What's the Connection Between Surfing and Particle Accelerators?

Do you like surfing?

To tell you the truth, I've never done it, and I don't have much of a talent for it anyway. I've never even skateboarded properly.

Although I did ski for a while.

So I know a little bit what it feels like, it must be very enjoyable. In fact, surfing is much more fun than skiing.

After all, surfing is an activity done in summer, in warm weather. The cold air probably doesn't hit your face like skiing.

At least we see it in movies, surfing is a really enjoyable activity.

Look, if it's a substitute, I once spent some time on vacation on a banana, so I can say that I know what it's like to slide on the water in warm weather, even if not exactly.

What made me think of surfing in this winter time, right? 

It was mentioned in a scientific video I watched and I was inspired by it.

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What do we do when we surf?

We catch the incoming wave and slide on the water by balancing on the surfboard.

Of course, I think surfers have a very hard time to keep their balance on that board, it must be really hard to surf.

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I say surfing, but I am actually writing this article in the context of scientific news.

So what I really want to draw attention to is the systematics of surfing, the physical aspect, the logic of the event.

The surfer goes so fast on that board, but that speed is actually the speed of the wave he catches. 

The waves get higher and faster as they get closer to the shore, this is because the depth decreases. 

I won't go into the details of wave mechanics now, but it is related to the decrease in depth.

This is a way of increasing the speed of the waves.

And if you put something like a surf on that accelerated wave, that thing starts to travel at the speed of the wave.

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Young scientists are currently thinking of building an accelerator for subatomic particles that works on the principle of surfing and is much smaller than the existing ones.

You know the most famous particle accelerator, CERN!

CERN consists of kilometers of tunnels underground, but in principle it is just a particle accelerator. 

It's also called a hadron collider.

I don't know if you've seen pictures of it? 

The most expensive machine of our time, with huge tunnels and huge equipment inside the tunnels!

It's a huge machine called CERN with lots of electromagnets in the tunnels, lots of electron accelerators, or I think there's a proton accelerator in there, coolers, sensors.

So what is it doing? 

It accelerates and then collides atoms, or subatomic particles like protons, which are meant to be smashed into smaller and smaller pieces!

Does it do anything else?

No! It's just an accelerator!

It's just an accelerator!

So all that expense was spent just to do these kinds of experiments!

Accelerating protons or other atomic elementary particles to speeds very close to the speed of light, and then colliding the accelerated particles together to detect the subatomic particles that are scattered, and analyzing the data obtained. This is what the scientists there are doing.

The God particle!

That's all it's ever been good for!

Yes, after long efforts, they have detected and proved the existence of the goddamn particle, or the god particle as it is called in the tabloids.

In fact, the debate is still ongoing, because there is no visible higgs boson, what is observed is only the graph of the energy emerging at a certain level on the screens.

The Higgs boson appears in split seconds and immediately decays into something else. What and why it decays is still not understood. 

Experiments continue.

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This huge machine, many kilometers long, uses a lot of energy to accelerate. 

It takes the energy of the world to make those huge magnets work. I don't know, when they turn the machine on, maybe they even cut the power in the neighboring towns.

In order to accelerate a proton beam to speeds very close to the speed of light with the help of magnets, the proton beam first has to be spun up to a certain speed many times in other small circular tunnels at CERN. 

Then the proton beam is transferred to the big tunnel, where it is spun as many times as it needs to be spun.

Only when the proton beam reaches the desired speed is it collided with the targeted proton beam, or whatever atomic particle it is, and the fragments are observed by sensors.

It's very laborious and requires a lot of fine-tuning to get the right results. 

After all, for the whole machine to work properly, there must not be the slightest deviation anywhere. 

A machine that is kilometers long! 

You have to adjust everything very well! It's not easy!

Accelerating the damn particles is really hard work!

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So, some young scientists who were wondering if there was no other way to accelerate protons to speeds close to the speed of light came up with the analogy of surfing, which I mentioned above.

Let me continue to explain a little more scientifically with another example.

You know FM radios. 

In the past, when we used to talk about radio, we used to talk about medium wave, long wave or short wave radios. 

Since FM radios give a much cleaner and higher quality sound, FM broadcasting has become much more common in many cell phones or car radios today. 

Today, though, FM radios have also gone the way of the dodo. Everything can be done over the internet now. I think FM radios are also broadcasting on the internet now.

But they are still in use as radios.

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What is the difference between FM radios and old radios?

They work with frequency modulation.

While old radios (AM radios) work with amplitude modulation, FM radios work with frequency modulation.

That's why it's called FM, Frequency Modulation. 

In other words, the radio broadcast is transmitted by modulating and changing the frequency of a second wave modulated and loaded on the radio waves, not by manipulating the amplitude of the wave as in the old radios.

This new particle accelerator does something similar.

Waves close to the speed of light obtained with nanoparticles are loaded onto protons as if they were surfing, and this is how protons are accelerated to a speed close to the speed of light in a very short distance and time. 

Instead of spending the energy of the world to accelerate them for kilometers in electric fields with huge magnets, you have to spin them around and around. 

Put it on a nanowave that is already accelerated and let the proton beam surf. It quickly reaches the desired speed.

On the one hand, a huge hadron collider to accelerate protons, billions and billions of Euros spent on its construction...

And on the other side, a tiny little device. 

It does almost the same thing!

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Yes, this new particle accelerator is the size of a hand tool. 

Much smaller, in fact!

It's about 10 centimeters long.

Can you believe it?

With such a small device, you can do what a huge hadron collider does!

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Of course, for now, this wake surfing device has been produced as a prototype.

It needs a lot more work.

I don't know if one day it will be much more developed and can be used instead of the huge machine at CERN.

There is hope, they say.

With a little more work and enough power, why not?

Remember, once upon a time, they used to carry what they called computers with cranes, and the first computers were huge pieces of equipment.

Now, look what I can do with the tiny cell phone in my hand. After all, cell phones are now computers too.

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So yes, why not? 

CERN may have been a waste of money.

If they had put a little more thought into it, maybe they could have designed a much simpler particle accelerator that would have gotten the same results without all that expense.

I guess it must have been very difficult to convince all those governments and politicians to invest in it.

There are already people in the scientific world raising their voices about CERN as a waste of money.

Actually, this subject always puzzles me too.

How can they spend so much money on such things?

Sometimes it really seems like a waste of money to me.

I'm all for science, of course, but science has its economies too, after all.

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What do you say? These young people are good, aren't they?

They can both surf and design new particle accelerators inspired by surfing.

Let's see what else we will hear in the world of science.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow.