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

Episode Date: January 31, 2019

CERN just released a new report describing the next planned collider and its price! Is it worth it? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer-free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation, none of that. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Deadwell Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that

drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest's personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show. There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years. New episodes of Bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hood of you. I'll take it all! I'm Mani. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming?

I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No such thing. Hey, Daniel, what's the biggest, most expensive science project ever?

Well, you know, us scientists, we love building taxpayer-funded toys. And when we get the freedom to do so, So we spend big. So I think the biggest one is the international space station at like $100 billion. A hundred billion dollars. Billion with a B. Oh my goodness. And by comparison, the largest particle collider we've ever built comes in at only $10 billion.

But let's put that in context for like compared to what normal people spend their money on. You could probably pay for like the college education of 40 or 50,000 people with that much money. Or the equivalent that's the equivalent of. about 2 billion lattes. Or you could have spent $10 billion on about 130,000 Teslas. Oh, my goodness. You could go out there and be like, you get a Tesla, and you get a Tesla. You're the new Oprah, Jorge.

Science could be the new Oprah. So that sounds like a lot of money, but actually, compared to some of the other things we spend money on, it's not that much, right? Like how much this one aircraft carrier cost? Yeah, those things are more than $10 billion. And our annual military budget is like $700 billion. dollars every year obviously military great and important is it 700 billion dollars important I have nothing I don't know what else to say about that yeah hi I'm Horne and I'm

Daniel. And we are the host of this podcast, Daniel and Jorge, Explain the Universe. Which takes something south of $10 billion to produce every year. Yeah, much cheaper. You can buy like a bazillion podcast episodes of our show for that kind of money. Actually, an infinite number since you pay nothing for this podcast. I mean, how much we get, how much we were paid to it. Yeah, that would be one bigigillion, I think, podcast episodes in 10 billion. Yeah, we get about three bananas per episode. You get three bananas? I don't think it's.

Two bananas. Where's my agent? Oh, oh, don't. Maybe you get paid in apples. That's right. Yeah. And so this episode, we're talking about money. And not just any kind of money, but money that's being proposed to be spent on the future of particle physics. And so on this episode, we're asking the question, Is a new $20 billion particle collider worth the money? And, you know, big science costs money.

Anytime we want to build something big, it costs money. Like, I was in the Bay Area recently, and I drove across the new Bay Bridge. That thing is beautiful. And every time I drive across it, I think, wow, look what humans can create, right? Like, when we come together, we can make things that are so much bigger, so much more grandiose than anything one human could ever build. If we pull together, right, and spend the money. Yeah, humans working together can achieve things that are incredible.

And that extends also to science. You know, we can do things in science together as hundreds or thousands of scientists that we could certainly never do as sole scientists. And that includes things like space stations and fusion reactors and particle colliders. Right. Well, it's interesting to think that science costs money, you know. Like, it's not something people do for free as a hobby. You have to pay for people to do it. You have to pay for people.

That's true. But also you have to pay for the stuff, right? The test tubes. You got to test tubes. We break a lot of test tubes when we make a particle collider. No, you've got to dig tunnels or you've got to launch stuff into outer space. You know, it uses practical resources. And so, you know, if money is a stand-in for, like, a fraction of the resources of a society,

then, yeah, it takes a fraction of our resources. Resources that could have gone to building schools or hospitals or swimming pools or mega mansions for the rich or whatever. So it's definitely a social choice. Where should our resources go? Well, this episode, we are referring to the news. recently that CERN, the

nuclear the do you know what CERN stands for? I know it's French. It's something like a European Center for Nuclear Research, right? That's right, yeah, but it's in French, so the acronym

is all inverted. Sandra, Yorkerone, the R.C.H. Nuclear. Oh, geez. That's how Pepe Le Pugh would say the name of Sir. Oh, my goodness. I would not cast you for a children's show. Excuse me, monsieur.

Oh, man. I hope they don't keep this. No two audio engineers. Please cut all of my bad friend Jackson. Yeah. So, yeah, there was news this week that CERN unveiled their plans for a new $20 billion particle collider. That's right. And for those of you who aren't up in the latest news in particle physics, remember that CERN is the place that currently has the latest, largest, most energetic,

sexiest collider we've ever built. It's the large Hadron Collider. It's 27 kilometers around in a big circle underground. So that one's been around for maybe over 20 years, right? Or it started over 20 years ago? Well, the Large Hadron Collider started about 2008, 2009, depending on how you count, because we had a few hiccups there. So it's been running for about 10 years.

But, of course, these things take decades to build, so it's been a project for much longer than 10 years. But it's in the same tunnel as the previous collider, the large electron proton collider, which operated in the 90s in the early 2000s. So, yeah, there's been a collider in that tunnel for a while. And that's the one they used to discover the famous Higgs boson a couple of years ago, right? That's right. The Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs boson. And before the Large Hadron Collider, the biggest accelerator in the world, and maybe the universe, we don't know the status of alien particle physics, was outside Chicago.

So the Americans had the lead until about 2007 with a collider outside Chicago called the Tevatron at Fermi National Lab. But then the Europeans took over with the LHC and they've been in the lead ever since. And so the news is that they're going or they're trying to or they're proposing to build an even bigger one. So bigger than the large Hadron Collider,

a new particle collider called the Future Stircular Collider. I feel like you guys, you physicists, sort of paint yourself into a corner every time you name one of these things. You know, you named the large Hadron Collider, and so now you're trapped. What are you going to call that next bigger one? The larger?

Well, you know, there's actually a proposal for a VLHC, the very large Hadron Collider, which means the next one would be like the... Giganto. You could just keep adding prefixes. Yeah. The amazing super extra-cali-fragilistic Collider. So you guys went with Future Circular Collider,

but what are you going to do once you build it and you want to build another one? You know, the future future, the very future circular collider? Ooh, that's a good question. Well, excuse me while I go tear up the CERN report. We have to start from scratch again. Jorge found a fatal flaw in CERN's proposal. Also, I think the FCC is taken, so. Yes, that's true.

There's probably other things. The Federal Communications Commission, the Fudge Chocolate Corporation. Yeah. What? Yeah, the fellowship of... Casual Christians. Circular clowns. The fancy cat cabal.

Yeah, I don't know. But so CERN did some studies, and they said, how big would the next one have to be, and how much would that cost? So they proposed one that's 100 kilometers in circumference. So remember, the LHC is 27 kilometers in circumference. This new one would be almost three-year-old. or four times bigger.

And they estimate the cost to be $20 billion worldwide. It's three times bigger, and it's going to cost $20 billion, which I think would sort of make it the, or one of the largest science experiments on Earth, like on the planet. Absolutely. Not floating in space. And so, yeah, we thought, is this worth it? Let's explore the reasons why you might, as a government official,

decide to spend $20 billion buying abstract knowledge about the universe and why maybe it's not a great idea. So Daniel, as usual, went out into the street and asked people, should we spend $20 billion on a new collider to understand tiny little particles? And this is what the unprepared, totally randomly accosted in UCI students had to say. It's better than spending it on a wall, you know? So, yeah, go for it, you know. Yeah, I think so.

If it helps me understand those things, then yeah. All right. I wouldn't say it's a bad use. It's definitely a good use, better than. and some other proposals we have today. But I don't know if that's the most urgent need that we have right now, I feel like, but a particle collider is no waste of money. Sure.

To study more about nature, it sounds like a good idea. I feel like you were asking them that question, but you were also sort of trying to validate your own existence. You were like, do you think this is worth it? What I do for a living? Well, I didn't tell them I was a particle physicist. And also, I don't actually have a stake in this because... If this collider gets built, it's not going to turn on until like 2045, 2050.

Oh, wow. But then I'll be long retired. Well, I thought professors never retired. We just grayed away, right? It won't be done until 20, 40 something. That's like 30 years from now. It's a long time. And, you know, we're going to be operating the LHC for another 15, 20 years.

And building a tunnel like that takes a long time. It has to be really precise. And you've got to start planning these things decades in advance because it takes a huge amount of political coordination. to get all the countries together and sign the treaties. So it's a big project. So, yeah, you've got to start well in advance.

So we're really talking about the future. It's like the people who are going to probably work in it, all those grad students haven't even been born. Oh, for sure, yeah. And so this generation is building the collider for the next generation. But, you know, back to the interviews on the street, I was really heartened.

Like, I pose this question as like, is this a good way to spend taxpayer money? And I try and on purpose to phrase it a little bit skeptically. But most people were like, yeah, sounds good. I'm interested in tiny particles. Science is awesome. Wow. That's cool.

I was heartened by that. Wow. So you try to add a little bit of like, do you think this is worth it when people responded positively? Yeah, they did. And then this morning I was teaching my class, which is about 400 freshmen, and I put a poll up in the start of class. And I asked them, I said, is it worth $20 billion to build a new particle accelerator? And 70% of them said yes. Wow. I think the surprising thing is that 30% of your students think you should be out of a job.

It was anonymous, right? So they don't lose credit or anything for saying no. But yeah, some of them I think just thought it's too much money. And, you know, in the interviews, some people make good points. Like there are other things we could spend this money on, like college educations and homelessness. Yeah, some people sort of brought that up in the interviews too. They said that, you know, maybe this is money we could be spending on something else. And every dime we spent is opportunity cost, right? Every dollar you spend on one thing means you can't spend it on something else.

Okay, so let's jump into it. And let's ask the question, first of all, why does it cost $20 billion to make this science experiment? I mean, my son had a science fair the other day, and, you know, he didn't spend $20 billion, $20 billion. So, yeah, why does it cost so much? And I guess maybe we need to get into a little bit of how a particle collider works, or maybe some people out there don't even know what a particle collider. is. Right. Okay. So a particle collider takes two little particles

like protons or electrons, two tiny little things, and smashes them together. Now, to get them to go really, really fast, you've got to push them for a while. They start off slow. Where do you get these protons and electrons? You take them from hydrogen, which is just everywhere. And then, how do you get

them to go really fast? You give them a push. And we can do that using little mini accelerators. Like they surf on electromagnetic waves that give them a little nudge. Meaning, like when you create one of these particles or you make one or you find one or you you get one, it's not moving that fast. It's not necessarily moving like the speed of light. That's right. When we start out, it's, you know, at rest. Like you take a hydrogen atom, you heat it up so that the electron

leaves and you have a proton. And it's basically just hanging out. And so first you got to give it a kick. Okay. You have to accelerate it. You have to, you know, like shoot it out of a cannon. Yeah, exactly. And so what we have is a series of tubes. Each one gives it a kick. And you pass it through this series of tubes, giving it more and more kicks until it's going faster and faster and faster, right? Yeah, but the problem is you need a lot of runway. Like, you need a long cannon to accelerate these particles. Exactly.

You want to get up to really high energies. You need a lot of these kicks. And so one way to save money is to have it go in a circle, so you can have it pass through those tubes over and over and over again. And like each time it comes around, you give it a little bit of more energy, and so it goes faster and faster and faster. Yeah, exactly. It's like your kid on the swing set, right?

First, you give it a little push and your kid is swinging. And then when they come back, you give them another push and another push. And you don't have to move. The kid comes back to you every time you give it another push. Eventually, your kid is doing loop-de-loops over the bar. And colliding, hopefully, not, with other kids. With the neighboring kids. Yeah, exactly.

Like I'm doing physics, honey. Yeah. So that's the basic premise, right? Take a particle, give it a bunch of little pushes until it gets going really fast. Okay. Why do you need bigger rings? Right. Well, how do you get it to move?

in a circle, right? You have a proton zipping along. How do you get to move in a circle? You need a magnet. A magnet will bend the path of a charged particle. So we have super duper strong magnets that actually use superconducting materials to make them really, really strong. And they bend the particles. Like you can't just sort of bounce him on the walls of the tunnel or the tube, right? Like you can't do that. You know what I mean? We have grad students in there to guide in the protons. Turn left, turn left. You know what I mean? You need magnets. Like magnets is the only way to kind of guide these particles in a circle. That's right. If they smash it into the walls of the tunnel, they'll be absorbed or interact or whatever. You want pure protons, so you want them a specific

energy, so you don't want to touch them. So we have a ring which has vacuum in it, and the protons are zipping around this vacuum, and they're being steered by magnets. So the way the accelerator work is it gives it a push, and then it bends it. It gives it a push, and then it bends it. It's not actually a circle. It's a bunch of these little straight lines connected by magnets that bend it. But they're connected in a circle. They're connected in a big circle and that way you can go around and round and around and get it to go faster and faster and faster and so that costs money

these cavities cost money the magnets cost money because in order to get to bend when it's going really fast you need a really powerful magnet but then the tunnel cost a lot of money also I would think the tunnel is the cheapest part man you have to drill a huge hole precisely in

a circle which is not easy and that's why it's by far the most expensive part of the collider oh I see it has to be like perfect circle. Yeah, a perfect circle. Fortunately, the Swiss are great at this. They are surrounded by mountains,

and so they've been developing tunnel technology for a long time. Like, they built a tunnel under the Mon Blanc, right? One of the mountains in the Alps. It's just huge tunnel. I thought you were going to say they're good at building watches, which are circular with precision. And so they... Well, you know, yeah, there's a lot of precision engineering in Switzerland.

But one of the things they're really good at is tunnel building, and they have these amazing machines, and if you've seen them, but they look like huge worms, and the front of them are basically just this big grinding face, and then all the rock comes out the back, and they just, like, chew their way through a mountain. It's really pretty awesome. And the tunnel is hard.

Like, it's not actually flat. You know, like, you have got to build something that big. You have to take into account geology. So on one side you have mountains, and the other side you have Lake Geneva, and so you've got to, like, angle it a little bit. So it's a big piece of work to make that thing happen. Then on top of it.

it you have all the electronics and all the people and so yeah it costs some money yeah okay so the faster you want the particles to go the bigger the circle needs to be which means more tunnel exactly and more stuff to pay for but exactly so why does this circle need to be bigger well either you need to have a bigger circle or you need more powerful magnets right or both because if they're going faster than to get them the curve in the same circle you need stronger magnets oh it's harder to make them go around in a circle the faster they go yeah exactly you need more of a force you a stronger magnet and we're already using super amazing superconducting magnets

and we're pushing that technology as hard as we can. You might ask well why do we care? Why are we pushing them at a higher higher energy? And the answer is simple. It's just E equals MC squared. That is you take two little light particles. That's the answer to everything. I mean you could use that for

to answer anything. That's right. Yeah when my wife asks me why I didn't do the dishes, that's what I say. You're like E equals MC squared. That's right. I had no energy because my mass is sitting on the couch, lazy. Because I added too much mass than dinner. That's right.

And the speed of light doesn't save me. No, because we want to pour a bunch of energy into one little spot. You take little protons, you speed them up, but you give them a lot of energy, and you pour that energy into one little spot, and then you can turn that energy into mass, right? So light

protons with a lot of energy can turn into some new particle that has a lot of mass, a particle that doesn't exist in normal life because it's too heavy. So we can create a spot with a lot of energy density. Maybe we can make these new kinds of particles and help unravel the riddles of dark matter and dark energy and antimatter and all this crazy stuff. Right. Yeah, that's what the colliders do is when you collide these particles together. Well, first of all, you shoot one of them in one direction and you shoot the other

direction and then you have them collide. Yeah, and that is hard, right? We're talking about tiny little particles. And so what we actually do is we don't shoot one proton at another proton because you basically always miss. We shoot a little, a little gas of protons against a little gas of other protons. And we hope that a few of them collide. Like a little cloud of them. You collide two clusters of them. Yeah, exactly.

We collide two clusters of them. Yeah. Okay. And so then when they crash, they create this kind of ball of pure energy. And that's the stuff you study. But the more energy they come into the collision with, the more interesting stuff you can make out of that ball of energy. That's right. And when you create a new collider that has more energy than anybody's ever used before, you're really exploring

new territory, right? You're creating collisions at an energy nobody's ever seen before. And so you have no idea what could come out. You could make new kinds of particles that nobody's ever seen before, that we're there on nature's menu, just waiting for somebody to create enough energy.

You know, particles that haven't existed in nature since the Big Bang. That was the last time there was as much energy in one spot. You mean we can recreate the Big Bang, potentially? Well, we're not recreating the Big Bang that we're not tearing the universe apart or anything like that. So those of you who are worried, don't worry about that.

But we are recreating some of the conditions just after the Big Bang, like the hotness, the density, the heat, the density, the intensity of the energy. We're recreating that to hope to understand, you know, what happened in the first few moments after the Big Bang. But more than that, we want to understand just like what's out there. What kind of particles can exist? You know, we are made of up quarks and down quarks and electrons, but we've found lots of other kinds of particles along the way.

and we're looking for patterns in those. We have lots of questions about those. We did a whole podcast episode about the mysteries of the little particles. So there's a huge number of outstanding questions. And one great way to explore them is to just build a bigger collider and try to make more particles

and see what the patterns are. Yeah. Well, let's get into how fast these particles are going. But first, let's take a quick break. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers.

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This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about thoroughly before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you realize just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem? I was eight years old, and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller.

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Like, why our last names would make the worst hyphen ever? My last name is Cummings. I have sympathy for nobody. Yeah, mine's brown-oller, but with an H. So it looks like brown-whaler. Okay, that's, okay, yours might be worse. We can never get married. Yeah.

Listen to this episode with Whitney Cummings and check out new episodes of bananas every Tuesday on the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so Daniel, tell me, so these particles are going really, really fast. So, like in the large Hadron Collider, they're already going at, like, 0.999 of the speed of light,

which is the maximum anything can go at, right? That's right. And that's why speed is not really the best way to think about these things because there's a speed limit to the universe, right, the speed of light. And as you get closer and closer, it gets harder and harder to go faster. But there is no limit on how much energy a particle can have. So, you know, at low speeds, yeah, low speeds when you and I move around, how fast we're going and how much energy we have are very closely connected.

As you know, some physics knows, just one-half mv squared, that's your kinetic energy. But as you get going really fast, you can keep pouring energy into something, but it doesn't always make it go faster. Really? Yeah, because you asymptotically approach to the speed of light, but you can keep pouring energy onto it, right? Right. And so we don't use normal units of energy

when we talk about particles. We talk about electron volts. So for scale, the energy that's stored in a proton is about one giga electron volts. That's a billion electron volts. But is it sort of because it doesn't sound as impressive? Do you know what I mean? Like to go, you're basically asking for $20 billion

to go from like 0.9. 99999 the speed of light to 0.9999999 to speed of light. It's just annoying to say all those nines all the time. They lose meaning at some point. Yeah, it's not impressive, but also it's not as useful, right? Let's choose units that reflect the thing we're doing. And the thing we're doing is trying to create a lot of energy in a small amount of space. So let's talk about the energy that's there.

But you're right. These things are zipping along near the speed of light. And the current accelerator we have is capable of colliding particle. with the energy of the collision is 13 terra electron volts. So that's 13,000 times the energy stored in a proton. Wow. And the new one would be capable of collisions at about 100 terra electron volts. Like seven times more?

Exactly, seven times more energy. And that's like a whole new energy range, right? Humans, up till now, have explored the energy range of up to 13 T.E.V. You turn on that new collider, you have multiplied by seven, how much energy we have explored, how much territory and particle physics we have explored. It's like in an answer, say you're an astronomer,

it's like you could simultaneously land on seven new Earth-like planets all at once and have a whole new amount of territory to explore all at once. It's an incredible opportunity. Right. Well, it sounds like a great deal for $20 billion. So let's get into it a little bit.

So why build it? Why spend $20 billion? on this one question or a couple of questions about the universe. For me, it's about exploration. And of course, I'm biased, right? I went into this field particle physics because I think the questions are fascinating. You know, what is the universe made out of? How is it organized?

How did it all begin? And also, I'm just curious. Like, I want to explore the universe. I want to know what's out there past our solar system. I want to know how things began. And so to me, the opportunity to learn the answers to these questions is tremendous. Right. Some of these questions can be answered only by big science, like telescopes and particle colliders.

And we have the technology. We know how to do these things. The only thing standing between us and the answers is time and money. This is not like, hey, can we make a quantum computer work? Maybe, probably, but we have a lot of big puzzles to figure out. It's like, we know how to do this. We just need to build a bigger one, and we can get answers. We can pull back the current on nature's mysteries.

It just takes some cash. Of course, we don't know if we're going to like the answers we get or if they're just going to generate more questions. Yeah, and it's not like we're going to get the answer otherwise. You know what I mean? Like if we don't spend this money to build these colliders, we're just never going to know some of these big questions about the universe potentially. That's true.

I'm sure there are folks out there in adjacent fields that work on similar stuff that might say, actually, you know, why don't you give me that $20 billion? I'm going to add. Really, they would be able to answer. These big questions about, like, a dark matter and how many particles there are, you think? Well, some of the questions can only be answered in a collider. You know, like, are there new heavy particles out there? Some of these things are exclusively the province of colliders.

But a lot of these questions could be answered in other ways, you know, new telescopes peering deep into the history of the universe or other kinds of particle experiments looking specifically for dark matter. And that's the thing. We don't know what's out there, right? We can't promise this new collider is going to discover particles. X, Y, and Z, because we don't know what's out there. We want to just explore. What we do know is that we know very little

about the universe, right? We know that we can explain 5% of the matter in the universe in terms of the particles we're familiar with, and the rest is dark matter and dark energy in these great mysteries. So we know that we know very little, which means it's time to explore in a sort of an open-minded

way, right? We know that we know very well, that we know very little, which means we should be looking in every way we can. So what I would say is, yeah, let's build the Collider, And let's also build those other things. Oh, you got a great idea? Here, you take 20 billion. You got a great idea, you take 20 billion.

Science for you and science for you. Exactly. Let's have a huge science party. Yeah. You know, it's incredible to me that as humans we could like change our relationship with the universe by learning the answers to these questions. And we just don't because we want to build another aircraft carrier or because we want to give a tax cut to the rich or whatever.

You know, we want to buy more plastic crap from China. I mean, the amount of... funding we give to science research compared to like how much we spend on our smartphones is ridiculous. Hey, what if we use our smartphones to do science? That sounds like a good idea. Let's put your smartphone in a particle collier, see what happens.

Is that what you mean? But, you know, I think it's interesting that this concept of exploration, because, you know, maybe people think exploration means going out into the stars or going somewhere and looking at different things. But here you're, it's kind of of exploring inwards. or exploring smaller and smaller scales

and seeing what's there and what can come out of these higher energies in such small places. That's right. And smaller and smaller scales is a great way to think about it. The more energy you put into one of these collisions, the smaller the distances that you're probing.

If you like to think about particles as waves, remember there's a very close connection between the energy of a particle and the wavelength of its wave function, this quantum mechanical thing that controls how it moves. So the higher the energy of the particle, the shorter the wavelength. Now, that's important because if you build a microscope, you can't see anything smaller than the wavelength of the light you're using.

So if you want to see something really, really small, you can't use light with a wavelength that's bigger than that object, which is why we make, for example, electron microscopes, because electrons have really short wavelengths compared to photons, and so we can see even smaller. So you could think about these particle colliders is like enormous microscopes. looking at matter at the tiniest distances. We're like down to the 10 to the minus 20 meters is the distance scale explored by the large Hadron Collider. So you're right. We're exploring like inner space instead of outer space, but still it's exploration.

And I think some people in the community try to sell these colliders as saying, we will find this new particle XYZ. And then it's embarrassing when you don't find it. But like we don't send, you know, rovers to Mars and say, and promise, we're going to find this little green man. we send rovers to Mars because we hope to be surprised.

We hope to find something weird and crazy and that would blow our minds. And that's exactly what we hope for in particle physics. You want to know, yeah. I want to know. And I'm willing to pay more to do it. Is it kind of like you can't read in the dark because it's just hard to kind of,

there's not enough energy there to discern these small details. But if you turn on the light, then it's easier to read a piece of paper. Yeah, exactly. And I feel like we're sitting in a room with a piece of paper that, has the answers to our deepest questions. And all we need to do is flip that light switch.

Okay, it costs 20 billion bucks, but, you know, let's flip it on. Let's flip it on, man. Yeah. The other arguments in favor of it are more practical ones, you know? Yeah, every time that we make these big science projects, there's a lot of new technology that comes out of it, right? That's right. And you can go to, you can look at CERN's history, for example,

and you can point to spinoffs that were created along the way. You know, like, for example, the guy who invented the World Wide Web, he was working at CERN and he needed a way to, like, connect computers and get people to talk to each other. Wait, wait, wait. The Internet? Not the Internet, but the World Wide Web. The WWW. The WWW, yeah. Could have been something else. Could have been the Y, why, why?

Could have been the U, you, you, or the me, me, me. Yeah, and, you know, that's not an argument specifically for particle colliders. That's an argument for, in general, investing in big science. It's along the way, you stumble across cool stuff. When you set a bunch of smart people with enough resources to tackle something that's never been done before, they're going to learn a lot of amazing new things, right? Kind of like all the technology that came out of sending people to the moon or all this technology that came out as CERN. It's just like when you invest in new ideas and smart people, stuff is going to come out,

not just maybe what the mission was. Absolutely. I'm most excited about the potential science. of it. But, you know, in terms of technological spinoffs, that always happens. You know, you can't predict, and so you shouldn't guarantee, but that kind of thing always happens. And if you look long term, every dollar you spend on basic research and development comes back to your society 100 or a thousandfold. It's incredible. Yeah. You know, like all the transformational inventions that have changed the way we live, you know, the transistor and plastic and all this stuff, came out

of basic R&D. Right. And so we need to keep funding that stuff if we want to keep transforming our society into new, crazy, amazing things, right? It's like every company spends money on R&D, right? Like, it would be dumb not to spend money on R&D because then you would just be stuck in the same place you are forever. Exactly. But the corporations these days have become much more focused on short-term gains. You know, I think it's this like cycle of investment and quarterly reports

and, you know, how much money you're going to make next year. So they're investing less and less in this sort of like blue sky research that could lead to the next gazillion dollar profit for them, right? And this is where government needs to step in. This is the role of government to build the Golden Gate Bridge and the projects that one person

or one company wouldn't do. To think big. To invest long term in our society, yeah. To spend a billion dollars now, which is going to mean a trillion dollars from return in 20, 30, 40, 50 years. The thing that I don't get

is why this isn't more of a bipartisan issue. You know, if you are interested in America's economic, hegemony. Well, you know, invest in basic research because that's how we got here. If you're interested in America's military hegemony, well, where do you think that came from? If you're, you know, if you are America first, you should be pro research. You should be shoveling buckets of cash to physics people because that's how we got where we are. Yeah. So if you're interested in big science, you're interested in technological advantage,

you're interested in military preeminence, all those things came from basic research. Yeah. Well, let's get into the economics a little bit, but let's take another quick break. Have you ever wished for a change but weren't sure how to make it? Maybe you felt stuck in a job, a place, or even a relationship. I'm Emily Tish Sussman, and on she pivots, I dive into the inspiring pivots of women who have taken big leaps in their lives and careers. I'm Gretchen Whitmer, Jody Sweetie. Annika Patton. Elaine Welterah. I'm Jessica Voss. And that's when I was like, I got to go. don't know how, but that kicked off the pivot of how to make the transition. Learn how to get comfortable pivoting because your life is going to be full

of them. Every episode gets real about the why behind these changes and gives you the inspiration and maybe the push to make your next pivot. Listen to these women and more on She Pivots, now on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I don't write songs. God writes songs. I take dictation. I didn't even know you've been a pastor for over 10 years. I think culture is any space that you live in that develops you. On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. This is like watching Michael Jackson talk about Thurley before it happened. Was there a particular moment where you realized

just how instrumental music culture was to shaping all of our global ecosystem? Eight years old and the Motown 25 special came on. And all the great Motown artists, Marvin, Stevie Wonder, Temptations, Diana Ross. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kurt Browneuler. And I am Scotty Landis and we host Bananas, the Weird News Podcasts with wonderful guests like Whitney Cummings. and tackle the truly tough questions.

Why is cool mom an insult, but mom is fine? No. I always say, Kurt's a fun dad. Fun dad and cool mom. That's cool for me. We also dig into important life stuff. Like, why our last names would make the worst hyphen ever? My last name is Cummings. I have sympathy for nobody. Yeah, mine's brown-oller, but with an H, so it looks like brown-holer. Okay, that's, okay, yours might be worse. We can never get married.

Yeah, listen to this episode with Whitney Cummings and check out new episodes of bananas every Tuesday on the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so let's take the maybe contrarian position. So what are really? reasons why maybe spending $20 billion on a new collider is not a good idea. Well, one strong argument is that we don't live in the fantastical environment that I described where politicians are throwing money at everybody who has a good idea for an experiment. In reality, we live in more of a zero-sum situation, where if you get a billion dollars for your science, that money is probably coming away from other science.

So really, it's a question of priorities. Should we spend $20 billion on this, or should we build a billion? $20 billion experiments or, you know, a hundred smaller experiments or a thousand even smaller ones. 20 projects that cost $1 billion each or, you know, $20,000, $1 million projects. Exactly. Because you know what? There's no shortage of awesome ideas for new science that we could do. If you work at a funding agency, then you're constantly being sent awesome ideas by smart people who spend a huge amount of time being clever

and proposing to you something really fascinating to do to learn something interesting. And you mostly have to say no. And the reason is that there just isn't enough money, right? There are limits to how much money we spend on science. In general, in society, too, right? I mean, some people in the interviews brought up that maybe we should spend that money somewhere else, like education or helping the homeless. Yeah, so just within science, it's having such a big gorilla can crowd out other projects,

other valuable projects, and it can focus the whole community on sort of one area. When you might think it would be healthier to have a diversity, you know, instead of putting all your eggs in one basket do a few things. But you're right. A bunch of little monkeys as opposed to a giant gorilla. That's right.

Who would you rather fight anyway? 20 monkeys or one gorilla. And just give them a typewriter each and they'll eventually, you know, you just have to wait. That's right. They'll eventually write a better script for this podcast than we could ever come up with.

But you're right. There are also other things we could spend this money on, right? Like the state of early childhood education in this country is appalling. The social welfare system we have in this country is terribly weak. The infrastructure, right, it's always infrastructure week since Donald Trump became president. The infrastructure in this country needs repair.

So we could spend that money well in lots of places. Right. And it's hard to know, like, how do you compare, right? How do you compare infant formula to a potential particle collider? It's hard to weigh those things. Yeah. How do you prioritize or how do you put a value on science as opposed? to people's immediate sort of happiness and comfort.

It's impossible, right? And that's why we should try to do all of these things, right? We have to weigh these things. Work harder. Work harder, you know. Don't charge as much, Daniel. Take a pay cut. Remember, the cost of the collider is mostly the tunnel, not the people.

And the $20 billion is a worldwide cost, not for the U.S. or for any single country or for any taxpayer. Right. The argument I find hard is to sustain our incredible, military budget at the expense of everything else. Even science aside, that would take some of that $700 billion and put it towards education or health care. You might think like, well, you know, do we need 10 aircraft carriers?

Couldn't we have nine and a $20 billion particle collider? Exactly. What pawn shop can you go to to trade in your aircraft carrier to get $10 billion? I think Russia or maybe North Korea. Oh, yeah, probably they would be happy to buy it from us. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, these are political choices. and everybody out there can have their own opinion about what is the best way.

I'm sure we'll hear some opinions on this episode. Yeah, exactly. And I totally respect. Some people think maybe it's not worth the money. I hope the people who happen to be listening to this podcast are the ones who think that science is a good way to spend our money and that you call your representatives around the world and tell them, yeah, let's build another particle collider. And let's also fund a new space telescope and another international space station and education for everybody. Because these things, if we spend the money now, it'll come back to us later.

Yeah. And if you're a politician out there listening, just think about it. 70% of our data sample supports big science. That's right. So send us $20 billion and we'll take care of it. We'll make a billion one dollar podcast. Exactly. We promise not to spend it on $20 billion of bananas.

Right, Jorge? What? I'm not hearing you probably. I can't make any guarantees. You know, in science, you can't make any guarantees. That's right. That's right. Well, how about if we discover the banana particle?

That thing that makes bananas so amazing. Yeah, and slippery. But in your view, it is worth it, right? In your view, you would pay anything for signs, right? You think that there's no higher calling, perhaps, than trying to figure out our place in the universe and how it all works. Yeah, and I think as a society, we should aim high. We should build incredible buildings and long bridges, and we should unravel the mysteries of the universe.

And, you know, we can focus on our day-to-day chores and the things we need to survive. We also need to think about what makes us human. And that's, you know, the cultural experience that includes art, creating beauty and creating and creating knowledge. And I think that's part of what makes life worth living. As a species, we can't just be looking down all the time. You sort of have to look up also out into the horizon. Exactly. All right. Thank you for listening. I hope that this inspired you a little bit to look up and think about the big questions about the universe.

That's right. And hope that our society and our children and their children's children will continue to explore both outwards and inwards to unravel these questions about the universe, these deep, deep mysteries we all want answers to. All right. Thanks for listening. See you next time. If you still have a question after listening to all these explanations, please drop us a line we'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Daniel and Jorge, that's one word, or email us at Feedback at Danielandhorpe.com. I was diagnosed with cancer on Friday and cancer-free the next Friday. No chemo, no radiation.

On a recent episode of Culture Raises Us podcast, I sat down with Warren Campbell, Grammy-winning producer, pastor, and music executive to talk about the beats, the business, and the legacy behind some of the biggest names in gospel, R&B, and hip-hop. Professionally, I started at Death World Records. From Mary Mary to Jennifer Hudson, we get into the soul of the music and the purpose that drives it. Listen to Culture Raises us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas. podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest's personal lives, too.

Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show. There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years. New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. are TSA rules so confusing. You got a hood of you. I'll take it all!

I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing, where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the IHeart Radio app.

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. No such thing. iHeart podcast.