Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Is A New Particle Collider Worth $20B?

Transcript

Is A New Particle Collider Worth $20B? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:07
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, what's the biggest most expensive science project ever? Well,
0:12
Speaker 1: you know, us scientists, we love building taxpayer funded toys,
0:16
Speaker 1: and when we get the freedom to do so, we
0:19
Speaker 1: spend big. So I think the biggest one is the
0:22
Speaker 1: International Space Station at like a hundred billion dollars a
0:26
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars billion with a B. And by comparison,
0:32
Speaker 1: the largest particle collider we've ever built comes into only
0:35
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars. But let's put that in context. For like,
0:39
Speaker 1: compared to what normal people spend their money on, you
0:41
Speaker 1: could probably pay for like the college education of forty
0:45
Speaker 1: or fifty thousand people that much money, or the equipment
0:48
Speaker 1: that's the equivalent of about two billion lott. Or you
0:51
Speaker 1: could have spent ten billion dollars on about a hundred
0:54
Speaker 1: thirty thousand testlas. Oh my goodness. You could go out
0:57
Speaker 1: and be like, you get a test left, and you
0:59
Speaker 1: get a test You're the new Oprah Horhan. Science could
1:02
Speaker 1: be the new Oprah. So that sounds like a lot
1:05
Speaker 1: of money, but actually, compared to some of the other
1:08
Speaker 1: things we spend money on, it's not that much, right,
1:10
Speaker 1: Like how much does one aircraft carrier costs? Yeah, those
1:13
Speaker 1: things are more than ten billion dollars, and our annual
1:16
Speaker 1: military budget is like seven hundred billion dollars every year.
1:21
Speaker 1: Obviously military great and important. Is it's seven hundred billion
1:26
Speaker 1: dollars important to have nothing? I don't know what else
1:28
Speaker 1: to say about that. Yeah. Hi, I'm Organ and I'm Daniel,
1:49
Speaker 1: and we're the host of this podcast. Daniel and Jorge
1:51
Speaker 1: explained the universe, which takes something south of ten billion
1:55
Speaker 1: dollars to produce every year. Yeah, much cheaper you can
1:58
Speaker 1: buy like a bazillion podcast episod So it's of our
2:00
Speaker 1: show for that kind of money. Actually an infinite number,
2:04
Speaker 1: since you pay nothing for this podcast. I mean how
2:07
Speaker 1: much we get? How much? How much we were paid? Yeah,
2:10
Speaker 1: that would be one billion I think podcast episodes and
2:13
Speaker 1: ten billion. Yeah, we get about three bananas per per episode.
2:17
Speaker 1: You get three bananas. I only get two bananas. Where's
2:19
Speaker 1: my agent? Maybe you get paid in Apple's And that's right. Yeah.
2:24
Speaker 1: And so this episode we're talking about money, and not
2:27
Speaker 1: just any kind of money, but money, and that's being
2:30
Speaker 1: proposed to be spent on the future of particle physics
2:33
Speaker 1: and so on this episode we're asking the question, is
2:41
Speaker 1: a new twenty billion dollar particle collider worth the money.
2:45
Speaker 1: And you know, big science costs money. Anytime we want
2:48
Speaker 1: to build something big, it costs money. Like I was
2:50
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area recently and I drove across the
2:52
Speaker 1: New Bay Bridge. That thing is beautiful, and every time
2:55
Speaker 1: I drive across it, I think, Wow, look what humans
2:58
Speaker 1: can create. Right, Like, when we come together there, we
3:00
Speaker 1: can make things that are so much bigger, so much
3:02
Speaker 1: more grandiose than anything one human could ever build if
3:06
Speaker 1: if we pulled together right and spend the money. Yeah,
3:08
Speaker 1: Cubans working together can achieve things that are incredible. And
3:13
Speaker 1: that extends also to science. You know, we can do
3:15
Speaker 1: things in science together as hundreds or thousands of scientists
3:19
Speaker 1: that we could certainly never do as soul scientists. And
3:22
Speaker 1: that includes things like space stations and fusion reactors and
3:25
Speaker 1: particle colliders. Right. Well, it's interesting to think that science
3:29
Speaker 1: cost money, you know, like it's not something people do
3:33
Speaker 1: for free as a as a hobby. You have to
3:35
Speaker 1: pay for people to do it. You have to pay
3:36
Speaker 1: for people, that's true, um, but also you have to
3:39
Speaker 1: pay for the stuff, right you have to build, you
3:42
Speaker 1: gotta test too. We break a lot of test too
3:45
Speaker 1: when we make a particle collider. Now you've gotta dig
3:47
Speaker 1: tunnels or you gotta launch stuff in outer space. You know,
3:50
Speaker 1: it's uh, it uses practical resources. And so you know,
3:54
Speaker 1: if money is a stand in for like a fraction
3:56
Speaker 1: of the resources of a society, then yeah, it takes
3:58
Speaker 1: a fraction of our resources, resources that could have gone
4:01
Speaker 1: to building schools or hospitals, or swimming pools or mega
4:06
Speaker 1: mansions for the rich or whatever. So it's definitely a
4:08
Speaker 1: social choice where should our resources go. Well, this episode,
4:12
Speaker 1: we are referring to the news recently that CERN the
4:16
Speaker 1: nuclear the do you know it's certain? I know it's French.
4:23
Speaker 1: It's something like as the European Center for Nuclear Research, right,
4:28
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, but it's in French. So the acronym
4:30
Speaker 1: is H inverted sancho Europeyond Nuclear. That's how PEP would
4:39
Speaker 1: say that I would not cast you for a children's show.
4:45
Speaker 1: Excuse him, monsieur, they don't keep the audio engineers. Please
4:51
Speaker 1: cut all of my bad friend Jackson. Yeah, so, yeah,
4:58
Speaker 1: there was news this week that's CERN unveiled their plans
5:01
Speaker 1: for a new twenty billion dollar particle collider. That's right,
5:05
Speaker 1: And for those of you who aren't up in the
5:06
Speaker 1: latest news and particle physics. Remember that certain is the
5:09
Speaker 1: place that it currently has the latest, greatest, largest, most energetic,
5:13
Speaker 1: sexiest um collider we've ever built. It's the Large hay
5:17
Speaker 1: Drawn Collider. It's twenties seven kilometers around in a big
5:22
Speaker 1: circle underground, so that that one's been around for maybe
5:25
Speaker 1: over twenty years, right, or it started over twenty years ago. Well,
5:29
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Colliders started about two thousand eight, two
5:31
Speaker 1: thousand nine, depending on how you count, because we had
5:34
Speaker 1: a few hiccups there. So it's been running for about
5:36
Speaker 1: ten years. But of course these things take decades to build,
5:39
Speaker 1: so it's been a project for much longer than ten years.
5:42
Speaker 1: But it's in the same tunnel as the previous collider,
5:45
Speaker 1: the Large Electron Proton Collider, which operated in the nineties
5:48
Speaker 1: and the early two thousand's, So yeah, there's been a
5:51
Speaker 1: collider in that tunnel for a while, and and that's
5:53
Speaker 1: the one they used to discover the famous Higgs boson
5:55
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Right, that's right, the Large
5:58
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson. And before the Large
6:01
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, the biggest accelerator in the world and maybe
6:04
Speaker 1: the universe, we don't know. The status of alien particle
6:07
Speaker 1: physics was outside Chicago, so the Americans had the lead
6:11
Speaker 1: until about two thousand and seven with a collider outside
6:14
Speaker 1: Chicago called the Tevatron Firm the National Lab. But then
6:17
Speaker 1: the Europeans took over with the LHC, and they've been
6:20
Speaker 1: in the lead ever since. And so the news is
6:22
Speaker 1: that they're they're going, or they're trying to, or they're
6:25
Speaker 1: proposing to build an even bigger one, so bigger than
6:28
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle collider called the
6:33
Speaker 1: Future Circular Collider. I feel like you guys, you physicists,
6:37
Speaker 1: sort of paint yourself into a corner every time you
6:39
Speaker 1: name one of these things. You know, you name, You
6:42
Speaker 1: named it the Large Hadron Collider, and so now you're trapped.
6:45
Speaker 1: What are you gonna call the next bigger one? The larger? Yes,
6:49
Speaker 1: there was, there was. There's actually a proposal for a
6:52
Speaker 1: v LHC, the very large Hydrin Collider, which means gigantic.
6:58
Speaker 1: You could just keep adding prefixes, the amazing, super extra
7:03
Speaker 1: califragilistic collider. So you guys went work with Future Circular Collider.
7:08
Speaker 1: But what are you gonna do once you build it
7:09
Speaker 1: and you want to build another one, you know, the
7:11
Speaker 1: future future, the very future circular collider. Oh that's a
7:16
Speaker 1: good question. Yeah, well, excuse me while I go tear
7:19
Speaker 1: up the Certain report. We have to start from scratch again.
7:21
Speaker 1: Jorge found a fatal flaw in terms proposal. I think
7:25
Speaker 1: the FEC has taken. So, yes, that's true. There's probably
7:28
Speaker 1: other things FEC with the Federal Communications Commission, the Fudge
7:34
Speaker 1: Chocolate Corporation, what ye, the Fellowship of of Um, Casual Christians,
7:40
Speaker 1: circular clowns, the fancy cat caball you know. I don't
7:49
Speaker 1: know UM, but so Certain did some studies and they
7:51
Speaker 1: said how big would the next one have to be
7:54
Speaker 1: and how much would that cost? And so they proposed
7:57
Speaker 1: one that's a hundred kilometers in circumfort. So remember the
8:01
Speaker 1: LIGHTCS twenty seven kilometers in their conference, this new one
8:05
Speaker 1: would be almost three or four times bigger, and they
8:08
Speaker 1: estimate the cost to be twenty billion dollars worldwide. It's
8:11
Speaker 1: three times bigger and it's gonna cost twenty billion dollars,
8:14
Speaker 1: which I think would sort of make it the or
8:17
Speaker 1: one of the largest science experiments on Earth, like on
8:20
Speaker 1: the planets, floating space, and so yeah, we thought, is
8:25
Speaker 1: this worth it? Let's explore the reasons why you might,
8:28
Speaker 1: as a government official, decide to spend twenty billion dollars
8:32
Speaker 1: buying abstract knowledge about the universe, and why maybe it's
8:35
Speaker 1: not a great idea. So Daniel, as usual, went out
8:38
Speaker 1: into the street and ask people, should we spend twenty
8:41
Speaker 1: billion dollars on a new collider to understand tiny little particles?
8:46
Speaker 1: And this is what the unprepared totally randomly a cost
8:50
Speaker 1: and u c I students had to say, spared than
8:53
Speaker 1: spending it on on the wall, you know, so yeah,
8:55
Speaker 1: go go for it, you know, yeah, I think so
8:58
Speaker 1: that helps me understand those things. And yeah, all right,
9:02
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say it's a bad use. It's definitely a
9:04
Speaker 1: good use, better than some other proposals we have today.
9:08
Speaker 1: But I don't know if that's the most urgent need
9:11
Speaker 1: that we have right now. I feel like, but a
9:13
Speaker 1: particle colleteral collider is no waste of money. Oh, sure,
9:18
Speaker 1: to study more about nature. It sounds like a good idea.
9:21
Speaker 1: I feel like you were asking them that question, but
9:22
Speaker 1: you were also sort of trying to validate your own existence.
9:26
Speaker 1: We're like, do you think this is worth it? What
9:29
Speaker 1: I do for a living? Well, I didn't tell them
9:31
Speaker 1: I was a particle physicist. And also I don't actually
9:34
Speaker 1: have a stake in this because if this collider gets built,
9:37
Speaker 1: it's not going to turn on until then I'll be
9:41
Speaker 1: long retired. I thought professors never retired. We just graat away, right, Um,
9:48
Speaker 1: it won't be done untilty something that's like thirty years
9:51
Speaker 1: from now. It's a long time. And you know, we're
9:53
Speaker 1: gonna be operating the late C for another fifteen twenty
9:56
Speaker 1: years and building a tunnel like that takes a long time.
9:59
Speaker 1: After you the precise um, and you've got to start
10:02
Speaker 1: planning these things decades in advance because it takes a
10:04
Speaker 1: huge amount of political coordination to get all the countries
10:07
Speaker 1: together and to sign the treaties. Um, so it's a
10:10
Speaker 1: big project. So yeah, you gotta start well in advance.
10:12
Speaker 1: So we're really talking about the future. It's like the
10:14
Speaker 1: people who are going to probably working at all those
10:17
Speaker 1: grad students haven't even been born, oh for sure. Yeah,
10:21
Speaker 1: And so it's this generation is building the collider for
10:23
Speaker 1: the next generation. But you know, back to the interviews
10:26
Speaker 1: on the street, I was really heartened. Like I posed
10:29
Speaker 1: this question, is like is this a good way to
10:31
Speaker 1: spend taxpayer money? And I tried on purpose to phrase
10:34
Speaker 1: it a little bit skeptically, but most people were like, yeah,
10:37
Speaker 1: it sounds good. I'm interested in talking particles. Science is awesome.
10:41
Speaker 1: Well that's cool. I was heartened by that. Wow, So
10:44
Speaker 1: you try to add a little bit of like do
10:46
Speaker 1: you think this is worth it? People responded yeah they did.
10:51
Speaker 1: And then this morning I was teaching my class, which
10:54
Speaker 1: is about four hundred freshmen, and I put a poll
10:56
Speaker 1: up on the the startup class and I asked them,
10:59
Speaker 1: I said, is it's worth twenty billion dollars to build
11:01
Speaker 1: a new particle accelerator? And seventy percent of them said yes. Wow.
11:06
Speaker 1: I think the surprising thing is that thirty of your
11:09
Speaker 1: students I think you should be out of a job.
11:14
Speaker 1: It was anonymous, right, so they don't lose credit or
11:17
Speaker 1: anything for for saying no. But yeah, some of them
11:19
Speaker 1: I think just thought it's too much money. And you know,
11:21
Speaker 1: in the interviews, some people make good points like there
11:23
Speaker 1: are other things we could spend this money on, like
11:26
Speaker 1: college educations and homelessness, and yeah, some people some people
11:30
Speaker 1: have brought that up in the interviews to they said
11:32
Speaker 1: that you know, maybe this is this is money we
11:34
Speaker 1: could be spending on something else, and every every time
11:37
Speaker 1: we spend his opportunity costs. Right, dollar you spend on
11:40
Speaker 1: one thing means you can't spend it on something else. Okay,
11:42
Speaker 1: So let's jump into it, and let's ask the question.
11:45
Speaker 1: First of all, why does it cost twenty billion dollars
11:48
Speaker 1: to make this science experiment? I mean, my son had
11:50
Speaker 1: a science for the other day and you know he
11:52
Speaker 1: didn't spend twill dollars. Uh So, yeah, what what does
11:57
Speaker 1: it cost so much? And I guess maybe we need
11:58
Speaker 1: to get into a little bit of how particle collider
12:01
Speaker 1: words or what. Maybe some people out there don't even
12:03
Speaker 1: know what a particle collider is, right, Okay, So a
12:07
Speaker 1: particle collider takes two little particles like protons or electrons,
12:11
Speaker 1: two tiny little things, and smashes them together. Now, to
12:14
Speaker 1: get them to go really really fast, you gotta push
12:17
Speaker 1: them for a while, right, They start off slow. Where
12:19
Speaker 1: do you get these protons and electrons? You take them
12:21
Speaker 1: from hydrogen, which is just everywhere. And then how do
12:25
Speaker 1: you get them to go really fast? You give them
12:26
Speaker 1: a push, and we can do that using little mini
12:29
Speaker 1: accelerators like they surf on electromagnetic waves that give them
12:33
Speaker 1: a little nudge. Meaning like when you create one of
12:35
Speaker 1: these particles, or you make one, or you you find one,
12:39
Speaker 1: or you you you get one, it's not moving that fast.
12:43
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily moving like the speed of light. That's right.
12:45
Speaker 1: When we start out, it's you know, at rest, like
12:47
Speaker 1: you take a hydrogen atom, you heat it up so
12:50
Speaker 1: that the electron leaves and you have a proton and
12:52
Speaker 1: it's basically just hanging out. So first you got to
12:55
Speaker 1: give it a kick. Okay, you have to accelerate it.
12:58
Speaker 1: You have to um, you know, like shoot it of
13:00
Speaker 1: a cannon. Yeah, exactly. And so we have is a
13:02
Speaker 1: series of tubes. Each one gives it a kick, and
13:05
Speaker 1: you pass it through this series of tubes, giving it
13:07
Speaker 1: more and more kicks until it's going faster and faster
13:09
Speaker 1: and faster. Right. Yeah, But the problem is you need
13:11
Speaker 1: a lot of runway, like you need a long cannon
13:14
Speaker 1: to accelerate these particles. Exactly. You want to get two
13:17
Speaker 1: really high energies, you need a lot of these kicks.
13:19
Speaker 1: And so one way to save money is to have
13:22
Speaker 1: a go in a circle, so you can have it
13:24
Speaker 1: passed through those tubes over and over and over again,
13:27
Speaker 1: and each time it comes around you give it a
13:29
Speaker 1: little bit more energy, and so it goes faster and
13:31
Speaker 1: faster and faster. Yeah, exactly. It's like your kid on
13:34
Speaker 1: the swing set. Right. First you give it a little push,
13:36
Speaker 1: and your kid is swinging, and then when they come back,
13:38
Speaker 1: you give them another push and another push, and you
13:39
Speaker 1: don't have to move. The kid comes back to you
13:41
Speaker 1: every time you give it another push. Eventually your kid
13:44
Speaker 1: is doing loop de loops over the ball and colliding.
13:47
Speaker 1: Hopefully not with kids. You bring kids exactly like I'm
13:51
Speaker 1: I'm doing physics, honey. Yeah, so that's the basic premise, right,
13:58
Speaker 1: Take a particle, give it a bunch of little pushes
14:00
Speaker 1: until it gets going really fast. Okay, what why do
14:03
Speaker 1: you need bigger rings? Right? Well, how do you get
14:04
Speaker 1: it to move in a circle? Right? You have a
14:06
Speaker 1: proton zipping along. How do you get to move in
14:07
Speaker 1: a circle. You need a magnet. A magnet will bend
14:10
Speaker 1: the path of a charge particle. So we have super
14:12
Speaker 1: duper strong magnets actually use super conducting materials to make
14:16
Speaker 1: them really really strong and they bend the particles. Like
14:20
Speaker 1: you can't just sort of bounce him on the walls
14:22
Speaker 1: of the tunnel of the tube, right, like you can't
14:25
Speaker 1: do it, you know. We actually we have grad students
14:27
Speaker 1: in there and died into protons. Turn left, turn left, turn,
14:31
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You need magnets, and like
14:33
Speaker 1: magnets is the only way to kind of guide these
14:35
Speaker 1: particles in a circle. That's right. If they smashed in
14:37
Speaker 1: the walls of the tunnel, they'll be absorbed or interact
14:39
Speaker 1: or whatever. You want pure protons and you want them
14:42
Speaker 1: a specific energy, so you don't want to touch them.
14:44
Speaker 1: So we have a ring with which has vacuum in it,
14:46
Speaker 1: and the protons are zipping around this vacuum and they're
14:48
Speaker 1: being steered by magnets. So the way they accelerated work
14:51
Speaker 1: is it gives it a push and then it bends
14:53
Speaker 1: it and gives it a push and then it bends it.
14:55
Speaker 1: It's not actually a circle. It's a bunch of these
14:57
Speaker 1: little straight lines connected by magnets bend it. But they're
15:01
Speaker 1: connected in a circle. They're connected in a big circle.
15:03
Speaker 1: And that way you can go around and around and
15:05
Speaker 1: around and getting to go faster and faster and faster. Okay,
15:08
Speaker 1: so that costs money. These cavities cost money, and the
15:10
Speaker 1: magnets cost money because in order to get to bend
15:13
Speaker 1: when it's going really fast, you need a really powerful magnet.
15:16
Speaker 1: But then the tunnel costs a lot of money. Also,
15:18
Speaker 1: I would think the tunnel is the cheapest part. Man.
15:23
Speaker 1: You have to drill a huge hole precisely in a circle,
15:26
Speaker 1: which is not and that's why it's by far the
15:29
Speaker 1: most expensive part of the collider. Oh I see, it
15:33
Speaker 1: has to be like perfect, the perfect circle. Yeah, a
15:36
Speaker 1: perfect circle. Fortunately, the Swiss are great at this. They
15:40
Speaker 1: are surrounded by mountains and so they've been developing tunnel
15:43
Speaker 1: technology for a long time. Like they built a tunnel
15:46
Speaker 1: under the Mont Blanc right one of the mountains and
15:48
Speaker 1: the Alps. It's this huge tunnel. I thought you were
15:50
Speaker 1: going to say they're good at building watches, which are
15:53
Speaker 1: a circular with precision, and so they well, you know, yeah,
15:57
Speaker 1: there's a lot of precision engineering in Switzerland, but one
16:00
Speaker 1: of the things they're really good at is tunnel building.
16:02
Speaker 1: And uh, they have these amazing machines and if you've
16:05
Speaker 1: seen them, but they look like huge worms and the
16:07
Speaker 1: front of them are basically just this big grinding face
16:10
Speaker 1: and then all the rock comes out the back and
16:12
Speaker 1: they just like chew their way through a mountain. It's
16:14
Speaker 1: really pretty awesome. Um, and the tunnel is hard, like
16:17
Speaker 1: it's not actually flat, you know, like you have mountain.
16:20
Speaker 1: You have got to build something that big. You have
16:21
Speaker 1: to take into account geology. So on one side you
16:23
Speaker 1: have mountains, on the other side you have Lake Geneva,
16:26
Speaker 1: and so you gotta like angle it a little bit.
16:28
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a big piece of work to
16:30
Speaker 1: to make that thing happen. Then on top of it
16:32
Speaker 1: you have all the electronics and all the people and
16:35
Speaker 1: so yeah, it costs some money. Yeah, Okay, So the
16:38
Speaker 1: faster you want two particles to go, the bigger the
16:40
Speaker 1: circle needs to be, which means more tunnel and more
16:44
Speaker 1: stuff to pay for it. But so what why does
16:46
Speaker 1: this circle need to be bigger? Well, either you need
16:48
Speaker 1: to have a bigger circle or you need more powerful magnets,
16:51
Speaker 1: right or both, Because if they're going faster than to
16:54
Speaker 1: get them to curve in the same circle, you need
16:56
Speaker 1: stronger magnets, so it's harder to make them go around
16:58
Speaker 1: in a circle. The faster they Yeah, exactly, you need
17:01
Speaker 1: more of a force, you need a stronger magnet, and
17:03
Speaker 1: we're already using super amazing super conducting magnets and we're
17:07
Speaker 1: pushing that technology as hard as we can. You might ask, well,
17:10
Speaker 1: why do we care? Why are we pushing them to
17:12
Speaker 1: a higher, higher energy, right, And the answer is simple.
17:15
Speaker 1: It's just E equals mc squared. That is, you take
17:18
Speaker 1: two little light particles everything. I mean, you could use
17:21
Speaker 1: that for anything, that's right. Yeah, when my my wife
17:25
Speaker 1: asked me why I didn't do the dishes, that's what
17:27
Speaker 1: I say. Equals I have no energy because my mass
17:32
Speaker 1: is sitting on the couch lazy because I added too
17:35
Speaker 1: much mass and dinner. That's right. And the speed of
17:39
Speaker 1: light doesn't save me. Um no, Because we want to
17:42
Speaker 1: pour a bunch of energy into one little spot. You
17:45
Speaker 1: take little protons, you speed them up. Would you give
17:47
Speaker 1: a lot of energy and you pour that energy into
17:50
Speaker 1: one little spot and then you can turn the energy
17:52
Speaker 1: into mass. Right, So light protons and a lot of
17:55
Speaker 1: energy can turn into some new particle that has a
17:58
Speaker 1: lot of mass, a particle that doesn't exist in normal
18:01
Speaker 1: life because it's too heavy. So we can create a
18:03
Speaker 1: spot with a lot of energy density. Maybe we can
18:05
Speaker 1: make these new kinds of particles and help unravel the
18:07
Speaker 1: riddles of dark matter and dark energy and antimatter and
18:11
Speaker 1: all this crazy stuff. Right. Yeah, that's what the colliders do,
18:14
Speaker 1: is is when you collide these particles together. Well, first
18:16
Speaker 1: of all, you shoot one of them in one direction,
18:18
Speaker 1: and you should deal the one in the other direction,
18:20
Speaker 1: and then you have him collide. Yeah, and that is hard, right,
18:23
Speaker 1: We're talking about tiny little particles. And so what we
18:26
Speaker 1: actually do is we don't shoot one proton at another
18:29
Speaker 1: proton because you basically always miss. Shoot a little a
18:32
Speaker 1: little gas of protons against a little gas of other protons,
18:35
Speaker 1: and we hope like a few of them collect a
18:37
Speaker 1: little cloud of them. You collide two clusters of them, Yeah, exactly.
18:40
Speaker 1: We can clide two clusters of them, yeah, okay, And
18:43
Speaker 1: so then when they crash, they create this kind of
18:45
Speaker 1: ball of pure energy, and and that's the stuff you study.
18:49
Speaker 1: But the more energy they come into the collision with,
18:51
Speaker 1: the more interesting stuff you can make out of that
18:54
Speaker 1: ball of energy. That's right. And when you create a
18:56
Speaker 1: new collider that has more energy than anybody's every us before,
19:00
Speaker 1: you're really exploring new territory. Right, you're creating collisions and
19:05
Speaker 1: energy nobody's ever seen before, so you have no idea
19:08
Speaker 1: what could come out. You could make new kinds of
19:10
Speaker 1: particles that nobody's ever seen before. That just that we're
19:13
Speaker 1: there on nature's menu, just waiting for somebody to create
19:17
Speaker 1: enough energy. You know, particles that haven't existed in nature
19:19
Speaker 1: since the Big Bang. That was the last time there
19:21
Speaker 1: was as much energy in one spot. I mean, we
19:24
Speaker 1: can recreate the Big Bang potentially. Well, we're not recreating
19:28
Speaker 1: the Big Bang that we're not tearing the universe apart
19:30
Speaker 1: or anything like that. So those of you who are
19:32
Speaker 1: worried don't don't worry about that. But we are recreating
19:36
Speaker 1: some of the conditions just after the Big Bang, like
19:39
Speaker 1: the the hotness, the density, the heat, the density, the
19:43
Speaker 1: intensity of the of the energy. Um. We're recreating that
19:45
Speaker 1: to hope to understand, you know, what happened in the
19:47
Speaker 1: first few moments after the Big Bang. UM. But more
19:50
Speaker 1: than that, we want to understand just like what's out there,
19:52
Speaker 1: what kind of particles can exist? You know, we are
19:55
Speaker 1: made of up quarks and down quirks and electrons, but
19:59
Speaker 1: we've found lots other kinds of particles along the way,
20:01
Speaker 1: and we're looking for patterns and those we have lots
20:04
Speaker 1: of questions about those. We did a whole podcast episode
20:06
Speaker 1: about the mysteries of the little particles. So there's a
20:09
Speaker 1: huge number about standing questions, and one great way to
20:11
Speaker 1: explore them is to just build a bigger collider and
20:14
Speaker 1: try to make more particles and see what the patterns are. Well,
20:18
Speaker 1: let's get into how fast these particles are going, but
20:21
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. Okay, So Daniel tell me,
20:37
Speaker 1: So these particles are going really really fast. So like
20:40
Speaker 1: in the large Hattern collider, they're already going at like
20:43
Speaker 1: point nine of the speed of light, which is the
20:47
Speaker 1: maximum anything can go at. Right, That's right, And that's
20:51
Speaker 1: why speed is not really the best way to think
20:53
Speaker 1: about these things, because there's a speed limit to the
20:55
Speaker 1: universe right at the speed of light, and as you
20:57
Speaker 1: get closer and closer, it gets harder and harder to
20:59
Speaker 1: go fast term, right, But there is no limit on
21:02
Speaker 1: how much energy a particle can have. Low speeds, yeah,
21:06
Speaker 1: low speeds when you and I move around, how fast
21:08
Speaker 1: we're going and how much energy we have are very
21:10
Speaker 1: closely connected because you know, some physics knows just one
21:13
Speaker 1: half mv square that's your kinetic energy. But as you
21:15
Speaker 1: get going really fast, you can keep pouring energy into something,
21:19
Speaker 1: but it doesn't always make it go faster. Really yeah,
21:22
Speaker 1: because you ask them topically approach to the speed of light.
21:24
Speaker 1: But you can keep pouring energy onto it. Right, So
21:27
Speaker 1: we don't use normal units of energy when we talk
21:30
Speaker 1: about particles. We talk about electron bolts for scale. The
21:34
Speaker 1: energy that's stored in a proton is about one giga
21:37
Speaker 1: electron bolts. That's a billion electron bolts. But is it
21:41
Speaker 1: sort of because it doesn't sound as impressive, do you
21:43
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like to go you're basically asking
21:46
Speaker 1: for twenty billion dollars to go from like po seed
21:50
Speaker 1: of light too, nine the speed of light. It's just
21:54
Speaker 1: annoying to say all those nines all the time. They
22:00
Speaker 1: at some point, Yeah, yeah, it's not impressive, but also
22:03
Speaker 1: it's not as useful. Right, Let's choose units that reflect
22:05
Speaker 1: the thing we're doing. And the thing we're doing is
22:07
Speaker 1: trying to create a lot of energy in a small
22:09
Speaker 1: amount of space, So let's talk about the energy that's there.
22:11
Speaker 1: But you're right, these things are zipping along near the
22:14
Speaker 1: speed of light, and the current accelerator we have is
22:17
Speaker 1: capable of colliding particles um with the energy the collision
22:21
Speaker 1: is thirteen terra electron bolts. So that's thirteen thousand times
22:25
Speaker 1: the energy stored in a proton, and the new one
22:29
Speaker 1: would be capable of collisions at about a hundred terra
22:32
Speaker 1: electron bolts seven times more, exactly seven times more energy.
22:37
Speaker 1: And that's like a whole new energy range. Right, Humans
22:40
Speaker 1: up till now have explored the energy range of up
22:43
Speaker 1: to thirteen TV. You turn on that new collider, you
22:46
Speaker 1: have multiplied by seven how much energy we have explored,
22:50
Speaker 1: how much territory and particle physics we have explored. It's
22:54
Speaker 1: say you're an astronomer. It's like you could simultaneously land
22:57
Speaker 1: on seven new Earth like planets all at once and
23:00
Speaker 1: like have a whole new amount of territory to explore
23:04
Speaker 1: all at once. An incredible opportunity, right, Well, um, it
23:08
Speaker 1: sounds like a great deal for twenty billion dollars um.
23:10
Speaker 1: So that's a let to get into a little bit.
23:14
Speaker 1: So why why build it? Why spend billion dollars on
23:19
Speaker 1: this one question? Or what a couple of questions about
23:23
Speaker 1: the universe. For me, it's about exploration. And of course
23:25
Speaker 1: I'm biased, right. I went into this field particle physics
23:28
Speaker 1: because I think the questions are fascinating. You know, what
23:31
Speaker 1: is the universe made out of? How is it organized?
23:33
Speaker 1: How did it all begin? And also I'm just curious,
23:37
Speaker 1: like I want to explore the universe. I want to
23:38
Speaker 1: know what's out there past our solar system. I want
23:41
Speaker 1: to know how things began. And so to me, the
23:43
Speaker 1: opportunity to learn the answers to these questions is tremendous.
23:48
Speaker 1: Some of these questions can be answered only by big
23:51
Speaker 1: science like telescopes and particle colliders, and we have the technology,
23:55
Speaker 1: we know how to do these things. The only thing
23:57
Speaker 1: standing between us and the answers is time and money.
24:01
Speaker 1: This is not like, hey, can we make a quantum
24:03
Speaker 1: computer work? Maybe? Probably, but you know, we have a
24:06
Speaker 1: lot of big puzzles to figure out. It's like, we
24:08
Speaker 1: know how to do this, we just need to build
24:09
Speaker 1: a bigger one and we can get answers. We can
24:12
Speaker 1: pull back the current on nature's mysteries. It just takes
24:15
Speaker 1: some cash. Right. Of course, we don't know if we're
24:17
Speaker 1: gonna like the answers we get or if they're just
24:20
Speaker 1: going to generate more questions. Yeah, and it's not like
24:23
Speaker 1: we're going to get the answer otherwise, you know, you
24:26
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, if we don't spend this
24:27
Speaker 1: money to build these colliders, we're just never gonna know
24:31
Speaker 1: some of these quick, big questions about the universe. Potentially
24:34
Speaker 1: that's true. Um, I'm sure there are folks out there
24:37
Speaker 1: in adjacent fields that work on similar stuff that might say, actually,
24:40
Speaker 1: you know, why don't you give me that twenty billion dollars.
24:43
Speaker 1: I'm gonna really they would be able to answer these
24:46
Speaker 1: big questions about like a dark matter and how many
24:50
Speaker 1: particles there are? You think, well, some of the questions
24:52
Speaker 1: can only be answered in the collider, you know, like
24:54
Speaker 1: are there new heavy particles out there? Some of these
24:56
Speaker 1: things are exclusively the province of colliders. But a lot
24:59
Speaker 1: of these quests, um, could be answered in other ways,
25:02
Speaker 1: you know, new telescopes peering deep into the history of
25:05
Speaker 1: the universe, or other kinds of particle experiments looking specifically
25:08
Speaker 1: for dark matter. And that's the thing. We don't know
25:11
Speaker 1: what's out there, right. We can't promise this new collider
25:14
Speaker 1: is going to discover particles X, Y and z because
25:16
Speaker 1: we don't know what's out there. We want to just explore.
25:19
Speaker 1: What we do know is that we know very little
25:21
Speaker 1: about the universe. Right. We know that we can explain
25:25
Speaker 1: five percent of the matter in the universe in terms
25:27
Speaker 1: of the particles were familiar with, and the rest is
25:29
Speaker 1: dark matter and dark energy in these great mysteries. So
25:32
Speaker 1: we know that we know very little, which means it's
25:35
Speaker 1: time to explore in a sort of an open minded way,
25:38
Speaker 1: right we don't we know that we know very well
25:40
Speaker 1: that we know very little, which means we should be
25:42
Speaker 1: looking in every way we can. So what I would
25:44
Speaker 1: say is, yeah, let's build a collider, and let's also
25:46
Speaker 1: build those other things. Oh, you've got a great idea here.
25:49
Speaker 1: You take twenty billion, you gotta you take for exactly.
25:54
Speaker 1: Let's have a huge science party. You know. It's it's
25:57
Speaker 1: incredible to me that as humans, we could like change
26:00
Speaker 1: our relationship with the universe by learning the answers to
26:03
Speaker 1: these questions, and we just don't because we want to
26:06
Speaker 1: build another aircraft carrier, or because we want to give
26:09
Speaker 1: a tax cut to the rich, or whatever, you know,
26:12
Speaker 1: we want to buy more plastic crap from China. I
26:15
Speaker 1: mean the amount of funding we give to science research
26:17
Speaker 1: compared to like how much we spend on our smartphones
26:19
Speaker 1: is ridiculous. Hey, what do we use our smartphones to do? Signs?
26:26
Speaker 1: Let's put your smartphone in the particle colliers? Is that
26:29
Speaker 1: what you mean? But you know, I think it's interesting
26:31
Speaker 1: that this concept of exploration, because you know, maybe people
26:35
Speaker 1: think exploration means going out into the stars or going
26:40
Speaker 1: somewhere and looking at different things, but here you're it's
26:44
Speaker 1: it's kind of exploring inwards or exploring smaller and smaller
26:49
Speaker 1: scales and seeing what's there and what can come out
26:51
Speaker 1: of these higher energies in such small places. That's right,
26:55
Speaker 1: And smaller and smaller scales is a great way to
26:57
Speaker 1: think about it. Um, the more enter you put into
27:00
Speaker 1: one of these collisions, the smaller the distances that you're probing.
27:04
Speaker 1: If you like to think about particles as waves, remember
27:07
Speaker 1: there's a very close connection between the energy of a
27:09
Speaker 1: particle and the wavelength of its wave function, this quantum
27:13
Speaker 1: mechanical thing that controls how it moves. So the higher
27:16
Speaker 1: the energy the particle, the shorter the wavelength. Now that's
27:19
Speaker 1: important because you can if you build a microscope you
27:22
Speaker 1: can't see anything smaller than the wavelength of the light
27:26
Speaker 1: you're using a right, So if if you want to
27:29
Speaker 1: see something really really small, you can't use light with
27:32
Speaker 1: a wavelength that's bigger than that object, which is why
27:34
Speaker 1: we make, for example, electron microscopes because electrons have really
27:37
Speaker 1: short wavelengths compared to photons, and so we can see
27:40
Speaker 1: even smaller. So you could think about these particle colliders
27:43
Speaker 1: is like enormous microscope and looking at matter at the
27:47
Speaker 1: tiniest distances were like down to the ten to the
27:50
Speaker 1: minus twenty meters is the distance scale explored by the
27:53
Speaker 1: large a dron collider. So you're right, we're exploring like
27:57
Speaker 1: inner space instead of outer space. But still it's exploration.
28:00
Speaker 1: And I think some people in the community try to
28:02
Speaker 1: sell these colliders is saying we will find this new
28:05
Speaker 1: particle x y z, and then it's embarrassing when you
28:07
Speaker 1: don't find it. But like we don't send um, you know,
28:11
Speaker 1: rovers to Mars and say and promise we're gonna find
28:13
Speaker 1: this little green man. We send rovers to Mars because
28:16
Speaker 1: we hope to be surprised. We hope to find something
28:19
Speaker 1: weird and crazy and that would blow our minds, and
28:21
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we hope for in particle physics. Yeah,
28:25
Speaker 1: I want to know, and I'm willing to pay more
28:27
Speaker 1: to do it. Is it kind of like you can
28:29
Speaker 1: read in the dark because they're just it's just hard
28:32
Speaker 1: to kind of there's not enough energy there to discern
28:35
Speaker 1: these small details. But if you turn on the light,
28:37
Speaker 1: then it's easier to read a piece of paper. Yeah, exactly.
28:41
Speaker 1: And I feel like we're sitting in a room with
28:43
Speaker 1: a piece of paper that has the answers to our
28:45
Speaker 1: deepest press and all we need to do is flip
28:48
Speaker 1: that lights. Which, Okay, it cost twenty billion bucks, but
28:52
Speaker 1: you know, let it on. Let's flip it on. Man.
28:55
Speaker 1: The other arguments in favor of it are more practical ones,
28:59
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, every time that we make these big
29:01
Speaker 1: science projects, there's a lot of new technology that comes
29:04
Speaker 1: out of it, right, That's right. And you can go
29:07
Speaker 1: to you can look at CERN's history, for example, and
29:09
Speaker 1: you can point to spinoffs that were created along the way.
29:13
Speaker 1: You know, like, for example, the guy who invented the
29:16
Speaker 1: World Wide Web, he was working at certain he needed
29:18
Speaker 1: a way to like connect computers and get people to
29:20
Speaker 1: talk to each other. Wait wait, wait the Internet. Now
29:23
Speaker 1: the Internet, but the Worldwide Web, the Www, the www. Yeah,
29:28
Speaker 1: and it would have been something else, could have been
29:30
Speaker 1: the y y y, could have been the uuu or
29:34
Speaker 1: the me me me um. Yeah. And you know that's
29:38
Speaker 1: not an argument specifically for particle colliders. That's an argument
29:40
Speaker 1: for in general investing in big science because along the
29:43
Speaker 1: way I stumbled across cool stuff. When you set a
29:46
Speaker 1: bunch of smart people, um, with enough resources to tackle
29:51
Speaker 1: something that's never been done before, they're going to learn
29:53
Speaker 1: a lot of amazing new things, right, kind of like, um,
29:56
Speaker 1: all the technology that came out of sending people to
29:58
Speaker 1: the moon, or all this technology that came out as cern.
30:02
Speaker 1: It's just like when you invest in new ideas and
30:05
Speaker 1: smart people, stuff is going to come out, not just
30:09
Speaker 1: maybe what the what the mission was, Absolutely and I'm
30:11
Speaker 1: most excited about the potential science of it. But you know,
30:14
Speaker 1: in terms of technological spinoffs, that always happens. You know,
30:17
Speaker 1: you can't predict and so you shouldn't guarantee, but that
30:20
Speaker 1: kind of thing always happens. And if you look long term,
30:24
Speaker 1: every dollar you spend on basic research and development comes
30:27
Speaker 1: back to your society a hundred or a thousandfold. It's incredible,
30:31
Speaker 1: you know, like all the transformational inventions that have changed
30:35
Speaker 1: the way we live, you know, the transistor and plastic
30:37
Speaker 1: and all this stuff came out of basic R and D.
30:40
Speaker 1: And so we need to keep funding that stuff if
30:42
Speaker 1: we want to keep transforming our society into new, crazy,
30:45
Speaker 1: amazing things. Right. It's like every company spends money on
30:49
Speaker 1: R and D. Right, Like it would be dumb not
30:52
Speaker 1: to spend money on R and D, because then you
30:54
Speaker 1: would just be stuck in the same place you are forever, exactly.
30:57
Speaker 1: But the corporations these days have become much more focused
31:00
Speaker 1: on short term gains. You know. I think it's this
31:02
Speaker 1: like cycle of investment and quarterly reports and you know
31:07
Speaker 1: how much money you're gonna make next year. So they're
31:08
Speaker 1: investing less and less in this sort of like blue
31:10
Speaker 1: sky research that could lead to the next gazillion dollar
31:14
Speaker 1: profit for them. Right, And this is where government needs
31:17
Speaker 1: to step in. This is the role of government to
31:19
Speaker 1: build those the Golden Gate Bridge and the projects that
31:22
Speaker 1: one person or one company wouldn't do, to invest long
31:25
Speaker 1: term in our society. Yeah, to spend a billion dollars now,
31:28
Speaker 1: which is going to be mean a trillion dollars from
31:30
Speaker 1: return in fifty years. Um. The thing that I don't
31:34
Speaker 1: get is that is why this isn't more of a
31:36
Speaker 1: bipartisan issue. You know, if you are interested in America's
31:41
Speaker 1: economic um hegemony, well you know, invest in basic research,
31:45
Speaker 1: because that's how we got here. If you're interested in
31:48
Speaker 1: America's military um hegemony, well, where do you think that
31:52
Speaker 1: came from? If you're you know, if you are America first,
31:55
Speaker 1: you should be pro research. You should be shoveling buckets
31:58
Speaker 1: of cash to physics people, be because that's how we
32:01
Speaker 1: got where we are. Well, let's if you're interested in
32:03
Speaker 1: big science, so you're interested in in um, you know,
32:06
Speaker 1: technological advantage, you're interested in military pre eminence. All those
32:09
Speaker 1: things came from basic research. Yeah, well let's get into
32:12
Speaker 1: the economics a little bit. But let's take another quick break. Okay,
32:28
Speaker 1: so let's take the maybe contrarian position. So why what
32:32
Speaker 1: are reasons why maybe spending twenty billion dollars on a
32:36
Speaker 1: new collider is not a good idea? Well, one strong
32:40
Speaker 1: argument is that we don't live in a fantastical environment
32:42
Speaker 1: that I described, where politicians are throwing money at everybody
32:46
Speaker 1: has a good idea for an experiment. In reality, we'll
32:48
Speaker 1: live in more of a zero sum situation where if
32:51
Speaker 1: you get a billion dollars for your science, that money
32:53
Speaker 1: is probably coming away from other science. So really it's
32:56
Speaker 1: a question of priorities. Should we spend twenty billion dollars
32:59
Speaker 1: on this or should we build twenty billion dollar experiments
33:05
Speaker 1: or you know, a hundred smaller or a thousand even smaller,
33:08
Speaker 1: one twenty projects that cost one billion dollars each, or
33:11
Speaker 1: you know, twenty one million dollar projects exactly because you
33:16
Speaker 1: know what, there's no shortage of awesome ideas for new
33:19
Speaker 1: science that we could do. If you work at a
33:21
Speaker 1: funding agency, then you're constantly being sent awesome ideas by
33:26
Speaker 1: smart people who spend a huge amount of time being
33:28
Speaker 1: clever and proposing to use something really fascinating to do
33:31
Speaker 1: to learn something interesting, and you mostly have to say no.
33:34
Speaker 1: And the reason is that there just isn't enough money. Right.
33:37
Speaker 1: There are limits to how much money we spend in
33:38
Speaker 1: science in general, in society too, right. I mean, some
33:41
Speaker 1: people in the interviews brought up that maybe we should
33:43
Speaker 1: spend that money somewhere else, like education or helping comes
33:48
Speaker 1: just within just within science. It's having such a big
33:51
Speaker 1: gorilla can crowd out other projects, other valuable projects, and
33:55
Speaker 1: it can focus the whole community on sort of one
33:57
Speaker 1: area when you might think it would be healthier to
34:00
Speaker 1: have a diversity, you know, instead of having putting all
34:02
Speaker 1: your eggs in one basket, do do a few things.
34:04
Speaker 1: But you're right, Now there's a bunch of little monkeys
34:06
Speaker 1: as opposed to a giant gorilla. That's right, who would
34:09
Speaker 1: you rather fight? Anyway? And just give him a typewriter
34:14
Speaker 1: each and they'll eventually, you know, you just have to
34:16
Speaker 1: wait to try. They'll eventually write a better script for this,
34:19
Speaker 1: for this podcast than we could ever come up with. Um.
34:22
Speaker 1: But you're right then there there are also other things
34:24
Speaker 1: we could spend this money on, right, Like the state
34:26
Speaker 1: of early childhood education in this country is appalling. The
34:30
Speaker 1: the social welfare system we have in this country is
34:34
Speaker 1: terribly weak. The infrastructure, it's always infrastructure, weekn um since
34:38
Speaker 1: Donald Trump became president. The infrastructure of this country needs
34:41
Speaker 1: to repair. So we could spend that money well in
34:43
Speaker 1: lots of places. And it's hard to know, like how
34:46
Speaker 1: do you compare right, how do you compare um infant
34:49
Speaker 1: formula to potential particle collider. And it's hard to it's
34:53
Speaker 1: hard to weigh those things. Yeah, how do you prioritize
34:56
Speaker 1: or how do you put a value on science as
34:59
Speaker 1: opposed to people's immediate sort of happiness and comfort. It's impossible, right,
35:04
Speaker 1: And that's why we should try to do all of
35:06
Speaker 1: these things. Right, We have to weigh these things. Um,
35:09
Speaker 1: work harder, work harder, you know, UM, don't charge as much, Daniel,
35:14
Speaker 1: take a pay cut. Remember the cost of the collider
35:16
Speaker 1: is mostly the tunnel, not the people. And the twenty
35:19
Speaker 1: billion dollars is a worldwide cost, not for the US
35:22
Speaker 1: or for any single country or for any taxpayer. Right.
35:26
Speaker 1: The argument I find hard is to sustain our incredible
35:30
Speaker 1: military budget at the expense of everything else, you know,
35:33
Speaker 1: even science aside, like that would take some of that
35:35
Speaker 1: seven bion dollars and put it towards education or healthcare.
35:38
Speaker 1: You might think, like, well, you know, do we need
35:40
Speaker 1: ten aircraft carriers? Can we have nine and a dollar
35:45
Speaker 1: particle collider? Exactly where what pawn shop can you go
35:48
Speaker 1: to to trade in your aircraft carrier to get ten
35:50
Speaker 1: billion dollars? I think Russia or maybe Northeast. Yeah, probably
35:56
Speaker 1: they would be happy to buy it from us. Um. Yeah, exactly.
35:58
Speaker 1: But you know these are political choices, is, and everybody
36:00
Speaker 1: out there can have their own opinion about what is
36:02
Speaker 1: the best way. We'll hear um some opinions on this episode,
36:06
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly, and I totally respect some people think maybe
36:09
Speaker 1: it's not worth the money. I hope the people who
36:10
Speaker 1: happen to be listening to this podcast are the ones
36:12
Speaker 1: who think that science is a good way to spend
36:15
Speaker 1: our money, and that you call your representatives around the
36:18
Speaker 1: world and tell them, yeah, let's build another particle collider,
36:21
Speaker 1: and let's also fund a new space telescope and another
36:24
Speaker 1: international space station and education for everybody, because these things,
36:29
Speaker 1: if we spend the money now, it will come back
36:30
Speaker 1: to us later. Yeah. And if you're a politician out
36:33
Speaker 1: there listening, just think about it. Seventy of our data
36:36
Speaker 1: sample supports big science. That's right. So send us twenty
36:40
Speaker 1: billion dollars and we'll take care of it. We'll make
36:44
Speaker 1: a billion one dollar podcasts, exactly, we will. We promised
36:49
Speaker 1: not to spend it on twenty billion dollars of bananas,
36:51
Speaker 1: right Orge, What what I'm not hearing? You're probably I
36:54
Speaker 1: can't make any guarantees. You know, it's science. You can't
36:57
Speaker 1: make any guarantees. That's right. Well, how about if we
37:00
Speaker 1: discovered the banana particle, that thing that makes banana is
37:03
Speaker 1: so amazing, Yeah, and slippery and m but but in
37:13
Speaker 1: your view it is worth it, right, in your view,
37:15
Speaker 1: you would pay anything for science, right. Do you think
37:17
Speaker 1: that there's no higher calling, perhaps than trying to figure
37:21
Speaker 1: out our placing, the universe and how it all works. Yeah,
37:25
Speaker 1: And I think as a society we should aim high.
37:27
Speaker 1: We should build incredible buildings and long bridges, and we
37:31
Speaker 1: should unravel the mysteries of the universe. And you know,
37:34
Speaker 1: we can focus on our day to day chores and
37:37
Speaker 1: the things we need to survive. We also need to
37:39
Speaker 1: think about what makes us human and that's you know,
37:41
Speaker 1: the cultural experience that includes art, creating beauty and creating
37:46
Speaker 1: and creating knowledge. And uh, I think that's part of
37:49
Speaker 1: what makes life worth men as a species, we can't
37:51
Speaker 1: just be looking down all the time. You sort of
37:53
Speaker 1: have to look up as out into the horizon. Exactly.
37:57
Speaker 1: All right, thank you for listening. I hope that this
37:59
Speaker 1: inspired you a little bit too look up and think
38:01
Speaker 1: about the big questions about the universe that's right, And
38:05
Speaker 1: hope that our society and our children and their children's
38:08
Speaker 1: children will continue to explore both outwards and inwards to
38:12
Speaker 1: unravel these questions of about the universe, these deep, deep
38:15
Speaker 1: mysteries we all want answers to. All Right, thanks for listening,
38:19
Speaker 1: See you next time. If you still have a question
38:29
Speaker 1: after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line.
38:32
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us
38:34
Speaker 1: at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge that's
38:38
Speaker 1: one word, or email us at Feedback at Daniel and
38:42
Speaker 1: Jorge dot com.