Physicist recalls witnessing Higgs particle's discovery at CERN
Theoretical physicist who was at CERN the day Higgs particle was found ponders its meaning for mankind and for pure research
About five years ago, during one of my many scientific visits to the European Centre for Nuclear Research ( CERN), the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was officially turned on. I still have vivid memories of that day: I was in the main auditorium of CERN along with other scientists, eagerly awaiting that historic moment. The atmosphere was somewhat similar to the opening of the Olympics. While the Olympics are held every four years, many scientists have been longing for that moment for decades. Many of their careers hinge on the success of this experiment. The tension and excitement in the air was palpable.
Undoubtedly, the LHC is the world's largest and the most complex experiment. The LHC is large in every sense of the word, and a true exemplar of "big science". To get a sense of scale, here are some numbers. The project took more than 30 years from conception to completion. It is a collaborative effort of nearly 10,000 scientists and engineers from more than 100 countries, many have dedicated their careers to this project for decades.
The LHC, located in the border of Switzerland and France, is a huge particle accelerator. The circular tunnel of the LHC is approximately 27 kilometres in circumference and 100 metres underground.
Inside the accelerator, protons (particles that make up the nucleus) circulate around at nearly the speed of light. With this incredible speed, proton beams going in opposite direction undergo millions of collisions in the blink of an eye. It is from the results of these complex collisions that physicists try to infer the underlying laws of the universe.
The situation is similar to analysing the cause of a chain traffic accident from the debris left by the violent collisions, but with immensely more difficulty. One can imagine the engineering and technical problems that need to be faced. Thus we see that although the starting point of basic science research is not about practical use, the problems researchers encountered along the way often drive the development of applied technology.
The worldwide web is an example of such byproducts of basic science. It was invented because particle physicists need to share and transfer huge amount of data with scholars around the world.