Last week, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) successfully trapped a chunk of antimatter for more than 16 minutes. Why is that significant? Because the volatile material, made out of atoms that are a mirror image of regular atoms, normally explodes into energy upon contact with matter. For that reason, it has only been held for fractions of a second in the past. The organization’s $9-billion Large Hadron Collider, meanwhile, is inching ever closer to discovering the elusive Higgs boson particle, a tiny speck said to be the foundation of all physical matter in the universe. The Post’s Tristin Hopper spoke with CERN director general Rolf-Dieter Heuer by phone from Victoria, as the scientist wound down a three-day speaking tour of Canada.
Q: Why are we trying to trap antimatter?
A: If you can store these antimatter atoms long enough, you can investigate whether they have the same properties as regular atoms.
Q: Why are you interested in this?
A: Because the universe, as far as we know, is matter-dominated; there’s no more antimatter in the universe [that] we know [of]. Yet after the Big Bang, matter and antimatter were created in equal quantities. If that were still true today, we couldn’t talk to each other because we would all be annihilated into energy. We don’t know the reasons why the universe is now made out of matter, and investigating antimatter atoms can help solve that problem.
Q: How do you describe the Large Hadron Collider to six-year-olds? Do you call it an atom smasher? A particle cannon?
A: I call it a super microscope. It’s a microscope that allows you to look deep into the structure of matter into the details that you can’t see with your eye. With such a high power to see things, you can see things that happened [soon after] the Big Bang. One of the main quests of the Large Hadron Collider has been to find the Higgs-Boson particle, the so-called “God particle” that is responsible for creating mass.
Q: When will it be found?
A: We know the properties of this Higgs boson very well. The only thing we don’t know is if it exists at all. I can now make a prediction that by the end of next year, we will have an answer on the Shakespeare question of the Higgs boson: “To be or not to be.”
Q: And if it doesn’t exist?
A: The final word on whether it does exist will come only when we find another mechanism which does the same job of the Higgs boson. There are many other theories on how this could be done. But there are holes and they are not very satisfactory.
Q: The Large Hadron Collider is one of the most expensive scientific instruments in the world, paid for largely with public funding. Maintaining that funding is your job. As director general, how much of your time ends up being spent on science, and how much is spent on public relations?
A: Zero per cent science, 100% public relations. I am still involved in the science, but my main job is outreach, to be the foreign minister, minister of the interior and also to be the president at the same time. One thing I’m finding is that society usually ignores science. Our life today is very much dependent on previous scientific results, nonetheless, people aren’t as interested as one would hope. They should be interested in science because science brings our lifestyle forward. The Large Hadron Collider is a good opportunity to talk about this and it’s why I give about one talk per week at the moment.
Q: In your talks you often stress the importance of “basic science” — science that has no clear applications for society. What arguments do you usually give for spending billions on theoretical physics rather than, say, engineering a new type of solar panel?
A: There is a general trend towards applied science because it gives an immediate return, but people are ignoring that you can’t do applied science without basic science. You never would have gotten the lightbulb if all you had done was applied science on the candle. It took basic science on electricity. I also like to use the example of [English physicist] Michael Faraday. Faraday was working on electricity and he was asked by the prime minister, “What can you use that for?” His answer was, “I don’t know, but maybe one day you will be able to tax it.” While you don’t know for sure, you get a feeling that someday all these things will have an application … There are also applications in the instruments we build to make our science. In 1989, our experiments at CERN became so international that we needed a software platform to distribute information — and that was the birth of the World Wide Web.