This column has been modified; please see the clarification at the end
Everyone is talking about the newly discovered Higgs boson particle that will bolster standard physics upon which science currently rests, and spawn an exciting new era of bad internet jokes (e.g. the Higgs boson walks into a church and tells the preacher they can’t have mass without him). So I Skyped a friend to get the lowdown.
“Could you explain this to me in the simplest possible terms?” I asked Christopher Allan Palmer, 27, now in the fifth year of a PhD titled “Search for the Higgs and the Di-photon Decay Channel” at CERN in Geneva.
“To explain the phenomenology,” replied Chris, “We’re looking for a narrow excess in events with two photons where, if there was no new physics, we’d expect a smooth and unvarying curve. But we’re looking at a graph plot that has a little spike in it. It’s just a handful of events, but we can tell that there’s something there.”
This wasn’t quite what I’d meant, but okay, graph, spike, I could see it. But then he added something about the Higgs decaying to electrons and muons, and then there was some other stuff about leptons and the di-photon channel being the one that sees 4 Sigma on its own, and my brain had to issue safety lockdown instructions. “In two of our search modes, we see an excess in the same mass, so we’ve got 5 sigma. It’s not displaying all of the properties of the Higgs yet, but we hope to acquire more data over the next year. That is fundamentally the simplest thing we can say.”
Huh. I’d hoped for something rather more metaphor- and haiku-wrapped from out of those feel-good physics books like The Dancing Wu Li Masters. I said, “They say it’s a Higgs, not the Higgs. What’s the difference?”
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“We can’t be certain that there’s only a singular Higgs particle,” he said. “Supersymmetry at its bare minimum has two Higgs particles. In addition we don’t know all the properties of this Higgs.”
I evaluated the cost of asking what “supersymmetry” is.
“Why is this all so important?” I asked instead.
“It solves the hierarchy problem that comes from the standard model Higgs,” said Chris. “Without supersymmetry, there’s a fine-tuning problem of the mass of the Higgs.”
Whatever the photon that means.
“The standard model of physics isn’t complete, it’s still evolving,” said Chris patiently. “Understanding that there is a Higgs adds to our understanding of how the fundamentals work in the first place.”
Chris has worked on ways in which the Higgs can decay, including the Vector Boson Decay Channel, on the CMS project. They published critical data in February. “That’s the most significant research I’ve contributed,” he said.
It’s all a long way from home in Harrisburg, Illinois. I asked where he would place himself in the scheme of Higgs research, hoping for a colourful physics analogy, like “Oh, I’m just a gluon in the larger picture....”
“I’m exceptionally fortunate to be in the right place in the right time,” he said. “It’s been an incredible rush over the past year — we’ve all worked very hard, very long hours to make sure our results are correct, and in the end we’ve come up with a solid analysis. I’ve been right in the middle of one of the most important analyses.”
What impact will the discovery of the Higgs have on the real world?
“The study of science for the sake of science is what we do,” said Chris delicately. “But a lot of technology comes out of just making stuff for our experiments — cutting edge materials developed just to make our detectors for example. There will be lots of by-products that I can’t predict.”
Has he met Peter Higgs? “I’ve met [Belgian theoretical physicist François] Englert,” he said. “He was very interested in the things we’re doing, and his theory is key to current experiments, but the universe he works in every day is … he’s a theorist.”
Somehow I’m much more interested in how they’re celebrating. From what I recall, CERN has conducted some large-scale experiments in the rate of liver decay, disguised as parties.
“There was a pretty big party at CERN after the announcement, yes,” he says.
And how was it?
“I didn’t go,” he said. “I stayed home and caught up on sleep.”
My attempt to humanise the story of the Higgs boson discovery, and enlighten myself, thus failed utterly. I reckon that’s how they found it: with people like Chris staying on the ball, refusing to be distracted by fluff, and giving up a fair amount of fun in the deadly serious pursuit of universal truth. I was positively humbled.
“Sorry for taking up your lunch time,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, perking up. “I think I’ll grab something at the canteen. They’ve got cookies, grapes and apples.”
CORRECTION
This column had previously mentioned that Chris Palmer has worked on the ATLAS project, which is incorrect. Palmer has worked on the CMS project. The error is regretted.