Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / How was the Higgs boson discovered?

Transcript

How was the Higgs boson discovered? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, did you celebrate July fourth? Of course, it's
0:11
Speaker 1: a really important day in history. July fourth, two thousand
0:15
Speaker 1: and twelves two thousand twelve. You mean seventy right, American
0:19
Speaker 1: Independence Day? Oh? I mean, yeah, that's important too, But
0:22
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve was a much more important day,
0:25
Speaker 1: more important than the founding of our country. Yeah, this
0:28
Speaker 1: is like cosmically important, all right, I'll buy what happened
0:31
Speaker 1: on July four, two thousand and twelve. July four, two
0:35
Speaker 1: twelve is the Higgs Dependence Day. It's the day we
0:38
Speaker 1: announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. Did we beat
0:41
Speaker 1: the British to it? Or it was our reunion with Britain?
0:44
Speaker 1: We did it together. Hi am Jorge. I'm a cartoonists
1:02
Speaker 1: and the creator of PhD comics. Hi. I'm Daniel Whitson.
1:05
Speaker 1: I'm a particle physicist, and the only particle I've ever
1:08
Speaker 1: helped discover was the Higgs boson. Oh nice, I've discovered
1:12
Speaker 1: lots of particles. There's plenty of dust particles in my house,
1:15
Speaker 1: none of which are particularly interesting. Some of them are big,
1:18
Speaker 1: but not Higgs. But welcome to our podcast. Daniel and
1:20
Speaker 1: Jorge explain the Universe, a production of I Heart Radio
1:23
Speaker 1: in which we talk about all the crazy and amazing
1:26
Speaker 1: things that we find in our universe. We take you
1:28
Speaker 1: to the forefront of knowledge where scientists are trying to
1:31
Speaker 1: figure out how everything works, and we show you how
1:34
Speaker 1: you can understand it to how your curiosity is the
1:37
Speaker 1: same as theirs. Yeah, and we like to talk about
1:39
Speaker 1: not just the things that scientists discover and what we
1:42
Speaker 1: understand about them, but we also like to talk about
1:45
Speaker 1: how they were discovered because we think this it's a
1:48
Speaker 1: very important part of understanding science and how science works,
1:51
Speaker 1: and what science knows and what it can know. That's right.
1:54
Speaker 1: Sometimes particle physics is presented is like a grand edifice
1:58
Speaker 1: that we've put together all at once, But really it's
2:00
Speaker 1: sort of like a sloppy house of cars that we've
2:03
Speaker 1: been building bit by bit over the last hundred years,
2:06
Speaker 1: and each piece was added painfully and with great effort
2:09
Speaker 1: due to lots of theorists and experimentalists working hard. And
2:12
Speaker 1: usually there are fun, juicy political dramas along the way.
2:16
Speaker 1: I guess it's made out of particles, the house of particles.
2:19
Speaker 1: Everything's made out of particles. Man Or Field, you did
2:22
Speaker 1: a TV series called House of Particles. There's definitely enough
2:26
Speaker 1: drama in particle physics to fuel a whole soap opera.
2:30
Speaker 1: Hopefully nobody gets pushed into a train or anything like that.
2:32
Speaker 1: But more than that, we want you to understand that
2:34
Speaker 1: this idea of particle physics, these things that we understand,
2:38
Speaker 1: are not just some theoretical concept, but they're slowly built
2:41
Speaker 1: up from actual discoveries, experiments. We've done, things that we
2:45
Speaker 1: forced the universe to reveal, and it's those experiments, those
2:48
Speaker 1: actual discoveries, those confrontations with nature that formed the foundation
2:52
Speaker 1: of that understanding. Yeah, because I think it's easy, once
2:55
Speaker 1: you know something to just forget that you at some
2:58
Speaker 1: point didn't know something. You know, like, think back when
3:01
Speaker 1: you're a kid and you didn't know about the universe
3:03
Speaker 1: or galaxies or planets. What were you thinking, Like, what
3:06
Speaker 1: was your view of the world. That's right, Like, before
3:08
Speaker 1: I knew that bananas were gross, I thought like, hey,
3:10
Speaker 1: maybe they were okay, But now I can never go
3:12
Speaker 1: back to a universe in which bananas could be digestive.
3:16
Speaker 1: Hey more bananas for me, Man, Mandy that you don't
3:19
Speaker 1: like them, it all works out, But you know, sometimes
3:22
Speaker 1: I like to imagine like alternative universes in which discoveries
3:25
Speaker 1: were made in different orders and different things were weird
3:28
Speaker 1: or puzzling, because you know, the reason that things seem
3:30
Speaker 1: weird is only because we haven't seen the whole picture.
3:33
Speaker 1: It's like when you're doing a jigsaw puzzle and you
3:35
Speaker 1: don't know like where these pieces go or what's that's
3:37
Speaker 1: going to reveal. The nature of the questions comes from
3:39
Speaker 1: the past you haven't found yet, But in some sense
3:42
Speaker 1: that's just due to luck. You know, we found this before,
3:44
Speaker 1: we found that, We stumbled over this before we stumbled
3:46
Speaker 1: over that. So the history of these discoveries is really
3:49
Speaker 1: important for you to understand why we're asking the questions
3:52
Speaker 1: we're asking now. Yeah, so to be on the program,
3:55
Speaker 1: we are covering some pretty recent history of physics wise,
3:59
Speaker 1: and we're probably the most famous particle I think in
4:03
Speaker 1: culture these days and maybe in physics. That's right, and
4:06
Speaker 1: that's not something I'm grumpy about. I mean, I think
4:08
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson deserves its role, is the most famous particle.
4:11
Speaker 1: It plays a really a central role in our theory,
4:14
Speaker 1: and it's a really epic struggle to find it. The
4:17
Speaker 1: search for it goes over many billions of dollars and
4:20
Speaker 1: many different particle colliders and many decades. Yeah, so to
4:23
Speaker 1: be on the program, we'll be asking the question, how
4:30
Speaker 1: was the Higgs boson discovered on a Tuesday? Right, wasn't
4:33
Speaker 1: it or a Wednesday? You know, it was no single moment.
4:38
Speaker 1: I think that's the short answer to the question. It's
4:40
Speaker 1: not like we came into work one day and boom,
4:43
Speaker 1: there was a Higgs boson in our email inbox. You know,
4:46
Speaker 1: We're like we found one in the center of the lab,
4:48
Speaker 1: or there was just one moment when the results were
4:51
Speaker 1: like boom, there we have it in sort of a
4:53
Speaker 1: slow build, the gradually accumulation of data, a very gentle,
4:57
Speaker 1: gradual reveal, not like an exciting plot twist at the end.
5:01
Speaker 1: I guess it wasn't discovered with the bang. It was
5:04
Speaker 1: more like with twenty three Brazilian bangs. A second. It's
5:08
Speaker 1: like somebody very slowly drawing back the curtains so you
5:11
Speaker 1: can see more and more and more of the drama
5:13
Speaker 1: builds slowly, but then you know you need to have
5:15
Speaker 1: a date. You need to have a moment where you say, okay,
5:18
Speaker 1: this is it. We've decided we've discovered it, so that's
5:21
Speaker 1: officially the moment of discovery. You guys picked your life four. Yeah,
5:25
Speaker 1: that's just sort of random, just so a fun coincidence.
5:27
Speaker 1: And that's why we get to call it Higgs Dependence
5:29
Speaker 1: Day because we depend on the Higgs. I guess we
5:31
Speaker 1: all depend on the Higgs. Really, the whole universe depend
5:34
Speaker 1: on the The whole universe does totally depend on the Higgs.
5:37
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for the Higgs boson, our universe would
5:39
Speaker 1: be totally different. And also, the Higgs boson is sort
5:42
Speaker 1: of precariously balanced. It's in this weird high energy state,
5:46
Speaker 1: and it's the reason that particles have certain masses, and
5:49
Speaker 1: if that changed, then the universe would totally change. It
5:52
Speaker 1: would collapse into something unrecognizable to us. So thank Gosh
5:56
Speaker 1: for the Higgs boson doing what it does. He's saying
5:59
Speaker 1: it rules by fear. We must more worship, but otherwise
6:03
Speaker 1: it's gonna have destory the universe. I think the Higgs
6:05
Speaker 1: boson would rather be feared than loved. Yeah, it should
6:09
Speaker 1: be called the Machiavelli particle, not the God particle. All right, Well,
6:13
Speaker 1: it's a very important particle and it was discovered recently,
6:15
Speaker 1: and there's a bit of drama about it and a
6:18
Speaker 1: lot of interesting twists of the stories. So we'll get
6:20
Speaker 1: into that today, but first it's usually we were wondering
6:23
Speaker 1: how many people out there had heard of the story
6:26
Speaker 1: or know about the details of how the Higgs boson
6:29
Speaker 1: was discovered. That's right, So I asked people to volunteer
6:32
Speaker 1: to answer random science questions on the Internet, not knowing
6:35
Speaker 1: anything about what I would ask them, and no googling
6:38
Speaker 1: allowed to Thank you to everybody who participated, and if
6:41
Speaker 1: you'd like to volunteer your voice for future random science questions,
6:45
Speaker 1: please write to us two questions at Daniel and Jorge
6:48
Speaker 1: dot com. All right, so before you listen to these answers,
6:51
Speaker 1: think about it for a second. What do you remember
6:53
Speaker 1: about July fourth? Here's what people had to say. The
6:57
Speaker 1: Higgs boson was discovered, You thing the lhc um some
7:04
Speaker 1: sequence of particle the case was detected that backed up
7:09
Speaker 1: the theory existing on the Higgs. I know where its
7:12
Speaker 1: cern large hydron collider, but how most likely shooting and
7:19
Speaker 1: colliding particles of the Higgs boson was discovered in the
7:23
Speaker 1: large HYDRONI the Higgs boson was predicted by Peter Higgs
7:27
Speaker 1: and others, and then it was discovered in two thousand
7:30
Speaker 1: twelve in the Large Head Dround Collider. It was discovered
7:35
Speaker 1: in the Large Hadron Collider, and it was by zooming
7:39
Speaker 1: around hydrogen or helium electrons very close to the speed
7:44
Speaker 1: of light. I think it was discovered with the Large
7:47
Speaker 1: Hydron Collider, But as to how, I don't know. I
7:52
Speaker 1: know that Higgs boson first discovered. In theory, we knew
7:56
Speaker 1: that every force has an acting party ill and for gravity,
8:02
Speaker 1: we called that particular Higgs. Physicists, even someone like I'm son,
8:10
Speaker 1: figured out that there was something missing, and they kept
8:14
Speaker 1: looking forward, looking for and it was my understanding that
8:17
Speaker 1: Higgs was the one that came up with the idea
8:22
Speaker 1: of how it might might exist. If the Higgs boson
8:25
Speaker 1: gives mass two particles, I'm going to suggest that they
8:28
Speaker 1: started with a particle with known mass. I think I
8:31
Speaker 1: heard in one of you guys podcasts that they were
8:33
Speaker 1: discovered by the Large Hadron Collidas, so I'd assume that
8:36
Speaker 1: tell it was discovered. I'm not sure, though, I feel
8:40
Speaker 1: like I should know that one, and I think maybe
8:44
Speaker 1: we were smashing some particles together and found some extra
8:49
Speaker 1: energy that we couldn't account for. All Right, some pretty
8:52
Speaker 1: knowledgeable answers here. You guys did a pretty good job
8:55
Speaker 1: of educating the public. Yeah. I think it's also a
8:57
Speaker 1: good pr by the LHC team because it's sort of
9:01
Speaker 1: the particle collider that's in people's minds. I mean, I
9:04
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember where we also asked people
9:06
Speaker 1: how the top cork was discovered, and the answers were
9:08
Speaker 1: basically the same by the Large change on collider, even
9:11
Speaker 1: though that one was actually discovered by the previous collider.
9:14
Speaker 1: So I think that this is a win for the
9:16
Speaker 1: l a C as being the particle collider that's in
9:19
Speaker 1: the forefront of people's minds and the tips of their tongues.
9:21
Speaker 1: You're like the Kleenex of physics experiments. You know, pretty
9:25
Speaker 1: soon they're going to call all colliders. That's right, I
9:28
Speaker 1: blow my nose in the LHC. Alright, So let's step
9:30
Speaker 1: us through the history here, Daniel. We're going to get
9:33
Speaker 1: into how it was discovered and how can we know
9:36
Speaker 1: that it's actually there. So take us back to before.
9:40
Speaker 1: What do we know and why do we think the
9:43
Speaker 1: Higgs boson existed? So The Higgs boson is one of
9:46
Speaker 1: these particles that has a long history because we thought
9:49
Speaker 1: it existed before we discovered it. There are a lot
9:52
Speaker 1: of people who suspected it was there, and there is
9:54
Speaker 1: a grand tradition of this and particle physics of like
9:57
Speaker 1: looking at the patterns of the particles that we see
10:00
Speaker 1: and seeing something missing, or you know, not having a
10:03
Speaker 1: question answered and finding a missing piece that answers that question.
10:07
Speaker 1: It's just like with the jigsaw puzzle or with the
10:09
Speaker 1: periodic table, if there's a hole in the periodic table,
10:11
Speaker 1: you wonder like, why is that hole there? Wouldn't this
10:13
Speaker 1: make more sense if there was something else there. So
10:16
Speaker 1: people spent a lot of time thinking about the patterns
10:18
Speaker 1: of the particles that we had seen and wondering about
10:21
Speaker 1: some things about them they didn't understand, and using that
10:24
Speaker 1: to predict the existence of this Higgs boson and also
10:27
Speaker 1: this Higgs field. But in this case wasn't really a
10:30
Speaker 1: pattern because I know, for the like some of the
10:32
Speaker 1: other courts, it was sort of based on a pattern,
10:34
Speaker 1: But here wasn't it more like about the math and
10:36
Speaker 1: looking at the equations and like, oh, it's missing some
10:39
Speaker 1: field here to make it all balanced out. Yeah, Actually
10:42
Speaker 1: it was a lack of a pattern. You see, in
10:44
Speaker 1: the second half of this last century, people had understood
10:47
Speaker 1: that there was a deep connection between electromagnetism, you know,
10:50
Speaker 1: thing responsible for electricity and magnets, and the thing that
10:53
Speaker 1: gives us the photon, and this other force, the weak
10:56
Speaker 1: nuclear force, the one responsible for radioactive decay, and that
11:00
Speaker 1: force has three particles, a Z particle and two W particles,
11:04
Speaker 1: and people that understood that actually these two different forces
11:08
Speaker 1: were just parts of the same force, the electro weak force,
11:12
Speaker 1: and the photon belonged with sort of a gang. It
11:14
Speaker 1: was actually not just like one photon over here and
11:17
Speaker 1: three week particles over there. They're part of this gang
11:20
Speaker 1: of four particles. And mathematically it fit together beautifully. It's
11:25
Speaker 1: just like a missing part of the jigsaw puzzle finally
11:27
Speaker 1: clicked into place and you could understand why things look
11:30
Speaker 1: the way they looked. It was just really gorgeous. Like
11:32
Speaker 1: from the group theory point of view, it satisfied lots
11:35
Speaker 1: of symmetries, but there was one problem. The problem is
11:39
Speaker 1: that the photon is really different from these other bosons
11:43
Speaker 1: in an important way that you mentioned, and that it
11:45
Speaker 1: has no mass, whereas the other ones are really heavy,
11:49
Speaker 1: And so what made us think that they were all
11:51
Speaker 1: together in a gang? You know, like, is it because
11:54
Speaker 1: they all transmit the same force kind of or do
11:58
Speaker 1: they behave in a similar way. They do kind of
12:00
Speaker 1: behave in a similar way. I mean, electrons very familiar particles.
12:05
Speaker 1: They like to interact with photons, but also with the
12:08
Speaker 1: weak bosons, the ws and disease and that's it. Electrons
12:12
Speaker 1: don't interact with anything else. That's all they interact with,
12:16
Speaker 1: and so it feels sort of natural to connect all
12:19
Speaker 1: the particles that electrons and also muons and taws talk
12:22
Speaker 1: to and look for a pattern among them to see
12:24
Speaker 1: if they fit into like a larger grouping. It's like
12:27
Speaker 1: when you put electricity and magnetism together. Electricity is a
12:31
Speaker 1: bunch of different phenomena that you observe and magnetism are
12:34
Speaker 1: a bunch of different phenomena that you observe. But you
12:36
Speaker 1: notice that sometimes electric charges cause magnetism and sometimes magnetism
12:42
Speaker 1: can induce electricity, and so it makes more sense to
12:45
Speaker 1: think of them as one thing. I mean, there are
12:47
Speaker 1: different phenomenon, right, It's not like magnets are electrical, but
12:51
Speaker 1: there really makes more sense. It's simpler just to think
12:54
Speaker 1: of it as part of a larger combination. The Yeah,
12:57
Speaker 1: it's like they're two sides of the same coin. And
13:00
Speaker 1: so you get this beautiful connection if you plug the
13:02
Speaker 1: photon in with these other three particles in the same
13:05
Speaker 1: way as if you merge electricity and magnetism, you get
13:09
Speaker 1: these beautiful symmetries. And particle physics is all about symmetries,
13:12
Speaker 1: about finding these patterns. And we don't know why the
13:15
Speaker 1: universe has symmetries. We don't know why it has patterns,
13:18
Speaker 1: but we have found that when you look for patterns,
13:20
Speaker 1: typically those things are clues there, hints. They show you
13:24
Speaker 1: how the universe works, Like everything needs to do somehow
13:27
Speaker 1: balance together, or it would be weird if it wasn't symmetry. Yeah, precisely.
13:31
Speaker 1: And here we have a really beautiful symmetry electroweak symmetry.
13:35
Speaker 1: These particles all fit together in this really nice way.
13:38
Speaker 1: And specifically you can like rotate your way through this
13:42
Speaker 1: four dimensional space. You have four particles there. If the
13:45
Speaker 1: symmetry works, you can rotate between them. And so like
13:47
Speaker 1: the photon and the z should play the same role,
13:49
Speaker 1: you should be able to rotate between them. But the
13:51
Speaker 1: problem is the symmetry was broken. It didn't quite work
13:54
Speaker 1: because the photon is very very light as no mass,
13:58
Speaker 1: and the z was very very heavy. So it's like
14:00
Speaker 1: an almost symmetry. It's like it's like a hint, like
14:03
Speaker 1: this almost works, but what about this one piece and
14:06
Speaker 1: that piece sort of stuck in physicist I for a
14:09
Speaker 1: long time. It's like looking in the mirror and it's
14:12
Speaker 1: seeing kind of a different image of yourself. You're like
14:14
Speaker 1: something's going on here, yeah, and it's like almost right,
14:18
Speaker 1: but not quite. And so they wanted to understand, like
14:20
Speaker 1: is this symmetry just flawed and we throw it out
14:22
Speaker 1: the window, or is there a reason why it's broken?
14:25
Speaker 1: Is that a clue? Does that explain something else? Because
14:28
Speaker 1: the symmetry was too good to abandon, you know. On
14:31
Speaker 1: the other hand, there's lots of times in the history
14:33
Speaker 1: of physics when we thought we've had a beautiful idea
14:35
Speaker 1: and had to throw it away because it just didn't work.
14:37
Speaker 1: Like mathematically it works, but nature says no. So sometimes
14:41
Speaker 1: that happens. But sometimes you know, it's just a clue
14:44
Speaker 1: that like you need to refine it or tweak it
14:46
Speaker 1: or twist it. And so that's what the Higgs boson was.
14:48
Speaker 1: It was a refinement of this theory to help it work. Right,
14:52
Speaker 1: Although I feel like it's weird because I feel like
14:54
Speaker 1: you physicists started wanting things to be symmetric, but nowadays
14:58
Speaker 1: they accepted some things are not symmetric. Yeah, well, you know,
15:01
Speaker 1: the universe doesn't know is obey these symmetries. You know,
15:04
Speaker 1: we'd like to see symmetry because it's like beautiful and pretty.
15:07
Speaker 1: But then the universe says, yeah, that's nice, but I
15:10
Speaker 1: don't follow those rules. And so then we got to
15:12
Speaker 1: figure out why, like what are the real symmetries, you know,
15:15
Speaker 1: or how do we break these symmetries in the smallest
15:18
Speaker 1: possible ways? So our theories are still pretty right, I guess.
15:21
Speaker 1: I mean, like we had known back then that some
15:23
Speaker 1: symmetries can be broken, would you still have looked for
15:25
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson or come up with the Higgs boson
15:28
Speaker 1: or would you have just said, oh, well it's not
15:29
Speaker 1: to meat. That's a great question, I think. So, I mean,
15:32
Speaker 1: there's just so much evidence that suggests that the weak
15:34
Speaker 1: force and electricity magnetism are connected. You have to find
15:38
Speaker 1: some way to connect them. So I think it's too
15:40
Speaker 1: tempting to avoid, So okay, So then that's how they
15:43
Speaker 1: came up with the Higgs field. It's like, hey, let's
15:46
Speaker 1: put a number here to make it all balanced out,
15:48
Speaker 1: and let's call that the Higgs field. Yeah, because you
15:50
Speaker 1: can't just say I'm gonna make these particles massive, I'm
15:53
Speaker 1: just gonna put in by hand some numbers and make
15:56
Speaker 1: the W and the Z massive because that breaks the
15:58
Speaker 1: kind of symmetry that you're trying to protect. It's called
16:01
Speaker 1: the local gauge symmetry of electroweak symmetry lets you rotate
16:04
Speaker 1: these particles between themselves. So if you put the masses in,
16:07
Speaker 1: it just breaks that symmetry. So they found another way
16:10
Speaker 1: to give these particles mass. It's like, don't put the
16:12
Speaker 1: mass on the particle itself. Instead give it mass from
16:16
Speaker 1: its environment. So the mass is no longer like something
16:19
Speaker 1: that belongs to the particle itself. It's an after effect.
16:22
Speaker 1: It's an emergent phenomena from interacting with its environment. Like
16:27
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't come from the photon, but maybe there's
16:29
Speaker 1: just something about space or the universe that somehow we're
16:33
Speaker 1: not seeing. But magically balances out the equations. Yeah, we
16:36
Speaker 1: talked about this on another podcast about renormalization. How for example,
16:41
Speaker 1: the actual charge of the electron all by itself is
16:44
Speaker 1: like negative infinity, and it's only an interaction with the
16:47
Speaker 1: complex vacuum of space that it gets brought up to
16:50
Speaker 1: minus one. And in the same way, the masses of
16:53
Speaker 1: these particles by themselves, like the Z and the w
16:56
Speaker 1: all by themselves and an empty universe would have mass zero,
16:59
Speaker 1: but you put them in our universe with a complex
17:02
Speaker 1: vacuum with particles and fields, whenever they look like they
17:05
Speaker 1: have this heavier mass, and that's because they interact with
17:07
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. So it's a clever way to effectively
17:10
Speaker 1: give mass to these particles without actually putting it on them,
17:13
Speaker 1: so you don't break this symmetry. It's like a clever
17:16
Speaker 1: little mathematical trick. I guess the idea is that it's
17:19
Speaker 1: not a property of the particles, but it's more like
17:22
Speaker 1: a property of interacting with something, and that's different. That's different.
17:26
Speaker 1: Although all we can do is measure our interactions, and
17:28
Speaker 1: so it's a bit of a philosophical difference, Like we
17:31
Speaker 1: talked about in the case of the renormalization episode, like,
17:34
Speaker 1: what does it really mean for the particle to have
17:36
Speaker 1: no mass in an empty universe. It's never gonna be
17:39
Speaker 1: in an empty universe. It's always going to be in
17:41
Speaker 1: our universe. And so it's a bit of a mathematical
17:43
Speaker 1: philosophical distinction, but it lets us keep this symmetry because
17:46
Speaker 1: we think the symmetry deals with like the bear the
17:49
Speaker 1: pure particle by itself. All right, pretty cool. Let's now
17:53
Speaker 1: get into how we actually found this magic or not
17:56
Speaker 1: magic particle that gives everything mass and what the search
18:01
Speaker 1: for it was like. But first let's take a quick break.
18:17
Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, we're celebrating Higgs Dependence Day, the day
18:20
Speaker 1: that we learned of our deep dependence on the Higgs boson,
18:24
Speaker 1: which was July four, a little over eight years ago.
18:28
Speaker 1: So how do we actually find this Higgs boson. It's
18:31
Speaker 1: important to understand that the first idea was not for
18:34
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, but for Higgs field. This is some new
18:37
Speaker 1: quantum field that fills the universe and has this effect
18:40
Speaker 1: that gives the Z and the W mass and not
18:43
Speaker 1: the photon. But one prediction of the field is that,
18:47
Speaker 1: like all other fields, if you give them a little
18:49
Speaker 1: blob of energy if you excite them. If you get
18:51
Speaker 1: a little packet of excited field, then that looks like
18:54
Speaker 1: a particle. So there's a prediction also for a new particle,
18:57
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. So the field and the part cool
19:00
Speaker 1: have the same relationship as other particles and fields. But
19:03
Speaker 1: what we found was not directly the Higgs field. We
19:06
Speaker 1: look for the Higgs boson, which is the particle from
19:08
Speaker 1: that could could you have a field without a particle,
19:11
Speaker 1: could you know, think the Higgs field but not the
19:14
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, or when you predict the Higgs field, you
19:17
Speaker 1: automatically predict the Higgs boson. Well, that's a great question.
19:20
Speaker 1: I think that every quantum field has to have a particle.
19:23
Speaker 1: I can't think of an example of a quantum file
19:26
Speaker 1: it doesn't have a particle, and I think that your
19:28
Speaker 1: interaction with it in terms of perturbation theories always described
19:32
Speaker 1: in terms of particles. But you know, I'm not sure
19:34
Speaker 1: that's a that's a really fun question. We'll smoke some
19:36
Speaker 1: banana peals and think about that deep question someday. But
19:39
Speaker 1: I guess it was. So it's all sort of together,
19:41
Speaker 1: like when Peter Higgs came up with this idea of
19:44
Speaker 1: like playing this in to make the equations, where he
19:46
Speaker 1: must have known right away that meant that there was
19:49
Speaker 1: a particle involved too. Yes, absolutely, and you know, Peter
19:52
Speaker 1: Higgs sort of wins the race to get his name
19:55
Speaker 1: put on this, but there were lots of other people
19:57
Speaker 1: coming up with very similar ideas at the same time,
20:00
Speaker 1: and they submitted papers like within weeks of each other,
20:03
Speaker 1: and so there's still a lot of bitterness. And in
20:05
Speaker 1: some parts of the world it's not called the Higgs Boson,
20:08
Speaker 1: it's called the b. E. H Boson because there's two
20:11
Speaker 1: other guys, Brout and Englert, who have their names on it. Also,
20:15
Speaker 1: so depending on like where your conference is, it's called
20:17
Speaker 1: the b. E. H Boson or the Higgs Boson or
20:20
Speaker 1: really you have to like code switch when you go
20:22
Speaker 1: between conferences. Yeah, precisely. And there's a whole group of
20:26
Speaker 1: Americans who are totally left out of the Nobel Prize
20:29
Speaker 1: and the naming and they're grumpy and all their friends
20:31
Speaker 1: call it after them, and so yeah, you totally have
20:34
Speaker 1: to switch. Oh man, But you know, I like the
20:37
Speaker 1: Higgs name. I feel like it's better than you feel
20:40
Speaker 1: like it best sounds like you burped or something, right, Yeah,
20:44
Speaker 1: but Higgs sounds pretty well if I'm insulting like all
20:48
Speaker 1: of Europe right now, mostly just Belgium. Actually, well they
20:52
Speaker 1: don't get insulted, so they're just drinking Belgian. Well, they
20:56
Speaker 1: have good fries and waffles anyway. So what we do
20:58
Speaker 1: is we look for the boson, not the field, And
21:01
Speaker 1: like with other particles, the way you make it is
21:03
Speaker 1: you use a collider and you smash particles together to
21:06
Speaker 1: try to make enough energy in a tiny little spot
21:09
Speaker 1: that the universe can make heavy particles. Most of the
21:12
Speaker 1: universe is like dilute and cool, and so there isn't
21:15
Speaker 1: enough energy to make anything except for very light stable
21:18
Speaker 1: particles like electrons and quirks that we're made up. But
21:21
Speaker 1: if you want to find new stuff, you've got to
21:23
Speaker 1: collide particles that really high energy and create those little
21:25
Speaker 1: packets of energy. The nature can then turn, sometimes very rarely,
21:30
Speaker 1: into an excitation of the Higgs field and give you
21:32
Speaker 1: a Higgs boson. I guess one question I have is,
21:36
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like the Higgs field is so
21:38
Speaker 1: pervasive and so integral to all particles, and it's like
21:42
Speaker 1: it's always there, Like, why is it so hard to
21:46
Speaker 1: make it BLib you know, Like, if it's right there,
21:48
Speaker 1: why does it have such a big threshold for us
21:51
Speaker 1: to find it. Why couldn't we have found it earlier
21:53
Speaker 1: with lower energy collider. Yeah, that's a great question, And
21:56
Speaker 1: the key is the mass. The prediction from Peter Higgs
21:59
Speaker 1: was there is this field, and therefore there is this particle.
22:02
Speaker 1: But he couldn't predict what the mass of that particle was.
22:05
Speaker 1: It could have been very very very light, in which
22:07
Speaker 1: case it would have been discovered just a few years
22:09
Speaker 1: after he predicted it, or it could have been super
22:12
Speaker 1: heavy so that we hadn't even discovered it yet, And
22:15
Speaker 1: so he didn't know how heavy it was. And like
22:18
Speaker 1: with all things in collider world, the heavier it is,
22:21
Speaker 1: the more energy you need to make it, and so
22:23
Speaker 1: the bigger your collider has to be, and so the
22:25
Speaker 1: more expensive it is, and so it just took time
22:28
Speaker 1: to build a big enough collider to find it. I
22:30
Speaker 1: guess you need energy to make it, but I guess,
22:34
Speaker 1: you know, it's sort of a weird thing to think
22:36
Speaker 1: about the Higgs boson having mass, because isn't isn't that
22:40
Speaker 1: what it does to give mass to things. Yeah, it's weird.
22:43
Speaker 1: It also has self interactions and interacts with itself, and
22:46
Speaker 1: that's the thing that gives it mass. And Higgs field
22:49
Speaker 1: didn't predict how strong that self interaction would be, and
22:52
Speaker 1: so we didn't know, and so people started looking for
22:54
Speaker 1: pretty much right away and not finding it all right,
22:58
Speaker 1: So then, yeah, you build a collider. You've smash protons together,
23:01
Speaker 1: and you hope that a Higgs comes out every once
23:03
Speaker 1: in aime, that's right, And protons have inside them quarks
23:06
Speaker 1: and gluons. The gluons hold the quirks together, and which
23:09
Speaker 1: you hope for is two of those gluons actually collide
23:12
Speaker 1: together with enough energy to give you a Higgs boson.
23:15
Speaker 1: And the Higgs boson doesn't last for very long. So
23:17
Speaker 1: you can't just like take a picture of it. You
23:19
Speaker 1: can't see it and say, here's our Higgs boson, in
23:21
Speaker 1: which case you only would have need to have made
23:23
Speaker 1: one of them and you could put it on your
23:25
Speaker 1: wall and that's your discovery. The problem is that it
23:27
Speaker 1: lasts for ten to the minus twenty three seconds and
23:31
Speaker 1: then it turns into other stuff. That's what you gotta
23:34
Speaker 1: do is look at that other stuff and figure out
23:36
Speaker 1: if it looks like it came from the Higgs boson
23:38
Speaker 1: or something else. I guess what made you think that
23:41
Speaker 1: it could even had mass? Like, couldn't have been like
23:44
Speaker 1: a photon or would that not help you with the
23:47
Speaker 1: symmetry of the equations. Yeah, in order to have the
23:49
Speaker 1: effect that it has, it has to have a non
23:52
Speaker 1: zero mass, otherwise it wouldn't have this weird symmetry breaking effect.
23:56
Speaker 1: But we didn't know it could have been ten times
23:58
Speaker 1: heavier than it turned out to be, were ten times lighter.
24:01
Speaker 1: You know. That's one of the frustrating things about the
24:03
Speaker 1: theories that we didn't quite know where to look. And
24:05
Speaker 1: that means you don't know how big to build your
24:07
Speaker 1: accelerator or how it will decay, because all those things
24:10
Speaker 1: change based on how heavy it is. Really, it can
24:12
Speaker 1: have any kind of mass, Like you know, what, do
24:14
Speaker 1: we have a very different universe of the Higgs boson
24:16
Speaker 1: was really big and massive. No, you could have the
24:19
Speaker 1: much heavier Higgs boson and basically have the same universe. Really,
24:23
Speaker 1: like if the Higgs was really massive, would in that
24:26
Speaker 1: I don't know affact how things have mass or anything
24:29
Speaker 1: like that, because it doesn't matter most things get massed
24:31
Speaker 1: through their interaction with the field. It doesn't matter how
24:34
Speaker 1: heavy the particle itself is, alright, so they're really fast collisions,
24:39
Speaker 1: and the Higgs doesn't last for very long. So how
24:42
Speaker 1: do you actually detected, Like, how do you know it
24:44
Speaker 1: existed if it only exists for ten to the minus
24:46
Speaker 1: twenty three seconds, and so we can never say for sure.
24:49
Speaker 1: What we do is we look at a collision and
24:51
Speaker 1: we look at the patterns of the stuff that came out,
24:53
Speaker 1: and we say, okay, this looked like this collision had,
24:55
Speaker 1: for example, two photons in it. We can add up
24:58
Speaker 1: the energies of those photon and say, okay, the total
25:01
Speaker 1: energy that came out of this collision, how much was it?
25:04
Speaker 1: And if higgs boson was there, then the total energy
25:07
Speaker 1: that came out of the collision should add up to
25:09
Speaker 1: the mass of the Higgs boson. So we look for
25:11
Speaker 1: a lot of events like that, a lot of collisions
25:14
Speaker 1: that turn into two photons. We add up all their
25:16
Speaker 1: masses and we make a plot of it like a histogram,
25:19
Speaker 1: and we look for a bump. We look for a
25:21
Speaker 1: bunch of collisions that led to photons that all have
25:24
Speaker 1: the same mass. Because if the Higgs boson is real,
25:27
Speaker 1: it will make more of those events happen. And you
25:29
Speaker 1: have to know for sure that those two photons couldn't
25:33
Speaker 1: have come from any other thing. We can never know
25:36
Speaker 1: that for sure. There are other ways to make two
25:37
Speaker 1: photons photons, two same photons, but they don't tend to
25:42
Speaker 1: make two same photons that add up to the Higgs mass.
25:44
Speaker 1: They tend to make random masses. And so the background,
25:47
Speaker 1: the things that mimic your signature that also give you
25:49
Speaker 1: two photons, just give you random numbers. Whereas photons that
25:53
Speaker 1: came from the Higgs always end up at about the
25:55
Speaker 1: same place. So if you do it often enough, you
25:57
Speaker 1: notice like a pile of them accumulating at this place.
26:00
Speaker 1: With the true mass of the Higgs, you look for this, basically,
26:03
Speaker 1: this bump over this background spectrum, right, and I imagine
26:06
Speaker 1: you see other bumps, but they're probably due to other
26:08
Speaker 1: like interactions. Right. Yeah, Well, bumps are pretty exciting because
26:11
Speaker 1: they almost always mean some particles. There are some heavy
26:14
Speaker 1: particles there and it decayed, and so basically every bump
26:18
Speaker 1: is a Nobel prize. You know. It's sort of like
26:21
Speaker 1: you're draining a swamp and you're seeing features in the lake,
26:24
Speaker 1: and everyone is something fascinating and interesting. And the bigger
26:27
Speaker 1: you're collider, and the longer you're running, the more you're
26:29
Speaker 1: able to like pump water out of that lake and
26:31
Speaker 1: see all the hidden features. And so we're constantly doing
26:34
Speaker 1: this way. This is why we run the collider over
26:36
Speaker 1: and over and over again, because we're looking for smaller
26:39
Speaker 1: and smaller and more subtle bumps. The more collisions you make,
26:42
Speaker 1: the more you can see these little bumps emerge from
26:45
Speaker 1: the fog. So I guess it's all statistical, right, because
26:48
Speaker 1: you you run us a bunch of times, I mean,
26:50
Speaker 1: and if you see it's kind of like an unexpected
26:53
Speaker 1: high incidence of you know, collisions in this mass range,
26:56
Speaker 1: that must mean that the Higgs was there. Yeah, it's
26:58
Speaker 1: all statistical, and we can't point to one event and
27:01
Speaker 1: say this one was definitely a Higgs. We just say, well,
27:04
Speaker 1: these fifty events all have about the same value, and
27:07
Speaker 1: there's more close to this value than any other value,
27:10
Speaker 1: and so we think it's very likely that it's there.
27:12
Speaker 1: But it's a little bit frustrating because you can't like
27:15
Speaker 1: take a picture of it or say conclusively this collision
27:18
Speaker 1: was a Higgs Boson. It it's in the end of
27:20
Speaker 1: purely statistical thing. You only see the leftovers or the
27:23
Speaker 1: footprints in the snow. You never actually like take a
27:26
Speaker 1: picture of it. Yeah, it's like you're looking for Bigfoot
27:28
Speaker 1: and you have tracks, and you have spore and you
27:30
Speaker 1: have you know, lots of other evidence that convince you
27:33
Speaker 1: that it's not just random nonsense, but you don't actually
27:36
Speaker 1: have the Bigfoot itself. You see a lot of poop
27:41
Speaker 1: in one place that more than usual, you're like something,
27:44
Speaker 1: something was here, and something likes to keep coming back here. Yeah, precisely.
27:49
Speaker 1: All right, Well let's get into now how we actually
27:51
Speaker 1: founded and what that discovery meant. But first let's take
27:55
Speaker 1: another quick break. All right, we are talking about the
28:10
Speaker 1: discovery of the Higgs Boson, which was an important date
28:14
Speaker 1: in history, at least physics history. And step us through Daniel.
28:18
Speaker 1: What was it actually like to like look for this
28:21
Speaker 1: thing and to find this thing where people confident they
28:23
Speaker 1: would find it or was it kind of a big
28:26
Speaker 1: shot in the dark. It was a very long and
28:28
Speaker 1: sometimes painful process, full of excitement and disappointment, and it
28:32
Speaker 1: was another one of these transatlantic rivalries where the Americans
28:35
Speaker 1: took the lead, and then the Europeans took over, and
28:37
Speaker 1: then they didn't find and then the Americans took over
28:39
Speaker 1: again and had a chance, and then finally the Europeans.
28:42
Speaker 1: Really like a race, Yeah, it really was. It's like
28:45
Speaker 1: an arms race in science, and it's constantly this like
28:49
Speaker 1: race for who's got the highest energy colliders. It's a
28:51
Speaker 1: bit of like nationalism and prestige. It's a lot like
28:54
Speaker 1: the space race, you know, except without the threat of
28:56
Speaker 1: i cb MS raining down on you who had the
28:59
Speaker 1: biggest rocket kind of yeah, and it started with the Americans.
29:02
Speaker 1: So there's a long history of looking for the Higgs
29:04
Speaker 1: boson a very low masses and other colliders which didn't
29:07
Speaker 1: see it. But once we understood like this thing was
29:09
Speaker 1: going to be pretty heavy, we knew it needed a
29:11
Speaker 1: big collider. And so the Americans had a big idea.
29:14
Speaker 1: They were going to build the super Conducting super Collider,
29:17
Speaker 1: awesomely named and it was gonna be the most powerful.
29:22
Speaker 1: I thought you were just using iproberly, No, they used
29:25
Speaker 1: hype of beliefs. Actually call this what is this super
29:27
Speaker 1: super conducting super collider. It's a pretty supername. It's like
29:33
Speaker 1: we made Superman. We're gonna we're gonna use super as
29:36
Speaker 1: much as possible, exactly. And this thing was going to
29:40
Speaker 1: have so much energy. It was going to have thirty
29:42
Speaker 1: three Tara electron bolts. Now Tara electron bolts, it's thirty
29:47
Speaker 1: three trillion electron bolts. That's a whole lot of energy.
29:52
Speaker 1: And it was gonna be the biggest collider ever. And
29:54
Speaker 1: they started building it. It was gonna be in Waxa Hatchie, Texas,
29:58
Speaker 1: and they started building it. They started wearing a hole.
30:00
Speaker 1: They cut like twenty kilometers of tunnel underground in Texas.
30:05
Speaker 1: They spent billions of dollars, and then they canceled the project.
30:09
Speaker 1: What happened? And well, and this one is interesting because
30:11
Speaker 1: it wasn't a ring, right, like I think it's like
30:13
Speaker 1: a straight collider. Now, this one was going to be
30:15
Speaker 1: a ring, but they never finished the ring. But it's
30:18
Speaker 1: still like a partial tunnel underground in Texas. And it
30:22
Speaker 1: just sort of lost political support and became a scapegoat
30:26
Speaker 1: for like, you know, excessive government spending, Like what are
30:28
Speaker 1: you spending five billion dollars on this thing? Is ridiculous?
30:32
Speaker 1: We scoffed at five billion dollars for the search for
30:35
Speaker 1: the ultimate particle I know. And it was especially ridiculous
30:38
Speaker 1: because they spent like two billion dollars digging a hole
30:41
Speaker 1: and then like another three billion dollars like closing up
30:44
Speaker 1: shop and filling it in. So there was so much
30:48
Speaker 1: waste of money. And there's a funny story there because
30:50
Speaker 1: the guy who was the director of CERN at the time,
30:53
Speaker 1: and CERN was preparing to build their own collider to
30:55
Speaker 1: look for the Higgs Boson, he came to the US
30:58
Speaker 1: and testified in front of RIS that it was a
31:01
Speaker 1: big waste of money to build the super conducting super
31:03
Speaker 1: collider because by the time it's finished, CERN would have
31:06
Speaker 1: already discovered the Higgs Boson. Sabotage. So Carlo Rubia, the
31:13
Speaker 1: same guy who in the top Cork history made that
31:15
Speaker 1: false claim to discovered the top word, he's sabotage. He
31:19
Speaker 1: totally knife in the back to the super conducting stugree
31:22
Speaker 1: with his confidence. He's just like, I don't even bother.
31:26
Speaker 1: He like totally psyched us out. He totally plucked us out.
31:29
Speaker 1: And of course his prediction with Bologna, because the Europeans
31:32
Speaker 1: didn't discover the Higgs boson with their next collider. And
31:35
Speaker 1: it's such a tragedy because that collider would have taught
31:38
Speaker 1: us so much about the universe. Thirty three terror electron
31:41
Speaker 1: bolts is three times as powerful as our best current collider,
31:45
Speaker 1: the large Hadron collider. This is like better, even better,
31:50
Speaker 1: three times better than the one we have now thirty
31:52
Speaker 1: years ago. So particle physics was set back like several
31:56
Speaker 1: decades by that funding decision because of this on moved
32:01
Speaker 1: by this person who had ambition to be the first
32:04
Speaker 1: one to discover it. Yeah, and you know, also the
32:06
Speaker 1: vaguaries of American electoral politics and shifting priorities in the
32:10
Speaker 1: house and all this stuff. But you know, it was
32:12
Speaker 1: sort of like particle physics aimed too high and flew
32:15
Speaker 1: too close to the Sun and then came crashing down.
32:17
Speaker 1: I see, like maybe they had only spent two billion
32:19
Speaker 1: dollars for twenty two tera electronic wal collider, maybe they
32:23
Speaker 1: would have made it through. Maybe. And you know a
32:25
Speaker 1: lot of people left their positions at academia to go
32:28
Speaker 1: work for the super conducting SuperCollider Lab, and their careers
32:31
Speaker 1: greater after that. And so it was really a big
32:33
Speaker 1: tragedy for American particle physics, all right, so then then
32:37
Speaker 1: the Europeans took over or what happened, Yes, and then
32:39
Speaker 1: the Europeans took over, and the super conducting super collider
32:42
Speaker 1: was going to collide protons, and protons are very powerful,
32:45
Speaker 1: but the Europeans took a different strategy. They decided to
32:48
Speaker 1: collide electrons and positrons. And these things are much cleaner
32:52
Speaker 1: because they don't have the strong interaction, and so the
32:55
Speaker 1: collisions are just simpler and more powerful and easier to understand.
32:59
Speaker 1: The trick is not as easy to get them up
33:01
Speaker 1: to high speed because protons are easier to accelerate to
33:04
Speaker 1: high speed because they have more mass. Counterintuitively, right, but
33:07
Speaker 1: this is still not This is not the LC. It's
33:10
Speaker 1: the l EP, the Large electron positron collider, call it LEPP.
33:15
Speaker 1: And this thing was like much much less than even
33:17
Speaker 1: one terra electron vault. It was zero point two is
33:20
Speaker 1: a fifth of a terra electron bolt. Doesn't sound so
33:24
Speaker 1: big compared to thirty three. Yeah, exactly. It was much smaller.
33:28
Speaker 1: But you know the good thing about having electron colliders,
33:30
Speaker 1: you got to use all the energy in the electron.
33:33
Speaker 1: When you collide protons, you only get part of it
33:35
Speaker 1: because you're really just using like one cork or glue
33:37
Speaker 1: on inside the proton. But when you collide electrons and positrons,
33:40
Speaker 1: you get all the energy, so you don't need as
33:43
Speaker 1: much energy in an electron positron collider. All right, Well,
33:46
Speaker 1: i've never heard of the LP, so I'm guessing it
33:47
Speaker 1: didn't discover the Higgs boltson. It didn't, but it almost did.
33:51
Speaker 1: And they turned this thing on and they ran it
33:53
Speaker 1: for a while and they didn't see the Higgs, and
33:55
Speaker 1: they didn't see the Higgs, and they didn't see the Higgs.
33:58
Speaker 1: And then the last summer that they were and have
34:00
Speaker 1: this thing turned on the summer of two thousand, they're
34:02
Speaker 1: supposed to shut down so they could tear it apart
34:05
Speaker 1: and build the Large Hadron Collider. There's gonna be the
34:07
Speaker 1: big upgrade. That last summer is in the same place,
34:11
Speaker 1: in the same place, in the same tunnel, right, So
34:13
Speaker 1: this same tunnel where the Large Electron Proton Collider was
34:17
Speaker 1: is the same tunnel we use now for the LHC.
34:19
Speaker 1: So you couldn't run both of them at once. Oh what,
34:23
Speaker 1: there's the same size tunnel, same size tunnel, just stronger
34:26
Speaker 1: magnets and so that's how they saved a bunch of
34:28
Speaker 1: money to build the LHC is that they put it
34:30
Speaker 1: in the same place as the original collider, but that
34:34
Speaker 1: meant that they couldn't operate both at the same time.
34:36
Speaker 1: So to build the LC they have to turn off
34:38
Speaker 1: the l E. So what happened right before they closed? Yeah,
34:41
Speaker 1: so right before they closed. It's a summer of two
34:43
Speaker 1: thousand and you know in Europe, in like July and August,
34:47
Speaker 1: everybody goes on vacation. It's ridiculous. It doesn't matter what's
34:50
Speaker 1: going on. Everybody takes like a month of vacation. Month
34:53
Speaker 1: I've heard of six weeks is the normal, and you're
34:55
Speaker 1: a month of the minimum. Every just sort of like
34:57
Speaker 1: slides down the continent to the beaches on the mediterrane Union.
35:00
Speaker 1: And so some people stayed behind, didn't take vacation. And
35:04
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine, Maroumi, who was a post
35:06
Speaker 1: doc in the time, he was there in the control
35:08
Speaker 1: room and it was like the last few weeks this
35:10
Speaker 1: collider would even run, and he's sitting there looking at
35:12
Speaker 1: the data, and all of a sudden, boom, there's a
35:14
Speaker 1: collision that comes in that looks exactly like a Higgs Boson.
35:17
Speaker 1: It's like beautiful, it has exactly everything you would expect.
35:21
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous. You know. It has a certain mass at
35:23
Speaker 1: about a hundred and fifteen g ev, which is like
35:26
Speaker 1: right on the edge of what the L e P
35:28
Speaker 1: could discover. And he thought, wow, that's pretty, but you
35:31
Speaker 1: know whatever, It's one event, and then later that same afternoon, boom,
35:35
Speaker 1: there's another one exactly the same mass, and he's like, wow,
35:39
Speaker 1: maybe this is like the moment, Like I'm here by myself,
35:41
Speaker 1: everybody else is on vacation. Maybe like nature is talking
35:45
Speaker 1: to me with an incredible moment for him, why would
35:47
Speaker 1: it start now and not before? Well, they were turning
35:50
Speaker 1: up the energy, so they were cranking up the energy
35:52
Speaker 1: bit by bit. They were like squeezing out as much
35:54
Speaker 1: energy as they could, and so it might be that
35:56
Speaker 1: they had just crossed the threshold to be able to
35:58
Speaker 1: create it, right, And was it real? It turned out
36:01
Speaker 1: it wasn't real, but it was tantalized. It was not
36:04
Speaker 1: it was not. And in the end he had six events.
36:06
Speaker 1: So everybody came back from vacation. He was like, guys,
36:09
Speaker 1: while you were on the beach, here's what I found.
36:11
Speaker 1: And he showed these events and it's set the whole
36:14
Speaker 1: community on fire. People are like, oh my gosh. The
36:16
Speaker 1: problem was they didn't have enough events to prove it.
36:19
Speaker 1: They didn't have like conclusive evidence that had a hint, right,
36:22
Speaker 1: So they wanted to run longer. But then everybody's also
36:25
Speaker 1: waiting to build the LHC. So they petitioned to the
36:29
Speaker 1: management of certain They said, please delay the LHC and
36:33
Speaker 1: let's run this collider for another six months or another
36:36
Speaker 1: year to get like conclusive evidence, right, just to get
36:39
Speaker 1: more hits. Yeah, because across the pond, the Americans were
36:43
Speaker 1: building their collider, the Tevatron outside Chicago, and if they
36:47
Speaker 1: turned off the l A P would take them, you know,
36:50
Speaker 1: eight or ten years to build the LHC. In the meantime,
36:53
Speaker 1: if it really was there a hundred and fifteen, the
36:55
Speaker 1: Americans would find it. And so it seemed like a
36:58
Speaker 1: really dangerous bet turn off the l EP where you
37:01
Speaker 1: had this like exciting hint that maybe it was right there,
37:04
Speaker 1: and to build the LHC. So they actually turned it off. Yea.
37:07
Speaker 1: They said no. The certain director said no, I don't
37:09
Speaker 1: think that the evidence is conclusive, and the LHC should
37:12
Speaker 1: be our priority, and so he shut it down. He
37:15
Speaker 1: gave them like an extra couple of weeks and he
37:17
Speaker 1: shut it down. What did they find in those extra weeks?
37:20
Speaker 1: Not much. You know, they had four experiments around the
37:23
Speaker 1: ring at the l e P and the one that
37:25
Speaker 1: my friend was on saw six events that looked like
37:28
Speaker 1: a Higgs boson, and a couple of the other experiments
37:31
Speaker 1: saw one or two, but some of them saw nothing,
37:33
Speaker 1: and so it was like it was tempting, It was tantalizing,
37:37
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really that strong. It was sort of
37:39
Speaker 1: like a last ditch effort to maybe maybe see it there,
37:43
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really conclusive. And so the certain director
37:46
Speaker 1: made a really tough choice, Well what do we think now,
37:49
Speaker 1: do we think that it was or that it wasn't
37:51
Speaker 1: for sure? We think it was just a fluctuation, because
37:54
Speaker 1: if it was there, if it really was the Higgs
37:56
Speaker 1: boson at a hundred and fift g V, the tevatron,
37:59
Speaker 1: the neck accelerator would have found it. And now, of
38:01
Speaker 1: course we know with the benefit of history, that's not
38:04
Speaker 1: an hundred fifty. It was found later at one. So
38:07
Speaker 1: that was just a fluctuation, you know, you flip a
38:10
Speaker 1: coin a hundred times. Sometimes you'll get weird distributions, and
38:13
Speaker 1: and that's what happened here. And the folks were like
38:15
Speaker 1: desperate to find that. They were so excited to see
38:17
Speaker 1: it that they got really excited about what, in the
38:19
Speaker 1: end was just a few random events. All right. So
38:22
Speaker 1: then I guess while they were building the L A C.
38:24
Speaker 1: Then the Americans had kind of like this window for
38:27
Speaker 1: them to do it, to find it with the teletron. Yes,
38:30
Speaker 1: so we built a collider outside Chicago at Fermulab and
38:33
Speaker 1: it was colliding protons and anti protons at two TV,
38:37
Speaker 1: so there's ten times the energy of the collider at left.
38:40
Speaker 1: Although you don't get to harness all that energy because
38:42
Speaker 1: remember the proton is like a bag of particles that
38:44
Speaker 1: has corks and gluons in it, which you're colliding are
38:47
Speaker 1: those corks and gluons, They don't have the full energy
38:50
Speaker 1: of the proton. But still it's really powerful, and you're right,
38:53
Speaker 1: they had like ten years to look for it. But
38:55
Speaker 1: you know, protons are messy because you're colliding a whole
38:58
Speaker 1: bag of particles and it makes a big, messy splash,
39:01
Speaker 1: just not as clean and pure as colliding electrons and positrons,
39:05
Speaker 1: so it's harder. So they had more energy, but it
39:08
Speaker 1: was always going to be tough for the tevatron to
39:09
Speaker 1: find it. The only chance they had is if it
39:11
Speaker 1: was very very light, if it was at one fifteen,
39:14
Speaker 1: they could have found it, but not but not higher
39:18
Speaker 1: because they can go up to two TV. They can
39:20
Speaker 1: go up to two TV. They could have found it
39:22
Speaker 1: like below one fifteen. And also there's a window between
39:26
Speaker 1: around like one fifty and one eight where it does
39:29
Speaker 1: a very special thing. It turns into w bosons that
39:32
Speaker 1: the tepatron would have been very good at finding. So
39:34
Speaker 1: they were just you know, rolling the dice. If it
39:37
Speaker 1: was low mass or if it was in this one window,
39:40
Speaker 1: they totally would have found it. The tevatron would have
39:42
Speaker 1: found the Higgs boson. So then what happened. Then they
39:45
Speaker 1: gave up while they ran as long as they could,
39:47
Speaker 1: and then once the l C turned on, then they
39:49
Speaker 1: gave up. They said, all right, well there's no point anymore. Really, yeah,
39:53
Speaker 1: what because I guess they weren't finding it. And so
39:56
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, somebody has a better machine. Yeah,
39:58
Speaker 1: And the LEDC is you know, ten times as powerful
40:01
Speaker 1: as the tevatron has higher energy and more collisions per
40:05
Speaker 1: second TV, So the LEDC is about five times is powerful.
40:09
Speaker 1: It's collisions they varied from seven TV the start up
40:12
Speaker 1: to now thirteen TV, so about an order of magnitude
40:16
Speaker 1: more powerful. But also they have more collisions per second,
40:19
Speaker 1: and so the tevatron knew that. You know, as soon
40:22
Speaker 1: as it turned on it was going to find it
40:24
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. There was no point to continue because but
40:26
Speaker 1: the tevatron to find it would need like two and
40:28
Speaker 1: a half times more data, need to run for like
40:31
Speaker 1: another five or ten years. But you know there are
40:33
Speaker 1: people in the fields who are like, no, we should
40:35
Speaker 1: keep running, we should keep going because they might stumble, right, yeah,
40:38
Speaker 1: they might crash right, Like the machine is hard to
40:41
Speaker 1: get it to work. Yeah, And you know when they
40:43
Speaker 1: turned the machine on the LHC after ten years they
40:45
Speaker 1: had been quiet building this thing. They turned it on
40:47
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight. It only ran for like
40:50
Speaker 1: nine days before there was a big disaster. So they
40:53
Speaker 1: did stumble. They did stumble exactly, and there was an
40:56
Speaker 1: electrical fault. One of the things hadn't been wired correctly,
40:59
Speaker 1: and it's short at out and released like tons of
41:01
Speaker 1: liquid helium. There's this big alarm. And I was actually
41:05
Speaker 1: at the LHC that day. I was on shift in
41:07
Speaker 1: the control room, which is normally a very boring thing.
41:10
Speaker 1: You sit there, you look at a bunch of panels,
41:12
Speaker 1: they're all green lights. You're trying not to fall asleep.
41:15
Speaker 1: But sometimes something crazy happens. And that happened while I
41:19
Speaker 1: was there. Really, like the lights turned red with the
41:22
Speaker 1: big horns, like, yeah, exactly. Wasn't just like a computer
41:26
Speaker 1: like a window popping up you just clicked Okay, You're like, wait, wait, wait,
41:32
Speaker 1: what what did I say? No, it was a big disaster.
41:34
Speaker 1: You know. There were fires and like really heavy equipment
41:37
Speaker 1: got like shoved around inside the tunnel, and so it
41:40
Speaker 1: was a big disaster. We got to hit the big
41:42
Speaker 1: red button finally to you know, shut everything down. It
41:45
Speaker 1: was exciting, but of course it was also disappointing because
41:47
Speaker 1: it took like fifteen months to fix it. This stuff
41:51
Speaker 1: is super cold, and so to fix it you have
41:53
Speaker 1: to warm it up very gradually, fix it, and then
41:55
Speaker 1: cool it down very gradually, which takes months and months.
41:59
Speaker 1: So maybe the Teva try should have been going, you know,
42:01
Speaker 1: so the Tabatron kept going during that window. They were like, oh,
42:04
Speaker 1: we got one more little chance at this. They were
42:07
Speaker 1: watching the L A C stumble yes exactly, and so
42:09
Speaker 1: they were like, keep going, everybody, maybe we'll see it.
42:12
Speaker 1: And so they pushed a little harder, one last gasp,
42:15
Speaker 1: because again nobody knew where it was. It could have
42:17
Speaker 1: been like just around the corner in the window that
42:20
Speaker 1: tabatron could have found it. But in the end, the
42:22
Speaker 1: LC turned on, and then people turned off the tabatron
42:26
Speaker 1: because they figured they were not going to find it
42:28
Speaker 1: was time to let the LC do its thing. And
42:31
Speaker 1: pretty soon after it turned on, you guys found it.
42:33
Speaker 1: Like it like, it didn't take a long time. It
42:35
Speaker 1: didn't take a long time. You know. We turned on
42:37
Speaker 1: again in like two thousand and ten and started analyzing data.
42:42
Speaker 1: And you know, it takes a little bit of time
42:44
Speaker 1: because you have to get enough data. And these colliders,
42:46
Speaker 1: when you turn them on, they work and fits and
42:48
Speaker 1: spurts until the engineers figure out like how to kick
42:50
Speaker 1: it and how to tweak this knob, and you know,
42:52
Speaker 1: on tuesdays you gotta elbow it this way and really
42:55
Speaker 1: get it, you know, humming. But eventually the data started
42:57
Speaker 1: pouring in and then we were doing that thing. We
43:00
Speaker 1: were like pulling the water out of the swamp and
43:02
Speaker 1: seeing the features, and you know, there were wiggles in
43:05
Speaker 1: the data early on that people got excited about. And
43:08
Speaker 1: people didn't know, is it there? Is it not there?
43:11
Speaker 1: Where are we going to find it? Nobody really knew
43:12
Speaker 1: where to look. So finally, one day, uh not on
43:16
Speaker 1: July four, they actually started getting the data and and
43:21
Speaker 1: it started to point to having found the Higgs. But
43:25
Speaker 1: you know, was there a moment I imagine you told
43:27
Speaker 1: me that maybe there wasn't, But I wonder if there
43:28
Speaker 1: was a moment when like some grad student or some physicists,
43:32
Speaker 1: you know, pulls out the data and they're like, huh,
43:34
Speaker 1: what is this little bump? Well, you know there was
43:36
Speaker 1: a moment for me in the summer of two thousand
43:38
Speaker 1: and eleven. Both experiments saw bumps, but they saw bumps
43:42
Speaker 1: in different places. Like ATLAS saw bump, but it was
43:44
Speaker 1: at around a hundred and forty five g V. Cmsaw
43:48
Speaker 1: bump around a hundred and twenty g V. So you
43:50
Speaker 1: knew that they were just random because it didn't agree. Now,
43:52
Speaker 1: these are two different experiments, ATLAS and CMS, two different
43:56
Speaker 1: experiments at different points around the ring independent data, and
43:59
Speaker 1: so you expect them if the Higgs is real, to
44:02
Speaker 1: see bumps at the same place. It's a very important
44:04
Speaker 1: cross check. And also the two groups. There's a whole
44:07
Speaker 1: group of thousands of experimentalists working on ATLAS and thousands
44:11
Speaker 1: of experimentalists working on CMS. They're not supposed to talk
44:13
Speaker 1: to each other. It's supposed to keep each other separate.
44:15
Speaker 1: It's supposed to keep these secrets so that the work
44:18
Speaker 1: can be independent. The problem is, of course, all these
44:21
Speaker 1: people know each other. We're all friends. Sometimes you got
44:24
Speaker 1: like a married couple where one is on one experiment,
44:26
Speaker 1: the others on the other experiment. You know, they're talking
44:28
Speaker 1: to each other. So there's no way that any secrets
44:31
Speaker 1: are really being kept. And so there was a moment
44:33
Speaker 1: in like late two thousand eleven. I called up a
44:36
Speaker 1: friend of mine on the other experiment. I said, hey, um,
44:39
Speaker 1: you know we have a bump. Where's your bump? Had
44:43
Speaker 1: a bump like I found? I found a lump? What no, no, no,
44:47
Speaker 1: I mean sharing information like that is strictly against the rules.
44:51
Speaker 1: I would never do that. Did I say it was me?
44:54
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in It was a colleague of mine
44:58
Speaker 1: who talked to his friend and then and told me
45:00
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, you must have misheard me. I
45:03
Speaker 1: would never do that. You tainted the results. We had
45:05
Speaker 1: this bump, and I was curious about whether they had
45:07
Speaker 1: a bump, And it turns out they had a bump
45:09
Speaker 1: in the same place. And that's the moment. And you
45:11
Speaker 1: figured that out on the phone. At the moment I
45:13
Speaker 1: started to believe when I thought, you know what, I
45:15
Speaker 1: think this is it. I think we actually did find this. Daniel,
45:20
Speaker 1: why did you do that? I think you mean my
45:22
Speaker 1: colleague who broke them and your friend also broke it
45:25
Speaker 1: because he told or she told you where the bump was. Again,
45:28
Speaker 1: this is a story about a colleague of mine who
45:30
Speaker 1: broke these rules. Everybody was breaking the rules. Man, these
45:33
Speaker 1: were the worst kept secrets at certain Oh man, I
45:36
Speaker 1: have less confidence now, Daniel in the Higgs Boson. Well,
45:40
Speaker 1: I was not directly involved in producing that plot, so
45:43
Speaker 1: it couldn't influence me in neither was he. Oh so
45:46
Speaker 1: you were like literally a league like he learned some
45:49
Speaker 1: secret and you you phone the other team again, this
45:52
Speaker 1: unnamed colleague of mine, he was we saw bumps in
45:56
Speaker 1: the same place, and so that's the moment I started
45:58
Speaker 1: to believe it. And then we just kept collecting were
46:00
Speaker 1: more data, and the bumps got bigger and bigger, and
46:03
Speaker 1: they lined up right on top of each other. And
46:05
Speaker 1: then in late June we had enough events, enough collisions
46:09
Speaker 1: at all the same place that we could say, statistically
46:12
Speaker 1: it was very, very unlikely for this to be random chance.
46:15
Speaker 1: Random chance can produce anything, but the odds were like
46:19
Speaker 1: one in millions that just random chance could produce all
46:22
Speaker 1: these bumps that exactly the same place. So that was
46:25
Speaker 1: the day we said, all right, we decided that now
46:27
Speaker 1: we have discovered. And that was July four, And that
46:31
Speaker 1: was j and there was big announcement at CERN, and
46:35
Speaker 1: everybody knew it was gonna be the announcement the next day.
46:37
Speaker 1: So starting like July three, everybody at CERN was like
46:40
Speaker 1: standing in line to get into that auditorium and sleeping
46:43
Speaker 1: in line, like camping out. You know, this is like
46:45
Speaker 1: Comic Con, but Nerd edition at CERN and super conducting
46:51
Speaker 1: super Nerds exactly, And people really wanted to be in
46:54
Speaker 1: that room. And they invited Peter Higgs and he was
46:57
Speaker 1: there and the director sir and give a tall talk,
47:00
Speaker 1: and you know, for the people in the audience. We
47:02
Speaker 1: are knew the results, we have been involved in producing
47:04
Speaker 1: them and preparing them. But it was just a moment
47:06
Speaker 1: we all got together and basically said, all right, let's
47:08
Speaker 1: high five and declare that we have found this thing
47:11
Speaker 1: after decades and decades of searching email. The rest of
47:14
Speaker 1: the world is like the Higgs What wait, do you
47:16
Speaker 1: have a collider in Geneva? Nobody told us about this.
47:19
Speaker 1: You know, the team at certain is really good at PR.
47:22
Speaker 1: They are very good at popularizing the science and making
47:24
Speaker 1: people understand it. And that's why I think the Higgs
47:26
Speaker 1: boson is one of the most famous particles is because
47:29
Speaker 1: it's been well sold to the public as an exciting discovery. Also,
47:33
Speaker 1: it was the Obama years. You know, we were we
47:35
Speaker 1: were happy about all good years. That's right, and we
47:37
Speaker 1: believed scientists. That's right. Then that gets us to today.
47:41
Speaker 1: So now these days, we know that the Higgs field exists,
47:44
Speaker 1: and that the Higgs boson exists, and it makes all
47:46
Speaker 1: the equations balance out, and and now we have a
47:50
Speaker 1: more complete picture of the yeiverse and the particles in it.
47:52
Speaker 1: That's right. And now we know where the Higgs is.
47:54
Speaker 1: It about a hundred and twenty five GV and number
47:56
Speaker 1: we didn't know before we measured it, and we can
47:59
Speaker 1: study all of its properties. We can see it turning
48:01
Speaker 1: into this kind of particle in that kind of particle,
48:03
Speaker 1: and we can try to measure its properties in great
48:05
Speaker 1: detail and see is this the particle that Higgs predicted
48:08
Speaker 1: or is it a weird version of it? Are there
48:10
Speaker 1: more Higgs bosons out there? And so the search doesn't
48:13
Speaker 1: stop just because we found it. Now we're studying in
48:16
Speaker 1: gory detail and trying to see if it has any
48:18
Speaker 1: more secrets to reveal. All right, well, again, also pretty
48:22
Speaker 1: exciting and a good insight into how signs works little
48:26
Speaker 1: by little through competition and friendly breaking of the rules.
48:31
Speaker 1: And anybody on the Atlas Experiment who heard that, please
48:34
Speaker 1: forgive me breaking the rules. But I bet you did too.
48:39
Speaker 1: You're like, hopefully nobody's listening to this podcast, not a
48:42
Speaker 1: couple of hundred thousand or ten thousand people. Well, I'm
48:46
Speaker 1: sure you know there's like you know, podcast hosts, podcast
48:49
Speaker 1: listener confidence reality. Absolutely, I mean we assume that, so
48:53
Speaker 1: I'm trusting you with that story, folks. All right, Well,
48:55
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us, Thanks for telling us a story.
48:58
Speaker 1: Daniel We hope you enjoyed that. See you next time.
49:09
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain
49:11
Speaker 1: the Universe is a production of I Heart Radio or
49:15
Speaker 1: more podcast For my heart Radio, visit the I heart
49:18
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
49:21
Speaker 1: favorite shows.