Stuff You Should Know - Will the Large Hadron Collider destroy the Earth?

Episode Date: December 8, 2009

In this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck discuss the Large Hadron Collider, from its purpose and origins to how likely it is to wipe out all life in the universe. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Bryant as well as our producer Jerry. You can just call me Boson.

Higgs Boson. No one's going to call you that. That'd be a great name though. Yeah, Higgs Boson. What up Higgs? I wonder if that thing is discovered if somebody will name their kid Higgs Boson, you know, Mechawitz or whatever.

Well if someone names your kid Yeah Detroit, I think someone could potentially name the kid Higgs Boson. There's even a comma I think in there, isn't there? In Yeah Detroit? Yeah. I don't remember an exclamation point. Yeah, there's some sort of punctuation. When you get punctuation into your name,

your parents were messed up. Yes. Chuck's talking about a theoretical particle called the Higgs Boson and we'll talk about it in a minute. But first we're going to talk about the place where they're hoping to find proof, positive that the Higgs Boson particle exists. Yes, Josh.

And this is very science heavy. Super science heavy. Because it's about science. So science heavy that Chuck and I are a little nervous about this one. I'm not afraid to admit. Yeah, I have dark matter oozing out of my ears. Yeah, you do.

Both ears. Which is proof that it exists. Exactly. You just amended the standard model, Chuck. Alright, let's talk about this, dude. What is this? We're talking about the Large Hadron Collider. Right.

Which you may have heard about. You may know a lot about and if you do, I imagine we'll probably get some angry emails from you. When we mess it up inevitably. Right. And on the border between Switzerland and France. Yes. 100 meters underground.

Beautiful country. Sure. Lots of good skiing out there. Sure. There is a facility with a track that's, what, 17 miles long? I think 17.7? 16.7.

Okay, we'll just call it 17. 17. And around this track, they shoot beams of light. Pretty simple. It is pretty simple. Can I stop now? Yeah. There's the Large Hadron Collider, everybody.

That's what it's called. It's called the Large Hadron Collider. Yes. It's been built, I think they started in the 21st century. And it finally went online for the first time in 2008. So far, it's cost $6 billion to construct. Yeah, I've heard any up to 10 even, depending on who you ask. Well, yeah.

And there's a lot of countries involved. There's thousands of scientists who are going back to their home countries and saying, we need more money. We need more money. Right. And France and Switzerland are running the show there. CERN is the name of the company. We should point out.

Right. Well, the organizations, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, abbreviated, en français, CERN. Okay. I was about to say, those letters don't match up. Right. There's something weird around here. So what is it, Chuck?

They shoot beams of light. Yeah. It's a particle accelerator. And it is the largest and most bad-ass particle accelerator in the history of particle accelerators. True that. That's the easiest way to say it. We've got particle accelerators that look like old donkeys pulling carts with square wheels compared to this thing.

Seriously. This is as big as it gets. It's as ambitious as it gets. And basically what they're trying to do are several-fold. They're trying to prove the existence of the Higgs boson particle. AKA the God particle. Well, let's talk about this. Why would anyone want to prove the existence of a theoretical particle?

Should we go back to the standard model? Yeah. Should we back into this? Let's do it. Basically, it tries to define the fundamental particles that make the universe. The forces. The forces. Right.

You've got strong nuclear force, strong like bull, weak nuclear force, electromagnetic force. The standard model which combines Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum physics, I believe. Quantum theory and all that other stuff you just said. It combines those two and it proves the existence and it counts for those three forces. The problem is gravity still remains unaccounted for it. Yeah.

That's the fourth fundamental force. Like we can account for it theoretically, but we can't say yes. This is why gravity exists and this is all the stuff gravity does. We're still with strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, and electromagnetic force. We've advanced leaps and bounds beyond classical physics, Newtonian physics, but we're still at the apple falling off the tree level as far as this goes when it comes to gravity. Right. So the Higgs boson particle, if we find it, if we detect it, it will fill out the standard

model, hopefully. Exactly. And it's a theoretical particle at this point that we're looking for. Right. And they think that it exists and that basically it's responsible for giving mass or matter mass. Right. Right.

Which is important, they say, because not all matter has mass, things called neutrinos. Right. Delicious and nutritious neutrinos do not have mass. Right. I practice that one. Did you? Yeah. Okay.

It's actually written down. How lame is that? Well, not everything has mass, and the idea is that if you explain the existence of mass using the Higgs mechanism, we'll all be better for it and understand our origins. We are. Ultimately, that's what it comes down to, is we're like, theory is not good enough. We have to know. Right.

You know? So the Higgs boson particle is one of the bigger ones. Named after Peter Higgs, by the way, is this to theorize it. Right. How do you know a theoretical particle when you see it? That's a good question. Do you know? This is what I understand, that you can't just say, oh, there must be this particle

out there. Sure. And name it after me, by the way. Right, right. I think Peter Higgs went a little further and said, this particle must exist, and if it does exist, this is basically, this is its energy, its mass. Right. So find this.

Right. And name it after me. Right. And so what's going to happen when they turn the Large Hadron Collider on? What? This Christmas, right? I think it begins the process, which will take several months after that to collide. Right.

Yeah. They'll have their sensors looking for a particle that's created that has that, I guess, mass, that energy, that whatever, however it's described mathematically. Yeah. The dark matter on my stuff. Yeah, it's coming out of my ears right now. So a dark matter is another one that they're hoping to find, right? Yeah.

You've got to come out your ears. Tell us about it, Chuck. Well, here's the deal with dark matter is, right now, humans can observe about 4% of all the matter that must exist in the universe. That's all we can account for. Yeah. That's not very much. No.

There's a theory that dark matter is this undetectable matter, and that, coupled with the matter that we can detect, makes up only about 25%, which is still not much. No. And the other three-quarters is what they think might be a force called dark energy. Right. Which scientists have become alarmed over the last few decades when they've detected that the universe is actually expanding, right? And they don't know why.

Well, and they think that dark energy may be the reason. Right. So they're looking for that, too. A lot of, again, once you theorize something, you kind of have to back it up with, and this is what it's going to look like. Right. And so you sense for it, right? Sure.

They're also looking for antimatter, which is matter's hated foe. Right. And they like to cancel each other out. Yeah, that's how it supposedly worked, is that there was more antimatter- More matter. Sorry, more matter than antimatter when the Big Bang happened. Which is how we're here. Exactly.

But they don't know why, and they're hoping to recreate that. Yes. Simulating. And that is the hook, Chuck, what they're going to do. They want to find all this stuff, and more, by recreating the Big Bang, what the universe looked like a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Right. Right.

Because we think what happened was the universe expands and cools, and all these particles floating around join up together, inform larger particles, and then- Protons. All of a sudden, what's the word? Evolution? Sure. Yeah. Right.

Pretty cool. If you believe in that kind of thing. Right. They're also looking for some other stuff, slightly stranger stuff than dark matter and antimatter. Uh-huh. They're looking for evidence, well, adherence of string theory, or looking for evidence of string theory.

Which would mean another dimension. Several. Up to 11, I believe. Yeah, that's- Michio Keiku, I think, theorized 11. I don't buy string theory. Yeah, and you've always poo-poo. I have a real problem, and it's most likely I just don't understand it, but from what

I understand, very, very smart people don't understand it either. Well, there's no proof. It's the impression that Keiku is like, this is what- he didn't come up with the measurements to back it up. Right. You know? But you're on the same page as a lot of scientists, though. They also say that it's a philosophy, it's not a science.

Right. Under his theory, or under his philosophy, however you want to say it, there's up to 11 different dimensions, we're currently aware of four, height, width, depth, and time. Yes. Those are our four dimensions that we exist in. Under Keiku, there's 11 totals, so there's another eight that are unaccounted for. Right. And that all matter in the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings.

Some are closed like little rubber bands, some are open like little, oh, I don't know, tapeworms. Like a cut rubber band. Right. Sure. Nice one, Chuck. Yeah. And like a guitar string, and one vibration might make it look like an electron, one might

make it look like a neutrino, a delicious and nutritious neutrino. And that's string theory in its simplest form. But even still, the strings are highly hypothetical. And even if they were created, we apparently wouldn't be able to sense them. What they're looking for, the string theorists, is evidence of supersymmetry. Right. And supersymmetry is, you have a particle, and it has an opposite particle, like a neutron and a positron, positive and negatively charged.

Right. An antiparticle. Sure. Right. Even further, those are super partners. Even further into supersymmetry, and this will somehow, I guess, prove string theory. I don't understand how it will, but, and oh my God, can you imagine the length of the emails we're going to get from people who explain how this proves string theory?

Yeah, I'm already suffering from brain melt, I can't imagine any more. So you've got the neutron and the positron. Yes. And those are super partners. But each of those have a positive partner too, rather than an opposite, they have one that's like them as well. Right. Each one has their own partner.

So each particle will have three partner particles. Three counterparticles. Counterparticles. Perfect shot. Yes. So that would be supersymmetry. If they find evidence of supersymmetry, then bada-boom, bada-bing, string theory is right. Right.

And it also helps to explain dark matter. Yes, it does. So, wow. Is anyone still out there? Yes. Stick with us, everybody. We're muddling through this part, but it's about to get a little more interesting. There's like 10 nerds that are like, this is the best thing ever.

Even though they're like carving their knives. Oh, right. Yeah. Ready to slice us up. Yes. What they're looking for, and also I think this is what I find most fascinating about it. Most of the scientists out there, I think, they're very few who are looking for evidence

that back up their theories. Most of them are actually hoping to learn like everything they know is wrong. And there's all this new stuff so that they can go out there and figure out how this fits here and all that. I find that very interesting. Yeah, me too. It's a very ambitious project, and as Strickland points out in this article, very comprehensive article, by the way, there is no practical application for this.

Yeah. It's all just to see what happens. Yeah. And go from there. Which is pretty cool to sink 6 to 10 billion into, you know? Well, and if you've ever seen the thing, I mean, the pictures of the Hadron collider is just unbelievable. It's ginormous.

It's ginormous. So what are they going to be doing, Chuck? How does this thing work? Well, Josh, there are eight sectors at the Hadron collider. And they basically use magnets to steer these beams of light, these protons, in a circle. Right. Because otherwise it would just go straight. You just shot it.

Right. You love that part. Well, yeah, because that's the only part that makes sense. Right. And the magnets are actually super cool, right, Chuck? Yeah. Well, there's 9,600 magnets if you want a little stat, stat, it's... This one's stat heavy.

This is your show. So 9,600 magnets, many of them weigh several tons, which is pretty big. And they are cool, Josh, to 1.9 degrees Kelvin, which is negative 271 Celsius or negative 456 Fahrenheit. Which is just above absolute zero. And the reason why they would want to cool an electromagnet to just above absolute zero is there's very little electrical resistance when you turn that thing on. So it can operate smoothly.

Exactly. Ideally. Right. Because its purpose isn't to a jokey, attract all of the pots and pans at the certain facility to it. I mean, it has a purpose. It's steering beams of light, which is much more difficult. You go out there and try to steer a beam of light.

I know. I did. I've tried. Yeah. It's tough. It is tough. Okay. So...

Well, how do they cool it, though? That's a pretty cool stat. They cool it using liquid hydrogen and helium, right? Liquid nitrogen, yeah. Woo. Yeah. It's got 1,800 tons of liquid nitrogen and 60 tons of liquid helium to finish up. Right.

That's pretty hardcore. Okay. So you've got these magnets and actually inside the magnets are pipes, right? Which are vacuumed. Yeah. You gotta have a vacuum. So basically, if you hear, you've heard vacuum and almost absolute zero. This sounds an awful lot like outer space.

Like deep space. Exactly. Yes. So you're creating a vacuum to keep any particle out. Right. Any particle could screw this whole thing out. So imagine that. There's inside this almost 17-mile track.

There's nothing. They're creating deep space, 328 feet below the Earth's crust. Without the space jump. That's nuts, dude. It is. Okay. So chuck along this and also those eight sectors. Each one is an arc, like you said.

So it's basically one big circle. And along this big circle are six stations basically. And each one of these is outfitted with tons of sensors. There's 150 million sensors, I think, throughout the whole collider. And so each station is basically working to measure one thing or another, right? Yeah. So we could go into detail here, but this is really when people would tune out. But suffice to say, there are eight main stations where they're looking for, or six of them?

Six main stations. Six, yeah. Four of which are really ginormous, collecting lots of info, and then two kind of smaller ones. Right. And remember, they're collecting things like information about radiation, sudden changes in mass, gravitational fields, electromagnetic fields, that kind of stuff. Sure.

So through, and actually another interesting thing about CERN is that it's getting something like 15 petabytes of data gathered every year, which is 15 million gigabytes. Yeah. That's, and they're constantly, the sensors are constantly feeding back information. Yeah. Would they say that was enough information to fill 100,000 DVDs? Which is not as impressive as I would have thought. I'm pretty impressed.

Okay. And they're actually using a grid computing, using off-the-shelf computers, which is pretty cool. Yeah. They just link them together. Right. Why'd they do that? It's more efficient from what I understand.

Yeah, I think so. And it's cheaper. Right. They're saving. Speaking of cheap, you know what's not cheap? Their power bill. No. Did you see that?

Yeah. Unbelievable. $30 million per year just to power this thing. Yeah. After they've already sunk between six and 10 billion into it. Right. And once this thing gets revved up, what they're going to do first, the first step, Chuck, and this is like the big experiment, basically they're just shooting beams of light and then

smashing them into each other. Right. Okay. So what they're going to do first is they're going to take hydrogen atoms, they're going to strip them of their electrons. Right? Yeah. Which produces protons.

They're going to take the protons and they're going to send them through a machine that fires them as beams. The PS booster. That's the accelerator, right? Yeah. I think that's what gets, there's a bunch of them, but that's what gets it going. Right. So it's just a beam and then it's a beam.

Right. Right? Yeah. Chuck, so when they get these beams ready, right, when the whole thing's ready to go online for the big experiment, sometime early next year, hopefully. So the first step is to take hydrogen atoms and strip them of their electrons. Poor guys. Which makes protons, right?

Yeah. And there we have our protons because this ultimately is a proton accelerator, right? Right. What they do is they feed these into a machine called the Lineck II, which fires the beams of protons into the accelerator, which is the PS booster. Yes. And dude, that uses radio frequency electric field to push the protons along and kind of get them started on their journey to just below light speed.

Yeah. Right. It's like, yeah, get along little protons. Right. And you're going to meet some other guys later that are going to whip you even harder. Right. Yeah. That PS booster makes them go from, you know, a beam of light to a beam of light.

Right. Right. Okay. That's a good way to say it. Yeah. The magnets are going to come in now. They're keeping these proton beams on track. Sure.

Oh, yeah. And the thing's going along pretty quick, pretty quick. And then the PS booster injects it into another accelerator called the Super Proton Synchotron Hey. It sounds like a children's toy. It does. It does. A very expensive one.

So the beams are now really picking up speed and they're divided into bunches. Right. Okay. So you have, just imagine one beam and it's divided into, I think, 2800 bunches? 2800 and 8. Per beam. Per beam. And each bunch has 1.1 times 10 to the 11th power protons.

Right. And this is important to say that they shoot one counterclockwise and one clockwise. Right. Because they need to be added at each other. And they're in two different tunnels. Yeah. So, yeah, they're going different directions, but they're getting faster and faster and they're actually coming very, very close to the speed of light.

At one point, remember, this is a 17 mile track. Yeah. At one point. It's crazy. These beams are getting to their top speed. They make 11,245 trips around the track per second. Stat of the year. That it may be.

Dude, it's, what is this, mid-November and that's the stat of the year. Yeah. More than 11,000 trips around a 16 mile track per second. Yep. If you ever wondered how fast the speed of light is, that's 99.9% there. Yeah. But you gotta admit that 100th of a percent is pretty substantial. Sure.

I wonder how many trips they make at the speed of light. Yeah. The fact that we have figured out how to do this, not you and I, obviously, but humans have figured out how to do this is pretty amazing. I agree. If it works. Amazing or terrifying, which we'll get to in a minute. Yes.

And then Josh, you know what happens then? They converge. Yeah. They direct these bunches of beams of protons to each other and kaboom. Boom. 600 million collisions per second at that point. And I get the impression also that it wasn't clear, but the beams can be directed toward one another at each of the six sensor stations.

Oh, okay. Really? I think so. Because I think you have to have your sensors right there. Right, right. We'll see. That makes sense. We'll find out.

We're going, by the way. I already booked us a trip. Oh, really? We'll be there. Sweet. So what happens, Josh, is they, theoretically, they're gonna collide and they're gonna break up into small particles like quarks. I think they're accompanying energy called gluon.

Yeah. You know, gluon keeps it all together. Which is why it's called gluon. Is it really? No, of course not. But quarks are really unstable and they will decay in just like a fraction of the second, but we have all these sensors to pick up what happened. Exactly.

Exactly. I think that's part of the problem with why we can't detect this stuff in the universe is it's already happened. Right? Right. And we're witnessing its effects. It's part of its effects, right? Right.

So they want to recreate the beginning of the universe to see if these things really exist and what their effects are, et cetera, et cetera. There's possibly going to be some other things that are created inadvertently. Yeah. Photons and muons. And black holes, Chuck. Yeah. That's possible.

It's very possible, actually. Even Cern said it was possible. Uh-huh. One of the things the critics point out is you may create a black hole and you may destroy the earth, so much so that Sue Dudes sued them, basically, to try and stop it. And not just two dudes, a guy named Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho. Walter Wagner was the former nuclear safety officer for the Large Hadron Collider. Right.

He was like the guy who was in charge of safety and he filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in Hawaii to file an injunction or to create an injunction to stop that thing from being turned on. Yeah. Because you know what a black hole is. It's a bad mammajama is what it is. I love how Strickland puts it. Black holes are regions in which matter collapses into a point of infinite density.

Not good. No, it's not. And again, as Chuck said, Cern has said, yeah, maybe they may create some black holes. But really teeny ones. That's what they're saying. Yeah, the black hole you know and love is a star collapsing on itself. We're talking about subatomic particles collapsing on themselves. Right.

So it may create a black hole, but you know, it's going to be tiny. One of the concerns that Wagner and Sancho have is that sure it may be tiny, but no one's ever done this before and you guys have no idea whether this is safe or not. It's just too much unknown. Right. And they're like, don't know. It's safe. They've been tested.

They're like, we're not talking about the magnets. We're talking about all the stuff you have. No idea what's going to happen. And they also said, I love the response. One of Cern's response was, and there's no one allowed down in there while it's going on. Right. And they're like, dude, what about the earth?

Right. Yeah. Being swallowed up into a black hole. Sure. Forget the one scientist that's, you know, wants to watch the explosion. Forget him. Yeah. He can write out of the black hole what's going on down there, you know.

Yes. Josh, and you know what? You know what else they think they might produce? A strangelit? Yeah. Yeah. These things are a little scary. Yeah.

Could be worrisome. Strangelits could possess a gravitational field that could convert them and the entire planet earth into a lifeless Hulk. Right. They think that strangelits have this, they're very dense. I think they're theoretical as well, right? Yeah. The hypothetical.

They apparently have the property of lending their incredible density to any other particle it touches and setting off a chain reaction. Kind of like rogue from X-Men. Sure. Maybe. Kind of. I think there's a lot of quantum physics in X-Men. In my P-brain, that's what I'm going to think.

So they're worried that if a strangelit is created, it could set off a chain reaction that turns all matter on earth into this ultra-dense, dead, lifeless Hulk, including us, on earth, because we're on earth. Yes. But Cern dismisses that for a few reasons. They say, first of all, that it's hypothetical, so we don't even know that. Right. So don't get your panties in a wide yet.

Right. I believe that's what the memo said, actually. And then they said that actually there's an electromagnetic field that would really repel normal matter instead of changing it. Sure. So don't sweat it. Right. It would resist.

It would be really unstable and would probably just decay instantaneously. Like those black holes. Right. And then the final thing they say is that high-energy cosmic rays would produce this stuff naturally anyway and should be hitting the earth already. Yeah. And we're still here. So don't worry about it.

The one that I have the real problem with was the third one that should decay almost instantaneously. Yeah. Or it should. Does it really? Well, no. I mean, does it really take a very long time for a strangelit to transfer that? Does it set off a chain reaction?

That's true. We'll find out if the world's a lifeless hulk this February. Yeah. Sweet. There's a couple of guys. Remember that Higgs boson particle that we talked about at the beginning, right? There are a couple of guys who are actually very well-respected physicists. Right, Chuck?

That's what I'm told. Who have come up with a couple of papers that basically say, and these are real physicists. These are real respected physicists, and they're not joking. Right. They're saying that the Higgs boson has already been created in the future at CERN, at the Large Hadron Collider. And it was so abhorrent that it rippled back in time and sabotaged itself so that it could never be created.

It sabotaged the LHC so it could never be created. So what's the analogy they liken it to coming back from the future to kill your father so you will never be born? Your grandfather's, whatever. Right. That's actually a paradox. You can't do that or else you never would have been born in the first place. Exactly.

But they make the case that it's not a paradox to travel back in time to push your grandfather out of the path of an oncoming boss. Right. Which is what they're saying the Higgs boson's doing. Right. And the reason they say this is because it has failed on a spectacular level so far. They've yet to... It has.

There's some things that have happened. Strange things you could say. Well, nah. There have been some strange ones. The first one wasn't that strange. It was a coolant leak and it destroyed a lot of the magnets which was pretty expensive to fix. Sure.

So that knocked it off track for quite a while. Off track literally. For a good year. Yeah. And then Josh, you know what happened last week? A bird dropped a baguette, a piece of bread into this thing. Yeah, into one of the magnets. This is really what happened.

Yeah. Can you believe that? I can because I'm kind of with the two physicists who think that the boson has been created and traveled back in time. Yeah. So this bird drops this into a piece of the outdoor machinery and overheated parts of it and it was not operational at the time but they said that it produced such a spike that if it had been turned on that dropping this bread would have enabled the automatic

fail safes and it would shut it down. Right. Piece of bread. Right. From a bird. Yeah. That's a little hinky. It's not really that hinky but everyone is so, everyone paying attention is so like this

could be really great or it could conceivably end life as we know it. Right. Let's see what happens. So anything that happens to it is just hugely under the microscope. Yes. Yes. And I just realized that I was agreeing with the string theorist. One of the physicists is Holger Beck Nielsen and his compatriot, Japanese physicist Maseo

Ninomiya and these are the two that are saying that the Higgs boson was created and traveled back in time. Right. They have a very easy way of solving whether or not the LHC should be put online. How's that? A card game. Really? Yeah.

So to come up with basically let's say 100 million cards and 99,999,099 of these cards say go ahead and then one card says shut it down and obviously this is all software not actual cards. Yeah. Yeah. And then you ask the LHC to pick one and if the LHC picks the one that says shut it down then we should shut it down. Shut it down.

And then it's fine. Wow. Yeah. Are they actually going to do this? I don't think so. Well because they have no sway over certain anyway. No they don't. They're not related to Swarm.

But like I said they are both respected physicists and the physics community when they first heard about this were like, and then they read it and they were like, yeah, because it is possible hypothetically and if the LHC is involved in anything it's hypothesis and theory. Yeah. And until it proves everything or destroys the universe. We should say too that this baguette in the works has not thrown it off schedule apparently this time.

No. It's just shut it down for the time being. Yeah. There's no schedule. Like you said, I think they're going to start cranking it up sometime in this winter. And then they're going to break for Christmas and come back and then. Right. Boom.

See what happened. Chuck, I propose and I also propose this to all of our listeners having a big old party on the day that they do this. Because it could be our last. Could be. I also want to point out that I just saw this in the news today. One of the scientists was arrested in France as an al-Qaeda suspect. Mm-hmm.

Isn't that weird? Yeah. And of course they're saying that this has nothing to do with al-Qaeda trying to get their hands on the LHC or anything like that. It was just kind of one of those things and there's I think 7,000 scientists working on it. Right. So, you know, it's not that big of a deal.

No. I guess it is for him. Yeah. He's in big trouble. Right. So that's the LHC, the Large Hadron Collider. Yeah. And probably talk about it again at some point in time, don't you think?

Yeah. We should follow up when it happens, if it happens. And we'll probably read one of the emails from one of the physicists that write in and let us know how supersymmetry could prove string theory. Right. Yeah. I look forward to that. Yeah.

So if you want to read this article, I strongly recommend it. We didn't cover all of it. It's a good article written by Strickland. Yeah. It's been Large Hadron Collider in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And bring your drip pan to catch the melting brain. The anti-matter that drips from here. Yeah.

It's dense. And I guess now, Chuck, it's time for Listener Mail, right? Yes, it is, Josh. My favorite portion of today's show. We're going to call this a response to my admission that Emily and I fight before every plane trip. Okay. Remember when I said that?

Yeah. My husband agrees that, or not agrees, but it happens to her and her husband as well. They've been married for 16 years. And every time before we take a trip, my husband has a major anxiety attack and acts like a total a-hole. I know that's what it is. And I am pretty tolerant, but until he's on the plane or in the car, he refuses to acknowledge the reason for his tension or even that he's particularly grouchy, which is what I do.

So the few days before we travel are always fraught and we always end up fighting about the only time we do fight. Once we're on our way, he's fine. I'm still totally aggravated, though, from him being such a jerk. Earlier this year, we went to Chile for a month and when I booked the flights, I seriously considered getting separate seats. I threatened that next time I'm booking my flight a few days earlier than his. Anyway, just wanted to share this so you know you're not alone.

That's nice. As always, thanks for the great podcast. The site is great in general. And for Unicorns, linked me to some information on Hardy Roses, which I'd actually recently been looking for. Awesome. There you have it. Wow.

And that is from Ann in New York City. And Ann says, as a PS, I could not find your team on Kiva. How do I find it? Well, Ann, you can find it. It's funny you should ask. By going into the URL bar of your web browser and typing www.kiva.org slash team slash stuff you should know. And Chuck, there's all the more reason.

By the way, I wanted to say I could not be prouder of our team, Chuck. The stuff you should know, Army is awesome. We're at straight up 100% loans. More? Are we really? Yeah, something like 750 members and 780 loans. We're above one loan per member. In four weeks, everybody, we donated $20,000.

That's phenomenal. And Colbert has already been left in the dust. His leaky team is donating like eight grand. I think they might be at nine grand so far. Chuck and I actually issued a video challenge to Mr. Colbert. We did. We want to see who can be the first to, what did we decide on? $100,000, I think.

That's a pretty big undertaking, I would say. But I think we can do it. So everybody, we have challenged Colbert's team to see who can get to $100,000. Yeah. And you know, he's ignored us so far. So if anyone knows Mr. Colbert or if anyone has any connection with this show or you're a fan, go smack him on his big fat head and tell him about the little challenge. Damn right.

That's what I say. So again, that's www.keva.org slash team slash stuff you should know. And if you have an email for Chuck or me or Jerry or the Large Hadron Collider, you can send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks? Check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry.

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