Daniel and Jorge Explain the UniverseCERN just released a new report describing the next planned collider and its price! Is it worth it?
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Hey Daniel, what's the biggest most expensive science project ever?
Well, you know, as scientists, we love building taxpayer funded toys, and when we get the freedom to do so, we spend big. So I think the biggest one is the International Space Station at like one hundred billion.
Dollars one 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 ten billion dollars. 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 forty or fifty thousand people that much.
Money or the equivalent that's the equivalent of about two billion lottes.
Or you could have spent ten billion dollars on about one hundred and thirty thousand teslas.
Oh my goodness. You could go out and be like, you get a Tesla, and you get a Tesla, You're the new Oprah. Who here size 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 does this one aircraft carrier cost?
Yeah, those things are more than ten billion dollars, And our annual military budget is like seven hundred billion dollars every year.
Obviously military great and important?
Is it seven hundred billion dollars important?
I think I don't know what else to say about that.
Yeah.
Hi, I'm orge and I'm Daniel, and we're the hosts of this podcast Daniel and Jorgey explain the Universe.
Which takes something south of ten billion dollars 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. No, I mean how much we get, how much how much we're paid to it? Yeah, that would be one bit of gillion. I think podcast episodes in ten billion.
Yeah, we got about three bananas per per episode.
You get three bananas, I don'tly get two bananas. Where's my agent?
Oh? 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, and 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 twenty billion dollar 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 soul scientists, and that includes things like space stations and fusion reactors and particle colliders.
Well, it's interesting to think that signs cost money, you know, like it's not something people do for free as a 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, you test to build, you got to test. We break a lot of tests to when we make a particle collider. No, you've got to dig tunnels or you're got to launch stuff in outer space. You know, it's a it uses practical resources. And so you know, if money is to 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 it certain stands?
I know it's French. It's something like as a European Center for New Clear Research, right.
That's right. Yeah, but it's in French, so the acronym is all inverted sancho nucleer geez. That's how pepe le Pew would say that.
Oh, I would not cast you for a children's show.
Excuse hi, mon, monsieur, I didn't keep 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 twenty billion dollar 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 it currently has the latest, greatest, largest, most energetic, sexiest collider we've ever built. It's the Large Hadron Collider. It's twenty seven kilometers around in a big circle underground.
So that one's been around for maybe over twenty years, right, it started over twenty years ago.
Well, the Large Hadron Collider started in about two thousand and eight two thousand and nine depending on how you count, because we had a few hiccups there. So it's been running for about ten years. But of course these things take decades to build, so it's been a project for much longer than ten years. But it's in the same tunnel as the previous collider, the Large Electron Proton Collider, which operated in the nineties in the early two thousands, 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 two thousand and seven with a collider outside Chicago called the Tevatron 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 and even bigger one, so bigger than the Large Hadron Collider, a new particle collider called the Future Circular Collider. I feel like you guys said, you physicists sort of paint yourself into a corner every time you name one of these things. You know, you named it the large Hadron collider, and so now you're trap, what are you gonna call the next bigger one? The larger Adrin collider?
Yes, there was, there was. There's actually a proposal for a v l HC, a very large Hadron collider, which means a never.
Giganto.
You could just keep adding prefixes, the amazing super extra califadulistic collider.
So you guys went with future circular collider. But what are you gonna do once you build it and you want to build another one, you know, the future future, the very future circular collider.
Oh that's a good question. You know. Well, excuse me while I go tear up the certain report. We have to start from scratch again. Jorge found a fatal flaw inns proposal.
Also, I think the FCC is taken.
So yes, that's true. There's probably other things FCC with the Federal Communications Commission, the Fudge Chocolate Corporation.
Ye 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? And so they proposed one that's one hundred kilometers in circumference. So remember the LHC's twenty seven kilometers in circumference. This new one would be almost three or four times bigger, and they estimated the cost to be twenty billion dollars worldwide.
It's three times bigger and it's going to cost twenty billion dollars, which I think would sort of make it the or one of the largest science experiments on Earth, like on the planet, not floating space.
And so yeah, we thought, is this worth it? Let's the reasons why you might, as a government official decide to spend twenty billion dollars buying abstract knowledge about the universe, and why maybe it's not a great idea.
So Daniel, as usual, went not into the street and ask people, should we spend twenty billion dollars on a new collider to understand tiny little particles?
And this is what the unprepared, totally randomly accosted UCI students had to say, than spending it on the wall, you know, So yeah, go go for it, you know.
Yeah, I think so, yeah, it helps me understand those things.
And yeah, all.
Right, I wouldn't say it's a bad use. It's definitely a good use, better than 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 a but a particle colliter is no waste of money.
Sure, do you 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, 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 twenty forty five, twenty fifty wow, and then I'll be long retired.
Well I thought Professor's never retired.
We just grade away, right, it.
Won't be done until twenty forty something, and that's like thirty years from now.
It's a long time. And you know we're going to be operating the LAC for another fifteen twenty years, and building a tunnel like that takes a long time, has to be really precise, and you 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 as sign the treaties. So it's a big project. So yeah, you 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 it's 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 tax payer money? And I tried on purpose to phrase it a little bit skeptically, but most people were like, yeah, sounds good. I'm interested in talking 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 costively.
Yeah they did. And then this morning I was teaching my class, which is about four hundred freshmen, and I put a poll up on the in the startup class and I asked them, I said, is it worth twenty billion dollars to build a new particle accelerator, and seventy percent of them said yes.
Wow, I think there's a pricing thing is that thirty percent 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.
And 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 time we spend is opportunity cost. Right, any 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 twenty billion dollars to make this science experiment? I mean, my son had a size for the other day, and you know he didn't spend billion twenty billion dollars, So yeah, what does it cost so much? And I guess maybe we need to get into a little bit of how a particle collider works or what maybe some people out there don't you 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 got to push them for a while, right, 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? And you give them the 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 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 we have as 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 GetUp 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 passed through those tubes over and over and over.
And like each time it comes around, you give it a little bit 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 loopy loops over.
The ball and colliding hopefully not with other kids.
Super 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 actually use super conducting 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 of the tube, right, like you can't do it, you know.
Actually we have grad students in there and dive into 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 the walls of the tunnel, they'll be absorbed or interact or whatever. You want pure protons and you want them a specific energy, so you don't want to touch them. So we have a ring with it which has vacuum in it, and the protons are zipping around this vacuum and they're being steered by magnets. So the way the accelerated work is that it gives it a push and then it bends it and 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, around and around and get it to go faster and faster and faster. Okay, so that costs money. These cavities cost money, and 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 costs 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 and that's why it's by far the most expensive part of the collider.
Oh, I see, it has to be like perfect. It's a 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 this huge tunnel.
I thought you were gonna say they're good at building watches, which are a circular with precisions, 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 mountain. You have got to build something that big. You have to take into account geology, so on one side you have mountains, on the other side you have Lake Geneva, and so you got to angle it a little bit. So it's a it's a big piece of work to make that thing happen. Then on top of 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 it. 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 to curve in the same circle, you need stronger magnets.
It's harder to make them go around in a circle the faster they go.
Yeah, exactly, you need more of a force. You need a stronger magnet. And we're already using super amazing super conducting 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 higher higher energy? Right? 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 answer anything.
That's right. Yeah, when my wife asked me why I did do the dishes, that's what I say.
Like equals empty squared.
I had no energy because my mask is sitting on the.
Couch lazy because I added too much mass and 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 gi 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 anti matter 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 one in the other direction, and then you have them collide.
Yeah, and that is hard, right, We're talking about tiny little particles. And so we actually do is we don't shoot one proton at another proton, because you basically always miss shoot a little gas of protons against a little gas of other protons, and we hope like a few of them collect, 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 and energy nobody's ever seen before, So you have no idea what could come out. You could make new kinds of particles that nobody's ever seen before that were 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 is the last time there was as much energy in one spot.
I mean, we can recreate the Big Bang.
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.
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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 point nine nine nine nine 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. Right, But there is no limit on how much energy a particle can have. Well, 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 because you know, some physics know it's just one half mvy square 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 as symptotically approach 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 bolts. So for scale, the energy that's stored in a proton is about one gigle electron bolts. That's a billion electron bolts.
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 twenty billion dollars to go from like point nine nine nine nine nine nine the speed of light to point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine the speed of light.
It's just annoying to say all those nines all the.
Time that they at some point.
Yeah, 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 particles with the energy of the collision is thirteen terra electron bolts. So that's thirteen thousand times the energy stored in a proton Wow. And the new one would be capable of collisions at about one hundred terra.
Electron bolts, 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 up to thirteen TeV. You turn on that new collider, you have multiplied by seven how much energy we have explored, How much territory in particle physics we have explored. It's like, say you're an astronomer, It's like you could simultaneously land on seven new Earth like planets all at once and like have a whole new amount of territory to explore all at once. It's incredible opportunity.
Right, Well, it sounds like a great deal for twenty billion dollars. So that to get into a little bit, So why build it? Why spend twenty billion dollars 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 wanted 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 you know, 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. Right. Of course, we don't know if we're gonna like the answers we get or if they're just gonna generate more questions.
Yeah, and it's not like we're gonna get the answer otherwise, you know, you know what I mean, Like, if we don't spend this money to build these colliders, we're just never gonna know some of these quick, 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 twenty billion.
Dollars I'm gonna 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 the 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 five percent 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 don't 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 twenty billion, You take twenty billion.
Signs for you, signs for you exactly.
Let's have a huge science party.
You know.
It's 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.
M Hey, what if we use our smartphones to do signs? That sounds a good Let's put your smartphone in a particle collier.
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 it's kind 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, 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 a right, 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 and looking at matter at the tiniest distances, we're like down to ten to the minus twenty 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 x, y, and z, and then it's embarrassing when you don't find it. But like, we don't send you 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 inn 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 there's just it's just hard to kind of there's send 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 presents, and all we need to do is flip that light switch. Okay, it costs twenty billion bucks, but yeah, you know, look it on. Let's slip it on, man. Yeah. The other argument 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 spin offs 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. Else could have been the yyy.
Could have been the u u u 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 because along the way I stumbled 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 the technology that came out Ascern. It's just like when you invest in new ideas and smart people, stuff is going to come out, not just maybe what the what the mission.
Was, absolutely and 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 one hundred or one thousand fold. It's incredible. Yea, 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 and D R 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 and D. Right, Like it would be dumb not to spend money on R and D because then you would just be stuck in the same place you are for ver 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 are you 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 those the Golden Gate Bridge and the projects that one person or one company wouldn't do. They invest long term in our society. Yeah, to spend a billion dollars now, which is going to mean a trillion dollars from return in twenty thirty, forty fifty years. The thing that I don't get is that 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?
Right?
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, well, let's if you're interested in big science, you're interested in technological advantage, you're interested in military pre eminence, 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.
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Okay, so let's take the maybe contrarian position.
So why?
What are reasons why maybe spending twenty billion dollars 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 twenty billion dollars on this or should we build twenty billion dollar experiments or you know, one hundred smallers or one thousand even smaller.
One twenty projects that cost one billion dollars each, or you know, twenty twenty thousand, one million dollar projects.
Exactly because you know what, there's no shortage of awesome ideas for new science that we could do. I mean, 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 use something really fascinating to do learn something interesting, right, 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 in 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 homeless.
Yes, just within just within science. It's having such a big gorilla can crowd out other projects, other valuable projects, and it can focus the whole be on sort of one area, when you might think it would be healthier to have a diversity, you know, instead of having putting all your eggs in one basket to do a few things.
But you're right, now, there's a bunch of little monkeys as opposed to a giant gorilla.
That's right, Who would you rather fight anyway, twenty monkeys or one gorilla?
I don't know, And just give them a tiewriter each and they'll eventually, you know, you have to wait.
Try they'll eventually write a better script for this, for this podcast than we could ever come up with. But you're right there. 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, and since Donald Trump became president, the infrastructure in this country needs repair. So we could spend that money well in lots of places, and it's hard to know, like how do you compare, right, how do you compare infant formula to a potential particle collider? Right, it's hard to 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, We're 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 twenty billion dollars is a worldwide cost, not for the US 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, you know, even science aside, Like that would take some of that seven hundred billion dollars and put it towards education or healthcare.
Think, like, you know, do we need ten aircraft carriers? Can we have nine and a twenty billion dollars particle collider?
Exactly? What pawn shop can you go to to trade in your aircraft carrier to get ten billion dollars.
I think Russia or maybe North Kaka.
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.
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. Seventy percent of our data sample supports big science.
That's right, So send us twenty billion dollars and we'll take care of it.
We'll make a billion one dollar podcast, exactly.
Will we promise not to spend it on twenty billion dollars of bananas? Right? Jorge, what what I'm not hearing your product.
I can't make any guarantees, you know, it's science, can't make any guarantees.
That's right. Well, how about if we discover the banana particle, that thing that makes bananas so amazing.
Yeah, and slippery and but but in your view it is worth it, right, in your view, you would pay anything for science, 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.
Me as a species. We can't just be looking down all the time. You sort of have to look up. Yeah, 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 Danielandhorge dot com. When you pop a piece of cheese into your mouth, you're probably not thinking about the environmental impact. But the people in the dairy industry are. That's why they're working hard every day to find new ways to reduce waste, conserve natural resources, and drive down greenhouse gas emissions. House US dairy tackling greenhouse gases. Many farms use anaerobic digesters to turn the methane from manure into renewable energy that can power farms, towns, and electric cars. Visit you as dairy dot COM's last sustainability.
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