Particle Fever Page #7

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beam in the opposite direction.

They will circulate

in parallel for a while,

and when everything is ready

and under control,

the separation

is going to be removed,

and the beams

are going to be made to collide

in the four points

around the LHC machine.

I just think to myself,

if you imagine, like,

Thomas Edison, like,

inventing the lightbulb...

if he had tried to invent

the lightbulb with, like,

a hundred camera crews

in his workshop,

and they would've been like,

"Oh, my God,

"you can't even turn it on?

"Come on!

Turn it on now!

"Come... ugh,

we're still waiting?

Come on. Ah, come on.

What's wrong with this guy?"

So the violet... there's always

one vertical, horizontal beam.

One beam.

Shh!

Please.

So a few minutes.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, bye.

Wow.

Everybody hear?

Few minutes away.

So we should watch that one,

our trigger rate,

this one, the separation bumps,

and the event displays.

Okay, these are

the three screens to watch.

If you have three eyes,

one there, one here,

and one over there.

So, okay,

both beams are at 3.5 TeV,

and we've just collapsed

the separation bumps

and brought the beams

into collision

inside the four experiments.

- Starting.

- They're starting.

They're starting.

- Oh.

- Ooh.

Okay, they're starting.

Two beams,

one in blue, one in red,

each circulating

in opposite directions.

They have

to get closer and closer.

When the numbers

on the four readers say zero,

it means that the beams

are finally aligned.

This is the historical moment

we were all expecting.

It can be anytime now.

Wow! Wow!

Fantastic!

Beautiful.

- Wow.

- We are ready.

First things first.

I just have to say:

"data."

It's... it's unbelievable

how fantastic data is.

You have this invariant mass.

This is for the Z

to mu-mu channel.

And you have this mass peak

of the Z,

in order to estimate

your backgrounds.

It's like the world

at ATLAS and LHC and CMS

and all those places

has suddenly changed.

I mean, it's like,

all of a sudden, there's data.

And after so many years

of not having data

and new data, new physics,

there's just so much

possibility,

and even though

you're rediscovering

the Standard Model,

that is more exciting.

But the most exciting thing

about the data

is not the first collision.

Because the first collision,

okay, great.

First collision,

everyone loves the first.

But the most exciting thing

about the data is the, you know,

1 millionth collision

or the 2 millionth collision

or the fact that collisions

just keep coming and coming

and coming and coming,

and the more and more

collisions we have,

the more and more chance we have

to look

at the interesting physics,

because it just means more

and more and more data for us.

The running is pretty good.

But right now,

it's running amazingly.

Yeah, right now,

but the day of reckoning

is in several months.

We heard rumors on that.

Well, we should be hearing

rumors now.

We really should be

hearing rumors now.

I'm a little worried,

actually.

Yeah.

- Well, we're hearing murmurs.

- What, what's...

Murmurs.

We're hearing murmurs.

There either...

there isn't much there,

or they're doing a very good job

keeping a poker face.

Or they're still at the point

where half of...

where they're still trying

to figure out

what's a murmur

and what's a rumor, internally.

And I think

that's probably actually true.

Right.

The problem is that, also,

I take completely innocent

remarks

and vastly over-interpret them.

Obviously, we're going to

learn about the first discovery

on Twitter and Facebook.

That's so sad,

but I think it's true.

It is.

You mean, I shouldn't check

the arXiv

first thing in the morning...

I need to check my Facebook?

- The arXiv is the last thing.

- The arXiv is the last...

First, like,

check Nima's Twitter feed.

Then check the arXiv.

If Nima has a Twitter feed,

then there's something

has been discovered.

It is August 7, 2011,

and, this is a significant time

for the LHC.

The first big set of data

was presented

at the end of July.

The data

has little extra bits in it

which could be interpreted

as a Higgs.

Even though the LHC

is running at half power,

it actually has gotten data

much, much faster

than anybody expected.

And that allowed them to be

sensitive to the Higgs boson.

It's f***ing cool right now.

There was huge excitement

because the Higgs' results

of the two main detectors,

CMS and ATLAS, were first shown,

together, in the same meeting.

For me, as Run Coordinator,

I discussed every little problem

where we lost here

a little bit of data

and there a little bit of data,

so somehow I really feel

attached to this data set.

So somehow it makes me proud

if the Higgs is found

or not with this data set.

The three, two, ones,

so the effect...

The mass of the Higgs,

namely the weight of the Higgs,

can actually tell us

or give us a hint

about what comes next.

If the mass

is on the lighter side,

then that's consistent

with some of the standard things

we've been looking for.

Supersymmetry generally favors

that the Higgs

is as light as possible.

About 115 times

the mass of the proton.

It's 115 GeV:

Giga electron volts.

If, on the other hand,

the Higgs is 140 GeV,

140 times the mass

of the proton,

it's a terrible mass,

because 140 GeV

is associated with theories

that rely on the multiverse.

ATLAS has a little bump here,

a small excess visible near 140.

And now, holy crap.

It's 140!

It's starting to look like

nature has made its choice.

What do we learn

if the LHC does discover

a Higgs at 140 and nothing else?

Chaos. Okay?

The problem

with the multiverse

is that it says the Higgs

might be the last particle

we ever see.

- So what we should do...

- I think the Higgs mass issue...

If we don't see any new

particles besides the Higgs,

we don't get any explanation

for dark matter.

We don't know

how the Higgs itself got a mass.

We never get access

to the deeper theory.

All that information

could be in the other universes.

We may be at the end

of the road.

That's it.

I guess, um...

Well, if it's right

at that number,

then it would be

so f***ing astounding.

Where the F is SUSY, right?

I mean, there's nothing.

I mean,

where's all the other stuff?

Where are the other particles?

What happened to dark matter?

I mean...

I've heard of many theories

saying that new particles

might be

at even higher energies, so...

Right.

Who knows? I mean,

it always comes differently.

Who knows if there

are other interesting things.

You know, somehow

it always comes differently

than you expect.

I know that the theorists

are all up in arms,

because, you know,

it could be a heavy Higgs,

but, you know,

I've always said, like,

the worst-case scenario,

I think,

would be Higgs and Higgs only.

- Who knows?

- I know. I know.

Come on,

it's just a little excess.

If this doesn't show up

by the end of next year,

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