The world of experimental particle physics just underwent a couple milestones that you are completely unaware of 👀:
📌 First, the CERN Council unanimously approved an updated strategy for how Europe (and everyone, to some extent) will explore the inner cosmos in the coming decades. This includes long-term plans to measure precise details of the Higgs boson and to explore high-energy realms for physics beyond our current model.
📌Secondly, one of the LHC experiments just published its 1000th paper.
So, what do you care? 🧐 We are in the middle of a pandemic, our economies face complete collapse, and there are mad idiots in charge of the largest, most influential countries on the planet. Will fundamental research solve these problems? Well, yes, actually.
Human beings have certain basic requirements to survive: we eat food, seek shelter, make babies and explore the world around us. 🤓 This last point drives us to improve our world not only for ourselves, but to seek solutions to the problems future generations will face. It is what gives us art, literature and science. These are not optional pleasures, but are essential for the survival of our species. They are why we are capable of developing a vaccine for COVID-19, for example.
👩🔬Steven Goldfarb will briefly describe the slow, careful and sometimes painful process scientists in the large international collaborations of the LHC follow from data taking to analysis to publication. That is, to measure truth.
He will then give a rough overview of what these thousands of pieces of information have taught us about our universe, so far, and give a glimpse of what we will be looking for with the upgraded LHC and beyond.
In the discussion session that follows, we can share ideas on how to awaken our species from its stupor, to revive our understanding — and hence trust — of science, and to rebuild our economy (and our souls) in a sustainable manner. Alternatively, we could share virtual beers 🙂
Steven Goldfarb is a particle physicist from the University of Melbourne working on the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. He has served as Muon Software Coordinator, Outreach Coordinator, and contributed to early studies in the search for the Higgs boson.
Steve currently chairs the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG), coordinates University of Michigan undergraduate programmes at CERN, serves on the QuarkNet Advisory Board, and is an American Physical Society Fellow, serving on the Committee for Informing the Public. Steve frequently gives public talks on science, discovery and international collaboration, co-wrote a popular TED Ed video “The basics of the Higgs boson” and, most importantly, fronts the world-famous Canettes Blues Band.