I've been doing these Space Fan News videos
of a while now and from time to time, one
of the things I say to put an exclamation
point on a particular discovery or exciting
bit of news is I'll say, "just like downtown".
And many of you get it, but there's always
a certain percentage of space fans out there
who get frustrated and leave comments saying,
'will someone please tell me what just like
downtown means?'
Well, setting aside for the moment the fact
that you can just google it, this week I have
the perfect example of what I mean when I
say 'just like downtown'.
By now, you've all heard the announcement
from the CERN folks running the Large Hadron
Collider that they've found the elusive Higgs
Boson.
Or, as they always want to add, something
just like it.
I guess they want to cover their butts, but
come on, they found it.
Here's the money plot:
This is the ATLAS result for the two-photon
channel and here you can see a beautifully
clear bump in the data at 126 GeV.
That peak means the collider ran into something
at that energy, which is the spot they expected
to run into a Higgs particle.
And the height of this bump is twice as large
as expected, which could be huge news, but
Sean Carroll points out that the error at
that height is substantial so it may be too
early to make anything of it.
So as you can see here, they found the Higgs
boson, or as Sean says, a Higgs.
From this experiment, we still can't tell
if its a standard model-type vanilla Higgs
boson or some special case.
But it's there, no mistaking it this time.
OK, so what's a Higgs Boson and why do you
care?
This Higgs Boson is the particle associated
with a Higgs Field and that field permeates
everything, the entire universe, including
the vacuum of space.
If you're a particle and you're in this field,
which you are because it's everywhere, like
the space-time of the universe, then how much
mass you have depends on how well you interact
with that field.
Lighter particles like the electron don't
interact as well with the field and so they
have less mass and larger particles, like
the proton, interact with it more and get
more mass as a result.
So how well you interact with that field,
determines how much mass you have.
To be a little more precise, as I said, the
announcement this week said only that they
found a particle where the Higgs is supposed
to be.
They don't know anything more about it, like
whether it has a spin or any of its other
properties.
But they found it, right where it should be
and the signal was twice the expected size.
Pretty conclusive stuff.
Now, why do you care?
Well, this is where just like downtown come
in.
This discovery is the ultimate example of
Just Like Downtown.
Here we have a case where scientists have
a theory about what the Universe should be
like, they found all these particles explaining
what we observe in the universe and they came
up with something called the Standard Model.
Everything's going great - the standard model
is explaining everything we observe around
us wonderfully, but there was this one piece
missing, one particle left unseen and undiscovered.
If they never found it, then all our theories
are wrong and we have to start all over.
So here we are: we think we have a good picture
of the way things work in the universe, but
something's missing.
it should be there, but where is it?
Turns out it's gonna be hard to find - and
expensive.
So they built this hugely expensive machine
to try to find the missing piece.
Billions of dollars… just to make sure we
know what we think we know and to discover
something never seen before.
Now you may think money like that is better
spent on other things but you'd be wrong.
It is vital that we continue to explore our
universe and make new discoveries - even if
they are expensive - because it is only when
we embark on things like this that humans
beings really grow and prosper in meaningful
ways.
One surefire path to doom is to stop seeking
answers to questions just because they're
expensive.
Think about it, we've picked all the low-hanging
fruit the easy questions have been answered,
all questions going forward are going to be
harder and more expensive to try and answer
and we can't just stop now, we've come too
far.
Science will always be our first, best path
to the prosperity, the success of our species
and our planet.
So they build this thing in Switzerland to
find a really hard thing.
Lots of smart people said the particle should
be there, others were not so sure.
We spent, we built and we looked, and on July
4th 2012, they announced:
There it is.
Just like it should have been.
Just like downtown.
So, when I say Just Like Downtown, what I
mean is that things are going just as they
should, everything's easy peesy japanesey.
I hope this helps many of you understand what
I mean when I say that.
The real irritating thing to me about this
whole thing is that we could have found this
out a decade ago right in the United States
if Congress had just paid for the Superconducting
Supercollider.
If you've never heard of that, do a google
search on it.
It's downright embarrassing.
I think Neil Degrasse Tyson said it best when
he sent out this tweet: "On the day we reserve
to tell ourselves America is great - July
4th - Europe reminds us that we suck at science."
Congrats to all a CERN for taking the lead
on this and for doing excellent science, now
you guys can sit back and wait for the nobel
prizes.
And thank you for showing one more thing about
the universe we didn't know yesterday.
Next, now that particle physicists get their
new particle, it's time for cosmologists to
get theirs: dark matter.
We need to figure out what it is and what
it's made of and this week, we've made a little
more progress.
Jörg Dietrich of the University Observatory
Munich, in Germany and other astronomers studying
the two galaxy clusters Abell 222 and 223
have found that they are connected by a dark
matter filament, forming a gravitational bridge
between the two clusters.
They found it using our old friend gravitational
lensing, one of the best tools we have for
finding dark matter.
We can only dark matter when light coming
from very distant galaxies travels through
it and is bent or distorted by the gravity
of whatever it's made of and there's no other
stars or galaxies that could have caused it.
Many astronomers thought they'd have to wait
for telescopes like the Webb Space Telescope
to be able to find filaments like these, but
this team was able to benefit from a rare
spatial geometry which amplified the signal
between the two clusters.
Abell 222 and Abell 223 are arranged in such
a way that they appear very close together
against the sky, but in reality one is farther
away than the other along our line of sight.
This means that most of the mass of the system
is condensed into one small area of the sky
so any light arriving at Earth from behind
those clusters will have to pass though them
both, which boosts the gravitational lensing
signal.
According to Jörg Dietrich, "This is the
first time [a dark matter filament] has been
convincingly detected from its gravitational
lensing effect.
It's a resounding confirmation of the standard
theory of structure formation of the universe.
And it's a confirmation people didn't think
was possible at this point."
Well, that's it for this week space fans,
thank you for watching and as always, Keep
Looking Up!
