The announcement of the detection at the LHC is a core memory of mine, I still distinctly remember where I was, what I was doing and very excitedly trying to explain how cool it was to my parents at the time.
I developed a hobby of reading up on and sharing factoids I found online, and found one about the 'god particle'. At first I thought it was cool because it seemed to basically talk about a particle that causes mass (of course, this was actually wrong, but that didn't really matter to a 10 year old), but reading about how it was predicted 40-50 years ago and the largest single machine humanity had built was being used to try to find it made it my favorite factoid and I'd excitedly start talking all about it the moment anyone showed even the slightest bit of interest.
In 2012 when the detection was announced, we were on a short 2-3 day vacation in Dubai and were having breakfast in the hotel. The TV was right next to us, and seeing the news I was trying (and failing) to explain to my parents how the Higgs boson had been predicted 50 years ago and it took that long for the technology to finally catch up to be able to verify it, and how this would represent one of the last remaining pieces of the standard model (although back then I didn't quite grasp that the standard model was not a full theory of everything). I was trying to explain to them the size of the LHC, how it was the biggest single machine we've built, how when they were turning it on for the first time, there were fears about it creating micro-black holes which might swallow the Earth.
I think that while we need scientists in the public eye, we don't need them as social media entertainers, a lot of well known science communicators on social media come off as attention-seeking charismatic fakes/frauds to me (eg NDT). Stuff like the interviews and documentaries Stephen Hawking had appeared in (or to a lesser extent, the ones Michio Kaku has appeared in) did much more for me in being inspired, even without having known what research they were known for.
I think we could also do with more books like Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and encouraging kids to read them. Also, instead of over-simplifying everything and passing off scientists as geniuses in the traditional sense, we should be more open in showing that the people who made these discoveries or predictions were not inherently born with it, the vast majority of them were completely normal people who worked very hard to build skills in the thing they enjoyed.
Another discovery I feel was somewhat similar is that of discrete time crystals, casually predicted in 2012, turned out to actually be possible in 2018 and has a similar 'cool' factor.
As a 12-13 year old, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design were by far my most memorable reads, although I already had my developing interest in physics by then.
They don't fully understand what I do and don't really care too much about the details, but when they saw pictures of where I worked, they did immediately bring up that I used to go on and on about something that seemed similar, so they at least did understand what I liked.
I guess the closest they get to being interested in theoretical physics is that my Dad, having run through his stash of novels during covid, eventually read my left-behind copy of A Brief History of Time, and occasionally quotes it when he's in the mood to wax philosophical. My Mom instead tries to keep up with my other interest of space exploration/astronomy.
That's a cliche, not why people are ignorant of science (if it's even true, which it's not), IMHO.
When you kiss your spouse or watch a sporting event or (go bird watching / play D&D / play your trumpet / <your hobby>), does it have a pratical application? Practical applications tend to be kind of boring, actually.
If you can't get excited about the fundamental laws of nature and a person's actual discovery of one - the reason for mass (such an incredible concept that it would be absurd to say if it wasn't true) - then the issue isn't partical physics.
For the broader public, I think these things just aren't explained well, and now there's the anti-science mis/disinformation.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3j...
I can see in own kids that each one is built differently, with different inmate propensities despite similar environment.
While all of us have things we find easier to do than the average person, short of a literal mental disability, we can build up skills in things we are not good at through practice. I used to barely pass in math class and didn't even understand the concept of negative numbers until 8th grade. A year of practicing daily for 2 hours after school, and my fundamentals had gotten good enough that I unknowingly derived a calculus-based solution to some problems I was stuck at, 2 grade levels before when I'd actually start learning calculus and got to skip a year as a result.
Similarly, I've been teaching myself to draw despite having been pretty terrible at it and discovering how 'deliberate' most professional artists have to be with practice and building skills.
I think it's pretty common for people to write off their inability to do something as just a lack of innate ability, when it's really just that no one really sees the struggle anyone famous for their work/skill has gone through to get there.
That really resonates with me. When I was a kid I got complimented a lot for being smart, especially when I did something quickly and easily. This trained me pretty well in seeming smart, but really discouraged me from things that required hard work or persistence through failure. It took me years to get over that.
Hardy stayed in Denmark with Bohr until the very end of the summer vacation, and when he was obliged to return to England to start his lectures there was only a very small boat available…. The North Sea can be pretty rough, and the probability that such a small boat would sink was not exactly zero. Still, Hardy took the boat, but sent a postcard to Bohr: “I proved the Riemann Hypothesis. G.H. Hardy.” If the boat sinks and Hardy drowns, everybody must believe that he has proved the Riemann Hypothesis. Yet God would not let Hardy have such a great honor and so He will not let the boat sink.
How the Higgs Mechanism Give Things Mass - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Q4UAiKacw
Could the Higgs Boson Lead Us to Dark Matter? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2yLMY6Mpw8
Where Is The Center of The Universe? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOLHtIWLkHg
(For me personally, I gave a massive sad sign when I saw this on the homepage. I really liked him a lot for a few reasons: He did his thinking in isolation, for a long period of time walking around the Scottish highlands . He was a keen disciple of interdisciplinary thought being pivotal to innovation. He appears to have imagined things and thought about things in a pretty weird way for his time, although that might seem obvious, how well he grappled with the reality of weirdness is exemplary. 힝)
Particle physicists and other researchers in fundamental science are also typically keen to point out at indirect effects. E.g., building the massive accelerators to detect particles pushes forward more conventional technologies. The Web was famously invented to serve CERN collaboration needs.
Don't downvote them! This is actually a good question! (and gives us a chance to talk about why we should pursue these things!)
It's also incredible difficult to answer! Can we define what it means? Direct or indirect?
=== Indirect (LHC) ===
Well one of the reasons the LHC was built was to find the Higgs. To do so, we had to invent a lot of shit along the way. Thing is, when you're pushing the bounds of human knowledge, you don't exactly have all the devices you need to measure and test everything. The WWW[0] is famously one of such "spin-offs" as we needed to connect scientists from around the globe to distribute the data from this project. Remember that it is an international project[1*]. There is also a lot about superconductors and refrigeration, both of which significantly contribute to modern medical devices. A lot for magnets, vacuum devices, and electronics, all of which have permeated into industry.
These scientific projects also are a big political effort and demonstrate good will and can be grounds for collaboration and building democracies. The hosting countries also have a lot to benefit from as direct collaboration happens there. Just think of the force of putting a bunch of very smart people in a room together, especially when they are experts in very different things. It's difficult to predict the direct revenue, but at such a cheap cost, even small innovations can easily end up covering the costs. Certainly the internet has more than paid for CERN, in the form of tax revenues to each country compared to the cost they give, not to mention benefit to the public (especially considering other indirect aspects).
=== Direct (LHC) ===
Maybe a bit harder. There's some slides here [2] that claim CERN nets 3.3bn for 1993 - 2038. You can find much more detail here[3] and another independent one here[4]. I'd just like to note [4]'s last line in their abstract:
We conservatively estimate that there is around a 90% probability that benefits exceed costs, with an expected net present value of about 2.9 billion euro, not considering the unpredictable applications of scientific discovery.
That's unfortunately impossible to say. To make use of it technologically we're at least 50 years away, which is to say "who the fuck knows". But also remember the cost is almost nothing. If we speculate, it is not unreasonable that the technologies that could be enabled through the understanding of this science (and the requisite further knowledge we'll need) could be insurmountable. We're talking about understanding how mass works. So if we're ever going to invent things like inertial dampeners (which would make mass an irrelevant aspect of transportation), mass effect drives, gravity generators, and so on, knowledge of the Higgs would be essential. But don't hold your breath on seeing technologies any time soon.
Remember that we're playing the long game with science. It is good to think about short term, but never forget the long game. If you forget you may win battles but will lose the war.
=== Side Note About Money ===
The LHC is actually one way I like to think about the ultra billionaires (like Musk, Bezos, Gates types). The reason being that with that level of wealth we cannot ignore the effects of compound interest, as this plays a significant role. Let's take Bezos, the #2 on the list (behind Bernard Arnault) with $203.3B. We can ask, how many LHCs could Bezos make? We assume 10 years to build at 0.5B/yr and then 1B/yr to operate. We'll assume a 7% interest rate, compounded yearly, which means 14.231B/yr! So clearly Bezos is worth at least 14 LHCs! We could get more precision and actually compound, but the quick version gives us a sufficient lower bound to really put into perspective either the wealth of Bezos or how cheap the LHC is. However your want to frame it. FWIW, with the same lazy analysis we get Forbes top 10 as: Arnault @ 15.2 LHCs, Bezos @ 14.2 LHCs, Musk @ 13.72 LHCs, Zuckerberg @ 12.7 LHCs, Ellison @ 10.7 LHCs, Buffett @ 9.6 LHCs, Gates @ 9.2 LHCs, Page @ 9.1 LHCs, Ballmer @ 8.8 LHCs, and Brin @ 8.8 LHCs.
I'm just saying, we could afford a lot of LHCs...
[0] https://www.home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
[1*] I wanted to take a minute to mention the cost, so we can better guestimate the ROI. The project took 10 years to build and cost about $5bn and costs about $1bn/yr to operate, with Germany being the largest contributor and only contributing 21%[1^]. I'm not sure how it works, but the Federal budget is about 370B euros but total gov spending was 1.76T for 2021. That would be 0.065% of the federal budget or 0.014% of the total spending. Pretty fucking cheap if you ask me!
[1^] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Participation_and_funding
[2] https://fcc-cdr.web.cern.ch/webkit/press_material/Brochure_A... (site: https://fcc.web.cern.ch/society)
[3] https://indico.cern.ch/event/760053/contributions/3152652/at...
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00401...
And in my mind, both of those achievements are awesome.
Lucky who is born in an English-speaking country with a short name easy to remember by other English monolinguals. The "Higgs boson" has many fathers, but his name got attached to the concept for simplicity, giving him world fame and, ultimately, a Nobel prize when he likely didn't contribute significantly more than others, cf. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#History or https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Ph...