Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / How many particles has the Large Hadron Collider discovered?

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How many particles has the Large Hadron Collider discovered? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, how much does it cost to discover a
0:10
Speaker 1: new particle? Well, I'm sorry to say that, like everything else,
0:14
Speaker 1: the prices seem to be going up and up. Oh,
0:17
Speaker 1: you mean, like with inflation. I think there's more than
0:19
Speaker 1: that going on. I mean, the electron was really cheap
0:22
Speaker 1: to discover in the eighteen hundreds, but then the top
0:24
Speaker 1: corps probably cost a billion dollars or so a billion
0:28
Speaker 1: dollars to discover one particle. A billion dollars is cheap.
0:32
Speaker 1: These days, the Higgs boson probably cost more than ten
0:35
Speaker 1: billion dollars and billion. That's like super fancy caviar probably
0:40
Speaker 1: tastes just as bad, Daniel. Cavire isn't about the flavor,
0:43
Speaker 1: it's about the glamour. Well, that's also true about particle physics.
0:46
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all ball gowns and tuxedos in the
0:48
Speaker 1: control room at CERN. I see, that's why it costs
0:51
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars. It's the dress code that's killing you.
0:54
Speaker 1: At least you have a dress code. I thought physics
0:56
Speaker 1: just war. You know, boxer shorts and T shirts. It's
0:59
Speaker 1: a T shirt with a tuxedo printed on it. Hi
1:17
Speaker 1: am or handmade cartoonists and the creator of PhD Comics. Hi,
1:20
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who's never discovered a
1:23
Speaker 1: new particle. Oh yet, Well, technically, Dan, don't you discover
1:28
Speaker 1: new particles all the time? Like you know this oxygen
1:31
Speaker 1: molecule and breathing right now? Is it's technically new to me?
1:34
Speaker 1: That's true. Each individual particle has its own wonderful spirit
1:39
Speaker 1: and personality. But we're more interested in new types of particles,
1:43
Speaker 1: new things that nobody in the world has ever seen before,
1:45
Speaker 1: things that can blow our minds and teach us something
1:48
Speaker 1: new about the universe. Well, welcome to this new type
1:50
Speaker 1: of podcast. Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe, a prolection
1:53
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, in which we sort through all
1:56
Speaker 1: the amazing and crazy stuff in this universe. The stuff
1:59
Speaker 1: made of oxygen, the stuff made of carbon, the stuff
2:02
Speaker 1: made of nitrogen, and the stuff made of things we
2:04
Speaker 1: don't even yet understand. The rest of the universe, whatever
2:07
Speaker 1: it's made out of, we tackle it. We asked the
2:09
Speaker 1: big questions and we try to explain all of it
2:12
Speaker 1: to you. Because there is a lot of stuff in
2:14
Speaker 1: the universe, actually, maybe an infinite amount of stuff. Right
2:17
Speaker 1: there might be an infinite number of particles, and there
2:19
Speaker 1: might even be an infinite number of kinds of particles.
2:22
Speaker 1: We have no idea. We're looking at an ice cube
2:24
Speaker 1: and we don't know if it's the whole cube or
2:26
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg. That's right, everything is
2:28
Speaker 1: made out of stuff, and we are made out of stuff,
2:30
Speaker 1: and we are also constantly trying to discover what this
2:34
Speaker 1: stuff is made out of and how it works and
2:36
Speaker 1: how it's put together, and what are the rules that
2:39
Speaker 1: tell the stuff what it can and cannot do. It
2:41
Speaker 1: feels like if we could pull apart everything in the
2:44
Speaker 1: universe into its tying these little bits and understand those rules,
2:47
Speaker 1: we will have revealed something true, something fundamental, something deep
2:51
Speaker 1: in the source code of the universe. And like looking
2:53
Speaker 1: at those rules and understanding that basic set of particles
2:56
Speaker 1: would finally tell us how the universe is really put together.
3:00
Speaker 1: I guess it's pretty amazing that, you know, there's all
3:01
Speaker 1: this stuff in the universe and us little humans on
3:04
Speaker 1: this little rock floating in space and sort of figured
3:07
Speaker 1: out that this stuff has kind of rules and types
3:10
Speaker 1: of stuff to it, right, Like it's not just random
3:12
Speaker 1: and there's only a certain number of kinds of stuff
3:15
Speaker 1: that out there, and that kind of stuff has certain
3:17
Speaker 1: rules about how it can put together and how it
3:20
Speaker 1: interacts with itself. Yeah, And the incredible thing is that
3:23
Speaker 1: there's a pretty small number of particles, like the particles
3:26
Speaker 1: that make up me and you. It's just really three
3:28
Speaker 1: of them, is the upcord, the down cord, and the electron.
3:31
Speaker 1: But you can put those particles together in so many
3:34
Speaker 1: different ways to get an incredible variety of things. So
3:37
Speaker 1: as you look at into the universe and you see
3:39
Speaker 1: all these weird things, you know, from bananas to comets
3:43
Speaker 1: to planets to neutron stars, you know that all those
3:45
Speaker 1: things are made of the same basic particles, just put
3:48
Speaker 1: together in different ways. And it's sort of incredible, like philosophically,
3:53
Speaker 1: that the universe even works that way, that you could
3:55
Speaker 1: take all this incredible complexity and boil it down to
3:58
Speaker 1: relative simplicity of the at the lowest level. Even caviar
4:02
Speaker 1: Daniel's caviar made out of regular particles or really expensive particles.
4:06
Speaker 1: It tastes like it's made out of some other weird,
4:08
Speaker 1: kind of gross particles. I take it you're not a
4:11
Speaker 1: fan of the caviar. Not a fan of tiny little
4:13
Speaker 1: salty fish eggs exploding in my mouth. You don't even
4:16
Speaker 1: really understand how that's the thing. Maybe you haven't bought
4:18
Speaker 1: the expensive kind, You've only had the cheap kind. You've
4:21
Speaker 1: only had the electrons of I should just keep spending
4:24
Speaker 1: more money on caviar until I like it. Yeah, that's
4:26
Speaker 1: a good idea. It's all about the cracker. Like, if
4:28
Speaker 1: you have the right cracker, you can put anything on it, caviar,
4:31
Speaker 1: higgs bosons. It doesn't matter if you have the right cracker.
4:34
Speaker 1: It's all good. Higgs boson exploded in your mouth. That
4:36
Speaker 1: would be kind of troublesome, wouldn't it. I don't know.
4:38
Speaker 1: It might be salty, might be delicious. It would already
4:41
Speaker 1: cost a lot of money, that's right, At ten billion
4:44
Speaker 1: dollars per particle. I don't think I could even taste it.
4:46
Speaker 1: But yeah, we are all made out of stuff, and
4:48
Speaker 1: that stuff in one sense, it feels like it's made
4:51
Speaker 1: out of a small number of kinds of stuff, you know,
4:53
Speaker 1: like you said, quarks and electrons. But at the same time,
4:56
Speaker 1: it seems like the universe is full of all kinds
4:58
Speaker 1: of particles and possibly, as you said, maybe an infinite
5:01
Speaker 1: number of different kinds of particles. Yeah, we sort of
5:04
Speaker 1: took a left turn there at some point in history.
5:06
Speaker 1: Like for a long time we were taking this stuff
5:08
Speaker 1: around us, and we were figuring out that it was
5:10
Speaker 1: made of a simpler set of stuff, you know, like
5:13
Speaker 1: all the crazy stuff in the universe is made out
5:15
Speaker 1: of elements, and then oh, it turns out those elements
5:17
Speaker 1: are just made out of protons and neutrons and electrons,
5:19
Speaker 1: and oh wow, look the protons and neutrons are made
5:21
Speaker 1: out of quarks. We were getting simpler and simpler and simpler.
5:24
Speaker 1: But then at some point we discovered a bunch of
5:26
Speaker 1: other weird stuff, other weird particles that you don't need
5:29
Speaker 1: to make up ordinary matter, things we've talked about in
5:32
Speaker 1: the podcast, like muans and tows and other kinds of quarks.
5:37
Speaker 1: And it's sort of puzzling, like why those particles exist.
5:40
Speaker 1: You don't need them to make bananas, so why do
5:43
Speaker 1: they exist in the universe. But if we systematically discover
5:46
Speaker 1: all of them, we might get some sort of like
5:47
Speaker 1: glimpse at the larger pattern and figure out what is
5:50
Speaker 1: really going on in the universe. Yeah, it's kind of humbling,
5:54
Speaker 1: I guess to think that, you know, we are basically
5:56
Speaker 1: masters of our We think we're masters of our universe.
5:58
Speaker 1: But really we're just made out of a small corner
6:01
Speaker 1: of the particle, you know, table and even matter and
6:05
Speaker 1: even stuff is just a small part of the the
6:08
Speaker 1: whole universe, right, Most of the universe is energy. Yeah,
6:11
Speaker 1: that's true. A huge fraction of the universe is just energy,
6:14
Speaker 1: and we are made out of sort of the lightest stuff.
6:17
Speaker 1: Like all these other heavy particles, they don't last for
6:19
Speaker 1: very long, and they fall apart really quickly, and they
6:21
Speaker 1: decay into lighter and lighter particles. So the reason the
6:24
Speaker 1: electron lives forever while the muon doesn't is that the
6:27
Speaker 1: electron is the lightest thing. It can't turn into anything lighter,
6:30
Speaker 1: whereas the muan can decay into the electron. So everything
6:33
Speaker 1: is made out of these lightest particles. It's sort of
6:35
Speaker 1: like if everything was just made out of hydrogen or
6:38
Speaker 1: hydrogen and helium. Instead, we're made out of a much
6:41
Speaker 1: more complex set of stuff. And so in the same
6:43
Speaker 1: way for particles, we want to understand, like what are
6:45
Speaker 1: those other heavier particles and what can they do? It
6:48
Speaker 1: would be cool if we were made out of helium
6:50
Speaker 1: and we all float around, right technically, or I guess
6:53
Speaker 1: if everything else was made out of hydrogen, which just
6:55
Speaker 1: fall to the bottom. I'm actually on the all helium
6:57
Speaker 1: diet right now. I'm trying to lose uh. It works. Actually,
7:01
Speaker 1: I just keep inflating this balloon and I keep losing weight.
7:04
Speaker 1: It's amazing you're in the helio diet exactly. If I
7:07
Speaker 1: got a big enough balloon, I'll be literally waitless, but
7:10
Speaker 1: your voice will be really high pitched, and this podcast
7:14
Speaker 1: would be a totally different experience, right. That's right, Eleven
7:18
Speaker 1: and the Chipmunks present the Universe, Daniel and the Chipmunks.
7:23
Speaker 1: But you know, we are sort of asking this question
7:25
Speaker 1: all the time of what kinds of particles are out there,
7:28
Speaker 1: and what kinds of particles can exist and do exist,
7:31
Speaker 1: and what are they for? And so scientists are hard
7:34
Speaker 1: at work at it. And one of the biggest places
7:37
Speaker 1: to do that, to search for new particles, is a
7:39
Speaker 1: place that you were work at, right, Daniel. That's right
7:42
Speaker 1: at the Large Hadron Collider, which is not just one
7:44
Speaker 1: of the biggest places to do particle physics, it's like
7:46
Speaker 1: one of the biggest science experiments ever in terms of
7:50
Speaker 1: money spent, and like actual physical size is an incredible accomplishment.
7:54
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the Golden gate Bridge of particle physics.
7:57
Speaker 1: You know. I stand at the Golden gate Bridge sometimes
7:59
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wow, look what humanity can accomplish when
8:02
Speaker 1: we all work together. And the Large Hadron Collider is
8:04
Speaker 1: similar to that. It's an incredible feed not just of physics,
8:07
Speaker 1: but also of engineering and organization and also politics that
8:12
Speaker 1: all these different countries from all over the world came
8:14
Speaker 1: together to build this incredible device that's helping us peer
8:17
Speaker 1: into the very very core of matter. Yeah, it's a
8:20
Speaker 1: big science experiment, although I thought the biggest science experiment
8:23
Speaker 1: was caviar Daniel like, how much can you get people
8:25
Speaker 1: to pay for something that's salty and crunchy? Are you're
8:28
Speaker 1: thinking of the Large Caviart Collider, I think, which is
8:30
Speaker 1: still being constructed somewhere in Russia. Yeah, the Large the
8:34
Speaker 1: other LC. Yeah, they collide money and Higgs to get
8:40
Speaker 1: new kinds of profits. But yeah, the LC is the
8:42
Speaker 1: biggest science experiment ever and also one of the most expensive.
8:46
Speaker 1: You said earlier that it caused about ten billion dollars
8:49
Speaker 1: just to find the Higgs boson. But the LC is
8:52
Speaker 1: a larger project than that, right, Like, it's looking for
8:54
Speaker 1: other things, and it costs a lot more than ten
8:56
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Ten billion dollars is about the cost of
8:58
Speaker 1: the project. It depends on little bit exactly how you
9:01
Speaker 1: do the accounting. But you know, it costs like a
9:02
Speaker 1: billion dollars to build the tunnel, and a couple of
9:05
Speaker 1: billion dollars to make those magnets, and then billions more
9:08
Speaker 1: to build the detectors and actual bean pipe and all
9:10
Speaker 1: that stuff. So altogether the whole project is a little
9:13
Speaker 1: bit more than ten billion dollars. And you're right. While
9:16
Speaker 1: many people think about the Higgs boson when they think
9:18
Speaker 1: about the large age On collider, it's actually a much
9:20
Speaker 1: broader science experiment. We were hoping when we turn this
9:23
Speaker 1: thing on, not just to find the Higgs boson, though
9:26
Speaker 1: we're happy to have done so, but to also find
9:28
Speaker 1: all sorts of other crazy stuff that might have been
9:30
Speaker 1: out there. Because remember, these experiments are like exploration. We
9:34
Speaker 1: don't know what we're going to find until we turn
9:36
Speaker 1: the machine on. That's why we build it, and so
9:39
Speaker 1: it's always a bit of a gamble. Yeah. Well, although
9:41
Speaker 1: I think the Higgs Boson sort of put it on
9:43
Speaker 1: the map, right, Like, I feel like probably very few
9:46
Speaker 1: people had heard of the L A C before the
9:48
Speaker 1: big discovery of the Higgs Boson about ten years ago,
9:51
Speaker 1: that's right, that's when it made it onto the a
9:52
Speaker 1: list of particle physics experiments. Before that, it wasn't even
9:55
Speaker 1: getting invited to those caveat parties. Is there an a
9:57
Speaker 1: list went up through about the Well, you know, there
10:01
Speaker 1: are bragging rights for who has the most powerful collider
10:04
Speaker 1: in the world, And for a long time the Americans
10:07
Speaker 1: dominated it, and then the Europeans took over in the nineties,
10:11
Speaker 1: and then the Americans stole the lead back in the
10:13
Speaker 1: early two thousands, and now the Europeans have had it
10:16
Speaker 1: for a while. And you know, it's not just enough
10:18
Speaker 1: to have the most powerful collider in the world. You
10:20
Speaker 1: have to find something new. You have to make a
10:22
Speaker 1: big discovery that leads to a Nobel Prize. And so
10:24
Speaker 1: you're right that seeing the Higgs Boson really put the
10:27
Speaker 1: L A C on the map. That's what I mean,
10:28
Speaker 1: Daniel to de list, I meant, like the discovery list.
10:31
Speaker 1: It's a good thing. Yeah, But anyways, I guess a
10:34
Speaker 1: big question is besides the l A C, what else
10:37
Speaker 1: has the Large Hadron Collider discovered? Like, I know, you
10:41
Speaker 1: set out to find lots of different particles and the
10:44
Speaker 1: big one was the Higgs boson. But I bet people
10:46
Speaker 1: don't know that the l AC is looking and has
10:49
Speaker 1: discovered a lot more particles than that. Yeah, we can
10:51
Speaker 1: do lots of really interesting physics with the l A T.
10:54
Speaker 1: It's not just for the Higgs boson. So to be
10:56
Speaker 1: on the podcast, we'll be asking the question how many
11:03
Speaker 1: particles has a large Hadron Collider discovered? I think probably
11:08
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of people maybe get confused.
11:09
Speaker 1: They probably associate the age in the l C with
11:12
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. What do you think? Commercial? There you go,
11:18
Speaker 1: the long Higgs Boson commercial. Man, I can't skip this ad.
11:22
Speaker 1: What's going on? Click? Click click, click click The lofty
11:25
Speaker 1: higgs Boson commercial? Good because you know, if I was
11:27
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson and I wanted to make a splash,
11:30
Speaker 1: the LC has been a big part of that, right, Yeah,
11:32
Speaker 1: that's true. The LC has been a good part of
11:33
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson marketing campaign. Who was hiding for fifty
11:37
Speaker 1: years while people were trying to look forward? But finally
11:39
Speaker 1: allowed itself to be discovered in t So, as usual'll
11:43
Speaker 1: be wondering how many people out there and have thought
11:45
Speaker 1: about what other particles that l a C has discovered.
11:48
Speaker 1: So Daniel went out there into the wilds of the
11:50
Speaker 1: internet to ask how many particles has the l a
11:52
Speaker 1: C discovered? And if you are a denizen of the
11:55
Speaker 1: wilds of the Internet, and you wouldn't mind me knocking
11:58
Speaker 1: on your virtual door to ask you for six questions
12:00
Speaker 1: that you haven't prepared for, please write to us two
12:03
Speaker 1: questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. We want to
12:06
Speaker 1: hear from you, and we think you'll have fun. Do
12:08
Speaker 1: you always start the day not not joke, the physics
12:10
Speaker 1: not not joke. I didn't, but now I will. We'll
12:13
Speaker 1: have the brainstorm, all right. Well, here's what people had
12:15
Speaker 1: to say. I know of only one particle that the
12:18
Speaker 1: LHC has discovered, which is the Higgs boat on, but
12:21
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine that's the only one it has discovered. Ever,
12:25
Speaker 1: would be quite an expensive machine who would only have
12:29
Speaker 1: discovered this one particle? But maybe that's actually the case.
12:34
Speaker 1: So my answer to is only one. I don't know
12:37
Speaker 1: the number, but for sure it needs to be more,
12:43
Speaker 1: and I like to be more. I think it's time
12:46
Speaker 1: to build a new, bigger particle collider, hopefully here in US.
12:54
Speaker 1: LHC must be the large Hadron collider. Hadron is a
12:59
Speaker 1: particle and you're colliding them together, so maybe you're smashing
13:03
Speaker 1: it up into smaller particles. I have no idea. Maybe three,
13:08
Speaker 1: maybe seven. I think the LHC has discovered only one particle.
13:13
Speaker 1: That would be the Higgs boson. I hope I'm not
13:16
Speaker 1: terribly off. I'm going to guess that the l a
13:18
Speaker 1: C has maybe discovered seven new particles. I know the
13:22
Speaker 1: most or the most recent particles that I know of
13:25
Speaker 1: that was discovered at the allergacy is the Higgs in
13:31
Speaker 1: I think, so I would say the number of new
13:34
Speaker 1: particles the allgacy has discovered is one. All right, there's
13:39
Speaker 1: a broad range here. Some people say one that you've
13:41
Speaker 1: only had a one hit wonder the l a C.
13:44
Speaker 1: And some people have a certain number, like maybe seven
13:47
Speaker 1: or a few. A couple of people said seven. I
13:50
Speaker 1: wonder where that number came from. I don't know, but
13:52
Speaker 1: I think if you just ask people to pick a
13:53
Speaker 1: number between one and ten, something like fifty of them
13:56
Speaker 1: say seven, So I think it's de bias there. Yeah. Wow,
13:59
Speaker 1: like we have an internal die, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
14:02
Speaker 1: we are bad random number generators. But there's some fun
14:05
Speaker 1: answers here. Some people give the large hage On collider
14:07
Speaker 1: credit for discovering the top cork that was actually discovered
14:10
Speaker 1: by the fermulab Tevatron, the previous record holder for the
14:14
Speaker 1: highest energy collider right the other d listen, yeah exactly,
14:20
Speaker 1: and I do like the person who supports building a new,
14:23
Speaker 1: bigger collider here in the United States, thank you very much,
14:25
Speaker 1: right to your congress person, or hey, cut us a
14:27
Speaker 1: check for twenty billion dollars. Technically it could happen, right,
14:30
Speaker 1: Like if someone like Basis suddenly, instead of going to space,
14:33
Speaker 1: wanted to discover a new particle, they could totally make
14:35
Speaker 1: that happen. Wow, that's true. I never even thought about
14:38
Speaker 1: emailing Jeff Bezos and asking him to spend twenty billion
14:40
Speaker 1: dollars on a particle collider. But I'm doing that just
14:43
Speaker 1: as soon as we're finished here. Yeah, he probably just
14:45
Speaker 1: has to reach into his pocket and pull out some chain.
14:48
Speaker 1: But you're right. The larger point is that the only
14:50
Speaker 1: thing preventing us from building a bigger collider and discovering
14:54
Speaker 1: more particles is money, Like we know how to do it.
14:57
Speaker 1: It's just kind of expensive because you have to dig
14:59
Speaker 1: these big tunnels and pay for really fancy magnets to
15:02
Speaker 1: bend the particles around in a circle. But the only
15:05
Speaker 1: limitation is money, which is understandable. These things are expensive.
15:08
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's frustrating though, because it feels like we could
15:11
Speaker 1: just be buying knowledge about the universe, like we just
15:14
Speaker 1: lay out some cash, boom, the universe will reveal some
15:17
Speaker 1: secrets to us. I think the question is why does
15:19
Speaker 1: the universe charge so much? Like why can't the universe
15:22
Speaker 1: just give us these things for free? Like is it
15:24
Speaker 1: trying to sell caviare you know? Like it's I feel
15:26
Speaker 1: like it's maybe overpricing it a little. Do we have
15:28
Speaker 1: it like another universe We can maybe get a competitive
15:31
Speaker 1: bid off. Yeah, we should negotiate with the universe. I
15:34
Speaker 1: don't know. I think we treat these things with value
15:36
Speaker 1: because we pay more for them, right, Like if you
15:38
Speaker 1: buy expensive shoes, then you're gonna think they're better shoes.
15:42
Speaker 1: And so we think the Higgs boson is super important
15:45
Speaker 1: because we spent so much on it. You just admitted
15:47
Speaker 1: that you're using the caviare strategy here to overvalue physics knowledge.
15:53
Speaker 1: But you know, we've also talked in the podcast about
15:55
Speaker 1: physics discoveries made with very cheap materials, like the whole
15:58
Speaker 1: two dimensionals here. That's something somebody discovered using literally scotch
16:02
Speaker 1: tape and a pencil. So you can totally discover things
16:05
Speaker 1: using you know, five dollars worth of materials, but some
16:09
Speaker 1: things do cost billions keeping price gouging humanity. That's right.
16:13
Speaker 1: We only spend ten bucks on the collider. The rest
16:15
Speaker 1: we're spending on caviare and ball gowns and T shirts
16:19
Speaker 1: with taxed those printing on them. But I guess you
16:21
Speaker 1: know it does cost a lot of money. I know
16:23
Speaker 1: it's expensive and maybe so maybe step us through this,
16:25
Speaker 1: like what's going on at the l h C. How
16:27
Speaker 1: does it work and why does it require so much
16:29
Speaker 1: infrastructure to make discoveries? Yea, So the basic idea of
16:33
Speaker 1: the large hay Drunk collider, like the reason to the
16:35
Speaker 1: Large hay Drunk Collider, is a window into the universe.
16:39
Speaker 1: The whole strategy for using it to discover new particles
16:42
Speaker 1: is to rely on Einstein's famous equation E equals mc squared,
16:47
Speaker 1: where E is energy and M is mass. And the
16:50
Speaker 1: goal is that we are looking for particles with a
16:52
Speaker 1: lot of mass. The particles that we see around us
16:55
Speaker 1: electrons and quarks. These are the lowest mass particles. As
16:58
Speaker 1: we talked about before, they're the stable ones. It's like
17:01
Speaker 1: the bottom rung of the ladder. Everything sort of like
17:03
Speaker 1: shakes down to the bottom rung of the ladder, the
17:05
Speaker 1: way like boulders tend to roll downhill and settle in
17:07
Speaker 1: the bottom of a valley. But we're interested in what
17:10
Speaker 1: the other rungs of the ladder are. Are there heavier
17:12
Speaker 1: particles out there? What are the heaviest particles? And we
17:16
Speaker 1: are limited in seeing those by the energy we can
17:18
Speaker 1: use to create them. So E equals mc square. It
17:21
Speaker 1: means if you want to create a particle with mass m,
17:24
Speaker 1: you need to put in as much energy as mc
17:27
Speaker 1: square to create it. So what we do with a
17:29
Speaker 1: large hadron collider is smash particles together, very low mass
17:33
Speaker 1: particles like protons, with a huge amount of energy, so
17:36
Speaker 1: we can turn that energy into the mass of some
17:38
Speaker 1: new kind of particle. Right. I guess what's interesting is
17:41
Speaker 1: that you're trying to make these particles. Like you're trying
17:44
Speaker 1: to discover particles that are out there, and you're doing
17:47
Speaker 1: that by trying to make them Like you're not sort
17:49
Speaker 1: of like breaking things apart and seeing what's there. You're
17:52
Speaker 1: really trying to sort of create conditions where they pop
17:55
Speaker 1: out of the vacuum, out of the nothingness. Yeah, it's alchemy.
17:58
Speaker 1: We are turning one kind of matter, are like normal
18:00
Speaker 1: everyday protons, into something new. It's not like we're taking
18:04
Speaker 1: the protons apart and looking for weird things in them.
18:07
Speaker 1: Sometimes these weird particles are called sub atomic, which is
18:10
Speaker 1: a little confusing because it implies that they're like inside
18:13
Speaker 1: the atom, but they're not. You can smash two protons
18:16
Speaker 1: together and make something totally new, which is not like
18:19
Speaker 1: a combination of the bits of the proton. And the
18:22
Speaker 1: reason you can do that is that you turn the
18:24
Speaker 1: protons into pure energy and then back from energy into
18:28
Speaker 1: a new kind of mass. So, as you say, we're
18:30
Speaker 1: making something new, so we're discovering it, not in the
18:33
Speaker 1: sense that like it's sitting there waiting for us to
18:36
Speaker 1: find it. It's sitting there on the list of possibilities,
18:40
Speaker 1: waiting for us to bring the ingredients, which is energy
18:43
Speaker 1: around so that nature can make it for us. Right,
18:45
Speaker 1: It's like you're discovering it in the sense of like
18:47
Speaker 1: going to a new restaurant, taking the menu, and then
18:50
Speaker 1: like discovering new dishes that could be made for you.
18:53
Speaker 1: That's right. We're like, oh, if we have enough money
18:55
Speaker 1: in our wallet, then we can afford this really expensive
18:58
Speaker 1: cavi are right, And so we are pouring energy into
19:01
Speaker 1: the climer because it allows us to look deeper, deeper
19:04
Speaker 1: onto nature's menu, so we can see what particles can
19:07
Speaker 1: be made. The amazing thing about the particle collider is
19:10
Speaker 1: that it's quantum mechanical, which means that when you smash
19:13
Speaker 1: these particles together, you don't know what's going to happen.
19:16
Speaker 1: You can predict the kinds of things that might happen,
19:18
Speaker 1: but for a given collision, you have no idea what
19:21
Speaker 1: might happen. Is like a list of possibilities. The cool thing, though,
19:24
Speaker 1: is that if you do it often enough, eventually you'll
19:26
Speaker 1: see everything on that list of possibilities. So you like
19:29
Speaker 1: exploring this menu of possibilities what nature might do just
19:33
Speaker 1: by doing the same collision over and over and over again. Right,
19:36
Speaker 1: I do that Sometimes I just go to restaurant and
19:38
Speaker 1: I order randomly from the menu, over and over and
19:41
Speaker 1: over and over, and eventually you try everything on the
19:44
Speaker 1: menu and also gain a lot of it. That's exactly
19:47
Speaker 1: what we're doing here. We're just going to the restaurant
19:49
Speaker 1: with our eyes closed, putting our fingers on the menu.
19:51
Speaker 1: And that's our strategy for ordering everything. You're going to
19:54
Speaker 1: the cosmic diner and taking that greasy menu and and
19:57
Speaker 1: just putting your finger anywhere on it. If we knew
20:00
Speaker 1: what was on the list already, we could look for
20:02
Speaker 1: it more intelligently. You know, we could design experiments that
20:04
Speaker 1: put in exactly the right amount of energy to make
20:07
Speaker 1: that particle we know is already there. We can do
20:09
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But if when you don't know
20:11
Speaker 1: what is there, then you have to just sort of
20:13
Speaker 1: poke around blindly, hoping something new appears when you put
20:16
Speaker 1: your finger on it, hoping you get a good dish.
20:19
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into how you actually see
20:21
Speaker 1: these particles at the large hydron collider, and let's get
20:24
Speaker 1: into what other particles they have found. But first let's
20:28
Speaker 1: take a quick break. All right, we're talking about what
20:43
Speaker 1: else has a large hydron collider the l a C
20:46
Speaker 1: discovered and Daniel, technically this is not a sponsored podcast episode, right,
20:50
Speaker 1: We're not being paid by the LHC. Here. I'm not
20:52
Speaker 1: a shill for big science. I mean I am, but
20:55
Speaker 1: I'm not getting paid to do it. Well, technically, you're
20:57
Speaker 1: paying the l a C to do your work like that.
21:00
Speaker 1: That's how it works, the collaboration and scientists have to
21:02
Speaker 1: like pay into it to use the facility and to
21:05
Speaker 1: get access to the data. Yeah, I mean, I'm not
21:08
Speaker 1: paying personally out of like my kids, Picky Bank. We're
21:10
Speaker 1: using government research funds. And so it's the US government,
21:13
Speaker 1: just like it's the German government and the Italian government
21:16
Speaker 1: and the British government. All these governments are paying to
21:19
Speaker 1: support this international facility for scientists to use. And so
21:23
Speaker 1: in the end it's all of us, right, it's all
21:25
Speaker 1: taxpayer money. Though. It's me and you and everybody down
21:28
Speaker 1: the street chipping in a few cents so that we
21:30
Speaker 1: can learn something new about the universe. Right. Well, and
21:32
Speaker 1: then technically Basis is chipping more than we are, so
21:35
Speaker 1: I think he pays zero taxes. Actually, so we're paying
21:38
Speaker 1: more than he is. I think he pays from when
21:41
Speaker 1: he buys that yacht, I think he's paying more taxes
21:44
Speaker 1: than I ever will in my life. But we're talking
21:47
Speaker 1: about how the LC works, and so you slash all
21:50
Speaker 1: known particles like protons together, and out of that ball
21:53
Speaker 1: of energy that gets made in that collision, new things
21:56
Speaker 1: come out. And you're doing that over and over and over,
21:58
Speaker 1: trying to find what else the universe can make and
22:02
Speaker 1: what else will pop out. That's right. We sift through
22:04
Speaker 1: all these collisions looking for something new, something that's not
22:07
Speaker 1: what we've seen before. We're very familiar with the old particles.
22:10
Speaker 1: We've been doing this for decades, and so what we're
22:12
Speaker 1: looking for is an anomaly, something surprising, something different, a
22:15
Speaker 1: new kind of thing that hasn't been seen before. Right,
22:18
Speaker 1: would you be surprised if like a cow like appeared
22:20
Speaker 1: out of your collider. We often use the example of
22:23
Speaker 1: pink elephants, you know, like when we turn on the
22:25
Speaker 1: collider and we don't know what could come out. It
22:27
Speaker 1: could be pink elephants, it could be the Higgs boson,
22:29
Speaker 1: it could be nothing. You really don't know, Oh, I said,
22:32
Speaker 1: you've thought about this, you know, large mammal appearance just
22:35
Speaker 1: in case and of course, you know, you have to
22:37
Speaker 1: balance the charge, and so you would have a pink
22:39
Speaker 1: elephant and an anti pink elephant created together like a
22:43
Speaker 1: great elephant. What would be the opposite of a pink elephant,
22:46
Speaker 1: a great mammoth maybe I don't know, maybe a blue
22:50
Speaker 1: ant a blue and you and we'll have to develop
22:51
Speaker 1: a mammoth collider to investigate that one. But then need
22:54
Speaker 1: they touch each other? It's bad news, it's bad news. Yeah.
22:57
Speaker 1: So then you collect these and every once in a
22:59
Speaker 1: while new particles come out, but they don't last very long, right,
23:02
Speaker 1: Like you're looking for things that don't just pop out
23:04
Speaker 1: and sit there on your counter. They disappear or changing
23:07
Speaker 1: to other things quickly. That's right. We are creating high
23:10
Speaker 1: energy density. We're pushing things up the ladder and they
23:13
Speaker 1: exist very briefly and then they fall apart back into
23:16
Speaker 1: low mass stable particles, the kinds of things that you
23:19
Speaker 1: and I are made out of. And you know, this
23:21
Speaker 1: is just what the universe does. You gather a bunch
23:22
Speaker 1: of energy together, it likes to spread it out. So
23:25
Speaker 1: we create these new heavy particles like a top cork
23:28
Speaker 1: or a Higgs boson. They last in that state. We
23:30
Speaker 1: know they exist, but they're only there for like ten
23:32
Speaker 1: to the minus twenty seconds. It's like the briefest moment
23:36
Speaker 1: in the sun before they decay back into lighter stuff, right,
23:40
Speaker 1: Because often you don't even detect the particles you're looking for,
23:43
Speaker 1: like the Higgs boson, And it's not like you had
23:45
Speaker 1: a detector that detected the Higgs boson. It's like you
23:48
Speaker 1: detect the things that the Higgs boson the case into
23:51
Speaker 1: and then you piece it back like, oh, this must
23:53
Speaker 1: have been the Higgs boson that existed there in the
23:55
Speaker 1: middle for ten to the minus twenty seconds. That's right. Technically,
23:58
Speaker 1: we've never seen a Higgs boson. I mean they last
24:01
Speaker 1: so briefly. We have no detector capable of seeing it directly.
24:04
Speaker 1: All we can do is see what it turns into.
24:06
Speaker 1: As you say, it's like coming to a street corner
24:09
Speaker 1: and seeing the remnants of a car accident and figuring
24:11
Speaker 1: out what must have happened, but not actually seeing the
24:14
Speaker 1: collision itself. And so in the case of the Higgs boson,
24:16
Speaker 1: for example, the Higgs likes to turn into a pair
24:19
Speaker 1: of photons or a pair of bottom corks, and those
24:23
Speaker 1: photons and bottom corks have particular configurations and energy to
24:26
Speaker 1: tell us that they must have come from a Higgs boson.
24:29
Speaker 1: So we can never actually be sure for any given
24:31
Speaker 1: collision what it came from, but we can make statistical
24:34
Speaker 1: arguments and say, oh, this one is more likely to
24:36
Speaker 1: be from a Higgs than from something else. That would
24:38
Speaker 1: also give you the same sort of signature in our detectors.
24:41
Speaker 1: And so that's what you do. You're colliding protons hoping
24:44
Speaker 1: to get new particles. And so the question we started
24:46
Speaker 1: off was was what has the NHD discovered in those collisions.
24:50
Speaker 1: Now we know the big one was the Higgs boson,
24:52
Speaker 1: which was discovered almost ten years ago, So tell us
24:55
Speaker 1: about that discovery and like sort of the specifics of
24:58
Speaker 1: how it was found. Yeah, so they Higgs boson is
25:00
Speaker 1: something we suspected was there. We looked at the patterns
25:03
Speaker 1: of all the particles and we said, this just doesn't
25:06
Speaker 1: make sense. And a guy named Peter Higgs realized that
25:08
Speaker 1: it would make much more sense, like it mathematically just
25:11
Speaker 1: clicked together beautifully if there was another particle. It's like
25:15
Speaker 1: if you have a jigsaw puzzle and there's a piece missing,
25:17
Speaker 1: you look at it, you can see the shape you're like,
25:19
Speaker 1: there must be one, and so you hunt around under
25:21
Speaker 1: the table looking for that particular piece. It's much easier
25:24
Speaker 1: to find a piece if you know what you're looking
25:25
Speaker 1: for and you suspect it exists. So we already had
25:28
Speaker 1: the idea that the Higgs boson might exist and how
25:31
Speaker 1: it would be created and what it would look like
25:33
Speaker 1: in our detector. And we have a whole fun podcast
25:35
Speaker 1: episode about the journey to find the Higgs, so long saga,
25:39
Speaker 1: lots of drama, lots of politics. But we ended up
25:41
Speaker 1: finding at the large Hdon collider in exactly that way
25:44
Speaker 1: that we talked about. It turns into two photons. So
25:47
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson is this little particle and it decays
25:51
Speaker 1: in this complicated way that ends up giving two photons,
25:53
Speaker 1: one in one direction and one in the other direction.
25:56
Speaker 1: And we surround these collisions with all sorts of layers
25:59
Speaker 1: of detector. Is that tell us what came out of
26:01
Speaker 1: those collisions. So we saw a lot of these events
26:04
Speaker 1: with two photons, one photon one way and the other
26:06
Speaker 1: photon going in the other direction. When you add up
26:09
Speaker 1: their energy, the energy of those two photons, it comes
26:11
Speaker 1: up to a certain number, and that's the mass of
26:14
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, and so we saw a lot of
26:16
Speaker 1: these particular kinds of collisions that led to this pattern
26:20
Speaker 1: of photons that all added up to the same number
26:22
Speaker 1: for the mass of the Higgs, and we thought that
26:25
Speaker 1: must be it. Right, It's like you saw the footprint
26:27
Speaker 1: of the Higgs boson in these two photons, right, yeah, exactly.
26:31
Speaker 1: We can't see the Higgs itself. Because I think that's
26:33
Speaker 1: one thing that's interesting about this is that you kind
26:35
Speaker 1: of have to have an idea of what you're looking for, right.
26:37
Speaker 1: You can't just like turn this on and then see
26:39
Speaker 1: what happens because there's so much stuff coming out and
26:41
Speaker 1: it's all probabilistic, So you kind of need to know
26:44
Speaker 1: what you're looking for, or you need to know about
26:46
Speaker 1: what size of a footprint you're looking for, or what
26:48
Speaker 1: would the footprint look like, sort of in other to
26:51
Speaker 1: actually discover these footprints, you just put your finger on.
26:53
Speaker 1: A really interesting and sort of hot headed debate in
26:56
Speaker 1: the field right now, Like a lot of people think
26:58
Speaker 1: that you're right that you need to know what you're
27:00
Speaker 1: looking for because these signals are subtle and you can't
27:03
Speaker 1: see things directly, so you need to know like well
27:05
Speaker 1: how to look for things in order to anticipate them
27:07
Speaker 1: and discover them. And that's probably true for really subtle
27:10
Speaker 1: signals like the Higgs boson. If we didn't know to
27:13
Speaker 1: look for the Higgs boson, we might not have seen it,
27:15
Speaker 1: because in the end, the signal is kind of subtle.
27:17
Speaker 1: It's like this little bump. There's lots of other ways
27:20
Speaker 1: to make the same signature that we see for the Higgs.
27:22
Speaker 1: But other people i e. Me and some folks that
27:24
Speaker 1: work with I think it might be possible to discover
27:27
Speaker 1: something we don't anticipate. That not knowing what's out there
27:30
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we can't see it. We need to
27:32
Speaker 1: be sort of more clever about how to look for
27:34
Speaker 1: things to be ready for surprises. But we think that
27:37
Speaker 1: using some new techniques from like machine learning and anomaly detection,
27:41
Speaker 1: it might be possible to figure out if there's something
27:43
Speaker 1: new in our data, even if we don't know exactly
27:45
Speaker 1: what to look for. But you're right, it's more difficult
27:48
Speaker 1: and it would need to be a more obvious signal.
27:50
Speaker 1: But I guess what I mean is you sort of
27:51
Speaker 1: need to know even for something where you're detecting anomalies.
27:54
Speaker 1: You sort of need to know what's normal so that
27:56
Speaker 1: you can tell what's an anomaly. Right, You need to
27:58
Speaker 1: have sort of an idea of what you might discover,
28:00
Speaker 1: or at least sort of like a good picture, and
28:02
Speaker 1: then you can tell if something is off of that
28:05
Speaker 1: or different than that. Yes, it's all about understanding what
28:08
Speaker 1: the current theory predicts so we can find deviations from it.
28:11
Speaker 1: And that's what was exciting, for example, about those muon
28:14
Speaker 1: G minus two experiments that were recently done at fer
28:16
Speaker 1: Me Lab, is that they had a really detailed prediction
28:19
Speaker 1: for what they expected to see when the muon wobbled
28:22
Speaker 1: around in a circle, and then they saw something different.
28:24
Speaker 1: They don't know what it is, and they don't need
28:26
Speaker 1: to know what it is, but they know they see
28:28
Speaker 1: something different, which requires some new kind of particle. So
28:31
Speaker 1: that's an example of how you might see that there
28:33
Speaker 1: is something out there new to discover without knowing exactly
28:36
Speaker 1: what it is, seeing a deviation from what you expect.
28:39
Speaker 1: And so that was the Higgs boson. That was a
28:41
Speaker 1: huge deal a while ago, and because it is such
28:44
Speaker 1: a fundamental particle in our model of particle physics, right,
28:48
Speaker 1: like it's the particle that sort of explains the masses
28:52
Speaker 1: of the other particles, and it's sort of in a way,
28:54
Speaker 1: sort of holds the universe together. Yeah. Absolutely, And it's
28:57
Speaker 1: even more deeply important than that. It completes this longer
28:59
Speaker 1: project of bringing together electricity and magnetism and the weak force.
29:04
Speaker 1: You know, James Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism more than
29:08
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, and then in the sixties somebody
29:11
Speaker 1: else brought together the weak force into a single force,
29:13
Speaker 1: the electroweak force, and it's all beautiful and mathematical, but
29:17
Speaker 1: didn't really work because it was missing a piece, and
29:19
Speaker 1: Higgs Boson was that piece. So finding that tells us
29:23
Speaker 1: not just how particles get their mass, but also that
29:25
Speaker 1: the weak force and electromagnetism are just two sides of
29:29
Speaker 1: the same coin. It's really an incredible triumph. That's like
29:31
Speaker 1: over a hundred years of theoretical progress. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
29:35
Speaker 1: That's what I tell the Higgs all the time, is
29:37
Speaker 1: I tell you complete me. So that's what maybe the
29:40
Speaker 1: last fundamental particle that humans have discovered, right, I don't
29:43
Speaker 1: think we've found other fundamental particles there or at at
29:47
Speaker 1: the head large tender and collider or anywhere, right, and
29:49
Speaker 1: we have been looking. We have been looking, and we
29:52
Speaker 1: had high hopes, but you're right, we haven't found anything else.
29:55
Speaker 1: You know, when we turned on the Large Hadron Collider,
29:57
Speaker 1: we were able to explore new energy ranges. Like the
30:01
Speaker 1: previous collider went up to two trillion electron volts that's
30:05
Speaker 1: like two thousand times the energy inside the mass of
30:09
Speaker 1: a proton, and the Large Hadron Collider goes up to
30:13
Speaker 1: fourteen terra electron volts, so like it's seven times as
30:18
Speaker 1: much energy as the old collider, and that means it's
30:21
Speaker 1: like seven times the territories, seven times the new menus.
30:24
Speaker 1: You know, you're going in and out and you get
30:26
Speaker 1: like the secret, secret, secret, secret menus. That's really exciting
30:30
Speaker 1: from like an explorational point of view. It's like simultaneously
30:33
Speaker 1: landing on seven new Earth like planets and seeing if
30:36
Speaker 1: there's life on. There's a huge territory that's that nobody
30:39
Speaker 1: had explored before, so the possibilities were huge. We could
30:43
Speaker 1: have seen nothing, right, you could be there's just nothing
30:45
Speaker 1: there because the only the Higgs boson, or we could
30:48
Speaker 1: have seen like a crazy number of particles flying out
30:51
Speaker 1: of the machine. Probably not pink elephants, but the possibility
30:54
Speaker 1: was that we could have seen dozens of new particles
30:57
Speaker 1: that it tells all sorts of crazy stories about the universe. Unfore,
31:00
Speaker 1: originally we didn't. All we saw in terms of fundamental
31:03
Speaker 1: particles was the Higgs boson. It's almost like you've got
31:05
Speaker 1: a bigger table in a way, not just access to
31:08
Speaker 1: the bigger many, but it's like you've got a bigger
31:09
Speaker 1: table and you told the universe all right, you know,
31:11
Speaker 1: surprise me, and it just kind of brought more of
31:13
Speaker 1: the same thing. That's right. We went to the all
31:15
Speaker 1: you can eat buffet and it just kept serving as
31:17
Speaker 1: mac and cheese. You didn't get a Higgs animal style.
31:21
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we made a mistake, we filled up
31:23
Speaker 1: on bread or something. I don't know what the problem was.
31:24
Speaker 1: But we were hoping to find gravitons. There's no like secret,
31:29
Speaker 1: secret crap buffet table in the back or anything. If
31:32
Speaker 1: it is, it's still a secret because we haven't found it.
31:34
Speaker 1: We had lots of ideas also of what we might
31:36
Speaker 1: have seen. You know, we might have seen gravitons. We
31:39
Speaker 1: don't understand how gravity works is a quantum theory, and
31:42
Speaker 1: some people think that every time you feel gravity, it's
31:45
Speaker 1: because you're passing little quantum particles back and forth called gravitons.
31:49
Speaker 1: And if that is true, there was a chance we
31:51
Speaker 1: could have seen those the l h C and we
31:53
Speaker 1: looked for them but didn't see them. And there are
31:55
Speaker 1: lots of other really fun theories supersymmetry and heavier corks
31:59
Speaker 1: and all sorts of weird you leftons. There's no shortage
32:02
Speaker 1: of ideas coming from the theoretical community about what we
32:04
Speaker 1: might have seen. But of course we didn't see any
32:06
Speaker 1: of those either. Right, You had sort of ideas about
32:08
Speaker 1: how the universe might work, you know, given all the theory,
32:12
Speaker 1: and so you needed some experimental confirmation to make those
32:15
Speaker 1: theories kind of solid, right, like to show that supersymmetry
32:18
Speaker 1: was right or plantum gravitational physics was right. You needed
32:22
Speaker 1: to find sort of weird new particles in that space
32:25
Speaker 1: that we're looking for, but you didn't. Yeah, but we didn't.
32:27
Speaker 1: It's just like with the Higgs boson. These things come
32:30
Speaker 1: from theoretical motivation, people looking at the theory and saying,
32:33
Speaker 1: you know, this would make more sense if we changed
32:35
Speaker 1: it in this way, if we added this piece and
32:38
Speaker 1: then experimentalists go out and look for and say, well,
32:40
Speaker 1: is it there, is your idea corresponding to the real
32:44
Speaker 1: structures of the universe, or is it just sort of
32:45
Speaker 1: like a nice, pretty bit of math in your head.
32:48
Speaker 1: Because there's an important difference, right, We're not just interested
32:50
Speaker 1: in exploring the insides of our head. We want to
32:52
Speaker 1: know what the structures of the actual universe are, and
32:55
Speaker 1: so to do that we need to do these experiments.
32:57
Speaker 1: But our job is not just to like go off
32:59
Speaker 1: and check the box because some theoretical ideas. I think
33:01
Speaker 1: we're also capable of discovering unanticipated stuff, of finding weird
33:05
Speaker 1: new stuff out there that no theorist has predicted, that
33:08
Speaker 1: nobody anticipated. That blows up all of our ideas about
33:11
Speaker 1: the universe. That hasn't happened either, But I hold out hope. Yeah.
33:15
Speaker 1: You always talk about the scenario where you do an
33:17
Speaker 1: experiment and you look at the data and then you
33:19
Speaker 1: see something and you're like, what are that? Like? Which
33:21
Speaker 1: many did that one come from? Yes, and that's happened
33:24
Speaker 1: in history, right, Like who ordered that is a literal thing.
33:27
Speaker 1: Somebody said when they saw that the muan had been discovered,
33:29
Speaker 1: because nobody expected the muan to be there. It's not
33:32
Speaker 1: something we thought might be on the menu. It's just
33:35
Speaker 1: something that God delivered and we're like, huh, I didn't
33:37
Speaker 1: order this, it's just sitting here in front of me.
33:39
Speaker 1: And so I fantasized about that, you know, sort of
33:42
Speaker 1: a scientific way, Like you know, my dream scenario is
33:44
Speaker 1: finding something weird that everybody scratches their head over. Because
33:47
Speaker 1: you and I talked about on the podcast all the time,
33:49
Speaker 1: how we know there are basic things about the universe
33:52
Speaker 1: we don't understand, and what we need is a clue,
33:54
Speaker 1: something that points us in the right direction to think
33:57
Speaker 1: about new ideas. And so a totally weird, new anticipated
34:00
Speaker 1: discovery would be a great clue in that direction. Cool, Well,
34:03
Speaker 1: we are standing by for you to discover new fundamental
34:06
Speaker 1: particles or to confirm fundamental new theories. But in the meantime,
34:10
Speaker 1: the LC has been busy that it has made a
34:12
Speaker 1: lot of discoveries, and maybe it's found more particles than
34:15
Speaker 1: most people think. So let's get into that. But first
34:17
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. All right, we're talking about
34:33
Speaker 1: the L A C And ordering things off of the
34:35
Speaker 1: universe menu at the what the Cosmic Diner I think
34:39
Speaker 1: that is an actual diner, probably somewhere in America. They
34:41
Speaker 1: probably don't serve caviar, though they still higgs Boson animal style.
34:46
Speaker 1: So we made the big higgs Boson discovery, and we
34:48
Speaker 1: don't have any sort of thing that fundamental yet since then,
34:52
Speaker 1: But the LC has been busy discovering more particles, right, actually,
34:56
Speaker 1: a surprisingly large number of new particles. That's right. The
34:59
Speaker 1: higgs Boson is like the glamour front person of the
35:03
Speaker 1: particle discoveries. But we've been hard at work and we
35:05
Speaker 1: found all sorts of crazy stuff out there that you
35:09
Speaker 1: probably haven't even heard of unless you listen to this podcast, right,
35:13
Speaker 1: that's right. We have talked about a couple of these
35:15
Speaker 1: discoveries on the podcast, and so those of you out
35:18
Speaker 1: there who follow it might not be surprised. But honestly,
35:20
Speaker 1: I was even surprised when I counted up all the discoveries.
35:23
Speaker 1: The numbers sort of shocked me. How many particles has
35:26
Speaker 1: the l AC discovered? Fifty nine more particles than just
35:29
Speaker 1: the higgs Boson. WHOA fifty nine. It's a lot of particles.
35:34
Speaker 1: There are that many particles. There are that many particles
35:37
Speaker 1: exactly because there's other ways to discover particles than finding
35:41
Speaker 1: new fundamental particles, We can find new ways to put
35:44
Speaker 1: the old particles together. Oh I see. These are not
35:48
Speaker 1: like fundamental like building blocks of the universe we think,
35:50
Speaker 1: but just sort of like when you arrange particles in
35:53
Speaker 1: a different way, they sort of become new particles, right,
35:56
Speaker 1: They act like a new kind of particle, exactly, Like
35:58
Speaker 1: the proton is not a fundamental particle, right, it's made
36:01
Speaker 1: out of quarks. You put two up corks and a
36:04
Speaker 1: down cork together and you get a proton. And that's
36:06
Speaker 1: really interesting. It's amazing, and the fact that it even
36:09
Speaker 1: works is something we don't fully understand because it involves
36:11
Speaker 1: is very complex and very powerful force called the strong
36:15
Speaker 1: nuclear force. You know, quarks have these weird things called colors,
36:18
Speaker 1: and they exchange gluons back and forth. It's a crazy system.
36:22
Speaker 1: And so one thing we can do with the large
36:24
Speaker 1: hadron colliders figure out, like, are there other ways to
36:27
Speaker 1: combine quirks to make new kinds of particles? Can we
36:30
Speaker 1: shake corks together and build out new things like new
36:33
Speaker 1: kinds of protons? Maybe? Right? Basically, what you're making like
36:37
Speaker 1: new kinds of protons because when the collisions happen. Remember
36:40
Speaker 1: we're colliding protons and protons at the Large Hadron Collider.
36:43
Speaker 1: But again, protons are not fundamental particles. So what actually
36:47
Speaker 1: happens when these protons come near each other is not
36:50
Speaker 1: that like one proton smashes into another one and they
36:52
Speaker 1: totally annihilate. When you're at that energy, the fact that
36:56
Speaker 1: these corks are bound together into a proton, it's sort
36:58
Speaker 1: of irrelevant because the corks have so much more energy
37:01
Speaker 1: individually than the bonds between them, So it's sort of
37:04
Speaker 1: like what you're doing is shooting together like a triple
37:07
Speaker 1: beam of quarks in one direction and the triple beam
37:09
Speaker 1: of quirks in the other direction. So then what happens
37:11
Speaker 1: when they collide is that the corks themselves are interacting.
37:15
Speaker 1: Now you have six corks, and you can mix the match,
37:17
Speaker 1: and you can make all sorts of weird, crazy stuff,
37:20
Speaker 1: And because there's so much energy there, you can even
37:22
Speaker 1: pop new corks out of the vacuum and make all
37:24
Speaker 1: sorts of new weird combinations. I think it's these combinations
37:27
Speaker 1: that really tell you or let you explore or know
37:31
Speaker 1: more about the basic particles, right and how they're put together,
37:35
Speaker 1: Because They all sort of depend on the rules of
37:37
Speaker 1: quarks and gluons exactly, and we are trying to understand
37:40
Speaker 1: those rules. We want to know how quirks push against
37:43
Speaker 1: each other, how gluons pull on each other, and it's
37:45
Speaker 1: something that's very difficult to grapple with. This whole field
37:48
Speaker 1: of the strong and nuclear force is very difficult because
37:51
Speaker 1: the force is so strong, and so it's very hard
37:54
Speaker 1: to do calculations because things get out of hand very quickly.
37:57
Speaker 1: One reason is that the strong force is we eard
38:00
Speaker 1: in a really super interesting way. If you take two
38:03
Speaker 1: corks and you start to pull them apart, you might
38:06
Speaker 1: expect that the strong force would get weaker as they
38:08
Speaker 1: get further apart from each other. That's the case with gravity,
38:11
Speaker 1: right like as you get further from the Earth, your
38:13
Speaker 1: gravity gets weaker. That's the case with electricity. Like take
38:16
Speaker 1: two electrons. They will repel each other, but as you
38:19
Speaker 1: move them further apart, they start to repel each other
38:21
Speaker 1: less and less. The opposite is true with corks. As
38:24
Speaker 1: you move them further apart, the force between them get
38:27
Speaker 1: stronger and stronger. And that's what makes it really hard
38:30
Speaker 1: to do these calculations because you can almost never like
38:33
Speaker 1: neglect another particle. In the case of gravity and electromagnetism,
38:37
Speaker 1: you can make lots of simplifying assumptions because as things
38:40
Speaker 1: get far away, you can basically ignore them. You can
38:42
Speaker 1: never do that with the strong force. As things get
38:44
Speaker 1: further away, they become more important. And so these calculations
38:47
Speaker 1: are a big mess. They're really really hard to do. So,
38:50
Speaker 1: as you say, by understanding how these particles are fitting together,
38:53
Speaker 1: we're trying to understand what the rules are of how
38:56
Speaker 1: they fit together, not something we still understand, right. I
38:58
Speaker 1: think maybe something that people haven't thought about is that
39:01
Speaker 1: quarks can combine in ways that are other than the proton, Right,
39:04
Speaker 1: isn't that a little weird to think about that? You know,
39:06
Speaker 1: like course could make protons that which make up you
39:09
Speaker 1: and me and part of what makes you and me,
39:12
Speaker 1: but it can also kind of fit together in different ways.
39:15
Speaker 1: It is cool, but it's sort of the beauty of
39:17
Speaker 1: the universe. And we see that same sort of thing
39:20
Speaker 1: happening in other places, like the fact that you can
39:22
Speaker 1: take protons and neutrons and electrons and you can fit
39:25
Speaker 1: them to together to make helium or calcium or neon
39:30
Speaker 1: or uranium. Those elements are all so totally different, but
39:33
Speaker 1: they're made of the same building blocks. So there's something
39:36
Speaker 1: really deep about the fact that the same building blocks
39:38
Speaker 1: can be arranged to make completely different things with totally
39:41
Speaker 1: different properties. And so the same is true at this
39:44
Speaker 1: deeper level that you can take quarks, you can put
39:46
Speaker 1: them together and make a proton or a neutron, or
39:49
Speaker 1: you can do all sorts of other things, like you
39:51
Speaker 1: combine just two corks together. That's like a pion is
39:54
Speaker 1: made out of just two corks, or a row mason
39:57
Speaker 1: is made out of just two quirks. So these things
39:59
Speaker 1: are really like let those and you can combine them
40:00
Speaker 1: to make all sorts of stuff. The thing is that
40:02
Speaker 1: we don't understand exactly how those rules work, So it's
40:05
Speaker 1: very hard to predict which combination of quirks fit together
40:08
Speaker 1: to make a nice particle, and which combination of quirks
40:11
Speaker 1: aren't stable will just like fly apart instantaneously. Really you
40:14
Speaker 1: can't predict that. You have to kind of look for
40:16
Speaker 1: them in a way, right, because you found at least
40:18
Speaker 1: fifty nine different ways in which quarts can be put together,
40:21
Speaker 1: that's right, fifty nine new ways. I mean we have
40:24
Speaker 1: lots and lots of ways for quirks to fit together.
40:26
Speaker 1: There was this period in the early sixties called the
40:29
Speaker 1: particle Zoo, and people were building bigger and bigger colliders
40:32
Speaker 1: and finding new particles all the time. You know, the
40:34
Speaker 1: pion k on all these particles. These are the particles
40:37
Speaker 1: that give us the clue about quirks. In the first place,
40:40
Speaker 1: we discovered all these crazy particles, we didn't understand them,
40:43
Speaker 1: and then people understood, oh, all these weird new particles
40:46
Speaker 1: are built out of the same building blocks. They're all
40:48
Speaker 1: just built out of these little lego pieces called quarks.
40:51
Speaker 1: As as you say, we still don't really quite understand
40:53
Speaker 1: how to predict what else the quarks can do. So
40:56
Speaker 1: it's very interesting to find those, to go out and
40:58
Speaker 1: actually look for them and see, look, this weird combination works.
41:02
Speaker 1: That weird combination works. So that's been a big industry
41:05
Speaker 1: at the large dron collider is making new combination of
41:08
Speaker 1: quirks to help reveal how these particles do fit together,
41:11
Speaker 1: what the rules are. And I guess maybe what's also
41:14
Speaker 1: interesting is that these new kinds of arrangements of quirks,
41:17
Speaker 1: they're not common, right, like most of the corks together
41:21
Speaker 1: that we see our protons and neutrons. But these new
41:23
Speaker 1: kinds of other protons and arrangements, they're not common and
41:27
Speaker 1: they don't last very long. Right, Yeah, just like the
41:30
Speaker 1: Higgs boson and the top corks. These things are not stable.
41:33
Speaker 1: They don't last for very long. They're a little bit
41:35
Speaker 1: more stable and depends exactly than the details. Some of
41:38
Speaker 1: them might even last, you know, like a million or
41:40
Speaker 1: a billion of a second. But you're right, you don't
41:42
Speaker 1: find them in nature. You can't like go drill into
41:44
Speaker 1: the earth to find these things. You have to create
41:46
Speaker 1: them in high energy density environments. You have to pour
41:49
Speaker 1: energy into one spot, so the quirks have enough energy
41:52
Speaker 1: to make these weird massive combinations. And so each of
41:55
Speaker 1: these sell you a little bit more about how corks
41:57
Speaker 1: and gluons can come together, which kind of tells you
41:59
Speaker 1: more about the rules of the universe. All right, So
42:02
Speaker 1: then maybe tell us also besides these composite particles, what
42:06
Speaker 1: else has the LC been discovering. Yes, so we haven't
42:09
Speaker 1: found more particles, but what we have done are more
42:12
Speaker 1: detailed studies of the particles that we do know. For example,
42:16
Speaker 1: we're really interesting questions like exactly how much does the
42:20
Speaker 1: top cork way, Like, the top cork is a weird cork,
42:24
Speaker 1: it's just like the up cork, except it's much much
42:27
Speaker 1: much more massive. It's super duper massive, and we'd like
42:31
Speaker 1: to understand exactly how massive is it. It's exact mass
42:34
Speaker 1: controls a lot about how things work in particle physics.
42:37
Speaker 1: So one thing we're doing is measuring that very very
42:40
Speaker 1: precisely to see if the mass that it has makes
42:43
Speaker 1: sense with some of our other calculations. So that's an
42:46
Speaker 1: example of the kind of thing we do. It's like
42:48
Speaker 1: a precision study of the particles we do know, so
42:50
Speaker 1: that we can anticipate anything weird. We can look for
42:53
Speaker 1: deviations and anomalies like we were talking about earlier, right,
42:56
Speaker 1: because we have this model of the universe, the standard
42:59
Speaker 1: model of stuff and matter, but you know, we think
43:02
Speaker 1: it's the kind of the right one, but there might
43:03
Speaker 1: be others, or we we just want to make double
43:06
Speaker 1: extra sure that it's the right model of the universe. Yeah,
43:08
Speaker 1: I would actually say we're sure it's not the right
43:10
Speaker 1: model of the universe. I mean, it works pretty well,
43:13
Speaker 1: it's kind of pretty, but we know it's not correct.
43:16
Speaker 1: Like there are things about it which just can't be right,
43:19
Speaker 1: and we're looking for are the cracks in it? We're
43:21
Speaker 1: looking for hints as to that deeper, more fundamental, more
43:25
Speaker 1: true model. And so one way to do that is
43:27
Speaker 1: to say, well, I think there's a new particle out there,
43:29
Speaker 1: let's go look and find it. Another way to do
43:31
Speaker 1: that is to just test the wazoo out of it
43:33
Speaker 1: and say, like, well, let's really see if it's correct.
43:36
Speaker 1: Let's see if we can find some deviations. So we
43:39
Speaker 1: have done stuff like that, and you know, at the
43:40
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider we talked about in the podcast, once
43:43
Speaker 1: they found this weird particle that uses Penguin diagrams and
43:47
Speaker 1: decays really strangely. Sometimes the decays to muan is more
43:50
Speaker 1: often than it decays to electrons, which is not what
43:53
Speaker 1: we expected. And that's a sign that maybe there's some
43:55
Speaker 1: new heavy particle very briefly appearing and messing things up.
43:59
Speaker 1: So that's the kind of thing we can do. Instead
44:00
Speaker 1: of looking directly for new heavy particles created at the collider,
44:03
Speaker 1: we're looking for like their subtle influence on the particles
44:06
Speaker 1: that we do know. We're looking at those cracks. You
44:08
Speaker 1: might sort of look into those cracks and find new
44:10
Speaker 1: particles there, right exactly. And that's the kind of thing
44:13
Speaker 1: that I'm excited about. As you said very intelligently earlier,
44:16
Speaker 1: if you want to find something new that you don't expect,
44:18
Speaker 1: you need to understand what you do expect very very well.
44:21
Speaker 1: And so that's basically what we're doing is fleshing out
44:23
Speaker 1: exactly what we expect and double checking that we're seeing
44:26
Speaker 1: what we expect. I'm always hoping that we don't see
44:28
Speaker 1: what we expect, that we see something weird and new
44:30
Speaker 1: in the data that we can't explain with our current theory,
44:33
Speaker 1: but so far not yet, not yet, but maybe in
44:36
Speaker 1: the future. So maybe tell us now, what can we
44:38
Speaker 1: expect in the future from the l a C. And
44:40
Speaker 1: I think part of it is that maybe you're changing
44:42
Speaker 1: the name due to an upgrade, right, Yeah, Well, we
44:45
Speaker 1: are going to be running the l C for like
44:47
Speaker 1: another ten years. You know, you pour billions of dollars
44:49
Speaker 1: into this machine. You want to get everything you can
44:51
Speaker 1: out of it. So we'll be running the Large hGe
44:54
Speaker 1: On Collider for at least another ten years, and we'll
44:56
Speaker 1: be looking for these really subtle hints like the longer
44:59
Speaker 1: you run your collision, and the more you can see
45:01
Speaker 1: really really rare things, or the more you can see
45:04
Speaker 1: very small deviations from what you expected, those alleviations might
45:08
Speaker 1: be nice clues that point us in the right direction.
45:10
Speaker 1: So we're gonna be doing this for another ten years
45:12
Speaker 1: or so really checking out all the details. Likely will
45:15
Speaker 1: also discover a bunch more of these new combinations of quarks,
45:20
Speaker 1: ways to put them together to make weird stuff that
45:22
Speaker 1: give us an idea for how quarks and luons work together.
45:26
Speaker 1: And it's possible that we could discover some new fundamental particles,
45:30
Speaker 1: some graviton, or some proof of supersymmetry. I think the
45:33
Speaker 1: chances of that really get less and less likely the
45:35
Speaker 1: longer we go on without having seen it, because one
45:38
Speaker 1: thing we can't do with the large hage On collider
45:40
Speaker 1: is increase the energy. Like the energy is fixed by
45:43
Speaker 1: the size of the tunnel and the strength of the magnets,
45:46
Speaker 1: so we can run it for a long long time,
45:48
Speaker 1: but we can't like boost it up to any higher energy.
45:51
Speaker 1: And that's really I think what we would need to
45:53
Speaker 1: find a new fundamental particle, a new like really heavy,
45:56
Speaker 1: new kind of particle. But if you do a fine
45:58
Speaker 1: one another one. Then that makes it the two fundamental
46:01
Speaker 1: particles for the price of one, and that has your
46:04
Speaker 1: per particle cost, making it more of a deal. That's right, exactly,
46:09
Speaker 1: and we would love to deliver that deal for taxpayers
46:11
Speaker 1: around the world. And you talked about changing the name.
46:13
Speaker 1: We are actually talking about new versions of the large
46:16
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, and so for example, people are talking about
46:19
Speaker 1: the v l h C and the very Large Hadron Collider,
46:23
Speaker 1: which really is a thing, but we don't know if
46:25
Speaker 1: that's going to be built there where it would be built.
46:27
Speaker 1: It's going to cost a lot of money, and so
46:28
Speaker 1: there's a lot of politics involved in figuring out who's
46:31
Speaker 1: going to pay for that thing and exactly where to
46:33
Speaker 1: put it. Right, I think you had a better name
46:35
Speaker 1: for it though earlier. You should call it the test
46:37
Speaker 1: the Wazoo out of it Particle Collider. That's the informal
46:42
Speaker 1: working name on all the documents internally. Yeah, I mean
46:45
Speaker 1: you can gain new particles wazoos. The particle was zoo.
46:49
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I think we'll stay tuned to see
46:51
Speaker 1: what else you discover in the next ten years. And
46:53
Speaker 1: I think it was something that a lot of listeners
46:55
Speaker 1: might not know, which is pretty cool. It's that you
46:57
Speaker 1: can actually go to the l a C. You know,
46:58
Speaker 1: once things open up, hopefully after this pandemic, that you
47:01
Speaker 1: can actually go there and they'll give you a tour
47:03
Speaker 1: of the facilities, and you can go to their gift
47:05
Speaker 1: shop and look around and see scientists at work and
47:08
Speaker 1: eating at the cafeteria. You can buy yourself a Higgs Boson.
47:11
Speaker 1: It's less than ten billion dollars. Diesel caviar there too,
47:14
Speaker 1: and T shirts. No caviar, but yes, T shirts. Well,
47:18
Speaker 1: it is in Switzerland, so they might have carrier maybe.
47:22
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of caviar eating in Switzerland.
47:24
Speaker 1: Not that much at certain just chocolate and coffee. Yeah,
47:27
Speaker 1: but you can come and visit. There's a really nice
47:29
Speaker 1: science center, so come check it out. It's a beautiful spot.
47:32
Speaker 1: It's also nestled between two sets of mountains and there's
47:35
Speaker 1: fields of sunflowers or if you like skiing, it's right
47:37
Speaker 1: next to the Alps, so it's a gorgeous spot. If
47:40
Speaker 1: you have the opportunity to visit, I totally encourage you.
47:43
Speaker 1: And we were not at all sponsored by Switzerland or
47:46
Speaker 1: the large Shadrin Collider. Just by listeners like you, who
47:49
Speaker 1: in the end are the ones footing the bill for
47:51
Speaker 1: this whole endeavor. Thank you very much everyone for paying
47:53
Speaker 1: your taxes. Thank you, Jeff Basins. All right, well that's
47:57
Speaker 1: pretty cool, so stay tuned and we help you joined that.
48:00
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time. Thanks for listening,
48:11
Speaker 1: and remember that. Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is
48:14
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For More podcast for
48:17
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
48:21
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,