What's Really Happening At CERN
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Published 2024-04-18
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On the border between France and Switzerland is the biggest science experiment humanity has ever built. Over a 100 meters underground, there’s a tunnel 27 kilometers long in a big loop under nearby homes, businesses, and farms. Inside that tunnel, scientists built a blue tube big enough to crawl through, and inside that tube, they put two pipes that they keep colder and emptier than outer space. Down those pipes, they fire particles smaller than atoms in opposite directions…. and push them faster and faster… until when they’re almost at the speed of light… they SMASH TOGETHER.
This underground particle-smasher is also known as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It took thousands of scientists from over nearly 100 different countries $5 billion dollars and 30 years to plan and build.
My question is: Why? Why did they do that??? Why spend so much money and time to smash particles underground? And now… why do so many scientists say what we really need to do is build… a BIGGER one?
To answer those questions, we’re going on a journey all the way to Switzerland, to the particle smasher itself! And you’re never going to see yourself or the world around you the same way…
Chapters:
0:00 What’s happening at CERN?
1:31 What is the Large Hadron Collider?
2:32 How did they build the Large Hadron Collider?
3:43 How small is a proton?
4:51 How do they get protons to hit each other??
6:43 Why build this?
7:43 What happens when particles smash together?
8:47 What are elementary particles?
9:37 What is the Higgs Boson?
10:46 What did they find??
11:33 Why does this matter?
12:52 Why build a bigger collider?
13:48 What is the Future Circular Collider?
14:56 What else could we build?
15:56 Who do we want to be?
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Bio:
Cleo Abram is an Emmy-nominated independent video journalist. On her show, Huge If True, Cleo explores complex technology topics with rigor and optimism, helping her audience understand the world around them and see positive futures they can help build. Before going independent, Cleo was a video producer for Vox. She wrote and directed the Coding and Diamonds episodes of Vox’s Netflix show, Explained. She produced videos for Vox’s popular YouTube channel, was the host and senior producer of Vox’s first ever daily show, Answered, and was co-host and producer of Vox’s YouTube Originals show, Glad You Asked.
Additional reading and watching:
- “Inside the World's Largest Science Experiment,” by Dianna Cowern, Physics Girl: • Inside the World's Largest Science Ex...
- “The Higgs Boson, Part I,” by Minute Physics: • The Higgs Boson, Part I
- “The Higgs boson at 10 years,” by Dr Clara Nellist (one of our wonderful experts in this video!): • The Higgs boson at 10 years
- “The Large Hadron Collider beam pipe: everything you didn't know you wanted to know,” by Dr Clara Nellist: • The Large Hadron Collider beam pipe: ...
- “The Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 1” by CERN: • The Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 1...
- “The Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 2” by CERN: • The Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 2...
- “The Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 3” by CERN: • The Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 3...
- “Seeing the Smallest Thing in the Universe,” by Dianna Cowern, Physics Girl: • Seeing the Smallest Thing in the Univ...
Vox: www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram
IMDb: www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/
Gear I use:
Camera: Sony A7SIII
Lens: Sony 16–35 mm F2.8 GM
Audio: Sennheiser SK AVX and Zoom H4N Pro
Music: Musicbed, Tom Fox
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—
Welcome to the joke down low:
Why did the Higgs Field get invited to church?
They wanted to have mass.
Find a way to use “mass” in a comment to let me know you’re a real one who made it to the end of the description :)
All Comments (21)
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Took my daughter there as a gift when she graduated from university . Now she's a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Proud Dad
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Loved the final note about how we want an Alien civilization to look at us as a scientific and curious race and not just a planet of conflict and mass destruction
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For context... $17B is roughly 1 week of the US military budget. Just to give a little perspective.
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Oh wow, did not know that Peter Higgs recently died! What a legacy that man left behind. From not taken seriously to finally seeing his theories in action must have been a delight. RIP
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Find someone who looks at you the way Cleo looks at the CERN collider. Your passion and awe for this stuff is infectious.
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Thanks for coming to visit us at CERN! It was fantastic to show you and the team our experiment and I love how the video came out! ☺
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I'm bald so I don't understand how small protons are.
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I went there before the pandemic during the open days, when they had every part of LHC open. It was the best weekend of my life, this machine is truly an engineering masterpiece
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Cleo is just out here living our nerd fantasies; working with NASA, Boston Dynamics, F1, CERN, etc. Thanks for bringing us along with you.
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That size comparison of a grain of rice as a nucleus honestly blew my mind
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Well done. You managed to explain everything in a very cool way without oversensationalizing it.
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Well put Cleo, science needs people like you to make it more accessible. The best thing about science is that it's a shared human experience in time, and we need to accelerate that knowledge
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RIP Peter Higgs. As a lapsed particle physicist I actually cried during the Higgs Boson announcement scene. An amazing human and I'm so glad he got to see the actual detection of his proposed/theoretical particle.
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"Yep, it's a bump on a chart." This is part of why I learn so much from your videos.
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Thank you for making complex topics digestible and comprehensible, you have struck a great balance for the general public.
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Deployed Worldwide Through My Deep Learning AI Research Library… Thanks Cleo.
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Your channel has quickly become one of my favorites Cleo. The subject matter, production, pacing, narration etc. are all superb. Huge props to you and your team for bringing science & technology to masses in such a well executed way!
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RIP Peter Ware Higgs... The giant genius of particle physics🙏🙏
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Where were you all this time? I loved this video. I am a Physics student currently doing my Masters. This video literally gave me a boost in my motivation to learn more.
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Wow, what a quality production you have made here, Cleo and Team. Excellent work, with the wonder and enthusiasm that all of us feel about exploring our universe. 🏆🏆
