"I ain't afraid of no ghost!"
Of course not.
You're in the Ghostbusters universe.
With a quick stomp,
demons are as good as gone.
So how would life change
if you could bust ghosts in real life?
In the new movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife,
a spooky tradition gets passed
on to the next generation.
This family has been using science
to catch ghosts since the 1980s,
but the concept is nothing new.
Ghostbusting revolves around electronegativity.
That means you'll be using positively charged atoms
to attract negatively charged particles.
You'll need heavy-duty power for this job.
Remember that in the films,
they use particle accelerators working at close to the speed of light.
In the original Ghostbusters movie,
the team wore portable particle accelerators called cyclotrons.
These devices used a constant,
high-frequency voltage contained
by a magnetic field.
Now, you would be using
something called a synchrotron.
This device would use superconducting
magnets to create the laser whip needed to lasso a ghost.
To catch a ghost,
you'd need to emit a particle stream
of protons along with raw nuclear energy.
In these films,
the spirits consist of psychokinetic energy.
"Die!"
And their energy has a negative charge.
So when this positively charged beam shoots out,
these floating nightmares can be dragged
into a positively charged laser grid.
We'll talk about that trap later.
Right now, let's focus on catching that ghost
without getting slimed.
When that hungry ghost hit actor Bill Murray,
it left behind a mess of slime
that the movie called ectoplasm.
In the real world,
ectoplasm doesn't exist.
But in the Ghostbusters' universe,
ectoplasm has a negative charge,
which the proton stream could trap.
Just keep your distance.
Ugh, it won't come off my hand.
Some amateur engineers have designed
cyclotrons only 8 cm (3 in) in diameter,
but that wouldn't be enough for you to bust a ghost.
Maybe you could use the energy produced by the Large Hadron Collider,
one of the most powerful particle accelerators ever made.
Much larger than an angry marshmallow man,
this monster is three times
the size of Mount Everest.
The particle accelerator's ring stretches
almost 27 km (16.7 mi) underground,
and superconducting magnets line the inside.
This scientific achievement cost billions of dollars.
But that one on your back,
well, that will run you around $125,000.
Not bad.
Now, let's talk about what you're wearing.
"Who you gonna call?"
"The nerds!"
This jumpsuit might be a classic,
but without proper protection,
the radiation from that laser
could damage your DNA,
and you might develop cancer in the long term.
Right now,
get out of the way.
This beam could instantly rip apart
the atoms of anything in its path.
And if you crossed two of these streams,
it could lead to every molecule exploding at the speed of light.
"Total protonic reversal."
"Alright, that's bad?"
Hey, watch where you're pointing that.
Once the trap door opens,
look away.
The positively charged radiation
your pack emitted would bring out
nanoparticles called muons.
These dense, negatively charged atoms
would weigh down the ghost
as the trap's positive charge would draw them inside.
And if the radiation hasn't killed you yet,
close that door.
With careful precautions,
you might have what it takes to go
head-to-uh, skull, with the undead.
So now that you mastered superconducting magnets,
"Oh my god."
maybe you're ready to take on a different movie franchise.
What if you built a lightsaber?
Alright, I've been waiting
for this for so long.
Oh, are you still here?
Sorry.
That's a story for another WHAT IF.