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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, you're officially one of the discoverers of the

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson, right, I mean, yeah, me and ten thousand

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Speaker 1: of my close collaborators, then thousands. Did you really need

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Speaker 1: ten thousand people to discover one particle? We each discovered

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Speaker 1: one ten thousands of it. Does that mean you also

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Speaker 1: get one ten thousands of a Nobel Prize? No, the

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize went to the theorists, of course, not to

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Speaker 1: those of us who actually found the thing. I guess

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Speaker 1: it must have been exciting though, when they finally discovered

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Speaker 1: the particle. It was exciting, but you know, it happened slowly.

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Speaker 1: It's sort of like taking a flight across the ocean.

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Speaker 1: You're really excited when it starts out, but by the

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Speaker 1: time it's all official and done with your exhausted. You

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Speaker 1: should do what I do, which is taken up during

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Speaker 1: the flight. Then it's like you're teleported, you know, you

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Speaker 1: teleport your way to a Nobel Prize. Yeah, exactly. So

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Speaker 1: what's the next discovery that particle physicists are working on? Well,

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Speaker 1: I hope there is a next discovery. It's usually about

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Speaker 1: twenty years between major discoveries. Wait, do you schedule it

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Speaker 1: every twenty years. Why not every ten years? Hey, I'd

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Speaker 1: like to do one every year, but these things are

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Speaker 1: pretty tricky. You just need more naps. Maybe I just

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Speaker 1: need a neck pillow. What's the point of the neck

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Speaker 1: pill if you're not gonna nap. I'm not sure you're

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Speaker 1: getting the physics of that being here, right, Daniel. I'm

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Speaker 1: definitely out of my expertise. You should just sleep on it.

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Speaker 1: Hi am Orhamma, cartoonists and the creator of PhD comics. Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I do have

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Speaker 1: one millions of a Nobel Prize one million or don't

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Speaker 1: you mean like one seven? Since you are part of

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Speaker 1: the human race. Yeah, but not every human has a

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize. Actually, I'm no longer a Nobel Prize winner.

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Speaker 1: I used to be you because I had EU citizenship

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Speaker 1: and the entire EU won the Nobel Peace Prize once.

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Speaker 1: But I'm a UK citizen, which means I'm no longer

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Speaker 1: an EU citizen. So I guess we brexited from Nobel

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Speaker 1: Prize winners. Oh my goodness, it affected so many people

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Speaker 1: in so many ways. It lost you the Nobel Prize.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you should write a book about losing the

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Speaker 1: Nobel Prize the Brexit. I had to update my CV

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Speaker 1: and everything, or at least one five million of it.

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Speaker 1: So anyone who joins the EU is a Nobel Prize one.

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Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying. I'm not sure it's retroactive.

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Speaker 1: I think you have to be a member of the

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Speaker 1: EU when the Nobel Prize was handed out. How do

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Speaker 1: you know is that in the rules. There's probably a

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Speaker 1: bunch of lawsuits about it right now. But welcome to

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Speaker 1: a podcast. Daniel and Jorge explained The Universe, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, in which we seek to misstow

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Speaker 1: the benefits of human knowledge on everybody, not just members

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Speaker 1: of the EU or the UK or any other silly

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Speaker 1: islands out there. We think that everybody should understand what

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Speaker 1: we understand about the universe and what questions we are

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Speaker 1: puzzling over as we struggle to sort through the crazy

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Speaker 1: details of this universe, all the amazing things that it

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Speaker 1: does out there in deep space, and all the incredible

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Speaker 1: things we discover in our particle colliders. That's right, because

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Speaker 1: science is for everybody. We are all part of the

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Speaker 1: human race, and this race to understand the universe and

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Speaker 1: how it works and how it came to be, so

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Speaker 1: that we can understand more about our context in the cosmos,

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Speaker 1: and also hopefully when some prices along the way, or

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Speaker 1: at least some chocolate. And it's incredible that we can

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Speaker 1: force the universe to reveal its secret to us by

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Speaker 1: constructing interesting experiments. Right. In some sense, you can think

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Speaker 1: of an experiment as a specific way to make the

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Speaker 1: universe show you the answer. You set up your apparatus

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Speaker 1: so that it tells you whether universe works this way

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Speaker 1: or that way. And we have lots of different ways

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Speaker 1: to explore the universe and to force it to tell

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Speaker 1: us its secrets, from things out in space to incredible

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Speaker 1: machines we build underground. That sounds great for us, Daniel,

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Speaker 1: but I feel like it feels a little mean to

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Speaker 1: the universe, like you're forcing it to do something or

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Speaker 1: to reveal something about itself. What if the universe doesn't

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Speaker 1: want so, don't we get consent? Well, you know, I'd

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Speaker 1: love if we instead just had an oracle. We could

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Speaker 1: ask the universe questions and it would just answer to

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Speaker 1: us in our language. That would be awesome. I definitely

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Speaker 1: would prefer that set up to feeling like the universe

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Speaker 1: was our partner in this process rather than our slippery adversary.

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Speaker 1: Oh man, you're consider the university adversary adversarial position to take. Well,

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Speaker 1: some people in my field think of the universe as

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Speaker 1: prey and we are the hunters going out. Jeez, I

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Speaker 1: didn't know physicists were so violent. But I agree with you.

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Speaker 1: We should just be sitting down with the universe over

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Speaker 1: a cup of hot cocoa and having a nice chat.

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Speaker 1: And you're like, quantum mechanics, what's the deal with that?

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Speaker 1: Then they take a nice deep sip and it just

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Speaker 1: gets downloaded into my brain. Right, Or if it says no,

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Speaker 1: you should be respected, it says no, Right, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: have to disagree with you on that one. No, if

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Speaker 1: the universe says no, I still want to have the answer.

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Speaker 1: I don't think the universe as a whole, as a

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Speaker 1: physical entity, deserves privacy you. Oh my goodness, I feel

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Speaker 1: like we're on shaky gra here. Ethnically, if someone says

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Speaker 1: the same thing about you, would you have to disclose

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Speaker 1: everything about that anyone asked you because you're part of

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Speaker 1: the universe technically, so it's anybody's right to know what's

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Speaker 1: the things that they want to know about you. I'm

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Speaker 1: part of the universe, but I'm not the universe. If, however,

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Speaker 1: I was in charge of the physical laws of the universe,

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Speaker 1: then yes, I wouldn't begrudge my denizens from attempting to

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Speaker 1: discover the laws under which they ruled. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: sort of like a Freedom of Information Act. Should you

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Speaker 1: be able to ask the government about what it's doing

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Speaker 1: and what the laws are. Wouldn't it seem unfair to

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Speaker 1: the government enforced laws on you and didn't even tell

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Speaker 1: you what they were. Well, that's why they have classified information,

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Speaker 1: which apparently sometimes doesn't matter, or that you can declassify

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Speaker 1: with just your thoughts. Yeah, I don't think the universe

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Speaker 1: should have classified information. I mean, it's not like we're

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Speaker 1: going to war with other universes and it needs to

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Speaker 1: keep secrets, right, But what if it's patented or what

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Speaker 1: if it's dangerous information? Well, that is a real concern.

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Speaker 1: And as we do discover the secrets of the universe,

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Speaker 1: we learn not just to understand what it's doing, but

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Speaker 1: also to influence it and manipulated and that, of course

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Speaker 1: we know leads sometimes too, very powerful, very dangerous technologies.

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Speaker 1: So there are of course real ethical implications in revealing

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Speaker 1: how the universe works to the wider human race. Well,

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Speaker 1: we are definitely hard at work and exploring the universe

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Speaker 1: and trying to learn more about it, whether or not

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Speaker 1: we have permission or not. I guess physicists are charging

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Speaker 1: forward plundering the universe just to line up their pockets.

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Speaker 1: Politely investigating the universe. That's how I like to think

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Speaker 1: about it. They see, you're just a member of the

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Speaker 1: press on behalf of the citizens of the universe. We

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Speaker 1: would just like to understand what are the rules we

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Speaker 1: are living by? Thank you very much. And there is

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Speaker 1: a lot to learn and a lot that we have

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Speaker 1: learned about the universe, including what things are made of.

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Speaker 1: We've made an incredible amount of progress understanding the particles

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Speaker 1: and all of the forces that govern those particles that

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Speaker 1: make up you. The reality that we experience turns out

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Speaker 1: to be very different on a microscopic scale. If you

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Speaker 1: pull things apart, you discover the table you are sitting

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Speaker 1: in front of, and the chair you're sitting on, and

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Speaker 1: even you are made out of these funny little objects

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Speaker 1: that weave themselves together with special rules to create the

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Speaker 1: reality that we experience. But as you zoom down to

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Speaker 1: that microscopic scale, you discovered the rules that they follow

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Speaker 1: are really quite different. They are quantum mechanical objects, and

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Speaker 1: they can do things that normal objects like baseballs and

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Speaker 1: ice cream can't do. It's really incredible how at the

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Speaker 1: tiny scale those different rules work together so that our

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Speaker 1: reality emerges. Yep. And we've seen a lot about what

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Speaker 1: reality is made out of, what the atoms and your

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Speaker 1: body are made out of, and how they work and

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Speaker 1: how they interact with each other. So the question now

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Speaker 1: is what else is there to know? I mean, I

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Speaker 1: know that I'm made out of electrons quarks. What else

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Speaker 1: is there to know? Daniel, Well, listener to this podcast.

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Speaker 1: Of course we'll know that there's never an end to

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Speaker 1: the questions. There's so much that we don't understand yet

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Speaker 1: about the universe. Sure, we take you apart and say

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Speaker 1: you're made of electrons and protons and neutrons which are

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Speaker 1: made up of quarks, but we don't know what's inside

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Speaker 1: those electrons and quirks, if anything. And there's still lots

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Speaker 1: of mysteries that we have not unraveled. Patterns in all

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Speaker 1: the particles that we've seen that remain unexplained, and then

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Speaker 1: even bigger mysteries like is dark matter made of particles?

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Speaker 1: And how does gravity work for particles? There's so much

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Speaker 1: still left to do. Yes, we have talked a lot

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Speaker 1: about the mysteries that are still in particle physics, but

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Speaker 1: I guess maybe in terms of the popular consciousness of

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Speaker 1: the quest for understanding particles, people clearly partly remember the

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Speaker 1: discovery of the Higgs boson. That was a big deal.

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Speaker 1: That was a big deal, and it was an important

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Speaker 1: moment in particle physics because it marked sort of the

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Speaker 1: end of an era. You know. We have lots of

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Speaker 1: questions about the particles we have discovered, but those questions

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Speaker 1: are sort of like can we use this to explain

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Speaker 1: other things like dark matter? Or why is it this

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Speaker 1: set of particles and not some other But before we

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Speaker 1: discovered the Higgs boson, we had other questions like how

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Speaker 1: does this stuff actually all work? Before the Higgs boson,

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Speaker 1: we didn't even have a really complete picture of how

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Speaker 1: all the electrons and the corks behaved. So finding the

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson was sort of like finding the last brick

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Speaker 1: in that wall. Now we still have questions about why

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Speaker 1: this wall not some other wall, and can we extend

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Speaker 1: this wall, build it in other directions. But the Higgs

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Speaker 1: Boson really did complete the picture of the standard model

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Speaker 1: as we know it, and that was a very important milestone. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it was a big deal because it sort of completed

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Speaker 1: the standard model, which is the set of particles and

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Speaker 1: forces that we think make up all matter in the

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Speaker 1: universe and how it interacts with itself. Um, and so

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Speaker 1: it was a big deal to find the Higgs Boson.

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Speaker 1: But I guess you know that was ten years ago, right,

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Speaker 1: it was discovered in That's a long time ago if

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Speaker 1: you're ten years old, especially, and so us in the

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Speaker 1: field of particle physics are wondering what comes next. Was

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Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson sort of like the last thing we're

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Speaker 1: ever going to discover? Or does it lead us down

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Speaker 1: the path towards future discoveries? And so to be on

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Speaker 1: the podcast, we'll be asking the question was the Higgs

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Speaker 1: Boson discovery a triumph or a disappointment? Does it after

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Speaker 1: you wanted the two you want to go for the

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Speaker 1: swirl option? Can it be a triumph but still disappointment?

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Speaker 1: You know, if you have picky parents, M I want

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Speaker 1: to triumph immediately with a disappointing aftertaste. It could be

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Speaker 1: a disappointing triumph. It was a huge deal when they

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Speaker 1: discovered the Higgs boson ten years ago, and it's hard

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Speaker 1: to believe it that it was ten years ago, because, um,

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Speaker 1: that's kind of when we started working together, right, Daniel, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's been more than ten years since we've been working together,

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Speaker 1: though sometimes it feels like shorter. Sometimes it feels like forever,

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Speaker 1: never ending, Daniel in Jorge time dilation, have you been

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Speaker 1: sucked into the black hole of particle physics? Wait, but

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Speaker 1: we don't know if there are particles inside the black holes.

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Speaker 1: Just dive on in and maybe we'll all find out.

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Speaker 1: But the discovery of the Higgs boson was a pretty

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Speaker 1: big deal in particle physics, and as you said, it's

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Speaker 1: And it's sort of hard to remember now because we've

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Speaker 1: some people predicting that we'd see other crazy stuff. So

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Speaker 1: the discovery of the Higgs boson validated one of those

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Speaker 1: research directions, but shut down a lot of other possible theories. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and so it was more than ten years ago that

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Speaker 1: is there still more to discover? And in fact, some

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Speaker 1: It is a tricky topic because these experiments are very expensive.

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Speaker 1: You know, the LHC costs like ten billion dollars to build,

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Speaker 1: and so you can always ask, like is that a

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Speaker 1: good use of our money? Particle physicists tend to justify

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Speaker 1: by building these things by predicting that we will discover things,

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Speaker 1: saying like, if we spend this money, we're very likely

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Speaker 1: to discover X, y Z. That can get them into

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Speaker 1: a little bit of trouble if they then don't discover

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Speaker 1: x y Z when you build it, and so some

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Speaker 1: people are wondering if particle physicists can really be trusted

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Speaker 1: to make those predictions or not. So that's the question

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Speaker 1: we'll dive into today. And so, as usual, we were

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Speaker 1: wondering how many people have thought about this idea, whether

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Speaker 1: the Higgs was a triumph or a disappointment. So thanks

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Speaker 1: to everybody who participates in these questions. We're very happy

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Speaker 1: to have your ideas before we dig into the topic.

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Speaker 1: So we're very grateful for your participation. If you'd like

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Speaker 1: to hear your voice for future episodes of the podcast,

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Speaker 1: please don't be shy. Right to me. Two questions at

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge dot com. Think about it for a second.

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Speaker 1: Do you think the discovery of the Higgs boson was

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Speaker 1: a triumph or a disappointment? Here's what people have to say. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it certainly was a triumph, but I guess there were

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Speaker 1: probably some people who were disappointed in some aspect or

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Speaker 1: other of it. I would say that's uh, three, no

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Speaker 1: questions about it. I think that it was probably like

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Speaker 1: a disappointing triumph because they found something, but it probably

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Speaker 1: wasn't exactly what they expected. To find because it only

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Speaker 1: happened very briefly, and even though it met the requirements

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Speaker 1: of what they were looking for, it might have been

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a disappointment because it was really

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Speaker 1: hard to find again later. I think the discovery of

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Speaker 1: the Higgs boson was a triumph because it had been

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Speaker 1: predicted in theory um, and so when it was found

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Speaker 1: it um gives on just some confidence in the theory.

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Speaker 1: All right. Most people think it was a triumph. That's

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Speaker 1: a that's a good thing for your job security. I

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Speaker 1: hope all these folks are voting on my promotions. But

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Speaker 1: how many of those folks are named Higgs? Like I imagine,

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Speaker 1: if your name is Higgs, then it was definitely a triumph.

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Speaker 1: Maybe if you have no connection to the bson at

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Speaker 1: all and now your name is famous, I wonder how

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Speaker 1: that feels. Actually. Like my wife, for example, her name

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Speaker 1: is Katrina, and after Hurricane Katrina blew through New Orleans,

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Speaker 1: everyone's like, oh Katrina, like the hurricane. Are you saying

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Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery was a disaster. I'm sure that

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Speaker 1: everybody named Higgs was flooded with emails afterwards. Yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: sure it was a heck of a job. But I

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Speaker 1: guess most people seem to think it was a trial.

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Speaker 1: That's a good thing, right or I guess mostly you

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Speaker 1: ask people who like physics, not people who need desperate

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Speaker 1: funding for other things. That's true. But you can be

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Speaker 1: a particle physicist and be pro physics and pro discovery

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Speaker 1: and still think that the Higgs boson discovery was a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a mixed bag. I personally felt a

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Speaker 1: little bit of disappointment when we discovered the Higgs boson.

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Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Interesting. I guess we'll dig into that, but first,

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Speaker 1: I guess we'll start with the basic discovery. So this

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Speaker 1: happened in right, What is it that they actually discovered. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it was announced July four, two thousand and twelve,

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Speaker 1: and what they announced on that day was that they

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Speaker 1: had enough statistical evidence to say that the Higgs field

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Speaker 1: exists in the universe. So the Higgs boson and the

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Speaker 1: Higgs field are slightly separate, but they're related. We've talked

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Speaker 1: often on the podcast about how particles are like wiggles

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Speaker 1: in a field. So photon is a wiggle in the

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Speaker 1: electromagnetic field. An electron is like a wiggle in the

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Speaker 1: electron field. So there's a field that fills space called

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Speaker 1: the Higgs field. Then if it gets enough energy in

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Speaker 1: one spot and it wiggles, then you can say it

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Speaker 1: makes a particle. So the particle for the Higgs field

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Speaker 1: is the Higgs boson. And this field is particularly interesting

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Speaker 1: because it interacts with all the other fields and changes

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Speaker 1: the way particles move so that they have mass. Right,

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Speaker 1: But I guess what does it mean that they discovered it? Like,

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Speaker 1: they probably had an idea that maybe it existed, that

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Speaker 1: it was in the theory that it could be there,

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Speaker 1: and then so this discovery that happened ten years ago

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Speaker 1: was confirmation of the theory, right? Or did they just

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Speaker 1: find something out of the blue. No, it's not like

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Speaker 1: they just found it in their coffee one morning and

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Speaker 1: you know, rain screaming to the papers. It was definitely

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Speaker 1: a dedicated effort. We thought that it might exist. We

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Speaker 1: had very clear and crisp theoretical ideas about what it

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Speaker 1: might be. But it's not enough to just say this

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Speaker 1: makes sense that the universe would be more mathematically consistent

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Speaker 1: if it were this case. You need to also make predictions. Remember,

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Speaker 1: physics is not just descriptive, where we say, here's a

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Speaker 1: description of everything we've seen in the universe. It needs

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Speaker 1: to be predictive. It needs to say if this description

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Speaker 1: real and not just part of our heads, we should

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Speaker 1: be able to predict the outcome of some new experiment.

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Speaker 1: So the Higgs theory predicts that if you collide particles

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Speaker 1: at very high energy, you can dump some energy into

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Speaker 1: the Higgs field, make it wiggle, create this Higgs boson,

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Speaker 1: and see evidence of it coming out of your collisions.

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Speaker 1: And so that's what we saw in the particle collider.

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Speaker 1: We created the conditions necessary to make the Higgs field

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Speaker 1: wiggle in just the right way so we can show

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Speaker 1: us that it actually exists. Right. You used the Large

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Speaker 1: Hadron collider in Geneva to speed up particles up to

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Speaker 1: almost the speed of lights, smash them together, and then,

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Speaker 1: just like theory predicted, sometimes all of that energy goes

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Speaker 1: into wiggling the Higgs field. And that was a big

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Speaker 1: deal because it confirm what the theory said. Right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and the theory predicted exactly how often those protons would

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Speaker 1: collide to give you a Higgs boson. How long that

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson would last and what it would turn into

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Speaker 1: because when you collide protons together, protons are not fundamental particles.

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Speaker 1: They're not like their own little tiny dots, their little

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Speaker 1: bags of particles. Each one has quarks inside of it

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Speaker 1: and blue ones inside of it. So when you smash

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Speaker 1: them together, what's really going on is that the cork

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Speaker 1: inside one proton is interacting with a cork inside another proton,

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Speaker 1: or a gluon from one proton is interacting with a

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Speaker 1: glue on from the other proton. And that's actually how

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Speaker 1: you make the Higgs boson. You don't collide the quarks

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Speaker 1: inside the protons, You collide the gluons to make a

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson. And so I guess that's why it caused

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Speaker 1: billions of dollars, because you have to build this huge

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Speaker 1: facility to create this huge particle accelerator. Because this kind

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Speaker 1: of thing doesn't happen just like anytime, right, you need

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Speaker 1: some very special condition. It actually does happen all the

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Speaker 1: time in the upper atmosphere. Cosmic rays hit the atmosphere

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Speaker 1: very high energies and create collisions even more powerful than

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Speaker 1: the ones we create in Geneva. But that's not easy

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Speaker 1: to control. You don't know where it's going to happen.

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Speaker 1: You can't set up really elaborate sensitive detectors around those

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Speaker 1: collisions because it's quantum, mechanical and random. Though a lot

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Speaker 1: of people do that kind of study of cosmic ray

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Speaker 1: physics using really interesting detectors on the surface of the ground.

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Speaker 1: But for our purposes, we need the collisions to happen

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Speaker 1: in a specific place where we can surround them with

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Speaker 1: our very sensitive instruments that detect what comes out of

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Speaker 1: the collision. And so you're right, it's expensive because we

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Speaker 1: had to build a big tunnel inside which we can

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Speaker 1: put our colliding beams and magnets to bend those beams,

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Speaker 1: and little devices to kick those beams to make them

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Speaker 1: go faster, and more magnets to focus those beams, and

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Speaker 1: so the whole system costs about ten billion dollars. It's

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Speaker 1: very specialized. It's not like that kind of thing you

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Speaker 1: can buy on Amazon for cheap. But I guess, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, you need this super a special equipment to

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Speaker 1: kind of create the collisions that then give you the

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Speaker 1: Higgs boson enough for you to see them. But I

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Speaker 1: guess also, at the same time, the Higgs boson is

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Speaker 1: working all the time, right, Like if it's the particle

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Speaker 1: that gives all the other particles a certain amount of mass,

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Speaker 1: then it's working. Like right now as I move my arm,

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Speaker 1: there's are there must be Higgs boson is flying all

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Speaker 1: over the place. The Higgs field is there all of

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Speaker 1: the time, and every particle in your body is interacting

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Speaker 1: with the Higgs field, and the field is there the

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Speaker 1: same way that like the electromagnetic field is there in

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Speaker 1: all of space. It may not have a lot of

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Speaker 1: energy and it may not be excited, but the field exists.

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Speaker 1: Like you have to empty space far far away from

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Speaker 1: everything else, there's no particles in it, there are still

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Speaker 1: the fields in there, like the capacity to have particles,

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Speaker 1: like a parking lot with empty spaces in it, right,

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Speaker 1: And so in that same sense, the field exists throughout

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Speaker 1: the whole universe. Whenever a particle moves through the universe,

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Speaker 1: it is interacting with that field, and it's that interaction

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Speaker 1: that gives the particle mass, that makes it move as

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Speaker 1: if it had mass. And so in that sense, the

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Speaker 1: Higgs field is interacting with you. And you can also

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Speaker 1: technically say that there are Higgs bosons doing it but

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Speaker 1: they're virtual Higgs bosons in the way we can replace

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Speaker 1: the concept of a field as like an infinite sum

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Speaker 1: over virtual particles. If you prefer that way of thinking

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Speaker 1: about it. I do prefer that way of think about it,

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Speaker 1: even for my every day life. No, I'm just kidding,

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Speaker 1: but I think you're saying that it's a field, and

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Speaker 1: so you need some kind of particle to interact with it, right,

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Speaker 1: And that's where the virtual Higgs bosons come in. Remember,

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Speaker 1: there's sort of two pictures of what happens microscopically with interactions.

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Speaker 1: Either you can imagine that a particles interacting with the

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Speaker 1: field produced by another particle, Like when you have two electrons,

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Speaker 1: maybe one of them creates an electric field that interacts

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Speaker 1: with the other electron. That's the field picture, or there's

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Speaker 1: the particle picture. We say the field is really just

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Speaker 1: a bunch of virtual photons, And so the way two

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Speaker 1: electrons interact is by passing virtual photons back and forth

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Speaker 1: between each other. Mathematically the equivalent philosophically, they're completely opposed

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Speaker 1: to each other. But in the second picture, you can

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Speaker 1: say that you're passing virtual photons back and forth. So

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Speaker 1: back to the Higgs field you can say that an

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Speaker 1: electron moving through the universe is interacting with the Higgs field,

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Speaker 1: or you can say it's got a lot of virtual

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Speaker 1: Higgs bosons bouncing off of it all the time. Fundamentally,

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Speaker 1: it's really equivalent. All right, Well, that's the discovery of

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Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. It happened ten years ago, and you

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Speaker 1: were able to produce Higgs boson's, right, You sort of

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Speaker 1: saw them in the data, and then you say, hey,

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Speaker 1: that bump, that has to be the Higgs boson. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: we saw things happen in our collisions that we couldn't

431
00:21:28,359 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 1: explain without the Higgs boson. It's important to realize also

432
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:35,360
Speaker 1: that this is a statistical discovery. It's not like back

433
00:21:35,359 --> 00:21:37,560
Speaker 1: in the old days, like the discovery the positron. Whether

434
00:21:37,560 --> 00:21:39,560
Speaker 1: it's just one example and yet a picture of the

435
00:21:39,560 --> 00:21:42,240
Speaker 1: path of a particle doing something nothing else could do,

436
00:21:42,359 --> 00:21:44,280
Speaker 1: and so you knew it had to be a positron.

437
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:47,520
Speaker 1: In our case. There are other ways to explain any

438
00:21:47,560 --> 00:21:50,440
Speaker 1: individual collision. You can't look at one collision and say

439
00:21:50,600 --> 00:21:53,640
Speaker 1: this one has to be a Higgs boson, therefore it exists.

440
00:21:53,800 --> 00:21:56,640
Speaker 1: There's always other things that can give the same sort

441
00:21:56,680 --> 00:21:59,080
Speaker 1: of signature in your instruments. So what we need to

442
00:21:59,119 --> 00:22:01,560
Speaker 1: do is a statistic analysis to show we see more

443
00:22:01,600 --> 00:22:04,360
Speaker 1: of this particular kind of collision than we would if

444
00:22:04,359 --> 00:22:06,840
Speaker 1: we didn't have higgs boson. So it's a little bit

445
00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 1: less satisfying because we don't have one we can point to.

446
00:22:10,040 --> 00:22:11,639
Speaker 1: We can look at a whole data set and say, oh,

447
00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:14,320
Speaker 1: we ran this thing for three years and the trends

448
00:22:14,400 --> 00:22:16,920
Speaker 1: in that data are consistent with their being a higgs

449
00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:20,879
Speaker 1: boson and not consistent with their not being a higgs boson.

450
00:22:21,119 --> 00:22:23,280
Speaker 1: All right, So that's the discovery the Higgs boson. And

451
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:25,640
Speaker 1: so now the question is was it a big triumph,

452
00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:28,960
Speaker 1: What's it a good thing for physics, for humanity, for

453
00:22:29,160 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 1: particle physicists or was it a bit of a disappointment

454
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:34,080
Speaker 1: or maybe a little bit of both. So let's get

455
00:22:34,080 --> 00:22:49,119
Speaker 1: into that, But first let's take a quick break. All right,

456
00:22:49,280 --> 00:22:52,440
Speaker 1: Today we are debating whether Daniel should keep his job

457
00:22:52,520 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 1: or not. Vote yes, yes, we still need particle physicists.

458
00:22:57,320 --> 00:22:59,440
Speaker 1: You vote yes, you're not desperate to get into another

459
00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:02,600
Speaker 1: line of work. I'm having a good time, absolutely yeah.

460
00:23:02,640 --> 00:23:05,359
Speaker 1: I love being a particle physicist. M But I guess

461
00:23:05,359 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: there's been a bit of a debate recently online, which

462
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:12,639
Speaker 1: of course makes it real that many particle physicists is

463
00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:15,440
Speaker 1: not maybe so justified in its search for particles, and

464
00:23:15,440 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: it maybe doesn't even know it exists. Well, like every

465
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:21,240
Speaker 1: field of science, it depends on funding, and who's paying

466
00:23:21,280 --> 00:23:24,200
Speaker 1: for it are the public, me and you and everybody

467
00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:26,880
Speaker 1: who pay taxes. Their money which comes from their hard

468
00:23:26,880 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 1: earned paycheck is going towards this thing, and so it's

469
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:31,840
Speaker 1: very reasonable to ask, like, is it worth the money?

470
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:34,199
Speaker 1: Should we be spending that money on something else, like

471
00:23:34,280 --> 00:23:37,440
Speaker 1: going to Mars or fighting climate change or whatever. So

472
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,000
Speaker 1: it's totally reasonable to be asking questions like do you

473
00:23:40,000 --> 00:23:42,760
Speaker 1: guys know what you're doing, and do you deserve another

474
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:45,680
Speaker 1: big chunk of money to build another collider? Because these

475
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,199
Speaker 1: things take decades to build, and so the planning for

476
00:23:48,280 --> 00:23:51,040
Speaker 1: them has to start well before you want to turn

477
00:23:51,080 --> 00:23:52,719
Speaker 1: the thing on. And we're sort of in the like

478
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:55,840
Speaker 1: middle age of the large hadron collider is not ready

479
00:23:55,880 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 1: to retire quite yet, but we can sort of see

480
00:23:58,440 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 1: that on the horizon in tent or of teen years.

481
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,200
Speaker 1: And so there's been a lot of conversations recently about

482
00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:06,560
Speaker 1: the future of particle physics should we build another collider?

483
00:24:06,680 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: Is it justified? How would you justify it? What do

484
00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:10,399
Speaker 1: you need to know before you build it? Do you

485
00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,119
Speaker 1: need to guarantee that you're going to discover something or

486
00:24:13,160 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: is it enough just to explore the universe. It sounds

487
00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:17,760
Speaker 1: like you have a lot to say about this topic. Daniel,

488
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 1: might be a little too close to home. We're sort

489
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:24,199
Speaker 1: of studying this question, I guess in the light of

490
00:24:24,320 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery because it was sort of the

491
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:30,760
Speaker 1: last big discovery that particle physicists made a big deal

492
00:24:30,760 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: about and that got the Nobel Prize and made the news.

493
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 1: It was, you know, the completion of the standard model

494
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,560
Speaker 1: and our confirmation of it. So maybe it's worth taking

495
00:24:39,600 --> 00:24:42,119
Speaker 1: a look back and thinking about whether it's a triumph

496
00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:45,399
Speaker 1: or a disappointment. And so Daniel, let's start with the

497
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: I guess the pro case in which way it was

498
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,479
Speaker 1: the Higgs Boson discovery a trial. It was a triumph,

499
00:24:50,680 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: first of all in the sense that it finally accomplished

500
00:24:53,480 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 1: something we've been trying to do for a very long time.

501
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: We had the idea of the Higgs boson since the sixties,

502
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:02,320
Speaker 1: and everybody agreed it was a very beautiful way to

503
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:06,160
Speaker 1: solve a sort of thorny theoretical problem understanding the connection

504
00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:09,199
Speaker 1: between the weak force and electromagnetism, and maybe we can

505
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:11,040
Speaker 1: get into that in a little bit. But people have

506
00:25:11,080 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 1: been looking for for a long time. You know. The

507
00:25:13,280 --> 00:25:16,520
Speaker 1: Americans wanted to build a super conducting super collider in

508
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:19,560
Speaker 1: Texas in the nineties, and we spent billions of dollars

509
00:25:19,560 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: on that before he was canceled, so we didn't get

510
00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 1: to discover the Higgs boson. And then the Europeans built

511
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:29,400
Speaker 1: a collider, the Large Electron Positron Collider, that almost discovered

512
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:31,880
Speaker 1: they thought the Higgs boson in the year two thousand

513
00:25:32,440 --> 00:25:35,399
Speaker 1: and then the Americans took over again, building the tevertron

514
00:25:35,480 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: in Chicago that would have seen the Higgs boson if

515
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:40,159
Speaker 1: it had been a little bit different, but they didn't

516
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:42,879
Speaker 1: find it. And so for the Large Hydron Collider to

517
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: finally discover in two thousand twelve was sort of like

518
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 1: the end of an epic journey, right, because I guess

519
00:25:47,960 --> 00:25:50,760
Speaker 1: what kept eluding all of these previous colliders was the

520
00:25:50,800 --> 00:25:54,280
Speaker 1: amount of energy, right, because they built one back then,

521
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:57,159
Speaker 1: but it wasn't powerful enough, or it turned out I

522
00:25:57,160 --> 00:25:59,119
Speaker 1: guess because they thought maybe it was powerful, but it

523
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:01,880
Speaker 1: wasn't powerful enough to find the Higgs. Because you need

524
00:26:01,920 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 1: a certain amount of energy in these collisions for the

525
00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 1: Higgs to come out. It was harder to find the

526
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,880
Speaker 1: people anticipated, and so it took a very powerful machine

527
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,240
Speaker 1: in order to create it, and not just powerful in

528
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:14,760
Speaker 1: terms of the energy, but also powerful in terms of

529
00:26:14,760 --> 00:26:18,280
Speaker 1: the number of collisions per second, because the Higgs boson

530
00:26:18,400 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 1: is very very rare. When you smash protons together, most

531
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:23,199
Speaker 1: of the time you don't get a Higgs boson, You

532
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:25,960
Speaker 1: just get more protons coming out. So to see the

533
00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:29,520
Speaker 1: Higgs boson, you need lots and lots and lots of collisions.

534
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:33,400
Speaker 1: But because the collisions, which happened every twenty five nano seconds,

535
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: were enough for us to build up the statistical picture

536
00:26:36,600 --> 00:26:39,359
Speaker 1: of the Higgs boson to claim the discovery. But it's

537
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:41,520
Speaker 1: also true that you just needed more energy to write

538
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:44,240
Speaker 1: that's why the LHC is so big. We also needed

539
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,280
Speaker 1: the energy, and the two things go hand in hand.

540
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 1: So it was a triumph in the sense that like

541
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 1: people have been trying for a long times, you know, saying, hey,

542
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,280
Speaker 1: if we build this, we'll find it. They didn't find

543
00:26:53,320 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: it to say it, but if you give us more money,

544
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: we can build even bear one and then we'll find it.

545
00:26:57,320 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: But they didn't find it, and so finally they said

546
00:27:00,000 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: it's go all in, and they built the L A C.

547
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:03,639
Speaker 1: And they found it, and they found It's sort of

548
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:06,240
Speaker 1: like climbing Mount Everest. You know, you failed a few times,

549
00:27:06,280 --> 00:27:07,919
Speaker 1: you didn't quite make it to the peak, so you

550
00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 1: definitely want to make it to the peak the next time,

551
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: and so when you finally get there, it feels triumphant, right,

552
00:27:13,800 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 1: And it wouldn't have felt as triumphant if you hadn't

553
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:17,800
Speaker 1: failed a few times along the way. And so I

554
00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:20,480
Speaker 1: guess it confirmed Peter Higgs theory that there is a

555
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: field called like the Higgs field coincidentally, I guess, and

556
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,199
Speaker 1: it's a field that kind of explains how particles have

557
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,479
Speaker 1: mass or feel a certain kind of mass or in

558
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,879
Speaker 1: a sense inertia. Right, Yeah, that's right, and sort of

559
00:27:33,960 --> 00:27:37,760
Speaker 1: most natural version of our theory, particles shouldn't have any

560
00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:41,080
Speaker 1: mass at all. They should all be massless. The electron,

561
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 1: the quarks, none of these particles should have any mass

562
00:27:44,160 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: if you want to respect all of the symmetries that

563
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:48,800
Speaker 1: we think exist in the universe, So it was sort

564
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 1: of a puzzle to us, like, well, we measure these

565
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:53,720
Speaker 1: particles to have mass, how is that possible if in

566
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: our theory they should all be massless, And particularly saw

567
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: that some particles were massless, like the photon is massless,

568
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,919
Speaker 1: whereas other particles like the W and the Z particles,

569
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 1: which mathematically are very very similar to the photon, have

570
00:28:05,960 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: a lot of mass. So there was this puzzle like

571
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,639
Speaker 1: how do particles get mass? And why do only some

572
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: of them get mass? Right, I guess it was kind

573
00:28:13,280 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 1: of a big question. It's a big question in general,

574
00:28:15,600 --> 00:28:17,679
Speaker 1: like why do things have mass? Like why is it

575
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:20,399
Speaker 1: hard to push on things? And why does it take

576
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:22,400
Speaker 1: a while for them to get going if you push

577
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,560
Speaker 1: on them. That's a really deep question in philosophy, like

578
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,119
Speaker 1: what does inertia exist at all? And it's important to

579
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:29,400
Speaker 1: remember that a lot of the mass in the universe

580
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: doesn't come from the Higgs field and the Higgs boson

581
00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:35,000
Speaker 1: like the corks, they get their mass from the Higgs field,

582
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:38,040
Speaker 1: but the mass of a proton doesn't come mostly from

583
00:28:38,080 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: the mass of the corks. The mass of the proton

584
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:43,120
Speaker 1: is a lot more than the mass of the pieces

585
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: that go into it. Most of the mass of the

586
00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,280
Speaker 1: proton comes from the energy stored within it, which also

587
00:28:48,400 --> 00:28:51,320
Speaker 1: gives it inertia. That's sort of a larger question that

588
00:28:51,360 --> 00:28:53,280
Speaker 1: we're going to dig into in a future episode, like

589
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 1: what is inertia? Where does it come from? Anyway? But

590
00:28:56,880 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson is sort of like just one slice

591
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: of that answer. It said as well, for fundamental particles

592
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:05,240
Speaker 1: like the electron and the corks, we think we have

593
00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: an idea for why they have mass. It doesn't answer

594
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,440
Speaker 1: the question why inertia exists at all, but is in

595
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: the interaction with the Higgs field sort of it looks

596
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:19,920
Speaker 1: like inertia for fundamental particles. For fundamental particles, it answers

597
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:22,320
Speaker 1: the question. And the mental picture I have is that

598
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:24,360
Speaker 1: you have sort of like the true electron, This like

599
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: theoretical quantity that has no mass, and it flies through

600
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: the universe, and if the Higgs field wasn't there, it

601
00:29:29,800 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 1: would move like a photon. But as it flies through

602
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,560
Speaker 1: the universe, the Higgs field is there, and Higgs field

603
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,120
Speaker 1: interacts with the photon same way that like the electron

604
00:29:37,160 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: interacts with the electromagnetic field. Right, it interacts with these fields,

605
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:44,040
Speaker 1: and that interaction changes how the electron move. It's like

606
00:29:44,080 --> 00:29:47,520
Speaker 1: absorbing Higgs bosons. It's radiating Higgs bosons, and the way

607
00:29:47,560 --> 00:29:51,320
Speaker 1: that it changes its motion is exactly the same mathematically

608
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:54,520
Speaker 1: as if you just give it mass. If you said, well,

609
00:29:54,560 --> 00:29:58,000
Speaker 1: how would an electron with mass move, it moves exactly

610
00:29:58,040 --> 00:30:01,200
Speaker 1: the same way as a massless electron that interacts with

611
00:30:01,240 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: the Higgs field. So that interaction with Higgs field changes

612
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,080
Speaker 1: how it moves in exactly the same way as if

613
00:30:07,120 --> 00:30:10,840
Speaker 1: it just sort of inherently had this inertia. All right, Well,

614
00:30:10,880 --> 00:30:13,400
Speaker 1: then I guess the discovery of the Higgs boson in

615
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: the experiment confirmed this theory, the Higgs field and these

616
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: ideas about how fundamental particles get their mass. I guess

617
00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:22,640
Speaker 1: was it a big surprise that you found it or

618
00:30:22,800 --> 00:30:25,479
Speaker 1: were people pretty sure that the theory was right. The

619
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: field was really divided on the question of whether we

620
00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:30,400
Speaker 1: were going to see the Higgs boson or not. But

621
00:30:30,440 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 1: there was something really important that we knew, which is

622
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:36,080
Speaker 1: that there had to be something else out there. The

623
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,760
Speaker 1: theory we had just didn't work. It was missing a

624
00:30:38,760 --> 00:30:42,000
Speaker 1: piece without the Higgs boson, it just didn't hang together.

625
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: So we either had to see the Higgs boson or

626
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: we had to see something else to explain why the

627
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:49,440
Speaker 1: theory didn't break down. So there was a bit of

628
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:52,000
Speaker 1: a no lose situation. We were going to see the

629
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: Higgs or we were going to see something else, because

630
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: the theory we had just wasn't gonna work. It was

631
00:30:57,320 --> 00:31:00,160
Speaker 1: going to bail if the Higgs boson or some thing

632
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: else similar didn't exist. And by fail, you mean like

633
00:31:03,400 --> 00:31:06,640
Speaker 1: it couldn't explain certain things like why do certain fundamental

634
00:31:06,640 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: particles have mass? That's right, that would be a failure theoretically,

635
00:31:10,240 --> 00:31:13,360
Speaker 1: but also the theory we have was going to fail experimentally,

636
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 1: like there were certain kinds of collisions ones where w

637
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:18,520
Speaker 1: Boson's we're going to bounce off of each other where

638
00:31:18,520 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: if the Higgs boson didn't exist, our current theory predicted

639
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:24,520
Speaker 1: that that would happen at an infinite rate, right, It

640
00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 1: predicted infinities in our experiments, and we knew that that

641
00:31:28,200 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: couldn't happen. You're not going to collide particles and get

642
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: like an infinite outcome, right, And so our theory itself

643
00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: was failing at predicting what was going to happen. In

644
00:31:37,120 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: the experiments, so we knew that we were going to

645
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: see something new, something interesting, something that wasn't predicted by

646
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:45,840
Speaker 1: the theory without the Higgs boson. Either the Higgs boson

647
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,000
Speaker 1: was there is going to rescue those predictions, or something

648
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:51,360
Speaker 1: else had to intervene. And I guess it was also

649
00:31:51,440 --> 00:31:53,680
Speaker 1: kind of a triumph in the sense of that it

650
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: was a huge project. Right as you mentioned, there were

651
00:31:55,840 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 1: ten thousand people working in it from you know, maybe

652
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:01,719
Speaker 1: hundreds of countries, and so it was kind of a

653
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:04,800
Speaker 1: triumph just for humanity to work on something so big

654
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:07,840
Speaker 1: together and the search for knowledge about the universe, and

655
00:32:07,880 --> 00:32:10,400
Speaker 1: then to have it be successful. Yeah, and remember that

656
00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 1: certain came out of sort of the ashes of World

657
00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: War two, trying to bring nations together, getting them to

658
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: work together on scientific projects, to build those connections and

659
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: to make sure that those communities are tightly woven together.

660
00:32:21,240 --> 00:32:22,920
Speaker 1: And so it's a real success that way. It's a

661
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,120
Speaker 1: very international place. You go have lunch at certain or coffee,

662
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:29,480
Speaker 1: You're going to hear conversations like fifteen different languages. There's

663
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird cuisines, being drunk in strange hot beverages,

664
00:32:33,600 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: really sort of a fascinating place. And politically it's a

665
00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 1: very sort of successful sociological experiment. Can you bring a

666
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,200
Speaker 1: bunch of physicists together from around the world and get

667
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:45,800
Speaker 1: them to work together. Well, we have our arguments, but

668
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,000
Speaker 1: we made it work. Yeah. And also it was kind

669
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:49,640
Speaker 1: of crazy about it is that you didn't know you

670
00:32:49,680 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: were going to find it, right, Like, it could have

671
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:53,520
Speaker 1: been that you looked and looked and looked and we

672
00:32:53,640 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 1: didn't find it. It certainly could have been. We had

673
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:58,320
Speaker 1: no guaranteed that the Higgs itself was there. It's just

674
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:02,640
Speaker 1: an idea in somebody's mind. It's incredible that a clever

675
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:06,200
Speaker 1: dude thinking mathematically can say the universe would make more

676
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: sense if it was arranged this way rather than the

677
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,120
Speaker 1: current idea. And so let's go out and see if

678
00:33:12,160 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: that's correct. And to have that actually be the way

679
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:17,680
Speaker 1: the universe is right, that we can deduce the mathematical

680
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:20,640
Speaker 1: structure of the universe just by using our minds and

681
00:33:20,640 --> 00:33:25,720
Speaker 1: finding patterns, that's really pretty powerful. That's philosophically very deep, right,

682
00:33:25,800 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: And I guess it says you mentioned the end of

683
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 1: a long string of similar discoveries, right, like you that's

684
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 1: how you build out. The standard model is people would

685
00:33:33,000 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: look at the theory and say, hey, maybe we should

686
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:36,320
Speaker 1: we should probably find a particle here, And then you

687
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:38,920
Speaker 1: go out and build a collider and you would find

688
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:41,800
Speaker 1: a particle. I guess I gave you some encouragement that

689
00:33:41,840 --> 00:33:43,600
Speaker 1: you might find it. Yeah, there have been times in

690
00:33:43,600 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: the past when we expected to see something and then

691
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 1: found it, like the top cork or the bottom pork,

692
00:33:48,400 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: these other quirks and leptons. There are also times when

693
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,640
Speaker 1: there were surprises, like the discovery of the Muan was

694
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: a big shocker to everybody. I have a whole bunch

695
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: of podcast episodes about the discovery of each of the particles.

696
00:33:59,240 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 1: Go back and check these out, because each one is

697
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: a really interesting history of false starts and dead ends

698
00:34:04,600 --> 00:34:07,640
Speaker 1: and final triumphs. Right, And I guess maybe a question

699
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,919
Speaker 1: is why did it take so many generations of colliders

700
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,319
Speaker 1: to find it? Didn't you have from the theory at

701
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: the beginning. Didn't you know how much energy you would need?

702
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:18,879
Speaker 1: Or the theory kind of evolve as you kept coming

703
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: up with empty hands. Now, great question. The theory does

704
00:34:21,760 --> 00:34:25,640
Speaker 1: not predict how heavy the Higgs particle itself is. It

705
00:34:25,640 --> 00:34:28,120
Speaker 1: tells us that the field or something like it has

706
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 1: to be there, But the actual mass of the particle,

707
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:33,120
Speaker 1: it is just a number. It's a parameter of the

708
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 1: theory isn't predicted, and so that meant we didn't know

709
00:34:36,080 --> 00:34:38,879
Speaker 1: exactly how big the collider had to be. It could

710
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: have been that the Higgs boson was much much heavier

711
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:43,759
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't see it at these colliders, And so

712
00:34:43,800 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: people were excited and at least at the time, it

713
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:49,359
Speaker 1: seemed like a huge triumph for science and for humanity. Right,

714
00:34:49,680 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. People were happy. Did you

715
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: shake hands with all ten thousand of your collaborators or

716
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: at least fiz bomp. You know, there was definitely a

717
00:34:56,600 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: lot of celebrating going on, even though it had been

718
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:01,319
Speaker 1: sort of slowly of involving, and we saw it sort

719
00:35:01,360 --> 00:35:04,040
Speaker 1: of rising out of the fog of the data bit

720
00:35:04,080 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 1: by bit over the year. The day that it was

721
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: announced was a big moment at CERN. People lined up

722
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 1: to being the auditorium that I camped out the night

723
00:35:11,200 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: before to make sure they got a spot to be

724
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:15,960
Speaker 1: in the room when they was announced. Peter Higgs himself

725
00:35:16,200 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: had flown in for the occasion, though I think he

726
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 1: fell asleep during the announcement. Well, I think the man

727
00:35:20,800 --> 00:35:23,279
Speaker 1: deserved the nap. I mean he did. He did most

728
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,279
Speaker 1: of the work, right, He's been waiting for fifty years

729
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: for us to follow up on his efforts. Absolutely, I'm

730
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:30,359
Speaker 1: sure he didn't need to hear one more talk about

731
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson. So there definitely was a sense of

732
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 1: celebration and you know, something accomplished on that moment. It's

733
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: it's good to mark these events in your life, right,

734
00:35:38,960 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 1: not to let them slide by. That's why we have birthdays.

735
00:35:41,200 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: Your birthday is not actually any different from any other day,

736
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:45,879
Speaker 1: but it's good to mark the passage of time and say, hey,

737
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:48,759
Speaker 1: I did it one more year. And in that same sense,

738
00:35:48,800 --> 00:35:50,919
Speaker 1: it was good to say here we draw the line.

739
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 1: Now we declared discovered. Let's congratulate ourselves. Yeah, And so

740
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: one way to look at it is that the discovery

741
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 1: of the Higgs boson was a triumph for scientists for humanity.

742
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: But you might also say that it was a disappointment

743
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:06,120
Speaker 1: or maybe the start of the end of particle physics.

744
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:09,040
Speaker 1: So let's get into that point of view. But first

745
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:24,440
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. All Right, we are celebrating

746
00:36:24,520 --> 00:36:29,440
Speaker 1: Daniel's birthday. Happy birthday, Daniel, It's not my birthday. Oh

747
00:36:29,480 --> 00:36:31,960
Speaker 1: wait what wait? I thought you said it was good

748
00:36:32,000 --> 00:36:34,399
Speaker 1: to celebrate your birthday every day. It's good to mark

749
00:36:34,440 --> 00:36:36,799
Speaker 1: those occasions in your life when you've achieved something. You know,

750
00:36:36,880 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: you get a new job, you get a promotion, you

751
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 1: get married, you have a kid, these kind of things.

752
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 1: I think it's good to celebrate moments in life. I

753
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:46,520
Speaker 1: guess if I celebrated my birthday every day, I would

754
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: be what years old? And if you eat cake every

755
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:53,400
Speaker 1: day you probably wouldn't live as long anyway. Be a

756
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:55,319
Speaker 1: lot of candles to blow out. All right, we're talking

757
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:58,720
Speaker 1: about selling the celebration of the Higgs Boson discovery, which

758
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 1: was a big deal at the time and was considered

759
00:37:01,080 --> 00:37:02,840
Speaker 1: and still is considered a triumph. But now we're going

760
00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:05,919
Speaker 1: to take the opposite view and think about whether maybe

761
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:09,200
Speaker 1: it's a disappointment for particle physics, whether or not we

762
00:37:09,239 --> 00:37:11,719
Speaker 1: can expect more things from particle physics, and whether or

763
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:15,120
Speaker 1: not we should keep hiring people like Daniel, and by extension,

764
00:37:15,160 --> 00:37:18,480
Speaker 1: me who interviews and talks to people like Daniel. Well,

765
00:37:18,520 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 1: I think it's valuable to take a time machine back

766
00:37:21,040 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 1: to before we discover the Higgs boson. And remember that

767
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 1: there were lots of other ideas. Peter Higgs had his

768
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:28,479
Speaker 1: theory about how particles get mass and how to solve

769
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: these other technical problems in the Standard model, But there

770
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:35,040
Speaker 1: were competitors out there. There were people with other ways

771
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:38,200
Speaker 1: to solve the same problem, to give particles mass, and

772
00:37:38,239 --> 00:37:40,800
Speaker 1: to patch up the other problems in the Standard model,

773
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:44,719
Speaker 1: and we just didn't know what we were going to discover. Wow, wait,

774
00:37:44,760 --> 00:37:46,959
Speaker 1: so how did they pick the Higgs boson as the

775
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: preferred solution to pour billions of dollars into. Well, when

776
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:51,840
Speaker 1: we build a large hige On collider, we try to

777
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: set it up so we could discover any of those things.

778
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:58,000
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a Higgs Boson search machine. It was like, hey,

779
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:00,920
Speaker 1: let's explore the universe and see what's out there and

780
00:38:00,960 --> 00:38:03,520
Speaker 1: set ourselves up to be able to discover the Higgs boson.

781
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 1: But we were also capable of discovering other things. There

782
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: was another theory, for example, called technique color, which was

783
00:38:10,160 --> 00:38:12,839
Speaker 1: like a super fancy version of the strong force, which

784
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: you remember uses colors to describe its charges. Technicolor was

785
00:38:16,560 --> 00:38:19,919
Speaker 1: like a super powerful version of color and it could

786
00:38:19,960 --> 00:38:23,880
Speaker 1: also give particles mass. Isn't that a registered trademark you

787
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:27,359
Speaker 1: use it or is that why it was projected? Well,

788
00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 1: it wasn't discovered. The universe doesn't seem to respect it,

789
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,000
Speaker 1: so we didn't have to worry about those legal issues.

790
00:38:32,120 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: I mean, the universe is not in technicolor not as

791
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 1: far as we know. Yeah, there were theories, for example,

792
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,160
Speaker 1: that like top corks could bind themselves together into weird

793
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 1: particles that could sort of function like a Higgs boson

794
00:38:44,960 --> 00:38:47,480
Speaker 1: and do its job instead of having Higgs boson. So

795
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: there were definitely other ideas out there. Why was the

796
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 1: Higgs boson theory itself the most popular, the most widely

797
00:38:53,480 --> 00:38:56,200
Speaker 1: talked about. That's just a question of like what particle

798
00:38:56,239 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 1: physicists thought might be reality. It's sort of like a

799
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: popular any contest. But they definitely were other ideas out there,

800
00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:05,319
Speaker 1: and so what we ended up discovering was sort of

801
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:08,720
Speaker 1: like the most widely expected one, which, in some sense,

802
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:11,239
Speaker 1: if you're looking to learn things about the universe, can

803
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:14,600
Speaker 1: be seen as a disappointment because there was the opportunity

804
00:39:14,640 --> 00:39:17,839
Speaker 1: there for something crazy to happen, for us to all

805
00:39:17,880 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: get surprised, right, I know, you like to take this

806
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:22,839
Speaker 1: point of view, and I wonder if part of it

807
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: is that, you know, if you consider the Higgs Boson

808
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:27,840
Speaker 1: discovery to be basically the end all, be all triumph

809
00:39:27,840 --> 00:39:30,080
Speaker 1: of particle physics, that sort of leads the question of, like,

810
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,400
Speaker 1: why do we need particle physics anymore? And so I know,

811
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:33,759
Speaker 1: you like to sort of take the point of view

812
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,480
Speaker 1: that there are still a lot of interesting things to

813
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:38,879
Speaker 1: discover out there. And part of it is sort of

814
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 1: thinking about the Higgs Boson discovery as a little bit

815
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 1: of a disappointment because it's sort of confirmed all of

816
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 1: our theories, which is, I guess if you're a young scientist,

817
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:50,120
Speaker 1: is bad news. But maybe you're an old scientists it's

818
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:54,040
Speaker 1: good news because I think you can retire officially that

819
00:39:54,120 --> 00:39:56,440
Speaker 1: makes me young, I suppose, yeah. I mean I like

820
00:39:56,520 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: discoveries that lead to more questions. Right, you find something new,

821
00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:01,799
Speaker 1: like well, why is it this way and not some

822
00:40:01,880 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 1: other way? Or it gives you a clue about how

823
00:40:04,239 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: the universe works that spurs more investigation. The Higgs Boson

824
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:11,320
Speaker 1: was sort of like the simplest, most vanilla, most boring

825
00:40:11,560 --> 00:40:13,600
Speaker 1: end to the story that wrapped up all the threads

826
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 1: in a way that didn't give us a clue necessarily

827
00:40:16,160 --> 00:40:18,560
Speaker 1: about what came next, and it could have been very different.

828
00:40:18,719 --> 00:40:21,120
Speaker 1: We could have found like a really weird Higgs boson

829
00:40:21,160 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 1: there was sort of Higgs like but did things we

830
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:26,440
Speaker 1: didn't understand. Or we could have found something totally weird

831
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:30,000
Speaker 1: and totally different that solved the same problem that Higgs did,

832
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:32,880
Speaker 1: but had been completely unexpected, and that would have been

833
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:35,520
Speaker 1: a huge clue that we were on the wrong track

834
00:40:35,640 --> 00:40:38,960
Speaker 1: and a way to learn about what the right track was. Instead,

835
00:40:39,040 --> 00:40:41,520
Speaker 1: we sort of like wrapped up all the threads nicely,

836
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: like at the end of every Disney movie, without a

837
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 1: clear path to follow up on, you're like, how are

838
00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: they going to make a sequel? But it's something this

839
00:40:49,120 --> 00:40:51,640
Speaker 1: confirms that you're on the right track. Isn't that good?

840
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,600
Speaker 1: And doesn't that also leaves you a lot of possibilities

841
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: for the future, Like why do you have to show

842
00:40:56,640 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 1: that you're on the wrong track to make more discoveries. Well,

843
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: in this case, remember sort of like the end of

844
00:41:00,960 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: a story, it's the last brick in the standard model,

845
00:41:03,760 --> 00:41:06,080
Speaker 1: and the standard mall itself, the openings, the holes and

846
00:41:06,120 --> 00:41:07,840
Speaker 1: it were great clues to know where to look to

847
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 1: find more stuff. We're trying to flesh that out, and

848
00:41:10,760 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: then look at it and say, well, what does this

849
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 1: tell us? And so it's sort of the end of

850
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:16,839
Speaker 1: one story, which is like, how do we fill all

851
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:19,759
Speaker 1: the holes in the standard model? So now there aren't

852
00:41:19,800 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: any holes in the standard model from that perspective, so

853
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: we have to pivot and ask different kinds of questions

854
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:27,239
Speaker 1: and say, all right, if this is the standard model,

855
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,600
Speaker 1: we have to ask like why is it this way?

856
00:41:29,680 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: Why is there some other standard model? Or ask bigger

857
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,080
Speaker 1: questions like well, what about the rest of the universe

858
00:41:35,080 --> 00:41:37,799
Speaker 1: that the standard model doesn't describe, like dark matter and

859
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 1: dark energy. So it's the sort of the end of

860
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:42,319
Speaker 1: the line of one kind of question. Of course, it

861
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:45,440
Speaker 1: doesn't shut down lots of other kinds of questions that

862
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:47,799
Speaker 1: we can ask. But you know, it's a disappointment if

863
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:51,759
Speaker 1: you imagine another alternative world where we had found not

864
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 1: the Higgs boson, but something else totally weird and different.

865
00:41:54,680 --> 00:41:57,680
Speaker 1: They gave us like very immediate, tangible things to follow

866
00:41:57,760 --> 00:41:59,959
Speaker 1: up on. Right, Well, although I feel like you're telling

867
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:01,840
Speaker 1: you're saying that it was a disappointment and that it

868
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:06,920
Speaker 1: didn't give you more work as a particle physicist, right, Like,

869
00:42:07,040 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: if you're a particle physicist and you discover something and

870
00:42:09,520 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 1: confirm its validity, then that doesn't leave much work for you.

871
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,279
Speaker 1: In that sense is a disappointment for you. But for

872
00:42:15,320 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 1: all the people who worked up to towards confirming maybe

873
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:21,479
Speaker 1: the Higgs theory, then it's not a disappointment, right. Yeah.

874
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 1: Whether it's a disappointment depends on your goal. If your

875
00:42:23,920 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: goal is to complete the standard model and put it

876
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:27,919
Speaker 1: away in a package on a shelf and go like, oh,

877
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,600
Speaker 1: how pretty, then yeah, that's not disappointing. But if your

878
00:42:30,600 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 1: goal is to understand the nature of the universe, then

879
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 1: you want dangling threads to pull on, you know, just

880
00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: to paint the picture more concretely, something else we might

881
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:41,719
Speaker 1: have found was something like a supersymmetry, this idea that

882
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:44,840
Speaker 1: every particle that we have is actually just one of

883
00:42:44,840 --> 00:42:47,920
Speaker 1: a pair, that for the electron, there's another version of it,

884
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 1: and for every cork there's another version of it. This

885
00:42:50,880 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: is also a prediction for something we might find the

886
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,160
Speaker 1: large hit dron collider, and if we had found the

887
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 1: beginnings of that, it would have led to lots of

888
00:42:57,360 --> 00:43:00,399
Speaker 1: really interesting research directions. To study all of these new

889
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: particles and what they do and what it means about

890
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:05,680
Speaker 1: the universe. But so far we haven't seen them, and

891
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,280
Speaker 1: so some of the people who predicted that we would

892
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:10,439
Speaker 1: see them at the large age on collider are eating

893
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: crow a little bit. But I feel like you're sort

894
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: of saying, like, you know, the goal is to understand

895
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 1: the universe. So if we confirm the standard model, doesn't

896
00:43:18,360 --> 00:43:21,400
Speaker 1: that also mean that we're understanding the universe? And in

897
00:43:21,400 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: a way, it's sort of like confirming that we understand

898
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:25,359
Speaker 1: the universe. Why is that a bad thing? In terms

899
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 1: of understanding the universe? It's not a bad thing. It's

900
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:30,280
Speaker 1: a very pretty picture. But we have other deeper questions,

901
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:33,279
Speaker 1: right It doesn't answer the deepest questions about the nature

902
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: of reality. Is just sort of like wraps up a

903
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 1: little corner of it as a way to make progress

904
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: on the bigger questions about how the whole universe works.

905
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,640
Speaker 1: And so it means that maybe this area isn't the

906
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:48,120
Speaker 1: most fertile ground anymore for answering those bigger, deeper questions.

907
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: You know, we have to go to other places where

908
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:52,600
Speaker 1: we have hints about how things are not quite working.

909
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:54,680
Speaker 1: Threads we can pull on to try to answer the

910
00:43:54,719 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 1: questions about like what is the whole universe made out of?

911
00:43:57,760 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: What is the underlying theory of physics for everything? Because

912
00:44:01,200 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: we know the theory we have now the Standard model

913
00:44:03,120 --> 00:44:06,120
Speaker 1: is definitely not the final answer. But wrapping these threads

914
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:09,240
Speaker 1: up so nicely doesn't give us immediate directions to explore

915
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: to finding that final answer. Well, I guess the question

916
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:14,920
Speaker 1: is how does the Standard model, or knowing that the

917
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:17,600
Speaker 1: Standard Model is right, how does that not help us

918
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:20,520
Speaker 1: understand some of these deeper questions, like if it's right,

919
00:44:20,600 --> 00:44:22,480
Speaker 1: then doesn't that tell us that that is the nature

920
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:25,200
Speaker 1: of the universe. Well, in an example is dark matter.

921
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:27,279
Speaker 1: We know that there's more stuff out there in the

922
00:44:27,320 --> 00:44:30,319
Speaker 1: universe than that is described by the Standard model. Right,

923
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: the Standard Model describes quirks and electrons which build up atoms,

924
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 1: but we know that dark matter is not made of

925
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:39,800
Speaker 1: those particles. One possibility is that we discovered at the

926
00:44:39,840 --> 00:44:43,799
Speaker 1: Large Hadron Collider a Higgs boson which interacts with dark matter,

927
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 1: which gives us like a portal into exploring dark matter.

928
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:50,160
Speaker 1: Or we could have discovered supersymmetric particles, some of which

929
00:44:50,280 --> 00:44:53,239
Speaker 1: are the dark matter. So in those alternate scenarios where

930
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:55,680
Speaker 1: we hadn't just discovered like the vanilla Higgs boson and

931
00:44:55,719 --> 00:44:58,640
Speaker 1: nothing else. We could have been cracking open this big

932
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:01,839
Speaker 1: puzzle about dark matter, right, which is a really big

933
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: question in physics. But discovering the vanilla Higgs in exactly

934
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: this way doesn't give us any access to what dark

935
00:45:08,080 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 1: matter is. Well, I should you say that. I'm a

936
00:45:09,920 --> 00:45:12,640
Speaker 1: big fan of vanilla. It's my favorite ice cream flavor,

937
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:14,839
Speaker 1: so I take offense that just you using it in

938
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:19,040
Speaker 1: such a derogatory way. I mean, it's delicious, but you

939
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: always feel like you didn't really have dessert. Well, it's

940
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: just a matter of taste here, But I mean, I

941
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 1: feel like if you're not finding something related to dark

942
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:28,840
Speaker 1: matter at the large out and collider, isn't that also

943
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:31,240
Speaker 1: good news? That just means you have to look elsewhere

944
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 1: for clues about dark matter. Maybe she just not in

945
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:37,080
Speaker 1: a particle collider. Yeah, it tells you something about what

946
00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: dark matter isn't. But it's more exciting to discover what

947
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: dark matter is than what it Isn't You mean you

948
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 1: wish as a particle physicist, you wish the dark matter

949
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 1: I had more to do with particle physics. Yeah, it's

950
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: a little bit disappointing, which is the question I think

951
00:45:50,080 --> 00:45:53,240
Speaker 1: we're trying to answer, that we didn't also discover dark matter,

952
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: or for example, we might have created many black holes

953
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,000
Speaker 1: which evaporated and gave us clues about the nature of

954
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:04,160
Speaker 1: quantum graph Right, what is gravity for particles? Unifying relativity

955
00:46:04,200 --> 00:46:07,000
Speaker 1: and quantum mechanics for the first time ever, that could

956
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,759
Speaker 1: have been a possibility, but it didn't happen. So yes,

957
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:11,840
Speaker 1: it was a triumph, but sort of in the spectrum

958
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 1: of other discoveries, we might have made a sort of

959
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 1: minor in comparison to other bigger winds, right, But I

960
00:46:18,600 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: guess I just want to I'm trying to understand the

961
00:46:20,680 --> 00:46:24,399
Speaker 1: distinction here. It's sort of a disappointment, but maybe from

962
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,600
Speaker 1: only from the point of view of a particle physicist, right, Like,

963
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:31,080
Speaker 1: it doesn't open up particle physicists search for these bigger questions,

964
00:46:31,120 --> 00:46:32,839
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that people can search for these

965
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: big questions elsewhere or in other ways. Yes, absolutely, from

966
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:39,320
Speaker 1: the narrow point of view of a collider particle physicist,

967
00:46:39,719 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: it's a disappointment. There are definitely areas in physics and

968
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 1: even in particle physics where other people can follow up

969
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:49,799
Speaker 1: on these questions searching for dark mattering underground laboratories or

970
00:46:49,840 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 1: with space telescopes. We heard recently about interesting discoveries with

971
00:46:53,760 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 1: muans and their magnetic moments, which gives a hint about

972
00:46:56,800 --> 00:46:59,799
Speaker 1: how my supersymmetry might actually exist. But it could just

973
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:02,960
Speaker 1: be too heavy for the large Hadron collider to discover.

974
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: But you know, we're in the era where we're asking

975
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:07,840
Speaker 1: the question should the public give us another ten or

976
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:11,480
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars to build another of these colliders and

977
00:47:11,560 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: has an impact on the rest of the community. That's

978
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:15,760
Speaker 1: why we sort of put a microscope on the collider

979
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:18,279
Speaker 1: physics and say, was this the success? Should we do

980
00:47:18,320 --> 00:47:20,200
Speaker 1: this again? How much do we have to have a

981
00:47:20,239 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: guarantee of a future discovery before we spend another ten

982
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:27,680
Speaker 1: billion dollars. So it is a disappointment for you and

983
00:47:27,800 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 1: ten thousand of my friends and ten thousands of your

984
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: friends out of the eight billion people on this planet.

985
00:47:33,520 --> 00:47:35,640
Speaker 1: But it's maybe an exciting news for people who are

986
00:47:35,640 --> 00:47:38,680
Speaker 1: not in particle physics, who are maybe now have more

987
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:42,439
Speaker 1: funding available or potentially available to study their ideas for

988
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:44,879
Speaker 1: what these big topics might be. Well I think there

989
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 1: is that myth often that if you cancel a big

990
00:47:47,080 --> 00:47:50,440
Speaker 1: science project that that money will then get distributed to

991
00:47:50,600 --> 00:47:53,759
Speaker 1: other science projects and sort of pits scientists against each other.

992
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:55,719
Speaker 1: But you know it doesn't work that way. When they

993
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:58,479
Speaker 1: cancel the super Conducting super Collider, they weren't like, well,

994
00:47:58,719 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: who wants this ten billion? And everybody just come in

995
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:03,800
Speaker 1: and take a handful. You know that money went away.

996
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: The amount of money we spend as a society is

997
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: not fixed, right. We can decide to spend more or

998
00:48:08,239 --> 00:48:10,879
Speaker 1: we can decide to spend less. So in my view,

999
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:13,520
Speaker 1: I think it's always good to spend more money on science.

1000
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 1: It's an investment in the future. So we don't need

1001
00:48:16,080 --> 00:48:17,840
Speaker 1: to pit the field of science against each other. But

1002
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: we do need to make sure that the science we're

1003
00:48:19,680 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 1: doing is well justified and well motivated and interesting and

1004
00:48:23,640 --> 00:48:25,960
Speaker 1: hopefully a lot of it going to particles you want

1005
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,960
Speaker 1: to be opposed to that, I'll make sure that there's

1006
00:48:29,040 --> 00:48:32,200
Speaker 1: vanilla ice cream in the cafeteriat cern Okay, then I'm

1007
00:48:32,239 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 1: on board throwing some root beer and we can make

1008
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,520
Speaker 1: root beer floats, and I'm all in. This is how

1009
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,120
Speaker 1: politics happens, man, It's all about special interests. It's all

1010
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:43,960
Speaker 1: about ice cream, all right. Well, an interesting and personal

1011
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 1: debate here for at least one of us about the

1012
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,120
Speaker 1: future of particle physics and how do you justify future

1013
00:48:49,160 --> 00:48:51,880
Speaker 1: work in it and exploration in it. Danny, you're a

1014
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:54,040
Speaker 1: big fan of exploration, right I am. And as we

1015
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 1: make these arguments for new colliders, to me, it's not

1016
00:48:57,160 --> 00:49:00,319
Speaker 1: important whether we know we will find something. We were

1017
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 1: very confident we would find something with the late C

1018
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 1: But to me, it's worth it just to explore the universe.

1019
00:49:05,880 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 1: You know, we land probes on alien moons and planets

1020
00:49:09,360 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 1: to see what's there without knowing in advance what we

1021
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:14,959
Speaker 1: might find, because we are curious. And in the same way,

1022
00:49:15,160 --> 00:49:18,400
Speaker 1: building these colliders and exploring reality and its smallest scale

1023
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:22,000
Speaker 1: is always worth the money, at least to me. All right, Well,

1024
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:25,239
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for joining us, See

1025
00:49:25,239 --> 00:49:35,520
Speaker 1: you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel

1026
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:38,080
Speaker 1: and Jorge explained. The Universe is a production of I

1027
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:41,759
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcast for my Heart Radio, visit

1028
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:45,279
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

1029
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:52,640
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. Yeah,