WEBVTT - Smashing Particles for Science 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.200 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.560 Forward Thinking, Either and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.520 that looks at the future and says he's going for speed. 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:22.360 I'm Jonathan Strickland. That was a good one. I'm Joe McCormick, 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:25.480 and Lauren Vogelbaum. Our other host is not with us today, 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:27.800 but she will be back with us soon. Yeah. So 0:00:28.000 --> 0:00:32.040 we thought we would take this opportunity to talk about, uh, 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:34.440 you know, some stuff that helps us really get a 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.159 grip on what's really going on out there. Yeah. Um, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:45.080 so I saw the movie Transformers for so sorry. Yeah, 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:48.320 I'm sorry to I'm sorry. I gave those people my money, 0:00:48.479 --> 0:00:51.640 and I'm I'm I'm sorry for the world. Yeah, we're 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:54.880 we're all victims here. But one thing it got me 0:00:54.920 --> 0:00:57.560 thinking about, since a lot of the movie was taken 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.520 up by things crashing into each other, really big things, 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:05.039 really big robotic things with laser swords and stuff like that. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:07.840 As as you as you do crashing into each other, 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.119 what happens when small things crash into each other, Well, 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:16.639 then we can get a glimpse of how the universe works. Joe, Yeah, okay, 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:19.520 So here's a question, And I really do mean this. 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.399 It sounds like I'm being flippant, but here's a real 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:27.400 question that we are looking for, like answers for this question, 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:33.240 why do we have stuff? Like? Why is there stuff? 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.760 Why is there matter? And energy? Sure? Why why is 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:40.039 there stuff? That's a good question. I mean, I don't 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:42.399 know if it's possible for their not to be stuff, 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:45.560 but at least there is stuff. See. The reason why 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.600 I ask is that if you look at our theories 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:54.400 on the the the earliest moments of the universe, keeping 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:56.520 in mind that if we're we're following the Big Bang 0:01:56.560 --> 0:01:59.680 theory here, the further you get, the closer you get 0:01:59.720 --> 0:02:04.440 to the beginning, the less time matters. Like time, it 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:07.120 eventually is no longer a thing, and so you can't 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:09.560 ask what happened before that because there's no time, right, 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.640 So there's no before time. Actually it goes back about 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.280 thirteen point eight billion years, and then you reach the 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.440 boundary of time. Yes, so you can't ask what happened 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.560 before that because that's a meaningless question in the context 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.640 of of the universe, because without time, there's no before. However, 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:32.120 one of the things we we have hypothesized have theorized 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:37.080 even is that those early moments there there was matter 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:40.400 and anti matter, and these two just do not get along. No, 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.880 they tend to completely annihilate one another, don't. Absolutely. If 0:02:44.960 --> 0:02:49.400 matter comes into contact with antimatter, you get total annihilation. 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.720 Assuming you have equal parts. Then you've got nothing left 0:02:52.880 --> 0:02:57.000 of that of that interaction because they will completely annihilate 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:02.239 one another. But we have matter. So that means something 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:06.680 happened for some reason, there was more matter than antimatter, 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:11.600 or something else happened to antimatter, so that for some 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.399 reason we didn't have everything annihilate. And that's why we're 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:17.520 able to have this podcast. I mean, it's not a 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:22.360 direct line. It's not a direct line, but we're one 0:03:22.440 --> 0:03:25.560 of the things, you know. So this is one of 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:28.959 those weird questions about the about the universe. Another one 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:33.680 would be like, why does the universe exhibit the gravitational 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:37.480 properties it does? Why does it expand at the rate 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:40.920 it does? Right, Because here's the thing about expansion. See, 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.280 based upon our understanding of the universe, the universe should 0:03:44.280 --> 0:03:46.960 do one of a couple of things. It should either 0:03:47.520 --> 0:03:52.240 continuously expand if there's not enough matter for the gravitational forces, 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:54.960 to pull it all back in again, or it should 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:59.480 expand slow, stop, and then contract because the gravity is 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:03.040 strong enough pull everything back into the center. Uh. But 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:05.280 one of the things we noticed is that it is expanding, 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.520 and through the data we've gotten from the Hubble space telescope, 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.880 it's actually expanding at a rate faster than what it 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:17.080 was billions of years ago. So now that brings in 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.480 a question, why does it do that thing? So now 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:23.280 we've had all these questions, how are we going to 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:26.960 solve questions like this? Well, here's the problem, right, I mean, 0:04:27.640 --> 0:04:30.160 these are questions that would most easily be answered if 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:33.560 we could somehow travel back thirteen point eight billion years. 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.839 I'm gonna stop you right there and say, even if 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:38.440 we could do that, I'm not sure it would be 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:41.120 all that easy to answer these questions because how could 0:04:41.120 --> 0:04:43.520 you measure it? No, but it would be it would 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:45.800 at least we would be there to witness what was 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.560 happening at the very least, if not the moment we 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:53.320 were dying. Well, let's say that somehow we've managed to exist, uh, 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:58.280 coexist in parallel to the budding universe. Uh, and we 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:00.960 were somehow able to measure it. That would be our 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.040 best chance. Of course, we can't do that, right, we don't. 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.039 We don't have a time travel machine, we don't have 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:08.440 any way of existing in parallel with our own universe. 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.080 So the next best thing I would assume would be 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:17.800 to somehow create a micro By micro, I mean super micro, 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:23.160 I'm talking like atomic level re enactment of the conditions 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:27.240 that were present moments after the Big Bang happened. By 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:33.039 smashing stuff together, so we see the fundamental uh uh, elements, 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.760 energies that were there before everything kind of coalesced into 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:38.960 what it actually is now. So you're saying, sort of, 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:42.280 by simulating or trying to as best as we can 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:46.599 recreate the initial conditions of the universe, we can get 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:49.240 a better sense for why the universe looks the way 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:52.560 it does now exactly. So by that, if we were 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.479 able to do that and then measure it, observe it, 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:59.360 draw conclusions, we could perhaps start to fill in some 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.840 gaps in our knowledge. But recreating the initial conditions of 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.119 the universe, that sounds crazy. How could you do that? Well, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.680 if you take it turns out, if you take those small, 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:11.600 small particles, you know, the small stuff we were talking about, 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.160 the very top of the show, not transformers, but the 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.599 small stuff and then smash them together at at sufficient 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:21.200 energy we can make them kind of um, well it's 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:24.359 decomposed of the wrong word, but to to convert into 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:27.520 their high energy states that they were, uh, that they 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:29.719 would have been right at moments after the Big Bang, 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.440 before they formed into the particles that we know today. 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.120 And we call these particle colliders. Right, These are the 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:41.400 machines we use to create these collisions. Uh. And they 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:46.200 are incredible things. Right, So our topic today is particle colliders. 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.080 We didn't need to bury the lead there that we 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:53.159 did find transformers in the beginning of the universe, very 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:57.160 closely related things. Okay, so what is a particle collider 0:06:57.240 --> 0:06:59.720 and how is it different or is it different from 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:03.080 a particle accelerator. Well, a particle accelerator is something that 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:05.120 you use in order to get a particle up to 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.719 a certain energy level, certain speed. And it's uh, I 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:12.280 mean those are components in colliders, but they are also 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.080 used for other things. Yeah, since in one sense there 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.440 sort of is no difference, people often use these terms interchangeably, 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:21.720 and it's sort of correct to do that because one 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:24.680 term is basically a more specific term than the other. 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:28.920 A collider is a specific way of using a particle accelerator, 0:07:29.320 --> 0:07:31.640 or it's sort of a type of particle accelerator, and 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:36.520 they generally refer to colliding two separate beams of subatomic 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:39.480 particles or ions. It doesn't have to be subatomic, it 0:07:39.520 --> 0:07:43.880 can be atomic particles. But uh, you know, an accelerator 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.360 doesn't necessarily have to collide it with another beam of 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.239 pro of of particles. It could actually be a fixed target, 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:54.080 so you could just accelerate stuff out of fixed target 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.440 to find out what happens, or at something where that 0:07:57.560 --> 0:08:00.240 beam of particles might be useful in a piece of technology, 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.760 say the back of a TV screen, or at a 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:08.520 tumor so. In a technical sense, a particle accelerator is 0:08:08.920 --> 0:08:13.800 a device that uses electromagnetic fields to grab particles, increase 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.840 their speed, and focus them into directed beams. Okay, so 0:08:18.200 --> 0:08:20.320 for one thing, one thing that we have to say 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:23.760 right away is that if we're using electromagnetic forces, then 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.280 clearly whatever particles we are manipulating need to have some 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.760 form of net charge to them, whether that's positive or negative. Right, 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:34.480 so you'll see them grabbing like electrons have a negative 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:40.040 charge or grabbing protons, grabbing ions which are charged those 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:45.680 atoms that either have more electrons than their natural state 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:48.480 or fewer electrons, so that they have a net charge 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.400 one way or the other. Yeah. So, one commonly given 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:54.280 example of a sort of small scale application of the 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:58.200 same principle behind a particle accelerator is a cathode ray tube. 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:01.080 That's what the CRT stands or when you talk about 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.960 a CRT monitor or CRT TV, that's the old way 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.960 of creating TV screen, those those larger, bulkier televisions that 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.640 some of our listeners may never have seen. Um So, 0:09:12.920 --> 0:09:15.600 actually Craig Freud and Rich uses this example in his 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.320 house Stuff Works article about atom smashers, which is a 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:20.240 term will come back to in a minute. So, in 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:22.800 a cathode ray tube, like on an old TV, you 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:27.000 use the electrical difference between a cathode which is negatively 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:31.079 charged and an anode which is positively charged, to pull 0:09:31.280 --> 0:09:35.040 a beam of electrons through an evacuated containers. That's like 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.600 a glass tube where you've sucked all the air out 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:40.160 of it and it's just a vacuum in side. And remember, 0:09:40.200 --> 0:09:44.319 because like charges repel one another, and opposite charges a track. 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:47.480 That's why we're getting this ability to move these particles 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:50.200 where we want them to write, So the positive anode 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.360 wants to pull the electrons from the cathode, and they 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.360 get pulled off in a beam and then shoot through 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:59.640 that anode toward the TV screen. Of course, you can't 0:09:59.679 --> 0:10:02.560 just you electrons at a TV screen. You've got to 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.760 aim them somehow, right, So that's where electromagnetic coils come in. 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.439 They can focus the beams of electrons and make them 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.120 go where they need to go. And these days particle 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.280 accelerators can be used for all kinds of stuff. We 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.079 don't have so much t c RT technology anymore these days, 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:20.840 but they can be used for things like treating cancer 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:25.000 by aiming particle beams at tumors. That's particle therapy. Interesting. 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:27.520 But most of the time, of course, when people are 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:31.760 talking about particle accelerators, they're talking about experimental mechanisms like 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:35.600 the colliders. So a collider is a particular kind of 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:40.640 particle accelerator that steers beams of accelerated particles into something, 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.040 either into a barrier or into an object, or into 0:10:44.160 --> 0:10:48.440 each other to smash them and study what happens when 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.720 this tiny moment of catastrophe takes place when the when 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:57.319 the tiny particles go blue. Yeah, that's the technical term. Uh. 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.840 And this is why we wanted to also bring up 0:10:59.880 --> 0:11:03.680 the whole atom smasher thing, because that is another kind 0:11:03.679 --> 0:11:06.560 of nickname for these sort of devices, right, Yeah, not 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.320 to get pedantic, I mean, that's basically it's fine to 0:11:09.320 --> 0:11:12.200 say atom smasher, but that's not technically so much what 0:11:12.320 --> 0:11:14.840 these are anymore, because they're usually not going to be 0:11:14.880 --> 0:11:20.359 grabbing whole atoms. Maybe ions. There's some heavy ion accelerators 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.560 out there, so that would be atomic. But but in 0:11:23.640 --> 0:11:27.240 large part, we're talking about subatomic particles. We're talking. Uh. 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:29.400 For example, one of the ones will be covering a 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:32.600 lot in this episode the Large Hadron Collider, which, among 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:36.840 other things, does proton collisions. So you have two different 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.320 beams of protons, which are subatomic particles, right, that's part 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:42.960 of what makes up an atom. But you can possibly 0:11:43.040 --> 0:11:45.640 charged part yes, and you can also have things like 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:50.400 electron positron colliders. Now electrons are the negatively charged particles. 0:11:50.480 --> 0:11:56.480 Positrons are their antimatter counterpart essentially. Yeah, So in other words, 0:11:56.520 --> 0:11:59.959 you're using, uh, you're using these things to to move 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:05.720 very very very tiny particles around. And when I'm saying tiny, 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:08.480 you might not really get a grip on exactly how 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:13.280 small we're talking about. Remember the nanoscale. A nanometer is 0:12:13.280 --> 0:12:17.120 one billionth of a meter. The nanoscale is smaller, Like, 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:19.880 if you're looking at something that's one or two nanometers long, 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.360 you're not looking at it optically because you can't there's 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:24.720 no way for you to be able to look at 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.080 that optically. Light itself is not going to allow you 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.440 to do that because the wavelengths are too long. But uh, 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:34.079 the atomic scale is an order of magnitude smaller than that, 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.920 So that's even smaller than a nanometer, right that you 0:12:37.920 --> 0:12:41.320 you essentially can have This is rough because it depends 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:43.680 upon the atom, but you could have ten atoms side 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:46.920 by side to make up one nanometer, so they're one 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:50.280 tenth that size, so they're even smaller. And then we're 0:12:50.280 --> 0:12:53.960 talking sub atomic particles that are even smaller than a 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:57.960 full atom. So at this point you're talking about things 0:12:58.000 --> 0:13:03.080 that are unimaginably small, and you're talking about directing them 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:06.000 as precisely as you possibly can so that they collide 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:09.560 with something like another beam of particles if you if 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.560 you can imagine it, that means that you have to 0:13:11.600 --> 0:13:16.960 focus these beams into insanely tiny, tight packages, or else 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:18.959 you would never get a collision. It would be like 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.360 if Joe and I were both in uh an enormous 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.360 stadium and blindfolded and set on either end running towards 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:29.599 each other, and the possibility of us actually colliding that 0:13:29.600 --> 0:13:32.320 would still be far more likely. You know. Yeah, I'd 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.480 say that's actually really generous. It's probably more like if 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.520 I stood on the Moon and you stood on the Earth, 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:41.440 and we each threw a pencil at each other and 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:44.920 we somehow were able to escape the various gravitational polls 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:49.240 saying gravity is negligible in this case, Yes, And the 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.320 idea that those two pencils would meet point to point 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:55.600 that would be still a level of precision greater than 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.640 what is required, are lesser than what is required, rather 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.440 than these beams of of sub atomic particles meeting is 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:07.320 an incredible achievement. Yeah, So how do these generally work? Well, 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.640 there's two main setups. You'd see. One is sort of 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:14.480 the ring shape, the cyclotron, the cyclic Yeah, so that's 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.200 where they would get these particles, like we said, they 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:21.160 control them with electromagnetic forces within some kind of tube 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:26.000 and accelerate them around a ring, going faster and faster 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.880 with each turn and increasing well faster and faster to 0:14:28.880 --> 0:14:31.040 a certain point. And then once they get up to 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:35.000 point something per cent of the speed of light, you're 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:39.640 just sort of like increasing their relativistic mass, and until 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.960 they finally get to that point where these two uh, 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.080 well one one set would be going clockwise, one would 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:51.640 be going counterclockwise in the notes, until they finally collide, Yes, 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:55.040 at specific points around the cyclotron. This would be the 0:14:55.080 --> 0:14:59.360 points where you have some form of scientific instruments that 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.960 are going to be measuring those collisions in various ways. Yeah, 0:15:03.000 --> 0:15:07.040 you've got an instrument sitting where the streams cross and waiting. Yes. Uh. 0:15:07.080 --> 0:15:09.080 And then the other way of doing it instead of 0:15:09.120 --> 0:15:12.080 a ring would be a linear accelerator, Right. That's where 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:14.800 you just kind of have one big long tube and 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.120 a gun on each side and you aim the bullets 0:15:17.120 --> 0:15:19.840 at each other. Yep, yep, that's that's pretty much it. 0:15:20.000 --> 0:15:23.400 And so the linear one is actually the the uh, 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:27.680 the earliest type of particle accelerator. The cyclotrons came a 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:30.440 little later. Yeah, but the linear type may actually figure 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.120 into the future of particle accelerators though the cyclotron is 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:38.480 what's big today. Yes, literally big today. So yeah, let's 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.800 talk about the history where these things come from. Okay, well, 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:42.760 if you if you're going to be really technical, you 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:45.440 have to go all the way back to because that's 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.480 when scientists were at first starting to notice that when 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:51.800 they were beaming particles at like a sheet of gold, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.080 some of them were bouncing back, which then began to 0:15:54.720 --> 0:16:00.400 give people a thought of these things have the kind 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:02.960 of mass and they're behaving in this way. Maybe there's 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:05.400 a way of smashing these together and kind of seeing 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.960 what makes them tick. Now, it wouldn't be until the 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.040 nineteen thirties that they started to the scientists started to 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:17.440 build particle accelerators that would actually uh end up colliding 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:21.520 these particles with something else and um. At that time, 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:23.520 they were pretty limited. They were usually that they were 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:27.520 the linear type originally, and they could get it up 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.520 to a few hundred thousand electron volts. So that might 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:33.400 not mean anything to you. An electron vault is a 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:37.840 unit of energy. It's equivalent to about one point six 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:43.000 times ten to the negative nineteen jewels or it's also 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:45.280 known as the energy gained or lost by the charge 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:48.960 of a single electron moved across an electric potential difference 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:51.880 of one vault. Well, that don't mean a lot to me, 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.520 Well at any rate, it's it's it's a very specific, 0:16:55.640 --> 0:17:00.000 very tiny amount of energy. So the the original experiments 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.040 were a few hundred thousand electron volts. Then they kind 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:05.080 of hit an energy barrier. They were specifically using direct 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:09.320 voltage to accelerate ions. So those charged atoms uh to 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.040 go and and get into these collisions. But at that 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:16.840 low energy, you're not getting the collision. The collisions are 0:17:16.880 --> 0:17:19.639 not necessarily as spectacular as what you would need to 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.960 really get an idea of what was going on in 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:27.760 the earliest moments of the universe. So eventually this this 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.679 approach got up to about a million electron volts. But 0:17:31.240 --> 0:17:35.520 after that, the the problem is that you get voltage breakdown, 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.960 so you could not continue to just try and throw 0:17:39.040 --> 0:17:41.800 more energy at the problem. They couldn't scale it up. Yeah, 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.879 So in the nineteen forties, scientists turned to oscillating radio 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:51.120 frequency electric fields to resonate with particles through accelerating gaps 0:17:51.600 --> 0:17:53.560 and that's a fancy way of saying they tried something 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:56.439 else that worked better. It really is. I mean, we 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.080 to go into a lot of detail would require one 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.200 It would require more time and too, frankly, it would 0:18:02.200 --> 0:18:04.240 require a lot more expertise than what I have in 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:07.440 this field. I've written about particle accelerators in the past, 0:18:07.800 --> 0:18:11.679 and I understand from a very kind of basic approach 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:15.480 how they work. When you get into fine details, my 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:19.320 knowledge breaks down pretty rapidly faster than the subotomic particle 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:23.520 as it turns out. So uh, these accelerators were still linear, 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:27.520 but then eventually scientists began to experiment a cyclotron designs, 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:31.440 these big circular designs, and that the purpose was to 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.560 try and continuously accelerate particles. Because you know, you're limited 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:38.840 by the lengths of whatever linear accelerator you have, and 0:18:38.960 --> 0:18:41.600 that's it, right. You can't you can't loop it back 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:44.240 and start over. You've got it's essentially a straight path 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.320 to whatever, whether that's two guns facing each other or 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:50.520 a gun facing a target. But with a circle, you could, 0:18:50.520 --> 0:18:52.840 in theory, just keep moving it around the circle and 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.320 getting it faster and faster and faster until you're ready 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.560 to direct it towards that collision, right, So that's why 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:01.080 they went with the circular approach. At this point they 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:04.480 got up to about twenty five million electron volts, and 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:07.320 by the nineteen fifties they could design elect cyclotrons that 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.960 could push back that energy barrier to two billion electron volts. 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:13.000 And before the end of the nineteen fifties they got 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:17.119 up to four hundred billion electron volts. So that energy 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:20.639 barrier just kept going up and up and up. Um 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.320 and so now these days we're talking about electron volts 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:25.560 and the trillions, So we should probably just take a 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.600 second to mention why is it so important to get 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.920 the energy so high to increase their speed and increase 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:36.359 their effective mass. It's really so that those collisions actually 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:41.560 result in the the primal kind of state that the 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:44.040 universe was in in those earliest moments. Without it, you 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:48.000 don't have enough energy to revert back to that. Yeah, 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:49.880 to get the kind of results you want, you want 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:54.600 the highest possible energy collision. Although we should say at 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:58.359 this point the LHC, the large hadron collider again, one 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:01.800 of the most famous collider is right now um Is 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:06.119 has been operating, hasn't been operating for the last several months, 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:09.399 but in its first round it was operating at like 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:14.560 a third of its capability. Those earliest experiments weren't really 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:19.600 performed at anywhere near its highest capacity. Although we don't 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:22.960 expect it ever will run it that now, but it's 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.080 definitely the second round is going to be much higher energy, 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:28.240 so they're expecting to find some really cool stuff the 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:30.719 second round through. Well, let's get into the large hat 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:33.000 round collider. Except first I think we should mention a 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:36.960 couple of the other notable colliders from recent years. Sure, so, yeah, 0:20:37.000 --> 0:20:40.160 you're talking about like brook Haven's relativistic heavy ion collider 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:43.680 are Hick that was commissioned back in two thousand. It's 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.120 designed to collide heavy ions, but it's capable of going 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.560 all the way down to protons and size. There is 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:52.639 Fermi Labs Tiva tron Teva tron Tevatron is what I've 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.440 always said, but it could be Tivatron. Well, yeah, so 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.120 that's one of those proton anti proton colliders that's matter 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:02.600 and anti matter. Yeah, and uh, it can work as 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:06.879 both a proton anti proton beam collider or as a 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:10.359 fixed target collider as well. Um, so it can do 0:21:10.400 --> 0:21:13.520 a couple of different things, and is it I'm to understand. 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:17.000 I believe it's number two. Yeah. Up until the Large 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.160 Hadron Collider it had become it was the the highest 0:21:20.240 --> 0:21:22.960 energy collider in the world with one point eight trillion 0:21:22.960 --> 0:21:26.840 electron volts, which is pretty significance. But then you've got 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.720 the Large Hadron Collider that's at cern which, uh, you know, 0:21:30.800 --> 0:21:33.399 we we recently got a chance to see the movie 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.080 Particle Fever, which was all about the development of the 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:39.840 Large Hadron Collider. It's early days of being switched on 0:21:40.280 --> 0:21:43.440 the relationship between theoretical physicists, who are the ones who 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:45.640 are coming up with the ideas of how the universe 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.520 must work based upon our understanding, and the experimental physicists 0:21:49.560 --> 0:21:51.520 who put those ideas to the test and see if 0:21:51.560 --> 0:21:55.560 they actually hold water. So, yeah, the Large Hadron Collider 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:59.520 might be the greatest instance of experimental physics in the 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:02.600 history of humanity. Yeah, depends on how you define greatest, 0:22:02.640 --> 0:22:06.520 I guess, but it's definitely the largest machine ever built 0:22:06.520 --> 0:22:09.159 by humans as far as we know, as long as 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:11.280 we we don't have that, Like, you know, the Nazis 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:13.359 built a death star inside of the Earth, kind of 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:15.639 theory or on the other side of the moon. As 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:19.520 Iron Sky has taught us, it's a terrible movie. Don't 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.120 watch it. Well, we've already you've already had to endure 0:22:22.160 --> 0:22:25.639 transformers for don't put yourself to more more pain. Uh No, 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:29.080 there's no serious reason to question. It is the largest 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:32.000 machine ever built by human beings. So the large hat 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:34.920 around collider, it's basically just picture this. It is a 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:41.520 giant underground ring shaped tunnel that's twenty seven kilometers in circumference, 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:44.199 and that is sixteen point seven miles. They usually just 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.359 call it seventeen miles. Um. If you got in a 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:50.399 golf cart with an average top speed about twenty miles 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.720 per hour and you drove around this thing, not saying 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:56.280 there's necessarily room for you to do that, it would 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.760 take you over fifty minutes to make a complete circuit 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:02.199 inside this tunnel. And this tunnel, by the way, is 0:23:02.200 --> 0:23:05.960 about three thirty feet below the surface of the ground. Yeah, well, 0:23:06.000 --> 0:23:10.800 the depth I think is variable hundreds of feet hundreds 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:13.520 of feet down under the earth at the border between 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:18.000