Shadowing Practice: What is This $3BN Machine Under New York? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
Okay, so here we go.
2
Ideas for another video on a big New York project.
3
Let's see what we've got.
4
Penn Station rebuild.
5
Yep, that's on the right track.
6
JFK's multi-billion dollar upgrade.
7
Yeah, I can see that one really taking off.
8
Oh, what's that?
9
Oh, must be in the wrong folder.
10
Ignore that.
11
Next up, a new skyscraper.
12
Yeah, love a New York skyscraper.
13
Oh, hang on a minute, there it is again.
14
Is that Long Island?
15
Okay, I'm curious now.
16
What is that thing?
17
Well, I was going to ask you guys to guess, but unless you're a nuclear physicist, then you probably won't know,
18
because this right here is a particle accelerator in New York.
19
And it's been there for more than quarter of a century.
20
Right on the doorstep of the world's most famous city.
21
But not anymore, because this spectacular contraption is now being shut down and replaced with something even crazier.
22
It's not often that a science megaproject creates an international media storm, but that's exactly what happened in 2008
23
when the completion of the Large Hadron Collider saw news trucks
24
from all over the world descend on Geneva for the official switch-on.
25
Everyone was fascinated by the idea of smashing subatomic particles together
26
in a massive underground ring to simulate what happened at the dawn of our universe.
27
And I mean, who didn't find that interesting at the time?
28
Especially because of some of the more colourful theories that were going around.
29
It could recreate the Big Bang and we'd all get sucked into this black hole.
30
It is possible, although it's extremely unlikely that CERN could create mini black holes.
31
Which is the worst type of black hole, because we'll all get drawn slowly towards Switzerland.
32
But none of that should have been a concern, because scientists in America were already conducting similar experiments and had been for years,
33
just on a much smaller scale.
34
As far as we're aware, no one got imploded, vaporised or teleported to another dimension.
35
Or maybe that's what they wanted us to think.
36
Anyway, it's called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider,
37
or RHIC, and began operation in 2000 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.
38
It's one of 17 federally funded research institutions that operate under the US Department of Energy spread across the country.
39
Again, it involved colliding particles together in a huge ring-shaped tunnel at almost light speed.
40
can clearly see that ring-shaped tunnel when you look down from above.
41
Like the Large Hadron Collider,
42
its purpose was to effectively recreate the conditions that occurred right after the Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago.
43
It did this by firing two beams of ions in opposite directions around the 3.8km ring
44
and smashing them together using over a thousand superconducting magnets.
45
These ions would typically be uranium nuclei or something similar,
46
even gold, and the machine would have them collide together in one of two spots.
47
We're referring to the gigantic detectors, named star and sphenix, where all the data is collected.
48
When the ions hit each other, they reached temperatures that were around 250,000 times higher than the core of our sun.
49
That's about 4 trillion degrees Celsius.
50
It caused them to effectively melt, releasing the tiny building blocks that form protons and neutrons,
51
as well as the glue-like substance that binds them together.
52
They're known as quarks and gluons.
53
What a relativistic heavy ion collider, or what we call RIC,
54
was trying to understand What was the state of matter just before the quarks and gluons started forming those protons and neutrons?
55
So what was the state of the universe when these quarks
56
and gluons were free to roam around in the available space of the universe?
57
Some pretty heavy stuff, I'm sure you'd agree.
58
The reason they often use gold, which might seem unnecessarily expensive at first, is because it's actually one of the heaviest common elements.
59
It means it's packed with protons and neutrons, which increases the chance of a collision, one that would create a quark-gluon plasma.
60
It's another name for the type of matter that existed at the time period Abbe was referring to.
61
Somewhere between one millionth and one trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
62
That form of matter where quarks and gluons are free to move around was something
63
that we had never seen before Rick came along.
64
So the questions for Rick were about what is that form of matter, how does it behave, what are its properties, so that's what Rick was doing.
65
Once the universe expanded and cooled, this plasma transformed to become the ordinary visible matter that makes up pretty much everything we know today.
66
Now imagine all of that's happening inside a tunnel where particles
67
collide at extreme temperatures covered with a radiation shield made of sand and earth.
68
It's the kind of place where things have to be done really carefully
69
and even the process of tunnelling itself can be incredibly hazardous.
70
With all the fast-paced drilling and grinding, as well as the atmosphere inside, exposure to dust, like silica, is very common.
71
Being able to monitor dust exposure in real time
72
and introduce control measures would certainly make me feel better about working in a tunnel.
73
I've been in many of them in all different countries around the world
74
and I know just how dusty those places can be.
75
That's where Trolloc's Air X range can help.
76
The Air XD dust monitor calculates the levels of dust in the air and the size of the particles, alerting workers if limits have been reached.
77
The air excess, meanwhile, can distinguish respirable crystalline silica from total dust loads.
78
All of Trollocs' freestanding transportable monitors feature a stainless steel casing with an IP66 rated enclosure,
79
which protects the housing from water, environmental contaminants and dust.
80
device menus, an industrial grade keypad and a display with an RGB backlight make it really easy to use as well.
81
They even have a data platform which provides both live
82
and historic data of all the dust levels your monitor has picked up since you started with it
83
and it's completely free to use.
84
So with Trolex you can identify the extent of a hazard, keep it under control quickly and cost effectively and most importantly keep your teams safe.
85
You can click the link below
86
or scan the QR code on screen to see how TrollX can help elevate your site safety today.
87
So now we know what to do about dust particles, let's go back to the world of particle physics.
88
If your brain hasn't melted like one of those ions by now, then all this talk of protons and neutrons might sound a bit familiar.
89
It's
90
because regular viewers of the B1M are going to recall my
91
trip to Sweden where I went inside a neutron research facility under construction called the European Spallation Source.
92
Imagining something as tiny as a neutron was difficult enough, but now we're talking about the bits and pieces that exist inside those.
93
RHIC was the first to prove how this plasma, that appeared after the Big Bang, behaved more like a liquid than a gas,
94
which is what many scientists thought at the time.
95
Then when the much bigger Large Hadron Collider came along a few years later, it was able to build on these findings by carrying out higher energy experiments.
96
So while CERN may have become one of the world's best known scientific organisations thanks to the LHC,
97
it was Brookhaven where most of the early breakthroughs were made.
98
But it didn't all begin with the RHIC.
99
Just south of that giant ring is a smaller one, where the world's leading particle accelerator at the time was launched in 1960.
100
This huge and complex machine, one half mile in circumference,
101
is housed in an earth-covered tunnel in order to shield people and sensitive equipment from the radiation present during operation.
102
Called the alternating gradient synchrotron, it was capable of shooting out protons at much higher energies than previously possible.
103
In fact, AGS was so successful that three Nobel Prizes were awarded off the back of it, and it's still in use today.
104
Those ions that were sent into the RHIC machine came from the synchrotron,
105
and it also provides particle beams to NASA's Space Radiation Laboratory on the same site.
106
As for RHIC itself, well, construction for what became that took place in the 1970s,
107
but it was actually meant for a completely different project that actually never completed.
108
That was called Isabel, and a decent amount of progress had been made, including excavating a tunnel before the project ran into trouble.
109
Problems with the superconducting magnets proved to be too great, and the whole scheme was cancelled just five years after it started.
110
A year later, it was suggested that the tunnel
111
and the parts already made that were usable could be used to create another accelerator.
112
And that would turn out to be RHIC, which began its first experiments almost two decades after Isabel was scrapped.
113
For more than 25 years, particles were being smashed together, while most New Yorkers didn't even realise it was there.
114
That was until early 2026, when scientists decided they'd done all they could with RHIC and it was permanently switched off.
115
Today we're doing something rare in science.
116
We are closing one of the most successful research facilities ever built by the US Department of Energy.
117
Basically, it had fulfilled its mission.
118
It had created plasma and researchers had spent years studying it.
119
And yet there were still questions that hadn't been addressed that only a new collider could answer.
120
The main one being how the quarks and gluons,
121
– those ingredients that are found inside protons and neutrons – are actually structured and what binds them together.
122
That's what RHIC's replacement, the Electron-Ion Collider, is going to set out to achieve.
123
Now unsurprisingly, based on its name, it's going to be colliding electrons with ions, the only accelerator in the world capable of doing so.
124
Quarks and other particles are scattered off of the target nucleus and are then picked up by a new detector.
125
where the results of those collisions are going to be, yes, you guessed it, detected.
126
It allows teams to study the forces generated
127
and uncover some of those secrets about quarks and gluons that continue to elude us,
128
including one that follows on from the LHC's most famous discovery, the Higgs boson.
129
That's the particle that gives all other fundamental particles, like quarks, their mass.
130
But when they come together to form a proton, these quarks only account for a small percentage of the proton's overall mass.
131
As for the rest… That is where the electron ion collider comes into picture.
132
LHC determines and explains 2% or 5% of the mass of the universe.
133
That gluon interaction is critical and unless we understand that, we won't understand the remaining 95% of the mass.
134
It's a tricky task, which is why it goes without saying that building particle accelerators is not an easy thing to do.
135
But much like its predecessor, EIC already has a head start.
136
Brookhaven plans to use much of the existing infrastructure, including RHIC's giant tunnel, although they are going to need to make some big changes on the inside.
137
Because it'll still be using ions, one of the two rings is staying where it is, while the second is being replaced with a ring that fires electrons.
138
It'll work in a similar way to its predecessor, with ions shooting off one way and electrons going in the other direction before they collide at a specific point,
139
which will be right here.
140
At the EPIC detector.
141
No, that's not just me calling it an epic detector, it's really what the B&L have named it.
142
Just this one part of the machine is going to be bigger than an American school bus.
143
Inside will be the 10-metre-long barrel detector, as well as additional instruments that will extend 45 meters in each direction down the beamline.
144
I just want to stop there for a moment to appreciate something that I think you guys might have just noticed.
145
That is a physical model of the detector that's clearly had a lot of effort put into it.
146
There are even little figures of scientists standing around chatting about clever stuff.
147
This guy looks like he's pondering something very important.
148
10 out of 10 guys, I absolutely love this.
149
No notes.
150
Other additions include the electron accelerator, complete with a new source for generating those particles built off to one site.
151
Then you've got the buildings that are going to be needed to supply and amplify power.
152
Plus, they might choose to add a second detector later on.
153
It's just a possibility at the moment.
154
While the RHIC had been offline for just a matter of weeks when we spoke to Abe, his team had wasted no time in getting started with the disassembly.
155
One of the rings of the rig has already been disconnected, there is no power on it,
156
and we are systematically taking each magnet out and placing it in the storage area.
157
So some magnets are moving from one part of the rig
158
to another part of the rig to be useful in the future, operations of the Electron-Ion Collider.
159
So that's the biggest activity which is going on right now.
160
More than a thousand magnets used on the RHIC are going to be retained in total, along with the same ion source,
161
meaning that the AGS won't be going into retirement itself for a little while yet.
162
Support buildings, roads, electrical and refrigeration facilities, they're all being carried over to the EIC as well.
163
In total, the EIC complex is going to comprise 34 buildings, covering over 34,000 square kilometres.
164
And for those of you desperate to find out what that is in American football fields, the answer is this – approximately six and a half of them.
165
Add in 42 substations to that, along with 15 cooling towers, 28 chiller units, five miles of tunnel piping,
166
and you've got a pretty comprehensive system to try and figure out.
167
The new collider is expected to cost almost $3 billion,
168
and that's on top of the $2 billion that was already invested in RHIC's infrastructure.
169
It's not going to be a quick job either.
170
The timeline doesn't have the machine operating until the mid-2030s.
171
You see, while there's a lot less to do than if they were starting completely from scratch, this is still going to be one of the most complicated projects on the planet.
172
We're talking about components that are incredibly specialised because nothing like this exists anywhere else.
173
And it's not really the kind of thing you want to rush.
174
Fortunately, BNL isn't working entirely on its own here.
175
Currently we have institutions from around the world,
176
forming about 1600 to 1800 people who are interested in coming and working with us.
177
And this is going to grow before we start operating.
178
We're going to go at least, I'm guessing, one and a half or two times larger by the time we start running the collider.
179
But roughly it is 50% US and 50% rest of the world.
180
So it is truly an international endeavour." Several of the partner firms are supplying it with high-tech components too.
181
For example, these huge magnets
182
that were once part of the Advanced Photon Source at Argon National Laboratory in Illinois are being repurposed for the new collider.
183
It'll represent the next leap forward in particle physics, and even when more advanced accelerators are being built in the future,
184
they'll likely be influenced in some way by the EIC.
185
And this doesn't just all mean bigger, fancier toys for the scientists to play with.
186
The upgrades being made here could lead to improved particle beams that are used to fight cancer,
187
or to enhance the accelerators that are used to design computer chips, or to advance new forms of clean energy.
188
If you're thinking
189
that spending time exploring the origins of our universe isn't really
190
a top priority given every other challenge we've got coming at us in 2026, then bear in mind that this stuff really could fundamentally change our world,
191
and it's hard not to get inspired by that.
192
Thanks again to TrollX for sponsoring today's video.
193
Don't forget you can click the link below
194
or scan the QR code on screen to see how TrollX can help elevate your site safety today.
195
And as always guys, if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction, make sure you're subscribed to the B1M.
📺 Same Channel
B22
New York's Buckling Tower: What Happens Now?
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B23
Germany Has Finally Built a Decent Airport
British AccentBusiness EnglishTravel EnglishUniversity Students
B24
The World's Most Beautiful Bridge Just Opened
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
Powering The Internet is Becoming a Big Problem
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C14
Why Europe Doesn't Build Skyscrapers
British AccentIELTS PrepTOEFL PrepUniversity Students
C18
Vietnam’s $67BN Gamble on High-Speed Rail
British AccentIELTS PrepBusiness EnglishUniversity Students
B2Why the World’s Biggest Aquarium is Being Built in Secret
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ Recommend Video
B25
450 sentences
I bought the most SATISFYING TECH on the internet.
British AccentBusiness EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
C11
195 sentences
How Solar Is Beating Nuclear's Best Idea
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
283 sentences
The Gaming Market is Starting to Break.
British AccentBusiness EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
23 sentences
Black Hole Documentary 2019 - Part 1
University StudentsWorking Adults
B24
28 sentences
The secret underground pipeline across Britain
British AccentUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C18
156 sentences
How Quantum Batteries Break Every Rule of Charging
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
85 sentences
stop running away from reality.
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
398 sentences
THIS Is Where the Internet Lives
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C12
182 sentences
We Let $200 GPT-Pro Think for 7 Days on Unsolved Math
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
51 sentences
What's Under Your Feet in New York City?
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
36 sentences
THREE PREDICTIONS THAT WILL SHAKE THE WORLD
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “What is This $3BN Machine Under New York?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: particle, ion, collider. This video has 195 sentences and 2780 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:34. The speaker talks at a natural 158 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| particle noun | /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/ | A very small piece of matter, a fragment; especially, the smallest possible part of something. |
| collider noun | /kəˈlaɪdɚ/ | Any of several forms of particle accelerator in which two opposing beams of particles collide. |
| quark noun | /kwɑɹk/ | In the Standard Model, one of a number of elementary subatomic particles having fractional electric charge that forms matter. They are theorized not to exist… |
| accelerator noun | /əkˈsɛl.əˌɹeɪ.tɚ/ | One who, or that which, accelerates. |
| gluon noun | /ˈɡlu.ɑn/ | A massless gauge boson that binds quarks together to form baryons, mesons and other hadrons and is associated with the strong nuclear force. |
| neutron noun | /ˈnu.tɹɑn/ | A subatomic particle forming part of the nucleus of an atom and having no charge; it is a combination of an up quark and two down quarks. |
| proton noun | /ˈpɹoʊ.tɑn/ | A positively charged subatomic particle forming part of the nucleus of an atom and determining the atomic number of an element, composed of two up quarks and a… |
| detector noun | /dɪˈtɛktə(ɹ)/ | A device capable of registering a specific substance or physical phenomenon, and that optionally sounds an alarm or triggers a warning. |
| magnet noun | /ˈmæɡ.nɪt/ | A piece of material that attracts some metals by magnetism. |
| collide verb | /kəˈlaɪd/ | To impact directly, especially if violent. |
| electron noun | /ɪˈlɛk.tɹɑn/ | The subatomic particle having a negative charge and orbiting the nucleus; the flow of electrons in a conductor constitutes electricity. |
| plasma noun | /ˈplæzmə/ | A state of matter consisting of partially ionized gas and electrons. |
| electrons noun | The digital or electronic version of a document. | |
| smash verb | /smæʃ/ | To break (something brittle) violently. |
| elevate verb | /ˈɛləveɪt/ | To raise (something) to a higher position. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come along verb | To accompany. | |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. | |
| carry out verb | /ˈkæ.ɹi aʊt/ | To hold while moving it out. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| go around verb | To move or spread from person to person. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Let's see what we've got.
- Some pretty heavy stuff, I'm sure you'd agree.
- Today we're doing something rare in science.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being shut · was fascinated · is collected |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've been · have been reached · has picked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | task, which is · activity which is · people who are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 40 contractions and reduced forms, such as we're, didn't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: smash /smæʃ/, enclosure /ɛnˈkloʊʒəɹ/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/, collision /kəˈlɪʒn̩/, dimension /daɪˈmɛn.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: accelerator /əkˈsɛl.əˌɹeɪ.tɚ/, relativistic /ˈɹɛl.ə.təˌvɪst.ɪk/, synchrotron /ˈsɪŋkɹə(ʊ)tɹɒn/, predecessor /ˈpɹɛd.ə.sɛs.ɚ/, kilometre /kɪˈlɑmɪtəɹ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like particle, collider, quark.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.