Higgs Boson

Enthusiastic physicists crowded the lecture hall, now an ersatz overflow assembly room.  The main auditorium had been packed by early morning with students and postdocs who had lined up before 5 AM on July 4 to procure a spot; other seats had been reserved for VIPs. They weren’t going to a rock concert.  Better than that, they were going to hear the results of two CERN experiments about the elusive Higgs boson.  

Overflow crowd in the lecture hall

Two non-physicist observers - CERN Wife and CERN Daughter - found seats by the wall in the lecture hall, and like everyone else in the room, sat facing a screen where two images from the main auditorium were posted: 1) a CERN logo noting "Higgs research update" and 2) views of the crowd in the main auditorium (where everyone in the overflow hall wanted to be).  

Waiting for the symposium to start

Lucky spectators in the auditorium,
as viewed on the screen at the overflow lecture hall

Like the scientists in the room, we too were excited to witness the "Higgs research update" announcements from the CMS and ATLAS experiments.  Although we might not have grasped everything explained by the two spokespeople - Joe Incandela of CMS and Fabiola Gianotti of ATLAS - we knew that the results of finding either the Higgs boson or a Higgs boson-like particle were extraordinary contributions to scientific knowledge of the natural world.

The Higgs boson is the particle that is believed to be responsible for giving mass to other elementary particles.  It is the last unidentified piece of the Standard Model, which describes all of nature at a fundamental level, except for gravity and dark energy.  The Standard Model has withstood concerted attack by experimentalists, who for 40 years have been trying to find ways of disproving it.  But they couldn’t.  If this discovery turns out to be the Standard Model Higgs boson, the Standard Model will have been proven correct yet again.  If it turns out not to be the Standard Model Higgs boson, further questions about the natural world would arise, which for physicists is even more interesting.  At least, this is what Spouse has told me.

So there we were, listening to the two spokespeople's reports about some of the most expensive, exciting, and exhilarating experiments in recent physics history.  Although CERN Wife and CERN Daughter needed further clarification to understand the talks and the graphs, the crowd's contagious enthusiasm needed no explanation.

Joe Incandela talks about the Standard Model

Another graph: Exclusion for SM Higgs

Explaining P-Values

Fitted signal strength

Intent physicists listening to the lecture

The CMS discovery

Joe Incandela summarizing CMS results:
discovering the Higgs boson (or boson-like particle)

Fabiola Gianotti explaining the ATLAS experiment

Gianotti explaining more results

ATLAS experiment's discovery
of the Higgs boson

Further research is needed...

Fabiola Gianotti thanking the ATLAS community

Summary of the director general of CERN,
Rolf-Dieter Heuer

Standing ovation in the auditorium

What, though, is a “boson” and why a “Higgs” boson?  A boson is a subatomic particle that has particular symmetries.  The name “boson” was coined by the theoretical physicist Paul Dirac to commemorate the contributions of the Indian mathematical physicist, Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974).  “Higgs” refers to the English theoretical physicist, Peter Higgs, who hypothesized the existence of this boson in 1964.  Although 5 other physicists (Robert Brout and François Englert from Belgium, and the Americans Gerald Guralnik and C.R. Hagen with Tom Kibble from England) wrote papers on the same topic at the same time as Higgs, the boson responsible for mass is named after Higgs.  Was that because his name is the easiest to pronounce?

And then there is the connotation of the Higgs boson being called the “God particle”.  This epithet comes from a popular book published in 1993 by physicist Leon Lederman and science writer Dick Teresi: The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What Is the Question? Lederman wrote that the Higgs boson is key to understanding the structure of matter but is elusive.  However, he originally wanted to call it the “Goddamn Particle” because of its “villainous nature” - but the publisher wouldn’t let them use that term.

When Spouse had forwarded me the CERN press release several weeks ago about the July 4 seminar to update the scientific community regarding the Higgs boson search, I knew that I wanted to be at that colloquium, even if I needed to take Physics 101 again.  This was going to be a momentous announcement, and as an anthropologist, I wanted to be part of that audience and experience their exhilaration.  But I’m still a little unclear about term “boson.”  I agree with my cousin Nancy (a professor at Stanford University): considering how physicists name things like hard probes and hot quarks, wouldn’t a Higgs bosom make more sense?

La Frère Fête Française à Ferney

Before moving to Ferney-Voltaire, I fantasized having a reunion in France of my coterie of high school girlfriends (and their spouses).  Decades ago our circle of seven young women of different religious and racial backgrounds hung out together before classes started, ate lunch together in our rural school’s cafeteria, and in spite of living miles away from each other, got together once in a while on weekends.  By our senior year we had become a congenial clique, although we didn’t allude to ourselves that way.  Our self-reference signified our social ideals: after an assembly during National Brotherhood Week in February of our senior year, we decided that the 7 of us were a Brotherhood.  From then on we called ourselves “Brothers.”

For over twenty years we’ve had Brotherhood reunions, most of which have taken place in the East Coast.  But as the Brother who lived so far away from all the others (California), and who was the oldest mom with the youngest child, I missed out on most Brofests, as we call our gatherings.  So I decided to host a Brofest in France, la Frère Fête Française.  

Although only two of the Brothers, Donna (whom I’ve known since kindergarten) and Jan (whom I met in high school), were able to make it to Ferney, our six-day Frère Fête introduced them to “my” part of France and neighboring Switzerland.  I prepared food for them from Picard, cooked meals from scratch, took them on trips to other towns and to stores I like (food stores, of course), and drove them through the undulating landscape of fields and farms, grazing cows and nibbling sheep, espaliered fruit trees and budding vineyards.  Sharing this part of the world with some of my oldest and dearest friends, and listening to their expressions of joy and wonder (not a Christmas cliché here) delighted me and vindicated me: yes, there are valid reasons why I enjoy living here.

CERNwife, Donna, and Jan

The Six-Day Frère Fête Française Whirlwind Tour

Day One:  Donna and Jan took the high speed TGV train (why don’t we have such trains in the US?) from Paris to Geneva.  After I picked them up and took them to the motel in Ferney-Voltaire to register and drop off their luggage, we headed up the Jura to a lookout point so that they could see the valley surrounding Lac Léman, Geneva, the Alps, and the part of France that has been my home since September.  Then we went to CERN to pick up my physicist Spouse (spouses, in the language of the Brothers, are referred to as “spice” – rhymes with mouses and mice).  And we did what many CERN scientists do in the late afternoon: sat around a patio table and sipped beer (Coke for Jan).

Having a drink at CERN

Day Two:  During the relaxing 45-minute drive to Annecy on a 2-lane country road, we passed through picture-postcard vistas of villages, rolling hills, farmland.  Annecy is an alluring city with canals, flowers, Renaissance buildings, boutiques and gelato stores, a chateau overlooking the town, a romantic botanical park that borders the clean and serene Lac d’Annecy (France’s second largest lake), and mountains that jut out from across the lake, where hand-gliders jump off cliffs and risk their lives for the views. The old town’s buildings and boutiques amazed Jan and Donna, who would have spent more time shopping if I didn’t complain about being hungry.  We bought lunch at a boulangerie/patisserie (a “formule” it’s called: one sandwich or pizza slice or quiche, a drink, and a dessert of choice for around 6 euros), and sat in the park near the lake to eat our picnic.  By late afternoon we returned to the Ferney area via the 20-minute autoroute drive because, as the spouse-chauffeur, I had to rush to CERN.  

Jan, CERNwife, and Donna at Annecy
(Jan's photo)

 

Crooked door of an old Annecy store

Lily of the Valley decorated chocolates (from May 1)
at one of Annecy's gourmet chocolateries

Day Three:  This day we relaxed in Ferney-Voltaire.  In the morning we walked to Ferney’s marché (yes, Jan and Donna were sufficiently awed), did a tour of Voltaire’s chateau in the afternoon, and ate dinner at a captivating country inn located in Echenevex, a village nestled in the Jura foothills. 

The three Brothers at the Ferney market

Jan and CERNwife in front of Voltaire's chateau

Dinner at Auberge des Chasseurs, Echenevex

Day Four:  Lac Léman, the largest lake in Switzerland (known as “Lake Geneva” to many Americans), is so picturesque that describing the lake and the towns, mountains, terraced vineyards and villages that surround it is impossible without seeming platitudinous and vapid. Some scenery is better just to experience. That’s what we did on Day Four by taking the 2-lane lake route (rather than the 4-lane autoroute) to the captivating Swiss town of Morges, where we strolled through a somewhat boring crafts fair that was held in Morges’ 13^th-century chateau.  Then we drove to one of Switzerland’s spectacular tourist venues, the medieval Chateau de Chillon, built on a rocky promontory that juts into Lac Léman within site of snow-covered Alps.  Walking through the cobblestone courtyards, climbing up and down stairs, examining various rooms of the chateau, and exploring the dungeon, where Lord Byron’s graffiti signature on one of the columns is marked by a frame (remember, he wrote “The Prisoner of Chillon”), we were like children playing make-believe.  Chateau de Chillon casts that spell.

The moat at Chateau de Chillon

Lord Byron's carved graffiti (framed)

In the world of make-believe

Day Five:  The salad bar at CERN’s cafeteria awed Jan and Donna as it had me.  My CERN Spouse just doesn’t understand how the three of us could get so excited by a salad bar, but we can.  After lunch he put on his tour guide cap and took them to the Microcosm, the museum that explains the kind of physics experiments that occur at CERN.  We headed to a model of the detector used in the ALICE experiment, which, considering Spouse works on ALICE, formed the framework for his explanation of CERN physics.  From the Microcosm we drove to the ALICE experimental site, but we couldn’t go down 100 meters into the tunnel to see the real detector because the site has been closed to visitors and employees since March: the experiment’s collisions of particles are occurring down there.  I think that by the end of the day, Donna and Jan were more impressed with CERN physics – whether or not they understood it is another story – than they had been with the CERN cafeteria.

Model of the ALICE detector at the Microcosm

Spouse, Donna and Jan at ALICE display

Day Six: Yvoire, regarded as one of the most beautiful villages in France, fills with tourists during vacations and holidays.  Although Yvoire is said to be a medieval village, in fact, most of its gray stone buildings hail from the early Renaissance, although its chateau (it seems as if every village I’ve written about here is dominated by a chateau) began its life during the 14^th century.  From Ferney-Voltaire, one can get to Yvoire by taking a boat across Lac Léman from Nyon, Switzerland, or one can partially circumnavigate the lake by skirting Geneva (our way of getting there).  We walked around its cobblestoned streets, admired the colorful potted flowering plants that decorate the gray buildings, peeked into Yvoire’s shops, and ate a leisurely lunch of “filets de perche” – tiny perch filets fried in butter and served with pommes frites – the specialty of French and Swiss restaurants bordering Lac Léman.  Walking fast and not going into stores, tourists could see Yvoire in 20 minutes or less.  It’s a small treasure.  But we went in and out of boutiques and tried on clothes, walked into galleries and tourist shops, and relaxed at a restaurant by the harbor – with a view of Switzerland across the lake - for our midday meal of perch filets.  We stayed in Yvoire at least 3 hours.  Maybe more.

A street in Yvoire

CERNwife and Donna eating dessert, Jan with spoon

Day Seven:  I picked up Jan and Donna from their hotel at 7 AM and drove them to the Geneva Airport for their flight back to Washington, DC.   After our usual emotional Brotherhood good-byes, I left them in the departure section of the airport and walked downstairs to the arrivals.  My 89-year-old mother was coming for a two-week visit.

The Romans and the Jews

View of the Colosseum (left) and Arch of Titus (right)

One major advantage of being a CERN Wife is travel, because CERN physicists, who come from over 80 countries, have international meetings to discuss their work, and some fortunate spouses tag along as tourists, which I did last week when the ALICE collaboration held a meeting in Frascati, Italy – a half-hour train ride from Rome.  

The Arch of Titus

When I toured Rome years ago, the Arch of Titus had impressed me, and I wanted to examine it once more.  I was discussing the remarkable bas-reliefs on the inside of the arch with my friend Susan, who was with me in Rome last week.  Both of us remembered bas-relief figures of the triumphant Roman soldiers and of enchained Jewish slaves carrying the Temple’s gold Menorah, which the Romans took while sacking Jerusalem in 70 CE.  But before heading to see the arch, which is in the Roman Forum, we spent several hours in the Colosseum, and were most surprised by one placard where it was written that the Colosseum was financed by “booty” from the “Jewish Revolt” against Rome.  WHAT?  Don’t the Colosseum historians know that the Jewish Revolt, led by Simon Bar Kochba, started in 132 CE, whereas construction of the Colosseum began in 72 CE and was completed in 80 CE?  Susan and I were puzzled: why such a blatant anachronism?

Bas-reliefs on one side of the Arch of Titus

Then we walked through the Roman Forum, passing majestic columns, stone paths, remnants of buildings, and current archeological digs and headed straight to the Arch of Titus.  But instead of bas-reliefs of enchained Jewish slaves holding the Menorah, we saw laurel-bedecked proud Roman soldiers parading with the Temple’s treasures.  How could our memories have been so wrong?

Roman soldiers carrying Menorah and other treasures

Victorious Roman soldiers with their horses

The following day we strolled through the old Jewish ghetto, where we sat outside at a kosher restaurant and consumed one of Rome’s most famous dishes – carciofi alla giudia – Jewish style artichokes, which are deep fried in olive oil and transformed into a golden-green crispy flower.  We also visited the outstanding Jewish Museum and took a guided tour of Rome’s Great Synagogue, which was built between 1901 and 1904.  The synagogue tour turned out to be a history lesson about Italian Jews.  Although Jews were brought to Rome as slaves after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, they had actually been in Rome since the second century BCE, a time when the Maccabees sought the help of Rome to fight the Assyrian Greek Seleucid Empire, which controlled ancient Judea.  Thus, Jews lived in Rome almost 500 years before the emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.  

Rome's Great Synagogue

During the Counter-Reformation of the mid-16^th century, which was a Catholic revival in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Jews of Rome were forced to live in the ghetto (starting in 1555).  By 1882, twelve years after the unification of Italy, Jews were permitted to reside outside the ghetto.  Although its walls were demolished in 1888, the ghetto remains a center of Rome’s Jewish identity, with the Great Synagogue, Jewish school, bakeries and restaurants, and plaques commemorating the round-up of Jews during the Holocaust.

Medieval house in the ghetto

Lining up in front of a Jewish bakery

Police guarding Jewish school (right); restaurant (left)

Ghetto building with Holocaust memorial plaque

So what’s with the story about the booty from the Jewish Revolt financing the construction of the Colosseum?  Since our memories about the bas-reliefs on the Arch of Titus were inaccurate, perhaps Susan and I harbored flawed memories about history.  That, indeed, was the case.  There were two Jewish revolts against the Romans, and we remembered the latter one.  We forgot about the first Jewish revolt against Rome between 66-70 CE, which had triggered a major civil war between Jews, resulted in the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, and culminated in the construction of the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus.  These two tourist attractions are reminders not only of ancient Rome’s power and ingenuity, but also of the intertwining history of the Romans and the Jews.

The CERN Cafeteria

One section of the CERN cafeteria

Physicists have to eat.  So do the engineers, support staff, administrators, construction workers, and artisans who contribute to making CERN the world’s premiere physics laboratory.  CERN’s cafeteria is where they go, not just to refuel, but also to socialize and talk about their work.

Working in the cafeteria mid-morning

CERN has two cafeterias.  The smaller one, in the outlying area of CERN, sits inside a fence that separates CERN from the fields and vineyards of a Swiss farmer.  The other cafeteria, located in a more central part of the campus, is the principal venue for having meals, snacks, and coffee, and for relaxing with a beer in the late afternoon.  Cafeteria One, as it’s called, has several sections or rooms with different types of tables, as well as two outdoor patios where patrons eat their lunches under umbrellas in good weather.  That’s where the smokers go, since smoking is prohibited inside CERN’s buildings.

The patio on a rainy winter afternoon

CERN’s cafeteria, though, is not just for eating.  By mid-morning and after lunch, the cafeteria provides a workspace for physicists who want a venue other than their offices for thinking about and discussing their experiments.  Moreover, the cafeteria is used every so often by journalists who conduct interviews with CERN scientists. 

The cafeteria manager (right) at the long salad bar

What also draws the CERN workforce to the cafeteria is the food.  It’s really good.  People decide what they want to eat after looking at the selections in the cafeteria’s different sections: a trattoria and a grill; two salad bars (one round table with bowls of plain vegetables and legumes, the other - a long rectangular table - with assorted pre-made salads, a variety of olives and pickles, cut meats, poached salmon, quiches and sushi); and a long dessert table with tarts, pastries, fruit salads, and puddings.

Some prepared salads

 Quiches and breads at the salad bar

Fruit salads and puddings

Pastries on the dessert table

 

Daily options for hot meals include pizza, pasta, meat, and fish, which come with a choice of rice, beans, cooked vegetables, and French fries or other potatoes, as well as a small salad.  There are sandwiches, too.  Aside from water, which most CERN employees drink, people can buy beer, wine, soft drinks or juice.

Veal sausages and vegetables

Decisions, decisions

CERN cafeteria's wine and beer bar

Physicists at lunch

 

Lining up for espresso, ristretto, cappuccino, or plain coffee at one of the coffee bars is the final ritual of lunch.  Then it’s back to work, at the office, experimental site, or…at the cafeteria.

CERN cafeteria's coffee bar

A post-lunch meeting in the CERN cafeteria