• Question: how has/did the activation of the LHC affected your work?

    Asked by harvey2k9 to Joel, Kristian, Tim, Venus, Zachary on 14 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Kristian Harder

      Kristian Harder answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      It wasn’t really such a big deal for me. The thing is, you don’t just switch on and then results and discoveries start pouring in. It takes a long time for the machine to start producing useful data, and these data to be analyzed. There were of course a few great moments, for example seeing the first beams circulate through the LHC, or seeing the first confirmation that we can see the previously known particles with it (thus telling us that the detectors are working properly), or, more recently, hearing about the discovery of the Higgs boson. But my work had not much to do with any of these bright moments, and most of the time I just sat there and got on with the work that I had already started before the LHC began running. The specific kind of particle that I had been looking for doesn’t seem to exist anyway. And I am not even surprised about that outcome. 🙂
      Possibly the biggest change that switching on the LHC brought for me may therefore be that I was asked a lot more often to give lectures for visitors at Rutherford Lab, or even to go to schools or other organizations to talk about the LHC. The public interest in this machine was quite big, and we try to explain to as many people as we can what it is that we are doing.

    • Photo: Tim Hollowood

      Tim Hollowood answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      You have to realize that there have been no new discoveries in particle for quite a while (well there was the top quark but every expected it). So there is a huge amount riding on the LHC considering that it cost quite a lot. For a theory point of view we knew that there had to be something like the Higgs boson around so it’s a wonderful confirmation that theorists know what they are doing that we found it. The next stage is even more exciting because we want to know what lies beyond the standard model….that is going to be genuinely new. The theorists believe that there will be new particle associated to something called supersymmetry. But in the end we have to let nature provide the answers and theorist like me just have to wait for our experimental colleagues to do their stuff….

    • Photo: Zachary Williamson

      Zachary Williamson answered on 15 Nov 2013:

      I don’t work on the LHC, so…not at all really. It does have a habit of sucking up all the money available for scientific experiments though! *shakes fist*

      I was working on an LHC experiment when it switched on though (switched on properly that is, it broke down a few times before that). It was a very exhilarating experience, watching the work of thousands of scientists and engineers finally coming to fruition.

    • Photo: Joel Goldstein

      Joel Goldstein answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      I do a lot of work on the LHC, so it has meant I have spent many hours sitting on Easyjet planes commuting backwards and forwards to Geneva. It has been a very exciting place to work, and with the discovery of the Higgs boson and the (so far) negative searches for new physics, it has already made a huge impact on my field.

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