From the video around :30 seconds in, "...this is when surprises might happen. Any day could be the day that changed the world."
I am still looking for an answer as to how the world could be changed by the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. What are some possible outcomes for society? I do not doubt that it will change, and I agree fully with it's value, however, I can't find any specifics in what ways it might change or what new technologies might be created with or without the Higgs Boson.
Also, at a 9 Billion USD price tag, how were our governments convinced? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer.
I'm sure it's not this...
Scientists: "We need 9 Billion to find out if the Higgs Boson particle exists."
Governments: "OK, here is your 9 Billion."
... 15 years later
Scientists: "The answer is yes. The Higgs Boson does exist."
Governments: "Oh, that's really great."
Update: I understand and agree fully with the value of this research. I am asking if there are any specific technologies that are expected to be advanced or if it is just added knowledge that could lead anywhere. I am also wondering how it was explained to politicians who don't have specific interest in science.
Understanding of how things work, so we can bend them to our will.
Better understanding of the standard model will buy us many things, most of which we don't yet realise will be interesting, useful, fun, exciting, and important. Better understanding of the standard model will possibly give us:
* Quantum computers
* Room temperature superconductors
* Substances strong enough to build a space elevator
40 years ago we had no idea how to build 'planes that were bigger, stronger, faster, and more efficient than the ones we had, and yet people did the basic research anyway, just because they thought it might be useful. They found composite structures, and we got the 'planes and other things. The metals used in car engines have improved enormously, in part because of what was seen at the time as being basic research that might not really go anywhere.
But in the end it's basic science, and we don't always know how - or whether - it will repay itself. For every advance that has gained us something there are other efforts that have led nowhere, but we never know in advance which will be which.
That's the nature of research -- you don't know
what in hell you're doing. -- 'Doc' Edgerton
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be
called research, would it? -- Albert Einstein
So who knows what will come out of this. The research could give us teleportation, or Star Trek-style replicators, or dirt-cheap solar energy harvesting paints that cars can run on, or electricity storage devices, or plastics that can be made without oil, or entirely new substances, just as plastics once were.
I have no idea how old you are, but I'm fifty, and stuff exists now that didn't when I was in my teens, partly because of people doing basic research.
The benefit of this is we get something that is invaluable, discovery. We discover things that may have no practical application at all, but we discovered it, then someone might come along in 1, 100, 10000 years that has a use for it, but only because it's been discovered.
X-rays, electricity, penicillin we're all discoved with no practical application in mind.
At a 9 Billion USD price tag, what are our governments buying for us? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer.
False dilemma. When we spend trillions of dollars a year to kill people in the name of stopping violence, 10^-3 of that for curiosity is not something that is rational to attack. Particularly when exploration for curiosity's sake has led to plenty of demonstrably beneficial results.
Without quantum mechanics exploration you wouldn’t have a transistor, which means no computer or television. Furthermore you can say goodbye to lasers and all the changes they brought to medical operations-for example all eye surgery today is done using lasers. So while the discovery of the Boson particle per se might not have a direct impact in our lives, the more we understand particle physics as a whole the better machines we will be able to build in the future which will definitely change the way we live.
Basically, we just keep discovering things like this until they flesh out our understanding of a whole bunch of interrelated domains enough to build a warp drive.
I am no physicist, but i have been following particle physics as a hobby. And as i understand it, there is this standard model which which describes how particles behave and groups them, and hence like periodic table (extreme simplification) helps predict particles that have not been discovered yet but that can be proved following the standard model and it's calculations. But There needs to be confirmation that standard model is itself correct. One way is to find particles that the model predicts. If they are found then we know that the standard model is in fact correct and the other implications can be that much more "correct". So Higgs boson will not only explain why/how matter has mass and hence makes everything possible but it will also re affirm that standard model is on track, for now.
We've reached the point in scientific discoveries where you can't expect an apple falling on a scientist's head to eventually lead to an explanation (I know this story isn't true). The proposed theory is more complex and therefore requires lots of money. You have no idea what this potential discovery could lead to 10, 20, 50, 200 years down the road. And neither does anybody, it could be a steal. How much is the truth worth (or a glimpse at why things happen)?
By the way, what was the common man's response when Newton first explained gravity? Probably, "Things fall, what more do you need to know"
This is actually a pretty shortsighted perspective. The understanding of the mechanism responsible for giving all particles the property of mass will have far reaching consequences for further research and technology in the future.
I'm pretty sure that the invention of much of the communication technologies we have today were not readily predicted in the mid-1800's when Maxwell was developing EM theory.
Part of the answer is a conscious decision on the EU level to 'become the best at science'. That sounds awfully vague and usually is an empty promise in politics, but in this case there was broad support for such an effort (plenty of money was available, the USA seemed to be slacking off, CERN had proven its worth etc etc).
Those are fantastic. This would be a great way to do a budget "about" video for a startup. Get a decent voiceover with a script, then have your designer do one of these videos.
I have a very minor claim to fame in that I appear in the background of one of the RSA animations (at about 6:45 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJmGrNdJ5Gw - and the nasty words about Perl coming out my mouth are not mine :-)
Don't worry, don't worry. This one of the most complicated theories in physics (apart from string theory) to grasp intuitively. I'm a physicist and I could try to help you.
Think of an excitation of the field. One of the "axioms" of quantum field theory is that the energy of an excitation is related to the inverse square of the wavelength. Don't ask me why, it's just like that. Think of UV radiation or X-rays, which are just light with a higher frequency and you know those radiation is more damaging to the human body than for example radio waves.
Now, are you familiar with Fourier decomposition?[1] It's the idea that all functions are the sum of a waves (sines and cosines). We do the same thing in quantum field theory, we have our quantum field and we write it as the sum of our elementary wavefunctions, which are called plane waves[2]. When you look at a wave packet[3], you can't really say what its wavelength is. Wavelength is not a local concept, as for example the height of the wave, but the wave differs from place to place, so it's impossible to give it just one wavelength! We don't have that problem with plane waves. Because they're the same all over the universe, they have a clear wavelength and thus a well-defined, unique energy. This concept, an excitation of a field with a well-defined energy (and thus a well-defined mass!) is what particle physicists call "a particle".
When a collision happens in a collider, we're actually preparing two plane waves and pointing them in the same direction. As they collide, the wavefunctions of the various fields become incredibly complex. We humans can only "see" excitations with a well-defined mass, or better yet, our detectors can only detect excitations with a well-defined mass. And thus instead of a complicated field, we see a mess of particles going in different directions and having different masses, energies and speeds.
Quantum theory is based on the concept of wave-particle duality. Think of the ocean. The water as a whole is pretty wave-y and non-localized (i.e. it's not in one place). But the crests of the waves (the "excitations") can be thought of as particles because they're localized fairly well.
So really all a Higgs boson is, is an excitation of the Higgs field.
Depressingly this cartoon is more complex than almost all of the BBC science output.
Broadcasters with the BBC's remit need to have science programmes that are far beyond my understanding. Almost everything on the BBC can be followed by a reasonably smart 14 year old.
While I would like advanced science programming, I think the BBC is not the right medium. Particularly, as the material gets sufficiently advanced, it targets a progressively smaller audience. At some point, it is better to have this on the internet than on TV.
It's the same logic as to why there aren't any interesting TV programs about, say, programming languages, but you can find good content on Channel 9 (not really a channel :P) or Google Tech Talks.
Current theory predicts that Higgs boson exists. If it is found, the theory is deemed 'correct' (that is, reinforced, not disproved). Then we're a step closer tho the 'general theory of everything'.
If Higgs boson is clearly not found where the theory predict it, then the theory is deficient and has to be seriously rethought or thrown away altogether! It would be exciting time of uncertainty, crazy ideas, and new and interesting stuff to try (like it was with quantum mechanics). Or maybe not — the new and interesting effects may lie far away from the range of masses and energies of daily life (e.g. we don't usually directly see any effects of general relativity).
It seems as if a Higgs confirmation announcement is going to happen in about 12 hours [1]. A video was briefly up on the CERN site, before disappearing behind a password. Apparently it is part of preparations for an announcement at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which started today in Melbourne, Australia.
If this is still too advanced for you, and you need to brush up on the atom, proton, neutron, and electron, this video of Venus Flytrap explaining the concept in 2 minutes might be a good place to start. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhbqIJZ8wCM
So if I've got this right, mass shouldn't be thought of as the "bulk" of a thing, it's simply thought of as a charge within that thing. So a photon is a particle of substance that contains no mass charge on it, despite the fact that it has some amount of volume?
"Mass", as referred to by physicists is what may be known to others as "rest mass" or "invariant mass". An electron and a positron both have rest-mass. (Think of it as a fundamental property, like charge.) When they collide, the result is two photons that no longer have rest-mass.
It is important to note that gravity affects energy (mass-energy). This is why a compressed spring weighs more than the same spring uncompressed. A spinning ball weighs more than the same ball when it is stationary because there is more energy.
It's an important but subtle distinction that even a lot of physics professors don't quite grasp. Matt Strassler has some very good explanations of it on his page.
The comments by others as a response are correct in that elementary particles are dimensionless.
One interesting point to add though is that only integer spin particles (the force carrying bosons) can share quantum states, which means they can occupy the same point in space.
Another way to say that is to say the opposite, i.e. that half-integer spin particles (the fermions, which includes quarks that make protons and neutrons as well as leptons like the electron) cannot occupy the same quantum state as each other, which is manifest by them obeying the pauli exclusion principle.
So if you were to take two photons they can literally occupy the same point versus two electrons which cannot (with some exceptions noted below). They are both point particles and technically have no volume, but there is this extra rule about quantum states that prevent two electrons from sitting in precisely the same place if they share all other quantum characteristics.
Since this rule applies only if those electrons share all other quantum states, that means that if two electrons have opposite spins, they can occupy the same point in space. The first valence shell in a atom is the lowest state that an electron can have in a stable orbit (think of it as a standing wave that exactly lines up in a circle). There is 'room' for only one electron when you view the electron as a wave, but that shell can hold 2 electrons because there can be one of each spin type.
Anyway kind of long winded, but I think the exclusion principle is at the heart of what makes us intuitively think about the electron as having volume in space and a photon as not.
All this stuff is really really cool, but you can tell why physicists have that itchy sensation that there is some deeper explanation that is underneath all these rules.
Elementary particles have no volume! (think about that one, it's kinda mindblowing)
They can only have "effective size" that arises due to say, electromagnetism. The electron has an effective radius that is measured by bouncing other charged "test" particles off of it. You don't get an answer of zero only because your test particles are attracted or repelled by the electron.
Mass should be thought of as something intrinsic to a particle, just like charge or spin. There's really no good way to visualize it - it's just something different particles have in different amounts.
Might be totally wrong here - photons have no volume yet can exhibit mass. (I don't fully understand that particular one yet.. need to read more. Whether or not photons have mass is a complex question it seems - or rather, multi-faceted)
What I don’t understand about quantum mechanics is the reason nature had to make things so damn complicated. What was the fundamental problem that led to the solution of quantum entanglement, or the duality of the wave-particle situation.
Awesome video! I had Daniel Whiteson as a Physics professor at UC Irvine last year. My favorite professors ever. Very great at explaining concepts and makes the class fun.
love this! it's like khan academy on steroids. It must have taken a lot of work to create. great way for Jorge Cham to get his name out. I'll be subscribing to PHD Comics
My takeaway from this: CERN's cafeteria beats the shit out of ours! Years ago I had the chance to visit there and didn't, talk about the road not taken.
I thought it added a nice "at the scene" ambience, as if you were in the cafeteria yourself overhearing a great explanation between two researchers. It gave it a great university feel to it.
[+] [-] kcima|13 years ago|reply
I am still looking for an answer as to how the world could be changed by the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle. What are some possible outcomes for society? I do not doubt that it will change, and I agree fully with it's value, however, I can't find any specifics in what ways it might change or what new technologies might be created with or without the Higgs Boson.
Also, at a 9 Billion USD price tag, how were our governments convinced? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer.
I'm sure it's not this...
Scientists: "We need 9 Billion to find out if the Higgs Boson particle exists."
Governments: "OK, here is your 9 Billion."
... 15 years later
Scientists: "The answer is yes. The Higgs Boson does exist."
Governments: "Oh, that's really great."
Update: I understand and agree fully with the value of this research. I am asking if there are any specific technologies that are expected to be advanced or if it is just added knowledge that could lead anywhere. I am also wondering how it was explained to politicians who don't have specific interest in science.
[+] [-] ColinWright|13 years ago|reply
Better understanding of the standard model will buy us many things, most of which we don't yet realise will be interesting, useful, fun, exciting, and important. Better understanding of the standard model will possibly give us:
* Quantum computers
* Room temperature superconductors
* Substances strong enough to build a space elevator
40 years ago we had no idea how to build 'planes that were bigger, stronger, faster, and more efficient than the ones we had, and yet people did the basic research anyway, just because they thought it might be useful. They found composite structures, and we got the 'planes and other things. The metals used in car engines have improved enormously, in part because of what was seen at the time as being basic research that might not really go anywhere.
But in the end it's basic science, and we don't always know how - or whether - it will repay itself. For every advance that has gained us something there are other efforts that have led nowhere, but we never know in advance which will be which.
So who knows what will come out of this. The research could give us teleportation, or Star Trek-style replicators, or dirt-cheap solar energy harvesting paints that cars can run on, or electricity storage devices, or plastics that can be made without oil, or entirely new substances, just as plastics once were.I have no idea how old you are, but I'm fifty, and stuff exists now that didn't when I was in my teens, partly because of people doing basic research.
[+] [-] TamDenholm|13 years ago|reply
X-rays, electricity, penicillin we're all discoved with no practical application in mind.
[+] [-] sophacles|13 years ago|reply
False dilemma. When we spend trillions of dollars a year to kill people in the name of stopping violence, 10^-3 of that for curiosity is not something that is rational to attack. Particularly when exploration for curiosity's sake has led to plenty of demonstrably beneficial results.
[+] [-] elorant|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|13 years ago|reply
I'm serious.
[+] [-] nilaykumar|13 years ago|reply
"what are our governments buying for us?": - knowledge - possible future applications
It's that simple. That's always how fundamental research works. How politicians were convinced, I don't know - that's an excellent question.
[+] [-] Achshar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousfiddler|13 years ago|reply
1. That mass is not an intrinsic property of matter; rather it is acquired by the particle's interaction with Higgs field.
2. A massless particle travels at the speed of light.
When controlled, this has the potential to result in super crazy outcomes (super fast transfer of matter and energy etc).
PS: Please correct my interpretation if it looks wrong.
[+] [-] mcguire|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdjarrell|13 years ago|reply
By the way, what was the common man's response when Newton first explained gravity? Probably, "Things fall, what more do you need to know"
[+] [-] modarts|13 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure that the invention of much of the communication technologies we have today were not readily predicted in the mid-1800's when Maxwell was developing EM theory.
[+] [-] mcpie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xbryanx|13 years ago|reply
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/03/20/...
[+] [-] obtu|13 years ago|reply
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/background/B11-Higgs_understa...
[+] [-] tatsuke95|13 years ago|reply
I admire this method of conveying ideas and information (animation). It's a great way to consume these clips.
The RSA has a whole series of 10 minute lectures which they animate on a whiteboard in this style. The illustrations are brilliant.
http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/
(search for RSA Animate)
[+] [-] brittohalloran|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swordswinger12|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianhoward|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runn1ng|13 years ago|reply
I still don't get how they jumped from "We have this Higgs field" to "and hey, the field is a particle."
[+] [-] kmm|13 years ago|reply
Think of an excitation of the field. One of the "axioms" of quantum field theory is that the energy of an excitation is related to the inverse square of the wavelength. Don't ask me why, it's just like that. Think of UV radiation or X-rays, which are just light with a higher frequency and you know those radiation is more damaging to the human body than for example radio waves.
Now, are you familiar with Fourier decomposition?[1] It's the idea that all functions are the sum of a waves (sines and cosines). We do the same thing in quantum field theory, we have our quantum field and we write it as the sum of our elementary wavefunctions, which are called plane waves[2]. When you look at a wave packet[3], you can't really say what its wavelength is. Wavelength is not a local concept, as for example the height of the wave, but the wave differs from place to place, so it's impossible to give it just one wavelength! We don't have that problem with plane waves. Because they're the same all over the universe, they have a clear wavelength and thus a well-defined, unique energy. This concept, an excitation of a field with a well-defined energy (and thus a well-defined mass!) is what particle physicists call "a particle".
When a collision happens in a collider, we're actually preparing two plane waves and pointing them in the same direction. As they collide, the wavefunctions of the various fields become incredibly complex. We humans can only "see" excitations with a well-defined mass, or better yet, our detectors can only detect excitations with a well-defined mass. And thus instead of a complicated field, we see a mess of particles going in different directions and having different masses, energies and speeds.
Does that make it any clearer?
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_wave [3]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Wave_pack...
[+] [-] scott_s|13 years ago|reply
edit: As the links are down, here they are from the Wayback Machine:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080209000844/http://www.phy.uct...
http://web.archive.org/web/20110724100137/http://www.phy.uct...
http://web.archive.org/web/20110724100208/http://www.phy.uct...
http://web.archive.org/web/20100202022203/http://www.phy.uct...
http://web.archive.org/web/20100323013823/http://www.phy.uct...
[+] [-] nilaykumar|13 years ago|reply
So really all a Higgs boson is, is an excitation of the Higgs field.
[+] [-] hazov|13 years ago|reply
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1489
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
Broadcasters with the BBC's remit need to have science programmes that are far beyond my understanding. Almost everything on the BBC can be followed by a reasonably smart 14 year old.
[+] [-] tikhonj|13 years ago|reply
It's the same logic as to why there aren't any interesting TV programs about, say, programming languages, but you can find good content on Channel 9 (not really a channel :P) or Google Tech Talks.
[+] [-] fromdoon|13 years ago|reply
Or is it that they are not sure what they would do with it when they find it.
Further, how would this discovery affect the modern day/upcoming tech?
[+] [-] nine_k|13 years ago|reply
If Higgs boson is clearly not found where the theory predict it, then the theory is deficient and has to be seriously rethought or thrown away altogether! It would be exciting time of uncertainty, crazy ideas, and new and interesting stuff to try (like it was with quantum mechanics). Or maybe not — the new and interesting effects may lie far away from the range of masses and energies of daily life (e.g. we don't usually directly see any effects of general relativity).
[+] [-] femto|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/weve-observed-a-ne...
[+] [-] ColinWright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krrrh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xcelerate|13 years ago|reply
It is important to note that gravity affects energy (mass-energy). This is why a compressed spring weighs more than the same spring uncompressed. A spinning ball weighs more than the same ball when it is stationary because there is more energy.
It's an important but subtle distinction that even a lot of physics professors don't quite grasp. Matt Strassler has some very good explanations of it on his page.
[+] [-] seats|13 years ago|reply
One interesting point to add though is that only integer spin particles (the force carrying bosons) can share quantum states, which means they can occupy the same point in space.
Another way to say that is to say the opposite, i.e. that half-integer spin particles (the fermions, which includes quarks that make protons and neutrons as well as leptons like the electron) cannot occupy the same quantum state as each other, which is manifest by them obeying the pauli exclusion principle.
So if you were to take two photons they can literally occupy the same point versus two electrons which cannot (with some exceptions noted below). They are both point particles and technically have no volume, but there is this extra rule about quantum states that prevent two electrons from sitting in precisely the same place if they share all other quantum characteristics.
Since this rule applies only if those electrons share all other quantum states, that means that if two electrons have opposite spins, they can occupy the same point in space. The first valence shell in a atom is the lowest state that an electron can have in a stable orbit (think of it as a standing wave that exactly lines up in a circle). There is 'room' for only one electron when you view the electron as a wave, but that shell can hold 2 electrons because there can be one of each spin type.
Anyway kind of long winded, but I think the exclusion principle is at the heart of what makes us intuitively think about the electron as having volume in space and a photon as not.
All this stuff is really really cool, but you can tell why physicists have that itchy sensation that there is some deeper explanation that is underneath all these rules.
[+] [-] nilaykumar|13 years ago|reply
They can only have "effective size" that arises due to say, electromagnetism. The electron has an effective radius that is measured by bouncing other charged "test" particles off of it. You don't get an answer of zero only because your test particles are attracted or repelled by the electron.
Mass should be thought of as something intrinsic to a particle, just like charge or spin. There's really no good way to visualize it - it's just something different particles have in different amounts.
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