Sean Carroll - The Particle at the End of the Universe

It was the universe's most elusive particle, the linchpin for everything scientists dreamed up to explain how stuff works. It had to be found. But projects as big as CERN's Large Hadron Collider don't happen without dealing and conniving, incredible risks and occasional skullduggery.

Award-winning physicist and science popularizer Sean Carroll reveals the history-making forces of insight, rivalry, and wonder that fuelled the Higgs search and how its discovery opens a door into the mind-boggling domain of dark matter and other phenomena we never predicted.

Watch the event Q&A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aom5Si...

Check out Sean's website: http://preposterousuniverse.com

The Ri is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science
and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution

Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://richannel.org/newsletter

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Opkankeren AQ]

We should be growing up with these sorts of lectures in Britain. If I had heard this and other inspiring and informative lectures in my school years coupled with an environment that encouraged learning to a more advanced level then I feel I may have had a better education.

I listened in awe. Thank you for the great upload.

[Yeibir Anthony]

very good lecture

[carlo sgroi]

Virtual particles are excitations of the underlying fields, but are "temporary" in the sense that they appear in calculations of interactions, but never as asymptotic states or indices to the scattering matrix. As such the accuracy and use of virtual particles in calculations is firmly established, but their "reality" or existence is a question of philosophy rather than science.

[FarFromEquilibrium]

Virtual particles are a field effect. They are not like imaginary numbers , which are more like Feynman diagram reverse time trajectories, and I am getting way over my head here! But virtual particles are particles , that are a result of field density, but they don't last long. Have you ever wondered how EM waves propagate in empty space? There is no 'ether' but there is a disturbance, in the field and these things go in and out of existence on that path.

[miskee11]

the higgs field is ubiquitous?

[carlo sgroi]

Particle off shell, considered a *manifestation* of quantum tunneling are a *mathematical* reality, but so are imaginary #s.

Are you referring to the propagator/ Green's function to describe what you call a rapid vacuum flux event?

I thought when black holes radiate Hawking radiation was due to entangled pairs where only one particle is entrapped and the other escapes thus creating a virtual response. Eventually the BH theoretically evaporates ... something of a Higgs field paradox

[FarFromEquilibrium]

Not sure what you mean by 'alternate realities', and as far as 'consciousness' and theory, well , it's not part of the virtual particle phenomena as it applies here. That's a different matter.. Virtual particles are in and out of existence fast enough to escape the mass shell. They are a requirement for quantum field potentials, and the are essentially what is being exchanged in an electromagnetic wave disturbance. They are real, actually, but a very rapid vacuum flux event.

[carlo sgroi]

Thanks so very much for your responce, but if virtual partials exist, is it to say virtual realities exist? I mean,if the equation for matter and energy to manifest itself into the equation that temples consciousness,is this an excuse for behavior? I say no! Let us stop expressing reality and the universe as virtual & let us answer the questions of our lives as what is common to all, as we experience reality. Particles do exist and so do we. Theory exists only because there is consciousness.

[FarFromEquilibrium]

That is a good question, regardless of the stupid repose you got from the other user. An electron has to regain energy, via another interaction, in order to re-emit a photon, and yes, photon have momentum, and they therefore transfer energy, which can covert to mass. This is how black holes radiate, but there it is even more bizarre, because the radiation is due to virtual particle exchange. On that note, please try to find a better explanation of virtual particles than I can provide!

[Brendan Smith]

Lol "Juggaloos"

[AnonaMousetookmaname]

Excellant lecture. Thanks for sharing. The public needs access to this kind of information.