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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast.

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Speaker 2: My name is Joe McCormick. My regular co host, Robert

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Speaker 2: Lamb is not with me today, but he'll be joining

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Speaker 2: again next time. Today's episode is going to be an interview.

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Speaker 2: This is a conversation I had with the accelerator physicist

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Speaker 2: and author Susie Sheehy about her recent book The Matter

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Speaker 2: of Everything, How Curiosity, Physics and Improbable Experiments Changed the World.

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Speaker 2: Susie's publisher sent us a copy of this book for review,

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Speaker 2: and I really loved it. So it's a history of

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Speaker 2: modern physics experiments from Runken's cathode ray tube and the

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Speaker 2: discovery of X rays all the way up to the

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Speaker 2: Large Hadron Collider and beyond. And what makes this book

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Speaker 2: really special, in my opinion, is that it focuses not

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Speaker 2: just on theoretical advancements, but on the labor of designing

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Speaker 2: and building experiments to test those new ideas. And because

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Speaker 2: it illuminates so much about the experimental apparatus behind the

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Speaker 2: progress of science, I think this book has a lot

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Speaker 2: of interesting things to say, not just about the history

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Speaker 2: of our quest to understand matter and energy, but about

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Speaker 2: epistemology and critical thinking and work to read from her

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Speaker 2: author bio. Susie Shehe is a physicist, science communicator and

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Speaker 2: academic who divides her time between her research groups at

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Speaker 2: the University of Oxford and the University of Melbourne. Her

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Speaker 2: research addresses both curiosity driven and applied areas, and is

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Speaker 2: currently focused on developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. Again,

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Speaker 2: the book is called The Matter of Everything and I

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Speaker 2: guess that does it. For the introduction, Here is my

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Speaker 2: interview with Suzie Shehe. Susi Shehey, Welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 3: Thanks Jen, nice to be here.

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Speaker 2: So I wanted to start off talking about how I

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Speaker 2: think a lot of the histories of physics that I've

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Speaker 2: read focus more on the theoretical side, like what led

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Speaker 2: to the insights theoretical physicists had, how they dreamed up

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Speaker 2: their models, and things like that. I really loved that

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Speaker 2: this book was intensely focused on the experimental component of physics,

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Speaker 2: and there was a lot of focus on the details

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Speaker 2: of the experiments, how they did it, and understanding experiments

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Speaker 2: as human projects operating under constraints. What kind of insights

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Speaker 2: do you think are revealed by looking at the history

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Speaker 2: of particle physics through the experimental lens, in particular, especially

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Speaker 2: things that you might miss if you only talk about

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Speaker 2: physics as a sort of history of ideas.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, you phrased that so beautifully in there by the way,

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Speaker 3: the importance of experiments. So I'm an experimental physicist, right.

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Speaker 3: So one of the things that I observed when I

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Speaker 3: sort of start on the journey of writing this book

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Speaker 3: was that almost every other comparable book was written by

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Speaker 3: a theoretical physicist, And so you'd get these stories where

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Speaker 3: you get this wonderful insight of say, either Einstein or

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Speaker 3: one of the key theoretical physicists of the age, And

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Speaker 3: it was like it was almost like they came to

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Speaker 3: these insights purely from their own personal genius, right. And

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Speaker 3: this was the story of physics that I was taught

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Speaker 3: pretty much when I did at university as well. But

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Speaker 3: it was also the story that comes across in these books.

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Speaker 3: And I don't know whether this is just like an egotistical,

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Speaker 3: aggrandizing thing that people do. Certainly these people are very

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Speaker 3: very smart, right, but they're not islands and I think

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Speaker 3: that's one of the key insights that you get from

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Speaker 3: taking a different approach to looking at the history and

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Speaker 3: looking more at the experiments and more at the wider

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Speaker 3: view of how physics progresses. And I think any theoretical

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Speaker 3: physicists today would all and hopefully also though is historically,

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Speaker 3: would admit that, you know, their work is nothing without

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Speaker 3: the work of the experimentalists, because at the end of

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Speaker 3: the day, physics is a subject which is trying to

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Speaker 3: describe the universe, our actual universe, not just some theoretical

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Speaker 3: mathematical universe that doesn't really exist. And so the only

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Speaker 3: way to meet those two things in the middle is

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Speaker 3: through experiment. You have to actually get out there and

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Speaker 3: test nature. But that's where a lot of people, i

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Speaker 3: think naively think that we just we know what we're

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Speaker 3: doing with that that we just we can go out

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Speaker 3: there and build an experiment and test or find this thing,

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Speaker 3: and that once the theorist predicts it, that it's a

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Speaker 3: straightforward journey. So that's I think the next sort of

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Speaker 3: key insight there is that it is not a straightforward

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Speaker 3: journey to discover and uncover the nature of our universe,

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Speaker 3: especially on these tiny scales. That we're looking at that

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Speaker 3: are so much smaller than what we can see with

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Speaker 3: our own eyes. And so when you delve into that, then,

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Speaker 3: as you say, there's this detailed development of how experiments

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Speaker 3: actually work, whether that's electronically, whether that's because they require

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Speaker 3: two thousand people with different expertise to actually put them together,

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Speaker 3: and also just that co development of technology and instrumentation

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Speaker 3: along with the development of ideas and insights about the universe,

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Speaker 3: and it really is sort of a synergistic development. So

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Speaker 3: there's I think a few things there about throwing out

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Speaker 3: the lone genius stereotype, managing to recognize how important it

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Speaker 3: is that we actually interact in the real world and

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Speaker 3: do experiments, and then just the unpredictable nature of doing

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Speaker 3: those experiments at all.

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Speaker 2: You mentioned in the book that some people think that

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Speaker 2: Diract's equation is the most beautiful equation in all physics.

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Speaker 2: I'm sure that people who have a lot of math

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Speaker 2: and physics knowledge would consider that subjective, but it made

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Speaker 2: me curious about the different ways that instruments within science

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Speaker 2: can be perceived not only as useful or accurate, but

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Speaker 2: sometimes esthetically beautiful. So I was wondering about the other

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Speaker 2: side of that, as an experimentalist, do you have an

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Speaker 2: opinion on what is the most beautiful experiment in all

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Speaker 2: of physics? Or do you have at least a few candidates?

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Speaker 3: Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I think I definitely appreciate the

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Speaker 3: beauty of a well designed experiment that can sort of

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Speaker 3: cut through all the background noise and find the thing

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Speaker 3: that they're looking for. But I'd say I appreciate the

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Speaker 3: beauty of an experiment in multiple dimensions though, right, so

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Speaker 3: you can. I can appreciate the beauty of an experiment

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Speaker 3: which serendipitously found something that it didn't expect, as well

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Speaker 3: as appreciating, you know, the sort of really well designed,

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Speaker 3: very specific experiment. But now you're putting me on the

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Speaker 3: spot if you ask me what my favorite experiment was.

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Speaker 3: I mean, in the book, I really focus on twelve

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Speaker 3: key experiments that I chose from what could have been thousands, honestly,

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Speaker 3: and focused on how those had contributed to our knowledge

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Speaker 3: of particle physics over about the last one hundred and

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Speaker 3: twenty years. And I think it's easier probably for me

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Speaker 3: to choose a favorite from the earlier ones of those

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Speaker 3: because they're smaller. It's easier to understand all the different

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Speaker 3: parts of the experiment. And so in that sense, in

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Speaker 3: a beauty and esthetic appreciation sense, I think I'm going

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Speaker 3: to say the cloud chamber. And this was developed in

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Speaker 3: the early nineteen hundreds by a physicist named CITR Wilson,

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Speaker 3: Charles Wilson, whose first love was actually meteorology, but he

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Speaker 3: was working in the Cavender just Labin, Cambridge in the UK,

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Speaker 3: alongside all the people doing all the early work in radioactivity,

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Speaker 3: so he was very well versed in radioactivity and those ideas.

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Speaker 3: But he invented this chamber originally to try and study

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Speaker 3: clouds and the interaction of light and electricity in the atmosphere.

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Speaker 3: And then he later realized when someone held an X

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Speaker 3: ray tube, well, he and a colleague held an X

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Speaker 3: ray tube to the side of it, that he could

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Speaker 3: see the passage of radiation through this chamber, which had

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Speaker 3: a sort of in his case water vapor and nowadays

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Speaker 3: we use alcohol vapors, and these little trails would form

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Speaker 3: like little tracts of cloud as the radiation went through

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Speaker 3: and left a little bit of energy inside the chamber.

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Speaker 3: And I find this beautiful because it's really the first

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Speaker 3: time as a species that we get to visualize radiation.

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Speaker 3: We get to visualize this thing which is otherwise extremely

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Speaker 3: abstract and difficult to understand, and now we're seeing its

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Speaker 3: effects almost in real time, so you can photograph as

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Speaker 3: particles pass through. And then we get and I think

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Speaker 3: the beauty comes in because it's this lovely interaction between

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Speaker 3: our own capacities as humans and the development of a

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Speaker 3: new instrumentation. Because then you can take you can leave

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Speaker 3: these chambers up on mountains, so you can take photographs

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Speaker 3: of the interactions there, and from that we discover lots

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Speaker 3: of new things, including we discover antimatter for the first time.

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Speaker 3: So the positron is the opposite version of the electron,

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Speaker 3: and when they come together they annihilate. But they can

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Speaker 3: also be produced in pairs electron positron pairs. And there

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Speaker 3: were positrons detected by a guy called Karl Anderson in

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Speaker 3: the US, and he discovered them in his experiments before

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Speaker 3: he'd read about Direct's beautiful equation. I'm coming back to

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Speaker 3: the equation again now. He actually wasn't aware of Dirac's work,

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Speaker 3: which was published in nineteen twenty nine, but in nineteen

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Speaker 3: thirty two he'd built this enormous chamber with this huge

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Speaker 3: magnet around it and legged it up a mountain and

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Speaker 3: discovered this type of anti matter. And I find that

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Speaker 3: really beautiful because then he's literally able to use our

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Speaker 3: internal sort of track recognition, our pattern finding system, our

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Speaker 3: brain to look at the photographs and actually see that

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Speaker 3: there's something new there. And there were other particles discovered

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Speaker 3: later as well, the new one being a key one,

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Speaker 3: which is a heavy version of an electron, and it

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Speaker 3: was really the instrument of choice for many many years

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Speaker 3: in the field, and it came from a meteorologists. So

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Speaker 3: I don't know, there's something in that story for me

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Speaker 3: which is just beautiful about how we can use our

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Speaker 3: creativity and sort of reuse of ideas in adjacent fields

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Speaker 3: to really make amazing discoveries.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that example too, And there's a kind

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Speaker 2: of beauty and a kind of lightness and elegance to

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Speaker 2: it that in a way seems contrasted by other experiments

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Speaker 2: you described that are also incredibly important and wonderful stories

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Speaker 2: to understand, Like one that stands sort of opposite it

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Speaker 2: in my mind is the story of Ernest Lawrence's team

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Speaker 2: and their cyclotron and this chapter struck me as interesting

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Speaker 2: in part because I think this is the one where

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Speaker 2: you illuminate a history of what struck me as interesting.

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Speaker 2: Mistakes like you mentioned a faulty reading from an accelerator

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Speaker 2: experiment due to I think it was like deuteron coding

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Speaker 2: on target elements. Please correct me if I'm getting this wrong.

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Speaker 2: And also an incident where they accidentally made the whole

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Speaker 2: lab radioactive without realizing it, which interfered with their measurements

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Speaker 2: on on a Geiger counter like device. So what is

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Speaker 2: the role of error and making a mess in scientific experiments?

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Speaker 3: Do you know? I've been thinking about this more since

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Speaker 3: writing the book, and I think we don't. I think

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Speaker 3: we don't acknowledge the role of error and failure enough

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Speaker 3: in science. In fact, we try and cover it up.

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Speaker 3: It's a huge there's a huge issue in fact with

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Speaker 3: if I failed experiments not being published, and in some fields

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Speaker 3: like medicine, that's that's a huge issue. Actually in physics

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Speaker 3: it's less of an issue, but it still happens. But

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Speaker 3: Ernest Lawrence's example of the cyclotone is a fantastic example

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Speaker 3: where by sort of realizing their mistakes and their errors,

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Speaker 3: they really made progress in their understanding. So, as you say,

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Speaker 3: they developed this particle accelerator, this circular machine, and then

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Speaker 3: over time they realized that they're not seeing the results

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Speaker 3: that they think they should be seeing because, for example,

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Speaker 3: in one situation, basically everything had become radioactive and so

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Speaker 3: all of their measurement devices were just picking up all

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Speaker 3: the background radiation and not the radiation they were trying

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Speaker 3: to look for. But that helped them understand what was

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Speaker 3: happening in the machine as it was accelerating, and they

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Speaker 3: missed a number of key discoveries that were made by

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Speaker 3: other research groups around the world, but they didn't mind

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Speaker 3: too much. And Lawrence sort of had this mindset which

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Speaker 3: is relevant to the question of errors and failures, which is,

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Speaker 3: you know, he sort of would like to say, there's

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Speaker 3: research enough for everyone, or there's discovery enough for everyone.

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Speaker 3: And so he was this big believer that he was

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Speaker 3: quite quite a futurist, I guess because at the start

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Speaker 3: of his career he was I think late to in

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Speaker 3: his early thirties when he first invented the cyclotron, and

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Speaker 3: he invented it because he couldn't see a path of

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Speaker 3: the existing technology. To the end of his career even

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Speaker 3: you know, he was sort of looking thirty years in

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Speaker 3: the future, going, well, these technologies are just they're going

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Speaker 3: to be outdated by the time I get to that point,

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Speaker 3: so I'm going to have to invent something new to

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Speaker 3: give myself, you know, a path of growth through my career.

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Speaker 3: And boy did he get it, you know, he really

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Speaker 3: The cycloton was an incredible invention and they're still built

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Speaker 3: today in hospitals to generate radioisotopes for medical procedures, which

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Speaker 3: is very, very useful. But obviously along the way he

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Speaker 3: could be perceived at having failed to make key discoveries

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Speaker 3: in physics. So I think induced radioactivity was one of

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Speaker 3: the ones that he missed actually, and was found by

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Speaker 3: Julio and Currie in France. That's Marie Kirey's daughter, arenar Kiri.

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Speaker 3: So I've been thinking about this since writing the book,

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Speaker 3: and I think I'd like to make the analogy with

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Speaker 3: in the arts, right, So, if you have a creative

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Speaker 3: practice in the arts, failure is an error. It's just

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Speaker 3: an inherent part of it. And it's also very much

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Speaker 3: acknowledged that by failing or making an error, you may

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Speaker 3: just stumble upon something new, a new way of doing

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Speaker 3: something a new invention. I'm even thinking in the culinary world,

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Speaker 3: you know. I know of a chef who now runs

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Speaker 3: a three Michelin starred restaurant in the UK, and one

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Speaker 3: day he accidentally dropped hot coal into a vat of

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Speaker 3: cooking oil, and so they later, you know, decided to

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Speaker 3: taste it and see how it tasted, and it tastes

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Speaker 3: it amazing, and he uses it in his signature dishes

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Speaker 3: in a three Michelin starred restaurant now. And I love

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Speaker 3: those stories of where errors lead you to new things

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Speaker 3: and new ideas. And I do think in science we

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Speaker 3: shy away a little bit from that, or we like

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Speaker 3: to sort of cover it up and then we publish

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Speaker 3: a paper that says the story was a linear one.

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Speaker 3: And you know, we made all these discoveries, and in

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Speaker 3: digging into the history of these experiments, which were so

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Speaker 3: critical in understanding particle physics, I did discover that there

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Speaker 3: was probably more failure than even I expected. And as

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Speaker 3: an experimentalist myself, I've just come to accept that I

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Speaker 3: often don't fully know what I'm doing because no one

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Speaker 3: has ever tried to do it before, and that sometimes

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Speaker 3: I'm going to try things and they're going to fail.

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Speaker 3: And there's a constant process in my lab with my

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Speaker 3: students and staff of sort of openly talking about this

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Speaker 3: right in it, you know, being candid about it and

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Speaker 3: sort of being like that's all right, you know, like

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Speaker 3: it's okay that it failed. You didn't know what you

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Speaker 3: were doing, because nobody knew what they were doing. But

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Speaker 3: for example, you know, you might consider an earlier experiment

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Speaker 3: in the book by William Rodkin, who discovered X rays,

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Speaker 3: and he discovered them because a sort of painted fluorescent

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Speaker 3: screen across his lab was glowing when he had a tube,

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Speaker 3: a cathoedray tube in his lab, and he noticed the

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Speaker 3: glow and he decided to investigate it. Now, we often

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Speaker 3: refer to that as serendipitous, but depending on your perspective,

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Speaker 3: you might consider it to be an error. You know,

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Speaker 3: you probably shouldn't have had the wrong detector, you know,

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Speaker 3: sort of out in the lab at the time. The

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Speaker 3: other person that comes to mind is Robert Millican, who

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Speaker 3: did twelve years worth of experiments trying to measure what's

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Speaker 3: called the photoelectric effect, which is the electrical current that

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Speaker 3: flows when you shine light on particular metals. And this

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Speaker 3: is an interesting one where along the ways, the early

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Speaker 3: phases of quantum mechanics had come around, and Einstein in

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Speaker 3: particular had come out with this equation which predicted what

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Speaker 3: should happen when you shine this light onto different metals.

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Speaker 3: And the upshot of Einstein's theory was really abhorrent to

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Speaker 3: the experimentalist. To Robert Millican, he called it the reckless hypothesis.

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Speaker 3: And that's because this hype office has implied that light

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Speaker 3: would be acting more like a particle than like a

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Speaker 3: wave in this experiment. And so he set out to

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Speaker 3: prove Einstein wrong, spent twelve years in the lab trying

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Speaker 3: to do it, and all he did was pre Einstein

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Speaker 3: right to a better precision than anyone had before. So again,

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Speaker 3: you might think, and he even thought that he was failing, right.

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Speaker 3: He thought he was failing as an experimentalist. He was

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Speaker 3: really struggling with He had to build all his own

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Speaker 3: equipment from scratch. And then at the end of twelve

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Speaker 3: years he sort of comes out with this result, which

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Speaker 3: I think even when he published it he still didn't

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Speaker 3: fully believe, but he was able to sort of say, well,

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Speaker 3: it is consistent with Einstein's prediction. And then later on

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Speaker 3: about another ten years later, he was awarded the Nobel

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Speaker 3: Prize for that and another famous experiment that he did

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Speaker 3: about the charge on the electron, and he changes his tune.

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Speaker 3: And I found this fascinating that, you know, this very

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Speaker 3: fallible nature of the experimentalist, of sort of thinking one

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Speaker 3: thing is going to happen and holding this bias that

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Speaker 3: you know, no, nature can't possibly work that way. It's ridiculous.

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Speaker 3: It's you know, preposterous that a particle could be a wave.

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Speaker 3: You know, sorry, a light could be a wave and

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Speaker 3: a particle. And then he gets through his Nobel Prize

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Speaker 3: speech or lecture and then he's saying, you know, however,

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Speaker 3: many years ago when when I set out to demonstrate

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Speaker 3: Einstein's photoelectric theory, so so he's making out like him

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Speaker 3: meant to do it all along, and I was I

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Speaker 3: was shocked. I was like, did someone transcribe that incorrectly?

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Speaker 3: I don't think so. And so so it turns out that,

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Speaker 3: you know, I think his bias against it was what

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Speaker 3: it gave him this force, this will power to persist

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Speaker 3: at his experiment for twelve years because he was just

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Speaker 3: like emotionally he was just like, this cannot be right,

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Speaker 3: this cannot be right, and you know, you would you

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Speaker 3: would say that he if I in that enterprise because

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Speaker 3: he was wrong and Enstein was right. But this is

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Speaker 3: I think this is how science progresses, and it's an

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Speaker 3: important part of how science progresses is that, yes, we're

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Speaker 3: all human, we're all you know, we're coming with our biases,

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Speaker 3: we're very fallible. But isn't it amazing that we can then,

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Speaker 3: you know, use the scientific process and apply, you know,

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Speaker 3: as sort of apply things to that process to try

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Speaker 3: and UnBias ourselves from the results and come out with

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Speaker 3: the knowledge that is, you know, sort of accurate, regardless

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Speaker 3: of the fact that you didn't believe it going into

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Speaker 3: doing the experiment. I think, I think that's actually a

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Speaker 3: pretty amazing thing that we can do.

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Speaker 2: And like the culture of experiment is the constraint on that. Yes, yeah, well,

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Speaker 2: regarding ideas that are wrong but persistent. One of my

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Speaker 2: favorite characters in the book is Ernest Rutherford, And there's

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Speaker 2: a part where you quote Ernest Rutherford saying that he

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Speaker 2: was originally brought up to think of the atom as

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Speaker 2: I think the quote is a nice hard fellow red

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Speaker 2: or gray in color according to your taste, and that

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Speaker 2: struck me as very funny. But then you also mentioned

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Speaker 2: in a footnote that even many physicists, still, despite knowing better,

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Speaker 2: think of sub atomic particles and atoms as little balls.

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Speaker 2: How do you visualize sub atomic particles or do you

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Speaker 2: at all? And is there a better way we should

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Speaker 2: try to picture this scale of matter in the mind's

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Speaker 2: eye or is it pointless to even try?

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Speaker 3: So? I'm going to sheepishly admit that, like all the

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Speaker 3: other physicists I've asked, we don't want to admit it.

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Speaker 3: But because the first time we were ever introduced to

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Speaker 3: the concept of Adams and particles, they were little hard spares.

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Speaker 3: When you say protons and neutrons and electrons and the

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Speaker 3: atom I have. I have a terrible picture in my

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Speaker 3: head that's I know is completely wrong, and yet it persists.

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Speaker 3: You know, I have this this, Yeah, I have little

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Speaker 3: hard spheres in my mind, just like Rutherford did. And

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Speaker 3: I mean this is a This is a huge disservice

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Speaker 3: that we do ourselves, I think, by persisting to describe

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Speaker 3: in this way. But here's here's a I think a

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Speaker 3: key point about the models that we have in our heads.

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Speaker 3: And I will answer the question about how better to

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Speaker 3: visualize it in a moment. Physics and all the natural

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Speaker 3: sciences really are sciences of different scales, and all the

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Speaker 3: models that we have and all the theories that we

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Speaker 3: have apply on different scales. So if you're a chemist

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Speaker 3: or a biologist, it's well, other than some realms of chemistry,

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Speaker 3: it's probably okay for you to visualize atoms and particles

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Speaker 3: as little hard spheres because the models that predict the

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Speaker 3: behavior which you're interested in on the scale that you're

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Speaker 3: interested in, which is now more much more macroscopic than microscopic.

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Speaker 3: You know, it works perfectly fine, it can sort of

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Speaker 3: approximate it. And quantum mechanics, though, is obviously the science.

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Speaker 3: When we get down to that very very small level

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Speaker 3: and we've realized that it no longer works in the

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Speaker 3: same analogous way to say billiard balls on a billiard table,

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Speaker 3: and it works in a very different way. Everything is

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Speaker 3: much more probabilistic. Nothing is as certain. We can't know

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Speaker 3: things like the position and the momentum at the same

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Speaker 3: time precisely, so everything becomes a little fuzzier. If I

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Speaker 3: were to try and encourage you to properly visualize an atom.

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Speaker 3: First of all, you know, the central nucleus of an

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Speaker 3: atom is extremely dense and extremely small compared to the

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Speaker 3: outer side of the atom. And Rutherford had another beautiful

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Speaker 3: analogy for this, which is that if the electrons which

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Speaker 3: now you're considering in your head, the electrons to be

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Speaker 3: kind of a wave or a sphere or a sort

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Speaker 3: of much more, you know, much less like a little

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Speaker 3: hard dot and much more like a probability cloud, that

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Speaker 3: cloud would be at the walls of a cathedral. And

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Speaker 3: if that was the size of a cathedral, then the

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Speaker 3: nucleus in the center would be the size of a

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Speaker 3: fly or a pee in the middle of the cathedral. So,

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Speaker 3: first of all, the scales inside the atom are very

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Speaker 3: different to the pictures that we look at when we're

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Speaker 3: taught this kind of science, because you just can't fit

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Speaker 3: those scales on a page and have them be sensible, right,

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Speaker 3: so we condense everything down. So, first of all, for

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Speaker 3: most of us, the scales of what things look like

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Speaker 3: inside the atom are kind of wrong. And this was

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Speaker 3: also something that really blew the minds of even people

403
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Speaker 3: like artists like Vasily Kandinski was really affected by this

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Speaker 3: idea that the atom is mostly empty space. It really

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Speaker 3: shifted his perception on what nature was made of, because

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Speaker 3: suddenly everything around us that seemed solid is made of

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Speaker 3: almost nothing. And it's purely the forces between these sort

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Speaker 3: of ephemeral objects which are creating our experience of everything

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Speaker 3: around us. Which back in twenty eighteen, I give a

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Speaker 3: teTeX of new Talk, and people have reflected back to

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Speaker 3: me that the moment when they got shivers was when

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Speaker 3: I said that you're not even touching the chair beneath you.

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Speaker 3: You're hovering ever so slightly above it, and it's just

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Speaker 3: the forces between the electrons in the chair and the

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Speaker 3: electrons in your body opposing each other that makes you

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Speaker 3: feel like you're in contact with the chair, but you're

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Speaker 3: never The particles are never actually physically in contact with

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Speaker 3: each other. It's just the electromagnetic force and gravity. First

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Speaker 3: of all, that is a different way to view it.

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Speaker 3: The scale is a different way to view it. And

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Speaker 3: then not just the not just the electrons a wave like,

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Speaker 3: but also those fundamental particles at the center, the protons

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Speaker 3: and neutrons have constituent quarks. And even then, you know,

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Speaker 3: we say that there's two types of quarks up and

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Speaker 3: down quarks inside the protons and neutrons, but there's really

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Speaker 3: a whole lot more so, it's kind of like the

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Speaker 3: Nora's box. It's like if you go down further, you

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Speaker 3: open it up and you're like, oh, there's all this

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Speaker 3: other messa in there as well. And it depends how

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Speaker 3: had I look at, what energy scale I look at,

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Speaker 3: And it's just you know, so I like to imagine

432
00:25:23,119 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 3: the nucleus as sort of as a you know, a

433
00:25:28,600 --> 00:25:31,320
Speaker 3: group of protons and neutrons. But then if I try

434
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:33,920
Speaker 3: and visualize opening up those protons and neutrons, that's where

435
00:25:34,040 --> 00:25:36,720
Speaker 3: even my brain goes, Nope, nope, I cannot do that.

436
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:38,840
Speaker 3: That's too complex.

437
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 2: So you give a bunch of examples in the Book

438
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 2: of Discoveries in the History of Particle Physics that were

439
00:25:47,200 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 2: thought by some to be pure intellectual curiosities with no

440
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 2: practical use, only to later become very important in broader civilization.

441
00:25:56,560 --> 00:26:00,119
Speaker 2: Maybe they become the backbone of whole new genres of technology,

442
00:26:01,320 --> 00:26:03,919
Speaker 2: or unlock new discoveries, or of unlock new wings in

443
00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 2: the mansion of physics. Do you want to tell the

444
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 2: story of one or two examples like this?

445
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 3: Sure, I think let's start right at the start, the

446
00:26:11,080 --> 00:26:14,439
Speaker 3: discovery of the first subatomic particle, the electron, and this

447
00:26:14,560 --> 00:26:17,439
Speaker 3: was done using the same experimental equipment basically as the

448
00:26:17,560 --> 00:26:21,399
Speaker 3: X ray discovery, so a cathoid ray tube. And JJ

449
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,560
Speaker 3: Thompson in England in eighteen ninety seven sort of picked

450
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:27,199
Speaker 3: up where others had left off and realized that he

451
00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 3: could do a series of experiments bending around the beam

452
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:35,159
Speaker 3: of so called cathode rays. So that's a glowing, glowing

453
00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:37,239
Speaker 3: green ray down the center of this tube that they

454
00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:39,199
Speaker 3: didn't and they didn't know how it worked at that

455
00:26:39,280 --> 00:26:41,640
Speaker 3: time or what it was made of. So he set

456
00:26:41,680 --> 00:26:45,440
Speaker 3: out to investigate the nature of these cathode rays by

457
00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:49,400
Speaker 3: deflecting them with electric fields and magnetic fields and catching

458
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,440
Speaker 3: the charge and seeing how it moved around. And as

459
00:26:52,440 --> 00:26:55,040
Speaker 3: a result of all of those experiments, which I should

460
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:58,440
Speaker 3: say he definitely needed help with, even though I say

461
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:02,359
Speaker 3: it was him, had to have his expert glassblower Ebenezer

462
00:27:02,400 --> 00:27:06,160
Speaker 3: Ever create all the experimental apparatus for him because JJ Thompson,

463
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,440
Speaker 3: despite being like the leading physicist in England at the time,

464
00:27:10,080 --> 00:27:13,159
Speaker 3: was I think I can't remember the exact phrase, but

465
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 3: it was like exceptionally helpless with his hands is the

466
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:21,320
Speaker 3: phrase that comes to mind, so that that's a quote

467
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 3: of someone describing his experimental skills. So somebody else had

468
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:27,760
Speaker 3: to create all of his apparatus, but anyway, he was

469
00:27:27,800 --> 00:27:33,919
Speaker 3: able to use Ebenezer's apparatus to bend the electrons to

470
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:35,960
Speaker 3: bend the beam around, and from that he managed to

471
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:41,560
Speaker 3: establish that not only is the beam made of particles,

472
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:45,119
Speaker 3: but that those particles were lighter than any atom that

473
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,040
Speaker 3: had ever been observed before, and so he was able

474
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 3: to establish that this must be some kind of new

475
00:27:50,320 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 3: fundamental particle, which we now call the electron, which is

476
00:27:54,200 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 3: about two thousand times lighter than the heaviest atom that

477
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,680
Speaker 3: had been seen before. And he was able to tell

478
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:04,919
Speaker 3: that that was really a fundamental component of matter because

479
00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 3: it didn't matter which cathoid he used. So the cathod

480
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 3: is the part that the rays jump out of, and

481
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 3: if it was just an atom, then you would expect

482
00:28:13,480 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 3: if you change the cathoid, or have you changed the

483
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,080
Speaker 3: gas inside the tube, that the results would vary, and

484
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 3: they didn't. So that told him that this electron was

485
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 3: somehow inside every single type of atom that he was

486
00:28:25,560 --> 00:28:30,000
Speaker 3: working with, so that that was an amazing discovery. And

487
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:33,159
Speaker 3: they used to be a toast in the Cavendish Lab

488
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:35,960
Speaker 3: in Cambridge where he made this discovery, and they have

489
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 3: this annual party where you know, they sort of, I

490
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 3: don't know, they make up songs and they make up

491
00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:44,600
Speaker 3: poems and they have a fancy dinner, and you know,

492
00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 3: having spent over a decade myself in the UK at Oxford,

493
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 3: I'm kind of imagining this in a wood paneled room,

494
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,120
Speaker 3: you know, with candlesticks and fancy, fancy food and everyone's

495
00:28:54,160 --> 00:28:57,360
Speaker 3: wearing black tie. And there used to be a toast

496
00:28:57,360 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 3: at this annual event where they would toast to the

497
00:28:59,720 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 3: electron and they would say, to the electron, may it

498
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 3: never be of use to anyone, because when he discovered

499
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:09,640
Speaker 3: it, it really was just him trying to figure out the

500
00:29:09,640 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 3: fundamental nature of how these rays happened in this tube

501
00:29:14,120 --> 00:29:16,880
Speaker 3: that numerous scientists had in their labs around the world.

502
00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 3: And in the few years after he discovered the electron,

503
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:24,240
Speaker 3: he also discovered the process called thermionic emission, which is

504
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,960
Speaker 3: the process by which the electrons actually jump out of

505
00:29:27,040 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 3: materials when you heat them up. And this then became

506
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:35,520
Speaker 3: an incredibly important piece of knowledge which he obviously published

507
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 3: and you know, wrote all many things about because a

508
00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:43,920
Speaker 3: few years a few years later, an electrical engineer would

509
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 3: sort of pick up this information and a previous discovery

510
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 3: that had been made by Thomas Edison when he was

511
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:55,200
Speaker 3: trying to manufacture reliable light bulbs, and they'd put those

512
00:29:55,320 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 3: two ideas together and come up with the first electric vat.

513
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 3: So that is a device which can control the flow

514
00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:07,480
Speaker 3: of electricity. You apply a small voltage and it either

515
00:30:07,560 --> 00:30:10,479
Speaker 3: lets the current pass or it stops the current. And

516
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:15,239
Speaker 3: then more and more electronic devices then were invented after this,

517
00:30:15,720 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 3: and in order to make those devices, they were one

518
00:30:17,760 --> 00:30:22,960
Speaker 3: hundred percent reliant on JJ. Thompson's materials, on his theories,

519
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:24,920
Speaker 3: and on the things that he had developed as a

520
00:30:24,920 --> 00:30:28,680
Speaker 3: result of his experiments. And those early tubes were very

521
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:32,600
Speaker 3: similar in their makeup to the tubes that Thompson was

522
00:30:32,640 --> 00:30:37,000
Speaker 3: working with. Anyway, it's all very similar technology. But one

523
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,200
Speaker 3: thing I find quite interesting is that Thomas Edison just

524
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,200
Speaker 3: you know, he sort of made this discovery, which was

525
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 3: called the Edison effect, which was kind of about the

526
00:30:45,800 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 3: flow of electricity, but he hadn't fully understood it. He

527
00:30:48,680 --> 00:30:51,200
Speaker 3: just if he put an extra electrode inside a light bulb.

528
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:53,920
Speaker 3: He noticed that it affected the flow of electricity, and

529
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 3: he patented it, but he couldn't think of any good

530
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 3: ideas for it, so he just set it aside and

531
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 3: ignored it. And if that had been the history, then nothing,

532
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:05,360
Speaker 3: you know, nothing would have been done about it at all.

533
00:31:05,400 --> 00:31:08,400
Speaker 3: And I'm always amazed that people sort of look at

534
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:11,960
Speaker 3: Edison and his trial and error approach and they hold

535
00:31:11,960 --> 00:31:15,600
Speaker 3: it up as this example of amazing innovation, and I'm like, well, okay,

536
00:31:15,600 --> 00:31:18,600
Speaker 3: but he ignored possibly the most important thing he ever discovered.

537
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:23,040
Speaker 3: And it was only because other people picked up the

538
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 3: ideas and understood it through JJ Thompson's investigations and his theories,

539
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:30,680
Speaker 3: that then it led to the first electronic devices, the

540
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 3: first and our ability through vacuum tubes to create things

541
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:40,640
Speaker 3: like the telecommunications industry to you know, and long distance communications,

542
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 3: the first computers, all of the early electronics were based

543
00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:47,240
Speaker 3: on these vacuum tubes. And of course that's changed a

544
00:31:47,280 --> 00:31:50,240
Speaker 3: bit now everything's based in silicon and in the future,

545
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 3: who knows what it will be based on. But if

546
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 3: that fundamental investigation hadn't happened at the right time and

547
00:31:57,160 --> 00:32:00,560
Speaker 3: that knowledge wasn't there for the electrical engineers to build off.

548
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 3: I sort of question, perhaps we'd have got there eventually

549
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,760
Speaker 3: with the electronics industry, but the story would have looked very,

550
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 3: very different. So that's I find that an interesting example

551
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 3: of the ways in which the sort of curiosity driven research,

552
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 3: you know, trying to uncover the nature of the universe,

553
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:24,200
Speaker 3: and our innovation stories and our entrepreneurial stories kind of

554
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:27,280
Speaker 3: merge all into one, and you start to see it

555
00:32:27,360 --> 00:32:30,040
Speaker 3: not as one is superior to the other, but that

556
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,760
Speaker 3: they are essential to each other, and that we need

557
00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 3: both approaches and we can't just always sort of seed

558
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 3: fund some entrepreneurial project or support some you know, innovator

559
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 3: who's full of energy. You actually do need the people

560
00:32:45,560 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 3: in the background doing that curiosity driven research in order

561
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:50,520
Speaker 3: to have new knowledge for those people to build on.

562
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of the people in the background, another interesting

563
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:57,440
Speaker 2: thing to me about a lot of the stories you

564
00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 2: tell are that some physics expect eerments that are very

565
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 2: important in history are surprisingly laborious. Like I think of

566
00:33:04,880 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 2: the example of particle counting, These experiments that involve just

567
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 2: staring at a screen for hours and counting flashes of

568
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 2: light by hand. Yeah, what are some of the ways

569
00:33:15,760 --> 00:33:19,880
Speaker 2: that crucial physics discoveries depended on types of work that

570
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:23,080
Speaker 2: people might not think of when they try to imagine

571
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 2: what scientists are doing.

572
00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:29,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a we love them, we love

573
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:33,120
Speaker 3: the moment of discovery, right, but we're often unwilling to

574
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:36,080
Speaker 3: figure out exactly what went into that discovery. And I

575
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 3: have to say it's often it often comes as a

576
00:33:39,320 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 3: surprise to people as you say how laborious it was.

577
00:33:42,080 --> 00:33:44,400
Speaker 3: So so that example you're talking about is in those

578
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:47,880
Speaker 3: early days of nuclear physics where the only detectors we

579
00:33:47,960 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 3: had were these fluorescent screens that lit up when high

580
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:55,720
Speaker 3: energy particles hit them. And so in Cambridge in the

581
00:33:55,800 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 3: UK especially, they trained all their students and all their

582
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 3: staff of how to sit in a dark room and

583
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:05,959
Speaker 3: look through a microscope at these plates when they were

584
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:11,279
Speaker 3: radioactive sources present and count each flash of light. But

585
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 3: of course every human eye and brain is different, and

586
00:34:14,520 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 3: so everyone was everyone was trained up and kind of

587
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:22,839
Speaker 3: measured to see how good they were at this particle counting. Right.

588
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 3: So there's all these I mean, to get reliable scientific results,

589
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 3: you need things like calibration, you know, these boring things

590
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 3: you know, the things that are not sexy or exciting

591
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 3: about science. Good calibration. You need to know your instruments

592
00:34:35,600 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 3: very very very well, and I think any physicist today

593
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:43,040
Speaker 3: would tell you that until you know your experiment inside out,

594
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:45,440
Speaker 3: you will not get reliable results from it. And it's

595
00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 3: something that frustrates the heck out of undergraduate students in

596
00:34:50,080 --> 00:34:52,160
Speaker 3: the lab when they're learning physics and they're trying to

597
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 3: recreate experiments that were done in the past, and even

598
00:34:55,200 --> 00:34:58,279
Speaker 3: though they've got apparatus that someone has prepared for them

599
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 3: that should be working, driven mad by the intricacies of it.

600
00:35:03,160 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 3: And this is the reality, I mean, unfortunately, but you know,

601
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:10,719
Speaker 3: it's the reality of experimental life, which is that this

602
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 3: stuff is not easy. And if it was easy, we

603
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 3: would have done it hundreds of years ago, right, But

604
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:20,239
Speaker 3: it's difficult. It's often laborious, and often what we're trying

605
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:22,600
Speaker 3: to do in inventing new technologies and pushing at the

606
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:26,880
Speaker 3: cutting edge of technologies in experimental science is sometimes to

607
00:35:26,920 --> 00:35:30,120
Speaker 3: get around the laboriousness, or even just to create a

608
00:35:30,160 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 3: method to collect enough data that we can actually that

609
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 3: we can actually use. So obviously, nowadays we don't use

610
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:40,279
Speaker 3: people sitting in a room particle counting. But there was

611
00:35:40,320 --> 00:35:44,839
Speaker 3: a whole phase of experimental physics where after the technologies

612
00:35:44,840 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 3: were invented that allows you to photograph the tracks of particles. Well,

613
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:53,239
Speaker 3: then who processes the photographic data, right, who maps out

614
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 3: those tracks and who turns all of that into tables

615
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:03,359
Speaker 3: that can be analyzed and searched for new physics. And

616
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:06,880
Speaker 3: the answer that most people probably don't realize is women

617
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:10,799
Speaker 3: did it. And in the early days these women were

618
00:36:10,800 --> 00:36:14,000
Speaker 3: called there was the computers, So the women who did

619
00:36:14,480 --> 00:36:18,000
Speaker 3: calculations by hand before the computer meant something very different

620
00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:21,200
Speaker 3: to us. And in particle physics even into the forties,

621
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:24,680
Speaker 3: fifties and sixties, you had the so called scanning girls,

622
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:28,480
Speaker 3: and these were women who almost all women. There were

623
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 3: some men who did it should I should say, who

624
00:36:30,920 --> 00:36:34,840
Speaker 3: would sit at these enormous light tables with the copies

625
00:36:34,880 --> 00:36:38,279
Speaker 3: of the photographic images and they would follow a very

626
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 3: precise sort of protocol in mapping out where the interesting

627
00:36:43,080 --> 00:36:47,120
Speaker 3: things were in those photographs. And there were many, many

628
00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 3: discoveries made this way, something I do find interesting in

629
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:53,800
Speaker 3: the history. And I'm sure we'll get to the discussion

630
00:36:53,840 --> 00:36:57,400
Speaker 3: of women in physics in a moment. But while some

631
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:00,239
Speaker 3: of these women were so called scanning girls, it was

632
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:04,400
Speaker 3: also considered to be a task that all the physicists

633
00:37:04,440 --> 00:37:07,920
Speaker 3: should also know how to do. And this continues to

634
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:10,880
Speaker 3: this day. Even when you get these big collaborations like

635
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:14,680
Speaker 3: the large Hadron collider, there's a sort of commitment to

636
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 3: the experiment that you do some of this grunt work,

637
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 3: you do some of this laborious work, and today that

638
00:37:19,600 --> 00:37:23,600
Speaker 3: means sitting in a control room and overseeing the running

639
00:37:23,640 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 3: of enormous colliders and detectors. But back then it would

640
00:37:27,200 --> 00:37:30,960
Speaker 3: mean that you would do your share of analyzing these images.

641
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 3: So this, in a way is inseparable work. It's specialized work,

642
00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:41,319
Speaker 3: but it's work where the physicists did as well. And

643
00:37:41,360 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 3: there were female physicists at that time who were also

644
00:37:45,239 --> 00:37:50,520
Speaker 3: doing these kinds of analyses. And I almost wonder in

645
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:52,840
Speaker 3: this time, and this is a it's just an idea

646
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:55,880
Speaker 3: that has come to me a number of times, I

647
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 3: almost wonder if the women who were working as physicists

648
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:03,000
Speaker 3: in those laboratories were somewhat overlooked because the women's work

649
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:08,279
Speaker 3: at the time was as the scanning girls mostly, you know,

650
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:11,839
Speaker 3: and so there was this gender divide in roles, and

651
00:38:12,280 --> 00:38:15,719
Speaker 3: even though the women were contributing, and some of them

652
00:38:15,880 --> 00:38:18,520
Speaker 3: were physicists, not you know, they weren't just hired as

653
00:38:18,520 --> 00:38:23,200
Speaker 3: scanning girls, and yet their contributions were overlooked far more

654
00:38:23,239 --> 00:38:26,319
Speaker 3: often than the contributions of their male colleagues. And I

655
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 3: do wonder how this gender divide in the roles of

656
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 3: this grunt work actually played into that overlooking at the time.

657
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:37,080
Speaker 3: But that's just one It's just one aspect of the

658
00:38:37,239 --> 00:38:40,359
Speaker 3: sort of gendered nature of physics as we as we

659
00:38:40,440 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 3: now know it, I think. But yeah, the I think

660
00:38:43,600 --> 00:38:45,319
Speaker 3: a lot of people would be really surprised by how

661
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 3: laborious a lot of the work is. And of course

662
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:53,800
Speaker 3: that's where automation nowadays and even AI tools just changing

663
00:38:53,800 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 3: the game so dramatically, because now that you can automate

664
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,399
Speaker 3: all of these processes and all of our detail as

665
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:04,279
Speaker 3: a you know, full of electronics instead of photographs, you know,

666
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:07,680
Speaker 3: the process of actually gathering the data is now much

667
00:39:07,800 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 3: much easier, and so people and people can access the

668
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 3: data around the world, including via the World Wide Web,

669
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 3: which was invented at soon just for that purpose. And

670
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:21,719
Speaker 3: so now we can focus on the analysis and we

671
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 3: can focus on the physics and the contributions to the

672
00:39:25,560 --> 00:39:29,200
Speaker 3: hardware and software become the grunt work and that part

673
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:32,520
Speaker 3: of the project as the experimentalist. So yeah, it's an

674
00:39:32,560 --> 00:39:34,279
Speaker 3: interesting shift through time.

675
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:46,880
Speaker 2: Coming back to the issue of women in the history

676
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:49,239
Speaker 2: of physics. You mentioned in the book this idea of

677
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:53,000
Speaker 2: the Matilda fact in physics, and it strikes me that

678
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 2: there are at least two different ways that the historical

679
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:04,080
Speaker 2: discrimination against women in physics manifests. There's one where there's

680
00:40:04,239 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 2: just direct limitations on their participation, like some researchers having

681
00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:11,840
Speaker 2: projects they considered not suitable for women to work on,

682
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 2: or the marriage bar where women who had previously been

683
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:18,120
Speaker 2: involved in research were disallowed from doing so after marriage.

684
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 2: But there are also cases where women researchers made significant

685
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 2: contributions to physics discoveries and their role in this work

686
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 2: was sometimes deliberately censored from public records and recognition. Could

687
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,120
Speaker 2: you talk about a couple of these examples.

688
00:40:33,520 --> 00:40:37,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I think that's really insightful that there are

689
00:40:37,239 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 3: these different ways in which women's involvement in physics was

690
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:45,280
Speaker 3: a stopped, as you say, you know, sort of prevented,

691
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 3: but then also that their contributions were diminished, and that

692
00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:51,399
Speaker 3: second one is really where the Matilda effect comes in.

693
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:55,360
Speaker 3: So one person I'm thinking of here, her name is

694
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 3: Marietta Blau, and she was a researcher in Austria and

695
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:03,120
Speaker 3: she invented a new type of particle detector. So I

696
00:41:03,239 --> 00:41:05,759
Speaker 3: talked before about how beautiful I thought the cloud chamber was.

697
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:08,239
Speaker 3: That's a very active detector. Things have to happen in

698
00:41:08,239 --> 00:41:10,440
Speaker 3: real time. You have to photograph things in real time.

699
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 3: It's very laborious to look after. And what she invented instead,

700
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:18,160
Speaker 3: because she had a background both in physics and photography,

701
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:23,080
Speaker 3: was a photographic plate method of detecting particles. So she

702
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:27,320
Speaker 3: had this very thick so called emulsions, and they would

703
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:31,640
Speaker 3: create stacks of these emulsions for high energy charge particles

704
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 3: to go through. And this now, instead of being looked

705
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:37,279
Speaker 3: after and photographed it every minute, could just be left

706
00:41:37,280 --> 00:41:39,439
Speaker 3: at the top of a mountain for a month, two

707
00:41:39,480 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 3: months and it would just collect data over time and

708
00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 3: then it would be pulled apart and analyzed. And Blau's

709
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:49,920
Speaker 3: invention led to a whole load of discoveries and she

710
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:53,920
Speaker 3: herself was actually nominated for the Nobel Prize, but never

711
00:41:54,200 --> 00:42:00,920
Speaker 3: never won it, and her invention led to think at

712
00:42:01,000 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 3: least I can think of at least two other Nobel

713
00:42:03,719 --> 00:42:08,080
Speaker 3: prizes that relied on her invention of this photographic emulsion method.

714
00:42:08,360 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 3: But she also actually made amazing discoveries with it herself,

715
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 3: one of which was she called it a star of disintegration,

716
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:19,359
Speaker 3: which was when a high energy cosmic ray coming from

717
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:23,160
Speaker 3: space came in and was sort of a direct hit

718
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:25,640
Speaker 3: on a heavy nucleus, and then that nucleus itself sort

719
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 3: of exploded and it left this amazing shower like a

720
00:42:30,160 --> 00:42:34,920
Speaker 3: super nova on the photographic emulsions. And this was a

721
00:42:35,080 --> 00:42:36,920
Speaker 3: you know, she published. I'm pretty sure that one was

722
00:42:36,960 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 3: published in Nature and her sort of contemporary or not.

723
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 3: Long after she was working, there was an Indian physicist

724
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 3: named Biber Chowdery working in India, and she was one

725
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 3: who was told that her professor didn't have any suitable

726
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:53,960
Speaker 3: projects for her as a woman, but she persisted anyway,

727
00:42:54,640 --> 00:42:56,799
Speaker 3: and eventually sort of I guess won him over because

728
00:42:56,840 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 3: she ended up working with him, and she used similar

729
00:43:00,040 --> 00:43:04,960
Speaker 3: photographic plates, but not of such great quality because she

730
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 3: didn't have them available to her. It was during World

731
00:43:07,239 --> 00:43:09,800
Speaker 3: War two and she was in India so the supply

732
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:15,000
Speaker 3: chain wasn't great, but she actually uses photographic plates up

733
00:43:15,040 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 3: mountains in India and then she managed to discover the

734
00:43:19,200 --> 00:43:21,759
Speaker 3: two different types of particles, which we would now call

735
00:43:21,800 --> 00:43:27,200
Speaker 3: the muon and the pion, and those were those were

736
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 3: some of the first observations of those particles, and as

737
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 3: far as I can tell, it was the first time

738
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 3: when it had been really recognized that there were two

739
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:39,799
Speaker 3: different particles. But I think she couldn't quite because of

740
00:43:39,800 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 3: the quality of her equipment. She couldn't quite sort of

741
00:43:42,560 --> 00:43:45,080
Speaker 3: say what was what or you know, the difference in

742
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:47,760
Speaker 3: masses between the two or something like that was missing.

743
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:51,239
Speaker 3: But this is the first authored paper in Nature, and

744
00:43:51,280 --> 00:43:53,400
Speaker 3: this time I know it was definitely in Nature, you know,

745
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:57,359
Speaker 3: the top top journal in the world. And then in

746
00:43:57,400 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, so not long after Cecil Power working

747
00:44:00,600 --> 00:44:04,560
Speaker 3: in England. Are sorry his Nobel prize was nineteen fifty.

748
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,960
Speaker 3: I think his work would have been late forties. He

749
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:12,720
Speaker 3: used exactly the same technique with superior emulsions to discover

750
00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:17,680
Speaker 3: the pion and in his earlier writing in his it's

751
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:20,600
Speaker 3: definitely at least one textbook that he writes about, he

752
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:24,200
Speaker 3: acknowledges Biber Chowdery's earlier work and references her Nature paper.

753
00:44:24,800 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 3: And then when he wins the Nobel Prize in nineteen fifty,

754
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:31,440
Speaker 3: every reference of his that referenced her work are not

755
00:44:31,640 --> 00:44:34,600
Speaker 3: used in the citation for the Nobel Prize. So all

756
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:37,920
Speaker 3: the papers that are cited of his for the Nobel

757
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:41,160
Speaker 3: Prize were the ones that didn't recognize the earlier work

758
00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 3: of this woman working in India. And I had never

759
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:47,880
Speaker 3: heard of her before I wrote this book. I'd never

760
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:51,320
Speaker 3: come across her story. But I thought that was phenomenal

761
00:44:51,320 --> 00:44:53,560
Speaker 3: because Powell himself was not you know, he wasn't a

762
00:44:53,560 --> 00:44:56,960
Speaker 3: rephensible human. He was a very left leaning liberal person.

763
00:44:57,040 --> 00:44:59,600
Speaker 3: He had an unusually high number of female physicists in

764
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:03,239
Speaker 3: his labe in Bristol in the UK, and I think

765
00:45:03,280 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 3: he himself was I haven't looked into his sort of

766
00:45:08,160 --> 00:45:10,560
Speaker 3: journals and things, whether they exist. I would love to

767
00:45:10,600 --> 00:45:13,040
Speaker 3: know how he felt about the fact that he had

768
00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 3: recognized the President and the Nobel Prize committee had not.

769
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 3: And so bib Chowdery is someone that even my particle

770
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:23,560
Speaker 3: physics colleagues have never heard of, even though she made

771
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 3: this amazing discovery. And so these kinds of behaviors of

772
00:45:29,320 --> 00:45:33,000
Speaker 3: sort of the ignoring of the women's contribution, like people

773
00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:36,680
Speaker 3: will use their contributions but won't acknowledge them properly, and

774
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:40,759
Speaker 3: so we get this historical track record of you know,

775
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 3: the Nobel Prize winners who are almost always men other

776
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 3: than Marie Currey because she was so damn good no

777
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 3: one could deny it, and you get these contributions of

778
00:45:52,080 --> 00:45:54,879
Speaker 3: these women sort of falling by the wayside. And it's

779
00:45:54,880 --> 00:45:58,719
Speaker 3: called the Matilda effect after Matilda Gage, who was a

780
00:45:58,719 --> 00:46:03,120
Speaker 3: suffragist who first recognized that the contributions of women, and

781
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:05,799
Speaker 3: back then she was talking about the contributions to technology,

782
00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 3: but she first recognized that these contributions were being overlooked

783
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:13,919
Speaker 3: or attributed to their male counterparts or peers or even

784
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 3: their husbands, and not properly attributed to the women who

785
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:22,759
Speaker 3: made them because of the biases that existed in our society.

786
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:27,239
Speaker 3: And a historian named Margaret Rossiter sort of coined this

787
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 3: term the Matilda effect, named after Matilda Gauge, and really

788
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:35,680
Speaker 3: encouraged all of us to look for those stories when

789
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:40,399
Speaker 3: we're looking at the history of especially technological fields and

790
00:46:40,560 --> 00:46:42,839
Speaker 3: highly technical fields like physics, where there is a lack

791
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:46,759
Speaker 3: of women today. First of all, because and even I

792
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 3: wasn't aware of this that you know, you will probably

793
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:51,400
Speaker 3: find women that you weren't aware of. And this was

794
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 3: absolutely my experience in writing this story. But secondly, she

795
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 3: then encouraged us to write their stories back in because

796
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 3: you know, there's no other way to correct the record,

797
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:07,600
Speaker 3: and they have simply been overlooked. And so I mean,

798
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:09,719
Speaker 3: what could I do other than you know, it was

799
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 3: sort of a call to arms as far as I

800
00:47:11,520 --> 00:47:14,760
Speaker 3: was concerned, because here was I, you know, a female

801
00:47:15,040 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 3: physicist today, having never heard of these women who made

802
00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 3: these amazing discoveries. And I thought, well, if I've never

803
00:47:20,520 --> 00:47:22,080
Speaker 3: heard of them, and I'm writing a book about the

804
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 3: history of these experiments, then probably no one else has

805
00:47:25,520 --> 00:47:27,759
Speaker 3: ever heard of them. And that turned out to be true.

806
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:31,000
Speaker 3: And so it was just such a wonderful privilege actually

807
00:47:31,080 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 3: to take up Margaret Rossiter's you know, sort of call

808
00:47:34,040 --> 00:47:36,919
Speaker 3: to arms and write their stories back into the main

809
00:47:37,320 --> 00:47:40,120
Speaker 3: stories of the history of these experiments because they're so

810
00:47:40,120 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 3: so important, and to me, as a female physicist working today,

811
00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:49,720
Speaker 3: it made me realize, you know, all of the people

812
00:47:49,760 --> 00:47:53,640
Speaker 3: who laid the foundations of my field whom I sort

813
00:47:53,680 --> 00:47:55,600
Speaker 3: of grew up in the field thinking that they were

814
00:47:55,600 --> 00:47:59,600
Speaker 3: pretty much all men other than Marie Currey, that that

815
00:47:59,760 --> 00:48:02,480
Speaker 3: was that was false, and it created for me this

816
00:48:02,600 --> 00:48:06,319
Speaker 3: sense of sort of belonging that I didn't expect to get.

817
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:08,239
Speaker 3: Out of the process of writing this book, I sort

818
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:11,160
Speaker 3: of thought, Wow, women like me have always been that.

819
00:48:11,280 --> 00:48:14,160
Speaker 3: Women who've been curious about the universe, women who've wanted

820
00:48:14,160 --> 00:48:17,000
Speaker 3: to be in the lab and using their technical skills

821
00:48:17,040 --> 00:48:20,320
Speaker 3: and making these contributions to society and to our knowledge

822
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:23,239
Speaker 3: have always been there. This isn't a weird thing that

823
00:48:23,320 --> 00:48:26,719
Speaker 3: I'm doing. I'm not unusual to want to do this.

824
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 3: And yeah, I've since had that sentiment reflected back by

825
00:48:32,160 --> 00:48:34,239
Speaker 3: women young and old. Actually, you know, sort of young

826
00:48:34,280 --> 00:48:36,640
Speaker 3: women starting out thinking of whether physics is for them.

827
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 3: I've had some lovely feedback that they you know, sort

828
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,160
Speaker 3: of read the book. They read about these women who fought,

829
00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:45,360
Speaker 3: you know, I mean it was so hard to achieve

830
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:47,600
Speaker 3: that as well, because often these women were denied formal

831
00:48:47,719 --> 00:48:50,480
Speaker 3: education in physics, that weren't even allowed in the lecture theaters.

832
00:48:50,680 --> 00:48:52,520
Speaker 3: So to realize that they were there and the things

833
00:48:52,520 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 3: that they achieved, just you know, it was a very

834
00:48:56,239 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 3: very encouraging and positive thing for me, even though in

835
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,920
Speaker 3: their own life it was obviously a very negative experience sometimes.

836
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:06,359
Speaker 3: But to me today these stories writing them back in

837
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:10,520
Speaker 3: brings I think, a new perspective on who gets to

838
00:49:10,560 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 3: do physics.

839
00:49:11,840 --> 00:49:15,960
Speaker 2: It's definitely a powerful thing learning these stories. So I

840
00:49:16,000 --> 00:49:17,359
Speaker 2: want to come to the part of the book where

841
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:22,879
Speaker 2: you talk about particle accelerators. Clearly you have a love

842
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:27,600
Speaker 2: for accelerators. That's your field. Imagine somebody who is generally

843
00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:32,400
Speaker 2: positive about science, but views particle accelerators, especially the big projects,

844
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,799
Speaker 2: the big colliders, as maybe too big and complicated to

845
00:49:36,840 --> 00:49:41,120
Speaker 2: be charismatic, as like objects of the imagination, and maybe

846
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:44,399
Speaker 2: views their findings as too abstract to digest. What would

847
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:47,960
Speaker 2: you tell this person to give them particle accelerator fever, like,

848
00:49:48,120 --> 00:49:49,520
Speaker 2: how would you make them fall in love?

849
00:49:50,160 --> 00:49:52,719
Speaker 3: Oh? That's real, that's really interesting. So I think we

850
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:56,239
Speaker 3: live in an interesting time in terms of particle accelerators

851
00:49:56,800 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 3: because you know, obviously they're very well developed now and

852
00:49:59,680 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 3: we have these enormous machines. So the large hydron collidor

853
00:50:03,440 --> 00:50:07,120
Speaker 3: in Switzerland is twenty seven kilometers in circumference one hundred

854
00:50:07,120 --> 00:50:11,120
Speaker 3: meters underground. Right, it's fricking enormous and it's very difficult

855
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:13,560
Speaker 3: to wrap your head around. First of all, I would

856
00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:16,800
Speaker 3: say to anybody who doesn't find that kind of experiment

857
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,560
Speaker 3: charismatic on paper, I implore you to go and visit.

858
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:25,360
Speaker 3: It will blow your mind. Honestly. It is just such

859
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:30,160
Speaker 3: an enormous feat of human ingenuity. And today, in order

860
00:50:30,200 --> 00:50:34,359
Speaker 3: to achieve these enormous experiments, we all have to work

861
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:37,640
Speaker 3: together and collaborate, and CERN is an amazing example of that,

862
00:50:37,800 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 3: and the big national labs in the US have also

863
00:50:41,880 --> 00:50:44,960
Speaker 3: been great examples of that, where you're bringing together experts

864
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,640
Speaker 3: from so many different areas because these projects are things

865
00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:51,960
Speaker 3: that we cannot achieve alone. Now, SERN is a wonderful

866
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 3: example because it was created post World War two somewhat

867
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:58,600
Speaker 3: as a peace building project, so in its remit or

868
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 3: in its constitution is science for peace. So they are

869
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:04,319
Speaker 3: not allowed to work on any defense related projects, are

870
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 3: not allowed to work on anything with weapon ability. Is

871
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:10,319
Speaker 3: it's probably the word that I should use. They're not

872
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 3: even allowed to turn a profit, not even in the

873
00:51:12,080 --> 00:51:15,960
Speaker 3: gift shop, which took some people by surprise. And I've

874
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:17,719
Speaker 3: had a few people comment on that but I noted

875
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 3: that in the book, But to me it was obvious

876
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:23,040
Speaker 3: because it's CERN, and they exist, you know, to seek

877
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:25,480
Speaker 3: new knowledge in physics, and they exist sort of for

878
00:51:25,719 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 3: the betterment of humanity in a sort of grand sense.

879
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:33,760
Speaker 3: And so after nineteen fifty six, you've got people working

880
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 3: at cerne across borders from countries who were at war

881
00:51:38,719 --> 00:51:41,560
Speaker 3: just a few years earlier. And this continues today. You know,

882
00:51:41,600 --> 00:51:44,560
Speaker 3: there are both Russian and Ukrainian scientists working at CERN

883
00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:51,600
Speaker 3: alongside each other. And so CERN really is this amazing

884
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:56,040
Speaker 3: human project where we've learned to collaborate with thousands of

885
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:59,799
Speaker 3: people to achieve things that certainly one lab can't do,

886
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 3: a lot one nation can't do alone. These are truly

887
00:52:03,400 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 3: global projects, so much so that sort of successful collaboration

888
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,080
Speaker 3: that even the UN has come to people at CERN,

889
00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 3: have come to people at CERN and tried to work

890
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:17,279
Speaker 3: together on Okay, how come STERN is so successful in

891
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:19,839
Speaker 3: its collaboration, right? What can the rest of us learn

892
00:52:19,920 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 3: from the way that CERN collaborates that could benefit the

893
00:52:24,239 --> 00:52:27,359
Speaker 3: rest of the world. And so, even if the technology

894
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:31,760
Speaker 3: doesn't float your boat, I think the human collaboration aspect

895
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 3: of it is something which most people find quite inspiring.

896
00:52:37,600 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 3: The other side of that is actually around the technology itself.

897
00:52:40,960 --> 00:52:43,359
Speaker 3: And as you say, I'm a total nerd for particle accelerators.

898
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 3: It is my professional day job. I design particle accelerators.

899
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:50,480
Speaker 3: I love it. They're great machines. And one of the

900
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:52,719
Speaker 3: reasons I love it, and the reason I chose it

901
00:52:53,120 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 3: back when I chose my PhD topic, was because someone

902
00:52:57,400 --> 00:52:59,959
Speaker 3: who turned out to be my PhD supervisor he called.

903
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:01,799
Speaker 3: He was like, so this isn't what you applied for,

904
00:53:01,880 --> 00:53:05,920
Speaker 3: because originally I applied to do particle physics with Higgs

905
00:53:05,920 --> 00:53:08,960
Speaker 3: Boson type stuff. And he said, okay, hear me out,

906
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:11,879
Speaker 3: hear me out. I want to design a new type

907
00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:15,360
Speaker 3: of particle accelerator to treat cancer. And I was just like,

908
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 3: what what do you mean? Why are you find beings

909
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 3: at people? And it turned out I was just I

910
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:26,440
Speaker 3: just was a bit naive. I didn't realize that you

911
00:53:26,480 --> 00:53:31,320
Speaker 3: could use these technologies at smaller scales for all sorts

912
00:53:31,360 --> 00:53:35,640
Speaker 3: of societal applications. So about half of all cancer treatments

913
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:41,240
Speaker 3: are actually done using small particle accelerators. For what's called radiotherapy,

914
00:53:41,320 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 3: which is one of the most successful forms of cancer

915
00:53:43,920 --> 00:53:47,800
Speaker 3: treatment that we've ever had, and it's a small electronic accelerator.

916
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:50,240
Speaker 3: It generates X rays and then you shape those two

917
00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:53,760
Speaker 3: the tumor inside the body, and the whole accelerator actually

918
00:53:53,920 --> 00:53:56,600
Speaker 3: rotates around the patient to be able to deliver beams

919
00:53:56,600 --> 00:53:59,799
Speaker 3: from different angles. And nowadays we have more advanced forms

920
00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:03,360
Speaker 3: of cancer treatment using heavier particles like protons and carbon

921
00:54:03,440 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 3: ions that are more precise in the way that they

922
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:10,120
Speaker 3: deposit the dose. And that was the area that I

923
00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 3: did my PhD on and even today I run a

924
00:54:13,080 --> 00:54:18,000
Speaker 3: research group about accelerators for medical applications. And so when

925
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:21,600
Speaker 3: you look at it, there's about fifty thousand particle accelerators

926
00:54:21,600 --> 00:54:24,280
Speaker 3: in the world, and only a fraction of a percent

927
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:28,440
Speaker 3: are actually used for particle physics. And so what has

928
00:54:28,480 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 3: happened since we first invented accelerators in the nineteen twenties

929
00:54:31,960 --> 00:54:35,440
Speaker 3: and thirties is that as we invent these new technologies

930
00:54:36,200 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 3: and the knowledge of how to accelerate beams of fundamental

931
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:44,880
Speaker 3: particles and control them, more and more applications have emerged,

932
00:54:44,920 --> 00:54:48,680
Speaker 3: so not just in cancer treatment, but also in industries.

933
00:54:48,840 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 3: So you can use particle accelerators to change the color

934
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:57,440
Speaker 3: of a gemstone by bombarding diamonds, you know, diamond companies

935
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 3: to conchange the color of a gemstone, often from clear

936
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:05,080
Speaker 3: to pink. Now that's you know, that's quite capitalistic because

937
00:55:05,120 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 3: note you're just trying to gain a bit more money.

938
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:09,840
Speaker 3: That's not really a very very very useful thing. But actually,

939
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:15,080
Speaker 3: all the devices that we use today rely on electronic chips,

940
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:17,279
Speaker 3: and today those are so small that you have to

941
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:20,320
Speaker 3: implant ions one by one. You can't do that using chemistry.

942
00:55:20,520 --> 00:55:24,560
Speaker 3: You have to do it using effectively a small particle accelerator.

943
00:55:24,920 --> 00:55:28,440
Speaker 3: And so almost everywhere you look, in every aspect of society,

944
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:32,040
Speaker 3: you will find somewhere in there a story about how

945
00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:37,279
Speaker 3: we use this really advanced technologies to create sort of

946
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 3: the modern world around us. And yet we almost always

947
00:55:40,239 --> 00:55:42,759
Speaker 3: don't know don't know that it's there. And some of

948
00:55:42,800 --> 00:55:46,480
Speaker 3: the most I think inspiring work that happens there is

949
00:55:46,520 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 3: when we're looking at things like you know, in the

950
00:55:50,880 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 3: environment or in cultural heritage. So we're able to do

951
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:58,600
Speaker 3: really advanced dating techniques putting together you know, the deep

952
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:03,680
Speaker 3: prehistoric story of our Earth and our species and other

953
00:56:03,719 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 3: species across large tracts of time because we have these

954
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:12,200
Speaker 3: techniques that come from fundamental physics. And so this is

955
00:56:12,239 --> 00:56:14,320
Speaker 3: where I get really excited, is because I'm like, Okay,

956
00:56:14,360 --> 00:56:16,520
Speaker 3: so I can sit in the lab every day, I

957
00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 3: can design these machines, I can test them, and they

958
00:56:19,360 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 3: can be used for everything from you know, looking at

959
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 3: an artwork to discover whether it's real or fake, to

960
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:33,760
Speaker 3: shrinking the shrink wrap that goes around a Christmas turkey.

961
00:56:33,880 --> 00:56:37,440
Speaker 3: That's a real application polem. A cross linking is the

962
00:56:37,520 --> 00:56:41,560
Speaker 3: technical term, but you know, you know, to uncovering the

963
00:56:41,640 --> 00:56:44,279
Speaker 3: Higgs boson in the secrets of the universe. And to me,

964
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:47,920
Speaker 3: the fact that it's the same physics and the same

965
00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:50,680
Speaker 3: area of research that I can do that that contributes

966
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:53,399
Speaker 3: to all of these different areas of our society. That

967
00:56:53,440 --> 00:56:56,400
Speaker 3: gets me really excited because I'm never bored. I can

968
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:59,640
Speaker 3: always choose a new application. I can always choose a

969
00:56:59,680 --> 00:57:04,560
Speaker 3: new type of machine to work on. And we're always

970
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:08,400
Speaker 3: trying to make improvements in the energy efficiency, you know,

971
00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 3: trying to make things smaller and better and cheaper, and

972
00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:15,919
Speaker 3: just trying to push forward the frontiers of these technologies

973
00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:21,200
Speaker 3: using our knowledge of fundamental physics in order to do

974
00:57:21,320 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 3: some good in the world, you know, to actually make

975
00:57:23,880 --> 00:57:26,919
Speaker 3: a difference to people's lives, and that's why I show

976
00:57:27,000 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 3: up in the lab every day. And I've had a

977
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 3: lot of people say, well, I had no idea that

978
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 3: you could do that with physics. That's amazing. And so

979
00:57:34,200 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 3: I've been told on a number of occasions that my

980
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:40,280
Speaker 3: job today is kind of the current equivalent of being

981
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:43,280
Speaker 3: a rocket scientist. You know, I'm sort of working on

982
00:57:43,280 --> 00:57:45,960
Speaker 3: this cutting edge of technology which is taking us to

983
00:57:46,040 --> 00:57:50,960
Speaker 3: new frontiers of knowledge and exploration. And while it's not

984
00:57:51,040 --> 00:57:52,880
Speaker 3: quite as dramatic as a rocket, when you start up

985
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 3: one of these machines, it is to me incredibly inspiring.

986
00:57:56,600 --> 00:58:00,600
Speaker 3: And every approach that we take, whether it's collaborating, you know,

987
00:58:00,640 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 3: in a multidisciplinary sense I collaborate very strongly with cancer

988
00:58:03,840 --> 00:58:08,920
Speaker 3: researchers nowadays, or collaborating across different nations and different technical skills,

989
00:58:09,760 --> 00:58:14,240
Speaker 3: I think really this type of research is sort of

990
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 3: unique in a way, but it's also representative of the

991
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:24,160
Speaker 3: approach that I think has led us to so many successes, both,

992
00:58:24,800 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 3: you know, both in science but also in terms of

993
00:58:27,960 --> 00:58:30,960
Speaker 3: improving our lives as people.

994
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:44,160
Speaker 2: I have a question about how you approach experiments in

995
00:58:44,200 --> 00:58:49,920
Speaker 2: physics when you're doing an experiment and you're getting results

996
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 2: that are not at all what you expect to see.

997
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:57,600
Speaker 2: How do you prioritize exploring the options that what you

998
00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:01,040
Speaker 2: expect to see is wrong versus there is something wrong

999
00:59:01,040 --> 00:59:01,720
Speaker 2: with your method.

1000
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:06,240
Speaker 3: I always err on the side of assuming I'm an idiot,

1001
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 3: So maybe just imposters in drome, But no, okay, this

1002
00:59:13,440 --> 00:59:16,560
Speaker 3: is kind of what I mean about ensuring you one

1003
00:59:16,600 --> 00:59:19,880
Speaker 3: hundred percent understand your apparatus. So typically when you start

1004
00:59:19,880 --> 00:59:22,080
Speaker 3: out an experiment and I'm thinking here of just a

1005
00:59:22,120 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 3: small experiment that I built in the UK, and when

1006
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 3: we first started using it, we'd get all these like

1007
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 3: electrical signals that we just didn't understand, and so my

1008
00:59:33,480 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 3: assumption there was not that the fundamental thing that I

1009
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:40,760
Speaker 3: was trying to study was wrong. My assumption almost always

1010
00:59:40,920 --> 00:59:43,600
Speaker 3: is to assume that I don't understand my experiment well enough,

1011
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:47,600
Speaker 3: and to devise little tests and little questions and little

1012
00:59:47,640 --> 00:59:51,680
Speaker 3: experiments to test my understanding of the equipment and to

1013
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:55,520
Speaker 3: test you know, I'll always pull it back to a

1014
00:59:55,560 --> 00:59:57,840
Speaker 3: test case where I'm like, okay, I should one hundred

1015
00:59:57,840 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 3: percent know the outcome of doing this test, So then

1016
01:00:01,160 --> 01:00:04,080
Speaker 3: I run that test and if that one is still failing.

1017
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:07,400
Speaker 3: Then I'm like, Okay, there's something wrong with the equipment,

1018
01:00:07,840 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 3: and maybe there's something wrong or maybe I've dialed it

1019
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:12,840
Speaker 3: in wrong, or I've got the wrong impedance matching, or

1020
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:16,560
Speaker 3: I've got you know, like something, something that I've failed

1021
01:00:16,600 --> 01:00:20,520
Speaker 3: to recognize is important in the experiment doing what I

1022
01:00:20,560 --> 01:00:22,480
Speaker 3: wanted to do. And I think that would be a

1023
01:00:22,480 --> 01:00:25,800
Speaker 3: familiar experience to almost every experiment, which is to go

1024
01:00:25,880 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 3: in with this overabundance of optimism that everything's going to

1025
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 3: work first time, and then slowly work your way through

1026
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:35,040
Speaker 3: the many, many, many ways in which you were wrong

1027
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:40,320
Speaker 3: until you really fully understand everything that's happening. And then

1028
01:00:41,000 --> 01:00:44,640
Speaker 3: then if you're testing your theory, or maybe there isn't

1029
01:00:44,640 --> 01:00:46,560
Speaker 3: a theory, maybe you're just testing something that doesn't have

1030
01:00:46,560 --> 01:00:49,280
Speaker 3: a theory yet, and if then it's coming back and

1031
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:52,360
Speaker 3: giving you a result that you don't expect, then you

1032
01:00:52,440 --> 01:00:55,200
Speaker 3: start to get those little you know, I'm getting shivers

1033
01:00:55,240 --> 01:00:57,200
Speaker 3: just saying it. It's ridiculous, isn't it. But like those

1034
01:00:57,240 --> 01:00:59,520
Speaker 3: little shivers which say, oh, this is something new, this

1035
01:00:59,600 --> 01:01:04,480
Speaker 3: isn't all. This is a potential to discover something that

1036
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:09,320
Speaker 3: no one's ever seen before, and it's in that mode

1037
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:13,920
Speaker 3: where you're both confident in your experiment that you can

1038
01:01:14,040 --> 01:01:18,320
Speaker 3: really ask the questions about the nature of reality. And

1039
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:21,400
Speaker 3: in that moment, I think more often than not, you

1040
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:25,280
Speaker 3: want to be wrong, right. You want nature to be

1041
01:01:26,760 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 3: throwing a caveball at you, You want it to be

1042
01:01:29,120 --> 01:01:33,280
Speaker 3: something surprising, and those are I think those are the

1043
01:01:33,280 --> 01:01:38,640
Speaker 3: moments in which would be the closest that I think

1044
01:01:38,680 --> 01:01:41,200
Speaker 3: you would get to having sort of a Eureka moment

1045
01:01:41,320 --> 01:01:44,440
Speaker 3: or that moment of I've seen something new for the

1046
01:01:44,520 --> 01:01:48,120
Speaker 3: very first time. And it's only by working your way

1047
01:01:48,160 --> 01:01:50,280
Speaker 3: through those smaller steps that you can get to that

1048
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:52,880
Speaker 3: level of confidence. And I think a lot of people

1049
01:01:54,240 --> 01:01:58,040
Speaker 3: don't realize that that is very much the day to

1050
01:01:58,120 --> 01:02:02,040
Speaker 3: day role of an experiment or is working your way

1051
01:02:02,120 --> 01:02:05,960
Speaker 3: through these annoying things, and you have to learn to

1052
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:09,800
Speaker 3: love that process, right, You have to learn to love

1053
01:02:09,960 --> 01:02:12,520
Speaker 3: the small bits of understanding and the small discoveries that

1054
01:02:12,560 --> 01:02:15,200
Speaker 3: come along the way. You know, maybe you've discovered a

1055
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 3: new way of arranging your apparatus that happens to give you,

1056
01:02:19,520 --> 01:02:21,800
Speaker 3: you know, ten times more signal than you had before,

1057
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:25,760
Speaker 3: and that's really satisfying. And so I think experimental science.

1058
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:29,640
Speaker 3: For that reason, it sort of appeals to people who

1059
01:02:29,720 --> 01:02:33,440
Speaker 3: like to tinker. It appeals to the detail orientated mind.

1060
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:36,840
Speaker 3: At the same time it has to appeal to people

1061
01:02:36,880 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 3: who have that bigger vision, you know, who have that

1062
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:43,800
Speaker 3: longer term time frame, because if you expect to go

1063
01:02:43,800 --> 01:02:46,040
Speaker 3: into the lab every day and make one discovery every day,

1064
01:02:46,040 --> 01:02:49,280
Speaker 3: you're going to be solely disappointed. But if you can

1065
01:02:49,360 --> 01:02:52,960
Speaker 3: keep in mind the big picture and work toward that

1066
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 3: over and often it is years, you know, and keep

1067
01:02:56,440 --> 01:03:00,440
Speaker 3: that enthusiasm and keep that wonder that have in the

1068
01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:03,720
Speaker 3: lab every day, I think that's the sort of personality

1069
01:03:03,840 --> 01:03:07,440
Speaker 3: type that fits experimental science very very well.

1070
01:03:08,040 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 2: There's a point about your book that I really love

1071
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 2: you in talking about how big projects like the large

1072
01:03:13,760 --> 01:03:16,080
Speaker 2: hadron collider you've talked about this today as well, are

1073
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:22,400
Speaker 2: illustrative of deeper points about human collaboration. And I wonder if,

1074
01:03:23,160 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 2: in a way you even alluded to this earlier when

1075
01:03:24,880 --> 01:03:27,320
Speaker 2: you were talking about what types of experiments are easier

1076
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:30,600
Speaker 2: to talk about in the setting like our conversation today.

1077
01:03:31,160 --> 01:03:34,160
Speaker 2: I wonder if these big collaborative stories like the large

1078
01:03:34,160 --> 01:03:37,720
Speaker 2: Hadron collider are more difficult to fit in the shape

1079
01:03:37,760 --> 01:03:41,080
Speaker 2: of a compelling and memorable narrative than stories with a

1080
01:03:41,120 --> 01:03:44,920
Speaker 2: single protagonist. Obviously, a lot of the most inspiring and

1081
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:48,320
Speaker 2: amazing stories in your book are about these huge megaprojects

1082
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:52,240
Speaker 2: with these unthinkable amounts of coordination and collaboration. Are there

1083
01:03:52,280 --> 01:03:56,320
Speaker 2: tricks to telling those stories in a way that makes

1084
01:03:56,360 --> 01:03:59,440
Speaker 2: them work as stories? But it's still true to the reality.

1085
01:04:01,520 --> 01:04:05,240
Speaker 3: It was very difficult. Yes, So I will definitely acknowledge

1086
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:08,400
Speaker 3: it is so much harder to write about enormous collaborations

1087
01:04:08,440 --> 01:04:12,120
Speaker 3: than it is to write about a few individuals. And

1088
01:04:12,200 --> 01:04:15,960
Speaker 3: I think in terms of the story, you know, the

1089
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:20,920
Speaker 3: story arc or the narrative creation process. I had to

1090
01:04:20,960 --> 01:04:26,440
Speaker 3: find my own route through that, and so I was

1091
01:04:26,480 --> 01:04:30,880
Speaker 3: looking for things like, Okay, well, you know, if i'm

1092
01:04:31,040 --> 01:04:34,040
Speaker 3: if I'm creating a sort of story arc, so you know,

1093
01:04:34,080 --> 01:04:36,560
Speaker 3: what would my crisis moment be, What would you know,

1094
01:04:36,640 --> 01:04:40,200
Speaker 3: what would a sort of pinnacle moment be? What is

1095
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:44,200
Speaker 3: my like sort of inciting idea that sort of sets

1096
01:04:44,560 --> 01:04:48,000
Speaker 3: sets that story off on a journey. And you can

1097
01:04:48,200 --> 01:04:52,600
Speaker 3: find those things within the stories of the big experiments.

1098
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:57,200
Speaker 3: It does make it harder to focus on individual but

1099
01:04:57,320 --> 01:05:00,760
Speaker 3: I actually, in the end, especially for the large Hadron Collider.

1100
01:05:00,800 --> 01:05:03,760
Speaker 3: I used myself as an example of a tiny, tiny

1101
01:05:03,760 --> 01:05:07,280
Speaker 3: individual within this enormous collaboration, and that worked for me

1102
01:05:07,360 --> 01:05:10,520
Speaker 3: partly because I actually didn't go on to continue in

1103
01:05:10,560 --> 01:05:13,280
Speaker 3: that collaboration. I worked in it. As a student. I

1104
01:05:13,320 --> 01:05:17,880
Speaker 3: did this very very small project which people love to

1105
01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:21,160
Speaker 3: h to recite the name of the project that I did,

1106
01:05:21,200 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 3: which was it was the design of a no, hang on,

1107
01:05:26,480 --> 01:05:27,840
Speaker 3: I'm going to get it, I'm going to get it wrong.

1108
01:05:27,840 --> 01:05:30,600
Speaker 3: But it was the design of a monitoring system for

1109
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:33,760
Speaker 3: the heating for that sorry, for the heaters of the

1110
01:05:33,800 --> 01:05:37,240
Speaker 3: cooling system, of the inner detector of the atlast.

1111
01:05:36,800 --> 01:05:41,600
Speaker 2: Experiment cooling system.

1112
01:05:41,920 --> 01:05:44,560
Speaker 3: Now the monitoring system. Yes, the monitoring system for the

1113
01:05:44,560 --> 01:05:48,600
Speaker 3: heaters of the cooling system. Okay, if you have a

1114
01:05:48,600 --> 01:05:52,560
Speaker 3: cooling system and you don't want it to all like

1115
01:05:52,760 --> 01:05:56,360
Speaker 3: clog up with condensation, right, so sometimes you need heaters

1116
01:05:56,400 --> 01:05:58,920
Speaker 3: on there to bring the temperature back up and stabilize it,

1117
01:05:58,960 --> 01:06:00,520
Speaker 3: like you need to be able to move temperature in

1118
01:06:00,520 --> 01:06:05,120
Speaker 3: two directions anyway. So that was my crazy, you know,

1119
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:07,440
Speaker 3: tidy little project that I did for three months when

1120
01:06:07,480 --> 01:06:10,360
Speaker 3: I was a summer student as an undergraduate working at CERN.

1121
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:16,680
Speaker 3: And it was illustrative though, of this idea that you know,

1122
01:06:16,920 --> 01:06:20,600
Speaker 3: I was this sort of tiny cog in this enormous machine.

1123
01:06:21,000 --> 01:06:24,880
Speaker 3: And I think the way I used that story was

1124
01:06:24,960 --> 01:06:28,800
Speaker 3: also to sort of say I doubted that this machine

1125
01:06:28,840 --> 01:06:32,880
Speaker 3: could ever work, because if I was making this contribution

1126
01:06:33,080 --> 01:06:35,720
Speaker 3: and deep within my code was the ability to switch

1127
01:06:35,760 --> 01:06:38,880
Speaker 3: the whole machine off, then surely, you know, statistically, this

1128
01:06:38,880 --> 01:06:41,840
Speaker 3: thing was never never going to work, and so I

1129
01:06:41,880 --> 01:06:45,760
Speaker 3: was as surprised as everybody else. Well, I don't think

1130
01:06:45,280 --> 01:06:48,320
Speaker 3: the actual rest of the collaboration would have been surprised

1131
01:06:48,320 --> 01:06:52,360
Speaker 3: when it worked, but I was surprised from my experience

1132
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 3: when it worked as well as it did when they

1133
01:06:55,000 --> 01:06:59,240
Speaker 3: started the machine up. Of course, people who remember back

1134
01:06:59,240 --> 01:07:01,120
Speaker 3: in two thousand and eight will remember that it worked

1135
01:07:01,160 --> 01:07:04,000
Speaker 3: for about seven days before it blew itself up, and

1136
01:07:04,040 --> 01:07:05,919
Speaker 3: then they spent a year fixing it before it came

1137
01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 3: back online. And I was I was at an event

1138
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:11,080
Speaker 3: the other day where someone referred to the startup of

1139
01:07:11,120 --> 01:07:14,160
Speaker 3: the large Hudron collider, in which they said, about two

1140
01:07:14,200 --> 01:07:17,200
Speaker 3: thousand and eight, with a shake of the hand, you know,

1141
01:07:17,600 --> 01:07:20,560
Speaker 3: this is sort of you know, this Italian style like

1142
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:25,040
Speaker 3: wobble of the hand that means roughly they did that.

1143
01:07:25,200 --> 01:07:27,240
Speaker 3: They said it started laughing about two thousand and eight,

1144
01:07:27,320 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 3: and it was all about that hand wobble of like, oh,

1145
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:33,360
Speaker 3: that means the machine blew itself up and it had

1146
01:07:33,400 --> 01:07:35,960
Speaker 3: to be fixed for a year. But anyway, so I'm

1147
01:07:35,960 --> 01:07:38,360
Speaker 3: getting off the track onto the large Hudron collider. But

1148
01:07:38,400 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 3: I think, I think, yes, it is much more difficult

1149
01:07:41,920 --> 01:07:45,880
Speaker 3: to write narratives about enormous collaborations. But I think that

1150
01:07:46,000 --> 01:07:49,720
Speaker 3: speaks to something a little deepant is something which has

1151
01:07:49,760 --> 01:07:53,040
Speaker 3: come out of conversations with people now that we're studying

1152
01:07:53,200 --> 01:07:58,320
Speaker 3: even larger colliders. So the next one potential next iteration

1153
01:07:58,480 --> 01:08:01,920
Speaker 3: is one hundred kilometers in succumb and will take about

1154
01:08:02,000 --> 01:08:06,920
Speaker 3: forty years to build, to design and build. That's getting

1155
01:08:06,960 --> 01:08:10,120
Speaker 3: to the same lengths as or longer than a lot

1156
01:08:10,120 --> 01:08:15,560
Speaker 3: of careers in the field. And so I think we

1157
01:08:15,720 --> 01:08:17,840
Speaker 3: are running into and it's something that I've been talking

1158
01:08:17,840 --> 01:08:21,679
Speaker 3: to people about, a sort of two big, too long,

1159
01:08:21,960 --> 01:08:26,840
Speaker 3: too complex problem with these collaborations. And even though they

1160
01:08:27,640 --> 01:08:30,639
Speaker 3: I find them more inspiring in what they have been

1161
01:08:30,680 --> 01:08:35,360
Speaker 3: able to achieve. If I was given the choice again,

1162
01:08:35,720 --> 01:08:39,640
Speaker 3: now you know, I'm a student, I'm raring to go

1163
01:08:39,680 --> 01:08:44,200
Speaker 3: in this field. I'm really interested, what would I choose

1164
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:47,519
Speaker 3: to work on, for saying, my PhD now at the

1165
01:08:47,560 --> 01:08:51,360
Speaker 3: age of early twenties, embarking on a PhD, which can

1166
01:08:51,400 --> 01:08:54,720
Speaker 3: be anywhere between about three and however many years, you know,

1167
01:08:54,800 --> 01:08:58,040
Speaker 3: seven eight years for some people, it's a huge commitment

1168
01:08:58,120 --> 01:09:00,000
Speaker 3: and a huge chunk of your life at that age.

1169
01:09:00,760 --> 01:09:05,400
Speaker 3: And totally I hear stories of professors who are struggling

1170
01:09:05,439 --> 01:09:09,880
Speaker 3: to recruit students to projects for the sort of next

1171
01:09:09,920 --> 01:09:12,640
Speaker 3: mega colliders because they're like, well, there's not going to

1172
01:09:12,640 --> 01:09:15,400
Speaker 3: be any data to work with for forty years. Like

1173
01:09:15,880 --> 01:09:17,680
Speaker 3: how am I going to have a career in this

1174
01:09:17,800 --> 01:09:19,960
Speaker 3: Why would I commit three to seven years to something

1175
01:09:19,960 --> 01:09:24,679
Speaker 3: that might not even be built? And so I don't

1176
01:09:24,680 --> 01:09:26,360
Speaker 3: want to make out like there's a crisis or a

1177
01:09:26,439 --> 01:09:28,519
Speaker 3: lack of people who are interested and very committed to

1178
01:09:28,520 --> 01:09:33,519
Speaker 3: this field. But I just hear inklings of dissatisfaction or

1179
01:09:33,720 --> 01:09:40,160
Speaker 3: sort of little little inklings of trouble, and I'm I'm

1180
01:09:40,240 --> 01:09:43,559
Speaker 3: curious about that, and I'm curious about how we're going

1181
01:09:43,600 --> 01:09:46,960
Speaker 3: to resolve that. And I guess there's two parts. Either

1182
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:48,840
Speaker 3: we find a way to resolve that through the career

1183
01:09:48,880 --> 01:09:53,280
Speaker 3: structure and through having shorter projects alongside these big, long

1184
01:09:53,360 --> 01:09:57,880
Speaker 3: ones that you know, keep people motivated and keep everyone working,

1185
01:09:58,240 --> 01:10:00,679
Speaker 3: or we really have to think about are these projects

1186
01:10:00,680 --> 01:10:06,040
Speaker 3: too big? Should we really be focusing all our energy

1187
01:10:06,160 --> 01:10:11,040
Speaker 3: on technologies which can shrink down the size of future

1188
01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:14,800
Speaker 3: collided projects, which is very very difficult although they are

1189
01:10:14,840 --> 01:10:22,160
Speaker 3: in progress. And also just refocus back down on the

1190
01:10:22,200 --> 01:10:26,160
Speaker 3: sort of structure in which these collaborations work, because realistically,

1191
01:10:26,400 --> 01:10:29,240
Speaker 3: you've got groups of about ten to twenty people in

1192
01:10:29,280 --> 01:10:32,919
Speaker 3: a research group in a university. Those work on specific

1193
01:10:32,960 --> 01:10:35,280
Speaker 3: sub areas of the experiment, and then they all join

1194
01:10:35,360 --> 01:10:37,920
Speaker 3: together and eventually you get you know, two thousand people.

1195
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:41,880
Speaker 3: And so it's not that two thousand people are sort

1196
01:10:41,880 --> 01:10:46,000
Speaker 3: of a negalitarian, you know, flat structure who all somehow

1197
01:10:46,040 --> 01:10:49,040
Speaker 3: know each other and communicate. That would be absolutely wild.

1198
01:10:49,640 --> 01:10:54,599
Speaker 3: There is a substructure, and so I'm interested in how

1199
01:10:54,640 --> 01:10:58,200
Speaker 3: we can use that substructure that works very well in small,

1200
01:10:58,320 --> 01:11:01,280
Speaker 3: close knit groups who then go out and work with

1201
01:11:01,320 --> 01:11:03,760
Speaker 3: other groups around the world. Perhaps there's a way we

1202
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:07,439
Speaker 3: can do that in the time domain as well. Right, so,

1203
01:11:07,520 --> 01:11:11,200
Speaker 3: perhaps there's a way of having more contained sections of projects,

1204
01:11:12,000 --> 01:11:15,080
Speaker 3: perhaps with applications, you know, that sort of keep people

1205
01:11:15,640 --> 01:11:18,760
Speaker 3: interested on that sort of you know, few year timescale

1206
01:11:19,600 --> 01:11:21,920
Speaker 3: that can drive things along. So maybe instead of in

1207
01:11:21,960 --> 01:11:24,120
Speaker 3: the future, instead of contributing to hardware or sitting in

1208
01:11:24,200 --> 01:11:28,000
Speaker 3: a control room, maybe you're contributing to the societal applications

1209
01:11:28,080 --> 01:11:31,120
Speaker 3: of the spin offs of the work that you're doing

1210
01:11:31,200 --> 01:11:37,680
Speaker 3: alongside developing the longer term curiosity driven parts. That's just

1211
01:11:37,760 --> 01:11:41,960
Speaker 3: my idea. It's very much an unsolved thing. But I

1212
01:11:41,960 --> 01:11:44,599
Speaker 3: think if I was given the chance again, I would

1213
01:11:44,640 --> 01:11:47,280
Speaker 3: struggle to commit to a project that wasn't going to

1214
01:11:47,360 --> 01:11:50,479
Speaker 3: have data for forty years. So I do want to

1215
01:11:50,479 --> 01:11:52,639
Speaker 3: acknowledge that it's a very interesting time for young people

1216
01:11:52,720 --> 01:11:55,200
Speaker 3: to be entering the field in that sense.

1217
01:11:56,320 --> 01:11:58,040
Speaker 2: Right at the end of the book, you offer a

1218
01:11:58,080 --> 01:11:59,840
Speaker 2: couple of big lessons that you think we need to

1219
01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:03,439
Speaker 2: brace for the future of physics and collaborative research projects.

1220
01:12:03,520 --> 01:12:05,360
Speaker 2: Do you want to mention those before we sign off?

1221
01:12:06,160 --> 01:12:07,840
Speaker 3: Yes. So, I think some of the things that I've

1222
01:12:07,920 --> 01:12:11,240
Speaker 3: learned through writing the book around collaboration and this curiosity

1223
01:12:11,400 --> 01:12:15,040
Speaker 3: driven research is that it is so important that we

1224
01:12:15,439 --> 01:12:18,160
Speaker 3: value it, that we value its impact in society, and

1225
01:12:18,240 --> 01:12:21,479
Speaker 3: that we create space for people to do this kind

1226
01:12:21,520 --> 01:12:25,320
Speaker 3: of research, not just space, but also it requires funding.

1227
01:12:25,360 --> 01:12:27,040
Speaker 3: And I know it sounds a little daddy to mix

1228
01:12:27,120 --> 01:12:31,000
Speaker 3: curiosity driven research and money, but in our society those

1229
01:12:31,040 --> 01:12:33,080
Speaker 3: two things are going to have to go hand in hand.

1230
01:12:33,160 --> 01:12:35,720
Speaker 3: So you know, even the future, we want to be

1231
01:12:35,760 --> 01:12:39,439
Speaker 3: able to create collaborations so we can really get the

1232
01:12:39,479 --> 01:12:43,960
Speaker 3: best out of specialized skills that people have to the

1233
01:12:44,000 --> 01:12:48,040
Speaker 3: betterment of society. We need to really think about how

1234
01:12:48,080 --> 01:12:51,479
Speaker 3: we value things that don't set out with a goal

1235
01:12:51,520 --> 01:12:54,280
Speaker 3: in mind, and I think we need to center those

1236
01:12:54,600 --> 01:12:58,240
Speaker 3: and we need to really value the fact that somebody

1237
01:12:58,240 --> 01:13:02,200
Speaker 3: would commit their life and career to something where they

1238
01:13:02,240 --> 01:13:05,240
Speaker 3: don't even know what the outcome is going to look like.

1239
01:13:05,479 --> 01:13:07,840
Speaker 3: We need to protect that with everything that we have,

1240
01:13:08,000 --> 01:13:11,680
Speaker 3: because that is such a generative force in our society

1241
01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:12,120
Speaker 3: for good.

1242
01:13:12,680 --> 01:13:15,240
Speaker 2: Susi Shi, thank you so much for talking today. It

1243
01:13:15,240 --> 01:13:17,680
Speaker 2: has been a privilege and a pleasure lovely to be here.

1244
01:13:17,720 --> 01:13:18,080
Speaker 3: Thanks Ja.

1245
01:13:19,040 --> 01:13:21,720
Speaker 2: All right, well that's it for today. Thanks again to

1246
01:13:21,720 --> 01:13:24,639
Speaker 2: Susie Sheihi for being so generous with her time. If

1247
01:13:24,640 --> 01:13:26,280
Speaker 2: you want to pick up a copy of the book,

1248
01:13:26,560 --> 01:13:30,519
Speaker 2: it is called The Matter of Everything, The Matter of Everything,

1249
01:13:30,680 --> 01:13:33,720
Speaker 2: and it's out in hardback in ebook form and as

1250
01:13:33,720 --> 01:13:37,320
Speaker 2: an audiobook narrated by Susie herself. Stuff to Blow Your

1251
01:13:37,320 --> 01:13:39,920
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a show about science and culture, with

1252
01:13:40,000 --> 01:13:42,920
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays of each week, but

1253
01:13:43,040 --> 01:13:45,240
Speaker 2: we also put out a number of other offerings. On

1254
01:13:45,320 --> 01:13:48,200
Speaker 2: Mondays we do a listener mail episode where we feature

1255
01:13:48,240 --> 01:13:51,679
Speaker 2: messages that listeners like you send into our email address,

1256
01:13:51,720 --> 01:13:56,000
Speaker 2: which is contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

1257
01:13:56,560 --> 01:13:59,400
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we run a short form episode called The

1258
01:13:59,520 --> 01:14:02,920
Speaker 2: Artifact or the Monster Fact. And on Friday we do

1259
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1260
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1261
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1263
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1264
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1265
01:14:25,080 --> 01:14:26,960
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1266
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:30,000
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1267
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1268
01:14:33,960 --> 01:14:44,160
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1269
01:14:44,560 --> 01:14:47,479
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1270
01:14:47,600 --> 01:14:50,360
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