Basement: Daniel Whiteson | CERN, Dark Matter, and the Aliens Next Door

The Why Files: Operation Podcast

The Why Files

Documentary, Science Fiction, Life Sciences, Science, Society & Culture, Fiction

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2026

⏱️ 198 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Why Files releases video episodes on Spotify every Monday and Friday. And when you become a Spotify Premium subscriber, you get fewer ads – that means more story, less interruption. Daniel Whiteson is a particle physicist at UC Irvine and an active researcher at CERN's Large Hadron Collider — the largest machine ever built — where 5,000 scientists are using high-energy collisions to read the universe's secret menu. He co-hosts the show Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe, co-created an award-winning science show for preschoolers, and recently wrote a book asking whether aliens would even recognize our physics at all. His work sits at the collision point of experimental science, philosophy, and the biggest unanswered questions in physics — what everything is made of, why gravity is so weak, and whether the universe has a bottom. DANIEL LINKS sites.uci.edu/daniel X - @DanielWhiteson Podcast - Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Where the hell am I?
0:02.0	It's a fighting tournament.
0:04.0	To the death.
0:05.0	It's called Mortal Kombat for a reason.
0:09.0	The tournament begins.
0:11.0	Johnny Case.
0:13.0	You have been chosen to fight.
0:15.0	Come in or what?
0:16.0	I'm an actor.
0:17.0	I can't do this.
0:19.0	You're fighting for the fate of our world.
0:22.0	Get over here.
0:24.9	Mortal Kombat 2. In Cinema's May 8. Book tickets now.
0:28.6	It's show time.
0:30.1	Today I am talking with Daniel Weitsen. He's a particle physicist at UC Irvine and an active researcher on CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
0:38.3	Every 24 nanoseconds, his team smashes protons together and waits for the universe to show them something new.
0:44.8	Oh, CERN, huh? The place with the Shiva statue at front and the interdimensional portal at back.
0:50.8	Oh, yeah, I know the place.
0:52.3	His new book is called Do Aliens Speak Physics? And the question
0:56.5	it asks is wild. Is physics something we discovered or is it something we invented? Because if it's
1:04.8	invented, aliens might show up one day with a completely different version. And ours might be wrong, or at least incomplete.
1:14.0	It's hard to explain in an intro, but it's pretty wild.
	...

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