New targets for the world’s biggest atom smasher and wood designed to cool buildings

Science Magazine Podcast

Science Podcast

News, News Commentary, Science

4.3 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built with one big goal in mind: to find the Higgs boson. It did just that in 2012. But the question on many physicists’ minds about the LHC is, “What have you done for me lately?” Host Sarah Crespi talks with Staff Writer Adrian Cho about proposals to look at the showers of particles created by its proton collisions in new ways—from changing which events are recorded, to changing how the data are analyzed, even building more detectors outside of the LHC proper—all in the hopes that strange, longer-lived particles are being generated but missed by the current set up. Also this week, Sarah talks with Tian Li of the University of Maryland in College Park about a modified wood designed to passively cool buildings. Starting from its humble roots in the forest, the wood is given a makeover: First it is bleached white to eliminate pigments that absorb light. Next, it is hot pressed, which adds strength and durability. Most importantly, these processes allow the wood to emit in the middle-infrared range, so that when facing the sky, heat passes through the wood out to the giant heat sink of outer space. This week’s episode was edited by Podigy. Download a transcript (PDF) Listen to previous podcasts. About the Science Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Morgan State University, a Baltimore, Maryland Carnegie R2 doctoral research institution,
0:05.0	offers more than 100 academic programs and awards degrees at the Baccliorate, Masters, and Doctoral Levels,
0:12.0	is furthering their mission of growing the future leading the world.
0:16.0	Morgan continues to address the needs and challenges of the modern urban environment.
0:20.0	With a four-year quadrupling of research, more than a dozen new doctoral programs,
0:25.7	and eight new National Centers of Excellence,
0:28.5	Morgan is positioned to achieve Carnegie R-1 designation in the next five years.
0:33.7	To learn more about Morgan and their ascension to R1, visit morgan.edu slash research.
0:46.1	Welcome to the science podcast for May 24, 2019. I'm Sarah Crespi. On this week's show, we've got
0:53.1	staff writer, Adrian Cho. He's going to talk to me
0:55.9	about potential new targets for the large Hadron Collider. Could long-lived particles be eluding the
1:02.8	detectors on the LHC? And I also talk with Tian Li about using modified wood to passively cool
1:10.4	buildings.
1:10.9	The idea is to make a cheap, scalable material that substantially reduces the energy footprint of buildings by sending heat into space.
1:23.2	I've got staff writer Adrian Cho here to talk with us about a hunt for oddball particles at the Large Hadron Collider.
1:30.9	Hi, Adrienne.
1:31.9	Hi, Sarah. How are you?
1:33.0	I'm good. I just wanted to say that we are both going to say Hadron, but other people say Hadron.
1:37.9	So that's okay. Large Hadron Collider is also known as the LHC. Can you remind us what it does? The LHC is the world's biggest atom smasher.
1:48.4	It's this accelerator that's underground on the French-Swiss border. It's 27 kilometers long,
1:56.0	and it basically accelerates protons in opposite directions and then smashes them together in the middle
2:02.2	of these gigantic particle detectors. And the idea is to smash particles together with enough
	...

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