Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Harry Cliff a particle physicist at the
University of Cambridge working on the
Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment
that specializes in investigating the
slight differences between matter and
antimatter by studying a type of
particle called the beauty quark or B
quark in this way he's part of the group
of physicists who are searching for the
evidence of new particles that can
answer some of the biggest questions in
modern physics
he's also an exceptional communicator of
science with some of the clearest and
most captivating explanations of basic
concepts in particle physicists that
have ever heard so when I visit in
London I knew I had to talk to him and
we did this conversation at the Royal
Institute lecture theatre which has
hosted lectures for over two centuries
from some of the greatest scientists and
science communicators in history for
Michael Faraday to Carl Sagan this
conversation was recorded before the
outbreak of the pandemic for everyone
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support this podcast and now here's my
conversation with harry cliff
let's start with probably one of the
coolest things that human beings have
ever created the Large Hadron Collider
ohc what is it how does it work
okay so is essentially this gigantic 27
kilometer circumference particle
accelerators this big ring it's buried
100 100 meters underneath the surface in
the countryside just outside Geneva in
Switzerland and really what it's for
ultimately is to try to understand what
are the basic building blocks of the
universe so you can think of it in a way
as like a gigantic microscope and and
the analogy is actually fairly precise
so gigantic microscope effectively
except it's a microscope that looks at
the structure of the vacuum in order for
this kind of thing to study particles
which are microscopic entities it has to
be huge yes gigantic Waxhaw so what do
you mean by studying vacuum okay so I
mean so particle physics as a field is
kind of badly named in a way because
particles are not the fundamental
ingredients of the universe they're not
fundamental at all so the things that we
believe are the real building blocks of
the universe are objects invisible fluid
like objects called quantum fields so
these are fields like like the magnetic
field around a magnet that exists
everywhere in space they're always there
in fact actually it's funny they were in
the wrong institution because this is
where the idea of the field was
effectively invented by Michael Faraday
doing experiments with magnets and coils
of wire so he noticed that you know if
he was very famous experiment that he
did where he got a magnet and put it on
top of it a piece of paper and then
sprinkled iron filings and he found the
iron filings arrange themselves into
these kind of loops of which was
actually mapping out the invisible
influence of this magnetic field which
is a thing you know we've all
experienced we're all felt held a magnet
and or two poles the magnet and pushing
together and felt this thing this force
pushing back so these are real physical
objects and the the way we think of
particles in modern physics is that they
are essentially little vibrations little
ripples in these otherwise invisible
fields that are everywhere they fill the
whole universe you know I don't
apologist perhaps for the ridiculous
question are you comfortable with the
idea of the fundamental nature of our
reality being fields because to me
particles you know a bunch of different
building blocks makes more sense sort of
intellectually so visually like it's it
it seems to I seem to be able to
visualize that kind of idea easier yeah
are you comfortable psychologically with
the idea that the basic building block
is not a block but a field I think it's
um I think it's quite a magical idea I
find it quite appealing and it's well it
comes from a misunderstanding of what
particles are so like when you when we
do science at school and we draw a
picture of an atom you draw a like you
know nucleus with some protons or
neutrons these little spheres in the
middle and then you have some electrons
are like little flies flying around the
atom and that is a completely misleading
picture of what an atom is like it's
nothing like that the electron is not
like a little planet orbiting the atom
it's this spread out wibbly-wobbly
wave-like thing and we know we've known
that since you know the early 20th
century thanks to quantum mechanics so
when we carry on using this word
particle because sometimes when we do
experiments particles do behave like
they're little marbles or little bullets
you know so in the LHC when we collide
particles together you'll get you know
you'll get like hundreds of particles
will fly out through the detector and
they all take a trajectory and you can
see from the detector where they've gone
and they look like they're little
bullets so they behave that way um you
know a lot of the time but when you
really study them carefully you'll see
that they are not little spheres they
are these virial disturbances in in
these underlying fields so this is this
is really how we think nature is which
is surprising but also I think kind of
magic so here we are our bodies are
basically made up of like little knots
of energy in these invisible objects
that are all around us and what what is
the story of the vacuum when it comes to
LHC so what why did you mention the word
vacuum okay so if we just if we go back
to let us the physics we do know so
atoms are made of electrons which were
discovered 100 or so years ago and then
nucleus of the atom you have two other
types of particles there's an up
something called an up quark and a down
quark and those three particles make up
every atom in the universe so we think
of these as ripples in fields so there
is something called the electron field
and every electron in the universe is a
ripple moving about in this electron
field the electron field is all around
we can't see it but every electron in
our body is a little ripple in this
thing that's there all the time and the
quark feels the same so there's an up
quark field and an up quark isn't a
ripple in the up quark field and the
down quark is a little ripple in
something else called the down quark
field so these fields are always there
now there are potentially we know about
a certain number of fields in what we
call the standard model of particle
physics and the most recent one we
discovered was the Higgs field and the
way we discovered the Higgs field was to
make a little ripple in it so what the
LHC did it fired two protons into each
other very very hard with enough energy
that you could create a disturbance in
this Higgs field and that's what shows
up as what we call the Higgs boson so
this particle that everyone was going on
about eight or so years ago is proof
really the particle in itself is I mean
it's interesting but the things really
interesting is the field because it's
the the Higgs field that we believe is
the reason that electrons and quarks
have mass and it's that invisible field
that's always there that gives mass to
the particles the Higgs boson is just
our way of checking it's there basically
and so the Large Hadron Collider in
order to get that ripple in the Higgs
field you it requires a huge amount of
energy
yes opposes so that's why you need this
huge that's why size matters here so
maybe there's a million questions here
but let's backtrack why does size matter
in the context of a particle collider so
why does bigger allow you for higher
energy collisions right so the reason
well it is kind of simple really which
is that there are two types of particle
accelerator that you can build one is
circular which is like the LHC the other
is a great long line so the advantage of
a circular machine is that you can send
particles around a ring and you can give
them a kick every
and they go round so imagine you have a
is actually a bit of the LHC that's
about only 30 meters long where you have
a bunch of metal boxes which have
oscillating to million volt electric
fields inside them which are timed so
that when a proton goes through one of
these boxes the field it sees as it
approaches is attractive then as it
leaves the box it flips and becomes
repulsive and the proton gets attracted
then kicked out the other side so it
gets a bit faster so you send it but
then you send it back round again and
it's incredible like the timing of that
the synchronization that wait really
yeah yeah yeah yeah that's I think
there's going to be a multiplicative
effect on the questions I have is that
okay let me just take that attention for
a second how the orchestration of that
is that a fundamentally a hardware
problem or software a problem like what
how do you get that I mean I might so I
should first of all say I'm not an
engineer so the guys I did not build the
LHC so they're people much much better
at this stuff than I for sure but maybe
but from from your sort of intuition
from the the the echoes of what you
understand you heard of house design
what's your sense how what's the
engineering aspects that the
acceleration bit is not challenging okay
okay there is always challenges
everything but basically you have these
the beams that go around you like see
the beams of particles are divided into
little bunches so they're called their
bit like swarms of bees if you like and
there are around I think it's something
of the order 2000 bunches spaced around
the ring and they if you were if you're
a given point on the ring counting
bunches you get 40 million bunches
passing you every second so they come in
like you know just like cars going past
from a very fast motorway so you need to
have if you're a electric field that
you're using to accelerate the particles
that needs to be timed so that as a
bunch of protons arrives it's got the
right sign to attract them and then
flips at the right moment but I think
the the voltage in those boxes
oscillates at hundreds of megahertz so
the beams at like 40 megahertz but is
oscillating much more quickly than the
beam so and I think you know it's
difficult engineering but in principle
it's not you know a really serious
challenge the bigger problem this
probably engineers like screaming at
ureña probably yeah
what
okay so in terms of coming back to this
thing why is it so big well the reason
is you wanna get the particles through
that accelerating element over over
again so you want to bring them back
round that's why it's round the question
is why couldn't you make it smaller well
the basic answer is that these particles
are going unbelievably quickly so they
travel at 99.999999 1% of the speed of
light in the LHC and if you think about
say driving your car round a corner high
speed if you go fast you need a very you
need a lot of friction in the tires to
make sure you don't slide off the road
so the the limiting factor is the how
powerful a magnet can you make because
it's what we do is magnets are used to
bend the particles around the ring and
essentially the LHC when it was designed
was designed with the most powerful
magnets that could conceivably be built
at the time and so that's your kind of
limiting factors if you wanted to make
the machines smaller that means a
tighter bend you need to have a more
powerful magnet so it's this toss-up
between how strong your magnets versus
how big a tunnel can you afford the
bigger the tunnel the weaker the magnets
can be the smaller a tunnel the stronger
they've got to be okay so maybe can we
backtrack to the data model and say what
kind of particles there are period and
maybe the history of kind of assembling
that the standard model of physics and
then how that leads up to the hopes and
dreams and the accomplishments of the
Large Hadron Collider yeah sure okay so
for all the 20th century physics in like
five minutes
yeah please okay so okay the story
really begins properly end of the 19th
century the basic view of matter is that
matter is made of atoms and the atoms
are indestructible immutable little
spheres like the things we were talking
about they don't really exist and
there's you know one atom for every
chemical element as an atom for hydrogen
for helium for carbon photon etc and
they're all different
then in 1897 experiments done at the
Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge where
I am still where I'm based showed that
there are actually smaller particles
inside the atom which eventually became
known as electrons these are these
negatively charged things that go around
the outside a few years later and it's
Rutherford very famous nuclear physics
nuclear physics shows that the atom has
a tiny nugget in the center which we
call the nucleus which is a positively
charged object so then by in light
1910-11 we have this model of the atom
that we learn in school which is you've
got a nucleus electrons go round there
fast forward you know a few years the
nucleus people start doing experiments
with radioactivity where they use alpha
particles that are spat out of
radioactive elements as as bullets and
they fire them other atoms and by
banging things into each other they see
that they can knock bits out of the
nucleus so these things come out called
protons first of all which are
positively charged particles about 2,000
times heavier than the electron and then
10 years later more or less neutral
particle is discovered called the
neutron so those are the three basic
building blocks of atoms you have
protons and neutrons in the nucleus that
are stuck together by something called a
strong force the strong nuclear force
and you have electrons in orbit around
that held in by the electromagnetic
force which is one of the you know the
forces of nature that's sort of where we
get to by late 1932 more or less then
what happens is physics is nice and neat
in 1932 everything looks great got three
particles and all the atoms are made of
that's fine but then cloud chamber
experiments these are devices that can
be used to the first devices capable of
imaging subatomic particles so you can
see their tracks and they use to study
cosmic rays particles that come from
outer space and bang into the atmosphere
and in these experiments people start to
see a whole load of new particles so
they discover for one thing antimatter
which is a sort of a mirror image of the
particles so we discovered that there's
also as well as a negatively charged
electron there's something called a
positron which is a positively charged
version of the electron and there's an
antiproton which is negatively charged
and and then a whole load of other weird
particle start to get discovered and no
one really knows what they are this is
known as the zoo of particles are these
discoveries fundamentally first
theoretical discoveries or the
discoveries in an experiment so like
well yeah what was the process of
discovery for these early it's a mixture
I mean that the early stuff around the
atom is really experimentally driven
it's not based on some theory it's
exploration in the lab using equipment
so it's really people just figuring out
hands-on with the fenomena figuring out
what these things are the theory comes a
bit later that there is that's not
always the case so in the discovery of
the anti-electron the positron that was
predicted from quantum mechanics and
relativity by a very clever theoretical
physicist called Paul Dirac who was
probably the second brightest you know
physicist of the 20th century apart from
Einstein but isn't as well anywhere near
as well known so he predicted the
existence of the anti electron from
basically a combination of the theories
of quantum mechanics and relativity and
it was discovered about a year after he
made their prediction what happens when
an electron meets a positron they
annihilate each other so if you when you
bring a particle in its antiparticle
together they they react well they react
they just wipe each other out and they
turn their mass is turned into energy
usually in the form of photons so you'll
get light produced so when you have that
kind of situation why why does the
universe exists at all if there's matter
in any matter oh god now we're getting
into the really big questions so you
want to go there now
yeah that's me maybe let's go there
later that's because I mean that is a
very big question yeah let's let's take
it slow with the standard model so okay
so there's matter and antimatter in the
30s mmm
so what else so matter antimatter and
then a load of new particles start
turning up in these cosmic ray
experiments first of all and they don't
seem to be particles that make up atoms
there's something else they all mostly
interact with a strong nuclear force so
they're a bit like protons and neutrons
and by in the 1960s in America
particularly but also in Europe and
Russia scientist article particle
accelerators so these are the
forerunners of the LHC so big ring
shaped machines that were you know
hundreds of meters long which in those
days was enormous you never you know
most physics up until that point had
been done in labs in universities you
know with small bits of kit so this is a
big change and when these accelerators
are built they start to find they can
produce even more of these particles so
I don't know the exact numbers but by
around 1960 there are of order a hundred
of these things that have been
discovered and physicists are kind of
tearing the hair out because physics is
all about simplification and suddenly
what was simple as
come messy and complicated and everyone
sort of wants to understand what's going
on it's a quick kind of a side and the
probably really dumb question but how is
it possible to take something like a
like a photon or electron and be able to
control it enough like to be able to do
a controlled experiment where you
collide it against something else
yeah is that is that that seems like an
exceptionally difficult engineering
challenge because you mention vacuum to
so you basically want to remove every
other distraction and really focus on
this collision how difficult of an
engineering challenge is that just to
get a sense and it's very hard I mean in
the early days particularly when the
first accelerators are being built in
like 1932 Ernest Lawrence builds the
first what we call the cyclotron which
is like a little celery - this big or so
there's another widely they're big
there's a tiny little thing yeah I mean
so most of the first accelerators were
what we call fixed argot experiments so
you had a ring you accelerate particles
around the ring and then you fire them
out the side into some target so is eat
that makes the kind of the colliding bit
is relatively straightforward to use
fire it whatever it is you want to fire
it out the hard bit is the steering the
beams with the magnetic fields getting
you know strong enough electric fields
to accelerate them all that kind of
stuff
the first colliders where you have two
beams colliding head-on that comes later
and I don't think it's done until maybe
the 1980s
I'm not entirely sure but it takes is
much harder problem that's crazy because
yet it's like perfectly you had them to
hit each other I mean we're talking
about I mean what scale it takes what's
this this I mean the temporal thing is a
giant mess but the spatially like the
size mmm it's tiny well to give you a
sense so the LHC beams the
cross-sectional diameter is I think
around a dozen or so microns so you know
ten ten millionths of a meters then a
beam sorry just to clarify a beam
how many is it the bunches that you
mentioned yes multiple poles is just one
part oh no no the bunches contained say
a hundred billion protons each so a
bunch is not really one shape they're
actually quite long they're like 30
centimeters long but thinner than a
human hair so like very very narrow long
sort of object so those are the things
so what happens in the LHC is you steer
the beams so that they cross in the
middle of the detector so the basically
have these swarms of protons are flying
through each other and most of that you
have so you have 100 billion coming one
way 100 billion another way maybe 10 of
them will hit each other okay so this
okay that makes a lot more sense that's
nice so there you're trying to use sort
of it's like probabilistically you're
not you can't make a single particle
collide with a single oh yeah so that's
not an efficient way to do it you'd be
waiting a very long time to get anything
yeah so you you're basically right see
you're relying on probability to be that
some fraction of them are gonna collide
yeah and then you know which is it's
it's a it's a swarm of the same kind of
particle so it doesn't matter which ones
each other exactly I mean that that's
not to say it's not hard you've got a
one of the challenges to make the
collisions work is you have to squash
these beams to very very the basic their
narrower they are the better because the
higher the chances of them colliding if
you think about two flocks of birds
flying through each other
the birds are all far apart in the
flocks there's not much chance that
they'll collide if they're all flying
densely together and they very much more
likely to collide with each other so
that's the sort of problem it's tuning
those magnetic fields getting them angry
feels powerful not that you squash the
beams and focus them so that you get
enough collisions that's super cool do
you know how much software is involved
here I mean it's sort of I come in the
software world and it's fascinating this
seems like it's a software is buggy and
messy and so like you almost don't want
to rely on software too much like if you
do it has to be like low-level like
Fortran style programming do you know
how much software isn't a Large Hadron
Collider I mean it depends at which
level a lot I mean the whole thing is
obviously computer-controlled so I mean
I I don't know a huge amount about how
the software for the actual accelerator
works but you know I've been in the
control center so has CERN there's this
big control room which is like
bit like a NASA mission control with big
banks of you know desk where the engine
is sit and they monitor the LHC because
you obviously can't be in the tunnel
when it's running so everything's remote
I mean one sort of anecdote about the
sort of software side in 2008 when the
LHC first switched on they had this big
launch event and then you know big press
conference party to inaugurate the
machine and about ten days after that
they were doing some tests and the this
dramatic event happened where a huge
explosion basically took place in a
tunnel that destroyed were damaged badly
damaged about about half a kilometer of
the machine but the story is viewed the
engineers here in the control room that
day they'd one guy told me the story
about you know basically there's all
these screens they have in the control
room started going red so these alarms
like you know kind of in software going
off and then they assume that lists all
wrong with the software cuz there's no
way something this catastrophic could
have could have happened yeah but I mean
when I worked on one when I was a PhD
student one of my Jobs was to help to
maintain the software that's used to
control the detector that we work on and
that was it's relatively robust not so
you don't want it to be too fancy you
don't want to sort of fall over too
easily the more clever stuff comes when
you're talking about analyzing the data
and that's where they're sort of you
know are we jumping around too much do
we finish for the standard model we
didn't know we didn't hurry and start
talking mark works we haven't talked
about me yet got to the messy zoo of
particles go back there if it's okay
okay that's take us the rest of the
history of physics in the 20th century
okay sure
okay so circa 1960 you have this you
have these hundred or so particles it's
a bit like the periodic table all over
again so you've got like like having a
hundred elements sort of a bit like that
and people try to start to try to impose
some order so Murray Gelman he's a
theoretical physicist American from New
York he realizes that there are these
symmetries in these particles that if
you arrange them in certain ways that
they relate to each other and he uses
these symmetry principles to predict the
existence of particles that haven't been
discovered which are then discovered in
accelerators so this starts to suggest
there's not just random collections of
crap there's like you know actually some
order to this under
a little bit later in 1960 again it's
round the 1960s he proposes along with
another physicist called George Zweig
the these symmetries arise because just
like the patterns in the periodic table
arise because atoms are made of
electrons and protons that these
patterns are due to the fact that these
particles are made of smaller things and
they are called quarks so these are the
particles they're predicted from theory
for a long time no one really believes
they're real a lot of people think that
there are kind of theoretical
convenience that happen to fit the data
but there's no evidence no one's ever
seen a quark in any experiment and lots
of experiments are done to try to find
quarks just try to knock a quark out of
her so the idea if protons and neutrons
say made of quarks you should work to
knock a quark out and see the quark that
never happens and we still have never
actually managed to do that really no so
the way but the way that it's done in
the end is this machine that's built in
California at Stanford lab Stanford
Linear Accelerator which is essentially
a gigantic three kilometer long electron
gun fires electrons almost speed of
light at protons and when you do these
experiments what you find is a very high
energy the electrons bounce off small
hard objects inside the proton so it's a
bit like taking an x-ray of the proton
you're firing these very light
high-energy particles and they're
pinging off little things inside the
proton that are like ball bearings if
you like so you actually that way they
resolve that there are three things
inside the proton which are quarks the
quarks that governance why I could
predicted so that's really the evidence
that convinces people that these things
are real the fact that we've never seen
one in an experiment directly they're
always stuck inside other particles and
the reason for that is essentially to do
with the strong force the strong forces
the force holds quarks together and it's
so strongly it's impossible to actually
liberate a quark so if you try and pull
a quark out of a proton what actually
ends up happening is that the you kind
of create this that this spring-like
bond in the strong force we've imagined
two quarks that are held together by
very powerful spring you pull it pull
and pull more and more energy gets
stored in there
bond like stretching a spring and
eventually the tension gets so great the
spring snaps and the energy in that bond
gets turned into two new quarks that go
on the broken ends so you started with
two quarks to end up with four quarks
so you never actually get to take a
quark out you just end up making loads
of more quarks in the process so how do
we again forgive the dumb question how
do we know quarks are real then well eh
from these experiments where we can
scatter you fire electrons into the
protons they can burrow into the proton
and knock off and they can bounce off
these quarks so you can see from the
angles the electrons come Alice you can
infer you can infer that these things
are there the quark model can also be
used it has a lot of successes you can
use it to predict the existence of new
particles that hadn't been seen so and
basically there's lots of data basically
showing from you know when we fire
protons at each other at the LHC a lot
of quarks get knocked all over the place
and every time they try and escape from
say one of their protons they make a
whole jet of quarks that go flying off
it has bound up in other sorts of
particles made of quarks so they're all
the sort of the theoretical predictions
from the basic theory of the strong
force and the quarks all agrees with
what we are seeing experiments we've
just never seen a an actual quark on its
own because unfortunate it's impossible
to get them out on their own
so quarks these crazy smaller things
that are hard to imagine a real so what
else what else is part of the story here
so the other thing that's going on at
the time around the sixties it's an
attempt to understand the forces that
make these particles interact with each
other so you have the electromagnetic
force which is the force that was sort
of discovered to some extent in this
room or at least in this building so the
first what we call quantum field theory
of the electromagnetic force is
developed in the 1940s and 50s by
Fineman Richard Feynman amongst other
people julian schwinger tominaga who
come up with the first what we call a
quantum field theory of the
electromagnetic force and this is where
this description of which I gave you at
the beginning that particles are ripples
and fields well in this theory the
photon the particle of light is
described as
people in this quantum field called the
electromagnetic field and the attempt
then is made to try what can we come up
with a quantum field theory of the other
forces of the strong force and the weak
the other third the third force which we
haven't discussed which is the weak
force which is a nuclear force we don't
really experience it in our everyday
lives but it's responsible for
radioactive decay is the force that
allows you know in a radioactive atom to
turn into a different element for
example and there are a few we've
explicitly mentioned but so there's
technically four forces yes I guess
three of them were being in in the
standard model like the weak there's the
strong and the electromagnetic and then
there's gravity in this gravity which we
don't worry about that because maybe
maybe we bring that up at the end yeah
gravity so far we don't have a quantum
theory of and if you can solve that
problem you win a Nobel Prize well we're
gonna have to bring up the graviton at
some point I'm gonna ask you but let's
let's leave that to the side for now so
those three okay fine man a
electromagnetic force the the quantum
field yeah where does the weak force
come in so so yeah well first of I mean
the strong force a bit easiest the
strong force is a little bit like the
electromagnetic force it's a force that
binds things together so that's the
force that holds quarks together inside
the proton for example so a quantum
field theory of that force is discovered
in I think it's in the sixties and it
predicts the existence of new force
particles called gluons so gluons are a
bit like the photon the photon is the
particle of electromagnetism gluons are
the the particles of the strong force
and so there's there's just like there's
an electromagnetic field there's
something called a gluon field which is
also all around us but these part
there's some of these particles I guess
the force carriers or whatever they
carry that well it depends how you want
to think about it I mean really the
field the strong force field the gluon
field is the thing that binds the quarks
together the gluons are the little
ripples in that field so that like in
the same way that the photon is a ripple
in there in the electromagnetic field
but the thing that really does the
binding is the field I mean you may have
heard people talk about things like
verge as you've heard the phrase virtual
particle
so sometimes in some if you hear people
describing how forces are exchanged
between particles they quite often talk
about the idea that you know if you have
an electron and another electron say and
they're repelling each other through the
electro bratok electromagnetic force you
can think of that as if they're
exchanging photons so they're kind of
firing photons backwards and forwards
between each other and that causes them
to repel therefore time is then a
virtual particle yes that's what we call
a virtual particle in other words it's
not a real thing doesn't actually exist
so it's an artifact of the way theorists
do calculations so when they do
calculations in quantum field theory
rather than there's no one's discovered
a way of just treating the whole field
you have to break the field down into
simpler things so you can basically
treat the field as if it's made up of
lots of these virtual photons but
there's no experiment that you can do
that couldn't detect these particles
being exchanged what's really happening
in reality is the electromagnetic field
is warped by the charge of the electron
and that causes the force but the way we
do calculations involves parties let's
say it's a bit confusing but it is
really a mathematical technique it's not
something that corresponds to reality I
mean that's part I guess of the fireman
diagrams yes is this virtual product
okay that's right yeah some of these
have mass some of them don't mm-hmm is
that is that what what does that even
mean not to have mass and maybe you can
say well which one of them's have mass
or which don't okay so and why is mass
important or relevant in this cupboard
in this in this field view of the
universe
well there are only two particles in the
standard model that don't have mass
which are the photon and the gluons so
they are massless particles but the
electron the quarks and they're a bunch
of other particles I haven't discussed
there's something called a muon and a
Tau which are basically heavy versions
of the electron that are unstable you
can make them in accelerators but they
don't form atoms or anything they don't
exist for long enough but all the matter
particles there are twelve of them six
quarks and six what we call leptons
which includes the electron and it's too
heavy versions and three neutrinos all
of them have mass and so do this is the
critical bit so the weak force which is
the third of these
quantum forces which is one of the
hardest to understand the force
particles of that force have very large
masses and there are three of them
they're called the W plus the W minus
and the Z boson and they have masses of
between 80 and 90 times that of the the
protons they're very heavy learn wow
they're very heavy things they're what
the heaviest I guess they're not the
heaviest the heaviest particle is the
top quark which has a mass of about 175
ish protons so that's really massive we
don't know why is so massive but they're
coming back to the weak force so that
the the problem in the 60s and 70s was
that the reason that the electromagnetic
force is a force that we can experience
our everyday live so if we have a magnet
and a piece of metal you can hold it you
know a meter apart if it's powerful
laughs and you'll feel a force whereas
the weak force only is becomes apparent
when you basically have two particles
touching at the scale of a nucleus so if
you get two very short distances before
this force becomes manifest it's not
doesn't we don't get weak forces going
on in this room they don't notice them
and the reason for that is that the
particle well the the field that
transmits the weak force the particle
that's associated with that field has a
very large mass which means that the
field dies off very quickly says you
whereas an electric charge if you were
to look at the shape of the electric
field it would fall off with this you
know this one called the inverse square
law which is the idea that the force
halves every time you double the
distance no sorry it doesn't have it
quarters every time you see every time
you double the distance between say the
two particles whereas the weak force
kind of you move a little bit away from
the nucleus and just disappears the
reason for that is because these these
fields the particles that go with them
have a very large mass but the problem
that was that theorists faced in the
sixties was that if you tried to
introduce massive force fields the
theory who gave you nonsensical answers
so you'd end up with infinite results
for a lot of the calculations you tried
to do so the basically it turned it
seemed that quantum field theory was
incompatible with having massive
articles not just the force particles
actually but even the electron was a
problem so this is where the Higgs that
we sort of alluded to comes in and the
solution was to say okay well actually
all the particles in the standard model
of mass they have no mass so the quarks
the electron they don't have a mass
neither do these weak particles they
don't have mass either what happens is
they actually acquire mass through
another process they get it from
somewhere else they don't actually have
it intrinsically so this idea that was
introduced by what Peter Higgs is the
most famous but actually they're about
six people that come up with the idea
more or less at the same time is that
you introduce a new quantum field which
is another one of these invisible things
as everywhere and it's through the
interaction with this field that
particles get mass so you can think of
say an electron in the Higgs field it
kind of Higgs field kind of bunches
around the electron it sort of a drawn
towards the electron and that energy
that's stored in that field around the
electron is what we see as the mass of
the electron but if you could somehow
turn off the Higgs field then all the
particles in nature would become
massless and fly around at the speed of
light so this this idea of the Higgs
field allowed other people other
theorists to come up with a well it was
another a unit basically a unified
theory of the electromagnetic force on
the weak force so once you bring in the
Higgs field you can combine two of the
forces into one so it turns out the
electromagnetic force and the weak force
are just two aspects of the same
fundamental force and at the LHC we go
to high enough energies that you see
these two forces unifying effectively so
that so first of all it started as a
theoretical notion like this is just
something and then I mean wasn't the
Higgs called the god particle at some
point it was by a guy trying to sell
popular science books yeah yeah but by
me I am because when I was hearing it I
thought it would I mean that would solve
a lot of the you know file a lot of our
ideas of physics was Molloy's my notion
but maybe you can speak to that was is
as big of a leap is it as a god particle
is it a Jesus particle which which you
know what's the big contribution of
Higgs in terms of this unification power
yeah I mean to understand that I maybe
helps know the history a little bit so
when the what we call electroweak theory
was put together which is where you
unify electromagnetism with the weak
force and the Higgs is involved in all
of that so that theory which was written
in the mid-70s predicted the existence
of four new particles the w+ boson the
w- boson the z boson and the Higgs boson
so there were these four particles that
came with the theory that were predicted
by the theory in 1983-84
the W's and the z particles were
discovered an accelerator at CERN called
the super proton synchrotron which was a
seven kilometer particle collider so
three of the bits of this theory had
already been found so people are pretty
confident from the 80s that the Higgs
must exist because it was a part of this
family of particles that this
theoretical structure only works if the
Higgs is there so what then happens this
question right why is the LHC the size
it is yes well actually the tunnel that
the LHC is in was not built for the LHC
it was built from for a previous
accelerator called the large electron
positron Collider so that that was bit
began operation in the late 80s early
90s they basically did that's when they
dug the 27 kilometer tunnel they put as
accelerator into it the collider defiers
electrons and anti electrons at each
other electrons and positrons so the
purpose of that machine was well it was
actually to look for the Higgs that was
one of the things it was trying to do it
didn't man I didn't have enough energy
to do it in the end but the main thing
it was it studied the W and the Z
particles at very high precision so it
made loads of these things previously
can you make a few of them at the
previous accelerator you could study
these really really precisely and by
studying their properties you could
really test this electroweak theory that
had been invented in the seventies and
really make sure that it worked so
actually by 1999 when this machine
turned off people knew well okay you
never know until you until you find the
thing but people were really confident
electroweak theory was right and that
the Higgs almost the Higgs or something
very like the Higgs had to exist because
otherwise the whole thing doesn't work
it'd be really weird if you could
discover and these particles they all
behave exactly just theory tells you
they should but somehow this key piece
of the picture isn't it's not there so
in a way it depends how you look at it
the discovery of the Higgs on its own is
it's also a huge achievement in many
both experimenting and theoretically on
the other hand it's this it's like
having a jigsaw puzzle where every piece
has been filled in you've this beautiful
image there's one gap and you kind of
know that that piece must be there
something right so yeah so the discovery
in itself although it's important is not
so interesting it's a good confirmation
of the obvious yes at that point but
what makes it interesting is not that it
just completes the standard model which
is a theory that we've known had the
basic layout offs for 40 years or more
now it's that the Higgs actually is a is
a unique particle is very different to
any of the other particles in the
standard model and it's a theoretically
very troublesome particle there are a
lot of nasty things to do with the Higgs
but also opportunities so that we
basically don't really understand how
such an object can exist in the form
that it does so there are lots of
reasons for thinking that the Higgs must
come with a bunch of other particles or
that it's perhaps made of other things
so it's not a fundamental particle that
it's made of smaller things I can talk
about that if you like a bit that's
that's still an ocean so yeah so the
Higgs might not be a fundamental
particle there may be some in my oh man
so that that is an idea it's not you
know it's not been demonstrated to be
true but I mean there's all of these
ideas basically come from the fact that
it's a this is this is a problem
motivated a lot of development in
physics in the last 30 years or so and
there's this basic fact that the higgs
field which is this field that's
everywhere in the universe this is the
thing that gives mass to the particles
and the Higgs field is different from
ever all the other fields in that let's
say you take the electromagnetic field
which is you know if we actually were to
measure the electromagnetic field
we would measure all kinds of stuff
going on because there's light there's
gonna be microwaves and radio waves and
stuff but let's say we could go to a
really really remote part of empty space
and shield it and put a big box around
it and then measure the electromagnetic
field in that box the field would be
almost zero apart from some little
quantum fluctuations but basically it
goes to naught the Higgs field has a
value everywhere so it's a bit like the
hole it's like the entire of space has
got this energy stored in the Higgs
field which is not zero it's it's finite
it's got some it's a bit like having the
the temperature of space raised to you
know some background temperature and
it's that energy that gives mass to the
particles so the reason that electrons
and quarks have mass is through the
interaction with this energy that's
stored in the Higgs field now it turns
out that the precise value this energy
has has to be very carefully tuned if
you want a universe where interesting
stuff can happen so if you push the
higgs field down it has a tendency to
collapse to what there's a tenon if you
do you're sort of naive calculations
they're basically two possible likely
configurations for the Higgs field which
is either it's zero everywhere in which
case you have a universe which is just
particles with no mass that can't form
atoms and just fly by at the speed of
light or it explodes to an enormous
value what we call the Planck scale
which is the scale of quantum gravity
and at that point if the Hicksville was
that strong even an electron would
become so massive that it would collapse
into a black hole and then you have a
universe made of black holes and nothing
like us so it seems that the the
strength of the Higgs field is - it
could achieve the value that we see
requires what we call fine-tuning of the
laws of physics you have to fiddle
around with the other fields in the
standard model and their properties to
just get it to this right sort of
Goldilocks value that allows atoms to
exist this is deeply fishy people really
dislike this well yeah I guess well so
what would be a so - two explanations
one there's a god the design this
perfectly and two is there's an infinite
number of alternate universes and we'll
just happen to being the one in which
life is possible
yeah complexity so when you say I mean
life any kind of complexity that's not
either complete chaos or black holes
yeah yeah I mean how does that make you
feel what do you make that has such a
fascinating notion that this perfectly
tuned field that's the same everywhere
yeah is there what do you make of that
yeah well you make of that I mean yeah
you like that two of the possible
explanations yeah I mean well someone
you know some cosmic creator way yeah
let's fix that to be at the right level
that's more possibility I guess it's not
a scientifically test for one but you
know theoretically I guess it's possible
sorry to interrupt but there could also
be not a designer but could never be
just I guess I'm not sure what that
would be but as some kind of force that
that some kind of mechanism by which
this this this kind of field is enforced
in order to create complexity basic
basically forces that pull the universe
towards an interesting complexity I mean
yeah I mean I has those ideas I don't
really subscribe to them as I'm saying
it sounds really stupid no I mean yeah
and there are definitely people that
make those kind of arguments you know
there's ideas that I think it's Lise
Mullins idea one I think that you know
universes are born inside black holes
and so universe is that behaved like
Darwinian evolution of the universe
where universes give birth to other
universes and they've universes where
black holes can form are more likely to
give birth to more universes so you end
up with universes which have similar
laws I mean I don't whatever but why I
talked to dr. Lee recently understand
this podcast and he's he's a reminder to
me that the physics community has like
so many interesting characters yeah it's
fascinating yeah anyway so so I mean as
an experimentalist I tend to sort of
think these are interesting ideas but
they're not really testable so I tend
not to think about very much
so I mean going back to the science of
this there wasn't that there is an
explanation there is a possible solution
to this problem of the Higgs which
doesn't involve multiverses or creators
fiddling
about were the laws of physics if the
most popular solution was something
called supersymmetry which is a theory
which is involves a new type of symmetry
of the universe in fact it's one of the
last types of symmetries that is
possible to have that we haven't already
seen in nature which is a symmetry
between force particles and matter
particles so what we call fermions which
held before the matter particles and
bosons which were force particles and if
you have supersymmetry then there is a
superpartner for every particle in the
standard model and the without going to
the details the effect of this basically
is that you have a whole bunch of other
fields and these fields cancel out the
effect of the standard model fields and
they stabilize the Higgs field at a nice
sensible value so in supersymmetry you
naturally without any concurring about
with the constants of nature or anything
you get a Higgs field with a nice value
which is the one we see so this is one
of the written supersymmetry has also
got lots of other things going for it it
predicts the existence of a dark matter
particle which would be great it you
know it potentially in suggests that the
the strong force and the electroweak
force unify high energy so lots of
reasons people thought this was a
productive idea and when the LHC was
just before it was turned on there was a
lot of hype I guess a lot of an
expectation that we would discover these
super partners because and particularly
the main reason was that if if
supersymmetry stabilizes the higgs field
at this nice Goldilocks value these
super particles should have a mass
around the energy that we're probing at
the LHC around the energy of the Higgs
so it was kind of thought you discovered
the Higgs you probably discover
superpartners so once you start creating
ripples in this fix field you should be
able to see these kinds of you should be
yeah super fields would be there but I
said well at the very beginning I said
we're probing the vacuum what I mean is
really that you know okay let's say
these super fields exist the vacuum
contains super fields they're they're
these super symmetric fields if we hit
them hard enough we can make them
vibrate we see super particles come
flying out that's the sort of that's the
idea the hope ok that's the whole alone
but we haven't but we haven't so so far
at least I mean we've had now a decade
of data taking at the LHC
no signs of superpartners have
supersymmetric particles have been found
in fact no signs of any physics any new
particles beyond the standard model have
been found so supersymmetry is not the
only thing that can do this there are
other theories that involve additional
dimensions of space or potentially
involve the Higgs boson being made of
smaller things being made of other
particles that's an interesting you know
I haven't heard that before that's
really that's an issue but could you
maybe linger on that like what what
could be what could Higgs particle be
made of well so the the oldest I think
the original ideas about this was these
theories called Technicolor which were
basically like an analogy with the
strong force so the idea was the Higgs
boson was a bound state of two very
strongly interacting particles that were
a bit like quarks so like quarks but I
guess higher energy things with a super
strong force so not the strong force but
a new force that was very strong and the
Higgs was a bound state of these these
objects and the Higgs wouldn't principle
if that was right would be the first in
a series of Technicolor particles
Technicolor I think not being a theorist
but it's not biz basically not done very
well there's particularly since the LHC
found the Higgs that kind of it rules
out you know a lot of these Technicolor
theories but there are other things that
are a bit like Technicolor so there's a
theory called partial composite nurse
which is an idea that some of my
colleagues that Cambridge have worked on
which is a similar sort of idea that the
Higgs is a bound state of some strongly
interacting particles and that the
standard model particles themselves the
more exotic ones like the top quark are
also sort of mixtures of these composite
particles so it's a kind of an extension
to the standard model which explains
this problem with the Higgs bosons
Goldilocks value but also helps us
understand we have we're in a situation
now again a bit like the periodic table
where we have six quarks six leptons in
this kind of you can range in this nice
table and there you can see these
columns where the patterns repeat and
you go okay maybe there's something
deeper going on here is that you know
and and so this would potentially be
something this partial composite NOS
theory could
Lane sort of enlarged this picture that
allows us to see the whole symmetrical
pattern and understand what the
ingredients why do we have wind so one
of the big questions in particle physics
is why are there three copies of the
matter particles so in what we call the
first generation which is what we're
made of there's the electron the
electron neutrino the up quark on the
down quark they're the most common
matter particles in the universe but
then there are copies of these four
particles in the second and the third
generations so things like muons and top
quarks and other stuff we don't know why
we see these patterns we have no idea
where it comes from so that's another
big question you know can we find out
the deeper order that explains this
particular tape period table of
particles that we see is it possible
that the the deeper order includes like
almost a single entity so like something
that I guess like string theory dreams
about is this is this part is this
essentially the dream is to discover
something simple beautiful and unifying
yeah I mean that is the dream and it I
think for some people for a lot of
people it still is the dream so there's
a great book by Steven Weinberg who is
one of the theoretical physicists who
was instrumental in building the
standard model so he came up with some
others with the electroweak theory the
theory that unified electromagnetism and
the weak force and here at this book I
think it was towards the end of the 80s
early 90s called dreams of a final
theory which is a very lovely quite
short book about this idea of a final
unifying theory that brings everything
together and I think you get a sense
reading his book written at the end of
80s and early 90s that there was this
feeling that such a theory was coming
and that was the time when string theory
had been was was very exciting so string
theory there's been this thing called
the superstring revolution and
theoretical physical very excited they
discovered these theoretical objects
these little vibrating loops of string
that in principle not only was a quantum
theory of gravity but could explain all
the particles in the standard model and
bring it all together and you as you say
you have one object the string and you
can pluck it and the way it vibrates
gives you these different notes each of
which is a different part
so it's a very lovely idea but the
problem is that well there's a there's a
few people discover their mathematics is
very difficult so people have spent
three decades and more trying to
understand string theory and I think you
know if you spoke to most string
theorists they would probably freely
admit that no one really knows what
string theory is yet I mean there's been
a lot of work but it's not really
understood and the other problem is that
string theory mostly makes predictions
about physics that occurs energies far
beyond what we will ever be able to
probe in the laboratory yeah probably
ever by the way so sorry they take a
million tangents but is there room for
complete innovation of how to build a
particle collider that could give us an
order of magnitude increase in any kind
of energies or do we need to keep just
increasing the size of thing
I mean maybe yeah I mean there are ideas
but to give you a sense of the Gulf that
has to be bridged
so the LHC collides particles at an
energy of what we call fourteen terror
electron volts so that's basically
equivalent of you accelerated a proton
through 14 trillion volts that gets us
to the energies where the Higgs and
these weak particles live they're very
massive the the scale where strings
become manifest is something called the
Planck scale which i think is of the
order 10 to the hang on again that's
right is 10 to the 18 Giga electron volt
so about 10 to the 15 terror electron
volts so you're talking you know
trillions of times more energy more the
10 to the 15 the 10 to the 14th larger
it's a very big number so you know we're
not talking just an order of magnitude
increase in energy we're talking 14
orders of magnitude energy increase so
to give you a sense of what that would
look like were you to build a particle
accelerator with today's technology
bigger or smaller and then our solar
system as start the size of the galaxy
the galaxy so you need to put a particle
accelerator that circled the Milky Way
to get to the energies where you would
see strings if they exist so there's a
fundamental
or problem which is that most of the
predictions of the unified these unified
theories of quantum theories of gravity
only make statements that are testable
are energies that we will not be able to
probe let and barring some unbelievable
you know completely unexpected
technological or scientific breakthrough
which is almost impossible to imagine
you never never say never but it seems
very unlikely yeah I can just see the
news story Elon Musk decides to build a
particle collider the size of our it
would have to be we'd have to get
together with all our galactic neighbors
to pay for everything
what is the exciting possibilities of
the Large Hadron Collider what is there
to be discovered in this in this order
of magnitude of scale is there other
bigger efforts on the horizon big in
this space what are the open problems
the exciting possibilities you mentioned
supersymmetry yeah so well there are
lots of new ideas well there's lots of
problems that we're facing so there's a
problem with the Higgs field which
supersymmetry was supposed to solve
there's the fact that 95% of the
universe we know from cosmology
astrophysics is invisible that it's made
of dark matter and dark energy which are
really just words for things that we
don't know what they are it's what
Donald Rumsfeld called a known unknown
we know we don't know what they are well
that's it's better than an unknown
unknown yeah well there may be some
unknown unknown but I don't know what
those yeah but but the the hope is the
particle accelerator could help us make
sense of dark energy dark matter there's
still there's just some hope for that
there's hope for that yes so one of the
hopes is the LHC could produce a Dark
Matter particle in its collisions and
you know it may be that the LHC will
still discover new particles that it
might still supersymmetry could still be
there we just it's just maybe more
difficult to find than we thought
originally and and you know dark matter
particles might be being produced but
we're just not looking in the right part
of the data for them that that's
possible it might be that we need more
data that these processes are very rare
and we need to collect lots and lots of
data before we see them but I think a
lot of people would say now that the
chances of the LHC
directly discovering new particles in
the near future is quite slim it may be
that we need a decade more data before
we can see something or we may not see
anything that's the that's what we are
so I mean the the physics the
experiments that I work on so I work on
a detector called LHC B which is one of
these four big detectors that are spaced
around the ring and we do slightly
different stuff to the big guys there's
two big experiments called outlets and
CMS three thousand physicists and
scientists and computer scientists on
them each they are the ones that
discovered the Higgs then they look for
supersymmetry and dark matter and so on
what we look at our standard model
particles called B quarks which
depending on your preference is either
bottom or beauty we tend to say beauty
because it sounds sexier yeah but these
particles are interesting because they
of you can make lots of them we make
billions or Billy a hundreds of billions
of these things you can therefore
measure their properties very precisely
so you can make these really lovely
precision measurements and what we are
doing really is a sort of complementary
thing to the other big experiments which
is they if you think the self analogy
that I often use is if you imagine
you're looking in you're in a jungle and
you're looking for an elephant same and
you are a hunter and you're kind of like
they said there's the relevance very
rare you don't know where in the jungle
the jungles big so there's two ways you
go about this either you can go out
wandering around the jungle and try and
find the elephant the problem is if the
elephant there's only one elephant the
jungles big the chances of running into
it very small or you could look on the
ground and see if you see footprints
left by the elephant and if the
elephant's moving around you've got a
chance that you're better chance maybe
of seeing the elephant's footprints if
you see the footprints you go okay
there's an elephant maybe don't know
what kind of elephant it is but I got a
sense there's something out there so
that's sort of what we do we are the
footprint people we are we're looking
for the footprint the impressions that
quantum fields that we haven't managed
to directly create the particle of the
effects these quantum fields have on the
ordinary standard model fields that we
already know about so these these be
particles the way they behave can be
influenced by the presence of say super
fields or dark matter fields or whatever
you like and they're the way they decay
and
hey've can be altered slightly from what
our theory tells us they ought to behave
sure and it's easier to collect huge
amounts of data and B and B quarks we
get you know billions and billions of
these things you can make very precise
measurements and the only place really
at the LHC or in really in high-energy
physics at the moment where there's
fairly compelling evidence that there
might be something beyond the standard
model is in these be these beauty quarks
decays just to clarify which is the
difference between the different the
four experiments for example the
emission is it the kind of particles
that are being collided is it the
energies that were which there collided
what's the fundamental difference
different experiments the collisions are
the same what's different is the design
of the detectors so Atlas and CMS are
called they're called what are called
general purpose detectors and they are
basically barrel shaped machines and the
collisions happen in the middle of the
barrel and the barrel captures all the
particles that go flying out in every
direction so in a sphere effectively
they can flying out and it can record
all of those particles and what's the
site of interrupting but what's what's
the mechanism of the recording oh these
detectors if you've seen pictures of
them the huge like Atlas is 25 meters
high in 45 meters long and vast machines
instruments I guess you to call them
really they are they're kind of like
onions
so they have layers concentric layers of
detective detectors different sorts of
detectors so close into the beam pipe
you have what a record usually made of
silicon their tracking detectors so
they're little made of strips of silicon
or pixels of silicon and when a particle
goes through the silicon it gives a
little electrical signal and you get
these dots you know electrical dots
through your detector which allows you
to reconstruct the trajectory of the
particle so that's the middle and then
the outside of these detectors you have
things called calorimeters which measure
the energies of the particles and in
very edge you have things called muon
chambers which basically met these muon
particles which are the heavy version of
the electron they are there like
high-velocity bullets and they can get
right to the edge of the detectors if
you see something at the edge that's a
muon so that's broadly how they work and
all there's being recorded that's all
being fed out to you know computers
must be awesome okay so LHCb is
different so we because we're looking
for these B quarks yes B quarks tend to
be produced along the beam lines so in a
collision the B quark tend to fly sort
of close to the beam pipe so we built
the detector that sort of pyramid
cone-shaped basically that just looks in
one directions we ignore if you have
your collision stuff goes everywhere we
ignore all the stuff over here and going
off sideways we're just looking in this
little region close to the beam pipe
where most of these B quarks are made so
is there a different aspect of the
sensors involved in the collection of
the B quark yes Jack thérèse there are
some differences so one of the
differences is that one of the ways you
know you've seen a B quark is that B
quarks are actually quite long-lived by
particle standards so they live for 1.5
trillions of a second which is if you're
if you're a fundamental particle is a
very long time because you know the
Higgs boson I think lives for about a
trillionth of a trillionth of a second
or maybe even less than that so these
are quite long-lived things and they
will actually fly a little distance
before they decay so they will fly you
know a few centimeters maybe if you're
lucky
then they'll decay into other stuff so
what we need to do in the middle of the
detector you want to be able to see you
have your place where the protons crash
into each other and that produces loads
of particles that come flying out so you
have loads of lines loads of tracks that
point back to that proton collision and
then you're looking for a couple of
other tracks maybe two or three that
point back to a different place this may
be a few centimeters away from the
proton collision and that's the sign
that little B particle has flown a few
centimeters in decayed somewhere else so
we need to be able to very accurately
resolve the proton collision from the B
particle decay so we are the middle of
our detector is very sensitive and it
gets very close to the collisions so you
have this really beautiful delicate
silicon detector that sits I think it's
seven mil millimeters from the beam and
the LHC beam has as much energy as a
jumbo jet takeoff so it's enough to melt
a ton of copper and as you have this
furiously powerful thing sitting next
it's tiny delicate you know sense of the
consent sir
so that into those aspects of our
detector that are specialized to desert
to discover these particular B quarks
that were interested in and is there
I mean I remember seeing somewhere that
there's some mention of matter and
antimatter connected to the be the these
beautiful quarks who's that
what what's the connection wha
yeah what's the connection there yes
there is a connection which is that when
you produce these B particles
it'll be these particles consider to the
B quark you see the thing that B quark
is inside so they're bound up inside
what we call beauty particles where the
B quark is joined together with another
quark or two maybe two other clocks
depending on what it is there a
particular set of these B particles that
exhibit this property called oscillation
so if you make her for the sake of
argument a matter version of one of
these B particles as it travels because
of the magic of quantum mechanics it
oscillates backwards and forwards
between its matter and antimatter
versions so just this weird flipping
about backwards and forwards and what we
can use this for is a laboratory for
testing the symmetry between matter and
antimatter so if the if the symmetry but
transparency is precise its exact then
we should see these B particles decaying
as often as matter as they do as
antimatter because this oscillation
should be even it should spend much time
in each state but what we actually see
is that one of the states it spends more
time and it's more likely to decay in
one state than the other so this gives
us a way of testing this fundamental
symmetry between matter and antimatter
so what can you sort of return the the
question or before about this
fundamental symmetry it seems like if
this perfect symmetry between matter and
antimatter if the equal amount of each
in our universe it would just destroy
itself
mm-hm and just like you mentioned we
seem to live in a very unlikely universe
where it it doesn't destroy itself
yeah so do you have some intuition about
about why that is I mean well I I'm not
a theory I don't have any particular
ideas myself I mean I sort of do
measurements to try and test these
things but I mean it's in terms of the
basic problem is that in the Big Bang if
you use the standard model to figure out
what ought to have happened you should
have got equal amounts of matter
antimatter made because whenever you
make a particle in our collide
collisions for exam
but when we collide stuff together you
make a particle you make an antiparticle
they always come together they always
annihilate together so there's no way of
making more matter than antimatter that
we've discovered so far so that means in
the Big Bang you get equal amounts of
matter antimatter as the universe
expands and cools down during the Big
Bang not very long after the Big Bang I
think a few seconds off the Big Bang
you have this event called the great
annihilation which is where all the
particles antiparticles smack into each
other
annihilate turn into light mostly and
you end up with a universe later right
if that was what happened then the
universe we live in today would be black
and empty apart from some photons that
would be it so there's stuff in this
there is stuff in the universe it
appears to be just made of matter so
there's this big mystery as to where the
how did this happen and there are
various ideas which all involve sort of
physics going on in the first trillionth
of a second or so of the Big Bang so it
could be that one possibility is that
the Higgs field is somehow implicated in
this that there was this event that took
place in the early universe where the
higgs field basically switched on it
acquired its modern value and when that
happened this caused all the particles
to acquire mass and the universe
basically went through a phase
transition where you had a hot plasma of
massless particles and then in that
plasma it's almost like a gas turning
into droplets of water you get kind of
these little bubbles forming in the
universe where the Higgs field has
acquired its modern value the particles
have got mass and this phase transition
in some models can cause more matter
than antimatter to be produced depending
on how matter bounces off these bubbles
in the early universe so that's one idea
there's other ideas to do with neutrinos
that there are exotic types of neutrinos
that can decay in a biased way to just
matter and not to antimatter so and
people are trying to test these ideas
that's what we're trying to do at LHC B
is there's neutrino experiments planned
they're trying to do these sorts of
things as well so yeah there are ideas
but at the moment no clear evidence for
which of these ideas might be right so
we're talking about some incredible
ideas by the way never hurt anyone be so
eloquent about describing even just a
standard model so I'm in awe just
listening if you're interesting just
have having fun enjoying it so
the yes the theoretical the particle
physics is fascinating here to me one of
the most fascinating things about the
Large Hadron Collider is the human side
of it that a bunch of sort of brilliant
people that probably have egos got
together and we collaborate together and
countries I guess collaborate together
you know for the funds and that
everything's just collaboration
everywhere because you maybe I don't
know what the right question here to ask
but almost what's your intuition about
how was possible to make this happen and
what are the lessons we should learn for
the future of human civilization in
terms of our scientific progress because
it seems like this is a great great
illustration of us working together to
do something big yeah I think it's
possibly the best example maybe I can
think of of international collaboration
it isn't for some unpleasant purpose
basically you know it's I mean so I I
when I started out in the field in 2008
I as a new PhD student the LHC was
basically finished so I didn't have to
go around asking for money for it or
trying to make the case so I have huge
admiration admiration for the people who
managed that because this was a project
that was first imagined in the 1970s and
the late 70s was when the first
conversations about the LHC were were
mooted and it took two and a half
decades of campaigning and fundraising
and persuasion until they started
breaking ground and building the thing
in the early noughties in 2000 so I mean
I think the reason just from uh sort of
from the point of view of this sort of
science the scientists there I think the
reason it works ultimately is that
everywhere everyone there is there for
the same reason which is well in
principle at least they're there because
they're interested in the world they
want to find out you know what are the
basic ingredients of our universe what
are the laws of nature and so everyone
is pulling in the same direction of
course everyone has their own things
they're interested in everyone has their
own careers to consider and you know and
pretend that there isn't also a lot of
competitions this is funny thing in
these experiments where your
collaborators your eight-hundred
collaborators in LHC be but you're also
competitors because you're academics in
your various universities and you want
to be the one that gets the paper out on
the most
citing you know new measurements so
there's this funny thing where you're
kind of trying to stake out your
territory while also collaborating and
having to work together to make the
experiments work and it does work
amazingly well actually considering all
of that and I think there was actually I
think McKinsey or one of these big
management consultancy firms went into
CERN maybe a decade or so ago to try to
understand how these organizations
functions they figure it out I don't
think they could I mean I think one of
the things that interests one of the
other interesting things about these
experiments is that their big operations
like say outlets there's 3,000 people
now there is a person nominally who is
the head of Atlas they're called the
spokesperson and the spokesperson is
elected by usually by the collaboration
but they have no actual power really I
mean they can't fire anyone they're not
anyone's boss so you know my boss is it
prefers the professor a professor at
Cambridge not the head of my experiments
the head of my experiment can't tell me
what to do really and I mean there's all
you got is independent academics who are
their own bosses who you know so that
somehow it nonetheless by kind of
consensus and discussion and lots of
meetings these you know things do happen
and it does get done but it's like the
Queen hearing you in the UK is the
spokesperson again so no actual don't
elect her know whatever everybody seems
to love her I don't know from the at my
outside perspective yeah but yeah giant
egos brilliant people and moving forward
do you think there's I would pick up one
thing you said just that just the
brilliant people thing cuz I'm not I'm
not saying that people aren't great yeah
but I think there is this sort of
impression that physicists will have to
be brilliant or geniuses which is not
true actually and you know you have to
be relatively bright for sure but you
know a lot of people a lot of the most
successful experimental physicists and
not necessarily the people with the
biggest brains they're the people who
you know particularly one of the skills
that's most important in particle
physics is the ability to work with
others and to collaborate and exchange
ideas and also to work hard and it's a
sort of often it's more a determination
or a sort of other set of skills is not
just being you know kind of some great
brain very true so in I mean there's
parallels to that in the machine
learning world if you wanted
if you want to solve any real-world
problems which I see is the the particle
accelerators essentially a real-world
instantiation of theoretical physics and
for that you have to not necessarily be
brilliant but be sort of obsessed
systematic rigorous sort of unbel
stubborn all those kind of qualities
that make for a great engineer so this
science scientist purely speaking the
practitioner of the scientific method so
you're right but nonetheless Timmy
that's Timmy has been my dad as a
physicist I argue with him all the time
to me engineering is the highest form of
science and he thinks that's all
nonsense that the real work is done by
the theory edition so he in fact we have
arguments about like people like Elon
Musk for example because I think his
work is quite brilliant but he's
fundamentally not coming up with any
serious breakthroughs he's just creating
in this world implementing I'd like
making ideas happen and have a huge
impact to me that is that's the Edison
that Timmy is is a brilliant work but to
him it's you know it's messy details
that somebody will figure out anyway
that's it I mean I don't know whether
you think there is a actual difference
in temperament between say a physicist
and engineer whether it's just what you
got interested in I don't know I mean
because you know a lot of what
experimental physicists do is to some
extent engineering and it's not what I
do I mostly do data stuff but you know a
lot of people would be called electrical
engineers but they trained as physicists
but they learn electrical engineering
for example because they were building
detectors so there's not such a clear
divide I think yeah it's interesting I
mean there but there does seem to be
like you work with data there does seem
to be a certain like I love data
collection
there might be an OCD element or
something that you're more naturally
predisposed to as opposed to theory like
I'm not afraid of data I love data and
there's a lot of people machine learning
core more like they're they're basically
afraid of data collection afraid of
datasets afraid of all that they just
want to
stay more than theoretical and they're
really good at it space I don't know if
that's a genetic that's your upbringing
the way you with it the way you go to
school but looking into the future of
LHC and other colliders so there's in
the in America there's the whatever was
called the super there's a lot of super
superconducting supercollider is super
gonna desert roll desert Ron yeah so
that was cancelled the construction of
that yeah which is a sad thing but what
do you think is the future of these
efforts will a bigger Collider be built
will LHC be expanded what do you think
well in the near future the LHC is gonna
get an upgrade so that's pretty much
confirmed I think it is confirmed which
is the it's not an energy upgrade it's
and what we call the luminosity upgrade
so basically means increasing their data
collection rates so more collisions per
second basically because after a few
years of data taking you get this law of
diminishing returns where each year's
worth of data is a smaller and smaller
fraction of the lot you've already got
so to get a real improvement in
sensitivity you need to increase the
data rate by an order of magnitude so
that's what this upgrade is gonna do an
LHC be at the moment the whole detector
is basically being rebuilt to allow it
to record data at a much larger rate
than we could before so that will make
her sensitive to whole loads of new
processes that we weren't able to study
before and you know I mentioned briefly
these anomalies anomalies that we've
seen so we've seen a bunch of very
intriguing anomalies in these B quark
decays which may be hinting at the first
signs of this kind of the elephant you
know that the the size of some new
quantum field or fields may be beyond
the standard model it's not yet at the
statistical threshold where you can say
that you've observed something but
there's lots of anomalies in many
measurements that all seem to be
consistent with each other so it's quite
interesting so you know the upgrade will
allow us to really homed in on these
things and see whether these alumni's
are real because if they are real and it
kind of connects to your point about the
next generation of machines what we
would have seen then is you know we will
have seen the tail end of some quantum
field in influencing these big quarks
what we then need to do
build a bigger Collider to actually make
the the particle of that field so if
these are if these things really do
exist
so that would be one argument I mean I
mean so at the moment Europe has going
through this process of thinking about
the strategy for the future so there are
a number of different proposals on the
table one is for sort of higher energy
upgrade at the LHC where you just build
more powerful magnets and put them in
the same tunnel that's a sort of cheap
cheaper less ambitious possibility most
people don't really like it because it's
sort of a bit of a dead end because once
you've done that there's nowhere to go
well there's a machine called clique
which is a compact linear collider which
is a electron positron Collider that's
uses a novel type of acceleration
technology to accelerate at shorter
distances we're still talking kilometers
long but not like 100 kilometers long
and then the probably the project that
is I think getting the most support
it'll be interested to see what happens
something called the future circular
Collider which is a really ambitious
long-term multi-decade project to build
a 100 kilometer circumference tunnel
under the Geneva region the LHC would
become a kind of feeding machine it
would just feed for the same area so
there would be a theater for there yeah
so it kind of the edge machine would be
where the LHC is but it would sort of go
under Lake Geneva and round to the Alps
basically since you know up to the edge
of the Geneva base and so basically
biggest it's the biggest tunnel you can
fit in the region based on the geology
alarm yes it's big it'd be a long drive
if your animal experiments on one side
you got to go back to CERN for lunch so
that would be a pain but you know so
this project is in principle is actually
to accelerators the first thing you
would do is put an electron-positron
machine in the 100 kilometer tunnel to
study the Higgs so you'd make lots of
Higgs boson study it really precisely in
the hope that you see it misbehaving and
doing something it's not supposed to and
then in the much longer term a hundred
with that machine gets taken out you put
in a proton proton machine so it's like
the LHC but much bigger and that's the
way you start going and looking for dark
matter or you're trying to recreate this
a phase transition that I talked about
in the early universe but you can see
matter antimatter being made for
examples there's lots of things you can
do with these machines the problem is
that they will take you know the most
optimistic you're not going to have any
data from any of
machines until 2040 or you know because
they take such a long time to build and
they're so expensive so you have W a
process of R&D design and also the
political case being made so la seal
cost a few billion depends how you count
it I think most of the sort of more
reasonable estimates that take
everything into account properly it's
around the sort of 10 11 12 billion euro
mark what would be the future sir I
forgot the numerator future circular
Collider future circular because you
mean I would call it that when it's
built because it won't be the future
anymore but a very big Hadron Collider I
don't know but yeah that will I know I
should know the numbers but I think the
whole project is estimated at about 30
billion euros but that's money spent
over between now and 2017 probably which
is when the last bit of it would be sort
of finishing up I guess so you're
talking a half a century of science
coming out of this thing
shared by many countries so the actual
cost the arguments that are made is that
you could make this project fit within
the existing budget of certain if you
didn't do anything else it's earned by
the way we didn't mention what is CERN
CERN is the European Organization for
Nuclear Research as an international
organization that was established in the
1950s in the wake of the Second World
War as a kind of it was sort of like a
scientific martial plan for Europe the
idea was that you bring european science
back together for peaceful purposes
because what happened in the 40s was you
know a lot of particular scientists but
a lot of scientists from Central Europe
had fled to the United States and Europe
and sort of seen his brain drain so it's
a desire to bring the community back
together for a project that wasn't
building nasty bombs but was doing
something that was curiosity driven so
and that has continued since then so
it's kind of a unique organization it's
you to be a member as a country you sort
of sign up as a member and then you have
to pay a fraction of your GDP each year
is a subscription I mean it's a very
small fraction relatively speaking I
think it's like I think the UK's
contribution is 100 or 200 million quid
or something like that yeah which is
quite a lot but no not that's fastest
man I mean just the whole thing that is
possible it's beautiful
it's a beautiful idea especially with
when there's no wars on the line it's
not like we're freaking out as we're
actually legitimately collaborating mmm
to do good sighs one of the things I
don't think we really mentioned is that
in the final side that sort of the data
analysis side is there a break there was
possible there and the machine learning
side like is there is there a lot more
signal to be mined in more effective
ways from the actual raw data yeah a lot
of people are looking into that I mean
so what we know I use machine learning
in my data analysis but pretty knotty
you know basic stuff because I'm not a
machine learning expert and just a
physicist who had to learn to do this
stuff for my day job so what a lot of
people do is they use kind of
off-the-shelf packages that you can
train to do signal noise you know just
like a cleanup yeah but one of the big
challenges you know the big challenge of
the data is a it's volume there's huge
amounts of data so the LHC generates now
okay I bought the actual numbers are but
if you we don't record all our data we
record a tiny fraction of the data it's
like of order one ten thousandth or
something I think right around that so
it's it votes mostly gets thrown away
you couldn't record all the LHC data
because it would fill up every computer
in the world in the matter of days
basically so there's this process that
happens on live on the detector
something called a trigger which in real
time 40 million times every second has
to make a decision about whether this
collision is likely to contain an
interesting object like a Higgs boson or
a Dark Matter particle and it has to do
that very fast and the software
algorithms in the past were quite
relatively basic you know they did
things like measure mementos and
energies of particles and put some
requirements so you would say if there's
a particle with an energy above some
threshold then record this collision but
if there isn't don't wear as now the
attempt is get more and more machine
learning in at the earliest possible
stage because cool at the stage of
deciding whether we want to keep this
data or not but also even even maybe
even lower down than that which is the
point where there's this you know
generally how the data is reconstructed
is you start off with a digital a set of
digital hits in your detector so
Scannell saying did you see something do
you not see something that has to be
then turned into tracks particles going
in different directions and that's done
by
using fits that fit through the data
points and then that's passed to the
algorithms that then go is this
interesting or not what we better is if
you could train machine learning to look
at the raw hits the basic real base
level information not have any of the
reconstruction done and it just goes and
it can learn to do pattern recognition
on this strange three dimensional image
that you get and potentially that's
where you could get really big gains
because our triggers tend to be quite
inefficient because they don't have time
to do the full whiz-bang processing to
get all the information out that we
would like because you have to do the
decision very quickly so if you can come
up with some clever machine learning
technique then potentially you can
massively increase the amount of useful
data you record and you know get rid of
more of the background earlier in the
process yeah to me that's an exciting
possibility because then you don't have
to build a sort of you can get again
without having to have to put an ephod
whereas per hardware yeah but I do you
need you need lots of new GPU farms I
guess so hardware it still helps but
yeah the you know I got a talk to you so
if I'm not sure how to ask but you're
clearly an incredible science
communicator I don't know if that's the
right term but you're basically a
younger Neil deGrasse Tyson with a
British accent
huh so and you but I mean can you save
where we are today actually yeah so
today we're in the Royal Institution in
London which is an old very old
organization has been around for about
two hundred years now I think maybe even
I should know when it was founded so the
early 19th century it was set up to
basically communicate science the public
so it was one of the first places in the
world where scientists famous scientists
would come and give talks so very
famously my Humphrey Davy who you may
know of who was the person who
discovered nitrous oxide is a very
famous chemist and scientists also
discovered electronic sis so he used to
do these fantastic was very charismatic
speakers who's to peer here there was a
there's a big desk they usually have in
the inner theater and he would do
demonstrations to the sort of the the
folk of London back in the early 19th
century and Michael Faraday who I talked
about who is the person who did so much
work connection Magnussen he used he
lectured here he
did experiments in the basement so this
place has got a long history of both
scientific research but also in the
communication of scientific research so
you gave a few lectures here how many -
I've give I given you I given a couple
of lectures in this theater before so I
mean that's think so people should
definitely go watch online it's there's
just the explanation of particle physics
that all the good thing it's incredible
like your your lectures are just
incredible I can't sing it enough pray
so it was awesome but maybe can you say
what did that feel like what was if you
like to lecture here to talk about that
and maybe from a different perspective
more kind of like how the sausage is
made is how do you prepare for that kind
of thing how do you think about
communication the process of
communicating these ideas in a way
that's inspiring to what I would say
your talks are inspiring to like the
general audience you don't actually have
to be a scientist you can still be
inspired without really knowing much of
the you you start from the very basics
so what's the preparation process and
then the romantic question is what does
that feel like to perform here I mean
profession yeah I mean the process I
mean the talk that the my favorite talk
that I gave here was one called beyond
the Higgs which you can find on the on
the all institutions youtube channel
which you should go and check out I mean
and their channels got loads of great
talks loads of great people as well I
mean that one I sort of given a version
of it many times so part of it is just
practice right I and actually I don't
have some great theory of how to
communicate with people it's more just
that I'm really interested and excited
by those idiot and I like talking about
them and through the process of doing
that I guess I figured out stories that
work and explanations that well you see
a practice you mean legitimately just
giving just giving talks given I said I
started off you know when I was a PhD
student doing talks in schools and and I
still do that as well some of the time
and doing things I haven't done a bit of
stand-up comedy which was sort of went
reasonably well even if it was
terrifying and that's unusual as well
there's also a new I wouldn't I wouldn't
necessarily recommend you check that out
I'm gonna post the links several places
to make sure people click on it yeah
it's basically I kind of have a story in
my head and I is I you know I kind of I
have a think about what I want to say I
usually have some images
to support what I'm saying and I get up
and do it and it's not really I wish
there was some kind of I probably should
have some proper process this is very
sounds like I'm just making up as I go
along and I sort of am I think the
fundamental thing they said I think it's
like I don't know if you know who a guy
named Joe Rogan is yes okay so he he's
also kind of sounds like you in a sense
that he's not very introspective about
his process but he's an incredibly
engaging conversationalist and I think
one of the things that you and him share
that I could see is like a genuine
curiosity and passion for the topic I
think that could be systematically
caught you know cultivated I'm sure
there's a process to it but you come to
it naturally somehow I think maybe
there's something else as well which is
to understand something there's this
quote by firemen whichever you like
which is what I cannot create I do not
understand so like I'm not I'm not like
particularly super bright like so for me
to understand something I have to break
it down into its simplest element yes
and that you know if and if I can then
tell people about that that helps me
understand it as well so I've actually
I've learned I've learned to understand
physics a lot more from the process of
communication because it forces you to
really scrutinize the ideas that you're
communicating in a coffin makes you
realise you don't really understand the
ideas you're talking about and I'm
writing a book at the moment I had this
experience yesterday where I realized I
didn't really understand a pretty
fundamental theoretical aspect of my own
subject and I had to go and hide to sort
of spend a couple of days reading
textbooks and thinking about it in order
to make sure that the explanation I gave
captured the got as close to what is
actually happening in the theory and to
do that you have to really understand it
properly and yeah and there's layers to
understanding yeah it seems like the
more there must be some kind of Fineman
law I mean the the more you the more you
understand services simply you're able
to really convey the you know the the
essence of the idea right so it's just
like this reverse the reverse effect
there's like the more you understand the
simpler the final thing that you
actually convey
and so the more accessible somehow it
becomes that's why faint fineman's
lectures are really accessible it was
just counterintuitive yeah although
there are some ideas that are very
difficult to explain
no matter how well or badly you
understand like I still can't really
properly explain the Higgs mechanism
yeah with because some of these ideas
only exist in mathematics really and the
only way to really develop an
understanding is to go unfortunately to
a graduate degree in physics but you can
get kind of a flavor of what's happening
I think and is trying to do that in a
way that isn't misleading but always
also intelligible so let me ask them the
romantic question of what to you is the
most perhaps an unfair question what is
the most beautiful idea in physics one
that fills you with are is the most
surprising the strangest the weirdest
there's some a lot of different
definitions of beauty mmm-hmm and I'm
sure there's several for you but is
there something just jumps to mind that
you think is just especially I mean I
well beautiful there's a specific thing
in a more general thing so maybe the
specific thing a first widget is a cone
i first came across this as an
undergraduate i found this amazing so
this idea that the forces of nature
electromagnetism strong force the weak
force they arise in our theories has
there a consequence of symmetries so
symmetry is in the laws of nature in the
equations essentially that used to
describe these ideas the process whereby
theories come up with these sorts of
models as they say
imagine the universe obeys this
particular type of symmetry is a
symmetry that isn't so far removed from
a geometrical symmetry like the
rotations of a cube it's not you can't
think of it quite that way but it's sort
of a similar sort of idea and you say
okay if the universe respects the
symmetry you find that you have to
introduce a force which has the
properties of electromagnetism or
different symmetry you get the strong
force or a different symmetry you get
the weak force so these interactions
seem to come from some deeper it
suggests that they come from some deeper
symmetry principle I mean depends a bit
how you look at it
cuz it could be that we were actually
just recognizing symmetries in fact as
you see but there's something rather
lovely about that but I mean I suppose a
bigger thing that makes me wonder is
actually if you look at the laws of
nature how particles interacts when you
get really close down they're basically
pretty simple things they bounce off
each other by exchanging you know
through force fields and they move
around in very simple ways and somehow
these basic ingredients these few
particles that we know about and the
forces creates this universe which is
unbelievably complicated and has things
like you and me in it and you know the
earth and stars that make matter in
there caused by this from the
gravitational energy of their own bulk
that then gets sprayed into the universe
that forms other things I mean the fact
that there's this incredibly long story
that goes right back to you know the big
it we can we can take the story right
back to you know a trillionth of a
second after the Big Bang we can trace
the origins of the stuff that we're made
from and it altum Utley comes from these
simple ingredients with these simple
rules and the fact you can generate such
complexity from that is really
mysterious I think and strange and it's
not even a question that physicists can
really tackle because we are sort of
trying to find these really elementary
laws but it turns out that going from
elementary laws and a few particles to
something even as complicated as a
molecule becomes very difficult and so
going from a molecule to a human being
is a problem that just you know can't be
can't be tackled at least not at the
moment
so yeah the emergence of complexity from
simple rules is so beautiful and so
mysterious and there's not either we
don't have good mathematics to even try
to approach that emergent phenomena
that's why we have chemistry and biology
and other subjects as well yeah I don't
think I don't think there's a better way
to end it Harry I can't I mean I think I
speak for a lot of people that can't
wait to see what happens in the next 5
10 20 years with you I think you're one
of the great communicators of our time
so I hope you continue that and I hope
that grows and um
definitely a huge fan so it was an honor
to talk to you today thank someone on it
thanks very much
thanks for listening to this
conversation with Harry cliff and thank
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Twitter at Lex Friedman and now let me
leave you with some words from Harry
cliff you and I are leftovers every
particle in our bodies is a survivor
from an almighty shootout between matter
and antimatter that happened a little
after the Big Bang in fact only one in a
billion particles created at the
beginning of time have survived to the
present day thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time
you