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

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Daniel and Jorge reveal that the Large Hadron Collider has found much more than just the Higgs boson! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey, Daniel, how much does it cost to discover a new particle? Well, I'm sorry to say that like everything else, the prices seem to be going up and up. Oh, you mean like with inflation? I think there's more than that going on. I mean, the electron was really cheap to discover in the 1800s, but then the top cork probably cost a billion dollars or so. A billion dollars to discover one particle? A billion dollars is cheap these days. The Higgs boson probably costs more than $10 billion.

10 billion? That's like super fancy caviar. Probably taste just as bad. Daniel, Caviar isn't about the flavor. It's about the glamour. Well, that's also true about particle physics. I mean, it's all ball gowns and tuxedos in the control room at CERN. Oh, I see.

That's why it costs $10 billion. It's the dress code that's killing you. At least you have a dress code. I thought physicists just wore, you know, boxer shorts and t-shirts. It's a t-shirt with a t-shirt with a t-sito printed on it. Hi, I'm Jorge. I'm a cartoonist and the creator of PhD comics. Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist who's never discovered a new particle. Oh, yet. Well, technically, Dan, don't you discover new particles all the time?

Like, you know, this oxygen molecule in breathing right now is technically new to me. That's true. Each individual particle has its own wonderful spirit and personality. But we're more interested in new types of particles, new things that nobody in the world has ever seen before, things that can blow our minds and teach us something new about the universe. Well, welcome to this new type of podcast, Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of iHeartRadio. In which we sort through all the amazing and crazy stuff in this universe, the stuff made of oxygen, the stuff made of carbon, the stuff made of nitrogen, and the stuff made of things we don't even yet understand.

The rest of the universe, whatever it's made out of, we tackle it, we ask, the big questions and we try to explain all of it to you. Because there is a lot of stuff in the universe. Actually, maybe an infinite amount of stuff, right? There might be an infinite number of particles and there might even be an infinite number of kinds of particles. We have no idea. We're looking

in an ice cube and we don't know if it's the whole cube or just the tip of the iceberg. That's right. Everything is made out of stuff and we are made out of stuff and we are also constantly trying to discover what this stuff is made out of and how it works and how it's put together and what are the rules that tell the stuff.

what it can and cannot do. Yeah, it feels like if we could pull apart everything in the universe into its tiniest little bits and understand those rules, we will have revealed something true, something fundamental, something deep in the source code of the universe and like looking at those rules and understanding that basic set of particles would finally tell us how the universe is really put together. I guess it's pretty amazing that, you know, there's all this stuff in the universe and us little humans on this little rock floating in space, so sort of figured out that this stuff has kind of rules and types of stuff to it, right?

Like, it's not just random. There's only a certain number of kinds of stuff out there, and that kind of stuff has certain rules about how it can put together and how it interacts with itself. Yeah, and the incredible thing is that there's a pretty small number of particles. Like the particles that make up me and you, there's just really three of them.

There's the upcork, the down quark, and the electron. But you can put those particles together in so many different ways to get an incredible variety of things. So as you look out into the universe and you see all these weird things, you know, from bananas to comets to planets to neutron stars, you know that all those things are made of the same basic particles, just put together in different ways. And it's sort of incredible, like philosophically, that the universe even works that way, that you would take all this incredible complexity and boil it down to relative simplicity at the lowest level.

Even caviar, Daniel, is caviar made out of regular particles or really expensive particles? It tastes like it's made out of some other weird, kind of gross particles. I take it. You're not a fan of the caviar. Not a fan of tiny little salty fish eggs exploding in my mouth. No. Don't even really understand how that's a thing.

Maybe you haven't bought the expensive kind. Maybe you've only had the cheap kind. You've only had the electrons of caviar. I should just keep spending more money on caviar until I like it. Yeah, that's a good idea. It's all about the cracker. Like if you have the right cracker taste is. You can put anything on it.

Caviar, Higgs bosons, it doesn't matter. If you have the right cracker, it's all good. The Higgs boson exploded in your mouth. That would be kind of troublesome, wouldn't it? I don't know. It might be salty. It might be delicious. It would certainly cost a lot of money, probably. That's right. At $10 billion per particle, I don't think I could even taste it. But yeah, we are all made out of stuff and that stuff.

In one sense, it feels like it's made out of a small number of kinds of stuff. You know, like you said, quarks and electrons. But at the same time, it seems like the universe is full of all kinds of particles and possibly, as you said, maybe an infinite number of different kinds of particles. Yeah, we sort of took a left turn there at some point in history. like for a long time we were taking the stuff around us and we were figuring out that it was made of a simpler set of stuff you know like all the crazy stuff in the universe is made out of elements

and then oh it turns out those elements are just made out of protons and neutrons and electrons and electrons and oh wow look the protons and neutrons are made out of quarks we were getting simpler and simpler and simpler but then at some point we discovered a bunch of other weird stuff other weird particles that you don't need to make up ordinary matter things we've talked about in the podcast like muons and and tows and other kinds of quarks and it's sort of puzzling like why those particles exist.

You don't need them to make bananas, so why do they exist in the universe? But if we systematically discover all of them, we might get some sort of like glimpse at the larger pattern and figure out what is really going on in the universe. Yeah, it's kind of humbling, I guess, to think that, you know, we are basically masters of our,

we think we're masters of our universe, but really we're just made out of like a small corner of the particle, you know, a table and even matter and even stuff is just a small part of the whole universe, right? Most of the universe is energy. Yeah, that's true. A huge fraction of the universe is just energy. And we are made out of sort of the lightest stuff.

Like all these other heavy particles, they don't last for very long, and they fall apart really quickly. And they decay into lighter and lighter particles. So the reason the electron lives forever while the muon doesn't is that the electron is the lightest thing. It can turn into anything lighter, whereas the muon can decay into the electron. So everything is made out of these lightest particles. It's sort of like if everything was just made out of hydrogen or hydrogen and helium. Instead, we're made out of a much more complex set of stuff.

And so in the same way, for particles, we want to understand like, what are those other heavier particles and what can they do? Yeah, it would be cool if we were made out of helium and we all float around, right, technically. Or I guess if everything else was made out of hydrogen, we would just fall to the bottom. I'm actually on the all helium diet right now. I'm trying to lose weight. Oh, really? It works.

Actually, I just keep inflating this balloon. and I keep losing weight. It's amazing. You're in the helio diet. Exactly. If I get a big enough balloon, I'll be literally weightless. But your voice will be really high-pitched.

And this podcast would be a totally different experience. Right, Daniel? That's right. Elvin and the chipmunks present the universe. Yeah, there you go. Daniel and the chipmunks. But, you know, we are sort of asking this question all the time

of what kinds of particles are out there and what kinds of particles can exist and do exist and what are they for? And so scientists are hard at work at it. And one of the biggest places to do that to search for new particles is a place that you work at, right, Daniel? That's right. It's a large Hajon Collider, which is not just one of the biggest places to do particle physics. It's like one of the biggest science experiments ever in terms of money spent and like actual physical size is an incredible accomplishment.

It's sort of like the Golden Gate Bridge of particle physics. You know, I stand at the Golden Gate Bridge sometimes and I'm like, wow, look what humanity can accomplish when we're we all work together. And the large Hadron Collider is similar to that. It's an incredible feat not just of physics, but also of engineering and organization and also politics that all these different countries from all over the world came together to build this incredible device that's helping us peer into the very, very core of matter. Yeah, it's a big science experiment.

Although I thought the biggest science experiment was caviar, Daniel. Like how much can you get people to pay for something that's salty and crunchy? Oh, you're thinking of the large caviar collider, I think, which is still being constructed somewhere in Russia. Yeah, the large, the other LHC. Yeah, they collide money and fish eggs to get new kinds of profits. But yeah, the LHC is the biggest science experiment ever and also one of the most expensive. You said earlier that it caused about $10 billion just to find the Higgs boson, but the LHC is a larger project than that, right? Like it's looking for other things and it costs a lot more than $10 billion. Yeah, $10 billion is about the cost of the project. It depends a little bit

exactly how you do the accounting. But, you know, costs like a billion dollars to build the tunnel and a couple billion dollars to make those magnets and then billions more to build the detectors, natural beam pipe and all that stuff. So altogether, the whole project is a little bit more than $10 billion. And you're right. While many people think about the Higgs boson when they think about the Large Hageon Collider, it's actually a much broader science experiment. We were hoping when we turned this thing on, not just to find the Higgs boson, though we're happy to have done so, but to also find all sorts of other crazy stuff that might have been out there. Because remember, these experiments are like exploration.

We don't know what we're going to find until we turn the machine on. That's why we build it. And so it's always a bit of a gamble. Yeah. Well, although I think the Higgs boson sort of put it on the map, right? Like, I feel like probably very few people had heard of the LHC before the big discovery of the Higgs boson about 10 years ago. That's right.

That's when I made it onto the A list of particle physics experiments. Before that, it wasn't even getting invited to those caviar parties. Is there an A list? I thought he only went up to about D. Well, you know, there are bragging rights for who has the most powerful collider in the world. And for a long time, the Americans dominated it. And then the Europeans took over in the 90s. And then the Americans stole the lead back in the early 2000s.

And now the Europeans have had it for a while. And, you know, it's not just enough to have the most powerful collider in the world. You have to find something new. You have to make a big discovery that leads to a Nobel Prize. And so you're right that seeing the Higgs boson really put the LHC on the map. That's what I meant, Daniel. The D list, I meant like the discovery list. Oh, I see.

It's a good thing, yeah. But anyways, I guess a big question is, besides the LAC, what else has the large Hadron collider discovered? Like, I know you set out to find a lot of different particles and the big one was the Higgs boson, but I bet people don't know that the LAC is looking and has discovered a lot more particles than that. Yeah, we can do lots of really interesting physics with the LAT. It's not just for the Higgs boson.

So to the end of the podcast, we'll be asking the question. How many particles has a large Hadron Collider discovered? I think probably a lot of people maybe get confused. They probably associate the age in the LHC with the Higgs boson. What do you think? The large Higgs boson commercial. There you go. The long Higgs boson commercial.

Man, I can't skip this ad. What's going on? Click, click, click, click. Yeah, the lofty Higgs boson commercial. Because, you know, if I was the Higgs boson commercial. Because, you know, if I was the Higgs boson and I wanted to make a splash, the LAC has been a big part of that, right? Yeah, that's true. The LHC has been a good part of the Higgs boson marketing campaign.

It was hiding for 50 years while people were trying to look for it. But finally it allowed itself to be discovered in 2012. So as usual, we were wondering how many people out there had thought about what other particles the LHC has discovered? So Daniel went out there into the wilds of the internet to ask, how many particles has the LHC discovered? And if you are a denizen of the wilds of the internet, then you wouldn't mind me knocking on your virtual door to ask you physics questions that you haven't prepared for, please write to us to questions at Daniel and Jorge.com. We want to hear from you and we think you'll have fun. Do you always start with a knock-knock joke, the physics knock-knock joke?

I didn't, but now I will. We'll have to brainstorm. All right, well, here's what people had to say. I know of only one particle that the LHG has discovered, which is the Higgs boson. but I cannot imagine that's the only one it has discovered ever would be quite an expensive machine if it would only have discovered this one particle but maybe that's actually the case so my answer is only one.

I don't know the number but for sure needs to be more and I like to be more. I think it's time to build a new, a bigger, particle collider hopefully here in US. LHC must be the large Hadron collider. Hadron is a particle and you're colliding them together so maybe you're smashing it up into smaller particles. I have no idea. Maybe three, maybe seven. I think the LHC has discovered only one particle. That would be the Higgs boson. I hope I'm not terribly off. I'm going to guess that the LHC has maybe discovered seven new parts.

I know the most, or the most recent particle that I know of that was discovered at the LHC is the Higgs in, I think, 2012. So I would say the number of new particles the LHC has discovered is one. All right. There's a broad range here. Some people say one, that you've only had a one hit wonder, the LHC, and some people have a certain number, like maybe seven or a few. A couple of people said seven. I wonder where that number came from. I don't know, but I think if you just ask people to pick a number between 1 and 10,

something like 50% of them say 7. So I think it's definitely a bias there, yeah. Wow. Like we have an internal die. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We are bad random number generators. But there are some fun answers here. Some people give the large Hedron Collider credit for discovering the top cork.

That was actually discovered by the Fermilab Tevatron, the previous record holder for the highest energy collider in 1995. Right. The other D-lister. Yeah, exactly. And I do like the person who supports building a new bigger collider here in the United States. Thank you very much. Write to your congressperson or, hey, cut us a check for $20 billion. Technically, it could happen, right?

Like, if someone like Bezos suddenly, instead of going to space, wanted to discover a new particle, they could totally make that happen. Wow, that's true. I never even thought about emailing Jeff Bezos and asking him to spend $20 billion on a particle collider. But I'm doing that just as soon as we're finished here. Yeah, he probably just has to reach into his pocket and pull out some change. But you're right, the larger point is that the only thing preventing us from building a bigger collider and discovering more particles is money. Like we know how to do it.

It's just kind of expensive because you have to dig these big tunnels and pay for really fancy magnets to bend the particles around in a circle. But the only limitation is money, which is understandable. These things are expensive. Sometimes it's frustrating, though, because it feels like we could just be buying knowledge about the universe. Like we just lay out some cash. Boom, the universe will reveal some secrets to us. the question is, why does the universe charge so much? Like, why can't the universe just give us these things for free?

Like, is it trying to sell caviar? You know, like it's, I feel like it's maybe overpricing it a little. Do we have it like another universe we can maybe get a competitive bid on? Yeah, we should negotiate with the universe. I don't know. I think we treat these things with value because we pay more for them, right? Like, if you buy expensive shoes, then you're going to think they're better shoes. And so we think the Higgs boson is super important because we spent so much on it.

You just admitted that you're using the caviar strategy here to overvalue physics knowledge. But, you know, we've also talked in the podcast about physics discoveries made with very cheap materials. Like the whole two-dimensional material, that's something somebody discovered using literally scotch tape and a pencil. So you can totally discover things using, you know, $5 worth of materials. But some things do cost billions. You've been price gouging humanity. That's right. We only spend $10 on the Collider.

the rest we're spending on caviar. And ball gowns and t-shirts with t-shirts printed on them. But I guess, you know, it does cost a lot of money. I know it's expensive. And maybe so, maybe step us through this. Like, what's going on at the LHC? How does it work?

And why does it require so much infrastructure to make discoveries? Yeah. So the basic idea of the Large Hadron Collider, like the reason to the Large Hadron Collider is a window into the universe. The whole strategy for using it to discover new particles is to rely on Einstein's famous equation. E equals mc squared, where E is energy and M is mass.

And the goal is that we are looking for particles with a lot of mass. The particles that we see around us, electrons and quarks, these are the lowest mass particles. As we talked about before, they're the stable ones. It's like the bottom rung of the ladder. Everything sort of like shakes down to the bottom rung of the ladder, the way like boulders tend to roll downhill and settle in the bottom of a valley. But we're interested in what the other rungs of the ladder are. Are there heavier particles out there?

what are the heaviest particles and we are limited in seeing those by the energy we can use to create them. So E equals MC squared means if you want to create a particle with mass M, you need to put in as much energy as MC squared to create it. So what we do with a large Hedron Collider

is smash particles together, very low mass particles like protons with a huge amount of energy so we can turn that energy into the mass of some new kind of particle. Right. I guess what's interesting is that you're trying to make these particles. It's like you're trying to discover particles that are out there and you're doing that by trying to make them.

Like you're not sort of like breaking things apart and seeing what's there. You're really trying to sort of create conditions where they pop out of the vacuum out of the nothingness. Yeah, it's alchemy. We are turning one kind of matter like normal everyday protons into something new. It's not like we're taking the protons apart and looking for weird things in them. Sometimes these weird particles are called subatomic, which is a little confusing because it implies that they're like inside. the atom, but they're not. You can smash two protons together and make something totally new, which is not like a combination of the bits of the proton. And the reason you can do that

is that you turn the protons into pure energy and then back from energy into a new kind of mass. So as you say, we're making something new. So we're discovering it not in the sense that like it's sitting there waiting for us to find it. It's sitting there on the list of possibilities waiting for us to bring the ingredients, which is energy, around so that nature can make it for us. Right. It's like you're discovering it in the sense of like going to a new restaurant, taking the menu and then like discovering new dishes that could be made for you.

That's right. We're like, oh, if we have enough money in our wallet, then we can afford this really expensive caviar, right? And so we are pouring energy into the collider because it allows us to look deeper, deeper onto nature's menu so we can see what particles can be made. The amazing thing about the particle colloquial. slider is that it's quantum mechanical, which means that when you smash these particles together, you don't know what's going to happen.

You can predict the kinds of things that might happen, but for a given collision, you have no idea what might happen. It's like a list of possibilities. The cool thing, though, is that if you do it often enough, eventually you'll see everything on that list of possibilities. So you're like exploring this menu of possibilities what nature might do just by doing the same collision over and over and over again. Right.

I do that sometimes. I just go to a restaurant and I order random. from the menu over and over and over and over. And eventually you try everything on the menu and also gain a lot of weight. That's exactly what we're doing here. We're just going into the restaurant with our eyes closed, putting our fingers on the menu, and that's our strategy for ordering everything.

You're going to the Cosmic Diner and taking that greasy menu and just putting your finger anywhere on it. If we knew what was on the list already, we could look for it more intelligently. You know, we could design experiments that put in exactly the right amount of energy to make that particle we know is already there. We can do that kind of thing. But if when you don't know what is there,

then you have to just sort of poke around blindly hoping something new appears when you put your finger on it. Hoping you get a good dish. All right, well, let's get into how you actually see these particles at the Large Hydrant Collider. And let's get into what other particles they have found. But first, let's take a quick break. LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of ed. emerged. And it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal justice system is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to

predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Oh, wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.

Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age. it's even more likely that they're cheating. He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him?

Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

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All right, we're talking about what else has a large Hadron Collider, the LHC, discovered. And Daniel, technically this is not a sponsored podcast episode, right? We're not being paid by the LHC here. I'm not a shill for big science. I mean, I am, but I'm not getting paid to do it. Well, technically you're paying the LHC to do your work, right? Like, that's how it works. The collaboration and scientists have to, like, pay into it to use the facility and to get access to the data.

Yeah. I mean, I'm not paying personally out of like my kids piggy bank. We're using government research funds. And so it's the U.S. government, just like it's the German government and the Italian government and the British government. All these governments are paying to support this international facility for scientists to use. And so in the end, it's all of us, right? It's all taxpayer money. So it's me and you and everybody down the street chipping in a few cents so that we can learn something new about the universe.

Right. Well, and then technically basis is chippening more than we are. I think he pays zero taxes, actually. So we're paying more than he is. I think he pays From when he buys that yacht I think he's paying more taxes than I ever will in my life But we're talking about how the LAC works

And so you slash old known particles like protons together And out of that ball of energy that gets made in that collision New things come out And you're doing that over and over and over Trying to find what else the universe can make And what else will pop out That's right, we sift through all these collisions Looking for something new

Something that's not what we've seen before We're very familiar with the old particles. We've been doing this for decades. And so what we're looking for is an anomaly, something surprising, something different, a new kind of thing that hasn't been seen before. Right. Would you be surprised if, like, a cow, like, appeared out of your collider? We often use the example of pink elephants, you know, like, when we turn on this collider,

we don't know what could come out. It could be pink elephants. It could be the Higgs boson. It could be nothing. You really don't know. Oh, I see. You've thought about this, you know, large mammal appearance just in case. And, of course, you know, you have to balance the chart.

And so you would have a pink elephant and an anti-pink elephant created together. Ooh, like a gray elephant? What would be the opposite of a pink elephant? A gray mammoth, maybe? I don't know. Maybe a blue ant. A blue ant, yeah. We'll have to develop a mammoth collider to investigate that one.

But then if they touch each other, it's bad news. It's bad news, yeah. So then you collide these and every once in a while, new particles come out, but they don't last very long, right? Like you're looking for things that don't just pop out and sit there on your counter. They disappear or change into other things quickly. That's right. We are creating high energy density. We're pushing things up the ladder and they exist very briefly and then they fall apart back into low mass stable particles, the kinds of things that you and I are made out of. And you know, this is just what the universe does. You gather a bunch of energy together. It likes to spread it out. So we create these new heavy particles like a top cork or a Higgs boson. They last in that state. We know they exist, but they're only there for like 10 to the minus 20 seconds. It's like the briefest moment in the sun before the decay. K back into lighter stuff.

Right. Because often you don't even detect the particles you're looking for. Like the Higgs boson, it's not like you had a detector that detected the Higgs boson. It's like you detect the things that the Higgs boson decays into. Then you piece it back like, oh, this must have been the Higgs bosom that existed there in the middle for 10 to the minus 20 seconds. That's right. Technically, we've never seen a Higgs boson. I mean, they last so briefly.

We have no detector capable of seeing it directly. All we can do is see what it turns into, as you say. It's like coming to a street corner and seeing the remnants of a car accident and figuring out what must have happened, but not actually seeing the collision itself. And so in the case of the Higgs boson, for example, the Higgs likes to turn into a pair of photons or a pair of bottom corks. And those photons and bottom corks have particular configurations and energy that tell us that they must have come from a Higgs boson. So we can never actually be sure for any given collision what it came from, but we can make statistical arguments and say, oh, this one is more likely to be from a Higgs. than from something else that would also give you the same sort of signature in our detectors. And so that's what you do.

You're colliding protons, hoping to get new particles. And so the question we started off was, what has the LHC discovered in those collisions? Now, we know the big one was the Higgs boson, which was discovered almost 10 years ago. So tell us about that discovery and like sort of the specifics of how it was filmed. Yeah, so the Higgs boson is something we suspected was there. We looked at the patterns of all the particles and we said, this just doesn't make sense. And a guy named Peter Higgs realized that it would make much more sense. Like it mathematically just clicked together beautifully if there was another particle.

It's like if you have a jigsaw puzzle and there's a piece missing. You look at it, you can see the shape and you're like, hmm, there must be one. And so you hunt around under the table looking for that particular piece. It's much easier to find a piece if you know what you're looking for and you suspect it exists. So we already had the idea that the Higgs boson might exist and how it would be created and what it would look like in our detector. And we have a whole fun podcast episode about the journey to find the Higgs. It's a long saga, lots of drama, lots of politics. But we ended up finding it the Large Hedron Collider in exactly that way that we talked about.

It turns into two photons. So the Higgs boson is this little particle and it decays in this complicated way that ends up giving two photons one in one direction and one in the other direction. And we surround these collisions with all sorts of layers of detectors that tell us what came out of those collisions. So we saw a lot of these events with two photons, one photon one way and the other photon going the other direction. When you add up their energy, the energy of those two photons, it comes up to a certain number. And that's the mass of the Higgs boson. And so we saw a lot of these particular kinds of collisions that led to this pattern of photons, it all added up to the same number for the mass of the Higgs.

And we thought, hmm, that must be it. Right. It's like you saw the footprint of the Higgs boson in these two photons, right? Yeah, exactly. We can't see the Higgs itself. Right. Because I think that's one thing that's interesting about this is that you kind of have to have an idea of what you're looking for, right? You can't just like turn this on and then see what happens because there's so much stuff coming out and it's all probabilistic.

So you kind of need to know what you're looking for or you need to know about what size of a footprint you're looking for or what would the footprint look like sort of in order to actually discover these footprints. You just put your finger on a really interesting and sort of hot-headed debate in the field right now. Like a lot of people think that you're right, that you need to know what you're looking for. for because these signals are subtle and you can't see things directly, so you need to know like how to look for things in order to anticipate them and discover them. And that's probably true for really subtle signals like the Higgs boson. If we didn't know to look for the Higgs boson, we might not have seen it. Because in the end, the signal is kind of subtle. It's like this little bump. There's lots of other ways to make the same signature that we see for the Higgs.

But other people, i.e. me and some folks I work with, think it might be possible to discover something we don't anticipate, that not knowing what's out there doesn't mean that we can can't see it. We need to be sort of more clever about how to look for things to be ready for surprises, but we think that using some new techniques from like machine learning and anomaly detection, it might be possible to figure out if there's something new in our data, even if we don't know exactly what to look for. But you're right, it's more difficult and it would need to be a more obvious signal. But I guess what I mean is you sort of need to know, even for something where you're detecting anomalies, you sort of need to know what's normal so that you can tell

what's an anomaly, right? You need to have sort of an idea of what you might discover or at least sort of like a good picture and then you can tell if something is off of that or different than that. Yes, it's all about understanding what the current theory predicts so we can find deviations from it. And that's what was exciting, for example, about those muon G minus two experiments that were recently done at Fermilab is that they had a really detailed prediction for what they expected to see when the muon wobbled around in a circle and then they saw something different. They don't know what it is and they don't need to know what it is, but they know that they see something different, which requires some new kind of particle.

So that's an example of how you might see that there is something out there new to discover without knowing exactly what it is, seeing a deviation from what you expect. And so that was the Higgs boson. That was a huge deal a while ago. And because it is such a fundamental particle in our model of particle physics, right? Like it's the particle that sort of explains the masses of the other particles and it's sort of, in a way, sort of holds the universe together. Yeah, absolutely.

and it's even more deeply important than that. It completes this longer project of bringing together electricity and magnetism and the weak force. You know, James Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism more than 100 years ago. And then in the 60s, somebody else brought together the weak force into a single force, the electro-week force. And it's all beautiful and mathematical, but didn't really work because it was missing a piece. And the Higgs boson was that piece. So finding that tells us not just how particles get their mass,

but also that the weak force and electromagnetism are just two sides of the same coin. It's really an incredible triumph that's like over 100 years of theoretical progress. Yeah, that's pretty cool. That's what I tell the Higgs all the time is I tell you complete me. So that's maybe the last fundamental particle that humans have discovered, right? I don't think we've found other fundamental particles there or at the Large Hadron Collider or anywhere, right? And we have been looking. We have been looking and we had high hopes.

but you're right, we haven't found anything else. You know, when we turned on the Large Hadron Collider, we were able to explore new energy ranges. Like the previous Collider went up to 2 trillion electron volts. That's like 2,000 times the energy inside the mass of a proton. And the Large Hadron Collider goes up to 14 terra electron volts. So like it's seven times as much energy as the old Collider. And that means it's like seven times the territory,

seven times the new menus. You know, you go in and out and you get like the secret, secret, secret, secret menus. That's really exciting from like an explorational point of view. It's like simultaneously landing on seven new Earth-like planets and seeing if there's life on there. It's a huge territory that's that nobody had explored before. So the possibilities were huge. We could have seen nothing, right? You could be there's just nothing there.

We could see only the Higgs boson. Or we could have seen like a crazy number of particles flying out of the machine, probably not pink elephants, but the possibility was that we could have seen dozens of new particles that would tell us all sorts of crazy stories about the universe. Unfortunately, we didn't. All we saw in terms of fundamental particles was the Higgs boson. It's almost like you got a bigger table in a way, not just access to the bigger menu, but it's like you got a bigger table and you told the universe, all right, you know, surprise me. And it just kind of brought more of the same thing. That's right. We went to the All You Can Eat Buffet and it just kept serving us mac and cheese.

No, you didn't get a Higgs animal style. No, maybe we made a mistake. We filled up on bread or something. I don't know what the problem was. But we were hoping to find gravitons. There's no like secret seafood crap buffet table in the back or anything. If it is, it's still a secret because we haven't found it. We had lots of ideas also of what we might have seen. You know, we might have seen gravitons. We don't understand how gravity works as a quantum theory. And some people think that every time you feel gravity, it's because you're passing little quantum particles back and forth called gravitons. And if that is true, there was a chance we could have seen those at the LHC and we looked for them but didn't see them. And there are lots of other

really fun theory supersymmetry and heavier corks and all sorts of weird new leptons. There's no shortage of ideas coming from the theoretical community about what we might have seen. But of course, we didn't see any of those either. Right. You had sort of ideas about how the universe might work, you know, given all the theory. And so you needed some experimental confirmation to make those theories kind of solid, right? Like to show that supersymmetry was right or quantum gravitational know physics was right, you needed to find sort of weird new particles in that space that we're looking for, but you didn't. Yeah, but we didn't. It's just like with the Higgs boson, these things come from theoretical motivation, people looking at the theory and saying, you know, this would make

more sense if we changed it in this way or if we added this piece. And then experimentalists go out and look for it and say, well, is it there? Is your idea corresponding to the real structures of the universe or is it just sort of like a nice pretty bit of math in your head? Because there's an important difference, right? We're not just interested in exploring the insides of our head. We want to know what the structures of the actual universe are. And so to do that, we need to do these experiments. But our job is not just to, like, go off and check the boxes on theoretical ideas. I think we're also capable of discovering unanticipated stuff of finding weird new stuff out there that no theorist has predicted that nobody anticipated that blows up all of our ideas

about the universe. That hasn't happened either, but I hold out hope. Yeah, you always talk about the scenario where you do an experiment and you look, the data and then you see something and you're like who ordered that like which menu did that one come from yes and that's happened in history right like who ordered that is a literal thing somebody said when they saw that the muon had been discovered because nobody expected the muon to be there it's not something we thought might be on the menu it's just something that got delivered and we're like huh i didn't order this it's just sitting here in front of me and so i fantasize about that you know sort of in a scientific way like you know my dream scenario is finding something weird that everybody scratches their

head over because you and I talk about on the podcast all the time how we know there are basic things about the universe we don't understand and what we need is a clue something that points us in the right direction to think about new ideas and so a totally weird new anticipated discovery would be a great clue in that direction cool well we are standing by for you to discover new fundamental particles or to confirm fundamental new theories but in the meantime the LAC has been busy it has made a lot of discoveries and maybe it's found more particles than most people think. So let's get into that. But first, let's take another quick break. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport.

The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA term. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is back.

In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. and harder to stop. Listen to the new season of law and order criminal justice system on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Well, wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That sounds totally inappropriate. Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor, and they're the same age. And it's even more likely that they're cheating.

He insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK. Storytime Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you

pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now. When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because

you're avoiding it, and in fact, it may get even worse. For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I had this, like, overwhelming sensation that I had to call it right then. And I just hit call, said, you know, hey, I'm Jacob Schick. I'm the CEO of One Tribe Foundation, and I just wanted to call on and let her know

there's a lot of people battling some of the very same things you're battling. And there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a nonprofit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. I was married to a combat army veteran, and he actually took his own life to suicide. One Tribe saved my life twice.

There's a lot of love that flows through this place, and it's sincere. Now it's a personal mission. I wouldn't have to go to any more funerals, you know. I got blown up on a React mission. I ended up having amputation below the knee of my right leg and the traumatic. brain injury because I landed on my head. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

All right. We're talking about the LHC and ordering things off of the universe menu at the, what, the Cosmic Diner. I think that is an actual diner, probably somewhere in America. They probably don't serve caviar, though. They sell Higgs boson, animal style. So we made the big Higgs boson discovery, and we don't have any sort of thing that fundamental yet since then. But the LAC has been busy discovering more particles, right? Actually, a surprisingly large number of new particles. That's right.

The Higgs boson is like the glamour front person of the particle discoveries. But we've been hard at work, and we found all sorts of crazy stuff out there that you probably haven't even heard of. Unless you listen to this podcast, right? That's right. We have talked about a couple of these discoveries on the podcast. And so those of you out there who follow it might not be surprised. But honestly, I was even surprised when I counted up all the discoveries. The number sort of shocked me. Oh, how many particles has the LHC discovered?

59 more particles than just the Higgs boson. Whoa. 59. 59. It's a lot of particles. There are that many particles? There are that many particles, exactly, because there's other ways to discover particles than finding new fundamental particles.

We can find new ways to put the old particles together. Oh, I see. These are not like fundamental like building blocks of the universe we think, but just sort of like when you arrange particles in a different way, they sort of become new particles, right? They act like a new kind of particle. Exactly. Like the proton is not a fundamental particle, right?

It's made out of quarks. You put two upcorks and a down quark together and you get a proton. And that's really interesting. It's an amazing. And the fact that it even works is something we don't, fully understand because it involves this very complex and very powerful force called the strong nuclear force. You know, quarks have these weird things called colors and they exchange gluons back and

forth. It's a crazy system. And so one thing we can do with the Large Hadron Collider is figure out like, are there other ways to combine quarks to make new kinds of particles? Can we shake quarks together and build out new things? Like new kinds of protons maybe, right? Basically is what you're making. Yeah, like new kinds of protons because when the collisions happen, remember, we're

colliding protons and protons at the Large Hadron Collider. But again, protons are not fundamental particles. So what actually happens when these protons come near each other is not that like one proton smashes into another one and they totally annihilate. When you're at that energy, the fact that these quarks are bound together into a proton is sort of irrelevant because the quarks have so much more energy individually than the bonds between them. So it's sort of like what you're doing is shooting together like a triple beam of quarks in one direction and a triple beam of quarks in the other direction. So then what happens when they collide is that the corks themselves are interacting.

Now you have six quarks and you can mix them match and you can make all sorts of weird crazy stuff. And because there's so much energy there, you can even pop new corks out of the vacuum and make all sorts of new weird combinations. I think it's these combinations that really tell you or let you explore or know more about the basic particles, right, and how they're put together because they all sort of depend on the rules of quarks and gluons. Exactly.

and we are trying to understand those rules. We want to know how quarks push against each other, how gluons pull on each other. And it's something that's very difficult to grapple with. This whole field of the strong nuclear force is very difficult because the force is so strong. And so it's very hard to do calculations because things get out of hand very quickly.

One reason is that the strong force is weird in a really super interesting way. If you take two quarks and you start to pull them apart, you might expect that the strong force would get weaker as they get further apart from each other. That's the case with gravity, right? Like as you get further from the earth, your gravity gets weaker. That's the case with electricity.

Like take two electrons, they will repel each other. But as you move them further apart, they start to repel each other less and less. The opposite is true with quarks. As you move them further apart, their force between them gets stronger and stronger. And that's what makes it really hard to do these calculations because you can almost never like neglect another particle. In the case of gravity and electromagnetism, you can make lots of simplifying assumptions

because as things get far away, you can basically ignore them. You can never do that with the strong forces. Things get further away. They become more important. And so these calculations are a big mess. They're really, really hard to do. So as you say, by understanding how these particles

are fitting together, we're trying to understand what the rules are of how they fit together. It's not something we still understand. Right. I think maybe something that people haven't thought about is that quarks can combine in ways that are other than the proton, right?

Isn't that a little weird to think about that, you know, like corks could make protons which make up you and me and part of what makes you and me, but it can also kind of fit together in different ways. It is cool, but it's sort of the beauty of the universe and we see that same sort of thing happening in other places, like the fact that you can take protons and neutrons and electrons

and you can fit them together to make helium or calcium or neon or uranium. Those elements are all so totally different, but they're made of the same building blocks. So there's something really deep about, the fact that the same building blocks can be arranged to make completely different things with totally different properties. And so the same is true at this deeper level. You can take quarks. You can put them together and make a proton or a neutron. Or you can do all sorts of other things. Like you combine just two corks together. That's like a pion is made out of just two corks or a roemason

is made out of just two quarks. So these things are really like Legos and you can combine them to make all sorts of stuff. The thing is that we don't understand exactly how those rules work. So it's very hard to predict which combination of quarks fit together to make a nice particle and which combination of corks aren't stable, which is like fly apart instantaneously. Really, you can't predict that you have to kind of look for them in a way, right? Because you found at least 59 different ways in which quarks can be put together. That's right, 59 new ways. I mean, we have lots and lots of ways for quarks to fit together.

There was this period in the early 60s called the particle zoo when people were building bigger and bigger colliders and finding new particles all the time. you know, the pion, the kion, all these particles. These are the particles that gave us the clue about quarks in the first place. We discovered all these crazy particles. We didn't understand them. And then people understood, oh, all these weird new particles are built out of the same building blocks. They're all just built out of these little Lego pieces called quarks.

As though, as you say, we still don't really quite understand how to predict what else the quarks can do. So it's very interesting to find those to go out and actually look for them and see, oh, look, this weird combination works. That weird combination works. So that's been a big industry. The Large Hadron Collider is making new combination of corks to help reveal how these particles do fit together, what the rules are. And I guess maybe what's also interesting is that these new kinds of arrangements of corks, they're not common, right?

Like most of the corks together that we see are protons and neutrons, but these new kinds of other protons and arrangements, they're not common. And they don't last very long, right? Yeah, just like the Higgs boson and the top cork. These things are not stable. They don't last for very long. They're a little bit more stable and depends exactly on the details. Some of them might even last, you know, like a millionth or a billionth of a second.

But you're right. You don't find them in nature. You can't like go drill into the earth to find these things. You have to create them in high energy density environments. You have to pour energy into one spot so the corks have enough energy to make these weird, massive combinations. And so each of these tell you a little bit more about how corks and gluons can come together, which kind of tells you more about the rules of the universe. All right, so then maybe tell us also besides these composite particles, what else has the LHC been discovering?

Yeah, so we haven't found more particles, but what we have done are more detailed studies of the particles that we do know. For example, we're really interested in questions like exactly how much does the top cork way. Like the top cork is a weird cork. It's just like the upcork, except it's much, much, much more massive. It's super duper massive. And we'd like to understand exactly how massive is it. Its exact mass controls a lot about how things work in particle physics. So one thing we're doing is measuring that very, very precisely to see if the mass that it has makes sense with some of our other calculations.

So that's an example of the kind of thing we do. It's like a precision study of the particles we do know so that we can anticipate anything weird. We can look for deviations and anomalies like we were talking about earlier. Right, because we have this model of the universe, the standard model of stuff and matter. But, you know, we think it's the kind of the right one, but there might be others or we just want to make double extra sure that it's the right model of the universe. Yeah, I would actually say we're sure it's not the right model of the universe. I mean, it works pretty well. It's kind of pretty, but we know it's not correct.

Like there are things about it which just can't be right. And what we're looking for are the cracks in it. We're looking for hints as to that deeper, more fundamental, more true model. And so one way to do that is to say, well, I think there's a new particle out there. Let's go look and find it. Another way to do that is to just test the wazoo out of it and say, like, well, let's really see if it's correct. Let's see if we can find some deviations. So we have done stuff like that.

And, you know, at the Large Hadron Collider, we talked about on the podcast once, they found this weird particle that uses penguin diagrams and decays really strangely. Sometimes it decays to muons more often than it decays to electrons, which is not what we expected. And that's a sign that maybe there's some new heavy particle very briefly appearing and messing things up. So that's the kind of thing we can do. Instead of looking directly for new heavy particles created at the Collider, we're looking for like their subtle influence on the particles that we do know. By looking at those cracks, you might sort of look into those cracks and find new particles there, right?

Exactly. And that's the kind of thing that I'm excited about. As you said very intelligently earlier, if you want to find something new that you don't expect, you need to understand what you do expect very, very well. And so that's basically what we're doing is fleshing out exactly what we expect and double checking that we're seeing what we expect. I'm always hoping that we don't see what we expect, that we see something weird and new in the data that we can't explain with our current theory.

But so far, not yet. Not yet. But maybe in the future. So maybe tell us now what can we expect in the future from the LHC? And I think part of it is that maybe a change in the name due to an upgrade, right? Yeah, well, we are going to be running the LHC for like another 10 years. You know, you pour billions of dollars into this machine. You want to get everything you can out of it.

So we'll be running the large Hageon Collider for at least another 10 years. and we'll be looking for these really subtle hints. Like the longer you run your collisions, the more you can see really, really rare things, or the more you can see very small deviations from what you expected. Those little deviations might be nice clues that point us in the right direction.

So we're going to be doing this for another 10 years or so, really checking out all the details. Likely we'll also discover a bunch more of these new combinations of corks, ways to put them together to make weird stuff that give us an idea for how corks and gluons work together. And it's possible that we could discover some new fundamental particle, some graviton or some proof of supersymmetry. I think the chances of that really get less and less likely the longer we go on without having seen it. Because one thing we can't do with the

Large Hadron Collider is increase the energy. Like the energy is fixed by the size of the tunnel and the strength of the magnets. So we can run it for a long, long time, but we can't like boost it up to any higher energy. And that's really, I think, what we would need to find a new fundamental particle, a new, like, really heavy new kind of particle. But if you do find one, another one, then that makes it the two fundamental particles for the price of one, and that halves your per particle cost, making it more of a deal. That's right. Exactly.

And we would love to deliver that deal for taxpayers around the world. And you talked about changing the name. We are actually talking about new versions of the large Hedron Collider. And so, for example, people are talking about the VLHC, the very large Hedron Collider, which really is the thing. But we don't know if that's going to be built or where it would be built. It's going to cost a lot of money. And so there's a lot of politics involved in figuring out who's going to pay for that thing and exactly where to put it. Right. I think you had a better name for it, though, earlier. You should call it the test the wazoo out of it, particle collider.

That's the informal working name on all the documents internally. Yeah. And then you can name new particles with zoos. It's the particle wazoo. All right. Well, I think we'll stay tuned to see what else you discover in the next 10 years. And I think maybe it was something that a lot of listeners might not know, which is pretty cool, is that you can actually go to the LAC, you know, once things open up, hopefully after this pandemic. You can actually go there and they'll give you a tour of the facilities, and you can go to their gift shop and look around and see scientists at work and eating at the cafeteria. You can buy yourself a Higgs boson and it's less than $10 billion.

Do you sell caviar there too? And T-shirts? No caviar, but yes, T-shirts. Well, it is in Switzerland, so they might have caviar, maybe. I think there's a lot of caviar eaten in Switzerland, not that much at CERN. Just chocolate and coffee. Yeah, but you can come and visit. There's a really nice science center, so come check it out.

It's a beautiful spot. It's also nestled between two sets of mountains and there's fields of sunflowers, or if you like skiing, it's right next to the Alps. So it's a gorgeous spot. If you have the opportunity to visit, I totally encourage you. And we were not at all sponsored by Switzerland or the Large Hadron Collider, just by listeners like you, who in the end are the ones footing the bill for this whole.

whole endeavor. Thank you very much, everyone, for paying your taxes. Thank you, Jeff Bases. All right, well, that's pretty cool. So stay tuned and we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us. See you next time. Thanks for listening. And remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a production of IHeart Radio. For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, visit the IHeart Radio app. or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious. Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back. the school week on the okay storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes,

my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot. He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her. Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone. Hold up. Isn't that against school policy? That seems inappropriate. Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance bro? Trying to tell us how to spend our own money. No thank you. Instead, check out Brown Ambition. Each week, I, your host, Mandy Money, gives you real talk, real advice with a heavy dose of I-feel uses, like on Fridays when I take your questions for the BAQA. Whether you're trying to invest for your future,

navigate a toxic workplace, I got you. Listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.