Go, go boson! François Englert and Peter Higgs get the Nobel Prize in Physics
You may have heard of the Higgs boson — that elusive little thing that explains a lot about our universe? Well, so has the Swedish Royal Academy of Science, and, today, its members awarded physicists François Englert and Peter Higgs the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work theorizing its existence, a postulate later confirmed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Hooray, CERN!
At TEDx, we’re no stranger to the fascinating science going down at the home of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. In fact, CERN just held their first TEDx event this May — TEDxCERN! As part of the event, CERN scientists teamed up with our friends at TED-Ed to create some amazing animations on the stuff they study.
So, for all of you who wanna learn about particle physics, but don’t exactly have the time to win a Nobel Prize, two animated lessons — one on the Higgs and the other, well, just on the beginning of the universe:
The basics of the Higgs boson
In 2012, scientists at CERN discovered evidence of the Higgs boson — a particular game-changer in the field of particle physics — key to understanding how particles gain mass. Using the Socratic method, CERN scientists Dave Barney and Steve Goldfarb explain the exciting implications of the Higgs boson.
The beginning of the universe, for beginners
How did the universe begin — and how is it expanding? CERN physicist Tom Whyntie shows how cosmologists and particle physicists explore these questions by replicating the heat, energy and activity of the first few seconds of our universe, from right after the Big Bang.
(Above, extraordinary photos of CERN, all copyright CERN and their photographers.)