1 00:00:11,340 --> 00:00:15,665 13.7 billion years after it all began, 2 00:00:15,700 --> 00:00:20,580 we're about to go back to the beginning of time. 3 00:00:25,340 --> 00:00:31,860 'With the largest and most complex scientific experiment ever attempted. 4 00:00:31,895 --> 00:00:35,625 'The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, 5 00:00:35,660 --> 00:00:40,065 'has just one simple but audacious aim - 6 00:00:40,100 --> 00:00:43,060 'to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang... 7 00:00:45,220 --> 00:00:50,860 '.. in an attempt to answer the most profound questions about our universe. ' 8 00:00:53,540 --> 00:01:00,185 The goal of particle physics is to understand the universe in which we live. 9 00:01:00,220 --> 00:01:06,820 We want to know why things are the way they are, how they work, what everything is... 10 00:01:06,855 --> 00:01:08,780 we want to understand. 11 00:01:10,540 --> 00:01:16,345 If you're going to go for the big questions then you have to go for it. 12 00:01:16,380 --> 00:01:23,540 There is no point in sort of messing around if you really want to understand how the universe ticks. 13 00:01:23,575 --> 00:01:25,540 The LHC is what you need. 14 00:01:27,500 --> 00:01:32,545 When the switch is thrown, this could be either the beginning of the end, 15 00:01:32,580 --> 00:01:36,860 when we find that our theories of what existed just after the Big Bang are right, 16 00:01:39,420 --> 00:01:46,020 or it could be the end of the beginning where we discover that the universe is more mysterious 17 00:01:46,055 --> 00:01:50,420 and more beautiful than we could possibly have imagined. 18 00:02:13,540 --> 00:02:19,900 The Large Hadron Collider spans the French/Swiss border just outside Geneva. 19 00:02:19,935 --> 00:02:23,020 It's the largest particle accelerator ever constructed. 20 00:02:27,140 --> 00:02:31,145 I'm Brian Cox and I've been helping build it, 21 00:02:31,180 --> 00:02:38,500 along with thousands of other scientists at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. 22 00:02:41,620 --> 00:02:45,100 This is the experiment, if you like, Q1, Q2, Q3. 23 00:02:47,460 --> 00:02:50,625 One of the scientists overseeing the launch 24 00:02:50,660 --> 00:02:56,700 of the biggest experiment since NASA sent men to the moon is Paul Collier. 25 00:02:56,735 --> 00:03:01,305 It's going to be a like a moon shot where you see CAPCOM - "Go, go!" 26 00:03:01,340 --> 00:03:06,240 There's going to be a bank of experts saying, "Mine is all right. " Probably yes. 27 00:03:06,275 --> 00:03:11,140 You must get asked this all the time. Is there a button? Who's going to press it? 28 00:03:11,175 --> 00:03:15,140 There is not at the moment a button, but I'm considering buying one, 29 00:03:15,175 --> 00:03:18,025 but the LHC is not like... it's not like a rocket. 30 00:03:18,060 --> 00:03:21,620 There will not be a countdown, there will not be a button to press, 31 00:03:21,655 --> 00:03:27,060 unfortunately. The buttons we have are all computer sequences 32 00:03:27,095 --> 00:03:30,100 which we have to go through to prepare the machine. 33 00:03:30,135 --> 00:03:33,385 It'll be standing room only 34 00:03:33,420 --> 00:03:37,065 as the world's most eminent particle physicists 35 00:03:37,100 --> 00:03:42,105 gather to watch this remarkable machine spring to life. 36 00:03:42,140 --> 00:03:48,260 What's the scene going to be like on the day that the first beam goes around LHC? 37 00:03:48,295 --> 00:03:50,505 What's it going to feel like in this control room? 38 00:03:50,540 --> 00:03:53,345 Yeah, it's going to be an interesting time and quite exciting. 39 00:03:53,380 --> 00:03:57,820 The first thing I should say is there will be two people on duty here, 40 00:03:57,855 --> 00:04:00,985 one physicist and one technical engineer, 41 00:04:01,020 --> 00:04:07,220 so, if you like, two people will be doing the work, and then probably 200 people will be watching them work. 42 00:04:07,255 --> 00:04:10,580 And of course we will have to... we will have to keep control of that. 43 00:04:10,615 --> 00:04:13,105 It's brilliant, actually, it's fascinating. 44 00:04:13,140 --> 00:04:19,700 All of us who work at CERN hope that this will become the world's most renowned Big Bang laboratory. 45 00:04:23,180 --> 00:04:30,180 That here we'll discover something so fundamental that it will change our understanding of the cosmos. 46 00:04:32,500 --> 00:04:37,025 Because right now even the brightest minds and the best theories 47 00:04:37,060 --> 00:04:44,060 all fall short of explaining what occurred as the universe burst into existence. 48 00:04:45,180 --> 00:04:50,545 Physics is stuck and the only thing left to do is recreate the universe 49 00:04:50,580 --> 00:04:56,780 as it was a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, and that's what the LHC's designed to do, 50 00:04:56,815 --> 00:05:01,500 to smash bits of matter together at energies never before achieved 51 00:05:01,535 --> 00:05:05,460 so we can stare at the face of creation. 52 00:05:12,260 --> 00:05:16,660 Every civilisation has its own creation story. 53 00:05:20,580 --> 00:05:25,225 The ancient Chinese, Indian mystics and Christian theologians 54 00:05:25,260 --> 00:05:29,900 all place a divine creator at the heart of their creation stories. 55 00:05:31,020 --> 00:05:36,900 Science too has an elaborate story that describes the universe's genesis. 56 00:05:39,260 --> 00:05:44,580 It tells us how the fundamental constituents of the cosmos took on their form. 57 00:05:47,180 --> 00:05:51,545 The difference with this story is that we can test it. 58 00:05:51,580 --> 00:05:57,660 We can find out if it's true by tearing matter apart and looking at the pieces. 59 00:05:58,740 --> 00:06:05,980 All you need is a machine powerful enough to restage the first moments after creation. 60 00:06:12,340 --> 00:06:15,585 In the beginning there was nothing. 61 00:06:15,620 --> 00:06:21,660 No space, no time, just endless nothing. 62 00:06:24,420 --> 00:06:29,580 Then, 13.7 billion years ago, from nothing... 63 00:06:35,420 --> 00:06:37,540 .. came everything. 64 00:06:40,420 --> 00:06:44,220 The universe exploded into existence. 65 00:06:48,340 --> 00:06:53,740 From that fireball of energy emerged the simplest building blocks of matter. 66 00:07:03,140 --> 00:07:10,060 Finding experimental evidence of these fundamental entities has become the holy grail of physics. 67 00:07:11,780 --> 00:07:15,860 Well, the universe is an object that is not stable. 68 00:07:15,895 --> 00:07:19,905 It is expanding and cooling, it's doing things. 69 00:07:19,940 --> 00:07:24,460 It was therefore different in the past and will be in the future. 70 00:07:24,495 --> 00:07:27,740 It has a history, it has a life, it has an evolution. 71 00:07:29,540 --> 00:07:34,825 As the early universe grew, its mysterious primeval constituents 72 00:07:34,860 --> 00:07:42,460 transformed themselves into atoms, then molecules and eventually stars and planets. 73 00:07:42,495 --> 00:07:47,340 Now, billions of years on from the Big Bang, the universe is so complex 74 00:07:47,375 --> 00:07:51,300 that all traces of the enigmatic building blocks are lost. 75 00:07:54,140 --> 00:07:59,460 Understanding the evolution of the universe requires understanding what it is made of. 76 00:08:00,980 --> 00:08:05,980 As it turns out, most of that of which the universe is made 77 00:08:06,015 --> 00:08:08,705 are things that we do not understand at all. 78 00:08:08,740 --> 00:08:14,780 But we hope that the LHC is about to bridge this profound gap in our knowledge 79 00:08:14,815 --> 00:08:18,820 by peering further back in time than ever before. 80 00:08:23,260 --> 00:08:26,585 The LHC is truly colossal. 81 00:08:26,620 --> 00:08:31,060 Its accelerator ring is 27 kilometres long, 82 00:08:31,095 --> 00:08:35,345 big enough to encircle a small city. 83 00:08:35,380 --> 00:08:39,185 And around it we've built four enormous experiments 84 00:08:39,220 --> 00:08:44,140 that will investigate the Big Bang in exquisite new detail. 85 00:08:45,860 --> 00:08:51,060 This is my experiment, the experiment that I work on, Atlas, 86 00:08:51,095 --> 00:08:54,825 and what you can see is just the surface buildings. 87 00:08:54,860 --> 00:08:59,345 The experiment is actually 100 metres below the ground which is where the LHC is, 88 00:08:59,380 --> 00:09:05,820 and basically this is just a building that covers cranes where we winch everything down. 89 00:09:06,900 --> 00:09:10,185 And it's pretty much the last time 90 00:09:10,220 --> 00:09:17,625 that not only TV crews, but me and the people who built it will be able to go down 91 00:09:17,660 --> 00:09:24,820 because once it starts operating, the whole area becomes a radiation area, it becomes mildly radioactive. 92 00:09:27,020 --> 00:09:29,820 You've always got to be worried when you see those things. 93 00:09:34,860 --> 00:09:39,300 One of the most expensive bits of Atlas, if not the most, was digging the cavern. 94 00:09:43,780 --> 00:09:49,180 We even have iris scanners, so a little bit of science fiction. 95 00:09:52,340 --> 00:09:58,100 It's down here in caverns brimming with the latest technology that the Big Bangs will be made. 96 00:10:03,300 --> 00:10:10,105 We just take little bits of matter, little bits of this stuff and accelerate them to as close 97 00:10:10,140 --> 00:10:17,300 to the speed of light as we can get and then smash them together right in the middle of that detector 98 00:10:17,335 --> 00:10:21,500 to recreate the conditions that were present back at the beginning of time. 99 00:10:27,300 --> 00:10:32,225 The bits of matter we're going to fire around the LHC are called protons. 100 00:10:32,260 --> 00:10:38,980 They come from a family of particles that give the collider its name, the Hadrons. 101 00:10:39,015 --> 00:10:44,340 Protons are going to fly around here so close to the speed of light 102 00:10:44,375 --> 00:10:47,860 that they go round this 27km tunnel 11,000 times a second. 103 00:10:50,140 --> 00:10:55,780 The ring has two barrels that will shoot beams of protons around in opposite directions. 104 00:10:59,140 --> 00:11:05,300 When they collide, they'll have the energy equivalent to an aircraft carrier steaming at 30 knots. 105 00:11:08,340 --> 00:11:13,500 All this energy will be focused into a space just a fraction of the width of a human hair. 106 00:11:18,540 --> 00:11:24,500 The resulting explosion will be so intense that no-one's quite sure what will happen. 107 00:11:28,020 --> 00:11:30,905 This machine really is a leap into the unknown. 108 00:11:30,940 --> 00:11:37,480 I mean it's often said with scientific experiments but I think in this case it's absolutely right. 109 00:11:37,515 --> 00:11:44,020 We're, we're a step, something like a factor of ten in energy so it's a huge jump up in energy. 110 00:11:44,055 --> 00:11:48,265 It's a huge jump up in the number of times we can smash particles together per second. 111 00:11:48,300 --> 00:11:54,540 It collides protons together so often that your chances of seeing something incredibly interesting 112 00:11:54,575 --> 00:11:58,997 and profound are increased way beyond anything that we've had before 113 00:11:59,032 --> 00:12:03,420 and I can think of no better place to be actually at the moment. 114 00:12:03,455 --> 00:12:05,540 This is exciting. 115 00:12:17,500 --> 00:12:22,300 The dream of understanding the building blocks from which the universe is constructed 116 00:12:22,335 --> 00:12:26,060 has inspired the greatest minds for over two millennia. 117 00:12:28,740 --> 00:12:34,700 People have wanted to understand the universe and the stuff around them 118 00:12:34,735 --> 00:12:37,300 ever since they began to think about it. 119 00:12:39,500 --> 00:12:43,460 People have always been making theories about what matter is made of. 120 00:12:45,220 --> 00:12:48,740 But the universe like everybody else is made of little pieces which 121 00:12:48,775 --> 00:12:52,260 need to be understood in order to understand how the universe works. 122 00:12:54,260 --> 00:12:57,585 The earliest reference to this concept of the world being made up 123 00:12:57,620 --> 00:13:03,740 of tiny indivisible pieces dates back to ancient India in the sixth century BC. 124 00:13:05,820 --> 00:13:13,700 Two centuries on, the ancient Greeks were the first to call these pieces, atoms, which means uncuttable. 125 00:13:13,735 --> 00:13:21,580 But incredibly it was only in the early 20th century that the concept of the solid atom was shattered... 126 00:13:23,460 --> 00:13:26,580 .. and the modern version of atomic theory was born. 127 00:13:28,860 --> 00:13:34,900 This new theory described the atom as being made up of a number of even smaller pieces. 128 00:13:35,980 --> 00:13:40,145 Around the particles which form the nucleus of the atom, 129 00:13:40,180 --> 00:13:46,460 other electrically charged particles called electrons constantly revolve like planets around the sun. 130 00:13:47,500 --> 00:13:51,460 This new sub-atomic theory inspired the great experimental physicist 131 00:13:51,495 --> 00:13:56,340 Ernest Rutherford to invent the art of particle colliding. 132 00:14:01,460 --> 00:14:04,660 And ever since, we've peeled away the atomic layers. 133 00:14:07,300 --> 00:14:12,660 Far from being uncuttable, the atom appeared to be more and more like a Russian doll. 134 00:14:24,740 --> 00:14:29,780 Today particle physicists are busy dreaming up ever more elaborate ways 135 00:14:29,815 --> 00:14:32,905 to torture matter. 136 00:14:32,940 --> 00:14:38,580 It almost seems like a paradox that the smaller the thing you are looking for, 137 00:14:38,615 --> 00:14:40,780 the bigger the instrument you need. 138 00:14:44,980 --> 00:14:49,220 This is Fermilab and I used to work here for three years. 139 00:14:49,255 --> 00:14:53,060 It's a beautiful piece of midwestern prairie. 140 00:14:54,740 --> 00:14:57,225 The reason I worked here is because over there 141 00:14:57,260 --> 00:15:01,300 is the biggest particle accelerator that's operating in the world today. 142 00:15:02,900 --> 00:15:07,020 'I served my apprenticeship on a machine here called the Tevatron. ' 143 00:15:08,660 --> 00:15:12,825 Under that lake there, there's a tube that carries a beam of protons one way 144 00:15:12,860 --> 00:15:18,740 and anti-matter protons the other way and we accelerate them round 50,000 times a second. 145 00:15:18,775 --> 00:15:19,825 Imagine that! 146 00:15:19,860 --> 00:15:25,160 It's as close to the speed of light as we can get and then we smash them together, two places actually, 147 00:15:25,195 --> 00:15:30,460 that red building there, which is called CDF and that blue building over there which is called D zero. 148 00:15:30,495 --> 00:15:34,260 And their job is to just simply take a picture of those collisions. 149 00:15:38,940 --> 00:15:41,900 Fermilab has been colliding particles for over 40 years. 150 00:15:44,740 --> 00:15:47,660 Probing the atom's secrets. 151 00:15:53,540 --> 00:15:59,620 Leading the way into this sub-atomic frontier was the renowned particle hunter, Leon Lederman. 152 00:16:06,540 --> 00:16:09,065 We didn't know anything about these particles. 153 00:16:09,100 --> 00:16:13,220 We knew about atoms, but we had no idea of the complexity of matter. 154 00:16:16,460 --> 00:16:20,420 What puzzled Lederman was that the more they looked inside the atom, 155 00:16:20,455 --> 00:16:23,700 the more fundamental particles they found. 156 00:16:26,260 --> 00:16:29,700 The moment of discovery is really a series of moments. 157 00:16:29,735 --> 00:16:31,465 The experiment has worked. 158 00:16:31,500 --> 00:16:35,500 We think it's OK, and then finally, "Hey, look at that, there's an event!" 159 00:16:40,260 --> 00:16:46,580 Eventually get enough data to say we're beginning to see a class of particles... 160 00:16:46,615 --> 00:16:51,020 that must have a very important role in the evolution of the universe. 161 00:16:53,260 --> 00:17:00,540 Because of the work of Lederman and other pioneers, scores of particles completely new to science emerged. 162 00:17:05,300 --> 00:17:07,905 The up quark, the down quark, 163 00:17:07,940 --> 00:17:10,420 the electron, the electron neutrino, 164 00:17:10,455 --> 00:17:13,505 the W-plus and the W-minus. 165 00:17:13,540 --> 00:17:20,060 As scientists made their discoveries they began to name these fundamental particles. 166 00:17:20,095 --> 00:17:24,460 The charm quark, the strange quark, the muon, the mu neutrino. 167 00:17:26,100 --> 00:17:32,180 With these building blocks they came to a remarkable understanding of the world. 168 00:17:32,215 --> 00:17:34,437 The top quark, the bottom quark, 169 00:17:34,472 --> 00:17:36,906 the tao and the tao neutrino, 170 00:17:36,941 --> 00:17:39,340 the Z particle and the photon. 171 00:17:40,940 --> 00:17:45,420 Now they could explain what anything and everything is made of. 172 00:17:47,300 --> 00:17:53,900 That's the Standard Model... Oh, no! The gluon, mustn't forget the gluon. 173 00:17:59,900 --> 00:18:06,260 The Standard Model has gone on to become the basis for all modern particle physics. 174 00:18:06,295 --> 00:18:10,460 So this was a model that was developed in the 1960s. 175 00:18:10,495 --> 00:18:14,465 The first experimental breakthroughs 176 00:18:14,500 --> 00:18:20,705 showing that it might be true came in the 1970s and I would say, 177 00:18:20,740 --> 00:18:25,900 was really established by experiments at CERN in the 1980s and the 1990s. 178 00:18:27,020 --> 00:18:33,180 Experimental science has shown that the nature of matter is more complex than anyone had foreseen. 179 00:18:36,380 --> 00:18:42,740 Rather than a single atom, it turns out that nature uses 16 different fundamental particles 180 00:18:42,775 --> 00:18:45,700 to make everything we see in the cosmos. 181 00:18:48,020 --> 00:18:53,985 The Standard Model itself is a triumph. We have not only 182 00:18:54,020 --> 00:19:00,780 the particles but the mathematics that gives a huge coherence 183 00:19:00,815 --> 00:19:04,980 to our world on the microscopic level. 184 00:19:14,580 --> 00:19:19,500 The Standard Model accurately describes the essential constituents of the universe. 185 00:19:22,060 --> 00:19:27,900 It's no exaggeration to say it's one of the most successful theories in the history of science. 186 00:19:34,140 --> 00:19:37,460 And yet many physicists feel uneasy about the Standard Model. 187 00:19:41,620 --> 00:19:45,580 The maths is too complex, even ugly. 188 00:19:49,620 --> 00:19:55,265 When scientists talk about beauty in a physical theory, they mean that 189 00:19:55,300 --> 00:20:04,660 it can describe a whole range of diverse phenomena with hopefully simple concepts and simple maths. 190 00:20:04,695 --> 00:20:07,545 Take Einstein's theory of general relativity, 191 00:20:07,580 --> 00:20:11,420 our theory of gravitation, you can write it down in one line. 192 00:20:20,020 --> 00:20:22,345 Now the trouble with the Standard Model is, 193 00:20:22,380 --> 00:20:30,900 well, it takes pages to write down but also there are elements in it that are mysterious, arbitrary even. 194 00:20:45,220 --> 00:20:49,545 There's something spooky about this Standard Model. 195 00:20:49,580 --> 00:20:53,740 It doesn't really work, so we know that there is something sick in our theory. 196 00:20:56,380 --> 00:21:03,140 For example, we have at the moment what we call a Standard Model of particle physics, works great. 197 00:21:03,175 --> 00:21:08,260 Only one small problem, if you write down the equations of this model 198 00:21:08,295 --> 00:21:11,980 it would seem to suggest that no particles would have any mass. 199 00:21:12,015 --> 00:21:13,180 Clearly that's not true. 200 00:21:19,340 --> 00:21:22,545 For all its power, the Standard Model overlooked 201 00:21:22,580 --> 00:21:26,460 one of the most basic fundamental properties of our world. 202 00:21:27,540 --> 00:21:31,300 It was incomplete in its description of the universe. 203 00:21:38,460 --> 00:21:46,860 What's missing is an explanation, a mechanism for how the fundamental particles acquire mass. 204 00:21:46,895 --> 00:21:52,380 Now we know intuitively that the things in the world around us have mass. 205 00:21:53,420 --> 00:21:54,785 We can feel it. 206 00:21:54,820 --> 00:21:59,780 It's... Well, it's what makes stuff, stuff. 207 00:21:59,815 --> 00:22:04,705 But what is mass and why does it exist? 208 00:22:04,740 --> 00:22:11,460 Sounds simple but it's become one of the most difficult and challenging problems in physics. 209 00:22:19,060 --> 00:22:22,505 There must have been a time in the early universe 210 00:22:22,540 --> 00:22:26,980 when the particles became substantial and took on their mass. 211 00:22:32,380 --> 00:22:37,300 The best theory we have to explain how this happened was dreamt up one day 212 00:22:37,335 --> 00:22:42,220 by a British physicist Peter Higgs, whilst walking in the Scottish Highlands. 213 00:22:45,220 --> 00:22:49,620 He came up with a theoretical mechanism that could explain 214 00:22:49,655 --> 00:22:53,580 how some but not all particles attain mass. 215 00:22:55,460 --> 00:23:01,420 The Higgs mechanism works by filling the universe with a field, the Higgs field, 216 00:23:01,455 --> 00:23:05,500 and by the universe I don't just mean up there amongst the stars. 217 00:23:05,535 --> 00:23:10,345 I mean here in front of me, and inside of me, and particles 218 00:23:10,380 --> 00:23:15,820 acquire mass by interacting with the Higgs Field, by talking to it. 219 00:23:18,700 --> 00:23:25,100 The theory is that every particle in the universe is traversing this invisible Higgs Field 220 00:23:25,135 --> 00:23:31,140 and some particles like the quarks and electrons acquire mass as they pass through. 221 00:23:33,900 --> 00:23:37,625 Whereas mass-less particles, particles like photons, 222 00:23:37,660 --> 00:23:43,940 don't interact with the Higgs Field and they just pass through the universe at the speed of light. 223 00:23:53,820 --> 00:23:59,540 The Higgs brings simplicity and beauty to a nature which looks too complicated. 224 00:24:02,260 --> 00:24:08,740 It introduces a kind of symmetry and a kind of beauty to nature which gives us an understanding of 225 00:24:08,775 --> 00:24:13,900 one of the most puzzling features of this little model I told you about, the Standard Model. 226 00:24:14,980 --> 00:24:19,700 The Higgs Field may solve the problem of missing mass in the Standard Model 227 00:24:19,735 --> 00:24:23,980 but the only trouble is we haven't been able to detect it yet. 228 00:24:25,740 --> 00:24:29,940 But there is hope, because it's a law of quantum physics 229 00:24:29,975 --> 00:24:33,420 that all fields must have an associated particle. 230 00:24:35,540 --> 00:24:42,740 And it's a key prediction of this Higgs theory that there should be a quantum of this field, a particle 231 00:24:42,775 --> 00:24:46,597 associated with it and that's what's called the Higgs boson. 232 00:24:46,632 --> 00:24:50,420 Is there a Higgs particle, and if there is, how does it appear? 233 00:24:50,455 --> 00:24:54,220 How does it come about to simplify our view of the world? 234 00:24:54,255 --> 00:24:56,340 It would be a tremendous discovery. 235 00:24:57,980 --> 00:25:03,305 If we can find this new fundamental particle, the Higgs boson, 236 00:25:03,340 --> 00:25:08,140 then we'll be one step closer to understanding how the universe came to be the way it is. 237 00:25:08,175 --> 00:25:13,025 No wonder Lederman called it the God particle. 238 00:25:13,060 --> 00:25:18,620 The Higgs mechanism is our best attempt to repair the Standard Model 239 00:25:18,655 --> 00:25:22,465 but over 40 years after it was first thought of, 240 00:25:22,500 --> 00:25:29,260 the Higgs particle, the one thing that could prove the theory correct hasn't been found. 241 00:25:33,940 --> 00:25:39,820 So the only way to prove the theory correct is to try and create the Higgs boson 242 00:25:39,855 --> 00:25:42,660 for an instant inside a particle collider. 243 00:25:49,580 --> 00:25:54,020 Some thought that Fermilab with its powerful Tevatron collider would have found it. 244 00:25:56,540 --> 00:26:01,020 Fermilab is working day and night, night and day with a machine 245 00:26:01,055 --> 00:26:06,017 that's ever increasing the number of collisions 246 00:26:06,052 --> 00:26:10,980 but I would say probabilistically we won't find it. 247 00:26:13,300 --> 00:26:18,820 Ever since the Higgs particle was dreamt up and despite billions of dollars worth of research, 248 00:26:18,855 --> 00:26:26,260 Fermilab has not seen even a hint that the God particle exists. 249 00:26:32,500 --> 00:26:36,220 So the hunt for the Higgs boson is about to step up a gear at CERN... 250 00:26:37,980 --> 00:26:43,180 .. where Europe is about to overtake America in the high-energy particle-hunting race. 251 00:26:49,180 --> 00:26:52,620 Building an instrument capable of recreating the early universe 252 00:26:52,655 --> 00:26:56,220 and finding the massive Higgs boson has taken decades. 253 00:26:58,620 --> 00:27:03,780 We've had to devise new ways of handling uniquely, not one, 254 00:27:03,815 --> 00:27:07,540 but the two most powerful proton beams ever created. 255 00:27:10,500 --> 00:27:15,940 There'll be a beam of protons going that way in that pipe at almost the speed of light, 256 00:27:15,975 --> 00:27:19,625 another beam of protons going that way in that pipe, 257 00:27:19,660 --> 00:27:25,940 at almost the speed of light and they'll cross inside Atlas and recreate the conditions 258 00:27:25,975 --> 00:27:30,260 that were present just after the beginning of the universe. 259 00:27:30,295 --> 00:27:32,425 Fantastic. 260 00:27:32,460 --> 00:27:37,785 A ring of 9,500 super-conducting magnets has been designed 261 00:27:37,820 --> 00:27:43,060 to safely contain and control the direction of the proton beams. 262 00:27:43,095 --> 00:27:47,825 13,000 amps of current to the magnets, 263 00:27:47,860 --> 00:27:55,740 1.9 Kelvin minus 271 degrees, colder than the space between the galaxies to cool the magnets down 264 00:27:55,775 --> 00:28:00,780 and then the two beam pipes, one there and one there. 265 00:28:01,900 --> 00:28:08,260 All joined up, these magnets make a collider four times longer than Fermilab's Tevatron. 266 00:28:09,340 --> 00:28:14,265 To put the scale of the experiment in context, each circuit the protons make 267 00:28:14,300 --> 00:28:21,660 is the same distance as the half-way mark from England to France along the Channel Tunnel 268 00:28:21,695 --> 00:28:25,100 and they'll do this 11,000 times a second. 269 00:28:34,380 --> 00:28:39,500 To understand how we hope to transform two tiny protons 270 00:28:39,535 --> 00:28:44,620 into a massive Higgs boson requires the help of a genius. 271 00:28:46,660 --> 00:28:51,900 Einstein's astonishing insight into the connection between matter 272 00:28:51,935 --> 00:28:57,780 and energy is the engine which drives all particle physics. 273 00:28:58,460 --> 00:29:02,345 His theory used just five characters 274 00:29:02,380 --> 00:29:07,420 but with them he had shown us the way to a modern form of alchemy. 275 00:29:09,220 --> 00:29:13,025 Einstein's famous equation, E = mc2, 276 00:29:13,060 --> 00:29:17,060 that basically says that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin. 277 00:29:17,095 --> 00:29:20,380 They're basically the same thing and they're interchangeable. 278 00:29:20,415 --> 00:29:23,500 In this idea I think that Einstein was truly the first. 279 00:29:23,535 --> 00:29:25,425 Mass is just a form of energy. 280 00:29:25,460 --> 00:29:28,225 That was a very deep insight of Einstein. 281 00:29:28,260 --> 00:29:33,825 There's absolutely no question. And there was no precedent for that idea. 282 00:29:33,860 --> 00:29:39,100 One thing we take for granted as particle physicists is that we can convert energy into mass. 283 00:29:39,135 --> 00:29:43,025 We do it all the time. That's how the LHC essentially works. 284 00:29:43,060 --> 00:29:47,105 It speeds protons around faster and faster, gives them more and more energy 285 00:29:47,140 --> 00:29:52,540 and then smashes them together, and the idea is to make new particles, like the Higgs boson, for example, 286 00:29:52,575 --> 00:29:59,340 that's many, many tens or even hundreds of times heavier than the protons that collided to make it. 287 00:30:02,580 --> 00:30:08,620 So Einstein's most famous equation is at the heart of the hunt for the Higgs particle. 288 00:30:08,655 --> 00:30:13,700 In effect, the Large Hadron Collider is a relativity machine. 289 00:30:15,300 --> 00:30:21,900 When the ultra high-speed protons smash into one another, they'll have phenomenal amounts of energy. 290 00:30:24,020 --> 00:30:28,460 Each collision can produce hundreds of new particles. 291 00:30:28,495 --> 00:30:32,417 For a moment, we've created a mini Big Bang. 292 00:30:32,452 --> 00:30:36,305 It's in these "events", as they're known, 293 00:30:36,340 --> 00:30:42,140 that we hope for a fleeting moment that the massive Higgs particle will be seen 294 00:30:42,175 --> 00:30:46,260 for the first time in 13.7 billion years. 295 00:30:47,980 --> 00:30:53,060 These will be the highest-energy collisions we've ever made. 296 00:30:53,095 --> 00:30:55,660 It's led some to wonder if we know what we're doing. 297 00:31:02,700 --> 00:31:07,260 One of the wildest speculations is that the LHC will be capable 298 00:31:07,295 --> 00:31:11,180 of creating black holes that will devour the Earth. 299 00:31:14,220 --> 00:31:17,705 I get page after page of e-mails saying, 300 00:31:17,740 --> 00:31:21,385 "You maniac, you're going to destroy the planet!" 301 00:31:21,420 --> 00:31:24,720 What do you say to these people? You must get the same e-mails. 302 00:31:24,755 --> 00:31:28,020 I've seen that too. It's what everybody wants to know about 303 00:31:28,055 --> 00:31:30,825 cos it's such a cool idea, right? Here we have LHC, 304 00:31:30,860 --> 00:31:34,660 looking at the universe at the earliest time. What if it could make black holes? 305 00:31:34,695 --> 00:31:37,557 Wow! Two interesting things happening at the same time. 306 00:31:37,592 --> 00:31:40,420 But personally speaking I think it's incredibly unlikely. 307 00:31:40,455 --> 00:31:43,037 I don't think there's any way they can be made. 308 00:31:43,072 --> 00:31:45,585 Don't forget, people take this very seriously. 309 00:31:45,620 --> 00:31:48,985 When there was this theory that came out that we could make black holes, 310 00:31:49,020 --> 00:31:53,900 CERN took it so seriously that they made this special risk assessment, really just to make sure 311 00:31:53,935 --> 00:31:58,620 that there wasn't going to be anything untoward happening. So no-one need worry. 312 00:31:58,655 --> 00:32:02,237 I really think that there's absolutely no way we are going 313 00:32:02,272 --> 00:32:05,820 to make anything like that. It's just too strange a theory. 314 00:32:06,860 --> 00:32:11,740 Even if black holes do show up, they will not destroy the Earth. 315 00:32:11,775 --> 00:32:16,585 'Much more likely is that the LHC will create Higgs particles 316 00:32:16,620 --> 00:32:22,020 'and we've had to go to extraordinary lengths to be sure of detecting them. ' 317 00:32:22,055 --> 00:32:27,225 Not one, but four colossal particle detectors have been installed 318 00:32:27,260 --> 00:32:31,940 around the ring to take pictures of what happens when protons collide. 319 00:32:37,500 --> 00:32:41,780 Early particle detectors also took photographs of similar events. 320 00:32:41,815 --> 00:32:44,785 It's these pictures that first captured 321 00:32:44,820 --> 00:32:48,160 the fundamental particles in the Standard Model. 322 00:32:48,195 --> 00:32:51,500 Here is evidence for a neutrino caught on film. 323 00:32:54,900 --> 00:32:58,900 This was the first glimpse of the W boson at CERN in the 1980s. 324 00:33:01,420 --> 00:33:04,420 And the Z boson's scientific debut. 325 00:33:06,460 --> 00:33:08,900 But the one missing picture, 326 00:33:09,060 --> 00:33:12,820 the one that would go on the wall if we find it, is the Higgs boson. 327 00:33:12,980 --> 00:33:14,100 the one that would go on the wall if we find it, is the Higgs boson. 328 00:33:17,100 --> 00:33:21,060 The reason it's been so elusive is to do with its mass. 329 00:33:22,660 --> 00:33:27,100 Our theories predict that the Higgs particle is immensely heavy 330 00:33:27,135 --> 00:33:30,140 and it's a general rule in particle physics 331 00:33:30,175 --> 00:33:32,985 that heavy particles are unstable. 332 00:33:33,020 --> 00:33:37,020 They simply fall apart into lighter particles. 333 00:33:37,055 --> 00:33:40,465 So if the Higgs is a real part of nature, 334 00:33:40,500 --> 00:33:44,580 it would have long ago vanished from the early universe. 335 00:33:44,615 --> 00:33:48,220 And today, even if we manage to recreate the Higgs, 336 00:33:48,255 --> 00:33:51,220 it'll disappear... 337 00:33:51,255 --> 00:33:53,660 .. before we can see it. 338 00:33:55,380 --> 00:33:59,785 Instead, we'll be hunting for its decay artefacts, 339 00:33:59,820 --> 00:34:05,620 other Standard Model particles like W and Z bosons, quarks and muons. 340 00:34:05,655 --> 00:34:10,737 This is a simulation of a single proton/proton collision at the LHC. 341 00:34:10,772 --> 00:34:15,820 It's actually the simulation of the production of a Higgs particle. 342 00:34:15,855 --> 00:34:18,180 Now, the Higgs particle you don't see, of course. 343 00:34:18,215 --> 00:34:21,097 It just decays in a fraction of a second. 344 00:34:21,132 --> 00:34:24,356 But what you do see is the smoking gun, 345 00:34:24,391 --> 00:34:27,545 in this case, two very clear red tracks, 346 00:34:27,580 --> 00:34:30,665 these two particles here, called muons, 347 00:34:30,700 --> 00:34:34,060 that have gone straight out to the very edges of the detector. 348 00:34:35,940 --> 00:34:40,660 And if we see not just one collision like this, but maybe 10, maybe 100, 349 00:34:40,695 --> 00:34:43,980 then we'll have discovered the Higgs and for the first time 350 00:34:44,015 --> 00:34:47,540 we'll understand the origin of mass in the universe. 351 00:34:52,380 --> 00:34:55,225 That is if the experiment works. 352 00:34:55,260 --> 00:35:01,460 Switching on the planet's largest particle collider is an anxious time for everyone. 353 00:35:05,020 --> 00:35:08,780 The sheer magnitude of this complex machine 354 00:35:08,815 --> 00:35:11,225 and the power in the beam 355 00:35:11,260 --> 00:35:14,825 is something that nobody's ever done in the world, 356 00:35:14,860 --> 00:35:19,540 and we have to not forget anything important that we destroy something. 357 00:35:24,780 --> 00:35:28,745 It takes months to cool each section of the LHC down 358 00:35:28,780 --> 00:35:34,420 to its operating temperature of less than minus 271 degrees Celsius, 359 00:35:34,455 --> 00:35:38,620 no mean feat since this is colder than deep space. 360 00:35:41,140 --> 00:35:47,340 And if anything fails, it'll be a major setback in the search for the Higgs. 361 00:35:49,580 --> 00:35:55,700 It would take us two, three months to repair that part of the machine, even though it's based on a sector basis, 362 00:35:55,735 --> 00:35:59,185 and it takes enormous time to warm up the whole sector 363 00:35:59,220 --> 00:36:03,940 of 3.3 kilometres, the cryogenic, so there is a lot of time issues involved. 364 00:36:03,975 --> 00:36:08,857 Even one week is too long so certainly two, three months is very long. 365 00:36:08,892 --> 00:36:13,740 People are waiting for beam, waiting for physics. We can't afford that. 366 00:36:14,780 --> 00:36:18,305 So CERN's management decided last year to cancel 367 00:36:18,340 --> 00:36:22,220 an engineering run scheduled to test the entire ring. 368 00:36:23,300 --> 00:36:28,380 Instead of beginning slowly with some safe but dull low-energy collisions, 369 00:36:28,415 --> 00:36:32,620 the machine's first run will accelerate particles 370 00:36:32,655 --> 00:36:35,620 to high energies straight away. 371 00:36:36,740 --> 00:36:41,140 If it works, this incredible machine, this vast effort 372 00:36:41,175 --> 00:36:44,865 of thousands of scientists and billions of Euros 373 00:36:44,900 --> 00:36:49,300 is certain to change our understanding of the universe. 374 00:36:52,340 --> 00:36:56,040 If the Higgs exists, then it'll be created here 375 00:36:56,075 --> 00:36:59,705 in the centre of Atlas over the next few years. 376 00:36:59,740 --> 00:37:05,580 If we don't see it, then it wouldn't help to build a bigger machine and a bigger accelerator. 377 00:37:05,615 --> 00:37:10,140 It really means that the God particle doesn't exist. 378 00:37:14,700 --> 00:37:18,980 And for some theorists, finding nothing at the LHC 379 00:37:19,015 --> 00:37:22,220 is actually the most exciting prospect. 380 00:37:25,660 --> 00:37:30,340 It can be argued that the most interesting discovery at the LHC 381 00:37:30,375 --> 00:37:33,197 would be that we cannot find the Higgs, 382 00:37:33,232 --> 00:37:35,985 proving practically that it isn't there. 383 00:37:36,020 --> 00:37:40,225 That would mean that we really haven't understood something, 384 00:37:40,260 --> 00:37:44,300 very deeply not understood something. That's a very good scene for science. 385 00:37:44,335 --> 00:37:47,377 Revolutions sometimes come from the fact that you hit a wall 386 00:37:47,412 --> 00:37:50,420 and you realise that you truly haven't understood anything. 387 00:37:59,620 --> 00:38:03,905 The theorists may long for a revolution but most of us 388 00:38:03,940 --> 00:38:08,180 are pretty sure that the Higgs boson is a real part of nature. 389 00:38:11,660 --> 00:38:17,300 What are the chances we're ever going to solve the mystery of mass? 390 00:38:35,340 --> 00:38:38,680 For the first time in a generation 391 00:38:38,715 --> 00:38:41,985 we stand at a crossroads in physics 392 00:38:42,020 --> 00:38:46,265 and that's what makes this place so exciting, 393 00:38:46,300 --> 00:38:51,340 because nobody knows what the next steps are in our quest 394 00:38:51,375 --> 00:38:53,705 to understand the universe, 395 00:38:53,740 --> 00:38:57,540 but I'm convinced that this place will show us the way 396 00:38:57,575 --> 00:39:00,300 to new physics. 397 00:39:19,900 --> 00:39:23,140 Even if the Higgs boson does turn up at the launch party, 398 00:39:23,175 --> 00:39:27,225 work at the Big Bang machine won't stop. 399 00:39:27,260 --> 00:39:31,820 Beyond the mystery of mass lies a much thornier challenge 400 00:39:31,855 --> 00:39:36,380 for the Standard Model, a puzzle that defeated even Einstein. 401 00:39:46,260 --> 00:39:49,780 Why does the world appear to obey different rules? 402 00:39:50,260 --> 00:39:53,820 There's the world of the small, the quantum world, 403 00:39:53,855 --> 00:39:56,677 that the Standard Model explains so well, 404 00:39:56,712 --> 00:39:59,586 and then there's the world of the large, 405 00:39:59,621 --> 00:40:02,425 the world of stars and planets and galaxies. 406 00:40:02,460 --> 00:40:06,300 The Standard Model has nothing to say about how they interact. 407 00:40:10,340 --> 00:40:13,580 And it's a problem we've yet to solve. 408 00:40:26,300 --> 00:40:31,305 When you want to understand the way the universe has evolved - 409 00:40:31,340 --> 00:40:35,660 so what happened to it straight after it began and how it got to how it is today - 410 00:40:35,695 --> 00:40:39,340 you've not only got to know about how many galaxies there are, 411 00:40:39,375 --> 00:40:42,100 the way that stars work and the way that planets form... 412 00:40:44,500 --> 00:40:48,580 .. you've also got to know what the fundamental building blocks 413 00:40:48,615 --> 00:40:51,500 of all those things are and how they interact together. 414 00:40:53,660 --> 00:40:57,480 And in particular it's not only the stuff that's in the universe, 415 00:40:57,515 --> 00:41:01,300 but the way that stuff talks to other stuff. It's about the forces. 416 00:41:02,380 --> 00:41:07,460 If these forces didn't act on matter, nothing would happen. 417 00:41:07,495 --> 00:41:09,905 The stars wouldn't shine, 418 00:41:09,940 --> 00:41:14,740 the atoms that make up the planetary bodies would fall apart. 419 00:41:16,860 --> 00:41:19,540 The universe would disintegrate. 420 00:41:22,660 --> 00:41:27,860 It's the forces in the Standard Model which hold everything together. 421 00:41:30,340 --> 00:41:34,040 There are four forces that we know of in the universe at the moment, 422 00:41:34,075 --> 00:41:37,740 the thing called the strong force which sticks nuclei together... 423 00:41:37,775 --> 00:41:41,260 This strong force is what binds the quarks together 424 00:41:41,295 --> 00:41:44,705 to form the nucleus at the heart of the atom. 425 00:41:44,740 --> 00:41:49,460 There's electro-magnetism, that kind of quite familiar force to everyone. 426 00:41:49,495 --> 00:41:55,100 This force holds the electrons in orbit around the atomic nucleus. 427 00:41:56,180 --> 00:41:59,760 And a thing called the weak force which is quite unfamiliar 428 00:41:59,795 --> 00:42:03,340 but it allows the sun to shine, so it's incredibly important. 429 00:42:04,420 --> 00:42:09,820 The weak force explains why some atoms undergo radioactive decay, 430 00:42:09,855 --> 00:42:13,540 the process which fuels every star in the universe. 431 00:42:21,060 --> 00:42:24,820 But, crucially, one force is missing from the Standard Model. 432 00:42:33,140 --> 00:42:35,140 Gravity. 433 00:42:38,340 --> 00:42:41,060 In the everyday world you and I inhabit, 434 00:42:41,095 --> 00:42:43,740 clearly gravity is all around us. 435 00:42:47,460 --> 00:42:50,760 It's what keeps you in your chair at home, 436 00:42:50,795 --> 00:42:54,060 it's what keeps Earth in orbit around the Sun 437 00:42:54,095 --> 00:42:57,020 and it's what holds our galaxy together. 438 00:43:06,300 --> 00:43:10,260 And Einstein too thought gravity was pretty important. 439 00:43:11,340 --> 00:43:15,400 His General Theory of Relativity beautifully describes 440 00:43:15,435 --> 00:43:19,460 how every celestial body interacts with every other body 441 00:43:19,495 --> 00:43:21,940 through this force. 442 00:43:27,060 --> 00:43:31,420 'The universe on the grand scale can be entirely explained 443 00:43:31,455 --> 00:43:34,660 'by Einstein's equations. ' 444 00:43:36,420 --> 00:43:38,820 But there's a problem. 445 00:43:42,220 --> 00:43:46,820 The moment we try to merge General Relativity with the Standard Model, 446 00:43:46,855 --> 00:43:50,185 we encounter immense difficulties, 447 00:43:50,220 --> 00:43:55,100 so immense, in fact, that nobody's been able to work out how to do it. 448 00:43:55,135 --> 00:43:59,497 They're completely incompatible pictures of the universe. 449 00:43:59,532 --> 00:44:03,860 The problem is they're pictures of the same universe. 450 00:44:03,895 --> 00:44:06,180 Something has to be wrong. 451 00:44:07,260 --> 00:44:13,260 The Standard Model is incredibly powerful at describing the world of the small, the quantum world. 452 00:44:15,860 --> 00:44:21,620 But as soon as you try to add gravity into the Standard Model equations, they break. 453 00:44:24,380 --> 00:44:28,700 Einstein was searching for just one set of equations 454 00:44:28,735 --> 00:44:32,540 that would work on both planets and particles, 455 00:44:32,575 --> 00:44:36,060 nothing less than a theory of everything. 456 00:44:37,740 --> 00:44:41,465 This was Einstein's greatest failure. 457 00:44:41,500 --> 00:44:45,940 At the smallest distance scales, his theory just falls apart. 458 00:44:47,020 --> 00:44:51,660 Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life trying to rectify the problem 459 00:44:51,695 --> 00:44:53,820 but he never succeeded. 460 00:45:01,620 --> 00:45:07,980 '53 years after Einstein's death his theory of everything still eludes us. ' 461 00:45:16,620 --> 00:45:19,620 This is CERN's theory corridor. 462 00:45:21,700 --> 00:45:25,060 Inside each room is a theoretical physicist. 463 00:45:28,620 --> 00:45:31,820 And inside the head of each theoretical physicist 464 00:45:31,855 --> 00:45:35,380 is a different conception of our universe. 465 00:45:38,780 --> 00:45:43,980 'The first physicist to coin the term "a theory of everything" 466 00:45:44,015 --> 00:45:46,580 'was CERN's John Ellis. ' 467 00:45:48,580 --> 00:45:51,705 When we talk about a theory of everything, 468 00:45:51,740 --> 00:45:56,900 we mean a theory of the fundamental constituents 469 00:45:56,935 --> 00:46:00,545 of matter and the forces between them. 470 00:46:00,580 --> 00:46:07,620 You can somehow think of it as a sort of cosmic genetic code, right? 471 00:46:07,655 --> 00:46:10,865 In fact, the Standard Model already you can regard 472 00:46:10,900 --> 00:46:16,545 as being a sort of genetic code for making up the regular visible matter in the universe. 473 00:46:16,580 --> 00:46:21,580 All the visible matter in the universe is made up out of the same quarks and electrons and things 474 00:46:21,615 --> 00:46:23,905 that we can measure in the laboratory. 475 00:46:23,940 --> 00:46:29,940 Somehow or other, these things can be combined in all sorts of ways 476 00:46:29,975 --> 00:46:35,060 to make people as complicated and bizarre as you or me. 477 00:46:36,660 --> 00:46:42,500 The search for this cosmic genetic code is the ultimate quest for physicists. 478 00:46:42,535 --> 00:46:46,220 We want to finish what Einstein started. 479 00:46:50,540 --> 00:46:54,980 You might wonder why we believe the baffling complexity of the universe 480 00:46:55,015 --> 00:46:59,065 can ever be reduced to a single theory. 481 00:46:59,100 --> 00:47:02,660 The answer can be found back at the Big Bang. 482 00:47:04,500 --> 00:47:09,580 If we journey back through time, the universe shrinks, 483 00:47:09,615 --> 00:47:14,660 galaxies disappear and the stars evaporate into gas. 484 00:47:18,780 --> 00:47:26,660 As we draw to within a couple of hundred thousand years of the Big Bang, the universe becomes opaque. 485 00:47:29,780 --> 00:47:34,060 Eventually we approach the moment when atoms vanish. 486 00:47:36,980 --> 00:47:40,060 Now things get really strange. 487 00:47:41,660 --> 00:47:46,060 Seconds away from the Big Bang, the atomic nuclei break apart. 488 00:47:49,180 --> 00:47:52,545 The universe is now so small and so hot 489 00:47:52,580 --> 00:47:57,540 that only the naked fundamental particles of the Standard Model exist. 490 00:48:02,140 --> 00:48:04,980 This is the time of the Higgs. 491 00:48:06,940 --> 00:48:11,980 It's at this time that the LHC will spend most of its working life. 492 00:48:15,140 --> 00:48:20,940 This is what this machine was designed to do, to open a window onto the time 493 00:48:20,975 --> 00:48:23,985 when the Higgs ruled the universe. 494 00:48:24,020 --> 00:48:29,340 But some of us believe that it may give us a glimpse of something even more profound. 495 00:48:31,940 --> 00:48:36,940 Beyond the Higgs, the universe continues to condense. 496 00:48:36,975 --> 00:48:40,220 Eventually even the fundamental particles 497 00:48:40,255 --> 00:48:42,745 of the Standard Model disappear. 498 00:48:42,780 --> 00:48:46,300 We are approaching the moment of the Big Bang itself. 499 00:48:46,335 --> 00:48:49,785 In the instant of creation there must have been a time 500 00:48:49,820 --> 00:48:55,180 when the universe was nothing more than a single, unimaginably hot, 501 00:48:55,215 --> 00:48:58,185 fantastically small entity, 502 00:48:58,220 --> 00:49:01,940 the entire universe was made of just one thing, 503 00:49:01,975 --> 00:49:04,460 pregnant with possibilities. 504 00:49:07,820 --> 00:49:11,260 Remarkably, we have a highly speculative theory 505 00:49:11,295 --> 00:49:13,940 that attempts to describe this era. 506 00:49:13,975 --> 00:49:16,700 It's called String Theory. 507 00:49:18,140 --> 00:49:23,500 The String Theory concept is that particles, the objects that exist, 508 00:49:23,535 --> 00:49:26,940 are actually vibrations of a single string 509 00:49:26,975 --> 00:49:31,425 and like, like the notes of a piano, 510 00:49:31,460 --> 00:49:36,660 they vibrate once or twice or three times, and each note corresponds to a different particle. 511 00:49:36,695 --> 00:49:40,505 So if everything was just a note that you could play on the piano, 512 00:49:40,540 --> 00:49:44,345 a single piano, maybe a single string, that would be a very simple idea. 513 00:49:44,380 --> 00:49:50,220 String theory is certainly the best candidate we have for a theory of everything which would combine 514 00:49:50,255 --> 00:49:54,780 all the different forces, all the different particles and make a decent cup of coffee. 515 00:49:56,980 --> 00:50:00,785 These peculiar strings, if they exist, 516 00:50:00,820 --> 00:50:06,780 are our best attempt to understand what might underpin everything. 517 00:50:06,815 --> 00:50:09,825 They're unimaginably small, 518 00:50:09,860 --> 00:50:13,385 they were the first things in the universe, 519 00:50:13,420 --> 00:50:19,700 and they have multiplied to create every particle we see today. 520 00:50:27,780 --> 00:50:30,900 Incredibly, String Theory may succeed 521 00:50:30,935 --> 00:50:33,900 where the Standard Model fails... 522 00:50:35,180 --> 00:50:38,700 .. because when gravity is added to the Standard Model, 523 00:50:38,735 --> 00:50:42,620 the equations break down and produce infinities. 524 00:50:47,740 --> 00:50:51,905 These horrendous infinite answers come about, 525 00:50:51,940 --> 00:50:56,860 we think, because we're treating the particles as being tiny little points 526 00:50:56,895 --> 00:51:00,137 and when you bring these tiny little points together 527 00:51:00,172 --> 00:51:03,380 the gravitational force becomes incredibly strong 528 00:51:03,415 --> 00:51:05,700 and we don't know how to handle that. 529 00:51:09,100 --> 00:51:13,740 Gravity can become so strong because point like particles 530 00:51:13,775 --> 00:51:17,020 can get infinitely close together... 531 00:51:18,100 --> 00:51:22,420 .. and that means that the gravitational force between them 532 00:51:22,455 --> 00:51:25,220 becomes infinitely strong. 533 00:51:27,340 --> 00:51:31,180 Supposing the particles, instead of being tiny little points, 534 00:51:31,215 --> 00:51:35,665 were sort of warm, fuzzy, extended things, right? 535 00:51:35,700 --> 00:51:41,420 Then you could bring them together and the gravitational force would not blow up in your face. 536 00:51:41,455 --> 00:51:46,420 So maybe that's the answer, maybe particles are not actually points 537 00:51:46,455 --> 00:51:50,700 but actually extended objects, maybe they're pieces of string. 538 00:51:52,300 --> 00:51:57,745 Strange as it may seem, by imagining a universe made of string, 539 00:51:57,780 --> 00:52:03,260 we have a way of creating the extra space that gravity needs to work. 540 00:52:08,380 --> 00:52:12,900 The extraordinary thing about String Theory is that, for the first time 541 00:52:12,935 --> 00:52:16,425 in the history of physics, it offers a bridge 542 00:52:16,460 --> 00:52:21,705 between the two contradictory descriptions of the world we see today - 543 00:52:21,740 --> 00:52:26,860 the Standard Model of particle physics and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. 544 00:52:26,895 --> 00:52:31,185 It's a contender for a theory of everything. 545 00:52:31,220 --> 00:52:36,740 What would Einstein have thought of our current attempts to bring General Relativity into the fold? 546 00:52:36,775 --> 00:52:39,465 What would he have thought of String Theory? 547 00:52:39,500 --> 00:52:44,905 I think he would have been delighted for a while. 548 00:52:44,940 --> 00:52:50,100 That is to say, he would have been fascinated by the beauty of the theory 549 00:52:50,135 --> 00:52:56,337 till he realised that it didn't have any convincing predictions 550 00:52:56,372 --> 00:53:02,540 that we could check now. He would be very unhappy about that. 551 00:53:03,620 --> 00:53:07,065 Einstein would have spurned String Theory 552 00:53:07,100 --> 00:53:12,580 because so far nobody has produced a single prediction that we can put to the test. 553 00:53:12,615 --> 00:53:17,980 It remains an intriguing but unprovable concept. 554 00:53:21,500 --> 00:53:25,745 This is science at its most esoteric. 555 00:53:25,780 --> 00:53:32,745 It's like philosophy, religion even, because all it has going for it is beauty. 556 00:53:32,780 --> 00:53:39,380 We have a mathematical description of the first few moments after creation but nothing more. 557 00:53:40,980 --> 00:53:48,300 To see far enough back in time to discover a string would require a collider the size of our galaxy. 558 00:53:50,380 --> 00:53:56,065 For now, the LHC is as large as it gets, 559 00:53:56,100 --> 00:54:02,340 although perhaps instead of creating a string we can search for one of its most remarkable properties. 560 00:54:06,100 --> 00:54:09,900 The original idea was that, OK if they're not points, maybe they extend out 561 00:54:09,935 --> 00:54:13,700 along some sort of line, might be a curvy line, like a piece of string. 562 00:54:13,735 --> 00:54:16,105 That's named the String Theory. 563 00:54:16,140 --> 00:54:19,660 In fact, people realised that that's not enough. 564 00:54:19,695 --> 00:54:23,145 If they're going to be extended in one dimension, 565 00:54:23,180 --> 00:54:28,020 they're probably extended in two dimensions, maybe three dimensions, maybe more dimensions. 566 00:54:28,055 --> 00:54:34,185 So in fact String Theory nowadays is a bit of a wrong name, right? 567 00:54:34,220 --> 00:54:38,425 And in fact people nowadays often talk about something called M Theory, 568 00:54:38,460 --> 00:54:43,460 which is supposed to contain this idea that particles are not just extended in one dimension 569 00:54:43,495 --> 00:54:46,420 but maybe M for many dimensions. 570 00:54:52,700 --> 00:54:56,100 Multiple dimensions are notoriously difficult to imagine, 571 00:54:56,135 --> 00:54:58,545 let alone detect, 572 00:54:58,580 --> 00:55:03,060 yet one of the wildest hopes is that we might just catch sight 573 00:55:03,095 --> 00:55:06,340 of an extra dimension at the LHC. 574 00:55:07,980 --> 00:55:09,625 Space has three dimensions, 575 00:55:09,660 --> 00:55:14,020 we all know that. But we think that maybe each point of our space 576 00:55:14,055 --> 00:55:18,060 is actually not a point but a sort of little sphere 577 00:55:18,095 --> 00:55:21,105 with extra dimensions inside. 578 00:55:21,140 --> 00:55:25,160 And if we could penetrate into these little spheres at the energies 579 00:55:25,195 --> 00:55:29,787 that we are exploring, maybe we'll find these extra dimensions. 580 00:55:29,822 --> 00:55:34,380 That idea of extra dimensions is very connected with String Theory. 581 00:55:41,260 --> 00:55:45,225 If we do detect another dimension at the LHC, 582 00:55:45,260 --> 00:55:52,440 then we'll be able to show that the universe is at least a place where strings might feel at home, 583 00:55:52,475 --> 00:55:59,620 a universe in which gravity and the other forces can harmoniously co-exist in our mathematics. 584 00:56:00,660 --> 00:56:07,140 We'll be one step closer to completing our story of creation. 585 00:56:08,780 --> 00:56:11,825 This is maybe the most important thing about the LHC. 586 00:56:11,860 --> 00:56:16,220 For a long time now, we've been speculating about String Theory, 587 00:56:16,255 --> 00:56:18,265 about extra dimensions, 588 00:56:18,300 --> 00:56:21,940 but we haven't had hard facts to confront them with. 589 00:56:25,300 --> 00:56:31,140 Now, if we find extra dimensions at the LHC, that would be kind of a hint 590 00:56:31,175 --> 00:56:34,657 that String Theory might be right, but it wouldn't be a proof. 591 00:56:34,692 --> 00:56:38,105 It would be, if you like, a smoking gun for String Theory. 592 00:56:38,140 --> 00:56:41,940 But it would encourage us to think that maybe we were on the right track. 593 00:56:45,100 --> 00:56:48,420 It would be a tremendous breakthrough, 594 00:56:48,455 --> 00:56:51,157 but with today's technology 595 00:56:51,192 --> 00:56:53,860 finding another dimension 596 00:56:53,895 --> 00:56:56,660 is highly unlikely. 597 00:57:01,300 --> 00:57:07,225 The LHC will allow us to explore the earliest times in the universe. 598 00:57:07,260 --> 00:57:13,900 Within a few years it will tell us whether the Higgs boson, the God particle, really exists. 599 00:57:16,460 --> 00:57:21,460 And it may even tell us that there are extra dimensions in the universe. 600 00:57:21,495 --> 00:57:23,825 This is exploration. 601 00:57:23,860 --> 00:57:27,940 It's a journey to the very edge of our understanding. 602 00:57:33,660 --> 00:57:36,420 Today is the moment. 603 00:57:37,980 --> 00:57:41,705 We don't know what the LHC is going to discover. 604 00:57:41,740 --> 00:57:46,940 We've got all these ideas. They can't all be right, a lot of them are going to be proved to be wrong. 605 00:57:46,975 --> 00:57:49,985 But if just one of them gets proved to be right, 606 00:57:50,020 --> 00:57:54,820 then it's going to be the most exciting event in my scientific lifetime. 607 00:57:57,420 --> 00:58:03,260 And, for me, that's what science at the Large Hadron Collider is all about. 608 00:58:03,295 --> 00:58:07,260 It represents the noblest side of humanity - 609 00:58:07,295 --> 00:58:10,620 our need to know. 610 00:58:33,380 --> 00:58:37,020 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd. 611 00:58:37,055 --> 00:58:40,660 E- mail subtitling@bbc. co. uk