TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Looks at the LHC

has over the last few years. And since then, I've actually had Daniel of Daniel and Jorge Explained the Universe over on our show to talk about the you know, running data for the LHC and and analyzing information that has gathered by the LHC. So I've talked about this in subsequent episodes, but I think it's fun to go back and listen to this early one where Chris and I really suss out what it's all about and give out the details of this amazing, amazing piece of technology.

So enjoy. So today we wanted to cover a pretty big piece of technology. Actually, yes, we're going to get deep into it, and it's a big piece of technology that looks at teeny tiny stuff yeah. Yeah, We've had quite a few people say that they wanted us to talk about this, and we've kind of put it off because, well, we wanted to talk about it. I know, it's it's strange. It's the large Hadron collider, folks, that's what we're gonna

talk about. And really we were going to do a podcast about this about nine months ago, but then a bird dropped a bag out on my head and it just threw everything off for ages. What really frightens me is that I thought about making that joke and hadn't yet. Yeah, well, I was like, one of us is going to it's just gonna be a race, all right. So um, and if you don't know the story about the bird and the bread, we will all become clear. Yes, we will

allude to it in in a moment. But let's talk about the large Hadron collider, what it is, what it does, and um and kind of get a grip on the whole idea of adam smashers and particle accelerators. Yes, this actually is the latest if you will entered in a a a race that has gone on, a scientific race that has gone on for many many years, a game of one upsmanship. Um that that started so long ago. But basically, in in in scientific terms, we're talking about

the race to build, uh, the largest particle accelerator. And it has gone back and forth between the United States and Europe for many years and and basically it seems like, um, the United States is sort of seeded uh this to a group of scientists or an organization called that calls itself CERN, which is which stands for the European Organization

for Nuclear Research. Yes, and if it doesn't make sense, why because Europeans there foreign that's why to our to our listeners in Europe, I love you guys, teasing being silly, but yes. The CERN of course also famous for a few other minor contributions to technology, the Worldwide Web, like the world Wide Web, Tim berners Lee of CERN being the guy who who developed what would later become the World Wide Web, so built on top of the Internet

network of networks. So anyway, yes, certain, definitely a pioneer in science and technology. They were the ones who spearheaded this whole development of the large Hadron collider, which was, you know, such an enormous project. It involved more than just certain it involved the cooperation of various organizations, search institutions, countries, UM.

And you know, it's a it's really a testament to science and to exploration, but it's kind of an exploration that involves recreating conditions that were prevalent immediately following the creation of the universe, but on the tiniest scale we can manage right now. Yes, yes, well, the scientists seem to think now. And the reason I say seemed to is because I have just a paltry layman's interpretation of

these things. UM. They believe that there are these these particles that existed um in the creation of the universe that simply aren't there today. And it's not because they couldn't be. It's because the conditions just aren't right now. So they want to recreate the conditions that they believe existed right after that, UM by accelerating very tiny things to smash together and basically make bits of particles that they think would be those those things that they're trying

to identify. Basically, there's a roadmap. They think there's a city there, and they want to see if they can make it happen. Right. So, so let's this really boils down to the whole Big Bang Theory, So our whole universe was in a hot, dense state. Really what there? Yes,

I did go there. Hey, some of the characters from the Big Bang Theory were some of my earliest Twitter followers, not the actors, the actual factional characters of the television show Big Bang Theory were following me on Twitter for a while, which I thought. I was thrilled anyway. Yes, according to the Big Bang Theory, which is one of the I would say the most prevalent theory of how

our universe was formed. Um, the Big Bang Theory states that there was a moment when which did not last very long relatively speaking compared to the life of the universe. There was a moment when energy and matter were one. They were not two different things. Energy and matter kind of were coupled together, uh, and then split apart and then developed into what we see today, into the matter and energy that we are able to observe today, as well as stuff that we may not ever be able

to observe. Yeah, and so there were these these fundamental particles that eventually became matter. And by taking sub atomic particles and accelerating them to near the speed of light, the speed of light and making them collide together, you can smash them apart so that they become these even more basic particles and energies that are what make up the stuff around us. So it's it's like reducing matter that we have today into the proto matter that existed

immediately following the Big Bang. UM, and they're well, we'll get a little bit more into the Big Bang stuff. It gets really really complex and complicated. It goes beyond the scope of tech stuff, and it gets difficult to to explain. I had a friend of mine asked me, well, what was there before the Big Bang? As if that question is meaningless? And so why is that question meaningless? Is it because time did not exist until the universe

came into being during the Big Bang. If you, according to the theory, as you get closer to the Big Bang, you eventually get to a point where time didn't exist. So before and after are meaningless because are concepts that depend upon the existence of time. What's really funny to me is, now, now that you've reached this point of the discussion, I feel like philosophy and science have become one,

and really they have been. At that point. There's there is a point where science and philosophy are one because you cannot or at least philosophy takes over because you cannot test or observe. And you know, scientific theory, this the whole scientific method is based upon the idea that you make observations and then you project future guesses essentially based on those observations, you test, and you continue to observe,

and based upon those results you build knowledge. Right, I mean, that's the basic when you boil it down, that's the basic scientific method, and you want to do it in a controlled way, so that way you can determine if in fact what you observe is a result of whatever the phenomena is you're observing. You know, like whatever whatever state you're looking at now, is in fact a result of a previous state, or if it was just a something something else. You know, you can't say A causes

B immediately. You have to build that case. Well, that's that's one of the reasons why this is so such a weird topic in a way, because the particle that they've been looking for most famously is the Higgs boson, and this is a theoretical particle. Yeah, this is the

thing according to the theories. You know, they they're they're the scientists are going by what we know of the universe, and they're they're essentially saying this should be able to exist, and we want to see if it actually can exist. That is just such a weird concept. Yeah, it's essentially what you do is you look at the math and you say, well, based upon our understanding of the universe and based upon some mathematical formulas that are far more

comp lex and I could ever hope to understand. So I want to make that clear. I'm stating this from the perspective of someone who is interested in the subject, but it is not an expert. But based upon the math and based upon our understanding of the universe, we think that there is a particle that we're calling the Higgs Boson particle that would explain why matter has mass, Because that's a it's a it's a question I would never have thought to ask, like why does why does stuff?

Why does matter actually have mass? Why do we have mass in the universe? That's actually a great question. There are a couple of reasons why it's a great question. One is that again, energy and mass at one point, or energy and matter at one point, we're coupled together and they split apart. So what was it that did that? Also was messy. There was alimony. Also, there was the element of the I shouldn't say element. There was the

factor of matter and anti manner. Okay. So when you have a matter, a particle of matter encounter a particle of antimatter, Uh, they annihilate one another, right, I mean antimatter and matter cannot coexist? They do right, right, hypothetical person who knows what I'm talking about in the room. So yes, when matter and antimatter uh encounter one another, they annihilate each other. So matter and antimatter both were

products of the Big Banks. So there must have been a little more matter than there was antimatter, or else we wouldn't have matter, but it would have all been annihilated there there would be there'd be no us, right because animatter and h and matter would have destroyed one another. So by that logic, there must have been more matter than antimatter. Well, why is that? It's a good question. The LHC might be able to give us some answers.

And the reason why the LHC might give us some answers is again because by smashing these sub atomic particles together at incredible speeds, we can recreate in miniature by several orders of magnitude, conditions that were around, or what we believe were around shortly after the universe was formed. By observing that, we could start to draw conclusions of what happened immediately after the universe was formed and why

stuff is the way it is. These are huge questions, and I mean it blows my mind to think about it for more than like to go beyond the surface level. I started getting a bit dizzy. Yeah, you know, well the uh I was going to get into how the monitor and the anti monitor deal with all of this and the green lantern core, but that will be a discussion best used for another podcast, maybe pop stuff. So they created this thinget down. Yeah, that only took you know,

sixteen years and ten billion dollars to come up with. Technically, it is one below ground feet as as Chris was saying, uh it is Uh, it's got a circumference of twenty seven kilometers, which is just under seventeen miles sixteen point eight miles or so. Uh. The entire thing, like if you think of it as a giant circle, because that's what the main part of the Large Hadron Collider is. It's an enormous circular ring. Um. It's got eight sectors, all right. Each of those sectors has an end cap

that connects it to the next sector. Okay, that end cap is called an insertion. Now, UH, within this circle protons, beams of protons mainly, although other atomic particles can also be accelerated through the Large Hadron Collider, but primarily it's it's beams of protons reached this speed of the speed of light. Now you might ask, why is it not

actually the speed of light? Well, there's two reasons. One is that, according to what we know of the universe, lights the fastest stuff there is, and you cannot equal or exceed the speed of light unless you're light like, unless you're a photon. You're not gonna do it. Well. Put it this way, the traffic ticket would be enormous. Yeah,

so don't do it. Well. The other reason is because this this UH the facility is so large it actually spans the border between UH France and Switzerland, so which is why the French it has to stop for customs each time it goes through, which delays it a little nice. So anytime it has any duty free stuff or you know, it's got to declare that it's carrying a certain amount of stuff from France to Switzerland, mainly cheese, then it

has to slow down. That's all a lie that that customs part the rest of we've been saying, besides the green lantern and other silly asides, totally true. Yes, but it's um it's fascinating in a way to think about because, um, you know, this very big, very expensive machine is necessary to smash tiny, tiny, tiny particles into even tinier particles. And and again remember we're looking for lots of different stuff.

Higgs boson is probably the most famous you know, and and someone that's made the news recently as at the time we're recording this, right, you are right. The recent news states that we have discovered a particle that fits very closely to what we would expect the Higgs boson to be. So it's not that we found the Higgs boson necessarily, but that we found something that's promising along those lines. Yes, So again we cannot say we found

the Higgs boson with certainty. Actually will probably never be able to say it with a hundred percent certainty. But we you know, what we can say is that the findings we've discovered our prom sing along those lines. It appears to be, but there's no way to know for certain, right, and we're gonna continue obviously, they're going to continue to do experiments, make sure it's repeatable, make sure that the things that they have observed are in fact actual observations

and not some form of error. Uh. This is all part of science, you know. Science is all about You've got to replicate whatever it is you did to make sure that it is in fact a real effect. What did you do? I don't know. But beyond the Higgs bo song, we're looking at other stuff too, Like, for instance, our universe is expanding, yes, all right, and uh, and it expands at a particular rate, and that rate is very difficult to explain based upon the observable amount of

matter in the universe. So the way the galaxies we're talking massive massive systems, not you know, not solar systems, we're talking entire galaxies, the way that they behave seems to contradict our knowledge of what the universe, how the universe should behave based upon the amount of matter we believe exists within the universe, so we have to figure

out why is that? Why is that the case? And one of the theories proposed, and a very popular one since really the ninety nineties, is that there is the stuff that we cannot observe, that is, it's it's undetectable by humans. Right now, we don't have the ability to figure out where and what it is. But that scientists, for lack of a better term, call it dark matter.

So it's the stuff that we cannot detect, but that at least in theory, must exist in order for the universe to behave the way it behaves despite the way we understand the universe. And by saying, okay, well, what if there's this stuff that we cannot see but it does exist and it otherwise behaves like matter, What if it's out there, how much of it would it? We need to balance out the way galaxies do behave and

the way we think they should behave and uh. And once we kind of created that theory, there's also a theory that kind of partners with this about dark energy, which is, you know, again an energy component that we cannot directly detect. We detect its uh, its effects, but not the actual energy itself. This would account for the way the universe is expanding and the way galaxies move in relation to one another. Um And you know, again, this is not a perfect explanation because it really just

says we don't really know. These are sort of place holders until we can figure out more. Well. Again, because the Large Hadron Collider will recreate conditions similar to those shortly after the Big Bang, there's hope that perhaps we will find some sort of evidence that supports or perhaps contradicts this theory of dark matter and dark energy. Beyond that, there's also the wonderful world of string theory, which I'll admit to you guys. I mean, like I said, I

am not an expert. So what I've been talking about so far is stuff that I have a weak grasp on right like I can, I can almost get my head around it. But it's still pretty perplexing to me. String theory just kicks my brain out my ear and says you do not belong here. Never show your face here again. Because string theory is again a completely theoretical model that is based primarily upon mathematics that would reconcile what we call the standard theory with uh, something that

the centard theory could not explain before. Um. So standard theory is kind of our our explanation about how the universe works, right, um, and it has uh. It encompasses three of the four fundamental forces we understand about the universe. Those those three forces are the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, and electromagnetic force. But the fourth fundamental force,

the one that it does not explain, is gravity. String theory is one attempt to reconcile everything we know about the universe and sort of it's kind of like the whole unified theory approach you might have you've heard the unified theory, right, this idea that there is there's got to be an explanation that brings together all of these elements so that we have a working model of why the universe behaves the way it does. Well. The string theory is kind of an approach to that. It is

again theoretical, it's all based on mathematics. Uh. A lot of the different string theories suggests that there are are at least eleven dimensions to the universe. Uh. We of course cannot directly observe all of these dimensions. We know, you know, there's certain spatial dimensions that we are aware of, length, height, depth, that kind of thing. There's also the dimension of time, which we perceive as a linear progression, though again time

is relative. If you move, you know, depending upon the speed that you are moving throughout the universe, time is going to pass at a different rate, but between you and as stationary observer, which is crazy as well. Also, by the way, alternative theory of why the universe is expanding the way it is at the speed at what it is is that it's not accelerating or anything like that. It's that time itself is slowing down. But we are incapable of perceiving that ourselves. It's just time is slowing

down in the context of the universe. It's a hole. Again, I can't even grasp that. So string theory boils down to this idea that everything in the universe, when you get really, really, really really down to it, is made up of these strings. And the strings can either be open, meaning that the ends are free, or they can be closed. So it's like a it's like a rubber band, a loop, and they vibrate at different frequencies, and how they vibrate

determines what they are. So a string vibrating a certain way would be an electron, or would really a collection of strings vibrating that way would be an electron versus

a proton or a neutron or whatever. Uh. The problem with string theory, among many other problems, one of the big problems with string theory is that you can't make an observation to prove or disproved string theory because it's it's dealing with something that is so tiny and fundamental that there's no way we can detect it, So you can't observe it and you can't test it, which has led some scientists to say string theory is more of a philosophy that it is a science, because if you

cannot observe or test it, how can you call it science. It's a mathematical theory that's more in the line of philosophy, which I agree that's a fairly valid argument at this stage. Well, there's some hope that the LHC could perhaps uncover some evidence that strength that would support string theory, mainly supersymmetry, and supersymmetry is a step beyond the idea of matter and anti matter. So we do know that there is

matter and anti matter. So for example, the anti matter component or or uh partner to an electron is a positron, which is a positively charged sub atomic particle. So positron and electron are our counters to one another. They would annihilate each other with extreme prejudice. And then supersymmetry are suggests that there are other counterparticles besides matter and anti matter.

They would say that each particle would have a superpartner partner and an anti superpartner, which we would call a supervillain, and that that those that perhaps the experiments in the LHC might uncover evidence of supersymmetry, which in turn would be support for string theory. So there are lots of different things that the LHC is looking for, and how

it does it is pretty phenomenal. And as we said, you know, it involves accelerating these these particles at near the speed of light and using an enormous machine to do it, and how that happens is insane. H Well, the collider itself is really one of of three main your parts to to what the the entire scientific machine if you will, that they are using over there um. The colliders is one the detectors. Therefore huge areas where the detectors sit and those you know, are there to

identify the results of the collisions. You know there there there are four major ones and two minor ones that are kind of piggybacked onto the major ones. And then there's the grid, which is the computers, the grid computer grid computers, so a series of network computers that handle all that data and crunch the numbers. So when you when we get down, let's get down to the physical way that this system works. And you can't just flip a switch and have beams of sub atomic particles traveling

at near the speed of light. It actually takes quite some time to ramp up that speed so that these particles are moving at the right velocity to make them collide with one another. UM. Now you remember we've got the LHC. It's a big ring. So these different beams are both traveling in opposite directions, and then we'll ultimately converge on one of these detector sites around the ring,

and at that detector site you will have your collisions. UH. So one beam is traveling counterclockwise and the other one is traveling anti counter clockwise as uh directions I once received for a fan said I, I am surprised you didn't say whitterians. Yes, yes, okay, So that would be clockwise and whitter sians. One is traveling clockwise, the other one's traveling whitter sians. If you wonder what whitter sians is read McMath uh the so the it's counterclockwise. So

these two beams are traveling in different directions. But before they can even do that, they have to be accelerated in separate accelerators. Separate in the sense that you know, it goes through them first and then gets injected into to the l h C. They are connected to the LHC, but they are each their own thing. So it starts off in the linnak T l I n a C the number two, which is UH. It fires beams of protons generally protons, although it can be other things as well,

into an accelerator that's called the PS booster. Now the PS booster uses UH these chambers called radio frequency cavities to actually push the protons with radio frequencies through a pathway, and that pathway is secured by magnets because you know, protons are positively charged. So by using magnets in the appropriate kind of magnetic field, you can keep those those

positively charged particles traveling in a very specific pathway. Um. Then once the protons reached the right velocity of where right energy level, like the PS two booster injects them into the super proton syncotron, which, to my disappointment, is not a decepticon. Uh. That's when the sincotron will actually divide these proton beams into bunches. That's a technical term, and that really is the term that cern uses. The

protons get divided into bunches. Those bunches are about around a hundred billion protons per bunch, and there are about two thousand, eight hundred and eight bunches per beam. Yep. Now, these beams start traveling around the LHC. It takes about twenty minutes for them to uh to hit that speed of nine the speed of light. And at top speed, a proton will make eleven thousand, two hundred forty five

trips around the entire large Hadron collider each second. And and and what was that distance again, it's uh twenty seven kilometers, so twenty seven kilometers. Uh, it takes it. There's a twenty seven kilometer trip and eleven eleven five kilometer trips every second. That's a lot of frequent flyer miles or kilometers as the case may be. Hey, it's

Jonathan from two thousand nineteen. I just pop back here to two thousand twelve so I can drop a piece of bread down a ventilation shaft in order to sabotage the LHC. While I'm doing that, let's take a quick break the fun part of this. Of course, they have to be kept separate initially, because you want them to collide when they're at act speed, yeah, and at the detector sites, so they have to They have to collide

at the right speed and at the right location. It also means that you have to make this this environment as close to a perfect vacuum as you possibly can, because even a single moat of dust floating in this device somewhere would cause billions of protons to collide prematurely, So you have to try and make it as close to a perfect vacuum as possible. It also means that in order to get the magnets to be as efficient and fast as possible, you have two super cool them.

Now super cooling an electro magnet. The reason why you want to do that is to reduce resistance. Now, resistance is well, it kind of is what it sounds. It's it's a conductor's tendency to resist the flow of electrons. Typically we experience this in the form of heat. So as an electronic device heats up, as the electronic components are heating up, it's because they are resisting the flow

of electrons through that that whatever component is. So in order to reduce this quality that all conductors as I mean, as you know, you can reduce it in different ways, but one of the ways is too super cool an electromagnet. You can reduce the resistance to almost nothing. Um, they use not liquid nitrogen. Uh, not liquid hydrogen, but liquid helium, which is incredibly cold, about one point eight degree kelvin.

Technically we shouldn't say degree, but yes, one point eight kelvin. Sorry, no, that that's something else I need to have correct in my article. I do have an article about the large hadron collider at How Stuff Works, and it's an article I'm particularly proud of. But as I was reading, I said, huh, I said degree kelvin. I should have just said kelvin. So so that's my fault. Send all hate mail to me.

The the the UM information I got from the scientists over you know, and doing the research from the certain website they said degree kelvin shows degree. Well, it's not this certain website, it's um UM, a different a different group, one of the groups from the UK that that works as part of the scientists that are doing that. I suddenly feel better than I had. Someone once chastise me for saying to Greek kelvin, that's why, that's why I jumped up. That is a good point, but I think

I think it's a useful construct in our hands. So if you're wondering what zero kelvin is, so one point eight one point nine kelvin, depending on who you ask. Zero kelvin is zero molecular movement. Yeah, that would be in the deepest, zero deep absolute zero, deepest reaches of space where there is no molecular movement at all. That

is zero kelen. It's the coldest you can possibly be because heat really boils down to molecular movement, and if you don't have any molecular movement, you can't get any colder than that. Um, you can't have negative molecular movement.

So one point nine one kelvin, which what I had originally seen, but one point eight kelvin if you want to know what that translates to in in the terms that we tend to use on a day to day basis, that is colder than negative two hundred seventy one degrees celsius or for those fahrenheit fans among us, negative four

hundred fifty six fahrenheits. So bundle up. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, the organization I was quoting from was the Science, Science and Technology Facilities Council, got you, well, you know

what they know what they're talking about. I'm going to say degreek Helvin then, And anyway, the the at this temperature, you have reduced resistance to almost a non factor, which is important to get these electromagnets to operate at the proper speed and efficiency, to keep these beams on track, and to direct them properly so they're going faster and

faster till they hit their top speed. At that point you want to direct them at whichever detector site is going to be measuring collisions at that moment, and uh, when the collisions happened. They happen at about six hundred million collisions per second. Now, remember we're talking about a hundred billion protons per bunch, so six million per second. That should lead you to the conclusion that not all

these protons are colliding with other protons. And it's true because at that level, at that sub atomic size, it's really hard to be so precise that you're going to make sure that every proton is going to collide with a proton coming from the other direction. It's just not

really possible. We don't have that level precision. So some of these protons actually a lot of protons will not collide with anything, and they end up going through the Large Hadron Collider further until they hit UH essentially a wall that's designed to absorb protons, and it's it's their proton dump UH. And again it's not all it's just protons. There there's one particular UH set of of of measuring devices connected to the LHC that's all about iron ions,

so it's not just protons. But that's again the the the typical use for the LHC. So six hundred million collisions per second. And then at these detector sites, they have these very very advanced pieces of equipment that observe what happens next, and they're observing trajectories and accelerations and well, really velocities I should say velocities trajectories of various um sub atomic particles that result from this collision, and things like quarks, which are sounds made by dirks. Dirk makes

a quirk. Uh, now quirks, which are they They're very unstable. They last less than a fraction of a second. Well, I guess technically they would last a fraction of a second. They last less than a second long. Yeah. Uh. And there's this stuff called gluon, which is a mitigating force. I thought that's what you used to stick together your muans. Uh No, I use glue on applied directly to forehead. Um,

you were doing so well without the jokes. Muan muans, by the way, also interesting, very tiny little particles they are. They're negatively charged particles, so in that way, they're kind of like electrons, but they are two hundred times heavier than an electron is and also very unstable. One of the other things that could potentially result from these collisions is the tiniest version of a black hole I can imagine, uh,

which caused some people to freak out right. They thought, oh, the AlgC is going to create a black hole and we're all going to die, which was a silly, silly thing to think, because a black hole, as we think of it, is a collapsed star. It's an incredibly dense uh point where or really point is the wrong term too, But it's incredibly dense and has an incredibly strong gravitational

poll that light itself cannot escape. But you think about that, that's the result of a star collapsing in on itself, gravity pulling the contents of the star into a dense a more and more dense uh point. Really, we're talking about protons slapping into each other at that scale. It's entirely different. And a black hole generated by a proton collision would last less than a fraction of a second. So you're talking about something that is not at all a danger to human life on Earth. Um. I've seen

the documentary The black Hole. Yeah, it looks pretty scary. Uh yeah, the it's just not something you need to

worry about. There's also the the there's been a little bit of news about the fact that one of the many scientific Studies that's connected to the Large Hadron Collider is looking at um cosmic rays, and really it's looking to see how we could create better devices to study cosmic rays out in the universe, which it's really hard to do from Earth because the Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere protect us from cosmic rays, So you can't really build a device here on Earth that can study them

because they can't get here UM. And there was so there was some worry about cosmic rays, which could be potentially incredibly dangerous to humans. It could cause lots of problems that that would be an issue. But again, uh, not not as as gary as it would first sound. That we're talking about stuff that is on a tiny scale and lasts, so it doesn't exist long enough for it to really do anything other than give us really cool information about how to study this stuff beyond a

laboratory environment. And that's important too, because you know the implications for the study they fall. There's a domino effect. It affects other stuff, including things like if we ever wanted to look at space exploration, exploration or colonization beyond what we've already done, you know, manned exploration and colonization. We need to know more about cosmic radiation because this

is stuff that we have to protect ourselves against. Otherwise we could end up having a tragedy on our hands, where you know, everything technologically works fine, we just didn't take into account other factors that would be and play in the far reaches of space. So there are definitely some some applications to this future application. So that's beyond just the fact that we have an understanding of our universe, which personally, I think is important enough on its own

to justify the existence of something like this. Um, I'm sorry you're gonna say something. Well, no, I didn't know if you had another point to add about the actual No, No, that's that's that. I think that's a That's pretty much all I have about the cans apart from I. Then we're gonna I can talk a little bit about the the various sites UH and and equipment that's connected to

the LHC. All right, Um, well, yeah, the when it, when it's working at full strength, it should be able to uh smash particles up to seven times the amount of force that current um the current colliders around the world can um. The you know, the in the United States. The uh Fermi Lab has the most powerful collider that we have here in this country, and they actually were going to build another one to rival the LHC. Yes,

actually was going to be larger than the LHC. Yes. However, um, those are expensive and the United States eventually donated money to the LHC project. Um so basically they said, okay, well we'll just go in with you guys for right now. Yeah, because you know, because after all, it is a friendly rivalry. Well, and I mean, ultimately, this is all about uncovering more information about the universe, not about you know, it's it's not like the space race. It's not a political thing, no,

not not to that extent, Not to the extent there. Yeah, there's the there's the bragging rights issues. So um so yeah, they they've gone to a great deal of effort to to build this device. Hey it's Jonathan from two thousand nineteen. It looks like I really mess things up by dropping that piece of bread down that ventilation shaft, and so I've decided to go back to two thousand twelve to stop the other two thousand nineteen me from doing that. But we're just gonna do that while we take this

quick break. So which projects did you want to Well, I was going to mention the major ones. So there's a like I said, there's the different collision points, the detector sites. Uh. The one of the major ones is called ATLASES, which stands for a Toroidal LHC Apparatus atlas uh, and that is it's a measuring device. It's about long, which is about hundred forty seven ft twenty five tall which is two ft, and it weighs about seven thousand tons,

and it's an observation station. Uh. Just that's probably the biggest one. I would say it's the most well known out of the people who have studied the whole LHC development. There's also my favorite is ALICE. Yes, the a large Ion Collider Experiment or ALICE. That's the one that I said, you know, there were there was a device specifically designed

to look at the collisions of iron ions. This is it, and that's specifically to look at conditions that would have been present right after the very early stages of the Big Bang. So um, yeah, that's ah, you know, that's that's the one that specifically is about that the all the stuff references I was making earlier in the episode.

Then there's CMS, which is the compact muon solenoid experiment, right, and that one can actually generate a magnetic field that's one times almost one hundred times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. Um. Powerful stuff. There's the so if your forks suddenly fly across the room and stick to the wall, they got it to work. That's a joke. The Large Hadron Collider Beauty Detector, which is looking for a beauty quirk, which is what you can find on Cindy Crawford's face.

She's got a little beauty quirk right there, bubber lip. This is known as LHC B. It's a great Pepsi commercial. This is rapidly devolving. Yeah alright, no, so beauty quark is one of those um, those uh, those subatomic fundamental particles that only exists for a fraction of a second. Then there's the Total Elastic and Defractive cross Section Measurement Experiment or totem UM. That's one of the smaller detectors in the LHC, and it measures the size of protons

and how effective the LHC actually is. So in other words, this this is really to make sure that the LHC is in fact performing at UH at the level that it needs to. So it's it's almost like it's more about the the measuring device than about what it's measuring, which is sort of funny because after all this time and all this money and effort that have been spent on it, the LHC is still not working at full capacity. Well,

it's also had a few delays. One of those delays, there was one delay where I mean, you're talking about the most complex machine ever built, right, So it's it's incredibly complicated, which also means there are a lot of different points of failure, and there have been several fairly well publicized failures that the LHC suffered on its way to becoming operational, Like the Dusk Star. UH, there were ewoks.

Ewoks definitely were a problem. No, no, there was one of them was there was a leak and the liquid helium UH system, which led a lot of people to make jokes about scientists speaking in high pitched, squeaky voices. But you know, liquid helium, I would not recommend in hailing it. It would kill you instantly. Uh, maybe not instantly, but it would definitely kill you. Because you're talking about something that's so cold that it would, you know, destroy

any tissue it came into contact with. Not a pleasant way to go, I would imagine, But anyway, liquid helium leaks, so they had to repair that to get the magnets working properly. Um there was there are tens of thousands of magnets, lots and lots of magnets UM for the big ones. I think there's nine thousand, six hundred, and then there are a bunch of support magnets too, UM

magnet schools as well around the whole area. The The the other big failure news story was what we alluded to early in the podcast about there was a story that something had fouled up some of the instruments for the LHC and and delayed its opening, and they had no idea what it was. They linked it, they they they flipped the switch. Yeah, they linked it to the possibility. Apparently a bird dropped some bread, specifically a piece of baguette.

Because we're talking about France and door Switzerland, so strutle not to be Germany. Um, so I dropped a piece of baguette down a ventilation shaft which would eventually ended up gumming up some of the works and causing mechanical failure electrical failure, which set back the operational date of the LHC UH and created a wonderful um ground for

some amazing jokes. Of course, also, I mean, since the LHC has come online, we've heard other funny jokes, like the possibility that neutrinos, which are particles that have no mass. So you remember I was talking about there's some particles that have mass and some that don't. Neutrinos don't have mass. So why do neutrinos have no mass while other particles do have mass. That's again one of the questions we

want to ask um. Some experiments that are related discern seemed to indicate that neutrinos were traveling faster than they should, faster than the speed of light, that they were actually arriving at their destination fractions of a second before they should have, and that if this were in fact true, that it would mean that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light and would call into question lots

of fundamental things we believe about the universe. Ah, while that's still kind of unfolding, it appears that all of that was really more down to some very simple errors, and that neutrinos in fact do not travel faster than the speed of light. This did not stop people from making jokes like neutrino knock, knock, who's there? Like that's where our idea. The neutrino arrives before the joke does. Um. So yeah. So there's a couple of interesting stories about

the LHC. There are a lot more of them. I mean, there's also the whole story about the people who wanted to SUECERN to keep the LHC from going online because they firmly believe that the facility would destroy the Earth if it were turned on. Despite the fact that we should point out LHC is what what it's doing is simulating stuff in a laboratory that happens all the time in the universe, and the universe is still around. So like, like these particles smashing into things at incredible speeds that

happens all the time in the universe. It doesn't happen on the surface of Earth so much because we have a magnetic field and atmosphere that that prevents it from happening, But it happens all the time out in space, and we don't see any evidence of that wreaking havoc. So there's no real difference between it happening out in space and having in a in a lab, apart from the fact that it's a controlled environment that we can actually observe.

So a lot of the objections that people raised were really they had no merit, And if you thought about it for a few minutes, you realize, wait a minute, if this happens all the time anyway, and we're all still around, chances are it's not a big problem. So there was there were those stories too, which you know, ultimately we're still around. The LEGC has been working, so

it doesn't seem to be a problem. Plus we've also had other particle accelerators that been doing work very similar to the LHC for years, not at the level of the LHC, but but comparable work. So those held no water. And there are other LHC stories too that are interesting and I'm using um to varying degrees depending on how dorky you are. For me, there are a lot of them.

That's how dorky I am. Well, I'm interested to see what happens when they finally get the machine running at full power, UM, they they think they may have found the Higgs boson um you know, running in approximately half power, and so just imagining what's going to happen when they can get it running at full strength, they may be able to to, uh do some confirmation of some of these these things, at least, you know, repeat the experiments and get them to uh to produce similar results. So

it's it'll be interesting. And I think one of the nice things about it is too that UM with this device science has been able to capture a few headlines UM well, because it doesn't all that I think it's Yeah, I think it's definitely one of the many scientific endeavors that is UM that's prevalent in the news that has really helped kind of bring you know, it's a weird word to use, but sort of a renaissance and interest in science because that partnered with some of the space

exploration stories we've talked about recently on the podcast and just stuff that's recently in the news, I think has really kind of inspired new generations of potential scientists and engineers to really push themselves and and and push forward our barriers of knowledge, which is fantastic. So that's also

a huge contribution, you know. And I forgot the one story that we had talked about before the show that I wanted to mention that the one bizarre theory that the reason why the LHC was failing so many times or and or the reason why it was so hard to find the Higgs boson was that the Higgs boson itself was some form of sentience was traveling back in time from the future to sabotage the LHC so that we would not be able to discover the Higgs boson, because were we to discover the Higgs boson on, a

series of events events would unfold that would be so incredibly catastrophic as to bring the entire universe's safety into jeopardy or something along those lines. Essentially, it's the story of Terminator Too, but done with a Higgs Boson in

place of Arnold Schwartzenegger. I'm I mean, sort of, which is and I was telling Chris, like, the more I read about this, the more I could not tell if this was just someone being incredibly tongue in cheeks silly about it and just you know, sort of well, you know, the reason the all age he has had so many problems, it's probably because blah blah blah blah blah, or if it was someone who genuinely believed this bizarre theory. I honestly don't know the answer to that. I'm hoping it's

the first case, because that's awesome. It's almost like it's almost like if Andy Kaufman were a quantum physicist. You know, the problem is that this sub atomic theoretical particle has traveled from the future and is is mucking about with all of our works so that we can't find it. That sounds like an Andy Kaufman joke to me. So anyway, that's kind of the basis of how the LHC works and what it does and why it's important, and the

work that's going on is amazing. I mean, the the reason why CERN has that grid of computers that we talked about is because the amount of data that the LHC gathers every second is huge, basically millions of snapshots what's going on. So there has to be this massive network of grid computers there to help decipher what all that data actually means and to make it meaningful to us. So, yeah, it's a phenomenal project that's continuing, and I hope that

they continue doing great science. I can't wait to see what else comes out of it. And that wraps up this classic episode of text Stuff. It was a weird one. There was that one part where I was fighting myself from like twenty minutes before. You didn't get to hear any of that because it all happened during the commercial breaks. But um, you know, I think I learned a lot about myself. Tarry learned a lot about me too. Yeah.

If you want to learn more about me, or you want to give suggestions for the show, you can contact me by email the addresses tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or pop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You'll find links to our presence on social media. You'll find an archive of all of our past episodes. Ever, you will also find a link to our online store, where every purchasing make goes to help the show, and we greatly appreciate it,

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