In search of the Higgs

Today, Ravi pointed me to an article in the National Geographic about the Large Hadron Collider. It is very well written, an enjoyable read yet (mostly) accurate. It is full of funny analogies. I think popular science writing has come of age in recent years. It was not so long ago when popular science articles were either completely incomprehensible or simplied so much that they were almost completely wrong.

I remember when I was preparing my "talk" -- the talk about my dissetation -- I looked at other people's talks. Most of them were impossible to understand and full of complicated equations.

The reason I love physics is that it is intuitive, once you get the basic concepts. You hardly have to memorize anything and can simply think through and derive the answer. But there are very few physicists who can do this well. I was lucky enough to have some very good scientists and professors to learn from. Slowly I came to believe that whatever I do I should be able to explain it to the "general public" in a simple to comprehend way. Granted that everyone will not be able to follow the esoterics of any advanced research, but most people can (and do) follow the basics when explained properly.

So I prepared my talk, which was actually a PPT, with simple language and structure. I used a lot of graphics, spending hours with Microsoft tools. Once I gave this talk at a company where I had applied for a job. One of the people in the audience told me afterwards about how surprised he was that he could follow it all along. Most other applicants who talked about their Ph.D.s and masters projects it seems gave incomprehensible talks to their future bosses.

Coming back to popular science writing, I think it has come of age in recent years. When I was looking for a job I actually considered entering this field, being a science journalist of sorts. I suspect others who felt like I did entered the field and helped change it over time.

With all this ado, we come to the article that Ravi pointed me to. First, a couple of funny exerpts.

"Some U.S. money has gone into the LHC [the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva], which will cost billions of dollars: five, maybe ten—the exact number is elusive (the science will be precise, but the accounting apparently follows the Uncertainty Principle)."

"Building a contraption like the LHC to find the Higgs [particle] is a bit like embarking on a career as a stand-up comic with the hope that at some point in your career you'll happen to blurt out a joke that's not only side-splittingly funny but also a palindrome."

I laughed out loud when I read these. But however witty, the analogy in the second para is not accurate because what you are looking for (the Higgs particle) is not detected directly but only through other (unique) by-products it creates after it comes into existence for a tiny fraction of a second. Maybe it is more like smelling, while blindfolded, a football stadium full of shirts, to identify the one that is yours.

The article is really entertaining (and mostly accurate).
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/achenbach-text