The Future of Particle Accelerators Looks Wild

The Large Hadron Collider has made some amazing discoveries, but science doesn't sleep, and we've got bigger, faster and more accurate particle accelerators on the way!

Hosted by: Stefan Chin (he/him)
----------
----------
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: Matt Curls, Alisa Sherbow, Dr. Melvin Sanicas, Harrison Mills, Adam Brainard, Chris Peters, charles george, Piya Shedden, Alex Hackman, Christopher R, Boucher, Jeffrey Mckishen, Ash, Silas Emrys, Eric Jensen, Kevin Bealer, Jason A Saslow, Tom Mosner, Tomás Lagos González, Jacob, Christoph Schwanke, Sam Lutfi, Bryan Cloer
---

#SciShow #science #education #learning #complexly
----------

Thumbnail Image Credit: CERN/ Brice, Maximilien

Sources:

IMAGES/MEDIA

[thedaybtomorrow]

I did my PhD on MICE and this is the first time I've heard what we were doing referred to as "super cooling". 🙂 Basically we send the beam through a low-Z absorber (liquid hydrogen or lithium hydride) and the muons lose energy by ionizing the absorber molecules. low-Z is important to minimize scattering. Was awesome to see an experiment as small as mine (only about 60 people at any given time) on SciShow though 🙂

[buhbird]

Particle physics has to be the most interesting I will never understand at more than a surface level

[pultofcat]

Dude this video is so dense with education I feel like most channels would split it into many videos. That’s why this is my fav, endlessly entertaining. Now time to watch again

[ekszentrik]

I am Swiss and I have just realized we are literally the dwarves from Middle Earth.
>live in mountains
>love to bore tunnels
>love gold
>our signature weapon (the halberd) is just an extra long axe

[gravitonthongs]

In one episode I just caught up to scientific progress plans for the next few decades.
A remarkably well composed narrative. Thank you.

[MajurSal]

i'm working on the DUNE project for the Fermilab. I myself, with my team, have the mission to transfer the detector from Frascati, Italy to Chicago, illinois. It's called Kloe-2. The ETA is very much of a positive way of thinking, but finger crossed we'll ship everything in the next 3 years

[Jake]

The (original) photo in the thumbnail is from within ProtoDUNE. There were 2 of these prototype detectors hosted at CERN which used 2 slightly different Time Projection Chamber readout technologies. The so-called 'Single Phase' version was injected with a charged hadron beam. Analysis of this data is ongoing.

Additionally, a small correction to how DUNE's detectors (Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers) work. Yes, the neutrinos will exchange a W or Z boson with the argon and some interaction products will be emitted. However, it's not just electrons which will be detected. Other charged particles will in fact ionize some of the other argon in the detector. The electrons from this ionization process are what will be read out by the detector (not actually the electrons produced directly by the neutrino-argon interaction and the subsequent shower).

[Descriptor]

Good video! A few corrections, though:

1. 1:40 Magnetic fields don't accelerate charged particles, electric fields do, generally through the use of resonating RF cavities. Magnetic fields can only deflect the particles in a direction perpendicular to the field and the direction that the particle is already going (which is how they are used for steering the beam, as you allude to later on).

2. 3:17 While not needing steering magnets is one reason for not using a ring shaped accelerator, there's actually a much bigger reason to use a linear accelerator! The real issue is something called synchrotron radiation, which is light emitted from charged particles that are going at relativistic speeds and then bumped in a direction that not the one they're already going in, which is what is constantly happening in a ring accelerator (since the magnets are always trying to force the beam to bend).

This synchrotron radiation causes the beam to lose energy, and thus speed, which is kinda the opposite of what you want your accelerator to do. Plus it creates tons of X-rays and other high energy photons, which can be quite the mess to deal with in the accelerator tunnels! (Side note, this phenomena is actually also used as a purposeful source of X-rays in some experiments, in what are called Synchrotron Light Sources).

The reason we can still use ring accelerators is because protons don't put off too much synchrotron radiation, so you can still reasonably come out ahead with achievable accelerator voltages to get up to near the speed of light without issue. This is why most (if not all) ring accelerators only deal with protons and anti-protons. The problem is that when you're trying to do stuff with electrons, they produce way more synchrotron radiation, so the only way you can accelerate them to where you need to go is by using linear accelerators, which don't need to bend the beam continuously (beyond some mild correction). And that's what the ILC hopes to achieve!

3. 8:34 The real reason the neutrinos are being made in IL but measured in SD is because it's cheaper that way for tax reasons. (This one's a joke)

Still, glad to see your channel put stuff like this out there for folks! There's a lot of nuance with these things, so no worries about missing a few details. I certainly wouldn't have known any better since starting my job at Fermilab a year ago, so the details don't matter too much if you're not actively working on these things. Still, I figured I would add a few tidbits for those interested!

[maxM]

I live 20 minutes away from a particle accelerator and I drive by it everyday on my way to work. And I got to visit it on a High School field trip years ago. Im so used to living near one I don’t even think anything of it until I’m reminded by a video like this of how amazing and complicated they are. Also no one in my area ever voiced any concerns of it creating a black hole.

[antonypalmer]

A large amount of Proto Dune was made at Daresbury Labs in the UK where we are now building some of the new detectors for Dune. We also do a lot of work for CERN if you are in England and interested in Physics you might be interested to know The team at STFC are currently planning to run their next Public Open Day on Saturday, July 15 2023, which will form part of a major Open Week starting July 10th.

[infinitivez]

It's so wild that we're building such massive structures to investigate such tiny tiny particles.

[sharrpshooter]

I can't believe they didnt even mention how insane it is to use 17 ton of liquid argon.
For anyone who doesn't know, liquid argon can only exist between 83-87 K (-308F to -302F), thats an insanely tight band, and while they can use liquid nitrogen, its gonna be insanely hard to even get that much liquid argon in there and keep it that cold

[FlyingDwarfman]

Pronunciation question.

Is "muon" more often said "moo-on" as Stefan does in this video or more "myuu-on" as I was thinking before?

I was thinking "myuu-on" because I had thought they were named after the Greek letter [μ] which I had learned was pronounced "myuu" ... despite its pronunciation being written [m-u] in the Roman alphabet.

I know it's confusing.

[Yezpahr]

Ah yes, 5 am in the morning, the best time to upload video's because you just know I will be here to lap up the content.
Thanks for making this early morning wake-up a little bit less boring.

[andrewroberts]

Particle physicist here - I don't think I've heard "moo-on" before aha, typically people use "myoo-on" like the greek letter. More interestingly with regard to a muon collider, the other big engineering constraint is that muons decay in microseconds. You can extend this relativistically when you speed them up, but you can't escape it, so you have a ticking clock from the time you create the muons to the time you collide them. The LHC currently takes hours from injection to collision, so this would be a significant design difference, though it should still be possible. A muon collider would be really, really exciting.

[adricortesia]

It's not the Higgs Boson that gives mass to particles but its associated field. The boson is just an excitation of said field. Like water to a wave. There would be no wave without water but water can exist perfectly fine without any waves.

[Nick-Lab]

The Higgs boson does no give any particles their mass. The particles interact with the Higgs field and that gives them mass. The Higgs boson is just an excitation of said field.

[phillm]

The anti-matter universe would say we are the antimatter to their matter😂

[torstenkruger]

I love how you use a green screen to represent a green area ❤️

[SecretSquirrelFun]

My friend, that is always playing down what he does for a living and how clever he is etc etc was sent to CERN as part of his work 😳 He’d be working at the “collider” and attending a conference with all the other smart people.

He asked me if I wanted anything while he was there, I said that I’d really like a souvenir of his visit.

I was thinking about a patch for my jacket or a T-shirt something cool like that - you know similar to NASA.

He brought me back a coffee mug. A coffee mug that I could have purchased from my local supermarket. It had a squirrel on it (because I like squirrels ❤).
He’s my own personal Sheldon Cooper bless him.

🙂🐿❤️🌈