Ed Vaizey

I went to Geneva for the day today.  Sadly, it was not to check out my Swiss bank account.  It was actually more exciting than that.  I was visiting the Large Hadron Collidor, or LHC, which, despite being an almost incomprehensible and mind-boggling physics experiment, has actually got quite a lot of press coverage as it nears its opening.  It is based at CERN, the European centre for nuclear research. CERN is where the world wide web was invented, and interestingly there is speculation taht one of the side-effects of the LHC will be to make the current web obsolete - see HERE.

My host for the day was Dr Brian Cox, a name which immediately conjures an image of beards and sandals.  So you can imagine my surprise when he turned out to be the spitting image of Liam Gallagher, if Liam had decided to pursue a career in particle physics rather than rock’n'roll.  It turned out that there was a reason for this.  Dr Cox had indeed been a rock star, playing keyboards for D:ream, of “Things can only get better” fame.  I was delighted to learn that he is now planning to vote Conservative.

Brian and his wife were producing a podcast in the lead up to the opening of LHC.  They have already interviewed John Barrowman and a Dean of the Church of England.  A lot of comedians seem interested in the project as well.  We pondered why this should be.  Is there a tendency in both physicists and comedians towards introspection? Or have both physicists and comedians worked out that we are merely insignificant specks in the universe, so the only way to get through is to have a good laugh?

Anyway, on to the collider, the purpose of the visit and the star of the show.  Yes, this is science fiction stuff.  It is a 27km circle 100 metres underground.  It has four detectors, which is a modest word for hundreds of tons and millions of pounds of sophisticated engineering that looks like a spaceship.  All this to detect the smallest particles in the universe.  The collider will sling particles around the circle at just under the speed of light, and collide them into each other.  The resulting smash up will replicate Big Bang about one billionth of a second after it happened i.e pretty much the very beginning of the universe, hence travelling back in time.  The furthest we have got so far is about 300,000 years after Big Bang.

They hope to find the Higgs Bosun.  This is a particle first identified (at least, the maths was) by Professor Higgs (who is alive and well in Edinburgh) in 1963, and it is the particle that gives matter mass (with me so far?).  The analogy used is that the Higgs bosun is a “sycophant” - it attaches itself to particles in the way sycophants attach themselves to famous people when they walk in the room, slowing them down and giving them mass.  Not all elements interact with the Higgs bosun - light, for example, which therefore has no mass and goes straight through the room, friendless.

Brian describes what is happening at CERN as the biggest step change in physics for a generation.  It is like opening the door to a room that has so far been completely sealed.  The Higgs bosun is the key but no one is sure what is inside.  Someone in Hawaii has even launched a lawsuit to prevent the LHC opening, as they think it will cause the end of the world.

All this excitement comes when science cuts are clouding the particle physics world.  Newsnight had a good report which you can read/see here including a starring role for the leyboard player from D;Ream.

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