through

694
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,560
Speaker 1: the data in a way so that these two hypotheses

695
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: give different predictions. Like in the case of the search

696
00:36:18,160 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 1: for the Higgs boson, we were looking for collisions that

697
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:25,839
Speaker 1: had to photons coming out. So two protons come in,

698
00:36:26,080 --> 00:36:28,960
Speaker 1: two photons come out, right, two little beams of light.

699
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 1: And that's because the higgs boson um sometimes turns into

700
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:35,800
Speaker 1: two photons, So we're looking for two photons. The problem

701
00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 1: is there are other things that also turned into two photons,

702
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:41,279
Speaker 1: lots of ways to make two photons that aren't the

703
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. But if you did make the Higgs boson

704
00:36:45,120 --> 00:36:47,960
Speaker 1: and it turned into two photons, then it would turn

705
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:50,520
Speaker 1: into two photons with a certain amount of energy, and

706
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:53,080
Speaker 1: that amount of energy is connected to how much mass

707
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 1: is in the higgs boson. So we did is we

708
00:36:55,719 --> 00:36:58,640
Speaker 1: just said, let's look at all the collisions that turned

709
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:01,520
Speaker 1: into two photons, and let's just compare, and we made

710
00:37:01,520 --> 00:37:03,239
Speaker 1: sort of a plot where we said, on the X

711
00:37:03,280 --> 00:37:05,920
Speaker 1: axis is the amount of energy and the collisions, and

712
00:37:05,920 --> 00:37:09,040
Speaker 1: then why excess is the number. So if you're envisioning this,

713
00:37:09,400 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 1: we have one theory that says there should be a

714
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,920
Speaker 1: smooth distribution, and then what the theory with the Higgs

715
00:37:14,920 --> 00:37:17,319
Speaker 1: boson says, well, there should be a smooth distribution, but

716
00:37:17,320 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 1: then you should you should get a bump, You should

717
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,200
Speaker 1: get an enhancement around the mass of the Higgs. So

718
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,360
Speaker 1: one theory is there is no Higgs boson, and you

719
00:37:25,400 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 1: should get a bunch of just random collisions with two photons,

720
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:32,319
Speaker 1: no special energy levels. And the other theory is you

721
00:37:32,520 --> 00:37:35,279
Speaker 1: have a Higgs boson, which means you get extra production

722
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: of two photon events and they should cluster and they

723
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:40,439
Speaker 1: should all have a similar energy. So if you make

724
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,560
Speaker 1: this uh this plot, you should get a bump near

725
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: the mass of the Higgs. And so essentially we have

726
00:37:46,040 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 1: two hypotheses. We say no Higgs boson or Higgs boson,

727
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,200
Speaker 1: and then we look at the data. So we've done

728
00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: the hard work of constructing two possible ideas and figuring

729
00:37:56,000 --> 00:37:59,200
Speaker 1: out what question to ask the data. That's always the

730
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:01,919
Speaker 1: crucial thing. It's a question are you asking the data?

731
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 1: And we've composed the question in a way that we

732
00:38:04,440 --> 00:38:06,880
Speaker 1: hope the data can answer it. And that's how we

733
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:10,240
Speaker 1: discover the Higgs boson. Is the data followed one curve,

734
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: the curve with a bump in it, and not the

735
00:38:11,960 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 1: smooth curve, the curve that had no Higgs boson. So

736
00:38:15,200 --> 00:38:17,720
Speaker 1: a lot of the work we do is involved in

737
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:21,880
Speaker 1: in analyzing that data, and because it's such a big project,

738
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 1: we have people specializing in these areas, and this is

739
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:28,319
Speaker 1: my area specialty is analyzing this data. And one of

740
00:38:28,320 --> 00:38:32,040
Speaker 1: my other interests is in computer science and artificial intelligence.

741
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,240
Speaker 1: And in the last five years we've been borrowing really

742
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,880
Speaker 1: heavily from computer science all these new tools they've developed

743
00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:43,920
Speaker 1: to do really fantastical artificial intelligence to recognize patterns. We

744
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:46,279
Speaker 1: found ways to take those tools and apply them to

745
00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:49,960
Speaker 1: these questions to say to artificial intelligence tools, can you

746
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: find patterns in this data? Can you learn to find

747
00:38:53,239 --> 00:38:56,560
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons in these ones and zeros um and separate

748
00:38:56,600 --> 00:38:58,680
Speaker 1: them from things that are not higgs bosons but look

749
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:01,160
Speaker 1: like them. So we've a lot of fun bringing in

750
00:39:01,200 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: ideas from other fields. We don't invent a lot of

751
00:39:03,200 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: this stuff by ourselves. We sort of you know, we

752
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:07,720
Speaker 1: have a nail and we sift around for somebody nearby

753
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: who might have a hammer. M h. Well, that to

754
00:39:11,120 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 1: me is always a fascinating thing as well. It's it's

755
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:19,359
Speaker 1: a different level of innovation where you are thinking rather

756
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:22,359
Speaker 1: than let's let's invent a brand new tool to do

757
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:25,000
Speaker 1: this thing. You say, well, do we have any tools

758
00:39:25,080 --> 00:39:28,239
Speaker 1: that perhaps are not currently being used to do this thing,

759
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:31,600
Speaker 1: but with some some work, we could repurpose them for

760
00:39:31,640 --> 00:39:35,879
Speaker 1: this thing. Um to that, Usually it's a happy discovery. Yeah.

761
00:39:35,920 --> 00:39:38,360
Speaker 1: I remember going over to the computer science department it

762
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:42,040
Speaker 1: was like two thousand twelve and describing this project and saying, look,

763
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:44,720
Speaker 1: here's the problem we have. We don't have a tool

764
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 1: that can solve this problem. What do you have? And

765
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 1: they said, oh, my gosh, we have the perfect tool.

766
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 1: Currently we're using it to solve this other problem. And

767
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 1: I was like, well, what problem are you solving and

768
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 1: they said, oh, we're trying to figure out how to

769
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,759
Speaker 1: answer the question is there a cat in this Internet video? Right?

770
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: Which is like the perfect example of how of a

771
00:40:02,200 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 1: hard but relevant problem. Like it's not easy to say,

772
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: here's a video, can you tell me if there's a cadet?

773
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:10,800
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing it's easy for a person,

774
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: but it's really hard for a computer program. Right, how

775
00:40:13,960 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: do you define a cat? And then it's moving through

776
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,600
Speaker 1: the videos on different colors of cats, cats, of different behaviors.

777
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 1: It's a difficult problem and it's one where there's a

778
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 1: lot of data available. So the computer scientists latched onto

779
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:28,800
Speaker 1: this problem not because it was important or particularly interesting

780
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:31,759
Speaker 1: or useful, but just because it was hard and they

781
00:40:31,800 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 1: had a lot of data. So when I came to

782
00:40:34,000 --> 00:40:36,640
Speaker 1: them with another problem that was hard, where we had

783
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:39,719
Speaker 1: a lot of data but actually had some like scientific

784
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 1: value and and sounded cool, they were very excited. So

785
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:46,000
Speaker 1: they're excited to get to use their tool and something

786
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:49,240
Speaker 1: that was actually relevant to society into physics and to science.

787
00:40:49,640 --> 00:40:51,839
Speaker 1: And we were excited, of course to use their awesome tool,

788
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,359
Speaker 1: which worked really, really well. So it's usually a sort

789
00:40:54,360 --> 00:40:56,239
Speaker 1: of a peanut butter and chocolate situation when you can

790
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:59,640
Speaker 1: find this sort of crossovers nice. I like, I like

791
00:40:59,680 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: the peanut ab her chocolate analogy. And of course, uh,

792
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,240
Speaker 1: the neat thing to me about the machine learning process

793
00:41:06,320 --> 00:41:09,400
Speaker 1: that you were talking about with with identifying cats and

794
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:13,719
Speaker 1: videos taking an approach like that, where again seemingly if

795
00:41:13,760 --> 00:41:16,799
Speaker 1: you if you explain that to someone, they sound they say, well,

796
00:41:16,840 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 1: that sounds like it's trivial. It's I mean, it may

797
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,239
Speaker 1: be a hard computer problem, but what's the purpose. And

798
00:41:21,640 --> 00:41:25,120
Speaker 1: my argument to them has always been, well, a human

799
00:41:25,160 --> 00:41:27,400
Speaker 1: can immediately tell if the computer was right or wrong

800
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:29,640
Speaker 1: when it or the machine was right or wrong when

801
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:32,600
Speaker 1: it comes to its conclusion, and therefore go in and

802
00:41:32,600 --> 00:41:36,839
Speaker 1: tweak the waitings of the various decision points. That if

803
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:39,440
Speaker 1: you're using an our official neural network, you change the

804
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: waitings of the the various values so that it can

805
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 1: slowly hone in on what is it to be a

806
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:50,680
Speaker 1: cat and and understand what catness really is, not not

807
00:41:50,719 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 1: the character from Hunger Games, but what catness really is.

808
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:59,479
Speaker 1: And that once you do that, yes, exactly, that's that's

809
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,319
Speaker 1: exactly what you want to do. Right If you're trying

810
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 1: to create a tool like this, you want to pick

811
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:08,319
Speaker 1: a goal where a human can say, yes, the the

812
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:10,920
Speaker 1: computer has managed to hit that goal, or no, the

813
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,320
Speaker 1: computer has not. So that way, once you've perfected the

814
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:16,759
Speaker 1: approach and you can then start to apply it to

815
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 1: things where uh, we don't have as full of an understanding.

816
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:24,240
Speaker 1: You know. It's the difference between supervised learning with machine

817
00:42:24,320 --> 00:42:27,920
Speaker 1: learning and unsupervised learning, and and to me, that's a

818
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:30,840
Speaker 1: very fascinating area of study. I've talked about that a

819
00:42:30,840 --> 00:42:34,279
Speaker 1: lot on tech stuff as well, and uh, it also

820
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:37,080
Speaker 1: gets into other issues that I won't. I won't dive

821
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: into here, things like the the need for transparency for

822
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:42,400
Speaker 1: these kind of systems so that we understand how they

823
00:42:42,440 --> 00:42:45,560
Speaker 1: get to their conclusions and it's not just a black box, etcetera, etcetera.

824
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: But I digress. How does it know what a cat? Exactly? Exactly? Yeah,

825
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:53,200
Speaker 1: interpreting these networks is very important. Yeah. If you get

826
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:55,279
Speaker 1: to a point where you watch a video and you say, oh,

827
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:56,880
Speaker 1: I didn't see a cat in there, but the computer

828
00:42:56,920 --> 00:42:58,600
Speaker 1: says there's a cat in there. The computer says, no,

829
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: there absolutely as a cat in there. Just because you

830
00:43:00,600 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: didn't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And then

831
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:04,799
Speaker 1: you start to get a little worried, just thinking are

832
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:07,920
Speaker 1: we are we heading toward how territory here? Let's uh,

833
00:43:08,080 --> 00:43:09,879
Speaker 1: let's pump the brakes a little bit and find out

834
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:11,840
Speaker 1: how you got to this happened to seed to the

835
00:43:11,840 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 1: computers the job of determining whether is the cat in

836
00:43:14,200 --> 00:43:17,839
Speaker 1: the video? They're better than I am. You say that,

837
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: but I find cat video so cathartic. Um. So this

838
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 1: one thing I wanted to to touch on just briefly, um,

839
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: And that might be difficult to do. But yeah, we

840
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 1: mentioned Higgs boson quite a quite a bit. And uh,

841
00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 1: how would you describe what the Higgs boson is to

842
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 1: someone who's interested in it but doesn't have that background

843
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:45,520
Speaker 1: in in physics. Yeah, so the Higgs boson is fascinating

844
00:43:45,520 --> 00:43:48,640
Speaker 1: little particle, and it's a sort of part of the

845
00:43:48,680 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 1: answer to the question what is stuff? You know, we

846
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: want to understand what are things made out of? But

847
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:57,319
Speaker 1: part of that is understanding like what am I made

848
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: out of? What is the substance of me? And you

849
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,040
Speaker 1: imagine that if you take yourself apart, you're made out

850
00:44:04,040 --> 00:44:06,319
Speaker 1: of molecules. Those molecules are made out of atoms. Those

851
00:44:06,360 --> 00:44:09,840
Speaker 1: atoms are made out of protons and electrons and neutrons,

852
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:12,640
Speaker 1: and the protons are made out of quarks. So at

853
00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:14,759
Speaker 1: this point we can describe everything that you're made out

854
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:18,120
Speaker 1: of in terms of quarks and electrons um. But what

855
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:21,120
Speaker 1: we still don't know is what are those made out of?

856
00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 1: Like do they get a little scoop of universe stuff?

857
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:28,280
Speaker 1: You know, there's some sort of basic matter unit, and

858
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 1: we don't understand like how do they have mass? Where

859
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:34,200
Speaker 1: does their mass come from? And it's a mystery because

860
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:38,239
Speaker 1: in our theory, these particles are not little balls. Like

861
00:44:38,239 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: when I say a particle, you're probably imagining like a

862
00:44:40,880 --> 00:44:43,840
Speaker 1: little spinning beach ball, right, a tiny little dot of

863
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:47,799
Speaker 1: actual stuff, but something with extent to it, something with size. Well,

864
00:44:47,800 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: in our current theory, these particles don't have any size.

865
00:44:50,239 --> 00:44:54,719
Speaker 1: Their dots their points in space, which means where is

866
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: the stuff to them? Right? Where is the mass? Where

867
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:00,200
Speaker 1: does the mass come from? Um, there's no room for

868
00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:02,400
Speaker 1: any mass in a point. Right. If there's mass, there

869
00:45:02,600 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 1: have infinite density, which makes no sense at all. You

870
00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:07,600
Speaker 1: have like all these tiny black holes. So the Higgs

871
00:45:07,600 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 1: boson is in a way that is a way to

872
00:45:09,239 --> 00:45:12,000
Speaker 1: answer that. What it does is it says that the

873
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:15,800
Speaker 1: mass the particles have doesn't come from a little scoop

874
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:18,520
Speaker 1: of universe stuff that they got. Instead, you have to

875
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:21,480
Speaker 1: think of it's sort of like a charge. Like when

876
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:23,759
Speaker 1: I tell you an electron has a negative charge, that

877
00:45:23,800 --> 00:45:26,240
Speaker 1: doesn't bother you. But what if I told you electron

878
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,680
Speaker 1: is a point particle there's no room for it. Would

879
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 1: you ask where does the negative charge go? Or is

880
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,040
Speaker 1: there room for the negative charge? You just think of

881
00:45:34,080 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: negative charge is sort of like a label, something that

882
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 1: you can apply to a tiny dot. We should think

883
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 1: of mass the same way. Mass is not a little

884
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:45,759
Speaker 1: serving of universe stuff. It's like a charge, and a

885
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:48,360
Speaker 1: charge of something that tells us how things interact. So

886
00:45:48,400 --> 00:45:51,000
Speaker 1: an electron has a negative charge, which means it, you know,

887
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:53,960
Speaker 1: um gets repelled from positive stuff, and they can interact

888
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:57,960
Speaker 1: with photons and things like that. Um particles that have mass.

889
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:01,320
Speaker 1: Um those particles that have mass us they have mass,

890
00:46:01,360 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: which is a charge. It tells us how it interacts

891
00:46:03,400 --> 00:46:06,440
Speaker 1: with the higgs boson. So the Higgs boson is the

892
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 1: thing that gives these that that interacts with these particles

893
00:46:09,640 --> 00:46:12,600
Speaker 1: and makes them move as if they had mass. So

894
00:46:12,640 --> 00:46:14,759
Speaker 1: they have some of the label on them, and the

895
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:17,239
Speaker 1: higgs boson interacts with them if you have if you

896
00:46:17,280 --> 00:46:19,920
Speaker 1: have a lot of mass, higgs boson interacts with them

897
00:46:19,960 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: a lot, and that's what gives them inertia. It makes

898
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:24,520
Speaker 1: makes it hard for them to speed up or hard

899
00:46:24,560 --> 00:46:27,440
Speaker 1: for them to slow down. Right, And so that's what

900
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:29,719
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson does, is it gives mass to these

901
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,839
Speaker 1: particles or explains how a tiny little particle can have

902
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:37,000
Speaker 1: any mass at all. And the fascinating thing is that

903
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 1: the idea, who has been around for decades before we

904
00:46:39,640 --> 00:46:43,279
Speaker 1: actually found it. Some theorist was looking at the list

905
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,279
Speaker 1: of particles and the math behind them and saying, this

906
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: doesn't really make sense, like how do these particles? How

907
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:52,000
Speaker 1: can these particles have mass? There's no way to give

908
00:46:52,040 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 1: them mass in our theory. Like, we have a really

909
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:57,720
Speaker 1: beautiful theory that would work perfectly if all the particles

910
00:46:57,719 --> 00:47:00,680
Speaker 1: in the universe had no mass, But the particles have mass,

911
00:47:01,120 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: and when you try to add mass in various ways,

912
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:05,600
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work mathematically. It breaks all sorts of

913
00:47:05,600 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 1: other rules. So he came up with a way to

914
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: give mass to these particles by having them interact with

915
00:47:11,040 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: this other new particle we've never seen before. And the

916
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:17,040
Speaker 1: thing I love about that is that it's it's purely aesthetic.

917
00:47:17,080 --> 00:47:19,839
Speaker 1: It's like philosophical. It's like saying, I'm looking at all

918
00:47:19,840 --> 00:47:22,440
Speaker 1: these puzzle pieces and it seems to be one missing.

919
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:25,120
Speaker 1: This whole story, right, this move back to the idea

920
00:47:25,120 --> 00:47:27,040
Speaker 1: of a story. This whole story would make much more

921
00:47:27,080 --> 00:47:29,120
Speaker 1: sense if there was one more character in it. You

922
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,600
Speaker 1: would just click together, would be symmetric, would be beautiful,

923
00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:35,200
Speaker 1: it would mathematically look pretty. And so he said, well,

924
00:47:35,320 --> 00:47:37,239
Speaker 1: maybe there is one, right, So let's go look for it,

925
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 1: and it was so compelling an idea that we spent

926
00:47:40,000 --> 00:47:42,279
Speaker 1: decades and billions of dollars looking for it and then

927
00:47:42,360 --> 00:47:45,600
Speaker 1: actually found it. Right. What a triumph for theoretical physics

928
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,240
Speaker 1: to say, just in my mind, I can think about

929
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:51,360
Speaker 1: the patterns of the universe and predict what else is

930
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:54,959
Speaker 1: out there that we've never seen. To me, that's incredible. Yeah,

931
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:58,560
Speaker 1: I love that. Uh it's a story where we take

932
00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:03,799
Speaker 1: a look at uh, an idea that's that's largely fleshed out,

933
00:48:04,280 --> 00:48:07,880
Speaker 1: and then we think, there's this would work so great

934
00:48:07,880 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: if only there was this thing. You know what, I'm

935
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 1: just gonna I'm going to create the mathematics here. I'm

936
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,920
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna figure out mathematically how this thing could

937
00:48:16,920 --> 00:48:21,040
Speaker 1: exist if everything else we've assumed is more or less right,

938
00:48:21,680 --> 00:48:25,839
Speaker 1: And then, wow, that looks really nice. Boy, it would

939
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:28,440
Speaker 1: be great if that thing exists. We should find out

940
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 1: if that thing exists, and then and then a lot

941
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,640
Speaker 1: of time and thought is put to it. Not obviously

942
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:38,000
Speaker 1: I'm trivializing and I'm very much generalizing, but to me,

943
00:48:38,080 --> 00:48:40,680
Speaker 1: it's just it is beautiful. But it's also there's like

944
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: a level there's a level of beautiful absurdity to it

945
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 1: that I find interesting from my perspective of not being

946
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:51,319
Speaker 1: a physicist right where to me, it's it's no, you

947
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: sound like you kind of are an amateur physicist. I

948
00:48:53,239 --> 00:48:55,360
Speaker 1: mean you think about these ways like a physicist. You know,

949
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:57,399
Speaker 1: it's not all about the mathematical training. It's so sort

950
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: about the front, the way you think, and the way

951
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:03,479
Speaker 1: you ask questions. So I'm happy to bestow you upon

952
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 1: you the dubious honor of being a deputized amateur physicist. Excellent.

953
00:49:07,640 --> 00:49:13,280
Speaker 1: I cannot I cannot wait to abuse my authority certificate

954
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: in the mail pretty soon. Yeah, you'll see me walking

955
00:49:15,560 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: into restaurants saying, give me a good table. I am

956
00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: an honorary physicist, and they'll say do you Yeah. No,

957
00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: it doesn't work for for podcast celebrity either. I can

958
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 1: tell you from ten years of experience. Uh. Yeah, it's

959
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 1: the I have the level of fame that is almost

960
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:33,359
Speaker 1: but not quite completely useless, and honestly I'm okay with that.

961
00:49:34,080 --> 00:49:36,839
Speaker 1: Um well, let me let me shift this a little bit.

962
00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:39,799
Speaker 1: We'll kind of uh get toward the end of our

963
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:43,880
Speaker 1: conversation here to talk about some more silly fun stuff.

964
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: One of the things I think a lot of people

965
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,000
Speaker 1: heard about when the LHC was, you know, still powering up.

966
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:52,000
Speaker 1: It was a very long process. In fact, it was

967
00:49:52,040 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: longer than we had anticipated because there were some problems

968
00:49:54,640 --> 00:49:56,799
Speaker 1: that we encountered along the way. I say we, as

969
00:49:56,840 --> 00:49:58,840
Speaker 1: if I had anything to do with it. You're an

970
00:49:58,880 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 1: honorary physicist. Now you to say we they're excellent. It's

971
00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's so good to join the collective. But

972
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: the there were there were some issues, and it also

973
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 1: led to a lot of speculation, much of it completely

974
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:17,400
Speaker 1: baseless from people who had uh, little to no understanding

975
00:50:17,400 --> 00:50:22,239
Speaker 1: of what was happening, but apparently access to wonderful platforms

976
00:50:22,280 --> 00:50:27,200
Speaker 1: from which they could espouse these these baseless claims. But

977
00:50:27,480 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 1: we had everything from people saying this is going to

978
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:34,480
Speaker 1: create black holes without really one understanding what a black

979
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:37,840
Speaker 1: hole is, to understanding if that were in fact to happen.

980
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:41,320
Speaker 1: The time frame we're talking about, and the size the

981
00:50:41,320 --> 00:50:45,600
Speaker 1: the UH of it, and and what energy level we'd

982
00:50:45,640 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 1: be talking about less than what a mosquito generates when

983
00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:51,759
Speaker 1: it flaps its wings, for example, and at a at

984
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 1: a at a time that's so small that is impossible

985
00:50:55,719 --> 00:50:57,799
Speaker 1: for us to think of it. We can we could

986
00:50:57,880 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 1: look at a measurement. We could look at a number

987
00:51:00,160 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: with a whole bunch of zeros, you know, a dot,

988
00:51:03,200 --> 00:51:05,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of zeros, and then a one after it,

989
00:51:05,560 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 1: and think, oh, that's how long it is based on

990
00:51:07,719 --> 00:51:11,360
Speaker 1: you know, point zero, zero, zero, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, one seconds.

991
00:51:12,000 --> 00:51:14,440
Speaker 1: But you can't by the time you think that, so

992
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:17,960
Speaker 1: a countless number of those have passed. And so to me,

993
00:51:18,040 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: that was one of those things that I found funny

994
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:26,879
Speaker 1: and infuriating at the same time, this sort of misconception about, oh,

995
00:51:26,920 --> 00:51:29,560
Speaker 1: the LHC is a doomsday device that is going to

996
00:51:29,840 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 1: end all life because we're going to create a black

997
00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 1: hole that will suck up the entire universe. There's even,

998
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 1: as I recall, there's a website that had a very funny,

999
00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:46,280
Speaker 1: very immateurish gift of a picture supposedly from a security

1000
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:50,440
Speaker 1: camera outside the LHC just getting sucked in to to

1001
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:52,720
Speaker 1: a single point as if a black hole had been created,

1002
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, that's amazing. That's amazing connection to

1003
00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:01,759
Speaker 1: be able to continue to broadcast while spaghetti location is happening. Now,

1004
00:52:01,840 --> 00:52:05,560
Speaker 1: my favorite website is called has the Large Hadron Collider

1005
00:52:05,600 --> 00:52:09,000
Speaker 1: destroyed the world yet dot com as we promised as

1006
00:52:09,040 --> 00:52:12,480
Speaker 1: physicist to always keep up to date, right, So if

1007
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 1: you go to that website and it says yes, then

1008
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, yeah, you might wanna, you might want to,

1009
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:21,120
Speaker 1: you know, might make some plans. Um, But yeah, this

1010
00:52:21,160 --> 00:52:23,120
Speaker 1: is a this is a common thing that's raised, and

1011
00:52:23,280 --> 00:52:25,879
Speaker 1: I think it's reasonable for people to wonder, like our

1012
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 1: physicists going to trigger some sort of universal apocalypse which

1013
00:52:29,360 --> 00:52:33,320
Speaker 1: ends society as we know it. It's a fair question, um,

1014
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,799
Speaker 1: But it's also reasonable for us to lean on physicists

1015
00:52:36,800 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: expertise and answering the question. In this case, I think

1016
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: Serain has done an excellent job of taking this concern seriously.

1017
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:45,319
Speaker 1: So for those who don't know, there there really is

1018
00:52:45,360 --> 00:52:47,720
Speaker 1: a theory that we could be creating miniature black holes

1019
00:52:47,800 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: at the Large Hadron Collider. The idea is that gravity

1020
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:54,560
Speaker 1: might be very very power. Gravity, which is the weakest force,

1021
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:57,439
Speaker 1: might actually be very very powerful if you bring things

1022
00:52:57,600 --> 00:53:00,880
Speaker 1: really close together, like the close the size you know,

1023
00:53:00,920 --> 00:53:03,320
Speaker 1: the width of a proton is sort of close together.

1024
00:53:03,800 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 1: So if you smash these protons together really high energy,

1025
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,839
Speaker 1: they might get close enough where the gravity gets really

1026
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:11,959
Speaker 1: really strong, and meaning you could create black holes, because

1027
00:53:12,000 --> 00:53:14,720
Speaker 1: black holes are essentially displaces where gravity gets really strong.

1028
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,440
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, those black holes, if they

1029
00:53:18,520 --> 00:53:20,839
Speaker 1: last long enough, could sit there and sort of swallow matter.

1030
00:53:21,200 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 1: But you know, there's lots of reasons not to be

1031
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:24,680
Speaker 1: worried about that. First of all, we think if these

1032
00:53:24,719 --> 00:53:27,440
Speaker 1: black holes are created, they wouldn't last very long. They

1033
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:31,520
Speaker 1: would radiate into nothing using Hawking radiation. And if they

1034
00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 1: and and we believe that collisions have been happening for

1035
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:38,239
Speaker 1: a long long time, like we've been being hit by

1036
00:53:38,280 --> 00:53:43,320
Speaker 1: particles from space forever basically, and those particles are traveling

1037
00:53:43,400 --> 00:53:45,800
Speaker 1: much faster than the particles at the large age On collider.

1038
00:53:45,880 --> 00:53:49,320
Speaker 1: So if collisions of particles were going to cause Earth

1039
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:52,480
Speaker 1: destroying black holes, it would have happened already. And so

1040
00:53:52,560 --> 00:53:56,000
Speaker 1: there's a pretty in depth analysis of this um And

1041
00:53:56,080 --> 00:53:57,680
Speaker 1: I think one thing that's funny about it is sort

1042
00:53:57,680 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 1: of the social aspect of it. Like if you ask

1043
00:53:59,880 --> 00:54:03,160
Speaker 1: of is this, is it possible for the LHC to

1044
00:54:03,200 --> 00:54:07,040
Speaker 1: destroy the universe, to destroy the Earth, The answer is technically, yes,

1045
00:54:07,080 --> 00:54:11,120
Speaker 1: it's possible. You don't want to talk about exactly, but

1046
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:14,520
Speaker 1: there's a difference between you know, a scientific answer and

1047
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 1: a sort of a public relations answer where it's possible,

1048
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: but not to the level where it's really worth talking about.

1049
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:24,280
Speaker 1: Like it's possible for me to disappear in quantum mechanically

1050
00:54:24,280 --> 00:54:28,000
Speaker 1: appear in Paris. Sure it's not impossible, but it's the

1051
00:54:28,040 --> 00:54:30,600
Speaker 1: real The odds are so remote nobody should factor that

1052
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 1: into their plans. And that's really what people are asking about, Like,

1053
00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:35,520
Speaker 1: is this possible at the level where we need to

1054
00:54:35,560 --> 00:54:38,040
Speaker 1: worry about it and make policy changes or you know,

1055
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:41,440
Speaker 1: use it to base decisions on And the answer is no. Um.

1056
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:43,520
Speaker 1: But you know, we as humans are pretty bad about

1057
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:46,759
Speaker 1: thinking about dangers and making decisions based on that. You know,

1058
00:54:47,160 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 1: I should worry about being struck by lightning or being

1059
00:54:49,719 --> 00:54:51,880
Speaker 1: eaten by sharks, but we don't worry too much about

1060
00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:54,759
Speaker 1: handgun safety this kind of stuff. So as human as

1061
00:54:54,800 --> 00:54:57,960
Speaker 1: we we have our policies upside down. Or even you know,

1062
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:01,319
Speaker 1: the likelihood of getting in even a minor accident in

1063
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:05,399
Speaker 1: a car, I mean, that's incredibly likely compared to these

1064
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: other things. But these other things because they I think

1065
00:55:08,719 --> 00:55:12,399
Speaker 1: largely because they and they tap into that same part

1066
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: of our brains that finds fascination in the unknown. There's

1067
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: there's that related element, the fear of the unknown. The

1068
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:23,560
Speaker 1: two are very close, and the less you know about something,

1069
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:27,839
Speaker 1: the more likely you are to fear it um. And paradoxically,

1070
00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:30,480
Speaker 1: also the more you know about something, depending on what

1071
00:55:30,560 --> 00:55:33,240
Speaker 1: it is, the more you might start to fear it um.

1072
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 1: So it's it's a really interesting Oh boy, being human

1073
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:39,320
Speaker 1: sure is great um. But in the end, it's all about,

1074
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:42,160
Speaker 1: you know, trying to answer these questions and exploring the unknown,

1075
00:55:42,160 --> 00:55:44,359
Speaker 1: and to me, that's always worth it. The guys who

1076
00:55:44,520 --> 00:55:46,520
Speaker 1: jumped in a ship and sailed into the ocean not

1077
00:55:46,600 --> 00:55:48,520
Speaker 1: knowing what they were going to find, you know, they

1078
00:55:48,520 --> 00:55:50,440
Speaker 1: were part of that. It's a it's a long legacy

1079
00:55:50,440 --> 00:55:52,640
Speaker 1: of exploration and to me, that's one of the most

1080
00:55:52,640 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 1: exciting things we can do as a species. Daniel, thank

1081
00:55:55,719 --> 00:55:58,359
Speaker 1: you so much for joining our show. Please can you

1082
00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:01,680
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your podcast and why

1083
00:56:01,760 --> 00:56:05,239
Speaker 1: everyone needs to listen to it? Sure? Our podcast is

1084
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:08,520
Speaker 1: called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. I'm one half

1085
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 1: of it. The other half is Jorge Chom, the internet

1086
00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:15,479
Speaker 1: famous cartoons behind PhD Comics, and we do a fun

1087
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:18,799
Speaker 1: chat about philosophy and science and try to explain things

1088
00:56:18,840 --> 00:56:21,000
Speaker 1: about the universe and the idea there is to take

1089
00:56:21,080 --> 00:56:23,799
Speaker 1: big topics and break them up into pieces that are

1090
00:56:23,840 --> 00:56:26,360
Speaker 1: actually understandable, not just so you hear a lot of

1091
00:56:26,360 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: fancy words and you don't really understand, but so that

1092
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:30,759
Speaker 1: you come away with a pretty good grasp of what

1093
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: these topics are. And we cover things like the Big

1094
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:37,120
Speaker 1: Bang and teleportation and fasten the light travel and history

1095
00:56:37,120 --> 00:56:39,080
Speaker 1: of the universe and the future of the universe. And

1096
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 1: so check it out. It's a lot of fun. It's

1097
00:56:40,960 --> 00:56:45,040
Speaker 1: called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. Yeah, it's fantastic, guys.

1098
00:56:45,040 --> 00:56:46,920
Speaker 1: If you have not listened, you need to check it out.

1099
00:56:47,120 --> 00:56:50,440
Speaker 1: I very much enjoyed it's I consider it sort of

1100
00:56:50,480 --> 00:56:56,239
Speaker 1: a spiritual cousin to text stuff and and and it

1101
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: makes me. It makes me long for the day when

1102
00:56:58,280 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 1: I can I can get a co host who I

1103
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:03,040
Speaker 1: can bounce stuff off of, and they can bounce stuff

1104
00:57:03,080 --> 00:57:07,000
Speaker 1: off of me. Right now, I'm playing tennis with myself,

1105
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:10,200
Speaker 1: so that is always a challenge. Daniel, thank you so

1106
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 1: much for joining the show. We greatly appreciate it. Thanks

1107
00:57:14,000 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 1: very much for having me on. And hello to all

1108
00:57:15,640 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: your listeners. Hey, guys, Jonathan from the future again. It's

1109
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. They're flying cars and everything. Anyway, uh, I

1110
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 1: was just here to tell you we're going to take

1111
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:35,320
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. That was a

1112
00:57:35,320 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 1: phenomenal conversation, or at least I had a ton of fun.

1113
00:57:38,120 --> 00:57:42,680
Speaker 1: I hope you guys enjoyed it. Daniel Whiteson is really

1114
00:57:42,880 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 1: great at communicating science, not just someone who practices it,

1115
00:57:47,240 --> 00:57:50,520
Speaker 1: but it's very good at explaining the wonder behind science.

1116
00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 1: So definitely check out that podcast. If you guys have

1117
00:57:53,560 --> 00:57:56,840
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future topics for tech Stuff, whether it's

1118
00:57:56,840 --> 00:57:59,320
Speaker 1: a technology, a company, maybe there's someone else I should

1119
00:57:59,320 --> 00:58:02,800
Speaker 1: interview on the show, let me know. Send me an email.

1120
00:58:02,840 --> 00:58:06,800
Speaker 1: The addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,

1121
00:58:06,920 --> 00:58:09,480
Speaker 1: or you can visit our website that is tech Stuff

1122
00:58:09,560 --> 00:58:12,400
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. There you're going to find links to

1123
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:15,520
Speaker 1: all of our social media as well as to our

1124
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:19,080
Speaker 1: store that's over at t public dot com slash tech Stuff.

1125
00:58:19,280 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 1: Every purchase you make goes to help the show, and

1126
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: we greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk to you again

1127
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:31,760
Speaker 1: really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1128
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:43,120
Speaker 1: Is that how stuff works dot com,