Kind: captions
Language: en
It all started in 1964
when a young English physicist named
Peter Higgs suggested something about
space that was so radical it nearly
ruined him.
I was told that I was talking nonsense,
that I couldn't be right. So they
clearly hadn't understood what I what I
was saying.
Higs and a few others were wrestling
with a puzzle which comes down to this.
The fundamental particles in the
universe all contain different amounts
of mass which we usually think of as
weight.
Without mass, these particles would
never combine to form the familiar atoms
that make up all the stuff we see in the
world around us.
But what creates mass? And why do
different particles have different
masses?
Try as they might, no one had been able
to answer this perplexing question.
Then one weekend after a walk outside
Edinburgh, Higs had a peculiar idea.
Using mathematics, he imagines space in
a new way, as something like an ocean.
Particles are immersed in this ocean and
gain mass as they move through it.
To see how this works, think of a
particle's mass like an actor's fame.
And the Higs Ocean is like the
paparazzi.
Some particles, like unknown actors,
pass through with ease. The paparazzi
simply aren't interested in them. But
other particles, like superstars, have
to push and press.
And the more those particles struggle to
get through, the more they interact with
the ocean and the more mass they gain.
Higs was convinced he'd made a great
discovery,
but when he submitted his idea to a
journal at CERN, it was rejected.
Undaunted, Hakes honed his theory
further until he was offered the chance
to present it at Einstein's old haunt,
the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton.
There, he expected his new idea would
meet some of its toughest critics.
[Music]
I was happily driving up the freeway and
then there was a sign to turn off for
Princeton and that really confronted me
with what I was going into. I broke out
in a cold sweat and and started
trembling and I had to pull off the road
to recover.
But Higs persevered.
It was the first in a series of talks
that would convince colleagues far and
wide that he was on to something
profound. Eventually I I sort of wore
them down. I felt I'd sort of triumphed.
So I enjoyed the parties which followed.
Today the idea Higs pioneered called the
Higsfield is crucial to our
understanding of space. The Higsfield is
everywhere. It's something that even in
the emptiest vacuum of space has an
effect. It gives you mass. So I think
Higgs actually deserves credit for being
one of the people that said space is
stuff. It has properties in it that are
intrinsic that you can't get rid of. You
can't turn them off. The only problem
there's no physical proof that the Higs
field exists.
At least not yet. But here at CERN,
scientists are attempting to smash
particles together with so much energy
that they will knock loose a piece of
the Higs field,
producing a tiny particle of its own.
It's as if they're trying to chip off a
piece of space.
We think that if we knock into space
hard enough with particle accelerator
collisions that we can actually make a
Higs particle come out of empty space.
Our whole understanding of matter as we
now have it would just fall apart if the
Higs field didn't exist. I don't think
anybody seriously doubts that we will
see it. Certainly if we don't that would
be an extremely bizarre outcome. Finding
the Higs particle would be a major
milestone. Establishing that the
emptiest of empty space has an impact on
all of matter.