All language subtitles for Through the Wormhole S04E01 Is There a God [pseudo]

Freeman: Scientists have been
hunting it for 40 years,

the key that will unlock
the secrets of the universe.

And now they've found it.

Can the Higgs boson
really tell us

how all creation
came into being?

Do we owe our existence to

something so elusive
yet so powerful?

Is there a God particle?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos
lie through the wormhole.

Subtital By RA_One

How did we get to be here
in this universe?

Scientists say our universe
began as a burst of pure energy,

but somehow, that energy
transformed itself into matter

which eventually became
stars, planets,

and the stuff that
makes up you and me.

Instead of being

a fleeting fireball
gone in an instant,

our universe has stuck around
for billions of years.

Physicists have long suspected
there must be

some invisible force field
spread across the universe

mysteriously turning energy
into solid matter.

Now scientists
have at last proven

that this
theoretical force field is real.

They have produced from it

a subatomic particle
known as the Higgs boson,

the so-called God particle.

Can it explain
the mystery of our creation?

Have you ever
watched a spinning top?

As a kid,
I remember being mesmerized

watching the painted shapes
spinning on mine.

The pattern
became a ghostly blur.

Looked like I could stick
my finger right through it.

But once it stopped moving,
the pattern became solid again.

The solid nature of matter
has long puzzled physicists.

Over the last four decades,

they have wondered
if matter is solid

because of the Higgs boson,

the so-called God particle.

You know what they really
wanted to call it, right?

They wanted to call it
the God [bleep] particle...

You probably can't
put that on TV though.

...given the amount of
time and money we've spent

looking for this thing.

And we've missed it.

"Oh [bleep] damn.
Where is that particle?"

Dan Hooper and Patrick Fox
are theoretical physicists

at the Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory

just outside of Chicago.

Like thousands of physicists,
they have spent their careers

waiting for the Higgs boson
to reveal itself

in high-speed particle-collision
experiments.

It's something we've been
looking for for a long time.

The universe
would be very different

if it weren't for
the God particle.

Physicists believe, in fact,
that there was a brief moment

when the universe
lived without the God particle.

It was
at the beginning of time itself,

long before there were
physicists and arcades.

Imagine this air hockey table
is the entire universe.

When it was born
in the big bang,

physicists think there were only

massless particles
of pure energy.

So, what you can
see here is that

all the particles are moving
around at the same speed,

at the speed of light.

They're all essentially massless
in the whole universe.

But the universe did not
remain that way for very long.

After
only a fraction of a second,

something changed.

Almost like
someone pulled a lever

that made many of the particles
grind to a halt.

At some point,
the Higgs field turned on,

and that made some of
the particles acquire a mass,

which meant they stopped
traveling at the speed of light.

The photons,
the yellow ones,

are zipping around
at the speed of light,

whereas the red and the green
have acquired a mass

thanks to
the Higgs mechanism

and travel more slowly.

Physicists believe that
right after the Big Bang,

the universe began to cool,
and the Higgs field turned on.

Some particles
began to interact with the field

and acquired mass.

Other particles remained
massless bundles of energy.

In the decades for which

scientists have been
smashing together particles

to probe the subatomic world,

they have found
two basic types of particles.

There are fermions,

a group of massive particles
that carry matter,

and there are bosons,

massless particles
that carry force.

Without the existence
of the Higgs,

all particles would be massless.

So, if there was
no Higgs field,

you would have had
these other force carriers.

They would have been
massless,

and therefore,
like the particles of light,

they would move
at the speed of light.

And without these masses,
you can never have

atoms or chemistry or
any of the interesting stuff

we find
in our universe.

The things that you and I
are made up of

wouldn't be able to
clump and coalesce

and slow down.

No structure, no life.
Right.

Boredom.
Yep.

Thanks to the Higgs,

our universe
hung around long enough

for complex structures
likes human life to form.

But why did the matter-creating
Higgs field turn on?

Many scientists,
including Dan and Patrick,

think the sheer violence
of the Big Bang

jostled the field into action.

So, up until now,
I've been

turning the Higgs mechanism
on and off by hand.

But of course,
in the early universe,

it didn't happen
that way.

And just like water
freezes all on its own

when you cool it,

the Higgs mechanism
will turn on all by itself

as the universe cools.

So, this pool cue
is supposed to represent

how unstable the Higgs mechanism
was all by itself.

And as you can see...

Voilà.
...It just falls over.

Scientists think
the Higgs field,

the force that
turned a ball of energy

into our physical universe,

turned on all by itself.

But some will say that
it was no accident,

and it must have been
turned on by a creator.

That mystery of creation
may be answered

if we learn more about
the Higgs field.

Scientists have been trying to
disturb the field enough

to make it produce a Higgs boson
so they can study it.

It's an effort that has made
physicists construct

the most powerful machine
in the history of science,

the Large Hadron Collider,
or the LHC.

Lyn Evans has been
responsible for building

every particle accelerator
at CERN in Geneva

for the past four decades.

All the machines he created
are still working.

In fact, they all work together
in stages.

Each older one
is now responsible for

giving the particles
an incremental push,

packing them
with more and more energy,

and eventually feeding them into
the giant,

17-mile-long ring
that is the LHC.

Evans: I came to CERN in 1969.

My first job was
working on what is called

the dual plasmatron ion source,

which is actually
the source of the protons.

And then, they are accelerated.

From the linear accelerator,

they go into a booster
to get higher energy

and then into
the super proton synchrotron,

which I worked on in the '70s,

and finally into
the Large Hadron Collider.

Freeman:
As particle accelerators

have advanced
over the past few decades,

they have been able to
get particles

to higher and higher energies,

allowing them to create

more and more massive
new particles

with each collision.

The older accelerators
only had enough energy

to smash together two protons
and make a new particle...

Aah! Aah!

...with just double the mass.

But theorists predict
the Higgs weighs

at least 100 times
as much as a proton.

The laws of physics say that

if you give protons
extra kinetic energy,

you can smash them together
to form a new particle

that weighs many times more
than the sum of their parts.

Evans: Well, it all goes back to

the most famous equation
in science,

e=mc squared.

In the LHC, we are
converting energy into mass,

and if you want to
make very heavy objects,

you need a high energy.

Freeman: Think of
particle physicists as golfers

hitting protons
instead of golf balls.

Over the years, they have gotten
better and better clubs.

Evans: To make an analogy,
I think this pitching wedge,

you can think of
as the machines of the '60s.

This will take me
about roughly 120 yards,

something like that,

because it doesn't
have enough energy...

to go very far.

Then, the next one was
the proton-antiproton collider.

The proton-antiproton collider
was much more powerful,

and, yeah,
a bit like a seven iron.

This time, the particles
will get more energy...

...and will go
quite a bit further.

And finally, of course,
now we've got --

at last, we've got the machine

that can produce
the Higgs boson.

And if you want
an analogy with that,

this is my faithful driver.

So, here we go.

And that really moves it.

Freeman: Making a particle
as heavy as the Higgs

requires far more energy

than any previous accelerator
has ever produced.

Lyn and the enormous
team of engineers at CERN

have had to push
their technology to the limits.

Evans: Every time
the particles come around,

they get a little kick,

increasing their energy
incrementally

until we get up to
the full energy reality.

Freeman: Physicists finally
have the power they need.

But capturing and studying
the Higgs boson

is about more than brute force.

It's a quest to
pull a needle from a haystack --

a haystack made of trillions of
subatomic particles.

For most religious believers,

God cannot be seen or heard.

But signs of his or her presence
are felt all around us.

The Higgs boson
is almost as elusive,

which is why the chase for it
has been so challenging.

The Higgs can
pop in and out of existence

in one billionth
of a trillionth of a second

and only leaves behind
the faintest of evidence

that it was ever there.

So, how do scientists
find something

that can never be seen?

When physicist Joe Incandela
was a kid,

his mom and dad hoped he would
become a glass sculptor.

Incandela: I was very much
interested in art as a kid.

My parents encouraged that
very strongly.

They'd been
very interested in art.

And I discovered
one of my favorite glassblowers

was a chemist,

and so, that kind of
gave me an excuse

to go to college
and study chemistry.

And so, when I took chemistry,
I had to take physics.

And that just
immediately hit me.

This was really fascinating.

This was
the stuff I wanted to study.

Freeman:
Joe is now the leader of

one of the two major experiments
at the LHC.

He directs thousands of
physicists from around the world

who are all on the same quest

to figure out how and why

we and everything we know exist.

Incandela: We're really
trying to understand

our place in the universe,
you know?

What is everything made of,

and how did it
become what it is?

These sort of
fundamental questions.

Freeman: Joe believes the LHC
will answer these questions.

The collisions at the LHC
recreate the energy conditions

that happened
just after the Big Bang.

Scientists are trying to
gain some insight

into the moment
when the Higgs field turned on

and spread across
the entire universe,

creating matter, the stars,

and eventually us.

The force of the Higgs field
is carried by the Higgs boson,

and a boson can only be detected
by creating

an energy disturbance
in the field.

Incandela:
Turns out the Higgs is actually

determining the whole universe
in some way,

what state it's in,

and how these particles
will manifest themselves.

So, if we take
an accelerator like the LHC,

and we provide enough energy,

and we
smash the protons together,

we can actually pull,
if you like,

a Higgs particle
out of this fabric

and study it.

Freeman:
Just like these glass balls

are filled with
a bunch of stuff,

the protons that are
smashed together at the LHC

are also filled with stuff --

particles
called quarks and gluons.

When protons collide,

thousands of new particles
come shooting out.

Studying the aftermath
is a painstaking job,

like sifting through
piles of shattered glass.

Incandela: We're looking for
certain patterns.

The energy, the particles,
the debris

is scattered around the detector
in various ways,

and for a Higgs,
you have very specific patterns

depending on
the decay that's involved.

Freeman: But the God particle has
blessed physicists with a twist.

It always vanishes
before it can be spotted.

The Higgs
decays almost instantly.

Its lifetime is so short,
we can't measure it.

And so, we detect it
by its decay products.

Freeman: To detect a Higgs,
physicists like Joe

have to look at the aftermath
of proton collisions

to figure out what
the original particles were.

If Joe could analyze

each piece of debris
in this glass collision

and calculate its trajectory,

he could reconstruct the crash

based on the remnants
that came out of it.

Incandela: Most of
the interactions that we see,

they immediately
create a pattern

that we recognize
as not interesting,

and we can reject them.

So, we reject, by far,

the vast majority
of the collisions.

Freeman: The only collisions
worth studying are when

the components of the protons
are perfectly aligned.

If a quark inside one proton
makes a head-on impact

with a quark inside the other,

then almost all the energy
of the collision

is concentrated in one place.

This creates a strong enough
ripple in the Higgs field

to make a Higgs boson.

But this type of collision
almost never happens.

Now, those are rare events,
okay -- really rare.

So, roughly speaking,

a Higgs production
is almost one in a trillion.

Freeman:
Since the LHC has been running,

it has produced
about 1,000 trillion collisions.

Incandela: If you had
1,000 trillion grains of sand,

you would fill
an olympic-sized swimming pool.

[ Zip! Crunch! ]

Freeman: But only a few hundred
of those collisions

might produce a Higgs.

Ugh.

A few hundred grains of sand

would just cover
the tip of your finger.

It is
a seemingly impossible task,

but to the world's astonishment,

Joe and
thousands of other physicists

pulled off the unfathomable.

There's
very few events involved,

and we can
trace where this comes from.

Freeman: On July 4, 2012,

Joe had the honor of announcing

that the teams at the LHC
had made a giant step forward.

They had detected a new particle

that weighed between
125 and 126 giga-electron volts,

the predicted range
of the mass of the Higgs.

...because these results
are now global

and shared by all of mankind.

So, I thank you for that.

[ Applause ]

I've never seen anything like it
in my career.

There was a lot of excitement.
People were very happy.

Fox: It was just incredible,
like going to

see the Beatles or something --
everybody was crazy,

and there was
spontaneous applause

at a physics seminar,

which never happens,
you know?

It's like
seeing the Beatles

after waiting for it
for decades.

Right, right.
Exactly.

Evans:
It's, I hope, not the end,

but it is
a little step in a long journey.

It's taken us
40 years to get here.

And we now have
a marvelous step forward

in our understanding of nature.

Incandela:
The Higgs field is unlike

anything we've ever seen before.

The Higgs field
is part of this fabric

that we're interacting with
everywhere we go.

From it, we can, to some extent,

even possibly understand
the evolution of the universe.

It's a very profound finding.

Freeman: It's being called the
greatest scientific discovery

since Einstein wrote
"e=mc squared."

Incandela: A great piece of art
is something that,

you know, lasts forever.

A new scientific
discovery or development

is something that contributes
to humanity for all time.

Freeman: The particle that could solve
the riddle of our existence

has been spotted.

Are we closing in on a final
understanding of the universe?

Dan Hooper thinks the answer
may be more complicated,

that there may not be
one Higgs boson

but five.

Freeman: The Higgs boson
is supposed to explain

where all the matter
in the universe came from.

But in the last decade,
we've learned that

most of our universe
is made up of

invisible particles
called dark matter.

In fact, there is
five times more dark matter

than ordinary matter.

The current theory that predicts
the existence of the Higgs boson

offers no explanation
for this strange substance.

Could the Higgs
have a hidden dark side?

Theoretical physicist Dan Hooper

has been waiting
his whole career

for the announcement that

the Higgs boson
has been discovered.

Hooper: I was up
streaming it on my laptop,

enthusiastically
waiting for the results.

You wait for something
this long,

and when it happens,

no matter how prepared you think
you should be for it to happen,

it seems surreal.

It seems unexpected

no matter how expected
it should have been.

Freeman:
The Higgs has been found.

But a huge mystery
still remains.

What is dark matter?

Hooper: One of the
biggest problems in cosmology

is that when we
look in telescopes at space,

we find that only a small
fraction of the total matter

is made up of things like atoms
and other known material.

Most of it is
some sort of elusive material

that, for lack of a better name,
we just call dark matter.

Freeman: Half a century
of exploring the subatomic world

has revealed
an organizing structure

called the standard model
of particle physics.

Scientists have discovered 12
fundamental particles of matter,

the fermions, equally split
among quarks and leptons.

There are four particles
that transmit force

like electricity and magnetism.

These are the bosons.

And then,
completing the picture,

is one very special boson,
the Higgs boson.

But the standard model has
no explanation for dark matter.

And it has another serious flaw.

One of the biggest problems with

the standard model
of particle physics

is something we call
the hierarchy problem.

We know that the Higgs boson

has a mass of about
126 giga-electron volts

or gev.

This is a heavy particle,
but naively,

we'd expect,
according to the standard model,

that the Higgs should be
much, much heavier than this.

And for some reason,
it's lighter.

Freeman:
The Higgs has weight issues.

Just as the Higgs boson
gives mass to other particles,

other particles, in turn,

contribute to
the mass of the Higgs.

When physicists work out
how big the Higgs should get

from these other particles,
they come up with a weight

billions of times heavier
than it is.

Scientists
have had to fudge the math

to make
the standard model work,

fully knowing something is off.

Hooper: So, to explain this,

something has to very precisely
cancel one another

to restore the Higgs mass
to its observed value.

[ Blues music plays ]

Freeman: When the Higgs and dark matter
weigh too heavily on Dan,

he takes a mental break
from physics.

The only dark matter he
and his band, the Congregation,

sing about are broken hearts.

But Dan
can't help but find parallels

between the rules of music
and the rules of the universe.

[ Song ends ]

It's amazing
how many physicists I know

who are also
accomplished musicians,

and maybe
there's reasons for that.

The patterns that you find
in particle physics

are oftentimes pretty similar to

the kind of symmetries
you can find in music theory.

[ Blues music plays ]

Freeman: Dan believes
there is a pattern in nature

that can solve
the small mass of the Higgs

and explain dark matter.

It is an idea that
modifies the standard model.

It's called supersymmetry.

♪ ...looking for so long

♪ but each time
that I've tried ♪

Hooper:
For every piece of matter,

every kind of
fermionic particle,

there has to be
a bosonic particle,

a force carrier.

So, the photon
requires a photino,

the electron a selectron.

In music theory,

if you have a major scale
like this "C" major scale...

[ Scale plays ]

...those same notes have to
make up an "A" minor scale

if you just
play them in a different order.

[ Scale plays ]

So, in a supersymmetric world,

you can't have
a photon without a photino,

and in our music theory,

you can't have a major scale
without a minor scale.

Freeman:
According to supersymmetry,

the particles
we have observed in nature

are only half of the picture.

There must be massive
superpartners for each one.

One of these superpartners
might even be dark matter.

So, in most
supersymmetric theories,

the lightest of
the new particles you introduce

is a very nice candidate
for dark matter.

So, in the early universe,
when the universe was very hot,

these particles would have been
produced in copious numbers.

Most of it would get destroyed,
but a little bit would survive,

and that little bit
could make up

all of the dark matter
in our universe today.

Freeman:
According to Dan, if symmetries

are a fundamental part
of our universe,

they can set the Higgs
at the correct mass.

Hooper: If supersymmetry
exists in nature,

then every contribution given

from a particle,
like an electron,

gets an opposite contribution

from its superpartner,
the selectron,

and they balance.

They cancel each other out
for the most part,

leaving us with
a pretty light Higgs boson.

Freeman:
Supersymmetry makes sense

where the standard model
does not.

It can explain
the small mass of the Higgs

and what dark matter is.

But there is a catch.

In order for
supersymmetry to be true,

there has to be
not just one Higgs

but five.

If nature really is
supersymmetric

and there were
only one Higgs boson,

the theory would contain

mathematical problems
we call anomalies.

It would contain paradoxes.

And to solve this, you need to
introduce extra Higgs bosons.

If CERN were to discover
a second or third

or fourth or fifth Higgs boson,

it would strengthen the case
for supersymmetry,

even if we hadn't observed

those superparticle partners
themselves yet.

If we are to explain
the universe

as we already know it,

to understand how dark matter
lives alongside ordinary matter,

scientists need to find evidence
for five Higgs bosons.

It took 40 years
to find one God particle.

Is the ultimate truth
destined to elude us?

The Higgs boson
is responsible for

giving everything
in the entire universe mass.

That's a big job
for one subatomic particle.

Some scientists believe it's
too big a job for one particle.

What if the God particle

isn't carrying the weight
all by itself?

Perhaps
the real design of the universe

needs more than one Higgs
to play God.

John Ellis is
a theoretical physicist at CERN.

He spends his time
thinking up ideas,

ideas that experiments here
often prove wrong.

But that's okay by John.

Ellis: So, no, my job is to

think of things
for the experiments to look for,

and then, as I like to say,

I hope
they find something different.

Freeman: Albert de Roeck
is an experimental physicist.

He spends his time
testing ideas,

hoping to prove them wrong.

I joined these experiments
in pursuit of

finding something
to crack the standard model,

possibly kill the standard model

by finding things
beyond the standard model.

Freeman:
Albert, the experimentalist,

and John, the thinker,

have both been part of
the hunt for the Higgs

since the beginning.

The Higgs boson was originally
supposed to solve one mystery --

the mass of
the "w" and "z" bosons,

which are extremely heavy.

The other two bosons
are massless.

Physicists proposed
the "w" and "z" get heavy

because they alone interact with

an invisible field
that is everywhere --

the Higgs field.

But the other bosons do not.

Later, when the standard model
was written,

the idea of the Higgs field
was extended

to take on a much bigger job --

to give mass
to the entire universe.

It was sort of added on.

It was not
why this mechanism was invented.

Freeman: But physicists
like Albert and John know

this one particle
may not be responsible

for giving mass to everything.

Ellis: There's myriads of
theories out there in physics

beyond the standard model,

and it's a general feature
of them

that they predict
something more complicated

than just a single Higgs boson.

Freeman: John and Albert
have been trying to

come up with new theories,
building upon the standard model

while fixing
what is wrong with it.

It means they must
change their predictions

for what the Higgs actually is.

Several varieties
of Higgs particles

have been predicted.

You can think of it
like flavors of ice cream.

If the LHC found
a plain, old, vanilla Higgs,

it confirms
what physicists already know.

[ Sighs ]

But if it turns out to be
a more exciting flavor

like mint-chocolate-chip,

it opens up new thrilling
possibilities for physics.

[ Smooching ]

Oh!

One of these possibilities
would be that

there are two Higgs bosons,
each with a different job.

So, there's been, you know,
a number of ideas that say,

"well, maybe there's
a bit of outsourcing going on,"

and that there is
one Higgs boson

for the "w" and the "zed"

and another one
for the matter particles.

Freeman: Imagine John is
a "z" boson, a force carrier.

Albert is a quark,
a matter carrier.

John is
a well-known coffee addict.

Albert is
a well-known chocoholic.

Say this café is one Higgs field

and this chocolate shop
is another.

When John passes the café,
he will slow down and gain mass.

De Roeck:
But the other particle, myself,

would just zap through until

I encounter the field
with which I'm interacting,

and that would give me mass --

in this case, a chocolate shop.

Freeman: The standard model

doesn't include
two Higgs fields,

which is why this idea is
so appealing to John and Albert.

If we were to find that
there is more than one Higgs,

that would mean for sure

there is physics
beyond the standard model.

Ellis:
Now, if what we're looking at

is something
which is not exactly,

you know, your grandmother's
Higgs boson,

that could actually, in a way,
be even more exciting.

Freeman: So far, there are
some signs of anomalies

in the way
this new particle decays,

suggesting
an exotic flavor of the Higgs

might be lurking in the data.

And there are still piles
of data waiting to be analyzed.

De Roeck: I actually hope that
this Higgs boson

is gonna be
a portal to the new physics

which we're going to find
beyond the standard model.

And that would be exciting
because

each time that happens,
we learn something new.

Freeman:
The LHC may be hinting that

the Higgs
is only one of many players.

It may not be the God particle
after all.

This man thinks the truth about
the creation of the universe

lies deeper than
the long-sought Higgs,

that we owe our existence to

particles we have
only just begun to imagine.

It was the Greek philosopher
Democritus

who first thought of the atom.

He imagined it to be

the smallest possible
building block of matter,

one that could never be divided.

His idea was good enough
to last 2,000 years,

until the nuclear age came along
and revealed a deeper truth.

The atom is made up
of smaller things.

Just as particles like quarks
and electrons make up the atom,

smaller, more fundamental
building blocks

might make up the Higgs boson.

If we can find them,
they could reveal

not just how matter exists
but why it came to be.

Francesco Sannino
is a theoretical physicist

at the University
of Southern Denmark in Odense.

He lives in the perfect town
to let his imagination run wild.

Odense is the birthplace

of the famous
children's story author

Hans Christian Andersen.

So, we are in the Hans Christian
Andersen neighborhood.

He was born here,

and he has drawn a lot
from these streets.

As you can see,

it looks like taken
by a page from a storybook.

Freeman:
But unlike this fairy-tale town,

our understanding

of the fundamental
building blocks of the universe

is not picture-perfect.

The standard model

regards the Higgs boson
as a fundamental particle,

but Francesco's imagination
is driving him to look further,

to see if he can peer
inside the Higgs.

Sannino:
According to the standard model,

the Higgs is
a fundamental particle.

It means it's not made
of something else.

So, look at this wall.
It's white.

But the truth is that
there are three different lights

combined together
making this white.

In fact, see what happen

if I put my hand
in front of the wall.

I can resolve
there's three different colors,

the green, the blue,
and the red.

Together,
they form the white light.

Freeman: Just as a white light

is actually made up
of three different colors,

Francesco wondered if the Higgs

is made up
of several different particles.

This would mean the Higgs

is not a fundamental root
of all matter.

He and many
of his colleagues think

the Higgs itself is governed
by a new force of nature,

something they call
the technicolor force.

Sannino: If you look
deep inside the Higgs,

you will find
it's made of something else.

[ Piano plays classical music ]

Freeman: Francesco believes

the Higgs boson dances
to a new tempo.

Imagine these Lego bricks
are ordinary quarks

and this board
is the force of the gluons

that holds them together.

To make a proton,
we need three quarks.

According
to the technicolor theory,

the Higgs is just the same,

but it is made up
of different types of quarks --

techniquarks.

Sannino: The techniquarks
are held together

by a new force, a techniforce.

And the energy
that comes from the interactions

also automatically provides
the mass of the Higgs.

Freeman: Physicists know

ordinary quarks
in different arrangements

make different particles.

One arrangement is a proton.

Another arrangement
is a neutron.

Techniquarks work the same way.

Arrange them one way,
and you get a Higgs.

But arrange those techniquarks
another way,

and you get something else

scientists have been
looking for,

a dark-matter particle.

Sannino: So, it's really like
a Lego brick.

You put them together,

and in one form,
you get the Higgs.

And in another form,
you can get the dark matter.

Freeman: Perhaps the reason
the standard-model Higgs

can't explain dark matter

is because the Higgs
is dark matter in disguise

and both particles
are held together

by the techniforce.

There will be definitely
a new force of nature,

so it will be fantastic
opportunity for mankind

to face a new force.

Freeman: Techniquarks could be
glued together in many ways,

constructing several
brand-new particles.

Those particles could be waiting
to be discovered at the LHC

when it comes back online
at much higher energies in 2015.

Francesco hopes that the
Higgs boson recently discovered

is the first candidate.

We just won't know it

until we have enough power
to crack it open.

Sannino: I think it's the duty
of human beings

to understand what is around us
and what makes us.

I think this is really
a fantastic opportunity

to push the boundaries
of science to that degree.

Freeman:
Does the so-called God particle

have multiple faces?

Perhaps the Higgs is not
as almighty as we thought.

But there are much more
mind-bending ideas.

What makes us exist

could be objects
that don't really exist at all.

When we look up
at the night sky,

our moon peers down at us.

It seem to be magically
suspended in thin air,

even though we know
it's being held in place

by the force of gravity.

What if all matter
in the universe

is actually being anchored
by something else,

something far stranger
than gravity

and far stranger
than the God particle?

Howard Georgi
from Harvard University

has been a particle physicist
for most of his life.

But recently,
he has made a career change.

He is now
an unparticle physicist.

I was trying to think about

what the LHC might see
that was really unusual,

and it occurred to me that
whether there was something

that might show up at the LHC
that was not particles at all.

That was the beginning
of my career

as an unparticle physicist.

Freeman: Like many physicists,

Howard has been trying to fix
the standard model

and come up with new theories.

While working on his equations,

he noticed
some puzzling calculations.

In physics,
massless particles like photons

show up in math
as negative whole numbers.

Howard's equations were
giving him negative numbers,

but they weren't whole numbers.

They were negative fractions.

Georgi: You do this analysis,

and you might get
2 1/2 massless particles.

And then,
you scratch your head and say,

"What? What is going on?"

Freeman:
Howard knew these half numbers

weren't half particles.

They were something new.
He called them unparticles.

Georgi:
There's something happening.

There's some physics,

but it's not the sort of physics
that we're used to.

Freeman:
Howard probed the math deeper

and learned more
about unparticles.

He realized the reason
they came out as fractions

is because they have
fractal dimensions,

much like the branches
of a tree.

Georgi: If you look at the tree,

it's not one-dimensional,

because the tree comes
and it branches,

and then the branches
branch again.

And the branch's branches
branch again.

And the branch's branch's
branches, et cetera and so on.

In a true fractal,
that would go on forever.

Freeman: Unparticles are like
the branches of this tree.

The pattern is the same

no matter how close
or how far away you look.

But normal particles are like
the leaves on the tree.

The closer you get,
the bigger they look.

Georgi: I like the idea
of thinking of the leaves

as the objects
of the standard model

because they have
a definite size,

like a mass that a particle has,

whereas the branches of the tree
don't have a definite size.

Freeman: All of the particles
that make up our universe

have mass,

which physicists believe exists
because of the Higgs.

But perhaps
those particles in the Higgs

are really being governed by an
invisible world of unparticles

that defy the laws
of known physics.

It would mean all matter
particles in the universe

are like the leaves
on this tree.

An invisible tree of unparticles
may be their anchor,

the secret underpinning
of the entire cosmos.

Georgi: That's really the point
of unparticle physics.

In order for this invisible tree
to be interesting,

it has to somehow interact

with the particles
of the standard model.

The leaves will have to
somehow be held up by that tree

or vice versa.

Freeman: So far,

there are no signs
of unparticles at the LHC.

But Howard isn't giving up
as an unparticle physicist.

I don't think we've got
the right picture frankly.

When you have something
that strange

and that different
from what we know,

it's tantalizing.

And so, I think
it's worth continuing

to try to beat on this
complicated mathematics

and see if can make
some more progress.

Freeman: Is the Higgs boson
really the God particle?

Or is there something else
underneath,

something more mysterious?

Do we owe our existence

to something
we might never detect?

For now,
scientists continue to probe

the God particle they have
triumphantly discovered,

hoping they will one day
find out.

The Higgs boson has been playing
a game of hide-and-seek

for decades.

Now that we have
finally found it,

or something like it,

we have more questions
than answers.

Each time physicists find
the key to one door,

they open it just to find,
another door.

And then, five more.

Maybe the Higgs boson really is,
God's particle.

A cosmic puzzle whose solution,
is just another puzzle.

Destined to remain,
an enigma.

Subtital By RA_One