Sunday, May 3, 2020

X17

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Recorded: 2019/12/06 Released: 2019/05/03

Randy and Jim about the perspectival nature of quanta, the Unruh effect, which says that for highly accelerated systems, additional particles and temperature will be seen.
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Notes:

1. The papers we read for this program:



2. Related Episodes of Physics Frontiers:


3. Books discussed on this podcast:
  • A. Franklin and Fischbach, E., The Rise and Fall of the Fifth Force, 2nd Ed. (2015). Discusses the history of a previously hypothesized "fifth force" of nature, this creating a medium-range correction to gravity. [Amazon]


4. Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to the "Construct Your Own Atom Smasher" article, but I did find references to it. I knew it wasn't just my imagination because I snuck into the University of Denver's library to find it in 1990-1992 timeframe (when a friend mentioned it), but I was expecting someone had put it up on the web. I'll try to remember to look later in the week.




5. For some reason I got mixed up between K decays and the g-2 value of the muon. The discrepancy in the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon between theory and experiment was discovered in 2001. [arXiv]


6. Please visit and comment on our subreddit, and if you can help us keep this going by contributing to our Patreon, we'd be grateful.

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Transcript (Rough Draft; Added: 2020/07/22)
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Jim: Hey, Randy what's going on? Randy: Jim. This is an exciting episode for me because, you know, for the last, actually my entire lifetime. I've been looking forward to some kind of anomaly in the particle physics community, a credible anomaly is something new. And that's been the frustration I think for a lot of particles, stews. Most of the discoveries and work is only verified standard model and there hasn't been much work beyond the standard law. And here we have something new to talk about in particle physics: the X17 particle. Jim: X17. Why call it X17? Randy: Well, they don't know really what the heck it is other than they think it might be either something new happening in nuclear physics that we hadn't seen before or it could be a new particle thatcould be a force carrier for a fifth force of nature. So the "X" I think means they don't know what it is, and the 17 refers to its mass energy. They're seeing a signal in the 15 million electron volts range in a couple of experiments now. The first one back in 2016 beryllium, and then this year of paper undergoing peer review right now for very similar finding with helium. 07:30:09 You know how those experiments were. Well, the earliest experiments. I believe they were firing a proton beam at a target of brilliant and exciting it, and the transition from the excited state down to the ground state, it might have been another excited 07:30:26 state Come to think of it 07:30:38 And then they recently did a similar experiment with helium bombarding the targets. And when that goes down to the ground state, they detected a similar signal in the 17 billion electronic vote range is slightly smaller divergence angle of around 215 07:30:54 degrees okay and so what happens here is, they have, let's say with beryllium they had a lithium target. Right. 07:31:02 They hit it with. They hit it with a proton beam to turn it into brilliant. And so that would turn it into beryllium in excited state, and then a little bit later on with the detect is what they're detecting a pair of particles electrons and protons are 07:31:19 a positrons. And I guess those decay off into kind of opposite directions, and then you just take those, I guess, and you find out how much kinetic energy they have and that tells you how much energy, they have. 07:31:32 Yeah, so they think that the electron positron pairs are some kind of new particle. So what you're saying is that when you have this extended beryllium state, it has to k into something, and one of those decays is not. 07:31:46 So I guess we should say it's an excited nuclear state of Berlin. 07:31:50 What they suspect, I guess there's a reference to said I didn't read that somebody did go through and actually check but even in the first paper. They said, this is not a possible nuclear decay, that is you can't have the except beryllium basically decay 07:32:04 into this electron positron pair. Yeah, that's interesting. It's kind of shocking, there's been so many particle experiments for so long that the idea of finding something new that doesn't fit within the existing model, especially in Adams that as well 07:32:18 well known and well tested is lithium and beryllium and in helium. It seems so improbable, so it sort of came really came out of left field. I'm not sure if it's completely out of left field. 07:32:30 Let's see if I can. If I can find exactly when the previous studies were done so he references, a bunch of previous studies, he said we went back. Yeah, we investigated the anomalies observed previously in the internal pair creation of a soul vector, 07:32:48 17.6, make an electron volts, and so scalar 18.1 mega electron volts, and one transitions in beryllium. 07:32:56 mega electron volts, and ISO scalar 18.1 mega electron volts, and one transitions in beryllium. And those were done from like 1996 to 2004 this pilot was that by the same Hungarian team that did these experiments. 07:33:08 I think the person associated with that was the beer before Ebo, er, and so he actually looked at these previously. Oh, I see. Is there a couple of other references. 07:33:20 2004 one, I think maybe a theoretical paper that goes through a bunch of different things because I saw was making notes from one of these other papers about a bunch of different possibilities of something rather. 07:33:34 So they already knew there was something that could have happened. 07:33:37 Okay, how did hear about that. But they didn't really have a strong enough signal. So we've seen something that may have been a problem. They didn't know that it was a problem at that point, they didn't have the strong signal booth thing here is that 07:33:50 we both have the signals. 07:33:51 both of the signals. You have about a seven standard deviation signal. Yeah, it's a huge sick, yeah so ones like 6.81 7.2. Both of them are well beyond the five sigma limit, and five signals already pretty stringent, so there's definitely something going 07:34:09 on right. There's something here. You don't know if it's definitely I don't know how many experiments, there are five sigma I'd have to look at it it's got to be extremely small. 07:34:18 Right. 07:34:19 And since you have two things that are both consistent with each other it's almost certainly not seeming as if it's got to be really small, really small chance that it's a statistical anomaly. 07:34:28 That's right. You have to have these things that have these really small probabilities of being a false positive. So almost certainly a real thing. Yeah, it seems like the experimental protocols were strangely enough, into they did get into some real 07:34:41 detail about how they controlled for you know cosmic rays and other kinds of possible errors and the background that convinced thing, and a whole group of businesses from the physics department at UC Irvine and the University of Kentucky to write a theoretical 07:34:59 paper about it. So the 2016 paper is called observations of anomalous internal pair creation in beryllium eight possible indication of a light neutral bosom. 07:35:10 And then later that year thing and his group published paper that was a theoretical analysis of their findings. 07:35:17 Call the proto phobic fifth force interpretation of the observed anomaly and barely made nuclear transitions, there's still the possibility that there could be something structurally I guess going on with a nuclear physics that we've never seen before. 07:35:43 equipment, you know that might have had some kind of air in the data, or there's another particle going on seems like those are the only real three options that we've got, I think the thing that people are looking at is that it should be a park. 07:35:56 Now you chose to look at this photo phobia paper. That's a good one. In the new evidence supporting the existence of the hypothetical x 17 particle hopefully they changed it to hypothetical the lists, like, five groups. 07:36:09 One group that had at least two different interpretations. 07:36:13 One was this quarter of a million vector gauge Buddhism. One was like pseudo scalar particle. There was an axiom. So there's a possibility that it could be an axiom. 07:36:25 There was a light. Zero both Sonic state, and maybe some beyond the Standard Model stuff, like a non standard pigs with extra Higgs bosons, but it seemed like they constrained, several of those and so that in this paper they focused primarily on the vector 07:36:44 pros on interpretation. Right. 07:36:45 Well they did do a lot of constraints in this particular paper. 07:36:48 I guess the first one is is that they don't think it's a scalar, because it violates parody conservation. They don't think it's a pseudo scalar they don't think it's an axiom, because there are severe constraints on the axial, but somebody actually did 07:37:03 sneak in there and try to find the possibility of a axiom that will work. So that will be your pseudo scalar particle for vectors. Well you normally think of is a dark photon, I guess, which is, you know, full time it doesn't matter, but couplings required 07:37:23 or too large for dark. 07:37:27 But what they're saying is that some other better gauge bows could do that as long as it has very weak and very specific coupling to matter. They also say that an axial vectors Okay, an actual vector cage goes on, would be okay but that you know that 07:37:51 like one line, and I can't see anybody else doing anything with it. So, possibly It's okay. And I think they threw out the gravity and possibly as well but i don't I'm not sure. 07:37:57 I didn't see that but I was intrigued because they see no parameter horizon charges. They looked at all the different kinds of charges that a particle can have it looks like all of them are extremely small. 07:38:08 For if it's going to conform to this particle. Yeah, so if we're looking at this in terms of the coupling two different corks. So they said okay, for the up cork. 07:38:20 You know, we have some sort of coupling for the down cork we have some sort of coupling. 07:38:26 And although we haven't tested these directly to figure out what the limits are. There was an experiment I think it was what any 48 slash to. 07:38:38 That was looking for evidence of the dark photon. That was looking for a coupling to an electron which still ends up being important here, and they use that couple weeks for the electron and, you know, some theoretical arguments about would have to happen 07:38:53 to give some idea about what coupling to the EU and the D, or the up and down particles would have to be in order for the proto phobic and Balian vector bows on to the Bible. 07:39:08 Basically, this means that this vector owes on this x 17 would have to couple to the neutron 10 times more strongly than the proton. Yeah, that's really fascinating, the idea that a couple's more strongly to neutrons and electrons and protons. 07:39:28 That's kind of battling. 07:39:30 You know if you figure who's going to couple to the electron that would have something to do with this electrical charge and you'd expect to have, you know, a similar strength reaction with the proton but apparently is the suppression of all interactions 07:39:41 of protons. 07:39:43 They don't understand. Yeah, that's the thing is that they don't really understand why. 07:39:47 And so I'm not really sure about that. I mean, I guess it's not too much less right so you have a couple into the proton may say here would be eight times 10 to the minus four. 07:39:59 And for the electron. It'd be about 1.4 times 10 to the minus three, it's not really even a order of magnitude it's almost not even a factor of two. 07:40:09 So, it's about the same coupling and we're good. Yeah well could produce it, you know, I'd love to see some theoretical analysis try to figure that out. 07:40:18 Is that would help us maybe understand something about the possible fifth force properties you know yeah that's the idea is that you know they're trying to get there. 07:40:28 But first, they have to get to the point where they agree on what the pit forces, right. So, I mean I guess they can keep investigating that as long as it's open open question but as long as there are at least five different viable possibilities. 07:40:42 Just because that's all the ones that are listed here doesn't mean that they're the only possible ones. 07:40:48 In fact there were another four or five that they mentioned in the original paper that I don't know why you might not work anymore. 07:40:56 There are four or five possibilities. And you know, there how many people that are actually working on this. And they're dividing up between four or five different possibilities, you know, could be a very long time. 07:41:09 I mean, how long is the anomalous magnetic moment of the new on been a problem. I don't know I didn't look to see what that was it. The G to magnetic anomaly for me one. 07:41:18 Og minus two magnetic anomaly yeah and that's because it should have magnetic one would have to but it hasn't been normalization it's already that g value should be too. 07:41:29 But it's a little bit different. And that ratio that anomaly for the electron is that super precise number that everybody likes to talk about in quantum electrodynamics and it predicts to at least 10 or 12 decimal places. 07:41:42 Who knows what it is now might be 17. Right. I have a lot of faith in experimental physics. 07:41:48 So, you know, they get that perfectly right with the electron. 07:41:51 And then they have a problem with the new one and other trying to explain, you know how long they've had that problem. I mean, it's been a few decades at least right um I think it's probably been 50 years. 07:42:07 Let me see. Did I bring that book in here with me I did not. 07:42:04 So there's a reference here for a book called rise and fall of the force. 07:42:10 And I been thinking about picking up for quite a while, I saw the reference in one of these papers. And I said okay well I'm picking up now. 07:42:17 But I like. 07:42:19 And I think even before they tried to explain, whatever anomaly with hyper photons. 07:42:25 The first attempt to explain this t minus two for the yuan came from hyper photons. 07:42:33 So, yeah, I think it's been at least since the 60s since the early 60s, what are hyper photons, I'm not familiar with that. Yeah, they didn't. 07:42:41 I'm not sure when they decided they had the problem with it, but they started measuring it in 1961, the G minus two for the newer this Expo zone, if that's what it is. 07:42:53 In the second paper they talked about how the range, and the speed. They gave it a characteristic range of 12. millimeters in a proton diameters like 1.75 centimeters. 07:43:05 So it's several times longer than the width of a proton and they said the characteristic velocity was like point three five See, I haven't done the math trying to figure out what time interval that exists in but it's going to be incredibly small, which 07:43:19 is a problem because I'd love to see how it would interact with other kinds of particles and you know nuclei and so forth but with that incredibly vanishing timeframe, it's going to be hard to imagine they could create that particle and get it to interact 07:43:32 in a way that they could detect what those interactions are like you know yeah I'm not sure so they're still thinking about you know how to confirm this or to figure out what kind of BC, it is, and in the 2019 paper, which is probably 2020 papers since 07:43:47 it hasn't been published yet you know the five different possible experiments that are either running now or will start in the next five years, that will do something that might look at it towards the better gauge goes on, like, the dark light experiment 07:44:03 which is a search for dark photons, but it's in the right energy range to other things like testing whether or not it's a z not particle resident production through higher energy proton beams and stuff like that so there are lots of different ways that 07:44:17 going to look, there's a collaboration named nas 64, which is looking for it. And I think so far they've only been able to rule out certain parameters, and they're upgrading now to do another round of searches is in a 64 Large Hadron Collider team do 07:44:34 you know, I didn't write that down. I think it is a sermon. 07:44:46 And there was one that looked really promising that they won't have the results until 2023 I think, yeah, that was a hazing. I think that one is the LSC one but I'm, I'm looking, I'm trying to look it up right now. 07:44:59 Let's exciting because a replication would be make a huge difference here. You know how to one team reporting these results is problematic to the fazer, the forward search experiment where they just randomly picked out letters to make an occasion. 07:45:15 Why not do. 07:45:17 It has to have a pronounceable name, otherwise we're not going to get funding. So yeah, that one's at the LHC, and that one's been approved and is ready to go in 2023 DNA 64, is that certain but it doesn't say here that it's FPLHCO, you don't need that 07:45:40 Yeah, it seems like a fairly modest requirements. You know, that's what kind of baffles me I'm really glad this. This work is getting some attention in the popular press, because here we are spending, you know, billions of dollars on a huge collider like 07:45:50 the Large Hadron Collider, and we have, you know, just the best article was in the world. Most of them anyway working there to try to find particles and phenomena beyond the standard model that here's this fairly modest experiments and seems to have something 07:46:04 that's worth looking into. I'm really hoping that you know somebody at a university will be like you know what i, we could set this up and and verify this you know that too much trouble or not, you know, this confirm it either way it would be hugely helpful 07:46:18 science. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean if they can find things at this level I mean that's good, right. So, in fact, you know, the more things you can find for cheaper but then I guess they, they didn't really talk about what the properties of the force 07:46:33 could be though they seem like they've tentatively connected, dark matter, but I didn't really get a clear sense even in the theoretical paper for what this pitfalls could be all about. 07:46:43 I mean I don't think they know what some other than there be another xh bows on maybe another field, but they did all that parameter ization on constraining its properties that give you some clues about what that field might be like well at night, I mean 07:46:58 mean it would be a lot like having a very weak, sort of anti electric field that does sort of the opposite as best I can tell by looking right so. 07:47:11 So like we said, you know, the electric field loves protons doesn't like neutrons right. So you might call it put a filter to prototype. 07:47:19 But this force is just the opposite. He likes neutrons, but it doesn't like protons. So it's a protocol. So that's basically all we can say it's quite weak it's at least 1000 times weaker than the electric field, but that's all you can say right now. 07:47:34 I guess it has a mass. So you know that it has, you know some sort of scale, it has some sort of a range, but given the short lifetime and pathway of this particle. 07:47:45 Does that constrain any possible long range effects like this help us get a handle on, I mean, hypothetically, any of the kind of cosmological interactions like dark matter and dark energy was trying to say was that, because it has to have this limited 07:48:06 range, because it has a mass, it has some sort of Decatur, and so because of that, that's what makes it so nice for something like dark matter is that you have this thing with a mass, it disappears before you can see it. 07:48:16 That's something that a dark matter would do. 07:48:18 And then there's another thing we like about Dark Matters we don't want it to really interact with the rest of the matter it's if gravitational right. 07:48:34 Well, one it's very very weak, it has this 10 to the minus three coupling to the optimal downforce. And on top of that, and probably week. It doesn't like protons which means it doesn't like the majority of the matter in the universe which is just, you 07:48:44 know, hydrogen, I guess there's a lot of just protons out there in the interstellar intergalactic medium right tenuous plasma right yeah so, isn't it mostly hydrogen like 90%. 07:48:54 Yeah but, Arthur also a lot of free protons, electrons floating around out there. I think they usually talk about it as a plasma state. The talking about the medium out there. 07:49:03 But if this particle, the case, the case into a positron and electron, then Shouldn't we see a gamma signatures from positron electron annihilation out there, sticky we'd have to see a lot of that for account for the dark matter observations right but 07:49:20 But they be pretty few still right okay yeah I wonder if you know I remember looking at the dark matter curves and everything and thinking that maybe you could actually explain the Galactic rotation curves. 07:49:32 If there was a some kind of repulsive interaction at the outsides of galaxies pushing in. This is a very small acceleration towards the center of galaxies and galaxy clusters that counts for that flat rotation curve so if there was some kind of repulsive 07:49:49 force out there, pressing on the galaxies maybe this could explain it. Because you'd have all those hydrogen atoms out there, it will yeah that is another thing to say about this is the you know the numbers I've been quoting have been absolute value. 07:50:02 So, the actual constraints are, you know, between minus something and plus something could very well do the exact opposite of the electric field, you know where you have something that you think should be attracted it's repulsive. 07:50:15 That's really fascinating. 07:50:17 I remember I was looking. 07:50:18 I did a quick search there was some talk about the X 17 on a Wikipedia page and, and apparently there's, there's a pair of particles which they you know hypothetical particles that they've also done. 07:50:49 unified field theory that wrongly predicted a higher frequency of proton decay, then we've observed experimentally, but there's been attempts to extend that theory to explain that. 07:50:47 And in that theory, you have a very odd number of violation. That was really interesting. So, you know, because the barrier Genesis problem you know is one that still remains unsolved. 07:51:01 They're looking for a mechanism for that, and it would just open up all kinds of new possibilities if you could violate Barry on number you know yeah possibly but I, again, I think we briefly touched on this before the podcast is that I don't think these 07:51:11 are the same things, but they may be, but I don't think they're the same things I think it's just means they don't know. Well yeah, if there is a big force then we're looking at a shift in the architecture of our entire Model of particle physics really 07:51:26 needed additional architecture that we've never seen before. 07:51:29 So, it might it might point that direction or other directions that we hadn't even considered yet. 07:51:34 I mean, the reason why there's all this beyond the standard model in the first place is because there are just enough anomalies that you think there should be something else out there that we have an accountable. 07:51:48 Right there these anomalies are decays of the female songs. So those two K's are a little bit off the G minus two that's a little bit off. Yeah, we're strong CP problem in QCD got plenty of little problems. 07:52:02 And one way to solve those little problems is new particles, you know that might be a fun topic for shows to just inventory. The all the anomalies that we've seen with the standard model so far. 07:52:13 Yes, it would just probably a good review paper out there. This is not a review, but one of the papers that are the 2020 paper. The one that isn't quite out yet. 07:52:24 The new evidence paper. He had a reference to something called resolving the G minus two new and the anomalies with left left the courts and the dark Higgs boson. 07:52:35 And that was by data, whose name I'm familiar with, although I don't really remember where I know, I know the name that digital paper probably has references that would help us find the best reviews for that sort of thing. 07:52:49 All right, that'd be fun. 07:52:50 One of the things that I found impressive about this new paper. I think this is the first time we've ever discussed the paper which hadn't already passed through peer review but it seemed to be very credible to other people in the field, didn't seem like 07:53:01 a big stretch to take a look at this one too. I was impressed by the agreement in the mass, between the beryllium and the helium experiments. I mean it was just within really a fraction of a million that electron volts. 07:53:25 for the paper that we look at it was 16.7 plus or minus point eight five Nicola crumbles. I'm glad you have that handy. But before doing this second paper we're looking at, which is the helium one. 07:53:32 They refine those measurements. 07:53:36 And they've gotten that to 17.01 plus or minus 0.16 mega electron volts. And then after refining those measurements, mostly just repeating the measurement to make sure they saw it twice. 07:53:48 Right. 07:53:51 Because, you know, these are fairly long experiments like year long experiments to do so. 07:53:56 You know you don't just run down to the lab and have data by lunchtime. 07:54:01 That's what I used to say, if I had the samples of he had to make samples of took on for the healing and experiment. They came later than they had the 16.84 plus or minus. 07:54:14 0.36 mega electron volts. So, those first two look really really close. You know, like point one five difference point one five negative electrons differences, but when you have to look at that error, plus you have to look at the fact that when they found 07:54:31 found the better experiment with the beryllium. 07:54:34 It was a little bit higher, but so everything's winner. And there's little overlap there so it very well could be the same particle they're saying they're probably it's. 07:54:47 I mean, at this point, it probably is the same particle, because, because of the overlaps. And it's hard to imagine that they're seeing a structural something in a nuclear physics happening. 07:54:56 Because if you think that would happen to very different energies for hydrogen or beryllium, you know, healing Merlin yeah yeah probably wouldn't be that, but apparently they already ruled that out through theoretical means, I mean they didn't looking 07:55:08 at beryllium for a very long time. 07:55:11 You know you can look at a possible transition and say, well, there's no way to get there from here. We've got a really nice list of brilliance states out there. 07:55:21 So we know what all the transitions are. Yeah, and helium two I mean Jesus we look at these things. This is the dawn of quantum physics. Yeah helium as well but nobody's gone through and done the analysis yet, right, except possibly you know somebody 07:55:37 did the analysis of the nuclear transitions themselves, and that's where they ruled out that it couldn't be a structural thing Zong and Miller i think is the correct one. 07:55:52 Yes long and Miller investigate the possibility to explain the anomaly with a nuclear physics explored the nuclear transition from the nuclear transition form factor as possible origin of the anomaly, and find the required for impact would be unrealistic 07:56:02 for the Berlin nucleus, but it was things group that did the theoretical analysis and did an excellent inventory of all the parameters space, based on all of the different kinds of experiments that could be brought to bear on this energy range and these 07:56:17 kind of transitions, so they did a really focused job for that vector gauge goes on these other people, other people did this stuff for the other, like the ACCION explanation that kind of stuff right. 07:56:29 That's right. 07:56:30 Do you remember anything from their work with they had any encouraging finding this like. Does it seem probable that it could be an ACCION and one of these ACCION like particles. 07:56:39 I didn't read that. 07:56:41 So I don't know and I'm biased against axiom. They've been around for a while people will be looking for them for a while and, you know, we've already eliminated huge categories of axioms. 07:56:53 So at some point they stopped being that interesting. But that's my own bias. 07:56:57 Right. So, people use them to explain just about anything. The originally proposed for strong CP problem, then they decided okay well maybe this will be dark matter maybe just be dark energy with the unexplained inflation with it, and explain wheat prices 07:57:10 with it i mean it's it's used for everything these days. I'm not a big fan of the zones. So, you know, I'm a little more interested in some of these other guys you know when they're looking at like one of the original papers possibilities was a dark z 07:57:24 particle. The dark Zeebo ism, whatever that would mean it could mean the same thing as the vector gauge goes on, we're talking about the political topic because dark only means that you know you can't see it. 07:57:36 So I'm not completely sure how these are related to each other, right, because some of the possibilities and the two different experimental papers at the guy dimensions are extremely similar, but it was just different enough that they really could be 07:58:02 different things, but I don't know enough about any of them, or one of those is this could be the like mediator for the win, articles, which nobody believes in this week, but make the leading them again this will do my understanding this most recent experiment 07:58:05 Make believe in them again this will do my understanding this most recent experiment properly that checking my notes here and I'm seeing that they were firing protons at a helium three target. 07:58:12 And then that absorbs, I guess, a proton and create an excited state of helium for. If it was helium three would have to. 07:58:21 I'm sorry or not helium, not healing hydrogen three. So yeah so that that's what they had to I think that trap that in the matrix of something else was a titanium titanium ti is titanium Right, yeah. 07:58:34 kiss helium so retracted in a titanium target, probably, I guess interstitial needs to be wonder how they're actually doing this, not something that you're going to be able to do in your garage. 07:58:44 Right. 07:58:46 That's a shame I was hoping we can see a little reason garage, physics obvious to do some particle experiments. I told you about the old Scientific American article. 07:58:55 Which one was that build your own atom smasher. Oh yeah. 07:58:59 Yeah, I'll see if I can find a link to that that people can actually read and hopefully we'll have 510 thousand people building, you know, am smashers in the garage. 07:59:09 That's such a great idea. 07:59:12 I think is a great idea. I think it's wonderful. I mean, all you need is a motor. A couple of metal balls some plastic tubes and a giant elastic band, and you'll be good, probably a good idea to lead walls though Huh. 07:59:23 Well, I mean, to be honest, that thing probably can't do anything really really scary. right, because you know you're using a spark or Vandergrift generator to power this I mean it's real mad site is stuff. 07:59:36 Right. So you charge up the standard graph generator, and then you get you get this visible spark between two metal Globes, and that's what's going to provide all the energy for your Adam smashing experiment. 07:59:50 Right. I mean it's awesome. You're not creating a fountain of articles Yeah, I don't know how you're going to get your Jacob's Ladder in there that's extra mad scientist research, you can send that to the mad scientist division at the NSF integrated grant 08:00:03 proposal, because every mad scientist device needs a Jacob's Ladder, or else is just not that film oval. 08:00:11 That's right. 08:00:12 Well, all right, was there anything else in there that that grabbed your attention that you'd like to talk about, I think we've hit the major points, and they've got into a lot of really detailed experimental descriptions and now they've managed to filter 08:00:25 out all the different noise and rule out all these different possibilities they seem to do a great job at that but it just be torture to talk about I think because most people are, you know, including myself, our particle physics specialist and what I 08:00:36 find very interesting for these experimental papers. They are 90% description of the experiment. Right, so unless you've been sitting around doing experimental Nuclear Physics for the past six years in graduate school. 08:00:51 You might have a little bit of a problem trying to interpret what the actually is going on, but that's okay I mean you can sit around and read it and see what they do but most of the specifications here are for purposes of competence really, you know, 08:01:06 you're just telling people. 08:01:08 You know, we've done all the right things we've aligned all the right devices we taken care of this problem that's shown up people we taking care of that problem that's shown up before, and so on, which is really important for an experimental paper that's 08:01:20 what most of the experimental papers is and then you add a little bit of physics on the side. But the big point of the experimental papers really just to say, in this case are valid right yeah this is valid and this is weird, and you better work on it, 08:01:35 and somebody else better send me money. 08:01:38 You that's the big deal there. So that's what I was worried about when you wanted to talk about this is that I sort of had the feeling that this is what these papers would look like. 08:01:47 Yeah, really dry experimental modern particle physics stuff which is, you know, really impenetrable yeah and no Jacob's Ladder so you did not tell us. 08:01:57 Jacob's ladder. 08:01:58 That's the whole thing that's holding this paper up in the review processes, you know, where does the mad scientist equipment actually go. 08:02:06 So that's why looking at this protocol Vic, if worse paper was so interesting. 08:02:11 There is something in there that's telling you something about what it is that could be going on. It's not a lot, right, there's not a lot of data to go, but it does tell you sort of where this would have to show up. 08:02:23 And so I think that's pretty much what we wanted to look at it, I mean we spent most of our time talking about the protocol Vic. It was and that was really really interesting. 08:02:32 I think similarly this data paper and actually I didn't realize it until just, I just looked at this and Jonathan phone is also on that so the phones the guided the worst thing. 08:02:43 And he's also on this lock the data. 08:02:48 Was it on this, so maybe that's why I know, yeah. So, this particular paper was also interesting but you know we can save that to whenever we want to actually talk about leftover works. 08:03:03 So, and the dark expose on instead of the light, exposing the dark Higgs boson, let's do corks and a dark expose on. Doesn't that sound conspiratorial. 08:03:10 It does an alien particle. 08:03:13 So anyway, so we could talk about something like that in the future so we want to hit the weird anomalies that will be pumped. Like I said, I'm sure there's a giant review paper out there that everybody loves they probably have the reference already written 08:03:29 down, and I just didn't download it, because again it's going to be a review paper that's 84 pages. So we'll have to take our time on that one. Well, still yeah I don't know how long it will be sometimes they're only 30 pages but usually those review 08:03:41 papers are really really long, and they're hard to read because you know they'll make a sentence and then they'll have six lines of references, then they'll have another 70. 08:03:49 Sure. 08:03:50 Maybe we can get the abridged version where they just, you know, leave out the references the cliff notes version. 08:03:58 It's not even a cliff notes version, it's really just the pros. 08:04:02 I mean, the reason why they do that is the reason why we do review paper is to get all those references right yeah but still it makes it very very difficult to read them sometimes. 08:04:12 Well, still we love anomalies and this was a good one. I'm glad that we found a nice juicy particle physics anomaly, so hard to come by. And I'm really excited to see where this all heads. 08:04:27 It's a shame that we might have to wait until 2023, another three and a half years or something, to find out, but it's nice to see that something on the horizon will be able to look forward to talking about. 08:04:36 Don't feel too bad about it. I mean, you know, it's been like a month, month and a half since the second paper the second experiment showed up on the archive, you know, and it was only about two or three weeks old it was still getting press when you suggested 08:04:50 it, but then it took us another two or three weeks to record it, and we've got another two episodes I think before I get to this. So, if you're hearing this is a three year wait maybe write two or three months but it's not going to be the hot topic than 08:05:03 it was you know when you suggested it, which is another reason why I don't like doing things that are hot topics. You know I could expedite it but this also makes it very very good 50th episode which is what this is going to be cool. 08:05:15 Well, Happy 50th episode Jim and listeners. Happy 50th episode. I'm glad we've had such a fun time doing this, and I hope everybody enjoys it very, very much. 08:05:27 And we do sometimes hear from aspiring mad scientists on Facebook. 08:05:32 So you know, all you mad scientists out there. I hope you, you get into some good weird physics and give us something to talk about in the years ahead. 08:05:40 Oh yeah. Yeah, that would be good yeah I tell you about my mad scientists account, I must have complained about it while I was in New Orleans because it sort of pissed me off, I'm sorry, everybody. 08:05:50 I'm very very sorry. 08:05:52 You know I'll cut out the paranoia, and put it as an extra special thing for the people on Patreon. 08:06:00 Good stuff, gotta pay to get that. All right, thank you very much Randy. 08:06:04 Thank you, James always good talking with you. It's been nice talking to you will find out something great. Next time, sounds great. Okay fine, but you have just listened to physics frontiers Episode Number 50 x 17 Show Notes for this episode can be found 08:06:20 at frontiers does accept them.com slash 50 show notes include links to related episodes books I mentioned but podcast I think I mentioned the rise and fall of that force, they'll be an Amazon link to that if you'd like to purchase that. 08:06:34 And the papers we discussed in this podcast. If you have any comments, that's a good place to leave comments. You can also go to our Facebook page. And we also have the Reddit page as well. 08:06:44 Thank you. Bye now. -------------------------------------------------------------

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