Welcome to the last session in the Science Strand for today. It has got great title, "Particle physics is sexy." I believe that. And just we are a little late. So I am going to rush through the introduction and get us into discussing what we mean by particle physics and is it actually on the way up, is CERN going to attract more people into studying physics, or may be is the way that science is going meaning that we are going to witness the end of big physics, when CERN launches the Large Hadron Collider. I think they are going to fire it up in May. Is that right? Hopefully. Hopefully and will there be anything to replace it after it has finished its useful purpose in the next couple of years? Who knows? Right, I have two speakers on this one. I have Brian Cox. Brian, on my left is based in Manchester and CERN, and he is in charge of the project there to upgrade CERN, in charge of two of the detectors there, for the Large Hadron Collider which is I am sure well if you know a bit about physics, is looking for mysterious particle will be Higgs boson, which may be Brian will explain to us. And Brian is also a television and radio presenter and he has been involved in programs like Horizon, Large Hadron Collider and Einstein in 2005 and and he is also famous for the being keyboardist for a band called D:Ream who produced "Things can only get better" in 1997. I am not sure. Right, okay on my right we got Joe Kaplinsky. Joe is science writer and researcher and he has carried out research in low temperature physics and more recently he is working in biophysics, and he has been a patent analyst in various fields in technology, and he also contributed a chapter on Chernobyl and nuclear power to collection "Science vs. Skepticism: The case for a new Scientific Enlightenment." And there we have it. So without further adieu, I am going to let Brian go first. We think he is going to talk for nearly 10 minutes or thereabouts and then Joe go in. Then we will it out to the audience, any questions and we just say here we go. Brian, thank you. Thanks, and Tony Blair isn't my fault, I should say, even though "Things can only get better" was my song before we start. I just thought I would give a just a very brief introduction to what particle physics is and what we hope to achieve with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. So really simply particle physics is that the exploration of the world at the smallest. I suppose that's the easy thing to say about it. And what we found over probably about a 100 years you could argue, since Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus, is that everything we see around in this room can be made of just four particles actually, in fact three in a sense, there are two quarks, called an up quark and a down quark and an electron. So the protons and neutrons in your body are made of up and down quarks, electrons go around there and they that's atomic structure. So an incredible simplification and we have also found another two copies of those particles which is rather strange. So there are in fact 12 fundamental particles of nature as we know at the moment. The copies appear identical in every way. So the electron has got a partner called a muon and the electron has also got a partner called the tau. They are heavier, but identical in every other way. And we have no idea why those copies exist. We have a interest in well from measurements made at CERN actually in the 90s; we believed that there are no further copies, with some very small caveats that appears to be true. So why nature is built that way? Why does that pattern? 12 particles that allow you to build everything in the universe, eight of which appears to be essentially useless, but they are still there. We have no idea. That's one of the big questions. The other fundamental aspect of particle physics is to describe the forces of nature. So that's the way that those particles talk to each other. And there are four fundamental forces as we know at the moment. There is gravity of course, which is the oldest of known forces and that Newton first came with a decent description of it in 1680. And actually to the day its one of the big issues about how we bring gravity into our picture with the other three, and that's another thing that may be we will get to talk about, that the LHC well high up on the LHC's menu hopefully. And the other three forces that work in the subatomic world; so it is electromagnetism which, I kind of suppose everything is familiar with fridge magnets and electricity. There is a thing called the weak force which allows the sun to shine and further more if you are a scientist out there, then is responsible for radioactive beta decay. And actually the weak force itself is only understood in some detail all the experimental verification about picture of it in mid 80s. So a very you know, well a force that has not been understood very long. And then there is the stronger nuclear force that sticks the nucleus together. The bi particles is called gluons, so you imagine its typically titled gluons. So just to really summarize, I suppose particle physics is the study or the search for the ultimate building blocks of the universe and the study of the forces that make the universe work. Really, in modern physics the picture is that any thing happen in the universe at all a force has to actually. And we have narrowed it down to about four. So the LHC that sends like a it sends a complete picture apart from these families. But there is a series of enormous questions. In a sense that I feel that the wheels are beginning to come off our picture of reality, almost feels like that its CERN of date 20th the 19th and 20th century when people thought they had understood all of physics, and little cracks began to appear. And there are some quite serious cracks actually beginning to appear in our cozy picture. And this is why the LHC is being built and why it's as big as it is and why it has got the energy it has. One of the first and I would say guaranteed discoveries it sounds unscientific, but I could explain it if anyone wants to ask the question, but I would say it's guaranteed that we will understand the origin of mass in the universe, right. And from the studies that we have done throughout the last 20 or 30 years or so, we have seen that all our equations that described the forces and the particles of matter, that we found over the last century, breakdown at the energies lower than those that collided at the LHC so below the LHC energy. If you don't have an explanation for the origin of mass in the universe, which sounds like a very profound and simple issue, so the Higgs particle, which I think you just mentioned, that's our best guess or the simplest guess for the origin of mass in the universe. If the Higgs particle exists, then you find it at the LHC, if it doesn't exist the nature has a habit of you know, confounding us and surprising us, then whatever does its job, it turns up with the LHC. And that's really the reason one of the main the reasons the LHC was built. But there are other huge and fascinating questions, which I am I will be more excited to see answered. One is that it turns out that 95 percent of the universe is made of the something other than those 12 particles. So that really over the last 10, 15, 20 years we found our beautiful picture of 12 fundamental particles of nature doesn't describe most of the universe at all. And it's true to say that we have very little idea what the other 95 percent is, which it kind of sounds embarrassing. But it makes it incredibly exciting. 25 percent of it is in the form of something called dark matter, which we see by looking at the way the galaxies rotate and the way that the universe on the large scale moves around, and an even more baffling 70 percent or so seems to be in the form of dark energy, which is a kind of bizarre antigravity force that pushes galaxies apart from each other, it's accelerating the expansion of the universe, again, a huge mystery. And the final issue which I think made I have some bearing on that is just understanding that oldest of forces, gravity, the force that Newton described and Einstein described in 1915. Einstein's description by the way is the best description we have of gravity. It's such a weak force that it plays no role in particle physics. In fact its you know if you pick a glass above the table, you can tell how weak it is, because the whole earth is pulling it down and you can just pick it up. The weakness of gravity is one of biggest mysteries I would say in fundamental physics at the moment. And again there is some ambition that may just set up just right, then we might get some signpost as to where to go in the understanding of gravity. String theory by the way is an attempt I know that was in the the introduction, String theory is an attempt to understand gravity. But it shows you how difficult it is because no one has been able to do it yet. Thank you. Joe. Okay, thanks. I mean that's kind of a really nice introduction to some of the things that people are trying to get out of the LHC and I think if you look at the kind of the excitement generates generated around the LHC, you can see it's clearly inspiring, certainly the kind of people who follow along with these sorts of developments, there is a kind of real anticipation building up. But I do think that there is a bit of a broader problem in terms of the appreciation of particle physics and you know, really pure science and the investigation of nature for its own sake, in society you know, I think even to the extend that this might kind of raise future problems in terms of the the kind of large resources that kind of have to to flow into these these projects. I think it's kind of quite important that we try and stay account to a case for the significance of this sort of work. I mean not to kind of bring the mood down too much, but I think we can may be remember the although the startup of the Large Hadron Collider is kind of a wonderful thing you know, all the way back in 1993, we already had the cancellation of what would have been an even larger particle accelerator - superconducting super collider in in the US. And the kind of explanations that were put forward around that were kind of do with budgetary mismanagement and so on. A few people did kind of try to look a little more broader than that and look well, the end of the Cold War you know people aren't so much interested in kind of investing for a kind of national prestige and so forth. And you know, I think we do have to kind of investigate these things little deeper and perhaps look at them as a bit of a warning. I don't if people are familiar with online satirical publication "The Onion," it builds itself as America's finest news source. I can highly recommend it as a great source of reading, I mean like all great satire it does tend to to kind of cut to the point sometimes. And on 28th of September, a couple of weeks ago, they ran an article headed, "Scientists asks Congress to fund $50 billion Science Thing." And I won't read you the whole thing, but its worth looking up online, but I will kind of give you a couple of key quotes from this article. So on the one side, you have the "While expense is something to consider, I think it's very important that we have this kind of scientific apparatus, because in the end I have always said that science is more important than it is unimportant". Committee Chairman Representative Bart Gordon said, "And it's essential, we stay ahead of China, Japan and Germany in science. We are ahead in space with massive rockets going to other planets, so we should be ahead in science too". Right. Countering that, according to America's finest news source, we have the highlight of the scientists testimony was a series of several colorful diagrams of how the big machine would work. One consisted of colored dots resembling skittles banging into one another. Noting the motion lines behind the circle ball things, committee members surmised that they were slamming together in a "fast, forceful manner" yet some expressed doubt as to whether they justified the $50 billion price tag. "These scientists could trim $10 million if they would just cut out some of the purple and blue spheres," said Representative Roscoe Bartlett, explaining that he understood the need for an abundance of reds and greens. "With all of those molecules and atoms going in every direction, the whole thing looks a bit unorganized, especially for science." Now, I mean Brian gave a very wonderful introduction without the need for the kind of visual aids and so forth, and I don't think the satire reflects on the efforts of of scientists and physicists to talk about their work to the public, though I think often they kind of do a very good job out there. But what I think it does drew around is the kind of philistinism in particular of the kind of political class policy makers, the funders of science, and draws out the sense of the concern for national competitiveness, the concern for cost and so forth, where the concern for the advancement of ideas is is pretty much absent. Now if it wasn't the end of the weekend may be I ought to quote the real life version of "The Onion" that you can read in the Science Preview of Science and Innovation. You can find the press release on the kind of fifth of October with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling and Secretary of State for Innovation Universities and Skills, John Denham so forth, kind of making not so such dissimilar kinds of points you know well may be I will quote a little. The Science Pre-review of Innovation which is the kind of newer vision says, "Presents the vision for a new science and innovation landscape for Britain. We are going to take that step, the vision further. We are making good progress, but so are our competitors and we need to keep the UK ahead of the game." And even more this is what the Chancellor of Exchequer things of science. "The UK can only maintain this competitiveness in today's more globalized world by placing itself at the forefront of the new scientific and technological breakthroughs that determine the future phase of our economy. This government is already investing record levels in the UK Science Base with the transfer of knowledge into the private sector significantly improved." Right, so you know that kind of ticking all the boxes there in terms of knowledge transfer, the kind of fairly kind of narrow vision of what it is that we are going to kind of get out of science here. Now, I guess I could I have got a few minutes left. And in terms of an alternative kind of sense of the kind of project that I think the particle physics is engaged in really, and a sense of where it's coming from. You know I think to me the kind of origins of this, you know if you go to the Vatican, the philosophy sections of the old library of Pope Julius The II and you look up, you can see a very wonderful, famous painting painted by Raphael in 1510, entitled The School of Athens, and spread across the steps of The School of Athens are all the famous ancient philosophers who the renaissance Italians thought were the great masters who they couldn't move beyond. And you find Plato there in the center looking out to the sky, he's pointing out because he thinks you know idea is the key. You've got Aristotle there kind of pointing downwards towards the earth, observation and so forth. And it's really the conundrum of how to reconcile these things that held back science ever since the Greeks. And you find 50 years later after renaissance born Galileo Galilee, who moves things on by essentially inventing physics, by and inventing modern science in the process, by reconciling this balance between theory and experiment, by finding the kind of dynamic balance between them beginning his investigations through investigating the motions of particles, the laws that determines these things. Then leading on you know inspired by Galileo, you find Newton, his name associate not just with you know a scientific revolution, many breakthroughs are labeled with that, but the scientific revolution. You find Newton taking this idea of looking inside looking at the motion of particles, breaking down, going smaller, you find in his queries at the end of his work on optics describing how the properties of fluids and solids and so forth can all be described by the interactions of this smaller particles, laying the foundations of chemistry. You know you find the tradition carried on by chemists and physicists through the 17th and 18th century, you know at end of 19th century you have Mendeleyev, clarifies the notion of atom, lays out the pattern of all the atoms in the periodic table. You know a conundrum as Brain described you know, his all the particles what's behind them you know, and investigating the periodic table, all the different chemical elements you know that laid the basis for the modern physics Quantum Mechanics, the inside of the atom, the electrons and nucleons and so forth, everything that Brain described, you can see that how productive it has always been to go further, go deeper. And you know today we are presented with this same pattern. We don't know whether the new pattern we have got, the new mysteries are going to be resolved by finding something inside them, whether there will be strings, whether there will some kind of new explanation altogether. But I do think that if we see on ourselves as part of a continuing quest to understand nature and to kind of move forward, and kind of take forward that quest which you know every previous generation of scientists have kind of tried to scrape together resources from one way from one place or another. You know today with kind of modern resources, modern economic growth and so forth you know we have the capacity to invest in this stuff and rather than seeing you know particle physics, something that should potentially contribute toward economic growth or pure science, I think we really want to start looking at these things the other way around and say that you know modern growth should really justify itself by contributing towards the investigation of nature and science, the Large Hadron Collider. And I think if we can develop that spirit, then we will ensure that both the Large Hadron Collider will be a success and will have a successor. Thank you very much.
Live Now
member. 
