Particle Fever Page #3

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"What is the economic gain?"

You're asking,

"What do we not know,

and where

can we make progress?"

So what is the LHC good for?

Could be nothing other than

just understanding everything.

The first time

I ever saw ATLAS was in 2005.

I had come out just to see

what ATLAS would look like

because there was a possibility

that I could be working on it

as a postdoc.

I can remember walking in

and just being like...

You know, just stunned.

I mean, me, stunned,

you know, just, you know,

already kind of having an idea

of the magnitude.

People tell you,

"Oh, it's five stories tall."

And you go, "Oh, okay,

five stories tall."

And then you see.

Five stories completely filled

with microelectronics...

All custom designed,

all hand-soldered.

You know, it's like as if

it's a five-story Swiss watch.

There was this issue

about the BCIDs.

We had our extended barrel

out earlier,

but it should be back in,

and we should be...

everything running normal.

Okay, so one more

announcement.

We have to be extremely careful

what we do to the system.

I mean, we know that anybody

who's even updating

a number somewhere

might stop our system for

more than an hour quite easily.

So please be absolutely sure

that you yourself

and everybody in your system

is not touching the system,

unless it's been agreed

by the shift leader, yeah?

Nothing should be touched, yeah?

And that includes all things

that you're absolutely

dead certain

they will not do anything wrong.

Especially those things.

It's being called the

largest scientific experiment

in history,

and some say

one that could cause Armageddon.

It's the strangest

experiment ever:

Mankind's most ambitious attempt

to understand

how we all got here.

Thousands of scientists

from around the world

spent 20 years designing

an extraordinary machine.

It cost 5 billion

and will switching on very soon.

This is a genesis machine,

a window on creation.

Five months of testing on...

They're looking for something

called the God Particle,

but skeptics are saying nobody

knows what will happen

when they turn on the switch.

A group of French scientists

believe the collider

might create a black hole

that could swallow up the earth,

and they filed suit to stop

the project from going forward.

Hello?

No, absolutely not.

Well, no, there is no scientific

ground to what they say.

It's not possible that the LHC

is going to destroy the world.

It's absolutely ridiculous.

Okay, it is 9:
15.

We are 15 minutes away

from beam.

We've been sitting here,

about 7:
00,

and absolutely nobody

brought food.

Again, 15 minutes to beam.

- Ciao, ciao.

- Stress levels are high.

Ciao.

But since I'm in a room

full of Italians,

the stress level's

pretty cool here.

But we have no coffee either.

No coffee.

Who didn't bring coffee?

What we're going to see today

is the launch

of the first beam of protons

around this enormous ring.

Very shortly, Lyn Evans,

the project director,

is going to be addressing

CERN staff,

who are gathered

at different points

around this massive complex.

It's just the first glimpse

at the fact the machine can run.

I mean, so what you need,

really,

is, you need two beams

colliding together

for quite a few...

quite a long period of time

before you calculate,

get enough...

sufficient statistics

in which to actually

be able to look

for the new physics.

But single beam,

the first beam, isn't even that.

You're not even getting

any collisions.

It's just one beam

going around in a circle,

not even at the high energies.

Just one beam going

around in the low energy circle,

that sort of says, "Okay,

we made it around the ring once

for the first time."

And it's a huge event.

Right, after 19 years,

you've been waiting

for this first step.

Let's get started, everybody.

Now comes the day of reckoning.

Five, four, three,

two, one...

Now.

No beam.

Yeah.

So where are we

with the injection kicker?

Oh, well...

they're out.

Okay, never mind.

Let's go.

Five, four, three,

two, one, zero.

We get a beam on this pulse?

I hope so.

Yes!

Well, last night I was,

like, waking up constantly.

Like, "Did we set that right?

What about... did we disable...

oh, my gosh!"

Marzio.

I have a plot for you.

Okay, check this out.

This is Z.

This is timing, in nanoseconds,

which we knew

from the cosmic data.

- That is very nice.

- Yes.

Upstairs, I think people

were more excited about this.

If you're in Google,

that means... that's the world.

This is the most important thing

today.

This is the first,

and this tells us

a lot of things.

It tells us that

the magnetic properties

of the machine are good,

that the aperture is clear.

There's nothing is sticking into

the beam pipe anywhere.

So a very, very encouraging sign

and remarkable progress.

Did you guys see

our beautiful plot?

- What?

- Okay, I want to show you this.

Come on, show them the plot.

You can take a picture of...

here you go.

Well, see if you can get it.

I don't think

there's anyone else

I can show my plot to, so...

It worked.

It just worked.

And there are so few times

in life where it just works.

And there are so

even fewer times in life

where it just works great.

We rocked.

I mean, Tile, first beam...

We destroyed that sh*t.

They got a beam circulating.

They've had beams circulating

for a full 30 seconds.

So let me understand.

This is one beam going one way?

They have one beam

going one way,

and then they went to the

other beam going the other way.

Well, does it work?

The second beam,

did it go fully around?

- Everything...

- they both went around.

I think

they had the beam go around

about a million times.

Something like that.

Yeah, their Twitter feed

said 10 million.

Now we'll become, you know,

CERN Twitter junkies.

I guess this is exciting.

My logical self

wants to be excited.

My psychological self

is very cautious.

My parents are both Iranian

and both physicists,

and my father in particular

had real political difficulties

with the regime,

and we had to go underground

for a number of years,

and we ended up escaping

from Iran

through the border of Turkey.

But then, through

a number of wonderful accidents,

we ended up in Canada.

I got interested in physics

when I was 13 or 14 years old.

It just offered the way

to combine the two things

I really loved:

Mathematics

and things in the natural world.

You almost done?

Yeah.

- It's just saying "What if?"

- It's, uh... yeah.

You're preparing

a broader audience for this.

Okay, now I'm going

to just do something fun.

Just do something fun.

What would be fun?

No, don't write "hell."

It's a public...

All right, I'm sorry!

- How about that?

- There we go.

Thinking about the LHC

has been the center

of my intellectual life

for about 15, 16 years now.

Depending on what happens

with the LHC,

you know, these are 15 years

I could come to see

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