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Is there a better way to accelerate particles? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how much did the last particle accelerator cost?
0:12
Speaker 1: The LHC had a price tag of about ten billion dollars? Oh?
0:16
Speaker 1: Is that it? And how much will the next one cost?
0:19
Speaker 1: Something like fifty to one hundred billion, depending on the design.
0:23
Speaker 1: Fifty to one hundred you can narrow it down a
0:26
Speaker 1: little bit. It's a fifty billion dollars difference there, and
0:29
Speaker 1: we'd be happy with fifty billion, thank you very much.
0:31
Speaker 1: I guess who's going to pay for it? We were
0:33
Speaker 1: going to send a request to the cartoonists of the world.
0:36
Speaker 1: You want cartoonists to pay for physics? You'd be the
0:39
Speaker 1: other way around. I feel like I guess we are
0:42
Speaker 1: constantly violating the laws of physics in cartoons, so why
0:46
Speaker 1: would you pay us? You guys are just rolling in it,
0:48
Speaker 1: aren't you? Rolling in? Some But maybe you should scale
0:51
Speaker 1: down your ambitions so it's not as expensive. Well, you know,
0:53
Speaker 1: we want to solve the deepest mysteries of the universe.
0:56
Speaker 1: How do you scale down those ambitions? Isn't that kind
0:58
Speaker 1: of your job? Things? Putting things into perspective, shrinking down
1:02
Speaker 1: thanks to the quantum level, and I want to scale
1:05
Speaker 1: our ten billion dollar budget to one hundred billion dollars
1:08
Speaker 1: in quantum coins or what in bitcoins or cue bitcoins.
1:13
Speaker 1: There's definitely a lot of uncertainty in whether we'll ever
1:15
Speaker 1: get that money, both the scam and legit kind of currency.
1:34
Speaker 1: Hi am Jorhemakirtiness and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
1:38
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at
1:40
Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I want all the science projects to
1:43
Speaker 1: get more money, really all of them. I'm sure there
1:46
Speaker 1: are some science projects you're like, M, I don't know
1:49
Speaker 1: if we should do that. As long as they qualify
1:51
Speaker 1: as science projects, I think we should invest in them.
1:53
Speaker 1: You know, the big government funding agencies. They get inundated
1:56
Speaker 1: in proposals every year, and a lot of them are
1:59
Speaker 1: really good ideas that they have to say no too
2:02
Speaker 1: because they don't have enough money. Yeah, that is pretty sad.
2:05
Speaker 1: There should be more money for science, right. Science is
2:08
Speaker 1: usually good, usually right, and your also are pretty good
2:11
Speaker 1: at doing something good. Yeah, it doesn't matter if you're
2:13
Speaker 1: studying the mating patterns of ducks or the formation of
2:16
Speaker 1: the Earth or what's inside black hole. You are feeding
2:19
Speaker 1: the curiosity of humanity, and history shows us that that
2:23
Speaker 1: is a good investment. So sometimes people pitch scientists against
2:27
Speaker 1: other scientists, saying like who should get this money? But
2:29
Speaker 1: I think we should all get the money, even the cartoonists.
2:33
Speaker 1: The science of cartoons. I guess that's a different agency
2:36
Speaker 1: in the government. But anyways, welcome to our podcast Daniel
2:39
Speaker 1: and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio in
2:43
Speaker 1: which we use science to try to push back the
2:45
Speaker 1: boundaries of human ignorance. We are amazed at this incredible
2:49
Speaker 1: and wonderful and beautiful universe that we find ourselves in,
2:52
Speaker 1: but we want to do more than just appreciate it.
2:54
Speaker 1: We want to understand it. We want to decode its
2:57
Speaker 1: mysteries and explain all of them to you. That's right.
3:01
Speaker 1: It is a pretty amazing universe. And if you invest
3:03
Speaker 1: in our of your time here with us today, we
3:05
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll give your returns in terms of you understanding
3:09
Speaker 1: how things work and appreciating this amazing and beautiful cosmos
3:13
Speaker 1: that we live in. That's right. Although you're welcome to
3:15
Speaker 1: invest more than just an hour of your time. Send
3:17
Speaker 1: us some cash, no problem. Do you take bitcoins or
3:20
Speaker 1: cue bitcoins, Hey, I'll take any donations from my science
3:24
Speaker 1: absolutely make out a check just too expressive, Daniel. Have
3:28
Speaker 1: you thought of maybe if you reduce your prices, people
3:30
Speaker 1: will invest more in it. I would love to make
3:32
Speaker 1: science cheaper. You know, something that limits our understanding the
3:35
Speaker 1: universe is really just how much money we spend on it.
3:39
Speaker 1: It's like we're in the science candy store and we
3:41
Speaker 1: just have pennies in our pockets. But if we could
3:44
Speaker 1: figure out a way and make it all cheaper than wow,
3:46
Speaker 1: we could just buy more secrets of the universe. What
3:49
Speaker 1: a day that would be. Yeah, it sounds awesome, although
3:52
Speaker 1: they say it all starts with the individuals, Daniel. So
3:54
Speaker 1: you know, should we tell your university to cut your
3:57
Speaker 1: salary so I should do half as much physics? Well,
4:05
Speaker 1: you know you could do twice as much for half
4:06
Speaker 1: the price. Yeah, and then I'll eat half as much. Right, Sorry, kids,
4:11
Speaker 1: you're not eating today. It's a Tuesday, and it's for science,
4:14
Speaker 1: so you could do it too. For Yeah, you could
4:17
Speaker 1: do a hunger experiment and also make size cheaper. For
4:20
Speaker 1: you know, the mating patterns of certain animals in certain places.
4:24
Speaker 1: Sounds like we could learn a lot, but learn we
4:27
Speaker 1: do aim to do here on the podcast and so
4:30
Speaker 1: there's the rest of humanity in terms of understanding the universe,
4:32
Speaker 1: from the immense galaxies out there floating in space to
4:35
Speaker 1: the tiny little particles that make up your body and
4:38
Speaker 1: everything that you touch on an everyday basis. That's right,
4:41
Speaker 1: and we have a few ways of understanding the universe.
4:44
Speaker 1: One thing we can do is just look out into
4:46
Speaker 1: the universe and find interesting stuff that's happening and try
4:49
Speaker 1: to learn from it. That's what astrophysicists have to do,
4:52
Speaker 1: because as much as they want to shoot black holes
4:55
Speaker 1: at each other, they don't have a black hole collider,
4:57
Speaker 1: so they have to wait for nature to set up
5:00
Speaker 1: and do it for them. The other approach, of course,
5:02
Speaker 1: is to try to create the conditions we want to
5:04
Speaker 1: study here on Earth, to set up the experiments that
5:08
Speaker 1: might force the universe to reveal one of its secrets
5:11
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, and one of those strategies is to
5:14
Speaker 1: basically smash things together, is to collide tiny little particles
5:18
Speaker 1: and kind of see how you can break them. I
5:20
Speaker 1: guess that's kind of what you're trying to do, right,
5:21
Speaker 1: is you're trying to break little particles. Yeah, we are
5:23
Speaker 1: trying to break little particles. Essentially, we are trying to
5:26
Speaker 1: create new conditions that reveal the laws of physics. You know,
5:29
Speaker 1: we have a lot of experience with sort of slow
5:32
Speaker 1: moving cold stuff like baseballs flying through the air or
5:36
Speaker 1: things swimming through the ocean. Things aren't moving very very fast,
5:39
Speaker 1: they don't have a whole lot of energy. So we
5:41
Speaker 1: think we understand that kind of physics. But we want
5:43
Speaker 1: to understand the physics of the whole universe. We want
5:46
Speaker 1: to understand what happens when you push things really really far,
5:49
Speaker 1: when you get really really small. And in order to
5:51
Speaker 1: do that, we have to create those conditions. So we
5:53
Speaker 1: smash tiny particles together to make these really dense little
5:57
Speaker 1: blobs of energy that we hope reveal what the sort
5:59
Speaker 1: of underlying truths of the universe is. I guess, yeah,
6:03
Speaker 1: you're not really trying to break particles. You're trying to
6:05
Speaker 1: kind of smush them together and then see what the
6:08
Speaker 1: universe does with that smooth the energy. Yeah, when particles
6:11
Speaker 1: get really close together, they interact, and that interaction can
6:14
Speaker 1: create new kinds of particles. One of the most amazing
6:17
Speaker 1: things about particle collisions is that it's not like chemistry.
6:21
Speaker 1: When you're doing chemistry, you combine like H two and
6:23
Speaker 1: O two to make water. All the bits that went
6:26
Speaker 1: in just get rearranged. Right, Every hydrogen nucleus that was
6:30
Speaker 1: there is still there. Every oxygen atom that was there
6:33
Speaker 1: is still there. But when we do particle collisions, that's
6:35
Speaker 1: not what happens. What comes out of the collisions, it's
6:38
Speaker 1: not just like a rearrangement of the bits that went
6:41
Speaker 1: in like some big Lego project. Those particles that go
6:44
Speaker 1: into the collisions, they get literally annihilated and turned into
6:48
Speaker 1: new kinds of matter. So we're not doing chemistry. We're
6:51
Speaker 1: doing alchemy. Although that's kind of what you think is happening, right, Like,
6:55
Speaker 1: you don't know, you're not quite sure. Maybe inside of
6:57
Speaker 1: those little tiny particles are tiny little strength that do
7:00
Speaker 1: get kind of rearranged like legos. Isn't that a possibility? Absolutely,
7:03
Speaker 1: that's right. There are many layers to our picture of
7:05
Speaker 1: the universe. Currently, we think about the particles that are
7:08
Speaker 1: interacting those quarks and the electrons as if they are
7:11
Speaker 1: fundamental objects. But it certainly might be that they are emerging,
7:14
Speaker 1: that there are combinations of even smaller things, and so
7:17
Speaker 1: then what it means to annihilate that particle is in fact,
7:20
Speaker 1: to break it into its smaller components, which then can
7:23
Speaker 1: rearrange themselves. But if we can do that, then we
7:26
Speaker 1: hope to smash those components together and maybe annihilate them,
7:30
Speaker 1: and eventually we think when you get down to the
7:32
Speaker 1: universe and its most basic building block, what you're really
7:35
Speaker 1: doing is annihilation of fundamental objects. So you're an annihilist
7:41
Speaker 1: at heart, you're an annihilist physicist, I am an annihilist, absolutely, Yeah,
7:46
Speaker 1: you subscribe to annihilism. Hey, at least it's an ethos, right,
7:49
Speaker 1: you should come up with your own kind of a
7:51
Speaker 1: punk rock music for that. But smashing these things together,
7:54
Speaker 1: I guess it's one thing that you can learn how
7:56
Speaker 1: things work, because I guess when things are that small,
7:59
Speaker 1: you can't take a pair of tweezers and pry them open, right, Like,
8:02
Speaker 1: That's kind of the only way you can really see
8:04
Speaker 1: what's inside of some of these fundamental particles. Yeah, and
8:08
Speaker 1: you really put your finger there on what we're trying
8:10
Speaker 1: to do. We're trying to see inside these particles. I mean,
8:13
Speaker 1: from one perspective, you could say you're annihilating them. From
8:16
Speaker 1: another perspective, you could say you're tearing them open. You're
8:18
Speaker 1: destroying the arrangement of whatever the smaller bits are, that
8:21
Speaker 1: is the electron or the quark. In the end, what
8:23
Speaker 1: we're trying to do is pull them apart, and fundamentally,
8:26
Speaker 1: it's not that different from using tweezers. What do tweezers do.
8:30
Speaker 1: They apply a lot of force in one's very specific
8:33
Speaker 1: energy in order to break some bonds, and that's exactly
8:36
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do with these particles. We smash
8:38
Speaker 1: one proton against the other one, hoping that the high
8:41
Speaker 1: energy that the proton has will smash open the other proton,
8:44
Speaker 1: revealing what's inside of it, and maybe even the quark
8:48
Speaker 1: smashing together will reveal what's inside of them. Well, smashing
8:51
Speaker 1: you have been doing at the Large Hadron collider or
8:54
Speaker 1: you were right now you have sort of an appointment there,
8:56
Speaker 1: that's right. My main research program when I'm not gooving
8:58
Speaker 1: off doing podcasts or other projects, is annihilating protons at
9:02
Speaker 1: the Large Hadron collider. I'm remember the Atlas experiment, which
9:05
Speaker 1: has built a huge electronic device which wraps around the
9:09
Speaker 1: point of collisions to take pictures of all the particles
9:12
Speaker 1: that fly out and try to learn things about what
9:14
Speaker 1: happened in all of those collisions. Yeah, And the whole
9:17
Speaker 1: point of the accelerator is to basically accelerate particles. You're
9:21
Speaker 1: speeding up the particles from standing still to almost at
9:25
Speaker 1: the speed of light, or at least at a very
9:27
Speaker 1: high velocity, and then you smash it together to get
9:30
Speaker 1: higher and higher energies. But I guess maybe the problem
9:32
Speaker 1: is that the LHC is kind of showing its age
9:34
Speaker 1: now a little bit. Yeah, that's right. The LHC is big,
9:37
Speaker 1: and it's powerful, and it was expensive, but it's also
9:41
Speaker 1: limited in its ability. The way we talk about these
9:43
Speaker 1: accelerators is basically by quoting their top speed the most
9:48
Speaker 1: energy that we can put into the particles that we're
9:50
Speaker 1: smashing together. The reason that that's the most interesting number,
9:54
Speaker 1: the one that really tells us like the discovery potential
9:57
Speaker 1: of this device, is because it limits the kind of
9:59
Speaker 1: things that it can create. Like, you take those two particles,
10:02
Speaker 1: you smash them together. What else can you make? Well,
10:04
Speaker 1: you might be able to have two other electrons come out,
10:07
Speaker 1: or two other quarks, or something else we already know about.
10:10
Speaker 1: But if you have enough energy, you might be able
10:12
Speaker 1: to build something new. Something we haven't seen before because
10:16
Speaker 1: it requires more energy density than typically exists in the universe.
10:21
Speaker 1: So the more energy you have in your collider, the
10:23
Speaker 1: more you have access to like Nature's hidden menu of particles,
10:27
Speaker 1: things that can exist in the universe but don't typically
10:31
Speaker 1: because there aren't the conditions to make them. So the
10:34
Speaker 1: LATEC is big and it's powerful, but it doesn't have
10:37
Speaker 1: infinite energy. Yeah. Well, at the time it was built,
10:39
Speaker 1: it did sort of break I mean, it definitely broke
10:41
Speaker 1: new ground in terms of how much energy you could
10:43
Speaker 1: get in an experiment. But I guess you random LAC
10:47
Speaker 1: and it found the exploson and all these amazing discoveries,
10:50
Speaker 1: and now you're kind of thinking about what's next, how
10:52
Speaker 1: can we get more energy? Yeah, we're always thinking about
10:54
Speaker 1: what's next. The collider that came just before the LATEC
10:57
Speaker 1: was just outside Chicago is the Tevatron about two terra
11:01
Speaker 1: electron volts and the Large Hadron Collider has about thirteen
11:04
Speaker 1: tera electron volts. And that's a big jump, right, that's
11:08
Speaker 1: like almost a factor of seven in terms of the
11:11
Speaker 1: territory we could explore and imagine, for example, multiplying the
11:15
Speaker 1: territory you've explored by a factor of seven. If you're
11:18
Speaker 1: in the field of like geology or planetary astronomy, you've
11:22
Speaker 1: only ever looked at Earth, and now you can simultaneously
11:25
Speaker 1: land on seven new planets all at the same time
11:27
Speaker 1: and see what's there and learn all about it. So
11:30
Speaker 1: when we turned on the Large Hadron Collider, it's like
11:32
Speaker 1: we multiplied by a factor of seven the sort of
11:35
Speaker 1: size of the particle universe that we were able to
11:39
Speaker 1: explore and to look at, and we didn't know what
11:41
Speaker 1: was there. Every time we do these kinds of explorations,
11:44
Speaker 1: there could be huge surprises waiting for us, or sort
11:47
Speaker 1: of nothing. And as you say, we found the Higgs boson,
11:49
Speaker 1: but we've been running for quite a few years and
11:51
Speaker 1: we haven't found anything else since then. Now we're wondering, like, hmm,
11:54
Speaker 1: what's around the next corner if we crack open another
11:58
Speaker 1: energy range, will there be for easy discoveries waiting for us,
12:02
Speaker 1: or just more dust and rubble. Yeah, So the LC
12:05
Speaker 1: sort of got you to a certain level, which was amazing,
12:07
Speaker 1: But I guess you feel like you've already explored this level.
12:10
Speaker 1: You've looked into every corner of this energy level, and
12:13
Speaker 1: you're kind of feeling like there's nothing else here. That's
12:18
Speaker 1: a very delicate political question as we seek approval for
12:21
Speaker 1: running the large changer on cloder for another fifteen years,
12:24
Speaker 1: because we're trying to make the science case that running
12:27
Speaker 1: it for a lot longer can look for really rare
12:29
Speaker 1: particles that maybe we missed in sort of the first scoop.
12:33
Speaker 1: So we're sort of going in two directions at once.
12:35
Speaker 1: One group of people is like, let's run this thing
12:37
Speaker 1: for as long as possible and maybe look for really
12:39
Speaker 1: rare stuff we might have missed, and the other group
12:41
Speaker 1: is looking towards the future and saying, can we build
12:44
Speaker 1: the next one? Can we plan now for the super LHC?
12:48
Speaker 1: The super LHC nice sounds like a like a superhero. Well,
12:52
Speaker 1: I guess the problem is that the LC was it's big,
12:55
Speaker 1: and it was a little expensive. But now if you
12:57
Speaker 1: want to get into higher energies, it gets even bigger
13:00
Speaker 1: and more expensive, right with the same technology it does. Basically,
13:04
Speaker 1: the only thing that limits us from building a bigger accelerator,
13:07
Speaker 1: or from having built one instead of the LATEC is money.
13:11
Speaker 1: The cost of the accelerator just scales with the size,
13:14
Speaker 1: sort of like building a highway. It's like a million
13:16
Speaker 1: dollars per mile. More miles means some more millions of dollars.
13:19
Speaker 1: So you want more energy, you've got to build a
13:21
Speaker 1: bigger collider, which costs more money. And so now people
13:25
Speaker 1: are wondering, like, should we just spend ten times as
13:28
Speaker 1: much money on a super duper version of this or
13:31
Speaker 1: should we figure out a cheaper way to do it? Yeah,
13:33
Speaker 1: because I guess, first of all, you'll know that I say,
13:36
Speaker 1: with the existing technology, it's going to be a bigger
13:39
Speaker 1: and more expensive and also I don't think most scientists
13:42
Speaker 1: are going to cut their salary and have it makes
13:46
Speaker 1: a cheaper endeavor. So I guess, like you said, we
13:48
Speaker 1: have to start looking at maybe new technologies. So today
13:51
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question, is there
13:58
Speaker 1: a better way to accelerate particles? I guess that you've
14:02
Speaker 1: been using one way to accelerate particles all this time
14:05
Speaker 1: or several ways. Right, We've been accelerating particles since about
14:08
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and we've had a series of sort
14:11
Speaker 1: of technological revolutions. People come up with a new idea
14:14
Speaker 1: to make them more powerful, and we get like a
14:16
Speaker 1: big jump in energy we're sort of at the end
14:19
Speaker 1: of one of those cycles. We've been doing it the
14:21
Speaker 1: same way for a few decades now, and we can
14:23
Speaker 1: get sort of like little incremental increases without just making
14:26
Speaker 1: it bigger, and so it sort of feels like about
14:29
Speaker 1: the time that we need to jump to the next
14:30
Speaker 1: technology and figure out like a whole new way to
14:34
Speaker 1: do this kind of thing. Yeah, like, if maybe the
14:36
Speaker 1: engineers figure out a better way to get particles moving,
14:39
Speaker 1: you could maybe make accelerators that are at the same
14:42
Speaker 1: energy or more but a lot cheaper, right, That's the
14:44
Speaker 1: whole point, And maybe eventually you'll just have it on
14:46
Speaker 1: your phone. Eventually there's an app for that, perhaps for
14:52
Speaker 1: shooting lightspeed particles from your phone. That seems usable. Well,
14:56
Speaker 1: you do have a light speed accelerator on your phone
14:58
Speaker 1: right now, I mean you have a flashlight literally shoots
15:01
Speaker 1: out particles at light speed. Unfortunately not high enough energy
15:04
Speaker 1: to do any interesting physics. But yeah, the dream is like,
15:07
Speaker 1: instead of having to collaborate with five thousand people from
15:10
Speaker 1: all over the world on a ten billion dollar project,
15:12
Speaker 1: why can't I just build this thing on a tabletop
15:15
Speaker 1: in my own basement or in my lab here at
15:17
Speaker 1: you see Irvine for two hundred thousand dollars or something
15:20
Speaker 1: and run my own experiments. Why can't everybody have their
15:23
Speaker 1: own plank scale particle collider to explore the nature of
15:27
Speaker 1: the universe? Well, I can't, and why shouldn't have? But
15:31
Speaker 1: that's not the topic today. The topic is can that happen? Like,
15:34
Speaker 1: can you imagine a future where you can have a
15:37
Speaker 1: particle collider that's as powerful as the LHC, which is huge,
15:40
Speaker 1: which is several kilometers along and underground. Can you maybe
15:44
Speaker 1: have that in like a little box in your basement.
15:46
Speaker 1: It's such a dream. I mean, imagine all of the
15:49
Speaker 1: secrets we could learn, those secrets that are just out
15:52
Speaker 1: there waiting for us if we only have the technology
15:55
Speaker 1: to crack them open. It's like we're in a room
15:56
Speaker 1: surrounded by locked boxes and we just don't have the
15:59
Speaker 1: key to any of them. You need engineers to save
16:01
Speaker 1: users say, we definitely do need the engineers working closely
16:06
Speaker 1: with a physicist to figure this all out. Well, it's
16:08
Speaker 1: usually we were wondering how many people have thought about
16:10
Speaker 1: this question of whether or not there's maybe a better
16:13
Speaker 1: way to accelerate particles. So thank you to everybody who
16:16
Speaker 1: answers these questions for the podcast to give us a
16:19
Speaker 1: sense for what people are thinking and what they already know.
16:21
Speaker 1: If you'd like to participate for a future episode, please
16:24
Speaker 1: don't be shy. Right to meet two questions at Daniel
16:27
Speaker 1: Nhorge dot com. So think about it for a second.
16:30
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a better way to accelerate particles.
16:33
Speaker 1: Here's what people had to say. My understanding of current
16:36
Speaker 1: method is that we apply electromagnetic field to accelerate a particle,
16:41
Speaker 1: and then they are propelled in high velocities in a tunnel.
16:47
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if there is any other way that
16:49
Speaker 1: this could be done. There must be, of course, but
16:52
Speaker 1: I don't think it will be that control and this
16:55
Speaker 1: might be more physical when I have no clue how
16:57
Speaker 1: that can be done well right away, I think about
16:59
Speaker 1: the fact that particles go to incredible speeds when they're
17:03
Speaker 1: orbiting a black hole in the ucretion disk. So maybe
17:07
Speaker 1: gravity would be a better way to accelerate particles. I
17:09
Speaker 1: just have no idea how we would go about doing that.
17:12
Speaker 1: I think a better way to accelerate particles might be
17:16
Speaker 1: to give it more energy or like heat, because if
17:20
Speaker 1: you have a lot of energy you're going to be
17:22
Speaker 1: moving fast. It also works the same way with heat,
17:25
Speaker 1: because like if you're cold, you don't want to move,
17:26
Speaker 1: you stay in the same place. I suppose if you
17:29
Speaker 1: could get yourself a mini black hole and rip the
17:33
Speaker 1: particles around the event horizon, they might speed up pretty good.
17:37
Speaker 1: I was wondering when I asked these questions, what if
17:40
Speaker 1: somebody actually came up with some super genius way to
17:43
Speaker 1: do this, would I end up like collaborating with them,
17:45
Speaker 1: or like, would they get the patent for it? I
17:47
Speaker 1: mean it could have been Thorny whoa like would you
17:51
Speaker 1: have to pay them as some of your salary? That
17:53
Speaker 1: would be such a difficult question. I'd hire them on
17:57
Speaker 1: the spot. Absolutely. There are some pretty interesting ideas here.
18:00
Speaker 1: I think maybe there are, you know, maybe the next
18:03
Speaker 1: big idea. It wasn't one of those answers. You think
18:06
Speaker 1: the mini black hole is the solution of the problem. Yeah,
18:10
Speaker 1: First build a super collider to create mini black holes.
18:14
Speaker 1: Then use those mini black holes to accelerate particles. It's
18:17
Speaker 1: like a bootstrap. Yeah yeah. Or gravity. That was kind
18:20
Speaker 1: of an interesting idea. I mean, we use gravity all
18:22
Speaker 1: the time to accelerate spacecraft, right, We definitely do use gravity, absolutely,
18:26
Speaker 1: and gravity does accelerate particles like particles fall towards the
18:29
Speaker 1: Earth all the time. They're called cosmic rays, and they
18:32
Speaker 1: actually do achieve super high energies and create massive collisions
18:36
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere that physicists study and used to try
18:39
Speaker 1: to understand how particles interact and what it all means.
18:43
Speaker 1: But those are a little more difficult to control. All right, Well,
18:45
Speaker 1: it's an interesting question. How do we accelerate particles faster, cheaper,
18:49
Speaker 1: and better? I guess cheaper, faster better? Isn't that the
18:52
Speaker 1: goal of any industry exactly? And then making an app
18:55
Speaker 1: how do we do physics cheaper, faster, bet Well, maybe
18:57
Speaker 1: a step us through here, how do we currently accelerate particles?
19:01
Speaker 1: Like how does the LHC exactly? How does it get
19:04
Speaker 1: particles moving so fast? Well, I don't know if that
19:05
Speaker 1: pun was intended or not, but we currently use electrical
19:09
Speaker 1: currents to accelerate particles. Yes, that was totally on purpose.
19:13
Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to app anything up or anything. I'm
19:15
Speaker 1: just trying to be a positive, reinforcing partner on the podcast. Yes,
19:19
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm also just trying to you know, kind
19:21
Speaker 1: of work the field here. This is why we don't
19:23
Speaker 1: charge for this podcast. Let's stop with the electrifinally terrible
19:27
Speaker 1: punts here, Let's get down in nuts and bolts. How
19:31
Speaker 1: are those nuts and bolts put together? In the LHC
19:34
Speaker 1: moving past our magnetic senses of humor. Essentially, we can
19:37
Speaker 1: only accelerate charged particles, and the reason is that we
19:41
Speaker 1: use electric fields in order to do it. Electric fields
19:44
Speaker 1: can tug on charge particles. That's essentially what they are.
19:48
Speaker 1: And so the basics is, you want a particle moving fast,
19:51
Speaker 1: you put it in an electric field. The voltage there
19:54
Speaker 1: will accelerate the particle in one direction. That's like the
19:57
Speaker 1: super basic initial version of a particle accelerator. Meaning basically
20:02
Speaker 1: you set up like a magnet, right, and then you
20:04
Speaker 1: have the magnet attract charge particles, and then that gets
20:08
Speaker 1: the moving. Well, we do have magnets, but magnets actually
20:11
Speaker 1: cannot accelerate particles. They can only bend them. They can
20:14
Speaker 1: change their direction, but they can't speed them up. But
20:16
Speaker 1: an electric field can actually accelerate something. And so, for example,
20:21
Speaker 1: the old televisions that people used to watch, the ones
20:24
Speaker 1: that are not flat screens, had an electron accelerator in
20:27
Speaker 1: the back of them. Met a little gun that would
20:29
Speaker 1: accelerate electrons across an electric field and shoot it at
20:32
Speaker 1: the back of the screen, and that's what actually made
20:34
Speaker 1: the images. So everybody used to have their own little
20:37
Speaker 1: particle accelerator in their house shooting into their brains extray night,
20:41
Speaker 1: and that uses an electric field. It's basically a cathode tube.
20:44
Speaker 1: We have a voltage applied and it boils electrons off
20:47
Speaker 1: of one of the nodes and towards the other one.
20:49
Speaker 1: But I guess what I'm saying, it basically works like
20:52
Speaker 1: a magnet, right, cathay tube is basically you're using magnetism
20:55
Speaker 1: to move the electrons along. Yeah, I mean you're using
20:59
Speaker 1: electromagnetism more generally, using the electric field to accelerate it,
21:02
Speaker 1: and then you had a magnet in order to steer
21:04
Speaker 1: the electrons. So yeah, absolutely, it's all electromagnetism. And that's why,
21:09
Speaker 1: for example, we have proton accelerators and electron accelerators. We
21:12
Speaker 1: don't have neutron accelerators or neutral atom accelerators because things
21:17
Speaker 1: have to have a charge in order for an electric
21:19
Speaker 1: field to push on them. Yeah, I guess just kind
21:21
Speaker 1: of generally, that's how things push and pull most of
21:24
Speaker 1: the time you're here on Earth, right, Like when I
21:26
Speaker 1: pick up a glass of water, or when you push
21:29
Speaker 1: on the door, you're really using electromagnetic forces to push
21:33
Speaker 1: those things. Yeah, that's absolutely right. A baseball is tugged
21:36
Speaker 1: by gravity, but most of the interactions you have are
21:38
Speaker 1: really electromagnetic interactions. The electrons that the tip of your
21:42
Speaker 1: finger are pushing against the electrons in the wall and resisting.
21:45
Speaker 1: That's why things seem to be solid, because the forces
21:48
Speaker 1: that fill the space between the tiny little particles, that's
21:52
Speaker 1: what gives volume volume, and so that's what constructs our world. Absolutely,
21:57
Speaker 1: it would be a very very different world without electromagnetic force. Yeah,
22:00
Speaker 1: you just made me realize, like all the neutrons in
22:02
Speaker 1: our bodies and the objects around is, we're not really
22:05
Speaker 1: pushing them directly, right, Like, it's more like our electrons
22:08
Speaker 1: are pushing the electrons and those atoms, and those electrons
22:10
Speaker 1: are pushing the protons in the nucleus, and then those
22:14
Speaker 1: are the ones that are pushing on the neutrons inside
22:16
Speaker 1: of atoms. Yeah, the protons and the neutrons stick together
22:18
Speaker 1: using the strong force, and so that's what clumps them together. Yeah,
22:21
Speaker 1: it's all a big dance of the forces we've discovered
22:24
Speaker 1: to make the world that we know and love. All right, well,
22:26
Speaker 1: that's the basic way that hilleriors work right now is
22:29
Speaker 1: using electromagnetic fields. Let's get into a little bit more
22:31
Speaker 1: detail about that and then also talk about maybe new
22:34
Speaker 1: ways that we can get particles going for better and
22:38
Speaker 1: more powerful colliders. But first let's take a quick break.
22:53
Speaker 1: All right, we're talking about new accelerator technologies here, but
22:57
Speaker 1: first we're talking about old accelerator technologies. And you said,
23:00
Speaker 1: we've had this old technology sins the fifties, right or
23:03
Speaker 1: fifties or thirties. So the very first accelerators were like
23:06
Speaker 1: in the thirties and the forties. They got more powerful
23:09
Speaker 1: in the fifties, which is what heralded like the era
23:12
Speaker 1: of the particle zoo, as people were smashing particles together
23:15
Speaker 1: at higher energies and discovering all sorts of stuff. But
23:18
Speaker 1: it basically started with just accelerating things over a gap,
23:21
Speaker 1: and then people tried to reuse that gap multiple times.
23:24
Speaker 1: So like you know, if you go across that gap,
23:26
Speaker 1: you speed up. Can we go across that gap more
23:28
Speaker 1: than once. So they had accelerators called cyclotrons, where a
23:32
Speaker 1: particle would go in a circle and go across the
23:34
Speaker 1: gap multiple times. They had singotrons where you got even
23:38
Speaker 1: more sophisticated and you would try to like sync up
23:40
Speaker 1: the energy in the gap with when the particle was
23:42
Speaker 1: going faster and faster. And so I think the basic
23:45
Speaker 1: idea is that if you have an electron, First of all,
23:47
Speaker 1: you sort of create an electron and you kind of
23:49
Speaker 1: put it out there in space in the air by itself,
23:53
Speaker 1: and then you basically hold a positive electric charge ahead
23:55
Speaker 1: of it basically or a negative charge behind it, and
23:58
Speaker 1: then that electro magnetic repulsion or attraction then moves your
24:02
Speaker 1: electron forward, and that's how you get it going. Yeah,
24:04
Speaker 1: that's basically how you do it. And you can imagine
24:06
Speaker 1: doing that with like a battery. For example, a battery
24:09
Speaker 1: can create that kind of voltage difference between two plates
24:12
Speaker 1: by shuttling the electrons from one side to the other,
24:15
Speaker 1: so that if you put an electron in the gap there,
24:17
Speaker 1: it will get pushed towards the lower voltage and that's
24:20
Speaker 1: what the acceleration is. So essentially you arrange the charges
24:24
Speaker 1: to give you an electric field to push on an
24:26
Speaker 1: electron and that will accelerate it. Yeah, like you said,
24:28
Speaker 1: like in a battery, Like a battery will maybe concentrate
24:31
Speaker 1: the electrons and a coil or a wire or plate
24:34
Speaker 1: towards the back, and then that will push your single
24:36
Speaker 1: electron forward. But there's only kind of so much that
24:39
Speaker 1: you can push it, right doing it that way, Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: there's only so much you can push it. You can
24:43
Speaker 1: try to pump a lot of energy into that electric field,
24:47
Speaker 1: but eventually things will break down. Like if you have
24:49
Speaker 1: two pieces of metal and you put a really strong
24:52
Speaker 1: electric field across them, Eventually it will pull the electrons
24:56
Speaker 1: out of that metal and break down the electric field.
24:59
Speaker 1: And then what you do is once the electron gets going,
25:01
Speaker 1: then you use another electric field up ahead to accelerate
25:05
Speaker 1: it even more. Yeah. So, because you can't put an
25:07
Speaker 1: infinite amount of energy into a single one of these
25:10
Speaker 1: sort of like little accelerators, because it'll break down the
25:13
Speaker 1: way like lightning is like a breakdown of the voltage
25:16
Speaker 1: between the air and the ground. Then you stack them up,
25:19
Speaker 1: you say, well, I'm gonna have one and then might
25:20
Speaker 1: have another one that might have another one that might
25:22
Speaker 1: have another one you just sort of like line these
25:24
Speaker 1: things up so that each one gives your electron a
25:27
Speaker 1: little bit of a push. Yeah, And I guess initially
25:29
Speaker 1: in the fifties they would use they would put these
25:31
Speaker 1: in a straight line, right, Like you accelerate an electron
25:35
Speaker 1: with one accelerator, and then the next one picks it
25:37
Speaker 1: up and accelerate it even more, and you sort of
25:39
Speaker 1: like a tunnel or a gun or like the barrel
25:42
Speaker 1: of a rifle, and that gets your electrons going even faster. Exactly.
25:46
Speaker 1: There's a little bit of a wrinkle there though, because
25:49
Speaker 1: what happens when your electron passes a sort of negative
25:51
Speaker 1: potential plate of the first one, is it wants to
25:54
Speaker 1: slow down. If you imagine like a bunch of positive
25:57
Speaker 1: charges there that are pulling the electron towards that first plate,
26:00
Speaker 1: what happens when it passes it, Now those positive charges
26:03
Speaker 1: are pulling it back. And so people develop these really
26:06
Speaker 1: fancy techniques to oscillate the voltage across those plates so
26:11
Speaker 1: that when the particles moving towards it pulling it towards it,
26:13
Speaker 1: and then just as it passes it flips the charges
26:16
Speaker 1: and pushes it away. So we have these like RF
26:19
Speaker 1: cavities they're called. With these oscillating fields, there are time
26:22
Speaker 1: perfectly to speed the particles up and then avoid slowing
26:25
Speaker 1: them down. And as you say, the strategy to making
26:28
Speaker 1: them bigger and longer and faster is just to stack
26:31
Speaker 1: them up to make a big tunnel and put a
26:33
Speaker 1: bunch of these in there. Yeah, that's how they did
26:35
Speaker 1: it initially. But then at some point they figured out
26:37
Speaker 1: that you can get even more acceleration by having the
26:40
Speaker 1: particles going a circle and basically go through this accelerating
26:44
Speaker 1: part multiple times, and then they can go faster and
26:47
Speaker 1: faster and faster each time. Yeah. So the one design
26:49
Speaker 1: of the accelerator is called a linear accelerator. There's one
26:52
Speaker 1: like that at Stanford, there's one like that in Germany.
26:54
Speaker 1: We just shoot them down a tunnel. It's a one go.
26:57
Speaker 1: You speed them up, you get them to as fast
26:59
Speaker 1: as you can, and then them at the end. But
27:00
Speaker 1: another strategy is to reuse the tunnel by having a
27:03
Speaker 1: go in a circle. And so as you say, you
27:06
Speaker 1: have like something that gives it a kick, and then
27:07
Speaker 1: you have something that bends it, and you have something
27:09
Speaker 1: it gives it a kick, and then you have something
27:10
Speaker 1: that bends it, and so the large hadron colliders like that.
27:13
Speaker 1: It's a big circle and the particles move around a
27:15
Speaker 1: tunnel and there's segments that push it and then segments
27:18
Speaker 1: that bend it using very powerful magnets bend it, you mean,
27:22
Speaker 1: like as in they make the particles kind of go
27:25
Speaker 1: right a little bit and then then makes them go
27:27
Speaker 1: in a circle. Yeah. So the particles move not actually
27:30
Speaker 1: in a perfect circle, because they move in straight lines
27:33
Speaker 1: through the little mini accelerator segments and then they bend
27:36
Speaker 1: through the magnets. So it's more like a really big
27:39
Speaker 1: polygon with a bunch of straight sides. Yeah, I guess
27:41
Speaker 1: the difference it's sort of like the between a sling shot,
27:44
Speaker 1: like you pull back and then you let go and
27:46
Speaker 1: the rover bands throw the rock forward or whatever you're
27:50
Speaker 1: trying to shoot and using a sling where you like
27:52
Speaker 1: put the rock in a little sling and then you
27:55
Speaker 1: spin and spin and spin, and each time you spin
27:56
Speaker 1: it you make it go faster and then at some
27:58
Speaker 1: point you let it go, you know. Or if going
28:00
Speaker 1: to use like kid analogies, it's like the difference between
28:02
Speaker 1: a slide. You start at the top and you go
28:04
Speaker 1: fast and you hit the bottom or a merry go
28:06
Speaker 1: round where your friend can keep pushing it faster and
28:08
Speaker 1: faster and faster, and you're going around faster and faster
28:11
Speaker 1: until you both throw up. And that's really what particle
28:13
Speaker 1: physics is all about, right, throwing up what's inside of
28:16
Speaker 1: the fundamental particles. Yeah, we're exploring the vomit frontier in
28:19
Speaker 1: the end, it's right, your vomit physicists, nihilist vomiting physics.
28:23
Speaker 1: And that's basically the technology. The large hadron collider is
28:26
Speaker 1: pushing bend, pushing bend, push in bend. And what limits
28:29
Speaker 1: the large hadron collider is essentially the size of the tunnel.
28:32
Speaker 1: Building that kind of tunnel and filling it with all
28:34
Speaker 1: that technology is expensive. But in order to get fast,
28:37
Speaker 1: you gotta go big. Well, maybe to talk a little
28:40
Speaker 1: bit about why it needs to be bigger, it's because
28:42
Speaker 1: of the limitations in the magnets that bend the path
28:46
Speaker 1: of the particles. Right, Like, if you can get stronger
28:50
Speaker 1: magnets are a better way to kind of curve the
28:53
Speaker 1: path of these particles, then you could have the same
28:56
Speaker 1: circle but just have the particles go faster in it. Yeah,
28:58
Speaker 1: if you had stronger magnet that could bend them more
29:01
Speaker 1: effectively at the same speed. Then, yeah, you could have
29:03
Speaker 1: a smaller circle, which means you could reuse the same
29:06
Speaker 1: linear accelerating segments at the same magnets more times. Right,
29:10
Speaker 1: So it would go around more times to get to
29:12
Speaker 1: the same speed. But you could build a smaller device
29:15
Speaker 1: instead of time to be like tens of kilometers around. Right,
29:19
Speaker 1: this tunnel, the large change on collider is filled with
29:21
Speaker 1: tens of kilometers of these things. Right, it's not a
29:24
Speaker 1: small device. But if the magnets were more powerful and
29:27
Speaker 1: you could bend it, then you could basically shrink the
29:29
Speaker 1: size of that circle and the whole thing would be
29:31
Speaker 1: smaller and cheaper, right, Because I guess the problem is
29:34
Speaker 1: that the faster the particles go, the harder it is
29:37
Speaker 1: to get them to go in a circle. Right, Because
29:39
Speaker 1: the fasters are going the kind of more I guess
29:41
Speaker 1: entrifical the force you need to kind of keep them
29:44
Speaker 1: in a circle. Yeah, you need strong magnets to move
29:46
Speaker 1: very high speed particles and a circle. It's a centripetal
29:49
Speaker 1: force towards the center that keeps something moving in a circle,
29:53
Speaker 1: the same way the Earth moves around the Sun because
29:56
Speaker 1: of the force of gravity pulling it towards the Sun.
29:59
Speaker 1: So we can make these particles kind of like orbit
30:02
Speaker 1: the center of the collider using these magnets to bend
30:05
Speaker 1: their path to provide that same kind of force, And
30:08
Speaker 1: if we could provide a stronger force, we could bend
30:10
Speaker 1: them in a tighter circle. Yeah. So like right now,
30:12
Speaker 1: you probably could accelerate the particles faster, like you can't
30:16
Speaker 1: make them go faster, but you wouldn't be able to
30:18
Speaker 1: basically control them. Like if you accelerated them any faster,
30:21
Speaker 1: they would basically go off the rails kind of right,
30:24
Speaker 1: Like they would start hitting the walls of your collider
30:26
Speaker 1: and that would burn them up, and then you'd poke
30:28
Speaker 1: a hole in your tup tunnel and then the whole
30:30
Speaker 1: thing goes That's right. We're limited either by the magnet
30:33
Speaker 1: technology or by the size of the tunnel. Like we
30:36
Speaker 1: can make the tunnel bigger with the same magnets and
30:39
Speaker 1: then we could get the higher energy, or we could
30:41
Speaker 1: make the tunnel smaller with stronger magnets to get to
30:44
Speaker 1: the same energy. But if we had the same tunnel
30:47
Speaker 1: and we just whizzed them around more and kept pushing
30:49
Speaker 1: on them. Then eventually we would not be able to
30:51
Speaker 1: contain them using our magnets. It would just slam into
30:54
Speaker 1: the wall. So if you increase the energy, do you
30:56
Speaker 1: have someone down there at the basement going she kind
30:59
Speaker 1: of take any more cut? Yeah, that's a specific job, absolutely,
31:06
Speaker 1: and you have to hire a scotchman from your collaboration
31:09
Speaker 1: to do that one. No, we prefer Panamanians to do
31:11
Speaker 1: a Scottish accent. Actually, oh yeah, that's just as good.
31:15
Speaker 1: No comment for our Scottish listeners. But our magnet technology
31:21
Speaker 1: is pretty awesome. I mean, we have super conducting magnets
31:24
Speaker 1: down there. We're really pushing the limits of what magnets
31:27
Speaker 1: can do. And so one way we could improve particle
31:30
Speaker 1: colliders is to make some breakthrough in magnet technology to
31:34
Speaker 1: make these things more powerful and smaller or cheaper. What's
31:38
Speaker 1: the limitation, I guess is it just that the magnets.
31:41
Speaker 1: You're already running as much current as you can through
31:43
Speaker 1: these magnets or what, Yeah, we're running as much current
31:46
Speaker 1: as we can without them breaking down. They're already cooled
31:49
Speaker 1: down to a few degrees Calvin. So we can take
31:51
Speaker 1: advantage of their super conducting nature, which means if we
31:54
Speaker 1: get super duper strong magnets out of our current and
31:57
Speaker 1: they don't like heat up and distort. Maybe you remember that,
32:00
Speaker 1: and we turned on the large hende On collider. There
32:01
Speaker 1: was a disaster in two thousand and nine, just a
32:04
Speaker 1: few months in, and some of the liquid helium that
32:06
Speaker 1: was keeping this thing cool sprayed out everywhere and the
32:09
Speaker 1: whole thing warmed up, and it was a big disaster.
32:11
Speaker 1: So these things are not easy to operate and to
32:14
Speaker 1: keep functional. One of the many ways that the beam
32:17
Speaker 1: can go wrong is something we call a quench, when
32:19
Speaker 1: one of the magnets basically fails and the beam just
32:21
Speaker 1: like gets dumped into the rock. And so we're really
32:24
Speaker 1: operating at the limit of magnet technology. All right, Well,
32:28
Speaker 1: then I guess the idea is that is there like
32:30
Speaker 1: a revolutionary new technology or a totally different way of
32:34
Speaker 1: doing the whole particle accelerating thing that could maybe like
32:37
Speaker 1: let you get away with faster velocities without having these
32:40
Speaker 1: gigantic tunnels and these superconducting magnets. Oh there is, and
32:44
Speaker 1: I'm dying to talk about it. Well, steps through this, Danuel.
32:47
Speaker 1: What is this amazing technology called and how does it work?
32:51
Speaker 1: So the idea is, instead of making the magnet stronger,
32:54
Speaker 1: can we make the accelerator part much more powerful? Can
32:57
Speaker 1: we accelerate particles to much higher energies over a shorter distance.
33:01
Speaker 1: I remember before the limitation was that we couldn't have
33:04
Speaker 1: strong enough electric fields across two metal plates because it
33:08
Speaker 1: would like make a breakdown between those plates. Remember that
33:11
Speaker 1: right now, in our colliders, these particles are accelerated through
33:14
Speaker 1: a vacuum. So between those plates, it's not like air,
33:17
Speaker 1: So you're not getting like ionization of the air the
33:19
Speaker 1: way you do when you have like static electricity or
33:22
Speaker 1: lightning jumping from the ground to the earth. It's really
33:25
Speaker 1: a pure breakdown of the metal, right You're like pulling
33:27
Speaker 1: the electrons off of the metal. And so in order
33:30
Speaker 1: to avoid this breakdown, people are thinking, well, maybe we
33:33
Speaker 1: shouldn't have a vacuum, Maybe we should fill that with
33:35
Speaker 1: something in order to avoid a breakdown. And so one
33:38
Speaker 1: idea is to use a plasma instead of having a vacuum.
33:42
Speaker 1: So let me see if I get this straight. It's
33:43
Speaker 1: sort of like the same technology where you have plates,
33:46
Speaker 1: like metal plates, and in these plates you basically like
33:49
Speaker 1: run a current through them, so that you kind of
33:52
Speaker 1: make a magnet basically, but now the twist is and
33:54
Speaker 1: instead of having it in a vacuum, you put it
33:56
Speaker 1: inside of a plasma. That's right, We use a plasma
33:59
Speaker 1: instead of having a vacuum. But now we don't have
34:01
Speaker 1: the external electric field provided by some plates. Now we
34:05
Speaker 1: use the plasma itself to generate the electric fields internally.
34:10
Speaker 1: So wait, there's no plates, there's no plates at all. No,
34:13
Speaker 1: but we think that it's possible to generate much stronger
34:16
Speaker 1: electric fields within the plasma than it is between two
34:19
Speaker 1: metal plates and a vacuum. Okay, so you use the
34:22
Speaker 1: plasma as the plate kind of m exactly. And so
34:25
Speaker 1: you take this plasma and you like zap it with
34:27
Speaker 1: a laser, which rearranges all the charges within the plasma
34:32
Speaker 1: in such a way to create very strong electric fields
34:35
Speaker 1: inside the plasma that can then be used to accelerate particles.
34:39
Speaker 1: That's the basic idea. So what would this look like
34:41
Speaker 1: A like a tube basically kind of or a tunnel
34:44
Speaker 1: filled with plasma, and then you're shooting lasers into this
34:48
Speaker 1: to create kind of like variations in the electric fields
34:52
Speaker 1: inside of the plasma. Exactly. Remember that a plasma is
34:55
Speaker 1: just really hot gas. Like you take hydrogen hydrogen as
34:58
Speaker 1: a proton and electron. The electron is happily orbiting of
35:01
Speaker 1: the nucleus the proton, and if you give that electron
35:03
Speaker 1: more energy, it goes up an energy level sort of
35:06
Speaker 1: larger orbital radius, and you keep doing that, eventually the
35:09
Speaker 1: electron goes free. And so that's what a plasma is.
35:11
Speaker 1: The electrons have so much energy that they're not bound
35:14
Speaker 1: anymore to the protons. So it's a charged gas, right.
35:18
Speaker 1: It has positive and negative charges all flowing around in it,
35:22
Speaker 1: unlike neutral hydrogen, which is you know, protons and electrons
35:25
Speaker 1: bound tightly together, so they're effectively neutral. So this plasma
35:28
Speaker 1: is like microscopically charged, but typically it's like macroscopically neutral.
35:33
Speaker 1: You take like a big chunk of it as the
35:35
Speaker 1: same number of electrons and protons, but you can induce
35:39
Speaker 1: waves in it. You can like pull on the electrons
35:41
Speaker 1: or zap all the electrons, get them to move in
35:43
Speaker 1: one direction, which will create an electric field within the plasma,
35:47
Speaker 1: like you create you're creating a current of electrons inside
35:50
Speaker 1: of the plasma. Is that what you mean? What you
35:52
Speaker 1: actually do is create like a wake field inside of it,
35:55
Speaker 1: so it's not literally a current, but yeah, you're creating
35:57
Speaker 1: like these waves of electrons through the plasma. They're like
36:01
Speaker 1: density waves where the electrons are like wiggling, and that
36:04
Speaker 1: creates electromagnetic fields which you can then use to accelerate particles.
36:08
Speaker 1: So you have this tube, as you said, of plasma,
36:10
Speaker 1: and you use zap it with the laser and you
36:12
Speaker 1: choose the laser frequency just right to excite oscillations in
36:17
Speaker 1: the electrons in the plasma to create this wake field,
36:21
Speaker 1: and then you dump your particle into it and it
36:22
Speaker 1: sort of like surfs along this electromagnetic field that you've
36:25
Speaker 1: created with your laser, and it gets shot at the end,
36:28
Speaker 1: going much much faster. Interesting, all right, well, maybe take
36:32
Speaker 1: a step a little bit of a step back here.
36:34
Speaker 1: How does the laser cause the electrons to form into waves?
36:39
Speaker 1: Like do electrons interact with photons? Is that the idea
36:42
Speaker 1: electrons do interact with photons, and so lasers are just
36:45
Speaker 1: like a great way to dump energy into the plasma.
36:48
Speaker 1: And typically you can think about a plasma as like
36:50
Speaker 1: a bunch of individual particles. You know, you have protons,
36:53
Speaker 1: you have electrons that have charges, so they can interact
36:55
Speaker 1: with photons and fields and all this stuff. But that's
36:57
Speaker 1: a little bit of a nightmare because there're so many
37:00
Speaker 1: of them. It just seems like a buzzing chaos. But
37:03
Speaker 1: you can also think about the plasma sort of like
37:05
Speaker 1: collectively and think about the collective motion of the electrons.
37:09
Speaker 1: So plasmas have like tiny, little local behavior, but they
37:12
Speaker 1: also have sort of like long distance collective behavior. You
37:16
Speaker 1: can get plasmas to do things like have waves moving
37:19
Speaker 1: through them, And so if you dump a laser beam
37:22
Speaker 1: into it with the right frequency and you can sort
37:24
Speaker 1: of excite it to do these waves the same way
37:26
Speaker 1: you can if you like slap your hand against the
37:29
Speaker 1: surface of a lake and do it at the right frequency,
37:31
Speaker 1: you can get the lake to produce these waves. But
37:34
Speaker 1: I guess the main mechanism is that it's interacting with
37:37
Speaker 1: the electrons, because I guess light doesn't interact with the protons.
37:40
Speaker 1: The light does interact with the protons as well, right,
37:42
Speaker 1: protons are also charged, but remember protons are much more
37:45
Speaker 1: massive than electrons, and so the same energy doesn't accelerate
37:49
Speaker 1: those protons to move as much. So this whole thing
37:52
Speaker 1: happens really really fast. Basically before the protons can sort
37:56
Speaker 1: of get out of bed. The electrons have this big
37:58
Speaker 1: wave that passes through them, and the protons are like
38:00
Speaker 1: what sort of like me? And in this podcast right now?
38:02
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's let's react to that laser a
38:06
Speaker 1: bit of knowledge there, and let's dig a little bit
38:08
Speaker 1: more into this effect than how you can use it
38:10
Speaker 1: to axillary particles, maybe faster than the Large Hadron collider.
38:14
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, we're
38:29
Speaker 1: talking about a new way to killary particles that is
38:32
Speaker 1: maybe faster and cheaper and better than the current technology
38:36
Speaker 1: which is at the Large Hadron Collider. And so this
38:39
Speaker 1: technology involves using a plasma. So you have a plasma,
38:43
Speaker 1: which is like a gas where all of the atoms
38:47
Speaker 1: have been broken down into single electrons and maybe protons
38:51
Speaker 1: or at least clumps of protons, and so you have
38:53
Speaker 1: the soup of all this stuff floating around that has
38:55
Speaker 1: a charge, and then you shoot a laser into it.
38:58
Speaker 1: And somehow that laser cites things, or maybe it causes
39:02
Speaker 1: electrons to clump or to scatter. What exactly is happening there.
39:06
Speaker 1: It causes the electrons to wiggle, It creates like a
39:08
Speaker 1: wave of the electrons moving through the plasma, and again
39:12
Speaker 1: you choose it very specifically the laser pulsed length to
39:15
Speaker 1: be resonant with the modes of the plasma. Everything that
39:19
Speaker 1: can wiggle, everything we can describe in terms of like
39:21
Speaker 1: wave physics has resonant frequencies, the way, for example, your
39:25
Speaker 1: shower is really good and amplifying certain frequencies when you're
39:28
Speaker 1: singing and not others, or guitar strings like to oscillate
39:32
Speaker 1: at certain frequencies and not others. They're resonant frequencies in
39:36
Speaker 1: the same way that like a laser is made use
39:37
Speaker 1: a resonant cavity. And so the equations of the motion
39:41
Speaker 1: of the electrons who the plasma allow for certain frequencies
39:45
Speaker 1: of collective motion where the electrons will like slash back
39:48
Speaker 1: and forth all together. Instead of getting like a bunch
39:51
Speaker 1: of individual electrons doing their own thing, you get this
39:53
Speaker 1: like collective behavior of all the electrons if you push
39:57
Speaker 1: it the right way, sort of like pushing your kid
39:58
Speaker 1: on a swing right shit the right frequency, and your
40:01
Speaker 1: kids can get going really really fast. You push it
40:04
Speaker 1: like random times, then you're going to get like chaotic
40:06
Speaker 1: motion in the swing. And I guess that's what the
40:08
Speaker 1: light is doing. Like the full time will hit electrons
40:11
Speaker 1: in a certain way, and because of the frequency, does
40:15
Speaker 1: it in different ways in different locations. And that's how
40:17
Speaker 1: you create the wave inside of the plasma exactly. And
40:20
Speaker 1: so in order to do this you need laser pulses.
40:22
Speaker 1: You're not just like shining a bright laser beam into
40:24
Speaker 1: this thing and heating up all the electrons. You're doing
40:27
Speaker 1: laser pulses so that you have like laser pulses at
40:30
Speaker 1: different locations through the plasma at the same time. So
40:34
Speaker 1: those pulse lengths and the pulse timings have to be
40:37
Speaker 1: just right to excite this motion in the plasma, like
40:40
Speaker 1: push on the right electrons at the right moment across
40:43
Speaker 1: the plasma to get this thing going. I guess it's
40:45
Speaker 1: sort of like you said, it's like having a pool
40:48
Speaker 1: and then you have kind of like a wave maker
40:50
Speaker 1: in the backack, like one of those pool and those
40:52
Speaker 1: water parks. Right, You're like you're using the laser to
40:55
Speaker 1: create waves in the pool, and then you're sort of
40:57
Speaker 1: dropping like a little kid in the life preserver. Hey,
41:00
Speaker 1: we'll get pushed by the waves to the shallow end.
41:02
Speaker 1: That's kind of the idea, right, that's the idea. And
41:04
Speaker 1: the reason this works better than the previous approach of
41:08
Speaker 1: just having like two metal plates and an electric field
41:10
Speaker 1: across them is because you can have much much stronger
41:13
Speaker 1: electric fields in a plasma without anything breaking down. Basically,
41:17
Speaker 1: the plasma is already broken down, right, there's nothing else
41:20
Speaker 1: to break down, so, like there's no limit to how
41:23
Speaker 1: much you can bunch electrons together or something within a
41:26
Speaker 1: plasma or there maybe the kind is right is in there,
41:29
Speaker 1: Like you can't bunch electrons infinitely. You can't bunch it infinitely,
41:33
Speaker 1: but you can dump a lot of energy into this plasma.
41:36
Speaker 1: And the cool thing is your laser beam doesn't have
41:38
Speaker 1: to have as much energy sort of per photon. You
41:40
Speaker 1: can just do a lot of photons to end up
41:42
Speaker 1: with a lot of energy. So you don't need to
41:44
Speaker 1: already have a super high energy laser to create a
41:48
Speaker 1: super high energy particle beam. You can use a high
41:51
Speaker 1: intensity laser to dump a lot of energy into the
41:54
Speaker 1: plasma which creates these fields, and then accelerate the particles
41:58
Speaker 1: to very high energy. Now, which particles are you accelerating
42:02
Speaker 1: then the electrons in the plasma or the protons in
42:04
Speaker 1: the plasma or are you trying to accelerate something else? Neither, right,
42:08
Speaker 1: So then you dump in a particle bunch that you're
42:10
Speaker 1: trying to accelerate, and they move through the plasma following
42:13
Speaker 1: this wake, following the wake of these electrons, and they're
42:17
Speaker 1: sort of like the surfers. Wouldn't you be accelerating protons too?
42:20
Speaker 1: Aren't protonons part of the soup? Like how do you
42:22
Speaker 1: you know, like if you have a soup with a wave,
42:24
Speaker 1: they sort of like in our pool analogy, or you
42:26
Speaker 1: have a WaveMaker in the back and you're trying to
42:28
Speaker 1: accelerate a drop of water you dump into it. So
42:31
Speaker 1: the protons in the plasma don't get accelerated because they
42:34
Speaker 1: don't respond on this time scale. The whole thing happens
42:37
Speaker 1: like too fast for them to even get moving. The
42:39
Speaker 1: electrons in the plasma they do get excited, and you
42:41
Speaker 1: do get this wave through the plasma, and then you
42:44
Speaker 1: have a third bunch which sort of rides that electric wave.
42:47
Speaker 1: The wake of that electron wave is a very high
42:51
Speaker 1: gradient electric field which you will accelerate a particle that's
42:54
Speaker 1: put in just the right location and velocity the same
42:57
Speaker 1: way as surfer needs to catch a wave to ride it,
43:00
Speaker 1: they need to be in the right spot and already
43:03
Speaker 1: going at the right speed. That's why the surfer rides
43:06
Speaker 1: the wave. But the other things are left behind. And
43:09
Speaker 1: so you have this like third group which rides that wake,
43:12
Speaker 1: sort of like the surfer on the wave right, right,
43:14
Speaker 1: but except that the surfer is made out of water too. Yes,
43:18
Speaker 1: in this case, the surfer is made out of matter.
43:20
Speaker 1: The waves are made out of matter, right. It's just
43:23
Speaker 1: a question of where you are and how fast you're
43:25
Speaker 1: already going. And so if you're in the right location,
43:28
Speaker 1: if it's timed just right, then you're riding that wave
43:31
Speaker 1: and you're constantly getting accelerated, whereas electrons in these waves
43:34
Speaker 1: are sort of slashing back and forth. I guess maybe
43:36
Speaker 1: what's confusing me is that I feel like if you
43:39
Speaker 1: drop a bunch of electrons into an electron soup, they'll
43:41
Speaker 1: just get, you know, absorbed by the soup. You know.
43:45
Speaker 1: But maybe the right way to think about it is
43:47
Speaker 1: more like you have this wave pool. You're making the waves,
43:50
Speaker 1: and then you shoot. There's a jet of water in
43:54
Speaker 1: the back that's shooting it towards the shallow end, and
43:57
Speaker 1: somehow it kind of gets an extra busive speed by
44:00
Speaker 1: the waves. If you just dropped electrons into any random
44:04
Speaker 1: spot in the plasma, they would become part of the plasma.
44:07
Speaker 1: But if you set up this wave and then inject
44:09
Speaker 1: particles at the right place with the right speed, they
44:13
Speaker 1: can ride the wave generated by the plasma without becoming
44:16
Speaker 1: part of the plasma. All right, that's the technology. It's
44:19
Speaker 1: using plasma. But plasma is kind of tricky, right, Plasma
44:23
Speaker 1: is super duper hot and it's really hard to contain,
44:25
Speaker 1: and you also need maggots to contain plasma. So how
44:28
Speaker 1: well does this technology work? Well, it works really really
44:31
Speaker 1: well so far. It's taken decades. Like the original ideas
44:35
Speaker 1: are from like the fifties, and then in the seventies
44:37
Speaker 1: people started working in the first prototypes. It was actually
44:39
Speaker 1: here at you see Irvine and a guy named Norm
44:41
Speaker 1: Rustoker who pioneered this technology together with his grand student
44:46
Speaker 1: Toshiki Tajima. But they were limited by the laser technology.
44:49
Speaker 1: You need like really really fast pulses. And then in
44:52
Speaker 1: the nineties people developed like super ultra fast sync lasers
44:56
Speaker 1: and that's when the first demonstration was performed. But by
44:59
Speaker 1: now people have been doing it all over the world,
45:01
Speaker 1: and they've been able to create these little accelerators that
45:05
Speaker 1: can accelerate particles to very high speeds over short distances.
45:09
Speaker 1: And we typically measure this in terms of like how
45:11
Speaker 1: much energy can you dump into a particle per centimeter, right,
45:15
Speaker 1: because you want to accelerate a particle and you don't
45:17
Speaker 1: want to have to take a mile or two miles
45:19
Speaker 1: to do it. And so these little plasma accelerators have
45:22
Speaker 1: been able to accelerate particles too much higher energies per
45:25
Speaker 1: centimeter than the traditional approach, by a factor of a
45:28
Speaker 1: hundred or a thousand. Cool. But I guess you know,
45:33
Speaker 1: how are they overcoming the difficulties in the problem? Right?
45:35
Speaker 1: Like how do you first of all maintain a plasma
45:37
Speaker 1: that's pretty hard, and then how do you shoot electrons
45:40
Speaker 1: into it? And how do you get them out of
45:41
Speaker 1: the plasma. So maintaining a plasma is not always that hard, right,
45:45
Speaker 1: Like you have plasma in the fluorescent lights that are
45:47
Speaker 1: above you, or it's just very dilute and so it
45:50
Speaker 1: doesn't like destroy the glass. And you typically think about
45:54
Speaker 1: plasmas being really hard to contain in the case of
45:56
Speaker 1: like fusion experiments, when you need a certain density also
45:59
Speaker 1: in order to act fusion. We don't want fusion happening
46:01
Speaker 1: in these plasmas, so they don't have to be actually
46:04
Speaker 1: that dense. So the containment is not nearly as challenging
46:07
Speaker 1: as it is in the case of fusion experiments. You
46:09
Speaker 1: can just basically have a can of the plasma and
46:12
Speaker 1: it's all right, and that's enough to get particles going.
46:14
Speaker 1: That's enough to get particles going. The main challenge was
46:17
Speaker 1: really the lasers, and now they've solved that, and so
46:20
Speaker 1: now they've really demonstrated this. They have these devices that
46:23
Speaker 1: it can actually accelerate particles to tens of GeV over
46:27
Speaker 1: centimeters or tens of centimeters, which is very exciting. It's
46:31
Speaker 1: exciting because it's a small amount. But you're also you're
46:34
Speaker 1: thinking ahead and you're thinking, we're going to stack these
46:36
Speaker 1: up to get like a thousand of these to get
46:39
Speaker 1: a terra electronvol exactly. So now the question is can
46:43
Speaker 1: they scale Where they've done it is they've proven the
46:45
Speaker 1: principle that you can accelerate particles more effectively over short distances.
46:49
Speaker 1: But we're not that interested in tiny little accelerators. We
46:52
Speaker 1: still want them kind of big so we can get
46:54
Speaker 1: to really high energies. And so the question is can
46:57
Speaker 1: you stack these things up? And that's where the technology
47:00
Speaker 1: struggle is right now, because what you need to do
47:02
Speaker 1: is like match these things up. You need to keep
47:04
Speaker 1: these things in sync. When you have the particles that
47:06
Speaker 1: you're accelerating come out of one stage of a plasma
47:09
Speaker 1: accelerator and you want to send them into the next one,
47:11
Speaker 1: then you have to like time the laser pulses in
47:14
Speaker 1: that next plasma accelerator perfectly, so like your little bunch
47:18
Speaker 1: of accelerating particles hit just the right part of the wave,
47:21
Speaker 1: otherwise everything's lost. And in order to get that all
47:23
Speaker 1: that timing just perfectly in sync is very very challenging.
47:27
Speaker 1: So what they've been able to do is match a
47:29
Speaker 1: couple of stages, maybe up to like five stages, but
47:33
Speaker 1: nobody's confident that they can do it for like a
47:35
Speaker 1: hundred or a thousand, which is the kind of thing
47:37
Speaker 1: you would need to do to really get to like
47:40
Speaker 1: physics level accelerators where we can start answering deep questions
47:43
Speaker 1: about the universe. So we're maybe still kind of far
47:46
Speaker 1: away because you would need to be able to sink
47:49
Speaker 1: and stack you're like, you're saying hundreds of these in
47:53
Speaker 1: a row or maybe one in a circle. Is the
47:55
Speaker 1: idea to put them all in a row and for
47:57
Speaker 1: a straight accelerator or to maybe replace its lerators at
48:00
Speaker 1: the LC. It depends on what you want to accelerate.
48:03
Speaker 1: For electrons, you can't really accelerate them in the circle
48:06
Speaker 1: because when you bend electrons in a circle, they radiate
48:09
Speaker 1: away photons and they'll lose their energy really really fast. Protons, however,
48:13
Speaker 1: you can accelerate them in a circle, and because they
48:15
Speaker 1: have more masks, they tend to radiate less. So that's
48:18
Speaker 1: why protons accelerators tend to be circles and electron accelerators
48:21
Speaker 1: tend to be straight lines. So people want to do both.
48:24
Speaker 1: They want to do straight electron accelerators and then want
48:26
Speaker 1: to occur protons into circles to smash them together. Protons
48:29
Speaker 1: we can tend to get to higher energies because of
48:31
Speaker 1: these circular colliders. I think this technology has come a
48:34
Speaker 1: long way in the last few decades. It's definitely not
48:37
Speaker 1: ready for prime time. Nobody's like proposing, let's build one
48:40
Speaker 1: of these things in five years or in ten years.
48:42
Speaker 1: But there are like larger and larger demonstration experiments being
48:46
Speaker 1: built and that are working, and lots of different ideas
48:49
Speaker 1: that people are using to develop these things, not just
48:52
Speaker 1: laser pulses, is ones where you drive it with a
48:54
Speaker 1: proton beam, and all sorts of other variations. It's a
48:57
Speaker 1: very exciting area and it might be in like you know,
49:00
Speaker 1: a couple of decades that we're ready to talk about,
49:03
Speaker 1: like building a LHC size or super LT size particle
49:07
Speaker 1: accelerator that's significantly smaller than the other plans we have.
49:11
Speaker 1: So this technology will also accilerate protons. It can also
49:15
Speaker 1: accelerate protons, yes, but then I guess you'll run into
49:17
Speaker 1: the same problem that you haven't in the LHC, Like
49:19
Speaker 1: if you can make them go faster, but then you
49:22
Speaker 1: still need to man to bend them into a circle
49:24
Speaker 1: or you need to build a bigger circle. Yeah, you'll
49:26
Speaker 1: still have that problem if you want to bend into
49:28
Speaker 1: a circle. But if you have a super duper plasma accelerator,
49:31
Speaker 1: maybe you just get them up to super high speeds
49:33
Speaker 1: in a straight line, which could also work for protons.
49:35
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's powerful enough, then you don't need
49:38
Speaker 1: to go around many many times interesting. Well, there's a
49:41
Speaker 1: lot of promise there. It sounds like it's definitely something
49:43
Speaker 1: people are hoping is around the corner, and that might
49:46
Speaker 1: revolutionize the way we're doing particle physics, because the way
49:49
Speaker 1: we're doing it right now definitely doesn't seem sustainable. I mean,
49:52
Speaker 1: particle physicists are talking about the next generation of colliders
49:55
Speaker 1: and how it's going to cost one hundred billion dollars
49:57
Speaker 1: and I'm all for it, you know, of course, but
50:00
Speaker 1: I'm pretty skeptical that governments are going to pony up
50:02
Speaker 1: that much money for another experiment. And so I'm looking
50:05
Speaker 1: forward to, you know, the revolution that makes particle physics cheaper,
50:08
Speaker 1: faster better. Did I tell you every once went to
50:11
Speaker 1: a conference for this technology? No you didn't. Did it
50:13
Speaker 1: accelerate your mind? Yeah? I got smashed. My brain got
50:17
Speaker 1: smashed a thousand tiny bits. All right. Well, there's a
50:22
Speaker 1: lot of promise in this new way of accelerating things,
50:24
Speaker 1: but it also sounds like there's a ton of challenges
50:27
Speaker 1: because you still have to scale these up, and you
50:29
Speaker 1: still have to maybe potentially bend them into a circle.
50:32
Speaker 1: Which city should we build the next giant particle collider
50:35
Speaker 1: on the Pasadena. Oh good, good, not South Pasadena exactly,
50:39
Speaker 1: always your neighbors. All right, Well, hopefully that made you
50:42
Speaker 1: think a little bit about how scientists are out there
50:44
Speaker 1: trying to break things apart and trying to uncover what's
50:48
Speaker 1: inside of the fundamental particles that make up nature and
50:53
Speaker 1: matter itself. That's right, because to answer the deepest questions
50:56
Speaker 1: in the universe, we need to develop more and more technology.
50:59
Speaker 1: We need better, inc more clever engineers to give us
51:02
Speaker 1: the tools we can use to ask these questions. And
51:05
Speaker 1: maybe it's gonna be plasma technology, or maybe it's gonna
51:07
Speaker 1: be something totally different that somebody else out there sinks up.
51:11
Speaker 1: We need more money or cheaper physicists, one of the two,
51:14
Speaker 1: but the skip fund the engineers. All right, Well, we
51:17
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See you
51:20
Speaker 1: next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and
51:30
Speaker 1: Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of iHeartRadio. For
51:34
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
51:39
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.