Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / What happened to the Superconducting Supercollider?

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What happened to the Superconducting Supercollider? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, not that I'm looking, but where can I
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: find the world's biggest laser? Oh, that's here in the
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: United States at the National Ignition Facility. To have a
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: hundred and ninety two beams. Oh man, it sounds awesome.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: How about the world's biggest telescope that's actually also an
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: American project at Mount Graham in Arizona. It's twelve meters
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: across twelve impressive. And who's got the record for the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: biggest particle accelerator. That's actually a European project. That's the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: large agar and collider at CERN. What happened? Why don't
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Americans have the record for that too? Well, you know
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: we could have had a super jumbo Texas sized collider. Well,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: let's just say there's a super story there. Nice, it's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a Texas size tall tale. I'm guessing it's a true
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: story of entriguing and politics, super colliding story. I am
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: more Hammond, cartoonist in the creator of PhD comments, I'm Daniel.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and I definitely want more government
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: dollars to build bigger particle colliders. Nice, I think we
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: both agree on that. I also want more dollars. You
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: didn't specify what you're gonna do with all that government cash.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Make more podcast episodes and welcome to our podcast, Daniel
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a super podcast in which we super collide your brain
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: with super crazy ideas. We go all over the universe
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: to talk about the biggest things, the smallest things, the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: weirdest things. But mostly we talk about the most wondrous
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and curiosity invoking things, the things we want to understand,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and the things that science is working right now every
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: day twenty four seven in white lab coats to figure
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: out for you, tried all the amazing and wonderful things
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: to discover out there in the universe. But we also
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: kind of like to talk about the process of discovery
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: because you know, it's a human endeavor and there are
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of interesting stories that happen in our search
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: for the truth about the universe. That's right, Science is
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: for people. It's not for just AI bots to digest
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: and understand. We do it because it's our curiosity about
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the universe. It's the things that we want to know,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: and so not only is it done for people, is
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: done by people, and those people have names and jobs
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: and real lives and ambitions, and they make mistakes, and
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: sometimes those mistakes are supersized. Yeah, and sometimes the science
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: has even done on people. I am fortunately not involved
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: in any of that kind of science. You never had
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: a particle collide with you, Daniel. I am particles, and
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: I collide with particles, but I've never intentionally collided particles
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: with people for science. You know. That's actually one of
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the only positive spinoffs of particle physics is that you
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: can use particle beams to treat answer. That's right. Yeah,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: But mostly we build these big particle colliders because we
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: want to replicate the situation in the early universe. We
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: want to create a little environment where nature can reveal
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: to us some of the secrets of how the universe
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: is put together. But it is a human endeavor, and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: as such, there are always a lot of interesting stories
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: about how discoveries are made or what people were thinking
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: at the time, and sometimes great stories about big experiments
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and why they didn't work, or why they work, or
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: why some of them weren't even built. That's right. The
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: history of particle physics is sort of an escalating series
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: of colliders, bigger and bigger, more and more energy, Probing
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: higher and higher into the secrets of nature. They got
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger and more and more expensive, until one
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: day they got maybe too big. And so right now,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the Europeans have the biggest particle collider basically as far
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: as we know in the universe, right, as far as
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: we know, the biggest collider as far as we know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: although you know, it doesn't create the most energetic particles.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: We've seen those come from space, and so it could
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: be that there are alien particle physicists out there shooting
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: their particle accelerator acces. So it's the biggest human made
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: particles that we know of that we know, and so
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the Europeans have it at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Right,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: that's the biggest one, that's the record holder. And so
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the question is why don't the Americans have it? You know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: we have the biggest laser, the biggest telescope, and the
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: biggest gravitation wave detector at least at the moment. So
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: there's kind of an interesting story there, and so to
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: be on the podcast, we'll be asking the question what
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: happened to the super conducting super collider. It's super mysterious.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's super fascinating, and it's something that came up briefly
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: in a podcast episode we did a couple of weeks
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: ago about the discovery of the Higgs boson and we
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: mentioned the super conducting super collider, and I remember you
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: were like, what is that a real name for a
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: real thing? It sounds like you just made that up.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Why would you put super twice in the title? I mean,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that's that's like an extra superlatives. It's so good they
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: used it twice, And a lot of listeners were curious
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: about this and wanted to hear more about this incredibly
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: named super collider, so we decided to do a whole
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: episode on why people built it and what it meant
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: and why it didn't end up getting finished right, And
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: this is kind of part of the story of particle
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: physics in the sense that, you know, I guess we
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: started probably with like small, little particle colliders, and then
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: they've just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and bigger over the years. And the question is maybe
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: one of these gods too big? Yeah, because the only
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: thing that limits us from building them bigger is money.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: The more money you give us, the bigger the collider
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: that you can build, but also the more seco to
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: you can reveal from nature. So it's sort of like
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you can just buy information, like you want to know
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: more about the basic way the universe works, spend more money.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: It's really very direct. But you know, we live in
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: practical times, and it's not always infinite cash to fund
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: your science projects. So these machines operate in a political environment.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: They need support, they need funding, they need continued funding
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: to be finished. And so it's a fascinating story of
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: sort of how much money you could ask for for
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: your particle physics toys. Yeah, I guess science is political
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and itself, but also it depends on politics, right, that's right. Well,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: you know, we try not to be political. We're serving
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: information that's of course used to make important political and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: policy decisions, but we try to be as fact based
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: as possible. But anytime you're spending money, that's political, right,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: And any dollar you're spending on a particle colliders that
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: dollar you're not spending on poverty programs, or on weapons systems,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: or on anything else. And so it's always a political
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: decision about how much to spend on science and what
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: kind of science to spend it on? Do you want
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: the biggest laser, the biggest telescope or the biggest microscope.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And there's another fascinating angle there, and that most of
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: these experiments end up being pretty international, like the folks
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: on them like me, I don't really care if it's
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: a Russian or a Chinese person or a South American
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: or Canadian who's working with me. But when we sell
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: these projects to our national governments who fund them, a
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: lot of times we end up pitching them like, hey,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: this is an American national pride project, all right. So,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: as usual, Daniel went out there into the Internet to
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: ask how many people out there knew about the almost
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: bill superior super conducting super collider superlatively named. And so
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: before you listen to these answers, think about what comes
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to mind when you hear the words super conducting super collider.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. It was a particle
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: accelerator that was planned for the United States. I think
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: it was meant for Texas, and I believe it was
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: supposed to be two or three times bigger than what
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: we have at the LHC at CERN, But I could
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: be wrong on that. Part and it never happened because
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: the US government cut funding for it. Actually, I've never
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: heard the word super conducting super collider. I think it's
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: similar to the let's see the larger collider, but but
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: condly colliding the conductive particles. Maybe two things stand out
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  Speaker 1: to me. One is you say it in past tense,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: so it's not around anymore. And the second one is
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of supers being used, So I mean
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: superconductor makes sense because that means that it's very efficient
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and it's not losing any energy as heat or other items.
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  Speaker 1: So the difference between a conductor and a superconductor is understood.
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  Speaker 1: But a super collider, that's so if you've got a
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  Speaker 1: regular collider. I'm wondering what the difference between a large
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: collider and a super collidery So that sounds like it
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: is massive or planning on crashing large items together. I
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: don't know. I'm super anxious to find out if I
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: have the right one. The super conducting super collider was
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: the United States attempt to create the biggest super collider
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  Speaker 1: before was created. I believe we try to do it
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  Speaker 1: down in Texas or something like that, and Carn's just
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: either never approved the funning or cut off the funning.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: All Right, I like these answers. They're pretty super I
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: like the person who broke it down. They're like trying
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to figure it out like you used to past tense.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: So I know it's not around anymore, and there's a
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: lot of super so it must be pretty cool. I
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: was impressed, you have. They made a lot of progress
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: just based on the name of the thing and how
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: I read the question. So super job to that person
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: like asking if super is bigger than large? That sounds
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: like a Starbucks question. It's venty larger than small. Who knows.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: I'd like a venti conducting hyper collider, coffee grande collider.
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  Speaker 1: Al Right, So this was a big experiment that was
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: almost built. So step us through Daniel. What was the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: super conducting SuperCollider? So the super conducting super collider. It's
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: really a tragedy and it still pains me to this
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  Speaker 1: day that we didn't build this thing because not only
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: would it have been a huge collider, it would have
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: been the biggest collider of its time, and even still today,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: it would be bigger than any collider we have. Now,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: you know, we measure these colliders not just in size, Like,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter how physically large they are. Yes,
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it does, Daniel. If you're gonna put it in Texas,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: it has to be the biggest one. We measure these
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: things in terms of their energy, So it really is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: about the energy of the particles. Because remember, the goal
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: of building a big collider is not just to say,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: look upon my works, e mighty. It's because we want
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: to create a lot of energy in a small space,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: because that allows us to probe really massive particles. Remember
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: e equals mc squared. If you put a lot of
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: energy into a small space and then as long as
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: you're above some m that nature has, you can create
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: that particle. And so it's a great way to just
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: sort of like search the cosmos for new kinds of
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: particles without knowing in advance that they are there. Right.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like having a big telescope and
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: just having more magnification or having a better microscope and
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: having better you know, ability to look at smaller things.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It's like the more energy you have, the more you
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: can probe what happens at the quantum level. Yeah, and
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: it's very similar to having a more powerful microscope because
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the more energy you have, literally the smaller distance scale
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you can probe, because there's this anti correlation between sort
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: of the width of the wave function and the energy
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: of the particle, and so higher the energy you're probing,
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the smaller the feature you can look at, for example,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: like inside the proton or inside the cork or whatever.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Oh I see, it's like literally the particles are smaller
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the fact where they go sort of you know, it's
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: like you can probe substructures of the proton or if
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: there is substructure to the cork, so to the electrons,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: you can see them only with higher energy collider that
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: could break those tight bonds and and sort of resolve
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: them at those very high energies. And so yeah, we
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: want to explore the universe, and a one great way
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: to do that is to create these really high energy collisions.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: So again it's not about the eyes of the colliders,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: about the energy stored. And we measured that in terms
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: of electron volts. But there's so many electron volts in
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: these collisions that we have a crazy unit called tera
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: electron volts trillion electron volts and to orient you, a
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: billion electron volts is about how much energy they're stored
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: in a proton, So a terra electron volts is like
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a thousand times the energy of a proton. Take me
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: back in history, So we're talking about the eighties, right,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: So the super conducting super collider was going to be
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: built in the eighties, and it was actually conceived by
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, the president. Yeah, and so we're back in
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the Cold War, you know, and back then a lot
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: of science was closely linked to national pride and to
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: national security. People felt like as long as we were
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: on the cutting edge of science, including space and including
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: particle physics and weapons physics, that we were secure and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: we were beating the Russians or the Soviets at the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: time in all these technologies, which you know, contributed to
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: our national defense dot dot dog. But it's literally like
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: bragging rights, like the moonshot, like getting to the moon,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: you know, didn't directly improve our national security, but just
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: being able to say that we didn't and they didn't
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: just it was just kind of a a national pride thing. Yeah.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: I think it motivates the population and makes us feel
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: secure and all that stuff. And there's also some direct
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: spin offs, you know, going to the moon helps you
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: develop rockets, which is important for I. C. B M. S.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: For you know, dropping weapons on your enemies, populations, and
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: all sorts of terrible things. Particle physics is much less direct, right,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: maybe if you are understanding the nature of the universe,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: eventually you could tap into that energy source or build
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: new things or whatever. You know. World War two was
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a lesson that, like nuclear physics and particle physics could
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: directly lead to weapons technology, you know, the development of
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: the atomic bomb and the understanding of the atom. So
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: there was a lot of ideas wrapped up in there,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: like we should be at the forefront, Americans should be
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: at the leading edge of particle So you tell me
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: that no politician at that time said the words you mean,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: you want to build a giant particle gun, great, can
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: we aim it? You definitely can't aim this kind of
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: thing at all. And you know, at the time people
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: were thinking about particle guns, but mostly in terms of
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: star wars. This was more for science. And so this
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: was a project originally conceived by Reagan and they thought, well,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: let's build a huge particle collider, bearer than anybody's ever
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: built one before, and we'll just put American particle physics
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: on the map. I mean, we're already were sort of
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: leaders in this area, a lot of Nobel prizes for
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: developing the technology behind particle colliders and you know, and
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Lawrence developed the sincratron technology. So Americans were already leaders,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and this was like, let's hang onto the leadership in
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: this area. And so it was like three and he
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: started this project. But these things take, you know, decades
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: to plan in decades to build, and so you're at
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: the mercy of the changing political time, right because you
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: can change government in between a project or at least
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: support potentially absolutely. And you know, then the Berlin Wall
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: fell down and the Soviet Union collapsed and we no
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: longer had the same adversary, which fueled the Cold War,
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: which made us want to necessarily fight these battles and uh,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: you know, beat the Russians, all right. So Reagan was involved,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: he championed in and it was aiming pretty high, like
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: at the time, what was the biggest collider in terms
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: of energy. The Europeans were planning their own collider, which
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: was going to be around thirteen or fourteen terror electron
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: volts that eventually became the LHC. The only C was
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: on a similar time scale to the super Connecting super Collider.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Of course, it ended up being delayed by ten years, etcetera, etcetera.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: But that's sort of the scales like fourteen TV at CERN.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: But this one, the super conducting super collider, This thing
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: was going to be forty t EV. It was three
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: times almost three times more energetic than the LHC is today.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: That's there were swinging for the fences. It really were,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and they were like, let's go really really big. And
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: you can read the stories of the time and the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: discussions among the physicists and some of them were thinking, wow,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that's really big, Like is that maybe too big? Should
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: we go for thirty five? Should we go for thirties?
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: And a lot of this internal discussion was like, no,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: we gotta hold for forty because if we start sliding
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: down and they're just gonna dial the knob down and
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: then we're just gonna get a small one, like the
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Europeans are getting start high, Start high. I have a
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: big starting offer. But there was also there was some
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: you know, arrogance there. They were like, you know, America's
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: in the lead. There's no way the government's not gonna
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: build this thing and fund this thing at a lot
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of political support in the beginning, and so they thought,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you know, let's just ask for as much as we
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: can get. There's no way they're going to cancel this thing.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Famous last words, his last words, they flew a little
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: too close to the Sun's where they're going to cancel
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: this podcast. In no way they're going to cancel this podcast,
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: not until it costs as much as the super connective
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: super collider, and we're always off from that. But they
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: had a huge competition to see where this thing should go.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Because it's such a big project. They can't just say, well, look,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: firm Lab is the center of particle physics, we'll just
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: put it there. It was, you know, billions and billions
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: of dollar projects. So they had to have it politically balanced,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: and they had this big competition, and Texas offered a
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: lot of money to help build the thing. So they
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: decided to put it south of Dallas in this town
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: called Waxahatchie, Texas. It was a really little town and
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: they were gonna build the thing. Was going to be
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: all the way around the town, like the whole town
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: was going to be surrounded by this thing, all right, well,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: let's get into what happened and what we learned from
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: this project. But first let's take a quick break. All right,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: we're talking about the superlatively superiorly named super condieing super Collider,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: which was almost old in a small town outside of
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Texas in the eighties, started by Reagan, but it was
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: never built. And so the question is what happened? What
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: did they have a name for it? Was it the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: super conducting super collider? From the start, there were a
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: lot of names floated around. You know. Some people wanted
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: to call it the Desert Tron because it was out there,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the Desert Tron no no, or even worse. Some people
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: wanted to call it the Gipper Tron for Ronald Reagan,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: you know, because he championed the project. Should have called
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: the Reagan Tron. There were some pretty silly names. He
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: is used a little robotic himself. That makes me sound
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: like you're colliding Reagan's and you know we only have
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: one of them, but Reagans, I guess. You know. So
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: they actually did start building this thing, I mean they
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: decided to build it. They started saving the money, they
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: proved the money, they started spending. The money was the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: initial budget for it. The initial budget for this thing,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: you know, depends on what you call initial And these
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: things always start out for, you know, a couple billion dollars,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: and in eight seven Congress was told it was going
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: to be ours and about four billion dollars, four and
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a half billion dollars. And then a few years later
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the project cost looks like they were rising to eight billion,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: ten billion, eventually up to like twelve billion dollars. What
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: in comparison, the large Hadron Collider was about a ten
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: billion dollar project. So twelve billion for a collider three
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: times the size of the Late C is not really
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: that outrageous, right, you know, they sold it for four
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: and then it turned out costing twelve so they were
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: in a bit of a political buying there. And these days,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: like a few billion dollars, I feel like we throw
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: that number around like like nothing. Well, these days, in
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: the epic of the pandemic, you know, we're spending tons
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: of money just to dig ourselves out of this economic hole.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: But you're right in in the scale of like government projects,
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: a few billion dollars is not a lot of money.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: It's a it's an aircraft carrier, it's half an aircraft carrier,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: it's a few fighter jets. It's it's not that much
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: money for secrets of the universe, but it's a lot
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: of money for science. You know. The only other project
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: that had ever been at this scale was like the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: International Space Station, which also ballooned in cost and went
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: up from ten billion to a hundred billion dollars. All right,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So it balloons and couts. And what happened like did
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: they start digging and suddenly they hit rock or something?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Why did they underestimate or why did cause go up? Well,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: costs always go up. You know, these are physicists, they're
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: not financial planners. You just gave me so much pressure
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: us here Daniel as their business partner. One problem was
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: that we expected, or we hoped for international cooperation. We
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: were hoping other countries were gonna be like, hey, that
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: sounds like a great project. Will pitch in a billion,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: or here's here for this piece. And that's commonplace these
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: days for the big international projects. For example, the US
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: contributed huge amounts of money hundreds of millions, if not
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars towards the LHC. And it's like it's
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: like you're buying a place at the table or at
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the science table kind of right, Like Japan can be like, hey,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: here's a few billion dollars, but we get DIBs on
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and having a certain number of scientists or is it
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: like office space, what do you negotiate? Well, that's a
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: great question. Really what you get is just access to
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the data that you get to use the data to
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: do science. But it's a little thickier. It's also it's
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: just national pride. Like you can say this was a
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Japanese project, and the Japanese Parliament can say, look, we
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: have proved this thing, and look the Higgs boson was
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: discovered using Japanese technology and Japanese scientists, and there's a
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: lot of national pride involved, like we're awesome. Yeah, Like
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Congress would have preferred if the money they spent to
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: build the LHC had been spent on an American collider
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: to discover the Higgs boson on American soil. I mean,
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: I don't personally care. I'm happy to work with international scientists.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I think the whole nationalism and science thing is a
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: red herring. But it's also important to the people who
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: make the political decisions about money. So you got to
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: play that game a little bit. Anyway, the Americans, they
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: hype this thing so much as an American project that
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the international community didn't really want to jump on board.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: You know, you can't be like, look, this is an
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: awesome American red, white, blue project. We're going to dominate
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: this thing. Oh and by the way, can we have
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: a billion dollars so you can be part of our
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: American is awesome project. Yeah. And you know, CERN was
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: building their competing set of colliders, the Large Electron Positron
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Collider and also the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider, so
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: they weren't gonna be pitching in and so, um, we
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: were going to ask the Japanese for a bunch of money.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: But then we actually got really unlucky with that one.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: What happened so that by then it was a Bush
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Bush Senior, that's where it was. President Bush was president,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: and there was a bit of a political delicate moment
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: there in the Japanese government and where they going to
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: support this thing. And so the Americans got Bush to
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: agree to raise this issue with the Japanese Prime Minister
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: in person. And you know he doesn't get that much time.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: You gotta really happy, like an important issue to get
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: all the way up to like the presidential negotiation level.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: So everybody was primed for Bush to like press this
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: issue with the Japanese Prime minister. But I don't know
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: if you remember there was this one trip where Bush
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: went to Japan and they were having a Nancy dinner
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: and he actually fainted and puked on the Prime minister
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: as he was about to ask about the collider. Yeah,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: that was the night he was supposed to ask for
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: money for the super conducting super collider, but instead, you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: rolfed on his lap, and so it's like, hey, can
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: you give us a big and so that didn't work out,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you know, so we didn't end up getting money from Japan. Really,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: do you think that Japanese based that decision on the puking. No.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I think it just never really got discussed. You know,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: if this is a priority for Americans, they're going to
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: bring it up. This is our opportunity just sort of
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: didn't happen, and then other things came up that were
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: more important, and so the Japanese didn't contribute. So it
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: was going to be an all American project, and you know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: costs start going up and nobody else is helping out.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: And then the political support started to dwindle, but they
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: did start digging and they started spending money. They spent
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: like billions of dollars. They dug kilometers and kilometers of tunnels. Well,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: maybe to take a step back here and paint a
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: picture for us. So this was going to be three
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: times more powerful than the LHC. And it's a collider.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: So what are we talking about like a tunnel, a
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: ring building? What what was this collider going to look like? Well,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: you got to build a whole new laboratory, right, the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: consequences of not building it at Firmi Lab where you
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: already have a laboratory and a community and land. Is
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: it gonna buy new land and build a whole new
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: laboratory and build the collider itself. The collider itself is
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: a huge tunnel and it was going to be ninety
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: kilometers around. So you have to dig this tunnel underground
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: that's nine kilometers in circumbent, and then in it you've
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: got to build the instrument, the actual collider itself, which
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: is you know a series of vacuum tubes and little
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: accelerator cavities and magnets to bend the thing. So it's
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of work. It's a huge piece of infrastructure.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: You're talking about a ring like a tunnel in the
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: shape of a circle, kind of like the large Hadron collider,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: but bigger. I imagine, much bigger, Like if you looked
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: at a map, you could fit like you know, eight
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: l ah c's inside the super conducting super collider. I
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: mean the large hadron colliders like thirty kilometers around. This
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: thing's ninety kilometers around. So it's much bigger. And it
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: was so big. In fact, they were going to make
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: it not a perfectly a circle. They were gonna have
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: some straight shot parts of it, like stretch out the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: circle light into more of like an oblong Well, you
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: don't need to bend it all the time. You can
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: have linear sections where you just accelerating like a running track,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: like a running track exactly. But then they had to
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: build experimental halls where they were going to surround the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: collider with the detectors to see the collisions. And you
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: have to build a whole place for the scientists to live.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And you know, one problem was just like getting scientists
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: out there. You know, you're working at firmula, you're living
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: in Chicago, and now your next job opportunity is like
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: waxa hatchie Texas. It was not always that attractive. You know,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: nothing against small town Texas, but not everybody wanted to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: move there. So there were a lot of obstacles to
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: get into this thing off the ground. Had to convince
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Starbucks to open a branch there. It was a man.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: And you need a bigger circle because the more energy
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: that you have in your beam and your particles that
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: you're accelerating, it's harder to kind of make them go
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: in a circle when they're they're going faster. That's right,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: That's what the magnets are for. They're there to curve
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: it into a circle. So you either need a larger
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: tunnel if they're going faster, or you need stronger magnets.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And so the Large Hadron Collider made a different choice.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: They were like, we're going to build our collider inside
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: an existing tunnel. We're just gonna work really really hard
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: on the magnet technology to make them bend even harder.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So the LEDC went for smaller tunnel, bigger magnets, and
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: the super Conducting super Collider were like, hey, we're in Texas,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: let's just make it huge, and that worries so much
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: about the magnets, I see, because it's tricky, right, I mean,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: those magnets are really tricky. These magnets are really tricky.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: And that's the super conducting part. Even though the magnets
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: at the SSC weren't going to be as powerful as
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the LHC, they still have to be really really cold
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: because remember these are electro magnets, and the way you
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: generate those magnets, you have loops of wire and a coil.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: You turned on the current and you get a magnet
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: through the center of it, and the stronger the current,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: the stronger the magnet. And if you have super conducting coils,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: then you have really high currents and you have really
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: strong magnets. So these things are cooled down to super
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: cool temperatures to be super conducting for super strong magnets.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: All right, So they planned it. They actually drew up
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the plants and they actually started building it. Like they
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: dug up the tunnel. Yeah, there's twenty three kilometers of
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: tunnel that they dug and are still there. They spent
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: two billion dollars building buildings and digging this tunnel. But
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: then they started to lose support in Congress. So now
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: it's like or so enthusiasm is weighing a little bit,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: because not only does it seem like the Cold War
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: is sort of over, there was a huge amount of
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: money being spent on the International Space Station, and people
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: didn't have the appetite for like two of these massive projects.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: And also I think we started going into a recession
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: or something, didn't we Yeah, exactly, and so we weren't
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: just like spending money out the wazoo anymore. And so
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: it was the U. S. House of Representatives actually voted
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to kill this project. You know, it needed authorization every
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: single year. It's not like you know, some centrally planned
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: government where you can say, here's twenty years where the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: funding the government is not going to change. The House
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: changes every two years, and you know, they had to
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: reauthorize funding because they get the bill every year. Every
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: year they look at the budget and the build they're like,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: what is now six billion dollars? Yeah, and so if
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: you're a project that's going to take twenty years to fund,
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: you need to be approved twenty times basically in order
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: to be completed. So in ninety two the House killed it,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: but then the Senate saved it. The Senate was like, no,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: this is a big deal. It is still important. You know,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: the Senate sort of slower moving than the House. Those
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: guys a six year terms, etcetera. So he was saved.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And you know, Carlo Rubia, the guy who has ended
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: up being the director of CERN, he came over and
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: testified to Congress and he said, you guys are wasting
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: your money because we're building a collider at CERN and
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: it's going to be just as good and it's gonna
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: be turned on before yours, and you're wasting your time
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and your money. But it was three times smaller. It
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: was smaller, and his collider was ten years behind schedule.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: But you know, it was in competition. He wanted the
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Europeans to discover the Higgs boson or what lay beyond it,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: and so he didn't want the American competition. We totally
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: got bamboozl we did, we got ruby, we got faked out,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: we did get packed out. And you know, at that point,
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: it was well over its budget. It looked like it
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: was going to cost like twelve billion dollars. And now
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: Clinton was president and Clinton was not terribly excited to
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: spend a lot of money on a project that seemed
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: like Ronald Reagan's pet project. I said, he didn't want
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: to spend the money on the kipper Tron kimber Tron exactly.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: If we had named it the Clintron, you know, then
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: maybe it would have succeeded. He yeah, there you go. Yeah,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you guys should have played that game a little better.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: And you know, it hadicism not just from politicians but
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: also from other scientists. Scientists and other field felt like, hey,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: this is too much money. Particle physicists been hogging the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: budget for years. This is unfair. Even other particle physicists.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: We're thinking, look, this one massive project is just sort
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of like pulling all the oxygen out of the room.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: You can't get funding from any other kind of particle
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: physics experiment. Some people thought, instead of having one megaproject,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: we should have like a healthy ecosystem of smaller ones, right,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: because if this project is taking the twelve billion dollars,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: that's twelve billion dollars that it's not going to other
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: science projects. Yeah, and it's not necessarily a zero sum game, right, Like,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: there is a lot more money than twelve billion dollars
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: in the US government, if they decided to spend this much,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: they might not necessarily cut it from other projects. Right,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: And when people talk about is ten billion dollars worth
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: it to build another collider, you know, you don't necessarily
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: have to assume that ten billion is coming from other
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: science projects. Maybe it's coming from the defense budget, or
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: maybe it's just an investment. You borrow the money from
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: their future, you know, by bonds, and then invest in
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: basic research and in education. In my view, it's always
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: good to spend money on basic research, particle physics or
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: otherwise because it pays for itself. You get that money
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: back in terms of educating your population or understanding the
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: universe or whatever. Me So it's a complicated political question,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: but preferably particle physics. You the top of particle physics,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: then cartoonists, then podcasts. All right, let's get into what
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: we could have learned from this project and what happened
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: when it was canceled. But first let's take another quick break.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: All right, Daniels, So the super conducting super collider, biggest
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: collider ever to be built in Texas, just got killed
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: by the House. And what was the reaction. Well, and
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: it was finally killed, and you know, in particle physics,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: people felt like the world it ended, you know, they
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. They thought, look, we built this big thing,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: We've already gotten funding, we started building a tunnel. We're
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the most important kind of physics there is. There's a
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: lot of arrogance and particle of physics, I will admit.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: And so they were just totally shocked. They were totally shocked,
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people lost their jobs and left
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the field, you know, because suddenly the field shrank all
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, there aren't these two thousand positions at
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: the Superconnecting super Collider Laboratory to support people. People had
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: left their jobs at universities to move down there and
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: work full time at this lab, which was now you know,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: become a ghost town. So the whole field just contracted,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: like the number of particle physicists shrink, not just the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: number of colliders and the amount of money spent on stuff,
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: but the number of people involved. And a lot of
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: those people went into finance to make money, to make money,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: and you know what's partially to cause for the financial
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: collapse in the two thousand seven and two thousand and
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: eight was a lot of physicists not really want, not
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: really understanding what they're doing. What you're drawing in line
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: directly from physicists leaving to field the nineties three to
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: the economic collapse of two eight. I'm not drawing the line.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying one thing and then I'm saying the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: other thing. There's a correlation, you're saying I didn't even
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: say there's a correlation. I just said the one thing
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: and then the other thing happened. But I will not
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: pretty sure you said that was to cause Daniel. We
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: can let's rewind the tape. But I will note that
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I think it's always a mistake to not invest in
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: keep keep physicists away from the actual money, and just
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: give them the money. I do think that's smart. I
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: do not think it's a good idea to have physicist anyway. Um,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: there was sort of a celebration in other fields, condensed
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: matter physics that always felt like particle physics got too
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: much of the pie. You know, they thought this come
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: up in for high energy physics was long overwhelmed. They
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: were dancing in your grave. They're in the streets celebrating. Yeah,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: they sort of were. The sort of were and of course,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: it left an opening for the Europeans to build their
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: collider and discovered the Higgs boson, and they did, and
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: they did, I mean a few twenty years later, twenty
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: years later exactly, but it's you know, it was sent
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: shock waves into particle physics that I still felt a
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: few years later. I didn't join the field until like
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: nine when I graduated from college and started grad school,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and people were still reeling from this. You know. It
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: was like the thing that happened that nobody wanted to
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: talk about, but it left a huge mark on the field.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: The project that shall not be named, that shall not
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: be finished, that should have been named the Bilotron, the Clintron,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: but now we don't talk about it about it anymore. Yeah,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: all right, Well that's a shame and sort of I
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: guess a tragedy and a victim of politics and changing,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: you know, political landscapes. So maybe it step us through.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Let's rubbit in, Daniel, what could we have learned from
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: this from the different on what that's potentially what? What
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: what amazing discoveries do we miss out on? Well, we
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: don't know. But maybe that's the most painful part for
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: me personally, because I feel like we could have purchased knowledge,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: We could have pulled back the curtain and seeing what
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: nature has and we still don't know the answer to
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: those questions, but we could have those today, you know.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: So Number one, we would have found the Higgs boson,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: and we would have found it ten or fifteen years earlier.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: You know, if the super conducting super collider had been
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: built and turned on like expected, you know, around the
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: year two thousand, then it would have been so powerful
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: it would have found the Higgs boson very quickly. You
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: know that's a ten year Yeah. Absolutely, it was definitely equipped.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: You don't think there would have been delays or like
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: you would have looked in the wrong place by accident. No,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: it's powerful enough to definitely discover it. Of course, there
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: could always be delays. That certainly happens in a lot
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: of these big experiments. But you know, they started building
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: this thing in the eighties, they started digging the tunnel
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: in the eighties. It seemed pretty likely it was going
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: to turn on two thousand, two thousand one, that kind
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: of time scale. And so the sooner you build these things,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: the earlier you learn this stuff, and the further down
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: the road you are to answering some mysteries of the universe. Right,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I don't really care if Americans or Europeans discover the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: Higgs boson, but we would have found it sooner, would
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I had the answer to these questions. And there's a
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: whole decade there where we didn't know the Higgs Boson existed,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: if it was real or not, and we could have
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: been in the know. And so to me that's sort
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: of tension, like that we could have known this sooner.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: That's really worth the luck, right, because we ain't getting younger,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: so the sooner we get answers to the better. Right. Yeah,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: you don't wanted to discover the secrets of the universe
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: after you're dead, that's right. But the really painful part
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: is just the missed opportunity for future exploration. I mean,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: we're really limited by the energy of these machines. The
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: more energy is in the machine, the easier it is
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: to create these new, really heavy particles. And the thing
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: that we don't know is where are the new particles
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: after the Higgs boson? What else is there to discover?
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: People have ideas, but they're just really ideas, and we
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: can talk about some of those in the moment. But
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: the point is that this is untapped territory. We don't
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: know what to expect. You just have to go look.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like landing on a new alien planet,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: right opening up the hatch and walking around. You don't
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: know if it's going to be dust and rubble and nothingness,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: or if it's going to be like filled with crazy
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: things that blow your mind. And so we could have
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: turned this thing on, We could have pulled back the curtain.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: There could be things waiting for us to discover that
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: we might have found. Now the late c it found
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, but so far it's found nothing else,
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: and that tells us that maybe it needed more energy.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe we needed a bigger collider in order to find
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: those secrets or to unravel some of the mysteries that
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: we're struggling with today. Right, it could be like like
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the mysteries of the universe, the pink unicorns are just
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: above what the l can do. It could be, right,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: it could also be that there's nothing there and we'd
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: build a forty TV collider and found nothing, but you
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: can't tell, or just like found the Higgs boson and
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: that's it. Yeah, but you can't tell them if you
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: don't look. And the amount of money we're talking about,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: you know, a few billion dollars, it just it pales
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: in comparison to like the amount of just money wasted
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: on toilets by the military. So it pains me to
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: think that we almost pulled back the curtain and could
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: have seen these things if they are there, but didn't
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: you know. It's like if somebody told you, oh, you
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: could have landed a spaceship on this exo planet and
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: we could have had pictures of it right now, Like, wow,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that would be exciting. How much would you pay for
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: pictures of the surface of exo planets? I would pay
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: billions of dollars of government money. Personally, I would write
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the check from the U. S. Treasury for billions of dollars,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: like I would spend billions of dollars of other people's money.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: It's our money. It's our money, man, we are we
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: earned that money, we gave it to the government. We
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: want them to do good stuff with it. Right Well,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: is the door closed? Like just because this collider didn't
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: take off or was built, isn't the l a C
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: upgrading itself? And are their plans for a bigger collider. Now, yeah,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: there are plans conversations about building a one hundred TV collider,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: which would dwarf even the super conducting super collider super
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: duper but you know, super super duper collider conducting super
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: duper collider. What we gotta do is figure out who's
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: going to be president in fifteen years and name it
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: after that or just keep changing the name. Why not? No,
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: but the SEC still overshadows these conversations. Every time somebody's like,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: let's build a really big one. People like, yeah, but
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: remember that time we asked for too much money. Traumatized,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: we crashed and burned. Yeah, we're traumatized. We've got PTSD
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: particle traumatic stress science syndrome. Yeah, nobody really knows, like
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: how much money will the political system tolerate? Like, hundred
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: billion dollars is a lot of money to spend on
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: a collider, Fifty billion is a lot of money, twenty
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: billion is a lot of money. How much can we
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: afford to spend on these things? So we're talking about
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: new colliders to maybe discover what dark matter is, maybe
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: figure out what the graviton is. Is there a particle
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: that media is gravity? Is there a whole spectrum of
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: crazy particles out there we haven't even anticipated. We're talking
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: about spending that kind of money, maybe building one in China,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: maybe building one in Europe. The v LHC, they call
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: it the Very Large Hadron Collider. But overshadowing all these
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: conversations is a memory of the SSC, why it fail,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: and how to avoid that kind of scenario in the future. Well,
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: I think I have the solution, Daniel. I think it's
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: pretty clear to me what needs to happen with that.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: You need to run for president. Man is never gonna happen.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I want to build a hundred billion dollar white c atron.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Do we get about two votes? Yeah, I'm a one
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: issue candidate. I'm gonna slash the US spending except for
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: particle physics. You know. Frankly, I'm I'm frustrated. I don't
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: understand why spending money on basic research isn't the bipartisan issue.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: You know, if your goal is to understand the universe,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: it's definitely worth the money. If your goal is to
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: prove education, it's definitely worth the money. If your goal
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: is to improve technology or economics or anything, even you know,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: potential military applications spend money on basic research. Republicans, Democrats, centrists, liberals, conservatives,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: everybody should agree that money for basic research improve society.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: It's a good investment in ourselves. So I don't understand
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: why we don't have a trillion dollar science. But because
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: you're not running for office, Daniel, I think you need
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: to do it. That was my pitch right there. All right,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: let's go viral then. But you know, people also tend
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: to view science is a zero sum game. So if
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: you're asking for money for your big collider, then probably
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: it's going to squeeze the budget of other projects. And
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: then you get into this question like what's more important,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you know, researching potential vaccines for future viral pandemics or
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: studying some crazy particles and nobody's ever seen before. And
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: those are really hard conversations to happen. Well at the moment,
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: At the moment, it's not that hard, Daniel, I think.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I think right now, are you saying you're not voting
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: for me? For presidents? What I'm here, I'm saying that
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: sixty years to think about it, that's right, you know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: let's see how that your platform involves. So it's a
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: it's a delicate balance. You know, you've got to have
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: good project management skills to your project doesn't go four
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: or eight billion dollars over budget. But you also have
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: to understand the political landscape and how it's changing, and
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: how the various national governments are involved, want to be
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: involved or don't want to be involved. It's really complex
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: to manage such a big international project. You're saying the
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: problem is people getting people to agree. Yeah, that's right.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: But science is by people and for people, and so
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: it's important that people are invested. And hey, that's one
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: reason why we do this podcast is that people understand
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: why these projects are so fascinating, why they're important, the
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: secrets we could learn about the universe, and why they're
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: important not just for a few thousand people in lab
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: coats around the world, but for everybody, because everybody wants
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: to know the answer to the questions what's the universe
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: made out of it? How did it start? And those
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: answers could lie at the heart of the next big
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: particle collector. All right, well, we hope you enjoyed that,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: and and it makes you think of what could have
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: been or what we could know but currently don't know.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: If only we explored. That's right. There is some element
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: of the multiverse out there in which they did build
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: the super connecting super collider, and they have the secrets
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: of the universe, and they are laughing at us because
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: we are so clueless. Oh man, Now I have FuMO
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: mode exactly fear of missing out to a multiverse observer geez.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: And it's infinite too, so it's infinite fomo. That's exactly
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: what I have. Yeah. All right, well, thanks for joining us,
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcast For my heart Radio,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. No