Particle Fever Page #9

---

and it's a big honor

and a big emotion for me

to represent this fantastic

collaboration at this occasion.

So let's go to the results

for this channel.

You can see here

the results for the 2011 to 2012

and the combination of the two.

The gamma jet

and jet-jet background

with one or both jet...

requirement that the energy

in a cone around the photon

is below...

a structure

which reproduces very well

the LHC bunch rate

with three bunch,

small gaps...

so then, of course,

we collect...

Yeah.

A few GeV and a few hundred

GeV at the level...

is fit in the nine

different categories

with an exponential function

to model the background,

so, no theoretical prediction,

no Monte Carlo.

The background is determined

from the side bands

of the possible signal.

From this spectrum,

the background fit,

you get this plot here.

Now the grand combination.

Here it goes.

So this distribution

is extremely clean,

except one big spike here...

in this region here.

Excess with a local significance

of 5.0 sigma

at a mass of 126.5 GeV.

Good.

As a layman, I would now say,

"I think we have it."

- Come, Lyn, come here.

- Come here!

Okay.

- There's Peter.

- Peter is there.

- Yeah. Get Peter.

- Peter's there.

Peter!

Well, I would like to add

my congratulations

to everybody involved

in this tremendous achievement.

For me, it's really

an incredible thing

that it has happened

in my lifetime.

Not only in your lifetime,

Peter.

That's a great day, huh?

That's a great day.

And I think all of us,

and all of the people

outside watching it

in the different meeting rooms,

everybody who was involved

and is involved in the project

can be proud of this day.

Okay, enjoy it.

We found the Higgs!

Scientists

this morning announced

they are almost certain

they have discovered

what's being

called the "God Particle."

It is not every day

that you see a whole bunch

of scientists

standing up with champagne

bottles and cheering.

Now, the God Particle,

we physicists wince

when we hear those words...

It's the last piece

of the puzzle

physicists have been looking for

for decades.

- Thank you all.

- Thank you for your attention.

Thanks to everybody

on the panel.

If I could just ask you all

to remain seated

just for a few minutes.

Clear passage here, please.

Can we have a clear passage?

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you.

I did feel a sense of pride

when the Higgs was announced,

but I felt a sense of pride

for humanity,

that, you know, we little people

on a little planet

with tiny brains

can go so deep

and understand what happens.

Now we're talking

about subnuclear distances

a thousand times smaller

than an atomic nucleus.

Nevertheless,

we can get things right,

and just the power

of the human mind.

It's astonishing that there are

any laws of nature at all,

that they're describable

by mathematics,

that mathematics is a tool

that humans can understand,

that the laws of nature

can be written on a page.

It's the greatest

of all mysteries.

There is a strong sense that we

are hearing nature talk to us.

Turns out, the Higgs mass

is about as interesting

as it could be.

It's sort of in no man's land.

It doesn't prefer symmetries,

and it doesn't prefer

multiverse,

but it's right in the middle.

The data is puzzling enough

that it hasn't excluded

any of the theories

I was involved with,

but it hasn't

confirmed them either.

But until we look at detailed

properties of the Higgs,

and until we have

the high-energy version

of the LHC in a couple of years,

we will not be able

to make a stronger statement.

The most important,

first lesson

of the discovery of the Higgs

is that physics works.

The Higgs, on the one hand,

completes the most successful

scientific theory

we've ever had,

on the other hand,

opens the door

to some very major paradoxes

that we now must address.

We're at a fork in the road,

and the LHC

is steadfastly refusing

to push us

in one direction or the other:

The multiverse on the one side,

and some beautiful symmetry

on the other side.

It's cranking up the suspense

as much as it possibly can.

Before the LHC started,

we would always say,

"New physics

is just around the corner."

And now we're kind of like,

"New physics

is still out there."

And, for one,

I'm not discouraged by this,

by any means, because we know

that new physics

has to be out there.

The next step is,

the LHC goes into a shutdown,

stays off for two years

for improvements and upgrades,

and when it returns, it's

going to be twice the energy.

And for sure,

my vote's for supersymmetry.

Jesus.

That was exciting.

If this is true,

the Higgs is about 125 GeV,

and that means...

um, yeah, actually

almost all of my models

are ruled out,

which...

all the supersymmetry models,

which is pretty cool.

I mean, supersymmetry

could still be true,

but it would have to be a very

strange version of the theory.

And if it's the multiverse...

well, other universes

would be amazing, of course,

but it could also mean no

other new particles discovered,

and then

a Higgs with a mass of 125

is right at a critical point

for the fate of our universe.

Without any other new particles,

that Higgs is unstable.

It's temporary.

And since the Higgs

holds everything together,

if the Higgs goes,

everything goes.

It's amazing that the Higgs,

the center

of the Standard Model,

the thing we've all

been looking for,

could actually also be the thing

that destroys everything.

The creator and the destroyer.

But we could discover

new particles,

and then none of that

would be true.

And anyway,

we have something to do.

There is a very nice sentence

in the Divine Comedy by Dante

who says, "Nati

non fummo a viver come bruti,

ma per seguir

virtute e canoscenza,"

which means, "We were not born

"to live as animals,

but to pursue knowledge

and virtue."

So science and knowledge

are very important,

like art is very important.

It's a need of mankind.

I just saw, two weeks ago,

Werner Herzog talking about

and then screening

his new movie.

But it was about

these incredible caves

that they discovered

a few years ago in France.

Stunningly beautiful.

Gorgeously drawn horses, bison,

rhinoceros, lions,

because, 40,000 years ago,

this is what was going on there.

- In exploration...

- and science is exploration...

there needs to be

the set of people

who have no rules,

and they are going

into the frontier

and come back

with the strange animals

and the interesting rocks

and the amazing pictures,

and to show us what's out there,

discover something.

Why do humans do science?

Why do they do art?

The things that are least

important for our survival

are the very things

that make us human.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes