Brown Sugar

On the 4th of July 2012 the world knew: the Higgs-particle had been discovered by two experiments, ATLAS and CMS, at the Large Hadron Collider of the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva. Two wonderful seminars at CERN summarized many years of innovative experimentation and data analysis, culminating in the highlight for now: the observation of the Higgs boson through its decay into two photons. A peak is observed in the two photon spectrum, the evidence being corroborated by other for the time being somewhat less populated channels.

There was relief and excitement, euphoria even, among those who had been involved in this long and risky project. Understandably so: the stakes had been very high, many had invested more than a decade and some more than two, of their scientific careers in this endeavour: the search for ‘the Higgs’. But the excitement was by no means limited to the ‘small’ circle of insiders: through the interest of the media in this news an audience of many, many millions was reached. Heart-warming for all the physicists and engineers who had been one way or another involved in this adventure, but also an opportunity for explaining and sharing the excitement with ‘the public’. ‘The Higgs’ is public property, the research has been entirely publicly funded by the Member States of CERN, by the associate members, by other bilateral agreements and by the various national research organisations (in the Netherlands this is NWO).

What ìs the Higgs particle? Why is this discovery so important? What is the use of it? I would love to address these questions and I would do so along the lines I have done many times before. I will not do that here. I would also love to answer questions like: how was the discovery made? Why was it so hard, why did it take so long? I will not do that here either. I use this space to challenge the ‘experts (without credentials)’ to properly think about answers to these questions before making statements and appearances in the mass media. If you are not passionate about the subject, either explain that or stay away from it. If you are not knowledgeable: stay away from it.

In a Dutch TV show the Higgs field was modelled as brown sugar. ‘Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good’.

Jos Engelen

July 9, 2012

Meritocratic or mediocre?

ATLAS and CMS are the names given to two large experimental setups at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s biggest accelerator for high energy physics (elementary particle physics) at the European CERN laboratory near Geneva. The setups are huge and heavy – 10,000 tons – and technologically very advanced and innovative: from superconducting magnets to highly integrated ‘deep sub-micron’ electronics. The detectors deal with tens of proton-proton collisions every 50 nanoseconds, producing thousands of particles at this high rate. In order words: the proton bunches in the beams meet and collide at the center of these detectors two hundred million times per second. Powerful and smartly programmed computer systems filter out about one hundred of the most interesting collision ‘events’ per second for recording them on a mass storage medium for further ‘off line’ analysis. In total the experiments record approximately 15 million gigabytes per year. The worldwide LHC computing grid – a distributed infrastructure – was developed for storing and analyzing these data.

The teams of scientists involved in each of these experiments (ATLAS, CMS) number two and a half, maybe three thousand persons. The period over which ATLAS/CMS were designed, constructed, built, commissioned up to ‘data taking’ and data analysis (‘physics’) is about 15 years, longer for the hand full of pioneers involved from the very early days of audacious planning. Audacious because they had to plan for technological advances that were by no means sure to happen. They had to work hard to make them happen!

ATLAS/CMS fully live up to the expectations. They collect their data very efficiently from the collisions provided prolifically by the Large Hadron Collider, also working wonderfully well. Prolific is also the production of scientific papers by ATLAS/CMS. I read them with great interest. It is exciting, breathtaking, to follow the hunt for the Higgs boson (its ‘hiding place’ has been localized quite accurately; before the end of 2012 we will have captured it!).

But there is one thing that disturbs me about the scientific publications of ATLAS/CMS. And that is the author list, in particular the length of it. You can find all 3000 authors on every paper. That is ridiculous. It brings high energy physics into a cultural crisis. It prevents the young and brilliant to manifest themselves through a distinctive publication record. It allows mediocrity to creep in.

I call on ATLAS/CMS to do something about this. In these days of web-based publishing it should be technically easy to distinguish, say, five categories of authors. 1: those who really did the innovative analysis published in a particular paper; 2: those, usually more senior, who were closely involved in inspiring, supervising, checking, improving the work; 3: those who made distinctive, but more generic contributions to the technical infrastructure of particular importance for the paper under consideration; 4: the present leadership of the collaboration; 5: the long retired who once made a contribution to the collaboration.

I know, my categories are not perfect, but they are a start. If high energy physics is to survive it has to very quickly re-emphasize scientific excellence again as the most important criterion for leadership.

Jos Engelen, March 26, 2012