What can we learn by smashing muons together?

23:32You can't predict exactly what's going to happen. But on the other hand, this is exactly what allows you to explore the universe because you don't have to know what's in that probability distribution. And the thing about that distribution is some things are super duper likely, like two protons come in, two protons come out. That's like 99 % of collisions. But very rarely, like once in a trillion collisions, you get a Higgs boson. And we don't know if the tails of those distribution have super duper rare things, like maybe every quadrillion collisions, you get something bizarre and crazy nobody's ever seen before.

24:05So one of the projects right now is to run the collider really fast, like lots of collisions, really long, to look for really, really rare stuff, Stuff the universe only occasionally makes if you ask like a zillion times. So how do you know when to stop then? Because at some point, if you haven't gotten a new result in like a decade and the funders are like, really, we're going to keep paying for this. Like, how do you like do you have some way of saying like, OK, we've done it enough. It's time to move on to something else. You have put your finger on the button right there, Kelly. Yeah, it's diminishing returns.

24:40It's like the longer you run your collider, the more you can set statistical limits on what can't be there. Like if there was something big there that comes up pretty often, we would have seen it already. So we can say that that doesn't exist, but there could always be something weird and more rare than you could have seen that you might be able to capture if you just run longer and longer, but it is diminishing returns. And eventually the mood shifts and people say, well, maybe we should build a bigger collider, higher energy rather than keep running the same one longer and longer. or maybe people decide this isn't worth the money.

25:12We're going to go off and do a different kind of science instead. All right. Well, let's take a break. And when we get back, we'll talk a bit more about how we get these particles moving so fast and how these colliders work.

25:31This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss Fourth of July concert. happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Fourth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for$17.76 at America250.org. Introducing the all-new Mazda CX-5, featuring more connection. Hey, Google, where's the nearest Pilates class?

26:08safety that has your back more discovery on the scenic routes more passion in the details and more control in changing weather the all new Mazda CX-5 more to move every side of you see it in 5 films at mazdausa.com slash 5 sides Google is a trademark of Google LLC sequences shortened and simulated eczema is unpredictable but you can flare less with EPCLIS a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking HempGliss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

26:51HempGliss, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems.

27:19You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit EBCLIS.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Here's golf legend John Daly. Hell yeah, these wins are piling up faster than my divorces. I only spent on Moto, America's Social Casino. You know I've won a couple of majors. And on Moto, I've won majors, grands, and epic jackpots on their classic Vegas slots with huge, huge bonus rounds. Moto Casino adds new games and awards players free coins every single day.

27:49Grip it and spend it on Moto Casino. Download the Moto Casino app today. Moto Casino is a social casino. Board will prohibit it. No purchase necessary. Visit Moto.us for more details. Moto Casino. America's Social Casino.

28:12All right, we are back and we're talking about how colliders work. We've talked about smashing particles together. I've managed to pronounce muon right almost the entire show. I'm proud of me. You're proud of me. So Daniel, tell us more about how these colliders work. So colliders have a few jobs. to get them up to high speed, what they have to do is push and bend, right? So most of the colliders we're talking about today are circular colliders, which gives you opportunities to like push the particles again and again and again. It's like when your kid is on a swing, right? You don't just give them one big push and then they're swinging.

28:47You start off slowly and you give them lots of gentle taps and then eventually they're swinging like crazy. It's the same story with colliders. You have particles that have an electric charge, they're moving in a circle, and you have alternating pushes and bends. So you have a little linear accelerator that pushes the particles a little bit faster and then a magnet, which bends them back in a circle and then a little pusher and then a bender and then a pusher and then a bender. So the pushers are RF cavities of chambers filled with electromagnetic waves that the particles basically surf and gather some of that energy and come out faster.

29:20It's like a fancy version of just having an electric field that accelerates the particle. It's an oscillating electric field that moves with the particle so it can continue to push it the whole way. And you can have like bunches of particles in there. So it's a fancy version of that. And then you bend them so that they keep going in a circle. First of all, the RF cavities sound awesome. I don't think I had heard of that before. But so if you are trying to work with protons, neutrons, electrons, like they've got all these different charges and you're using magnets to try to make them bend, does that mean that you're going to like lose something like neutrons around the corner because they don't respond to the magnets and they smash into the wall?

29:56Like what's the limitation of the magnets? You can't build a circular particle collider of neutrons because you can't accelerate them and you can't bend them. Okay. So you can only really work with charged particles. You can make a neutron beam if you have something else which decays into neutrons, but you can't like direct it or shape it. It's frustrating to work with neutrons because they're neutral. But we can do it for electrons or we can do it for protons, but you need a different kind of accelerator for protons or for electrons because they're very different masses. Electrons, very, very low mass.

30:28Protons, relatively high mass. And so you need an accelerator tuned specifically to the particle. You can't put electrons and protons in the same accelerator. Got it. Okay. And at the Lartadron Collider, we use fancy technology to make these magnets as strong as possible because you either need a really big ring so your bending is gentle or you need a strong ring with powerful bending and then you need powerful magnets to do that bending. And so the most powerful magnets we use are superconducting magnets. and they use like 96 tons of super fluid helium, which cools it all down to like two Kelvin for a very strong magnetic field.

31:03It's like seven Tesla. And this is very cool, but it also means, ha ha, very cool. But it also means that anytime you want to fix it, you have to warm up the magnets and you do it gradually. It takes like weeks and weeks. And then when you repair it and then you got to cool it down again, it takes weeks and weeks and weeks. So it's awesome to have them be super cool, but it would be really awesome to have room temperature superconducting magnets. So was that like space constraint? It wasn't possible to build a big enough one where they could slowly be bent and you had to do it a little bit more of a harder bend?

31:35Yeah, CERN is already 33 kilometers around. Like that's a big tunnel. Yeah. And so, yeah, you could build a bigger one, but then the tunnel becomes crazy expensive. So nobody wants to build a new tunnel. These days, a lot of the conversations about colliders are like, What can we fit inside existing tunnels? Or also, how can we make tunnels cheaper, right? So lots of people working in different directions. And in most colliders, you actually have two accelerators in the same tunnel. So for example, the Tevatron, we had a proton accelerator going one way and the anti-protons going the other way.

32:10Because you wanted them to run into each other? Yeah, you wanted them to run into each other. And the Large Hadron Collider, we have protons going one way and protons going the other way at the same time because you want colliding beams. And so the Large Hadron Collider is actually two accelerators in the same tunnel. It's crazy. So if you send a proton and an antiproton in opposite directions to smash into each other, is that a big explosion? She says, hopefully. Yeah. In fact, that's what the Tevatron Collider was. And the SPS before, the super proton signatron that discovered the WZ bosons, they collided protons and antiprotons.

32:46And there's a lot of different choices to make here about what particles to use and what particles to collide. There's some pros and cons here. So electrons are really nice to use because electrons appear to be fundamental, right? They don't have stuff inside of them. So you can like accelerate the electron up to a certain energy and you know all that energy is going to go into the collision with the anti-electron, right? It's very clean in that way. Also because the electrons don't feel the strong force. And so the interaction is limited. You don't get like crazy gluons everywhere. And so collisions with electrons in them are very clean.

33:21They're easy to understand. You can control the energy. There's not a lot of messy stuff in there. But because electrons have kind of a low mass, when they go around the corner, they have to radiate a lot of energy. And so electrons moving in an accelerator will radiate a lot of photons, which means that it's hard to get them up to really high energy. So electron colliders are good for precision measurements. You want to like study something you already know is there, created it lots of times in a really clean environment so you can study it in gory detail and measure its properties. Good to use electrons for your collisions.

33:56But if you want to explore a new energy range, you want to get to the highest energy you can, then you use protons. So my brain today is kind of stuck on that conversation we had about whether or not electrons are fundamental. Does the fact that they work so well for these purposes suggest they really are fundamental? And why are we even still looking for a way to break apart the electron? Or it's just for the speeds we're talking about, assuming their fundamental works, because we know they're fundamental when you're working with these particular kinds of energies. So even if we're wrong about it being fundamental, we can still go forward with this experiment.

34:32Yeah, it's the second one, exactly. We don't know if they're fundamental. They appear to be fundamental at our energy level. And so we can take advantage of that. The fact that they don't crack open, that they're very simple, that the whole electron is interacting with the whole positron. In contrast, protons are much messier because they're not fundamental and we can crack them open. So what happens when you collide two protons? You don't really collide two protons. At those energies, the protons aren't even bound together. The energy of the bonds is almost zero compared to the energy of the protons.

35:03So you're colliding a bag of quarks with another bag of quarks. So the quarks interact with each other or all the gluons inside the bag interact with each other. And so you can sometimes get like a bunch of different interactions all at the same time. It's kind of a mess. And because they feel the strong force, every time they interact, there are gluons everywhere. It's just like sprays of gluons all over the place. And so the fact that protons are not fundamental is one reason why they're so messy to collide. So you might think, well, why does anybody ever collide protons? Well, protons have a lot more mass than the electron.

35:36So when they go around the corner, they don't radiate as much energy, fewer photons. And so you can get protons up to higher mass than you can get electrons. So if you want to explore a new energy range, create stuff that hasn't existed before, protons are the way to go because they cover a big energy range. Like you accelerate protons up to 7 ,000 giga electron volts, for example, the quarks inside them are interacting at a lower energy because those quarks have a fraction of that proton's energy. So you get interactions at many, many different energies. Whereas with the electrons, you collide them at a certain energy, you know, every collision has exactly the same energy because you're putting all that energy into the electron and it goes into the collision.

36:16Protons, you have these bags and you know, what interacts with what you can't control that, how much energy they have, you can't control that. It's a big mess, but it's a very, very high energy. And so if there is something new in there, you're probably going to see it. Okay, so protons and neutrons are made up of up and down quarks. And gluons are the charges that hold those quarks together? Gluons are the particles that carry the strong force. And they are also charged under the strong force. So they're very, very messy. Gluons are to the quarks the way like photons are to electrons. All right, so protons, high energy, messy, electrons, low energy, clean.

36:54Exactly. How have, for the particle accelerators that we've made so far, how have we sort of split out our interest in protons and electrons? Yeah, so we've sort of been going back and forth. Some discoveries have been made at electron-positron machines, like the discovery of the J-psi particle was at an E plus E minus machine at SLAC. That's actually a rare example of a discovery at an E plus E minus machine because they had to know exactly what energy to tune that machine to make that particle. because all the energy goes into the electrons. And if you remember, there's a whole controversy about how they knew how to tune it.

37:29And they discovered exactly how to tune it one day before their competitors were about to announce the discovery of the JPSI. And so there's a big scandal there. Go check out that episode. So when you say E plus, E minus, is that an electron and an anti-electron? Okay, got it. Yeah, exactly. So you smash electrons and anti-electrons together. They annihilate into like a photon or something, which turns into, in this case, a charm and anti-charm. And that's what the J-Psi particle is. All right. Awesome. So that was at Slack. And then CERN built the super proton synchrotron, which collides protons with anti-protons, like antimatter again.

38:06We're not just talking about like scooping stuff up from around the earth and smashing it together. You have to make anti-particles, just like they did at Slack when they used positrons. That sounds like a lot of work. It is a lot of work. And they use the same strategy for the next accelerator, which is the Tevatron. This is the one outside Chicago where I got my PhD. This collides protons and antiprotons, and it discovered the top quark. Way to go, Tevatron people. Did you discover the top quark, Daniel, in particular? I did not discover the top quark. That was in 1995, and I was in college.

38:37I do remember my particle physics professor announcing the discovery in class one day, and I got kind of chills. I was like, ooh, this feels like a momentous occasion. Yeah. And it was, because in particle physics, you don't discover stuff very often anymore. It's like every 10 to 20 years. And so like, that was a moment for sure. Very cool. And did that make you want to go to grad school? It did. It made me like, ooh, maybe the next one's around the corner. I want to get involved. Yeah. Very cool. Little did you know. Yeah, exactly. And after the Tevatron, they built the Large Electron-Positron Collider at CERN.

39:11This one didn't discover any new particles. It was an E plus E minus machine, but it was really good for measuring the W and the Z and the top really, really precisely. And because of those measurements, we were very confident that the Higgs existed. Because of the properties of those particles, we could sort of triangulate what the Higgs might be doing because the Higgs is involved in all those particles. So even though we hadn't seen the Higgs directly, we could sort of like intuit or deduce what the Higgs had to be like from measuring these things really, really precisely. And so it set the stage for the Higgs discovery.

39:45Okay. And then what about the LHC? Yeah. So the Large Hadron Collider, which we're still running, this is protons and protons. So not protons and antiprotons. They made a different choice here. And one reason they did is that they wanted to go for really high rate. It's easier to make high rate collisions of protons and protons because protons are everywhere. Antiprotons are hard because you've got to make them. It's like manufacture antimatter, which requires like starting from a beam of matter and smashing into this stuff and filtering out the rare antiprotons and then storing them. It's really complicated to make antimatter and smash it together.

40:21So they were like, let's just do the easy thing. Proton, proton, because protons are everywhere and they're simple and they're stable. And then we can do it really, really high intensity for a long, long time in order to look for really, really rare things. And they discovered the Higgs boson. Woohoo! Yeah. And you might be wondering, like, how does a proton interact with another proton? Don't you need matter, antimatter? Well, remember, the whole proton is not interacting with the other proton. You have like a bag of quarks and you have gluons. And so actually what happens most of the time at the Large Hadron Collider is gluon-gluon collisions.

40:51So it's really kind of a gluon collider, which is crazy. That is crazy. And then there was a particle collider that was partly built in Texas before we gave up on funding it, right? What kind of particle collider was that going to be? Yeah, so the super connecting super collider, which never happened, unfortunately, that was going to be very similar to the Large Hadron Collider. It was going to be proton-proton in the same way. And so it almost certainly would have discovered the Higgs boson. Also, it was going to be like three times more energy than the Large Hadron Collider. So it would have revolutionized particle physics.

41:24Like they would have built it and discovered stuff which today is still out of our reach. Like 30 years ago, they would have known the answers to questions we still don't know the answers to. Such a shame. Does the tunnel still exist? The tunnel still exists and is mostly filled with water. Ah, well, let's start that project again. All right. Well, Daniel, while you and I go look for funding to start that project again, we'll take a break. And when we come back, we'll talk about why we should be smashing muons into each other.

42:04America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Fourth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for$17.76 at America250.org. Introducing the all-new Mazda CX-5. Featuring more connection. Hey Google, where's the nearest Pilates class? Safety that has your back. More discovery on the scenic routes. More passion in the details.

42:46And more control in changing weather. The all-new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdousa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. Eczema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with EpGliss, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EpGliss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EpGliss, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

43:31also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBCLIS can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EBCLIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit EBCLIS.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

44:00Hi, Uncle Lazer here. America's built on fast cars, fast food, and even faster women. Moto Casino's built in America. You know what they're fast at? Fast cash, rise, redemption. You see, only Moto is U.S. owned and operated. Moto. It's American-made. That's who we are, and that's who we care about. Play for free at Moto.us. Moto Casino's the social casino. Avoid were prohibited. No purchase necessary. Visit Moto.us for more details. Must be 21+. Moto Casino. America's social casino.

44:41All right, Daniel and I still have not figured out a way to get funding to resurrect that particle collider in Texas. I thought Texans like to go big, but apparently they don't like to go that big. And now we're talking about muons. So muons are attractive to use for a because they might be the best of both worlds. Remember, muons are like more massive electrons. And the only negative thing we had to say about electrons was they were so low mass that when they went around corners, they lost a lot of their energy. So it's hard to get electrons up to high energy. All right, we'll just swap in muons for electrons.

45:15Now they have more mass, they can get to higher energies, right? So now they are like very high energy and they're cleaner than protons. Protons are these messy bags of quarks with the strong interaction. So this is like taking something which is massive, like the proton, but clean like the electron. And would we need muons and anti-muons, or could we just smash muons into each other? You could just smash muons into each other, but you'd learn more if you smashed muons and anti-muons into each other. Absolutely. And to make the same kind of discoveries in a muon collider, you don't even need to get the muons up to the same energies as the protons.

45:51Remember, protons are bags of three quarks. So you accelerate the protons to like 10 trillion electron volts. Each quark only has like 3 trillion electron volts. And that's what goes into your collision. To make those same discoveries in a muon collider, you only need to bring your muons up to like 3.3 trillion electron volts, not all the way to 10. So it's easier to make these discoveries at a muon collider because it's fundamental, or at least we can't tell if it's not fundamental. And so there are real advantages there. The kind of physics you can do at a muon collider is very powerful at lower energies and yet clean like an electron collider.

46:28And so what do we think we would discover that would be different if we used a muon collider than if we had the pre-existing electron colliders? Yeah. So muon colliders can get to higher energies. We think if you built a muon collider, at just 10 trillion electron volts, it could discover the same kind of things that a proton collider at 100 trillion electron volts could discover. So it's like 10 times more efficient in that sense per discovery because at 100 tera electron volts, protons are insane bags of gluons and most of the energy is just in the gluons and every collision is very inefficient.

47:03You're not really getting any fraction of that 100 trillion electron volts. Whereas muons at 10 trillion electron volts, you can really precisely tune those interactions and you can find all sorts of crazy stuff. Plus, there's the added bonus. Remember we said that muons have more mass. Why? Because they interact with the Higgs more. That means that if you collide muons together, you're going to get more Higgs's because muons interact with the Higgs's. And when the universe is like making its draw from its random probability distribution, what are we making today? If you start from muons, then the Higgs's are a bigger part of that probability distribution than if you start from electrons because electrons hardly interact with the Higgs boson because they have such low mass.

47:43So in that sense, a muon collider is like a Higgs factory. It'll make tons and tons of Higgs bosons for us to study and learn about. So the LHC is where we discovered Higgs. What would we learn if we saw more Higgs? Great question. So we found the Higgs, but we don't really know, is this the Higgs that Peter Higgs predicted or is it like a weird version of the Higgs? And so the next thing is to like study it in detail, measure its mass, measure its properties. Remember how we measured the top and the W and the Z at the Large Electron-Positron Collider, and that set the stage for the discovery of the Higgs because all those particles' properties really only made sense if the Higgs was there.

48:26So what we want to do is study the Higgs in gory detail and see like, well, is it decaying to dark matter? Is it interacting with something else? Are there two Higgs bosons? These kinds of things can be revealed if we study the Higgs in great detail. So far, we haven't seen any hints of that, but you never know what's around the corner. Are there theoretical predictions that, I guess you've already, you're already not sure you've seen the only version of the Higgs. So there's probably a lot of questions you all have. There are, and there's lots of predictions about models with two Higgs bosons or three Higgs bosons, all sorts of crazy stuff that we're excited to look for.

49:01And a muon collider would be a great way to do that. It'd be very powerful in its physics reach. Cool. Okay, so we've tried to figure out if electrons are fundamental by smashing them together and nothing has come apart. Is there any reason to think that muons being essentially heavy electrons would be more likely to break apart if there was something break-apart-able about electrons and muons? No, not necessarily. So if they are fundamental, then there's no reason to imagine muons would be easier to break apart than electrons. But the advantage is it's easier to get muons up to higher energies.

49:37If there is some threshold above which you can see inside electrons and muons, it's much easier to get muons over that threshold than electrons. So in that sense, we're more likely to discover that muons are made of something else, little bits and bobs, than we are of electrons. All right. Well, this sounds like a slam dunk. Why wouldn't we do this? Well, one of the real challenges is that muons are not stable. Like you have a pile of electrons, they're going to stay a pile of electrons. The protons that are inside you have been protons since the Big Bang. These are really stable things. Muons last for 2.2 microseconds.

50:14So you can't just say, hey, I've got a big pile of muons in a drawer. Do you need any? You open that drawer, they're gone. 2.2 microseconds, that's 10 to the minus 6 seconds. So it's not a lot of time, which means that, number one, there aren't muons around. You can't just go dig up muons. Like you want electrons and protons, you just start with hydrogen, which is everywhere, and you separate it and you have protons and electrons. Easy. If you want muons, you have to make them in collisions of other stuff and filter them out. And then they disappear after a millionth of a second. Oh, my gosh. So there's a lot of challenges here.

50:52So making them, accelerating and cooling them and colliding them all within microseconds is not an easy thing to do. And what about anti-muons, which you'd probably want for these collisions? Is that harder still? Actually, it turns out those are just as hard. So there's a bonus. Yeah. So where do you get muons? Like there actually are natural sources of muons because protons are hitting the upper atmosphere all the time. And when protons hit the atmosphere, they create showers of particles, some of which decay into muons. So, you know, muons are passing through you all the time, but not at the rate we need for the Large Hadron Collider.

51:26And so what they plan to do there is they're going to make their own muons. They start with protons, which are easy to get. They accelerate those up to reasonable energies, not crazy LHC level energies, just like smash them into some block of stuff like carbon or whatever. And out the back comes a bunch of different particles, kaons, pions, whatever. And a lot of these will decay into muons. And so then you use a magnet to filter out the ones that you want because a magnet will bend a charge particle. So you get like muons going one way, anti-muons going the other way. and other stuff goes at a different angle because it has a different mass.

52:02So now you have your muons and the clock starts ticking. You have a millionth of a second to accelerate these things and smash them together. But fortunately, physics comes to the rescue because if you get them going at really high speed, you can take advantage of special relativity. Remember that moving clocks run slow. So if you have a muon sitting on your table, it lasts for 2.2 millionths of a second, but a muon going at almost the speed of light can last for minutes and minutes because its clock is running slowly. That's the only reason why muons make it all the way down from the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth.

52:36They're created in the upper atmosphere, and two microseconds is not enough time for them to get here, but their clocks are slowed down because they're relativistic, and so there's enough time for them to get here. In the same way, if we get our muons up to high speed, then we actually have longer to play with them. Okay, that's awesome. All right, so we've got a chance of making this work. Did I hear you say at the LHC? Are they starting to do this at the LHC? Or did I mishear you? I'm not sure what I said. We're not doing this yet. This is like very experimental technology. There's a lot of stuff that has to happen here.

53:06You have to make the muons. And then you need to do something called muon cooling. Because the muons that are made come out of the spread of energies and directions. And you need a bunch of muons all organized. Like you want a marching band of muons where everything is the same energy in the same direction. You don't want like a mosh pit of muons. And so they do something called muon cooling, which is basically getting them all in line. It means like reducing the phase space that these muons are in, in sort of velocity and location. And to do this, they pass them through a bunch of filters, which tend to reduce the energy of the muons more for the higher energy ones.

53:41And so bring them sort of together, coalesce them. This is something still experimental. We're not like experts in muon cooling, but the way we're experts in dealing with protons, for example, because nobody's done this before. So it's sort of like a technology that's being developed. And then you have to accelerate these particles really fast. Protons, you've got lots of time. It's like pushing your kid on the swing. You can push very gently all afternoon until they get up there. But with muons, the clock is ticking. So you have to accelerate them like really quickly. It requires different kinds of technologies.

54:12So what they actually want to do is separate the rings into an accelerating ring and a separate colliding ring. So you have an accelerating ring where you do like these crazy rapidly changing magnetic fields to accelerate your muons really, really rapidly. And then you move them into a ring where you can collide them together and observe those collisions to see what comes out. So when you say that they last 2.2 microseconds, but they last longer because of time dilation, when they disappear, what do they become? So like you said, they're not stable. Do they decay into like electrons that then mess up your experiments and they need to be pulled out?

54:47What happens to them? Yeah, that's exactly right. They decay into electrons and then two neutrinos, but the neutrinos are mostly invisible. But that's actually a problem because now you have sprays of high energy electrons filling your detectors, which is bad. And so you have to work on shielding to block all those electrons from your detectors. You want to just see what happens when muons are colliding. You don't want to be buried under massive sprays of electrons from all of your decaying muons. And so it's complicated. There's a lot of technology here that has not been fully developed. We think we know how to tackle these problems, but some of this is sort of in the like, we have an idea, we think it's going to work, let's try it.

55:26There's always surprises around the corner. So the timeline here is like, maybe we're going to get the funding together if we can convince everybody to build a demonstrator, like a mini version in the 2030s. And if that works, then we can ramp it up and start building a massive one, which we hope would turn on in like 2050. Wow. Yeah. And so is there like a consortium of scientists then writing up this grant? There is a community of folks, the Muon Collider community. They're very engaged. They're very active. They're very energetic. I think they have a good case. But there are other people who think, no, let's build another proton-proton machine.

56:02Or other people who think, no, we should build a linear accelerator with electrons and positrons so we don't have to worry about any magnets. So the field right now is a little bit split into different camps about what the best thing to do is. It's all very congenial, people disagreeing in good faith, but there's not a whole lot of clear consensus about what the next step is. And it's sort of an unusual moment in particle physics. Usually we have one collider running and another one we're building, which is why we had this sort of zigzag we talked about before, like the Tevatron and then LEP and then the Large Hadron Collider.

56:33But right now we're operating one and we're not building another collider. China has said maybe they'll build one, but they don't really know. CERN has said they could build a 100-TEV machine, but we don't know if the money is there. Other people are pushing for this muon collider. And so we don't really know what the future holds for particle physics. And what is the cost of a project like this? If Musk decided he really wanted a particle to be named the Muscon, and he decided he was going to build one of each of these particle colliders, Like, could he afford to do that? Or are we even exceeding Musk's vast wealth?

57:08No, Musk could afford to do that. I mean, I don't know what his liquid assets are. But, you know, these are things that cost tens of billions, maybe up to$100 billion. So definitely Musk, who is likely to be the first trillionaire, could afford to build one of these things and insist that it be named after him. In fact, you know, since his name starts with M-U, you can imagine some clever play on words there. Yeah, absolutely. And that would have been a much better. The Muscon Collider. There you go. That's right. That's right. That would have been a much better purchase than X, I think. But anyway, this is why I am not in the tech industry, nor am I an entrepreneur.

57:42I don't know what good investments are. Nor are you a business advisor to billionaires. That is exactly true. Yeah, I have made lots of suggestions for how he could spend his money in my book and on shows, and he doesn't seem to be listening. But that's okay. All right. Well, this was fascinating. I hope that physicists find ways to have more of all of the different fun colliders that they want to be working with. Yeah, me too. These are really fun toys. The most exciting thing are the potential surprises. These colliders really are ways to explore the universe without going anywhere. If you're excited about, like, landing a probe on a new planet because you never know what you're going to find, that is exciting.

58:19And it's the same kind of excitement when you turn on a new collider at a new energy. Nobody has collided particles of this energy before. You have no idea what on nature's menu will be revealed. And that is really exciting. So I hope we get to build these things because the only obstacle between us and understanding is money. We are in the candy store of universal knowledge and we have the money in our pocket. And we're just deciding, hey, should we buy those sweets or not? Or should we cure cancer and give it to the biologists? Who's a better investment? You decide. No, no, it's a false choice.

58:54They're all good investments. All of these investments pay for themselves. And so it's not a zero-sum game. We should do all of it. Let's cure cancer and build a Mule Collider. Amen. You're right. Why am I dividing us, Daniel, when we could be brought together instead? All right. Believe in the universe. Invest in humanity. Let's go explore it. Thanks, everyone. Until next time.

59:21Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you. We really would. We want to know what questions you have about this extraordinary universe. We want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for future shows. If you contact us, we will get back to you. We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. Or you can find us on social media. We have accounts on X, Instagram, Blue Sky, and on all of those platforms, you can find us at D and K universe. Don't be shy. Write to us. Introducing the all new Mazda CX-5.

1:00:02Featuring more connection. Hey Kukul, where's the nearest Pilates class? Safety that has your back. More discovery on the scenic routes. More passion in the details. And more control in changing weather. The all new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving 4th.

1:00:44Helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Black Party tickets now for$17.76 at America250.org. Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with EpGliss, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EpGliss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EbGliss, Librikizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

1:01:30Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit ebglis.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

1:01:59Hi, Uncle Lazer here. America's built on fast cars, fast food, and even faster women. Moto Casino's built in America. You know what they're fast at? Fast cash, rise, redemption. You see, only Moto is U.S. owned and operated. Moto. It's American-made. That's who we are, and that's who we care about. Play for free at moto.gov. U.S. Moto Casino. The social casino board were prohibited. No purchase necessary. Visit moto.us for more details. Must be 21 plus. Moto Casino. America's social casino. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.