High Energy Physics (HEP)

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Clive Best

I was asked to give a talk on High Energy Physics to a group of ex-Engineers and Scientists. It is a long time since I was active in this field but I put some slides together which I hope are a reasonable introduction. Click below to view

HEP

 

About Clive Best

PhD High Energy Physics Worked at CERN, Rutherford Lab, JET, JRC, OSVision
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2 Responses to High Energy Physics (HEP)

  1. Curtis Manning says:
    May 25, 2025 at 4:41 pm

    Thanks for the historical overview. However, the Higgs video did nothing for me. Nobody has explained how the Higgs particle (must we capitalize it?) gives mass to everything.

    I believe this is “another kind” of cosmology. All cosmologies come to a point where there are difficulties. I am sure high energy physicists have gone deeper than the video would imply, so help us get a little closer to the point where the mystery abides. I do not believe particle physicists have explained everything, or else they would all go home and live off their pensions.

    What I would like to see is the philosophy behind their model. I am certain that there is something to it, but for my purposes, the reality of this cosmology escapes me. How were all these little particles created? As Eddington said at the conclusion of his book, The Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons, 1936, “And so we may look forward with undiminished enthusiasm to learning in the coming years what lies hidden in the atomic nucleus — even though we suspect that it is hidden there by ourselves”.

    Eddington was no lightweight theorist. What did he mean? Thankfully, he was a philosopher too and noted that, “If experience is a subject-object relation, the subject is entitled to — nay he cannot divest himself of — his half share”, noting that Heisenberg “has defined the half-way line with mathematical exactitude, distributing a coordinate to one side and a momentum to the other”.

    I would like quantum mechanics to acknowledge their part in what is discovered in the atomic nucleus. And really, I have been waiting for quantum theory to begin the task to applying their methodology to the observer. It is clear to me that high-energy physics is trying to poke a hole in the universe, but the universe cannot allow that. Thus the phenomena it evinces are reflective of the conditions that they impose on the universe.

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  2. Clive Best says:
    May 25, 2025 at 6:38 pm

    The Higgs particle is named after Peter Higgs.
    I think this is a better article describing his motivation.

    https://physics.aps.org/articles/v6/111

    I also agree that it is hard to delve down too much with Quantum Mechanics !

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