Simone Pagan-Griso, Postdoc Chamberlain Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, works on the ATLAS team at CERN.
Transcript
Speaker 1: Spectrum's next [inaudible]. [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news.
Speaker 2: Good afternoon. My name is Rick Karnofsky. Brad swift and I are the hosts of today's show. We are speaking with Dr Simone Simona, pic Ingreso of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. [00:01:00] Simona is a physicist who is searching for the Higgs bows on which has also been called the God particle because it is the theoretical establish or have mass in the standard model of physics. This recording has been prerecorded and edited to Monet. Can you please tell us a little bit about what you do
Speaker 3: that an experimental physicist? I basically work on understanding fundamental laws of nature in day, a smallest scale as possible and to understand which are the fundamental [00:01:30] constituents of matter and which laws, governor, these are the forces between them. And currently I work on an experimented, which is, uh, in um, Geneva, Switzerland, um, in the seminal laboratory and this experiment is called Atlas. And, uh, one of its purposes is actually to us, Mesh Protons are together to uh, investigate the nature of the fundamental Christy trends [00:02:00] of uh, the metal that we see around including to find the Higgs Boson. Is Macanese Alto almost widely accepted as never been proved experimentally. So it's really just a theory of this. Well, yes, very well motivated by just the theory and in doing this mechanism, what happens is that you introduce one more piece in these theory, we call them fields and this field basically [00:02:30] breaks down and give mass to these first careers.
Speaker 3: But in doing this thing, one single piece remains the left. Okay. And uh, this small piece is suppose is what we are looking for is what is called the Higgs Boson. So if we see these, these expos on will be a very, very good indication that this mechanism is actually the one the natural have chosen and make things work as we see we some indications [00:03:00] or how it should behave. And which are the property of this particular in particular [inaudible] the key characteristic of this particular mass. We don't know in this theory it's mass is a free parameter if you want. We don't know what what you should AV. It could span in different ranges. However, we have both experimental constraints and a theoretical motivation to think that it's masses [00:03:30] in a well-defined range and this is the best way we can account for what we see in the end.
Speaker 3: This was initially a quite wide range. It was initially searched the at cern and experiment, which was colliding electrons and anti electrons to search up to [inaudible] 2000 and increasing the energy because it was not fun and pushing it to harden harder. And what does increasing the energy do? Increase? That's [00:04:00] a very good question. The point is that in the end, energy and mass are back as Einstein teacher does are basically the same thing. So colliding them in electron anti electron at higher energy. We can procreate particle with higher masses basically. And the idea was try to create two collided higher energy because we didn't find any trees of the production of the heat. So they give an energy. So in mass it, it me, it meant that it was at higher masses that we couldn't [00:04:30] reach. So increasing the energy was the way to produce in a laboratory.
Speaker 3: This particle after the year 2000 where this in this patio was not found, the collider was shut down because our new collider was under project to be built, which is still a large other collider that is now operating. And the search pastor to another laboratory which is located a r near Chicago. The fair made up that was still r a machine [00:05:00] which was basically colliding particle to create in laboratory heavy. Particular usually in nature are not easy to find. This was a little different. Particle was not colliding, electrons was colliding, protons and antiprotons. So cause the trends of the tones, this was done because in this way we could achieve higher energies in the collision. And the reason for that is just the protein mass is higher than the electron to collide is particularly to accelerate them [00:05:30] and to accelerate. And we use circular rings so we need to ban them and accelerate them.
Speaker 3: But if they throw it too fast, you don't have enough bending power to to keep them in the ring. Right? So you need bigger and bigger drinks. Now with the protons you could with our relatively feasible ring, which is around the six kilometers in circumference, you could actually increased the energy by a lot. Can you please walk us through [00:06:00] what the standard model is? It basically has its really nice thing is that we, one equation, we can described how all the metrics that we see around behaves. I interact with other matters with all these forces at certain they sell tee shirts with this equation. Okay. Written down on the tee shirt and it's very compact form. And from there in principle you, you can know whatever happens or how matter's interacting, whatever different situation, [00:06:30] it turns out that we cannot solve that equation and if one can do it that we get a fixed price right away.
Speaker 3: And if Nobel prize two probably, but we can try to find approximate solutions that and now the nice thing of the standard model is that the only thing you need to do to build this and our model is to write down in these equations the content of metal that you see around. So I say I just say I want [00:07:00] other recent electron. It doesn't tell me because why there is an electron, but I say I want to be at an electron. I'm human and Tau want to be quirks. Okay. But I don't specify that electrons can interact through light with other particles. So or I don't specify any force. I just write down the content of matters and then just applying and just requiring the, these equations are the same for [00:07:30] some symmetries. For different observers or around that. The easy example of like, I want the equation to be the same if I'm here or for me the other room.
Speaker 3: Okay. So there are other symmetries that we can impose to this equation and just imposing this, the symmetry to start that is a question itself, does not satisfy these cemeteries. And the only way to satisfy these symmetries that pretty simple is that there are forces between these things that you've put in the theory. So it must be the electromagnetics, it must be [00:08:00] there or there was the theory wouldn't be symmetric in this transformation. This one, not one really nice thing. We didn't do steering, we didn't put by hand the forces that the full, all the forces that we see in nature, they come out just requiring asymmetry of this equation. Pretty nitrous symmetries and it comes out that if you do that, it's told it must exist. All the forces that we see. So this is one of the very beautiful things are of the standard one that why we believe [00:08:30] so much in this theory and why it worked.
Speaker 3: So well. Many prediction of the standard model we're actually did, uh, from a theoretical point of view and then confirmed experimentally and did this also got the Nobel prize and gives them examples. Yeah. The WNC Boson started one of beautiful examples. We saw the worst there were, is trying to explain the objective of the case and why they happen. How did that happen [00:09:00] by the has several problem is doing based on their model, kind of unified all these treatments and a offered an explanation. But in order to that he had to introduce these forced carters that Dublin CBOs, which were as the photons bring light and bring electromagnetic force between two charged particles. These established the balls and chemigate this weak force between particles and can give rise to the case for the activity case. In order to do that, [00:09:30] they need to be, to act in a very short range.
Speaker 3: And to do that the WNC both need to have a mass on the contrast of the Photon, which is masters and that's why it can travel as much as it wants. There was a kind of breaking ground prediction and uh, turns out that from nowhere energy experiments, which couldn't achieve that mass, they could any way measure other things, which made a very precise prediction of what [00:10:00] at the mess of the Dublin sibilance would have been. It's still at seven. They actually built an experiment to look for this particular, this keep an energy and they found it and that was noble price directly and yeah, that that was a beautiful example of how theory can go had experiments and, and you have example, on the other hand went for example in dark matter experiments found evidence of dark matter. While [00:10:30] no theoretical model was really seriously considering it as a possibility and we still don't know exactly what it is, right? So it's a very nice usually interplay between theoretical and experimental physicist in, in advancing the knowledge in this
Speaker 4: [inaudible] you're listening to spectrum on l this week we are talking to Simona pink and zone about the search for the Higgs Bose on
Speaker 3: [00:11:00] right now we know that the heeks particle must have a mass which is above 114 times 10 so the Proton and this bound comes from the lab experiment. We know that those who it's not in between what is kind of 155 to 180 times 70 times the muscle [inaudible] proud. We think that is unlikely to be heavier than [00:11:30] that because can measure other quantities, which can depend on the Higgs mass without directly producing it. This is kind of amazing. This is a pure quantum mechanical phenomenon, so that even if you don't produce actually a particle that can influence other phenomena, depending on the master analysis techniques to adopt are different because the properties of the particles change how much statistical, certain, Hey, do you need before you can exclude a mass [00:12:00] range or say, Hey, we, uh, we found the expose on. Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 3: In the end, we count the number of coalition that we should be [inaudible] we think that he should, but we have other processes that are known and behaves in a similar way for claiming the discovery of the he expose on. We basically ask that the probability to be, uh, less than a 10 to the minus seven. So that means that even repeating, if, [00:12:30] if we repeated the experiment 10 millions times, only one of these times it would happen that the known processes we give rise to the number of events to explain what we see. We are getting very close in in starting refining, having enough data collected and enough knowledge of the data that we collect to be able to see if among the all the coalition that we record the Hicks person is produced or not. And how much data [00:13:00] are we talking about here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the data in a larger than collider, we have 20 millions collision per second. However, in every collision of two protons, it doesn't always happen. The same thing. Different things can happen and what we look for is the result of this coalition. We have this theory, the standard model, which not only unifies all these forces but give really a precise prediction of what actually happens. [00:13:30] Even when you collide. For example, two protons, the heat exposed in is predicted to be produced only like a one over 10 billions, billion, billions. Yes. Of these conditions. And I'm the one and 10 yes. One in 10 billion. So valuable. Yeah. It's what we are looking for. All the data that we record from one coalition is about one megabyte and we cannot write that [00:14:00] much of 20 millions coalition per second on a disk. We just don't have the technology to do that and it will require an enormous disk space.
Speaker 3: So one very active and difficult part of the experiment is try to decide in real time which of these collisions may be potentially interesting for what you're looking for or not. And we reduce them and write basically two, 300 of damage each second. How long does dates [00:14:30] to the text for you to get the data from? The experiments are happening in Geneva, so this is a very amazing thing and this is something that is only possible for the work of a lot of people, but usually data are get recorded. I send this a huge amount of data. There are people checking that every day. I mean while data is taking, everything is working properly. So all of them, they need to meet every day and decide what is was working, what was not, what had problems [00:15:00] and mark the data saying, okay, during these data I've had this problem during this, I had this one so that every one who analyzed can say, oh, I need this competent the detector.
Speaker 3: So give me only the data. Which was working in which that you collected while this piece was working that that needs to be distributed worldwide when we analyzed and we'd be full doing that. It's not like you collect data, you analyze it itself. You also need some, some kind of processing [00:15:30] pre processing of this data and all this process usually takes are, are just few days really one week I would say I can brand my analysis based on data. Yeah. One thing that is maybe not, not obvious is why I need to process this data and this goes a bit in how these huge detector that right now, which are a black box for you. I mean I haven't explained anything about it, how it works and I mentioned [00:16:00] that it has many systems just to give you a feeling. I can tell you that a date, the systems that are closer to the interaction are the one that um, basically when the particle passed through them, they basically try to disturb the particle in the less possible.
Speaker 3: So they are very thin part of material and they basically just just try to say, uh, to the electronic yet the particles pass through this point. So what you have [00:16:30] is kind of it creed all around several layers of grades, which will tell you a particular past here and other here. Sometimes they fail, they don't tell you that he passed. Sometimes they tell you that he's passed even if nothing was going on for noise of course. And so what you actually see when you record any event is are this huge amount of greets with points. And from that you need to figure out what does he mean? We mean how many particles were there, which trajectory did they, [00:17:00] they went through. And this is an highly non trivial task and this needs to be done in these. And from there we can start and saying, okay, if I see these kinds of particles, then it means that they originate from these other particle here and they have these energies. So I can, I know that this is not this process and you can do all this kind of infer things. So this needs to be done before the is analyzed and usually, yeah.
Speaker 4: [inaudible] [00:17:30] you're listening to spectrum on k l x this week we are talking to Somalia and pink Ingreso about the search for the Higgs Boson theoretical particle of mass in the standard bottle of physics.
Speaker 3: These experiments are very huge collaboration of people worldwide at center right now. Each of these experiments, [inaudible] experiment [00:18:00] is a collaboration of three thousands of people, which was needed to build the experiment to make it work, to still make it working right now. And when that eyes, what we see. So I'm very interested in just the scope of the project and how, how many people are working on it for such a fundamental question. When thinks that if we have an answer that could be potentially worthy of winning a Nobel prize. So who actually gets surprised if that's a very [00:18:30] good question. I think that of course, uh, in ob price I think is very much worth in this case, after all these years of searches, all the theorist working on building this theory of this Hicks Mechanism and these gander prediction of this particular of course worth a, a very good price and a noble price can be sweetened to that.
Speaker 3: And as well as that, I think all the experimental [00:19:00] effort would may need a w is definitely worth a very good price. So I like to think that, uh, this price will be shared among all the people that worked along all these years. But of course it will happen that probably a representative, uh, of those will actually take physically the price. But I'm sure that, uh, it will happen that it will be felt as shared among all the thousands of physicist working on this [00:19:30] project. And what's it like for you as an individual scientist on a big team? How do you sort of carve out your own niche and how is you cannot, uh, enforce a strict cerotic across structure, right? You basically have [inaudible] you cannot appoint coordinators which can try to focus on day the work of many people. But every people is basically free to pursue his own research as he feels that is the better way to go.
Speaker 3: It's never work that you do alone. It's something [00:20:00] that requires the work of several people. I worked on a similar thing in Chicago during my Phd [inaudible] a lot of experience in that and I tried to use the experience now too to improve things to push harder, our organized technique and understanding of our data at LHC. So there is plenty of room in which every person is contributing. I personally work, I'm like to work a lot on the analysis techniques [00:20:30] that are used to analyze what we see and to distinguish known processes from process that we are looking for. That is an extremely interesting field. Um, the reason for that is that we have a huge amount of information after this collision. Um, one that you didn't mention is that these detectors are huge [inaudible] yet us detector itself is kind of 45 meters long and 25 meters high.
Speaker 3: So [00:21:00] there are some huge, uh, instrumentations and uh, each of the, this detector is made of various sub system which are, which have the, uh, goal of measuring different protests, processes of the known particles that comes out from the interactions. And being in a, this is a huge amount of information. Okay. And it's not easy. Um, you don't, you don't know exactly what happens, but you try [00:21:30] to reconcile from what you see what happened. And this is something, ah, that I tried to work a lot on in really just analyzing what they see and try to classify if you want the values coalition and try to understand what happened. And this field are made a lot of progresses and, and it's using very, very, uh, advances techniques. And, uh, it seemed interesting how, uh, many concerts [00:22:00] that were born in other science fields that computer science are actually merging in what we are using right now.
Speaker 3: One of the nicer example are what are called narrow networks. So we're born in computer science are used a lot. For example, in, uh, our vision for the, for, uh, automation for robotics. Uh, and uh, we actually can use them to ah, to process the whole information that we have and try to classify [00:22:30] these events and to see how they look. Like we can use simulation of these events. We have a lot of people working, trying to simulate what what we expect to see in our detector, which been such a huge piece of instrument is not easy. And uh, using this simulation we can actually uh, make, uh, make new art tools like neural networks, which are tried to see what happened really in our detector and to see [00:23:00] if it is what we expect from a known process or from money x production. I have to say we are pretty close. We should be able to say something in a very short amount of time. We also know that thanks for joining us. Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 4: [inaudible] the regular feature of spectrum is to mention some of the science and technology events happening in [00:23:30] the bay area over the next two weeks. I'm joined for this calendar by Brad Swift
Speaker 5: to preserve our planet. Scientists tell us that we must reduce the amount of co two in the atmosphere from its current level of 392 parts per million to below 350 parts per million. The organization three fifty.org is building a global grassroots movement to solve the climate crisis. Moving planet is a worldwide rally to demand solutions to the climate [00:24:00] crisis. Moving planet is a global day of action scheduled for Saturday, September 24th, 2011 the San Francisco Rally begins with a parade from Justin Herman Plaza, which is at the intersection of market street and the Embarcadero. The parade will head up market street to the Civic Center at 12:30 PM once at the civic center. There will be Speakers, music, food workshops and exhibits for details on all the Saturday events including the San Francisco rally. Go [00:24:30] to the website, three fifty.org and click on moving planet
Speaker 2: Berkeley Ameritas professor Frank Shu will deliver a lecture entitled Nuclear Energy After Fukushima on Tuesday, September 27th at 6:00 PM at the Commonwealth Club's San Francisco office located on the second floor of five nine five market street. The media and public's reaction to the recent nuclear accident threatened to cripple the nuclear renaissance that is humanity's best hope for mitigating climate disruption. She will review how [00:25:00] light water reactors and the once through fuel cycle came to dominate the landscape for generating nuclear power today and we'll assess options for the future. A standard ticket for this event is $20 but emission is $8 for members and $7 for students with a valid ID visit, www.commonwealthclub.org
Speaker 5: more information. What's right with Kansas. Learn how Kansas is climate and energy project is capitalizing on heartland values to change behavior [00:25:30] and reduce carbon emissions. A panel of Nancy Jackson, executive director, Kansas climate and energy project and Marianne Fuller from the Lawrence Berkeley labs. Environmental Energy Technologies Division will present the Kansas project plus be the first to see lbls video Kansas, which shows how the climate and energy project has become a Kansas mainstay. This will be Monday, October 3rd 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM this is a free event at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, [00:26:00] 2025 Addison Street in Berkeley,
Speaker 2: exploratorium is hosting after dark and evening series for adults 18 and over. That mix is science, art and cocktails and mission to the exploratorium is included. Tickets are $15 or $12 for seniors, students or persons with disabilities and are free for members. On Thursday, October 6th from six to 10:00 PM this months after dark theme is again and again explore the fascinating worlds of reminiscence and repetition [00:26:30] and then backwards skate through your own nostalgia on their temporary roller rink. UC Berkeley professor of psychology, Art CIM, and Maura will explain the mechanics of human memory. The website for this event is www.exploratorium.edu/after dark and now for a couple of recent science news events. Here's Brad Swift.
Speaker 5: Gamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. [00:27:00] The gamers achieved their discovery by playing folded and online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules. This is the first instance that the researchers are aware of in which gamers solved a longstanding scientific problem. After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein cutting enzyme from an aids like virus they called in the folded players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. The gamers did it and only three [00:27:30] weeks folded was created by computer scientists at the University of Washington Center for game science in collaboration with the Baker lab, a biochemistry lab at the university, figuring out the structure of proteins contributes to the research on the causes of and cures for cancer, Alzheimer's immune deficiencies, and a host of other disorders as well as work on biofuels. A paper describing the retrovirus enzyme structure was published September 18th [00:28:00] in the journal, nature, structural and molecular biology. The scientists and the gamers are listed as go authors
Speaker 2: and in news related to this week's interview. Science reports that Israel has become an associate member of the European Physics Laboratory [inaudible]. They're the 21st member nation and the first new members since Bulgaria joined in 1999 this move is somewhat controversial. Sm Academics in the UK and South Africa. I wished to boycott collaboration due to Israeli Palestinian conflicts [00:28:30] but this ends a two year probationary membership and Israel will eventually contribute 1 billion Swiss francs to the project a year. Israeli representative to the certain Governing Council Eliezar revenue beachy states that he hopes this will inspire other Arab nations to join the effort.
Speaker 4: [inaudible] music her during the show was attract [inaudible] Sean's divvy from David Lewis, Donna's self-published folk [00:29:00] and acoustic album. It is published under the creative Commons attribution license version 3.0 is available@wwwdotjamendo.com editing and production assistance for the show by Brad Swift.
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