Latest / Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe / Was the Higgs boson discovery a triumph or disappointment?

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Was the Higgs boson discovery a triumph or disappointment? · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

0:08
Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you're officially one of the discoverers of the
0:11
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, right, I mean, yeah, me and ten thousand
0:15
Speaker 1: of my close collaborators, then thousands. Did you really need
0:19
Speaker 1: ten thousand people to discover one particle? We each discovered
0:22
Speaker 1: one ten thousands of it. Does that mean you also
0:25
Speaker 1: get one ten thousands of a Nobel Prize? No, the
0:27
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize went to the theorists, of course, not to
0:30
Speaker 1: those of us who actually found the thing. I guess
0:33
Speaker 1: it must have been exciting though, when they finally discovered
0:36
Speaker 1: the particle. It was exciting, but you know, it happened slowly.
0:38
Speaker 1: It's sort of like taking a flight across the ocean.
0:41
Speaker 1: You're really excited when it starts out, but by the
0:44
Speaker 1: time it's all official and done with your exhausted. You
0:47
Speaker 1: should do what I do, which is taken up during
0:49
Speaker 1: the flight. Then it's like you're teleported, you know, you
0:51
Speaker 1: teleport your way to a Nobel Prize. Yeah, exactly. So
0:54
Speaker 1: what's the next discovery that particle physicists are working on? Well,
0:58
Speaker 1: I hope there is a next discovery. It's usually about
1:00
Speaker 1: twenty years between major discoveries. Wait, do you schedule it
1:04
Speaker 1: every twenty years. Why not every ten years? Hey, I'd
1:07
Speaker 1: like to do one every year, but these things are
1:10
Speaker 1: pretty tricky. You just need more naps. Maybe I just
1:12
Speaker 1: need a neck pillow. What's the point of the neck
1:14
Speaker 1: pill if you're not gonna nap. I'm not sure you're
1:16
Speaker 1: getting the physics of that being here, right, Daniel. I'm
1:19
Speaker 1: definitely out of my expertise. You should just sleep on it.
1:37
Speaker 1: Hi am Orhamma, cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.
1:41
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I do have
1:44
Speaker 1: one millions of a Nobel Prize one million or don't
1:50
Speaker 1: you mean like one seven? Since you are part of
1:53
Speaker 1: the human race. Yeah, but not every human has a
1:55
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. Actually, I'm no longer a Nobel Prize winner.
1:59
Speaker 1: I used to be you because I had EU citizenship
2:01
Speaker 1: and the entire EU won the Nobel Peace Prize once.
2:05
Speaker 1: But I'm a UK citizen, which means I'm no longer
2:08
Speaker 1: an EU citizen. So I guess we brexited from Nobel
2:11
Speaker 1: Prize winners. Oh my goodness, it affected so many people
2:15
Speaker 1: in so many ways. It lost you the Nobel Prize.
2:17
Speaker 1: I mean, you should write a book about losing the
2:19
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize the Brexit. I had to update my CV
2:21
Speaker 1: and everything, or at least one five million of it.
2:25
Speaker 1: So anyone who joins the EU is a Nobel Prize one.
2:28
Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying. I'm not sure it's retroactive.
2:30
Speaker 1: I think you have to be a member of the
2:31
Speaker 1: EU when the Nobel Prize was handed out. How do
2:34
Speaker 1: you know is that in the rules. There's probably a
2:37
Speaker 1: bunch of lawsuits about it right now. But welcome to
2:39
Speaker 1: a podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained The Universe, a production
2:42
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, in which we seek to misstow
2:44
Speaker 1: the benefits of human knowledge on everybody, not just members
2:48
Speaker 1: of the EU or the UK or any other silly
2:51
Speaker 1: islands out there. We think that everybody should understand what
2:55
Speaker 1: we understand about the universe and what questions we are
2:59
Speaker 1: puzzling over as we struggle to sort through the crazy
3:02
Speaker 1: details of this universe, all the amazing things that it
3:05
Speaker 1: does out there in deep space, and all the incredible
3:08
Speaker 1: things we discover in our particle colliders. That's right, because
3:11
Speaker 1: science is for everybody. We are all part of the
3:13
Speaker 1: human race, and this race to understand the universe and
3:17
Speaker 1: how it works and how it came to be, so
3:19
Speaker 1: that we can understand more about our context in the cosmos,
3:23
Speaker 1: and also hopefully when some prices along the way, or
3:26
Speaker 1: at least some chocolate. And it's incredible that we can
3:28
Speaker 1: force the universe to reveal its secret to us by
3:32
Speaker 1: constructing interesting experiments. Right. In some sense, you can think
3:35
Speaker 1: of an experiment as a specific way to make the
3:38
Speaker 1: universe show you the answer. You set up your apparatus
3:41
Speaker 1: so that it tells you whether universe works this way
3:45
Speaker 1: or that way. And we have lots of different ways
3:48
Speaker 1: to explore the universe and to force it to tell
3:50
Speaker 1: us its secrets, from things out in space to incredible
3:54
Speaker 1: machines we build underground. That sounds great for us, Daniel,
3:57
Speaker 1: but I feel like it feels a little mean to
3:58
Speaker 1: the universe, like you're forcing it to do something or
4:01
Speaker 1: to reveal something about itself. What if the universe doesn't
4:03
Speaker 1: want so, don't we get consent? Well, you know, I'd
4:06
Speaker 1: love if we instead just had an oracle. We could
4:08
Speaker 1: ask the universe questions and it would just answer to
4:10
Speaker 1: us in our language. That would be awesome. I definitely
4:13
Speaker 1: would prefer that set up to feeling like the universe
4:16
Speaker 1: was our partner in this process rather than our slippery adversary.
4:20
Speaker 1: Oh man, you're consider the university adversary adversarial position to take. Well,
4:26
Speaker 1: some people in my field think of the universe as
4:28
Speaker 1: prey and we are the hunters going out. Jeez, I
4:33
Speaker 1: didn't know physicists were so violent. But I agree with you.
4:36
Speaker 1: We should just be sitting down with the universe over
4:38
Speaker 1: a cup of hot cocoa and having a nice chat.
4:40
Speaker 1: And you're like, quantum mechanics, what's the deal with that?
4:44
Speaker 1: Then they take a nice deep sip and it just
4:45
Speaker 1: gets downloaded into my brain. Right, Or if it says no,
4:49
Speaker 1: you should be respected, it says no, Right, I'm gonna
4:52
Speaker 1: have to disagree with you on that one. No, if
4:53
Speaker 1: the universe says no, I still want to have the answer.
4:55
Speaker 1: I don't think the universe as a whole, as a
4:58
Speaker 1: physical entity, deserves privacy you. Oh my goodness, I feel
5:01
Speaker 1: like we're on shaky gra here. Ethnically, if someone says
5:07
Speaker 1: the same thing about you, would you have to disclose
5:09
Speaker 1: everything about that anyone asked you because you're part of
5:12
Speaker 1: the universe technically, so it's anybody's right to know what's
5:15
Speaker 1: the things that they want to know about you. I'm
5:17
Speaker 1: part of the universe, but I'm not the universe. If, however,
5:20
Speaker 1: I was in charge of the physical laws of the universe,
5:23
Speaker 1: then yes, I wouldn't begrudge my denizens from attempting to
5:27
Speaker 1: discover the laws under which they ruled. You know, it's
5:30
Speaker 1: sort of like a Freedom of Information Act. Should you
5:32
Speaker 1: be able to ask the government about what it's doing
5:34
Speaker 1: and what the laws are. Wouldn't it seem unfair to
5:37
Speaker 1: the government enforced laws on you and didn't even tell
5:40
Speaker 1: you what they were. Well, that's why they have classified information,
5:43
Speaker 1: which apparently sometimes doesn't matter, or that you can declassify
5:47
Speaker 1: with just your thoughts. Yeah, I don't think the universe
5:49
Speaker 1: should have classified information. I mean, it's not like we're
5:51
Speaker 1: going to war with other universes and it needs to
5:53
Speaker 1: keep secrets, right, But what if it's patented or what
5:56
Speaker 1: if it's dangerous information? Well, that is a real concern.
5:59
Speaker 1: And as we do discover the secrets of the universe,
6:01
Speaker 1: we learn not just to understand what it's doing, but
6:04
Speaker 1: also to influence it and manipulated and that, of course
6:08
Speaker 1: we know leads sometimes too, very powerful, very dangerous technologies.
6:12
Speaker 1: So there are of course real ethical implications in revealing
6:15
Speaker 1: how the universe works to the wider human race. Well,
6:18
Speaker 1: we are definitely hard at work and exploring the universe
6:21
Speaker 1: and trying to learn more about it, whether or not
6:23
Speaker 1: we have permission or not. I guess physicists are charging
6:26
Speaker 1: forward plundering the universe just to line up their pockets.
6:30
Speaker 1: Politely investigating the universe. That's how I like to think
6:33
Speaker 1: about it. They see, you're just a member of the
6:35
Speaker 1: press on behalf of the citizens of the universe. We
6:39
Speaker 1: would just like to understand what are the rules we
6:41
Speaker 1: are living by? Thank you very much. And there is
6:44
Speaker 1: a lot to learn and a lot that we have
6:46
Speaker 1: learned about the universe, including what things are made of.
6:49
Speaker 1: We've made an incredible amount of progress understanding the particles
6:52
Speaker 1: and all of the forces that govern those particles that
6:55
Speaker 1: make up you. The reality that we experience turns out
6:58
Speaker 1: to be very different on a microscopic scale. If you
7:02
Speaker 1: pull things apart, you discover the table you are sitting
7:04
Speaker 1: in front of, and the chair you're sitting on, and
7:06
Speaker 1: even you are made out of these funny little objects
7:10
Speaker 1: that weave themselves together with special rules to create the
7:13
Speaker 1: reality that we experience. But as you zoom down to
7:17
Speaker 1: that microscopic scale, you discovered the rules that they follow
7:20
Speaker 1: are really quite different. They are quantum mechanical objects, and
7:24
Speaker 1: they can do things that normal objects like baseballs and
7:26
Speaker 1: ice cream can't do. It's really incredible how at the
7:30
Speaker 1: tiny scale those different rules work together so that our
7:33
Speaker 1: reality emerges. Yep. And we've seen a lot about what
7:36
Speaker 1: reality is made out of, what the atoms and your
7:39
Speaker 1: body are made out of, and how they work and
7:41
Speaker 1: how they interact with each other. So the question now
7:43
Speaker 1: is what else is there to know? I mean, I
7:45
Speaker 1: know that I'm made out of electrons quarks. What else
7:49
Speaker 1: is there to know? Daniel, Well, listener to this podcast.
7:51
Speaker 1: Of course we'll know that there's never an end to
7:54
Speaker 1: the questions. There's so much that we don't understand yet
7:58
Speaker 1: about the universe. Sure, we take you apart and say
8:01
Speaker 1: you're made of electrons and protons and neutrons which are
8:04
Speaker 1: made up of quarks, but we don't know what's inside
8:07
Speaker 1: those electrons and quirks, if anything. And there's still lots
8:10
Speaker 1: of mysteries that we have not unraveled. Patterns in all
8:13
Speaker 1: the particles that we've seen that remain unexplained, and then
8:17
Speaker 1: even bigger mysteries like is dark matter made of particles?
8:20
Speaker 1: And how does gravity work for particles? There's so much
8:24
Speaker 1: still left to do. Yes, we have talked a lot
8:26
Speaker 1: about the mysteries that are still in particle physics, but
8:28
Speaker 1: I guess maybe in terms of the popular consciousness of
8:32
Speaker 1: the quest for understanding particles, people clearly partly remember the
8:37
Speaker 1: discovery of the Higgs boson. That was a big deal.
8:40
Speaker 1: That was a big deal, and it was an important
8:41
Speaker 1: moment in particle physics because it marked sort of the
8:45
Speaker 1: end of an era. You know. We have lots of
8:47
Speaker 1: questions about the particles we have discovered, but those questions
8:50
Speaker 1: are sort of like can we use this to explain
8:53
Speaker 1: other things like dark matter? Or why is it this
8:56
Speaker 1: set of particles and not some other But before we
8:58
Speaker 1: discovered the Higgs boson, we had other questions like how
9:01
Speaker 1: does this stuff actually all work? Before the Higgs boson,
9:04
Speaker 1: we didn't even have a really complete picture of how
9:06
Speaker 1: all the electrons and the corks behaved. So finding the
9:09
Speaker 1: Higgs boson was sort of like finding the last brick
9:12
Speaker 1: in that wall. Now we still have questions about why
9:15
Speaker 1: this wall not some other wall, and can we extend
9:17
Speaker 1: this wall, build it in other directions. But the Higgs
9:19
Speaker 1: Boson really did complete the picture of the standard model
9:23
Speaker 1: as we know it, and that was a very important milestone. Yeah,
9:26
Speaker 1: it was a big deal because it sort of completed
9:28
Speaker 1: the standard model, which is the set of particles and
9:31
Speaker 1: forces that we think make up all matter in the
9:33
Speaker 1: universe and how it interacts with itself. Um, and so
9:36
Speaker 1: it was a big deal to find the Higgs Boson.
9:38
Speaker 1: But I guess you know that was ten years ago, right,
9:40
Speaker 1: it was discovered in That's a long time ago if
9:44
Speaker 1: you're ten years old, especially, and so us in the
9:46
Speaker 1: field of particle physics are wondering what comes next. Was
9:50
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson sort of like the last thing we're
9:52
Speaker 1: ever going to discover? Or does it lead us down
9:55
Speaker 1: the path towards future discoveries? And so to be on
9:58
Speaker 1: the podcast, we'll be asking the question was the Higgs
10:05
Speaker 1: Boson discovery a triumph or a disappointment? Does it after
10:10
Speaker 1: you wanted the two you want to go for the
10:11
Speaker 1: swirl option? Can it be a triumph but still disappointment?
10:15
Speaker 1: You know, if you have picky parents, M I want
10:18
Speaker 1: to triumph immediately with a disappointing aftertaste. It could be
10:21
Speaker 1: a disappointing triumph. It was a huge deal when they
10:24
Speaker 1: discovered the Higgs boson ten years ago, and it's hard
10:27
Speaker 1: to believe it that it was ten years ago, because, um,
10:29
Speaker 1: that's kind of when we started working together, right, Daniel, Yeah,
10:31
Speaker 1: it's been more than ten years since we've been working together,
10:34
Speaker 1: though sometimes it feels like shorter. Sometimes it feels like forever,
10:38
Speaker 1: never ending, Daniel in Jorge time dilation, have you been
10:41
Speaker 1: sucked into the black hole of particle physics? Wait, but
10:44
Speaker 1: we don't know if there are particles inside the black holes.
10:46
Speaker 1: Just dive on in and maybe we'll all find out.
10:48
Speaker 1: But the discovery of the Higgs boson was a pretty
10:50
Speaker 1: big deal in particle physics, and as you said, it's
10:53
Speaker 1: sort of finished the picture of the standard model, which
10:56
Speaker 1: is kind of our view of all the particles that
10:58
Speaker 1: there are and all the forces that work between m.
11:00
Speaker 1: And it's sort of hard to remember now because we've
11:03
Speaker 1: had the Higgs for so long. But before we found
11:05
Speaker 1: the Higgs, we weren't sure that it was there. There
11:09
Speaker 1: were other ideas, competing theories in play. Some people predicting
11:14
Speaker 1: we wouldn't see the Higgs boson, that it doesn't even exist,
11:17
Speaker 1: some people predicting that we'd see other crazy stuff. So
11:20
Speaker 1: the discovery of the Higgs boson validated one of those
11:23
Speaker 1: research directions, but shut down a lot of other possible theories. Yeah,
11:27
Speaker 1: and so it was more than ten years ago that
11:29
Speaker 1: it was discovering, and I guess people are kind of
11:31
Speaker 1: twiddling their thumbs now and wondering, like what else is
11:35
Speaker 1: the next? Like are we done with particle physics or
11:38
Speaker 1: is there still more to discover? And in fact, some
11:41
Speaker 1: people are kind of starting to question the whole field
11:43
Speaker 1: of particle physics, right. It's a bit of a recent controversy.
11:46
Speaker 1: It is a tricky topic because these experiments are very expensive.
11:49
Speaker 1: You know, the LHC costs like ten billion dollars to build,
11:53
Speaker 1: and so you can always ask, like is that a
11:55
Speaker 1: good use of our money? Particle physicists tend to justify
12:00
Speaker 1: by building these things by predicting that we will discover things,
12:03
Speaker 1: saying like, if we spend this money, we're very likely
12:06
Speaker 1: to discover X, y Z. That can get them into
12:08
Speaker 1: a little bit of trouble if they then don't discover
12:11
Speaker 1: x y Z when you build it, and so some
12:13
Speaker 1: people are wondering if particle physicists can really be trusted
12:16
Speaker 1: to make those predictions or not. So that's the question
12:19
Speaker 1: we'll dive into today. And so, as usual, we were
12:21
Speaker 1: wondering how many people have thought about this idea, whether
12:24
Speaker 1: the Higgs was a triumph or a disappointment. So thanks
12:28
Speaker 1: to everybody who participates in these questions. We're very happy
12:31
Speaker 1: to have your ideas before we dig into the topic.
12:35
Speaker 1: So we're very grateful for your participation. If you'd like
12:37
Speaker 1: to hear your voice for future episodes of the podcast,
12:40
Speaker 1: please don't be shy. Right to me. Two questions at
12:43
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. Think about it for a second.
12:46
Speaker 1: Do you think the discovery of the Higgs boson was
12:48
Speaker 1: a triumph or a disappointment? Here's what people have to say. Yes,
12:52
Speaker 1: it certainly was a triumph, but I guess there were
12:56
Speaker 1: probably some people who were disappointed in some aspect or
13:02
Speaker 1: other of it. I would say that's uh, three, no
13:09
Speaker 1: questions about it. I think that it was probably like
13:11
Speaker 1: a disappointing triumph because they found something, but it probably
13:16
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly what they expected. To find because it only
13:19
Speaker 1: happened very briefly, and even though it met the requirements
13:23
Speaker 1: of what they were looking for, it might have been
13:24
Speaker 1: a little bit of a disappointment because it was really
13:26
Speaker 1: hard to find again later. I think the discovery of
13:29
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson was a triumph because it had been
13:33
Speaker 1: predicted in theory um, and so when it was found
13:36
Speaker 1: it um gives on just some confidence in the theory.
13:40
Speaker 1: All right. Most people think it was a triumph. That's
13:42
Speaker 1: a that's a good thing for your job security. I
13:45
Speaker 1: hope all these folks are voting on my promotions. But
13:47
Speaker 1: how many of those folks are named Higgs? Like I imagine,
13:50
Speaker 1: if your name is Higgs, then it was definitely a triumph.
13:53
Speaker 1: Maybe if you have no connection to the bson at
13:56
Speaker 1: all and now your name is famous, I wonder how
13:58
Speaker 1: that feels. Actually. Like my wife, for example, her name
14:01
Speaker 1: is Katrina, and after Hurricane Katrina blew through New Orleans,
14:04
Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh Katrina, like the hurricane. Are you saying
14:07
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery was a disaster. I'm sure that
14:11
Speaker 1: everybody named Higgs was flooded with emails afterwards. Yeah, I'm
14:15
Speaker 1: sure it was a heck of a job. But I
14:16
Speaker 1: guess most people seem to think it was a trial.
14:18
Speaker 1: That's a good thing, right or I guess mostly you
14:20
Speaker 1: ask people who like physics, not people who need desperate
14:24
Speaker 1: funding for other things. That's true. But you can be
14:27
Speaker 1: a particle physicist and be pro physics and pro discovery
14:31
Speaker 1: and still think that the Higgs boson discovery was a
14:34
Speaker 1: little bit of a mixed bag. I personally felt a
14:37
Speaker 1: little bit of disappointment when we discovered the Higgs boson.
14:40
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Interesting. I guess we'll dig into that, but first,
14:43
Speaker 1: I guess we'll start with the basic discovery. So this
14:45
Speaker 1: happened in right, What is it that they actually discovered. Yeah,
14:50
Speaker 1: so it was announced July four, two thousand and twelve,
14:53
Speaker 1: and what they announced on that day was that they
14:55
Speaker 1: had enough statistical evidence to say that the Higgs field
14:58
Speaker 1: exists in the universe. So the Higgs boson and the
15:02
Speaker 1: Higgs field are slightly separate, but they're related. We've talked
15:06
Speaker 1: often on the podcast about how particles are like wiggles
15:09
Speaker 1: in a field. So photon is a wiggle in the
15:12
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field. An electron is like a wiggle in the
15:15
Speaker 1: electron field. So there's a field that fills space called
15:18
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. Then if it gets enough energy in
15:21
Speaker 1: one spot and it wiggles, then you can say it
15:23
Speaker 1: makes a particle. So the particle for the Higgs field
15:27
Speaker 1: is the Higgs boson. And this field is particularly interesting
15:30
Speaker 1: because it interacts with all the other fields and changes
15:33
Speaker 1: the way particles move so that they have mass. Right,
15:37
Speaker 1: But I guess what does it mean that they discovered it? Like,
15:40
Speaker 1: they probably had an idea that maybe it existed, that
15:43
Speaker 1: it was in the theory that it could be there,
15:45
Speaker 1: and then so this discovery that happened ten years ago
15:48
Speaker 1: was confirmation of the theory, right? Or did they just
15:51
Speaker 1: find something out of the blue. No, it's not like
15:52
Speaker 1: they just found it in their coffee one morning and
15:55
Speaker 1: you know, rain screaming to the papers. It was definitely
15:57
Speaker 1: a dedicated effort. We thought that it might exist. We
15:59
Speaker 1: had very clear and crisp theoretical ideas about what it
16:02
Speaker 1: might be. But it's not enough to just say this
16:05
Speaker 1: makes sense that the universe would be more mathematically consistent
16:08
Speaker 1: if it were this case. You need to also make predictions. Remember,
16:11
Speaker 1: physics is not just descriptive, where we say, here's a
16:14
Speaker 1: description of everything we've seen in the universe. It needs
16:17
Speaker 1: to be predictive. It needs to say if this description
16:20
Speaker 1: of the universe is right, if these concepts are actually
16:23
Speaker 1: real and not just part of our heads, we should
16:25
Speaker 1: be able to predict the outcome of some new experiment.
16:28
Speaker 1: So the Higgs theory predicts that if you collide particles
16:32
Speaker 1: at very high energy, you can dump some energy into
16:34
Speaker 1: the Higgs field, make it wiggle, create this Higgs boson,
16:38
Speaker 1: and see evidence of it coming out of your collisions.
16:41
Speaker 1: And so that's what we saw in the particle collider.
16:44
Speaker 1: We created the conditions necessary to make the Higgs field
16:47
Speaker 1: wiggle in just the right way so we can show
16:50
Speaker 1: us that it actually exists. Right. You used the Large
16:52
Speaker 1: Hadron collider in Geneva to speed up particles up to
16:56
Speaker 1: almost the speed of lights, smash them together, and then,
16:59
Speaker 1: just like theory predicted, sometimes all of that energy goes
17:03
Speaker 1: into wiggling the Higgs field. And that was a big
17:05
Speaker 1: deal because it confirm what the theory said. Right. Yeah,
17:08
Speaker 1: and the theory predicted exactly how often those protons would
17:12
Speaker 1: collide to give you a Higgs boson. How long that
17:15
Speaker 1: Higgs boson would last and what it would turn into
17:18
Speaker 1: because when you collide protons together, protons are not fundamental particles.
17:22
Speaker 1: They're not like their own little tiny dots, their little
17:24
Speaker 1: bags of particles. Each one has quarks inside of it
17:27
Speaker 1: and blue ones inside of it. So when you smash
17:30
Speaker 1: them together, what's really going on is that the cork
17:32
Speaker 1: inside one proton is interacting with a cork inside another proton,
17:35
Speaker 1: or a gluon from one proton is interacting with a
17:38
Speaker 1: glue on from the other proton. And that's actually how
17:41
Speaker 1: you make the Higgs boson. You don't collide the quarks
17:43
Speaker 1: inside the protons, You collide the gluons to make a
17:47
Speaker 1: Higgs boson. And so I guess that's why it caused
17:49
Speaker 1: billions of dollars, because you have to build this huge
17:51
Speaker 1: facility to create this huge particle accelerator. Because this kind
17:55
Speaker 1: of thing doesn't happen just like anytime, right, you need
17:58
Speaker 1: some very special condition. It actually does happen all the
18:01
Speaker 1: time in the upper atmosphere. Cosmic rays hit the atmosphere
18:05
Speaker 1: very high energies and create collisions even more powerful than
18:08
Speaker 1: the ones we create in Geneva. But that's not easy
18:12
Speaker 1: to control. You don't know where it's going to happen.
18:14
Speaker 1: You can't set up really elaborate sensitive detectors around those
18:17
Speaker 1: collisions because it's quantum, mechanical and random. Though a lot
18:20
Speaker 1: of people do that kind of study of cosmic ray
18:23
Speaker 1: physics using really interesting detectors on the surface of the ground.
18:26
Speaker 1: But for our purposes, we need the collisions to happen
18:29
Speaker 1: in a specific place where we can surround them with
18:31
Speaker 1: our very sensitive instruments that detect what comes out of
18:34
Speaker 1: the collision. And so you're right, it's expensive because we
18:37
Speaker 1: had to build a big tunnel inside which we can
18:39
Speaker 1: put our colliding beams and magnets to bend those beams,
18:43
Speaker 1: and little devices to kick those beams to make them
18:45
Speaker 1: go faster, and more magnets to focus those beams, and
18:48
Speaker 1: so the whole system costs about ten billion dollars. It's
18:51
Speaker 1: very specialized. It's not like that kind of thing you
18:53
Speaker 1: can buy on Amazon for cheap. But I guess, um,
18:56
Speaker 1: you know, you need this super a special equipment to
18:59
Speaker 1: kind of create the collisions that then give you the
19:02
Speaker 1: Higgs boson enough for you to see them. But I
19:05
Speaker 1: guess also, at the same time, the Higgs boson is
19:07
Speaker 1: working all the time, right, Like if it's the particle
19:10
Speaker 1: that gives all the other particles a certain amount of mass,
19:13
Speaker 1: then it's working. Like right now as I move my arm,
19:16
Speaker 1: there's are there must be Higgs boson is flying all
19:18
Speaker 1: over the place. The Higgs field is there all of
19:20
Speaker 1: the time, and every particle in your body is interacting
19:23
Speaker 1: with the Higgs field, and the field is there the
19:25
Speaker 1: same way that like the electromagnetic field is there in
19:28
Speaker 1: all of space. It may not have a lot of
19:30
Speaker 1: energy and it may not be excited, but the field exists.
19:33
Speaker 1: Like you have to empty space far far away from
19:36
Speaker 1: everything else, there's no particles in it, there are still
19:38
Speaker 1: the fields in there, like the capacity to have particles,
19:42
Speaker 1: like a parking lot with empty spaces in it, right,
19:45
Speaker 1: And so in that same sense, the field exists throughout
19:48
Speaker 1: the whole universe. Whenever a particle moves through the universe,
19:51
Speaker 1: it is interacting with that field, and it's that interaction
19:55
Speaker 1: that gives the particle mass, that makes it move as
19:58
Speaker 1: if it had mass. And so in that sense, the
20:00
Speaker 1: Higgs field is interacting with you. And you can also
20:03
Speaker 1: technically say that there are Higgs bosons doing it but
20:06
Speaker 1: they're virtual Higgs bosons in the way we can replace
20:10
Speaker 1: the concept of a field as like an infinite sum
20:12
Speaker 1: over virtual particles. If you prefer that way of thinking
20:15
Speaker 1: about it. I do prefer that way of think about it,
20:17
Speaker 1: even for my every day life. No, I'm just kidding,
20:22
Speaker 1: but I think you're saying that it's a field, and
20:24
Speaker 1: so you need some kind of particle to interact with it, right,
20:27
Speaker 1: And that's where the virtual Higgs bosons come in. Remember,
20:30
Speaker 1: there's sort of two pictures of what happens microscopically with interactions.
20:34
Speaker 1: Either you can imagine that a particles interacting with the
20:37
Speaker 1: field produced by another particle, Like when you have two electrons,
20:41
Speaker 1: maybe one of them creates an electric field that interacts
20:44
Speaker 1: with the other electron. That's the field picture, or there's
20:46
Speaker 1: the particle picture. We say the field is really just
20:49
Speaker 1: a bunch of virtual photons, And so the way two
20:51
Speaker 1: electrons interact is by passing virtual photons back and forth
20:54
Speaker 1: between each other. Mathematically the equivalent philosophically, they're completely opposed
20:58
Speaker 1: to each other. But in the second picture, you can
21:00
Speaker 1: say that you're passing virtual photons back and forth. So
21:03
Speaker 1: back to the Higgs field you can say that an
21:05
Speaker 1: electron moving through the universe is interacting with the Higgs field,
21:08
Speaker 1: or you can say it's got a lot of virtual
21:10
Speaker 1: Higgs bosons bouncing off of it all the time. Fundamentally,
21:14
Speaker 1: it's really equivalent. All right, Well, that's the discovery of
21:16
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. It happened ten years ago, and you
21:18
Speaker 1: were able to produce Higgs boson's, right, You sort of
21:20
Speaker 1: saw them in the data, and then you say, hey,
21:22
Speaker 1: that bump, that has to be the Higgs boson. Yeah,
21:25
Speaker 1: we saw things happen in our collisions that we couldn't
21:28
Speaker 1: explain without the Higgs boson. It's important to realize also
21:32
Speaker 1: that this is a statistical discovery. It's not like back
21:35
Speaker 1: in the old days, like the discovery the positron. Whether
21:37
Speaker 1: it's just one example and yet a picture of the
21:39
Speaker 1: path of a particle doing something nothing else could do,
21:42
Speaker 1: and so you knew it had to be a positron.
21:44
Speaker 1: In our case. There are other ways to explain any
21:47
Speaker 1: individual collision. You can't look at one collision and say
21:50
Speaker 1: this one has to be a Higgs boson, therefore it exists.
21:53
Speaker 1: There's always other things that can give the same sort
21:56
Speaker 1: of signature in your instruments. So what we need to
21:59
Speaker 1: do is a statistic analysis to show we see more
22:01
Speaker 1: of this particular kind of collision than we would if
22:04
Speaker 1: we didn't have higgs boson. So it's a little bit
22:06
Speaker 1: less satisfying because we don't have one we can point to.
22:10
Speaker 1: We can look at a whole data set and say, oh,
22:11
Speaker 1: we ran this thing for three years and the trends
22:14
Speaker 1: in that data are consistent with their being a higgs
22:16
Speaker 1: boson and not consistent with their not being a higgs boson.
22:21
Speaker 1: All right, So that's the discovery the Higgs boson. And
22:23
Speaker 1: so now the question is was it a big triumph,
22:25
Speaker 1: What's it a good thing for physics, for humanity, for
22:29
Speaker 1: particle physicists or was it a bit of a disappointment
22:32
Speaker 1: or maybe a little bit of both. So let's get
22:34
Speaker 1: into that, But first let's take a quick break. All right,
22:49
Speaker 1: Today we are debating whether Daniel should keep his job
22:52
Speaker 1: or not. Vote yes, yes, we still need particle physicists.
22:57
Speaker 1: You vote yes, you're not desperate to get into another
23:00
Speaker 1: line of work. I'm having a good time, absolutely yeah.
23:02
Speaker 1: I love being a particle physicist. M But I guess
23:05
Speaker 1: there's been a bit of a debate recently online, which
23:08
Speaker 1: of course makes it real that many particle physicists is
23:12
Speaker 1: not maybe so justified in its search for particles, and
23:15
Speaker 1: it maybe doesn't even know it exists. Well, like every
23:17
Speaker 1: field of science, it depends on funding, and who's paying
23:21
Speaker 1: for it are the public, me and you and everybody
23:24
Speaker 1: who pay taxes. Their money which comes from their hard
23:26
Speaker 1: earned paycheck is going towards this thing, and so it's
23:29
Speaker 1: very reasonable to ask, like, is it worth the money?
23:31
Speaker 1: Should we be spending that money on something else, like
23:34
Speaker 1: going to Mars or fighting climate change or whatever. So
23:37
Speaker 1: it's totally reasonable to be asking questions like do you
23:40
Speaker 1: guys know what you're doing, and do you deserve another
23:42
Speaker 1: big chunk of money to build another collider? Because these
23:45
Speaker 1: things take decades to build, and so the planning for
23:48
Speaker 1: them has to start well before you want to turn
23:51
Speaker 1: the thing on. And we're sort of in the like
23:53
Speaker 1: middle age of the large hadron collider is not ready
23:55
Speaker 1: to retire quite yet, but we can sort of see
23:58
Speaker 1: that on the horizon in tent or of teen years.
24:01
Speaker 1: And so there's been a lot of conversations recently about
24:03
Speaker 1: the future of particle physics should we build another collider?
24:06
Speaker 1: Is it justified? How would you justify it? What do
24:09
Speaker 1: you need to know before you build it? Do you
24:10
Speaker 1: need to guarantee that you're going to discover something or
24:13
Speaker 1: is it enough just to explore the universe. It sounds
24:15
Speaker 1: like you have a lot to say about this topic. Daniel,
24:20
Speaker 1: might be a little too close to home. We're sort
24:21
Speaker 1: of studying this question, I guess in the light of
24:24
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery because it was sort of the
24:26
Speaker 1: last big discovery that particle physicists made a big deal
24:30
Speaker 1: about and that got the Nobel Prize and made the news.
24:33
Speaker 1: It was, you know, the completion of the standard model
24:37
Speaker 1: and our confirmation of it. So maybe it's worth taking
24:39
Speaker 1: a look back and thinking about whether it's a triumph
24:42
Speaker 1: or a disappointment. And so Daniel, let's start with the
24:45
Speaker 1: I guess the pro case in which way it was
24:48
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery a trial. It was a triumph,
24:50
Speaker 1: first of all in the sense that it finally accomplished
24:53
Speaker 1: something we've been trying to do for a very long time.
24:56
Speaker 1: We had the idea of the Higgs boson since the sixties,
25:00
Speaker 1: and everybody agreed it was a very beautiful way to
25:02
Speaker 1: solve a sort of thorny theoretical problem understanding the connection
25:06
Speaker 1: between the weak force and electromagnetism, and maybe we can
25:09
Speaker 1: get into that in a little bit. But people have
25:11
Speaker 1: been looking for for a long time. You know. The
25:13
Speaker 1: Americans wanted to build a super conducting super collider in
25:16
Speaker 1: Texas in the nineties, and we spent billions of dollars
25:19
Speaker 1: on that before he was canceled, so we didn't get
25:21
Speaker 1: to discover the Higgs boson. And then the Europeans built
25:24
Speaker 1: a collider, the Large Electron Positron Collider, that almost discovered
25:29
Speaker 1: they thought the Higgs boson in the year two thousand
25:32
Speaker 1: and then the Americans took over again, building the tevertron
25:35
Speaker 1: in Chicago that would have seen the Higgs boson if
25:38
Speaker 1: it had been a little bit different, but they didn't
25:40
Speaker 1: find it. And so for the Large Hydron Collider to
25:42
Speaker 1: finally discover in two thousand twelve was sort of like
25:45
Speaker 1: the end of an epic journey, right, because I guess
25:47
Speaker 1: what kept eluding all of these previous colliders was the
25:50
Speaker 1: amount of energy, right, because they built one back then,
25:54
Speaker 1: but it wasn't powerful enough, or it turned out I
25:57
Speaker 1: guess because they thought maybe it was powerful, but it
25:59
Speaker 1: wasn't powerful enough to find the Higgs. Because you need
26:01
Speaker 1: a certain amount of energy in these collisions for the
26:04
Speaker 1: Higgs to come out. It was harder to find the
26:06
Speaker 1: people anticipated, and so it took a very powerful machine
26:09
Speaker 1: in order to create it, and not just powerful in
26:12
Speaker 1: terms of the energy, but also powerful in terms of
26:14
Speaker 1: the number of collisions per second, because the Higgs boson
26:18
Speaker 1: is very very rare. When you smash protons together, most
26:21
Speaker 1: of the time you don't get a Higgs boson, You
26:23
Speaker 1: just get more protons coming out. So to see the
26:26
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, you need lots and lots and lots of collisions.
26:29
Speaker 1: But because the collisions, which happened every twenty five nano seconds,
26:33
Speaker 1: were enough for us to build up the statistical picture
26:36
Speaker 1: of the Higgs boson to claim the discovery. But it's
26:39
Speaker 1: also true that you just needed more energy to write
26:41
Speaker 1: that's why the LHC is so big. We also needed
26:44
Speaker 1: the energy, and the two things go hand in hand.
26:46
Speaker 1: So it was a triumph in the sense that like
26:47
Speaker 1: people have been trying for a long times, you know, saying, hey,
26:51
Speaker 1: if we build this, we'll find it. They didn't find
26:53
Speaker 1: it to say it, but if you give us more money,
26:54
Speaker 1: we can build even bear one and then we'll find it.
26:57
Speaker 1: But they didn't find it, and so finally they said
27:00
Speaker 1: it's go all in, and they built the L A C.
27:01
Speaker 1: And they found it, and they found It's sort of
27:03
Speaker 1: like climbing Mount Everest. You know, you failed a few times,
27:06
Speaker 1: you didn't quite make it to the peak, so you
27:08
Speaker 1: definitely want to make it to the peak the next time,
27:10
Speaker 1: and so when you finally get there, it feels triumphant, right,
27:13
Speaker 1: And it wouldn't have felt as triumphant if you hadn't
27:15
Speaker 1: failed a few times along the way. And so I
27:17
Speaker 1: guess it confirmed Peter Higgs theory that there is a
27:20
Speaker 1: field called like the Higgs field coincidentally, I guess, and
27:25
Speaker 1: it's a field that kind of explains how particles have
27:28
Speaker 1: mass or feel a certain kind of mass or in
27:31
Speaker 1: a sense inertia. Right, Yeah, that's right, and sort of
27:33
Speaker 1: most natural version of our theory, particles shouldn't have any
27:37
Speaker 1: mass at all. They should all be massless. The electron,
27:41
Speaker 1: the quarks, none of these particles should have any mass
27:44
Speaker 1: if you want to respect all of the symmetries that
27:46
Speaker 1: we think exist in the universe, So it was sort
27:48
Speaker 1: of a puzzle to us, like, well, we measure these
27:51
Speaker 1: particles to have mass, how is that possible if in
27:53
Speaker 1: our theory they should all be massless, And particularly saw
27:56
Speaker 1: that some particles were massless, like the photon is massless,
28:00
Speaker 1: whereas other particles like the W and the Z particles,
28:03
Speaker 1: which mathematically are very very similar to the photon, have
28:05
Speaker 1: a lot of mass. So there was this puzzle like
28:08
Speaker 1: how do particles get mass? And why do only some
28:10
Speaker 1: of them get mass? Right, I guess it was kind
28:13
Speaker 1: of a big question. It's a big question in general,
28:15
Speaker 1: like why do things have mass? Like why is it
28:17
Speaker 1: hard to push on things? And why does it take
28:20
Speaker 1: a while for them to get going if you push
28:22
Speaker 1: on them. That's a really deep question in philosophy, like
28:24
Speaker 1: what does inertia exist at all? And it's important to
28:27
Speaker 1: remember that a lot of the mass in the universe
28:29
Speaker 1: doesn't come from the Higgs field and the Higgs boson
28:32
Speaker 1: like the corks, they get their mass from the Higgs field,
28:35
Speaker 1: but the mass of a proton doesn't come mostly from
28:38
Speaker 1: the mass of the corks. The mass of the proton
28:40
Speaker 1: is a lot more than the mass of the pieces
28:43
Speaker 1: that go into it. Most of the mass of the
28:45
Speaker 1: proton comes from the energy stored within it, which also
28:48
Speaker 1: gives it inertia. That's sort of a larger question that
28:51
Speaker 1: we're going to dig into in a future episode, like
28:53
Speaker 1: what is inertia? Where does it come from? Anyway? But
28:56
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson is sort of like just one slice
28:59
Speaker 1: of that answer. It said as well, for fundamental particles
29:02
Speaker 1: like the electron and the corks, we think we have
29:05
Speaker 1: an idea for why they have mass. It doesn't answer
29:08
Speaker 1: the question why inertia exists at all, but is in
29:12
Speaker 1: the interaction with the Higgs field sort of it looks
29:16
Speaker 1: like inertia for fundamental particles. For fundamental particles, it answers
29:19
Speaker 1: the question. And the mental picture I have is that
29:22
Speaker 1: you have sort of like the true electron, This like
29:24
Speaker 1: theoretical quantity that has no mass, and it flies through
29:27
Speaker 1: the universe, and if the Higgs field wasn't there, it
29:29
Speaker 1: would move like a photon. But as it flies through
29:31
Speaker 1: the universe, the Higgs field is there, and Higgs field
29:34
Speaker 1: interacts with the photon same way that like the electron
29:37
Speaker 1: interacts with the electromagnetic field. Right, it interacts with these fields,
29:41
Speaker 1: and that interaction changes how the electron move. It's like
29:44
Speaker 1: absorbing Higgs bosons. It's radiating Higgs bosons, and the way
29:47
Speaker 1: that it changes its motion is exactly the same mathematically
29:51
Speaker 1: as if you just give it mass. If you said, well,
29:54
Speaker 1: how would an electron with mass move, it moves exactly
29:58
Speaker 1: the same way as a massless electron that interacts with
30:01
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. So that interaction with Higgs field changes
30:04
Speaker 1: how it moves in exactly the same way as if
30:07
Speaker 1: it just sort of inherently had this inertia. All right, Well,
30:10
Speaker 1: then I guess the discovery of the Higgs boson in
30:13
Speaker 1: the experiment confirmed this theory, the Higgs field and these
30:16
Speaker 1: ideas about how fundamental particles get their mass. I guess
30:20
Speaker 1: was it a big surprise that you found it or
30:22
Speaker 1: were people pretty sure that the theory was right. The
30:25
Speaker 1: field was really divided on the question of whether we
30:28
Speaker 1: were going to see the Higgs boson or not. But
30:30
Speaker 1: there was something really important that we knew, which is
30:33
Speaker 1: that there had to be something else out there. The
30:36
Speaker 1: theory we had just didn't work. It was missing a
30:38
Speaker 1: piece without the Higgs boson, it just didn't hang together.
30:42
Speaker 1: So we either had to see the Higgs boson or
30:44
Speaker 1: we had to see something else to explain why the
30:47
Speaker 1: theory didn't break down. So there was a bit of
30:49
Speaker 1: a no lose situation. We were going to see the
30:52
Speaker 1: Higgs or we were going to see something else, because
30:54
Speaker 1: the theory we had just wasn't gonna work. It was
30:57
Speaker 1: going to bail if the Higgs boson or some thing
31:00
Speaker 1: else similar didn't exist. And by fail, you mean like
31:03
Speaker 1: it couldn't explain certain things like why do certain fundamental
31:06
Speaker 1: particles have mass? That's right, that would be a failure theoretically,
31:10
Speaker 1: but also the theory we have was going to fail experimentally,
31:13
Speaker 1: like there were certain kinds of collisions ones where w
31:16
Speaker 1: Boson's we're going to bounce off of each other where
31:18
Speaker 1: if the Higgs boson didn't exist, our current theory predicted
31:21
Speaker 1: that that would happen at an infinite rate, right, It
31:24
Speaker 1: predicted infinities in our experiments, and we knew that that
31:28
Speaker 1: couldn't happen. You're not going to collide particles and get
31:30
Speaker 1: like an infinite outcome, right, And so our theory itself
31:34
Speaker 1: was failing at predicting what was going to happen. In
31:37
Speaker 1: the experiments, so we knew that we were going to
31:38
Speaker 1: see something new, something interesting, something that wasn't predicted by
31:42
Speaker 1: the theory without the Higgs boson. Either the Higgs boson
31:45
Speaker 1: was there is going to rescue those predictions, or something
31:49
Speaker 1: else had to intervene. And I guess it was also
31:51
Speaker 1: kind of a triumph in the sense of that it
31:53
Speaker 1: was a huge project. Right as you mentioned, there were
31:55
Speaker 1: ten thousand people working in it from you know, maybe
31:59
Speaker 1: hundreds of countries, and so it was kind of a
32:01
Speaker 1: triumph just for humanity to work on something so big
32:04
Speaker 1: together and the search for knowledge about the universe, and
32:07
Speaker 1: then to have it be successful. Yeah, and remember that
32:10
Speaker 1: certain came out of sort of the ashes of World
32:12
Speaker 1: War two, trying to bring nations together, getting them to
32:15
Speaker 1: work together on scientific projects, to build those connections and
32:18
Speaker 1: to make sure that those communities are tightly woven together.
32:21
Speaker 1: And so it's a real success that way. It's a
32:23
Speaker 1: very international place. You go have lunch at certain or coffee,
32:26
Speaker 1: You're going to hear conversations like fifteen different languages. There's
32:29
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird cuisines, being drunk in strange hot beverages,
32:33
Speaker 1: really sort of a fascinating place. And politically it's a
32:36
Speaker 1: very sort of successful sociological experiment. Can you bring a
32:40
Speaker 1: bunch of physicists together from around the world and get
32:43
Speaker 1: them to work together. Well, we have our arguments, but
32:45
Speaker 1: we made it work. Yeah. And also it was kind
32:48
Speaker 1: of crazy about it is that you didn't know you
32:49
Speaker 1: were going to find it, right, Like, it could have
32:51
Speaker 1: been that you looked and looked and looked and we
32:53
Speaker 1: didn't find it. It certainly could have been. We had
32:55
Speaker 1: no guaranteed that the Higgs itself was there. It's just
32:58
Speaker 1: an idea in somebody's mind. It's incredible that a clever
33:02
Speaker 1: dude thinking mathematically can say the universe would make more
33:06
Speaker 1: sense if it was arranged this way rather than the
33:09
Speaker 1: current idea. And so let's go out and see if
33:12
Speaker 1: that's correct. And to have that actually be the way
33:14
Speaker 1: the universe is right, that we can deduce the mathematical
33:17
Speaker 1: structure of the universe just by using our minds and
33:20
Speaker 1: finding patterns, that's really pretty powerful. That's philosophically very deep, right,
33:25
Speaker 1: And I guess it says you mentioned the end of
33:27
Speaker 1: a long string of similar discoveries, right, like you that's
33:30
Speaker 1: how you build out. The standard model is people would
33:33
Speaker 1: look at the theory and say, hey, maybe we should
33:34
Speaker 1: we should probably find a particle here, And then you
33:36
Speaker 1: go out and build a collider and you would find
33:38
Speaker 1: a particle. I guess I gave you some encouragement that
33:41
Speaker 1: you might find it. Yeah, there have been times in
33:43
Speaker 1: the past when we expected to see something and then
33:45
Speaker 1: found it, like the top cork or the bottom pork,
33:48
Speaker 1: these other quirks and leptons. There are also times when
33:50
Speaker 1: there were surprises, like the discovery of the Muan was
33:53
Speaker 1: a big shocker to everybody. I have a whole bunch
33:56
Speaker 1: of podcast episodes about the discovery of each of the particles.
33:59
Speaker 1: Go back and check these out, because each one is
34:01
Speaker 1: a really interesting history of false starts and dead ends
34:04
Speaker 1: and final triumphs. Right, And I guess maybe a question
34:07
Speaker 1: is why did it take so many generations of colliders
34:11
Speaker 1: to find it? Didn't you have from the theory at
34:13
Speaker 1: the beginning. Didn't you know how much energy you would need?
34:16
Speaker 1: Or the theory kind of evolve as you kept coming
34:18
Speaker 1: up with empty hands. Now, great question. The theory does
34:21
Speaker 1: not predict how heavy the Higgs particle itself is. It
34:25
Speaker 1: tells us that the field or something like it has
34:28
Speaker 1: to be there, But the actual mass of the particle,
34:31
Speaker 1: it is just a number. It's a parameter of the
34:33
Speaker 1: theory isn't predicted, and so that meant we didn't know
34:36
Speaker 1: exactly how big the collider had to be. It could
34:38
Speaker 1: have been that the Higgs boson was much much heavier
34:41
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't see it at these colliders, And so
34:43
Speaker 1: people were excited and at least at the time, it
34:45
Speaker 1: seemed like a huge triumph for science and for humanity. Right,
34:49
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. People were happy. Did you
34:51
Speaker 1: shake hands with all ten thousand of your collaborators or
34:54
Speaker 1: at least fiz bomp. You know, there was definitely a
34:56
Speaker 1: lot of celebrating going on, even though it had been
34:58
Speaker 1: sort of slowly of involving, and we saw it sort
35:01
Speaker 1: of rising out of the fog of the data bit
35:04
Speaker 1: by bit over the year. The day that it was
35:06
Speaker 1: announced was a big moment at CERN. People lined up
35:08
Speaker 1: to being the auditorium that I camped out the night
35:11
Speaker 1: before to make sure they got a spot to be
35:13
Speaker 1: in the room when they was announced. Peter Higgs himself
35:16
Speaker 1: had flown in for the occasion, though I think he
35:18
Speaker 1: fell asleep during the announcement. Well, I think the man
35:20
Speaker 1: deserved the nap. I mean he did. He did most
35:23
Speaker 1: of the work, right, He's been waiting for fifty years
35:25
Speaker 1: for us to follow up on his efforts. Absolutely, I'm
35:28
Speaker 1: sure he didn't need to hear one more talk about
35:30
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. So there definitely was a sense of
35:33
Speaker 1: celebration and you know, something accomplished on that moment. It's
35:36
Speaker 1: it's good to mark these events in your life, right,
35:38
Speaker 1: not to let them slide by. That's why we have birthdays.
35:41
Speaker 1: Your birthday is not actually any different from any other day,
35:43
Speaker 1: but it's good to mark the passage of time and say, hey,
35:46
Speaker 1: I did it one more year. And in that same sense,
35:48
Speaker 1: it was good to say here we draw the line.
35:51
Speaker 1: Now we declared discovered. Let's congratulate ourselves. Yeah, And so
35:54
Speaker 1: one way to look at it is that the discovery
35:56
Speaker 1: of the Higgs boson was a triumph for scientists for humanity.
35:59
Speaker 1: But you might also say that it was a disappointment
36:02
Speaker 1: or maybe the start of the end of particle physics.
36:06
Speaker 1: So let's get into that point of view. But first
36:09
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. All Right, we are celebrating
36:24
Speaker 1: Daniel's birthday. Happy birthday, Daniel, It's not my birthday. Oh
36:29
Speaker 1: wait what wait? I thought you said it was good
36:32
Speaker 1: to celebrate your birthday every day. It's good to mark
36:34
Speaker 1: those occasions in your life when you've achieved something. You know,
36:36
Speaker 1: you get a new job, you get a promotion, you
36:38
Speaker 1: get married, you have a kid, these kind of things.
36:42
Speaker 1: I think it's good to celebrate moments in life. I
36:44
Speaker 1: guess if I celebrated my birthday every day, I would
36:46
Speaker 1: be what years old? And if you eat cake every
36:50
Speaker 1: day you probably wouldn't live as long anyway. Be a
36:53
Speaker 1: lot of candles to blow out. All right, we're talking
36:55
Speaker 1: about selling the celebration of the Higgs Boson discovery, which
36:58
Speaker 1: was a big deal at the time and was considered
37:01
Speaker 1: and still is considered a triumph. But now we're going
37:02
Speaker 1: to take the opposite view and think about whether maybe
37:06
Speaker 1: it's a disappointment for particle physics, whether or not we
37:09
Speaker 1: can expect more things from particle physics, and whether or
37:11
Speaker 1: not we should keep hiring people like Daniel, and by extension,
37:15
Speaker 1: me who interviews and talks to people like Daniel. Well,
37:18
Speaker 1: I think it's valuable to take a time machine back
37:21
Speaker 1: to before we discover the Higgs boson. And remember that
37:23
Speaker 1: there were lots of other ideas. Peter Higgs had his
37:26
Speaker 1: theory about how particles get mass and how to solve
37:28
Speaker 1: these other technical problems in the Standard model, But there
37:31
Speaker 1: were competitors out there. There were people with other ways
37:35
Speaker 1: to solve the same problem, to give particles mass, and
37:38
Speaker 1: to patch up the other problems in the Standard model,
37:40
Speaker 1: and we just didn't know what we were going to discover. Wow, wait,
37:44
Speaker 1: so how did they pick the Higgs boson as the
37:47
Speaker 1: preferred solution to pour billions of dollars into. Well, when
37:50
Speaker 1: we build a large hige On collider, we try to
37:51
Speaker 1: set it up so we could discover any of those things.
37:54
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a Higgs Boson search machine. It was like, hey,
37:58
Speaker 1: let's explore the universe and see what's out there and
38:00
Speaker 1: set ourselves up to be able to discover the Higgs boson.
38:03
Speaker 1: But we were also capable of discovering other things. There
38:07
Speaker 1: was another theory, for example, called technique color, which was
38:10
Speaker 1: like a super fancy version of the strong force, which
38:12
Speaker 1: you remember uses colors to describe its charges. Technicolor was
38:16
Speaker 1: like a super powerful version of color and it could
38:19
Speaker 1: also give particles mass. Isn't that a registered trademark you
38:24
Speaker 1: use it or is that why it was projected? Well,
38:27
Speaker 1: it wasn't discovered. The universe doesn't seem to respect it,
38:29
Speaker 1: so we didn't have to worry about those legal issues.
38:32
Speaker 1: I mean, the universe is not in technicolor not as
38:35
Speaker 1: far as we know. Yeah, there were theories, for example,
38:38
Speaker 1: that like top corks could bind themselves together into weird
38:41
Speaker 1: particles that could sort of function like a Higgs boson
38:44
Speaker 1: and do its job instead of having Higgs boson. So
38:47
Speaker 1: there were definitely other ideas out there. Why was the
38:50
Speaker 1: Higgs boson theory itself the most popular, the most widely
38:53
Speaker 1: talked about. That's just a question of like what particle
38:56
Speaker 1: physicists thought might be reality. It's sort of like a
38:59
Speaker 1: popular any contest. But they definitely were other ideas out there,
39:03
Speaker 1: and so what we ended up discovering was sort of
39:05
Speaker 1: like the most widely expected one, which, in some sense,
39:08
Speaker 1: if you're looking to learn things about the universe, can
39:11
Speaker 1: be seen as a disappointment because there was the opportunity
39:14
Speaker 1: there for something crazy to happen, for us to all
39:17
Speaker 1: get surprised, right, I know, you like to take this
39:20
Speaker 1: point of view, and I wonder if part of it
39:22
Speaker 1: is that, you know, if you consider the Higgs Boson
39:24
Speaker 1: discovery to be basically the end all, be all triumph
39:27
Speaker 1: of particle physics, that sort of leads the question of, like,
39:30
Speaker 1: why do we need particle physics anymore? And so I know,
39:32
Speaker 1: you like to sort of take the point of view
39:33
Speaker 1: that there are still a lot of interesting things to
39:36
Speaker 1: discover out there. And part of it is sort of
39:39
Speaker 1: thinking about the Higgs Boson discovery as a little bit
39:41
Speaker 1: of a disappointment because it's sort of confirmed all of
39:44
Speaker 1: our theories, which is, I guess if you're a young scientist,
39:47
Speaker 1: is bad news. But maybe you're an old scientists it's
39:50
Speaker 1: good news because I think you can retire officially that
39:54
Speaker 1: makes me young, I suppose, yeah. I mean I like
39:56
Speaker 1: discoveries that lead to more questions. Right, you find something new,
39:59
Speaker 1: like well, why is it this way and not some
40:01
Speaker 1: other way? Or it gives you a clue about how
40:04
Speaker 1: the universe works that spurs more investigation. The Higgs Boson
40:07
Speaker 1: was sort of like the simplest, most vanilla, most boring
40:11
Speaker 1: end to the story that wrapped up all the threads
40:13
Speaker 1: in a way that didn't give us a clue necessarily
40:16
Speaker 1: about what came next, and it could have been very different.
40:18
Speaker 1: We could have found like a really weird Higgs boson
40:21
Speaker 1: there was sort of Higgs like but did things we
40:23
Speaker 1: didn't understand. Or we could have found something totally weird
40:26
Speaker 1: and totally different that solved the same problem that Higgs did,
40:30
Speaker 1: but had been completely unexpected, and that would have been
40:32
Speaker 1: a huge clue that we were on the wrong track
40:35
Speaker 1: and a way to learn about what the right track was. Instead,
40:39
Speaker 1: we sort of like wrapped up all the threads nicely,
40:41
Speaker 1: like at the end of every Disney movie, without a
40:44
Speaker 1: clear path to follow up on, you're like, how are
40:46
Speaker 1: they going to make a sequel? But it's something this
40:49
Speaker 1: confirms that you're on the right track. Isn't that good?
40:51
Speaker 1: And doesn't that also leaves you a lot of possibilities
40:54
Speaker 1: for the future, Like why do you have to show
40:56
Speaker 1: that you're on the wrong track to make more discoveries. Well,
40:58
Speaker 1: in this case, remember sort of like the end of
41:00
Speaker 1: a story, it's the last brick in the standard model,
41:03
Speaker 1: and the standard mall itself, the openings, the holes and
41:06
Speaker 1: it were great clues to know where to look to
41:07
Speaker 1: find more stuff. We're trying to flesh that out, and
41:10
Speaker 1: then look at it and say, well, what does this
41:12
Speaker 1: tell us? And so it's sort of the end of
41:15
Speaker 1: one story, which is like, how do we fill all
41:16
Speaker 1: the holes in the standard model? So now there aren't
41:19
Speaker 1: any holes in the standard model from that perspective, so
41:23
Speaker 1: we have to pivot and ask different kinds of questions
41:25
Speaker 1: and say, all right, if this is the standard model,
41:27
Speaker 1: we have to ask like why is it this way?
41:29
Speaker 1: Why is there some other standard model? Or ask bigger
41:32
Speaker 1: questions like well, what about the rest of the universe
41:35
Speaker 1: that the standard model doesn't describe, like dark matter and
41:37
Speaker 1: dark energy. So it's the sort of the end of
41:40
Speaker 1: the line of one kind of question. Of course, it
41:42
Speaker 1: doesn't shut down lots of other kinds of questions that
41:45
Speaker 1: we can ask. But you know, it's a disappointment if
41:47
Speaker 1: you imagine another alternative world where we had found not
41:51
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, but something else totally weird and different.
41:54
Speaker 1: They gave us like very immediate, tangible things to follow
41:57
Speaker 1: up on. Right, Well, although I feel like you're telling
42:00
Speaker 1: you're saying that it was a disappointment and that it
42:01
Speaker 1: didn't give you more work as a particle physicist, right, Like,
42:07
Speaker 1: if you're a particle physicist and you discover something and
42:09
Speaker 1: confirm its validity, then that doesn't leave much work for you.
42:12
Speaker 1: In that sense is a disappointment for you. But for
42:15
Speaker 1: all the people who worked up to towards confirming maybe
42:18
Speaker 1: the Higgs theory, then it's not a disappointment, right. Yeah.
42:21
Speaker 1: Whether it's a disappointment depends on your goal. If your
42:23
Speaker 1: goal is to complete the standard model and put it
42:26
Speaker 1: away in a package on a shelf and go like, oh,
42:27
Speaker 1: how pretty, then yeah, that's not disappointing. But if your
42:30
Speaker 1: goal is to understand the nature of the universe, then
42:33
Speaker 1: you want dangling threads to pull on, you know, just
42:35
Speaker 1: to paint the picture more concretely, something else we might
42:38
Speaker 1: have found was something like a supersymmetry, this idea that
42:41
Speaker 1: every particle that we have is actually just one of
42:44
Speaker 1: a pair, that for the electron, there's another version of it,
42:48
Speaker 1: and for every cork there's another version of it. This
42:50
Speaker 1: is also a prediction for something we might find the
42:53
Speaker 1: large hit dron collider, and if we had found the
42:55
Speaker 1: beginnings of that, it would have led to lots of
42:57
Speaker 1: really interesting research directions. To study all of these new
43:00
Speaker 1: particles and what they do and what it means about
43:02
Speaker 1: the universe. But so far we haven't seen them, and
43:05
Speaker 1: so some of the people who predicted that we would
43:08
Speaker 1: see them at the large age on collider are eating
43:10
Speaker 1: crow a little bit. But I feel like you're sort
43:13
Speaker 1: of saying, like, you know, the goal is to understand
43:15
Speaker 1: the universe. So if we confirm the standard model, doesn't
43:18
Speaker 1: that also mean that we're understanding the universe? And in
43:21
Speaker 1: a way, it's sort of like confirming that we understand
43:23
Speaker 1: the universe. Why is that a bad thing? In terms
43:25
Speaker 1: of understanding the universe? It's not a bad thing. It's
43:27
Speaker 1: a very pretty picture. But we have other deeper questions,
43:30
Speaker 1: right It doesn't answer the deepest questions about the nature
43:33
Speaker 1: of reality. Is just sort of like wraps up a
43:35
Speaker 1: little corner of it as a way to make progress
43:37
Speaker 1: on the bigger questions about how the whole universe works.
43:41
Speaker 1: And so it means that maybe this area isn't the
43:44
Speaker 1: most fertile ground anymore for answering those bigger, deeper questions.
43:48
Speaker 1: You know, we have to go to other places where
43:50
Speaker 1: we have hints about how things are not quite working.
43:52
Speaker 1: Threads we can pull on to try to answer the
43:54
Speaker 1: questions about like what is the whole universe made out of?
43:57
Speaker 1: What is the underlying theory of physics for everything? Because
44:01
Speaker 1: we know the theory we have now the Standard model
44:03
Speaker 1: is definitely not the final answer. But wrapping these threads
44:06
Speaker 1: up so nicely doesn't give us immediate directions to explore
44:09
Speaker 1: to finding that final answer. Well, I guess the question
44:12
Speaker 1: is how does the Standard model, or knowing that the
44:14
Speaker 1: Standard Model is right, how does that not help us
44:17
Speaker 1: understand some of these deeper questions, like if it's right,
44:20
Speaker 1: then doesn't that tell us that that is the nature
44:22
Speaker 1: of the universe. Well, in an example is dark matter.
44:25
Speaker 1: We know that there's more stuff out there in the
44:27
Speaker 1: universe than that is described by the Standard model. Right,
44:30
Speaker 1: the Standard Model describes quirks and electrons which build up atoms,
44:34
Speaker 1: but we know that dark matter is not made of
44:36
Speaker 1: those particles. One possibility is that we discovered at the
44:39
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider a Higgs boson which interacts with dark matter,
44:43
Speaker 1: which gives us like a portal into exploring dark matter.
44:47
Speaker 1: Or we could have discovered supersymmetric particles, some of which
44:50
Speaker 1: are the dark matter. So in those alternate scenarios where
44:53
Speaker 1: we hadn't just discovered like the vanilla Higgs boson and
44:55
Speaker 1: nothing else. We could have been cracking open this big
44:58
Speaker 1: puzzle about dark matter, right, which is a really big
45:01
Speaker 1: question in physics. But discovering the vanilla Higgs in exactly
45:05
Speaker 1: this way doesn't give us any access to what dark
45:08
Speaker 1: matter is. Well, I should you say that. I'm a
45:09
Speaker 1: big fan of vanilla. It's my favorite ice cream flavor,
45:12
Speaker 1: so I take offense that just you using it in
45:14
Speaker 1: such a derogatory way. I mean, it's delicious, but you
45:19
Speaker 1: always feel like you didn't really have dessert. Well, it's
45:22
Speaker 1: just a matter of taste here, But I mean, I
45:24
Speaker 1: feel like if you're not finding something related to dark
45:26
Speaker 1: matter at the large out and collider, isn't that also
45:29
Speaker 1: good news? That just means you have to look elsewhere
45:31
Speaker 1: for clues about dark matter. Maybe she just not in
45:34
Speaker 1: a particle collider. Yeah, it tells you something about what
45:37
Speaker 1: dark matter isn't. But it's more exciting to discover what
45:40
Speaker 1: dark matter is than what it Isn't You mean you
45:42
Speaker 1: wish as a particle physicist, you wish the dark matter
45:45
Speaker 1: I had more to do with particle physics. Yeah, it's
45:47
Speaker 1: a little bit disappointing, which is the question I think
45:50
Speaker 1: we're trying to answer, that we didn't also discover dark matter,
45:53
Speaker 1: or for example, we might have created many black holes
45:56
Speaker 1: which evaporated and gave us clues about the nature of
45:59
Speaker 1: quantum graph Right, what is gravity for particles? Unifying relativity
46:04
Speaker 1: and quantum mechanics for the first time ever, that could
46:07
Speaker 1: have been a possibility, but it didn't happen. So yes,
46:09
Speaker 1: it was a triumph, but sort of in the spectrum
46:11
Speaker 1: of other discoveries, we might have made a sort of
46:14
Speaker 1: minor in comparison to other bigger winds, right, But I
46:18
Speaker 1: guess I just want to I'm trying to understand the
46:20
Speaker 1: distinction here. It's sort of a disappointment, but maybe from
46:24
Speaker 1: only from the point of view of a particle physicist, right, Like,
46:27
Speaker 1: it doesn't open up particle physicists search for these bigger questions,
46:31
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that people can search for these
46:32
Speaker 1: big questions elsewhere or in other ways. Yes, absolutely, from
46:36
Speaker 1: the narrow point of view of a collider particle physicist,
46:39
Speaker 1: it's a disappointment. There are definitely areas in physics and
46:43
Speaker 1: even in particle physics where other people can follow up
46:45
Speaker 1: on these questions searching for dark mattering underground laboratories or
46:49
Speaker 1: with space telescopes. We heard recently about interesting discoveries with
46:53
Speaker 1: muans and their magnetic moments, which gives a hint about
46:56
Speaker 1: how my supersymmetry might actually exist. But it could just
46:59
Speaker 1: be too heavy for the large Hadron collider to discover.
47:03
Speaker 1: But you know, we're in the era where we're asking
47:05
Speaker 1: the question should the public give us another ten or
47:07
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars to build another of these colliders and
47:11
Speaker 1: has an impact on the rest of the community. That's
47:13
Speaker 1: why we sort of put a microscope on the collider
47:15
Speaker 1: physics and say, was this the success? Should we do
47:18
Speaker 1: this again? How much do we have to have a
47:20
Speaker 1: guarantee of a future discovery before we spend another ten
47:23
Speaker 1: billion dollars. So it is a disappointment for you and
47:27
Speaker 1: ten thousand of my friends and ten thousands of your
47:30
Speaker 1: friends out of the eight billion people on this planet.
47:33
Speaker 1: But it's maybe an exciting news for people who are
47:35
Speaker 1: not in particle physics, who are maybe now have more
47:38
Speaker 1: funding available or potentially available to study their ideas for
47:42
Speaker 1: what these big topics might be. Well I think there
47:44
Speaker 1: is that myth often that if you cancel a big
47:47
Speaker 1: science project that that money will then get distributed to
47:50
Speaker 1: other science projects and sort of pits scientists against each other.
47:53
Speaker 1: But you know it doesn't work that way. When they
47:55
Speaker 1: cancel the super Conducting super Collider, they weren't like, well,
47:58
Speaker 1: who wants this ten billion? And everybody just come in
48:01
Speaker 1: and take a handful. You know that money went away.
48:03
Speaker 1: The amount of money we spend as a society is
48:06
Speaker 1: not fixed, right. We can decide to spend more or
48:08
Speaker 1: we can decide to spend less. So in my view,
48:10
Speaker 1: I think it's always good to spend more money on science.
48:13
Speaker 1: It's an investment in the future. So we don't need
48:16
Speaker 1: to pit the field of science against each other. But
48:17
Speaker 1: we do need to make sure that the science we're
48:19
Speaker 1: doing is well justified and well motivated and interesting and
48:23
Speaker 1: hopefully a lot of it going to particles you want
48:25
Speaker 1: to be opposed to that, I'll make sure that there's
48:29
Speaker 1: vanilla ice cream in the cafeteriat cern Okay, then I'm
48:32
Speaker 1: on board throwing some root beer and we can make
48:34
Speaker 1: root beer floats, and I'm all in. This is how
48:37
Speaker 1: politics happens, man, It's all about special interests. It's all
48:40
Speaker 1: about ice cream, all right. Well, an interesting and personal
48:44
Speaker 1: debate here for at least one of us about the
48:46
Speaker 1: future of particle physics and how do you justify future
48:49
Speaker 1: work in it and exploration in it. Danny, you're a
48:51
Speaker 1: big fan of exploration, right I am. And as we
48:54
Speaker 1: make these arguments for new colliders, to me, it's not
48:57
Speaker 1: important whether we know we will find something. We were
49:00
Speaker 1: very confident we would find something with the late C
49:03
Speaker 1: But to me, it's worth it just to explore the universe.
49:05
Speaker 1: You know, we land probes on alien moons and planets
49:09
Speaker 1: to see what's there without knowing in advance what we
49:11
Speaker 1: might find, because we are curious. And in the same way,
49:15
Speaker 1: building these colliders and exploring reality and its smallest scale
49:18
Speaker 1: is always worth the money, at least to me. All right, Well,
49:22
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See
49:25
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel
49:35
Speaker 1: and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I
49:38
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast for my Heart Radio, visit
49:41
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
49:45
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,