Review of "Big Bang Machine: Searching for the Hoggs Boson Particle," a NOVA video

 Review of

Big Bang Machine: Searching for the Hoggs Boson Particle, a NOVA video

Five out of five stars

Success in understanding the universe

 While a lot is known about the universe and the particles that make it up, there is always something more over the horizon. A previously unknown item over the horizon was first postulated in 1964 and came to be known as the Higgs boson. If it could be proved to exist, that fact would fill a major hole in the understanding of how the state of having mass is attained. 

 Unfortunately, at the time the Higgs boson was first postulated, there was nothing that could create the incredibly high energies that could recreate them. Ten billion dollars was spent in creating the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. After four decades of construction, the involvement of thousands of physicists and the creation of some ingenious detection techniques, it was announced in 2012 that the Higgs boson had been detected. This was a major achievement, and the original postulators were awarded a Nobel prize in 2013. 

 This video explains all aspects of the Higgs boson, from the characteristics of the particle to the role it plays in the structure of the universe. The vast resources, physical and human, that went into the successful search of the Higgs boson  are described. All are done using explanatory techniques that people lacking a knowledge of nuclear physics can understand. It also ends with a brief explanation of what is over the next horizon in physics and how the search for confirmation of that feature is being planned. 


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