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J BUTTERWORTH: Well it would be one thing to tick off the ‘to do’ list. I think
it really means, I would be surprised right, it means that the ideas we have had about
how nature works, which are very mathematical and very obtuse are actually happening in
real data and to me that’s something rather deep and wonderful that goes beyond finding
a particle. It’s a vindication of a certain approach and a connection between our maths
and our, nature um and I just think that’s wonderful, if that turns up!
INTERVIEWER: And it must be, I guess, particularly amazing if you’ve worked on something for
such a long time and then finally you’ve got a result. I mean how would that feel if
you find the Higgs?
J BUTTERWORTH: Um it’s, in a way the wonderful thing is seeing the stuff you’ve worked
on for so long work, so actually take data, actually function in the way this massive
complex machine was supposed to. If then we see the Higgs within that, um part of me will
be a little disappointed because the theorists have been telling us it’s there and I would
have liked to have surprised them. On the other hand to see something that new and that
fundamental is just amazing.
INTERVIEWER: How well do you think it inspires other people to take up physics? You know
it must be a really exciting time if you’re going through school, college and you’re
hearing about the Higgs all the time.
JBUTTERWORTH: I think there’s a good thing and a danger about all that so, about inspiring
people to do physics. The good thing is that it’s obviously fantastic to have a really
high profile thing that’s exciting that shows you that physics is alive, that it’s
not a closed book of stuff we know, that we are still adding pages to the text books if
you like. The danger is that people think that because the LHC is so big that that is
the only kind of physics. I mean in this department here we are doing all kinds of physics, there
are many frontiers of knowledge in physics that are very exciting but particle physics
isn’t the whole thing and people should remember there is a lot of physics goes on
into making the LHC work for instance and there’s a lot of physics that’s going
on about how the electrons and atoms interact and build into technologies there. So I think
it’s great that it pulls people in, I would be worried if many people think that particle
physics is the only kind of physics. It’s one of the really exciting frontiers, it’s
one of the most visible ones and that’s fantastic but people should remember that
physics, the science, is much more than just hunting the Higgs, it’s not a one man band
or one show, and it’s not the only game in town.
INTERVIEWER: and so I guess in relation to that, if people say ‘Well we’ve found
the Higgs now, no point in the LHC any more then!’ What would you say to that?
J BUTTERWORTH: Well you don’t build, this machine has given us access to physics above
what we call the electroweak symmetry breaking scale which is a fundamental energy scale
in nature which is where the Higgs lives if it’s there, that’s what the Higgs is to
do, the Higgs is what breaks this symmetry. Really what the LHC has done, whether or not
it finds the Higgs, whether it shows it’s there or whether it find’s it’s not, it’s
giving us access to physics above this fundamental scale in nature for the first time ever and
we know that above that scale for instance, the weak nuclear force and the electromagnetic
force look the same. We need to know how physics behaves in that region and you don’t kind
of build this enormous kit, find out that one of the things you were looking for is
either there or not and then go home. You explore what physics is really like in that
region and you find out how is the Higgs behaving if it’s there for instance. If it’s not
there, how is nature behaving any way without it, how does nature cope with the fact that
it’s not there, so it would be, you know, this is the start of physics above the electro
symmetry scale basically.
INTERVIEWER: If you were to compare finding the Higgs to another field in physics, um,
how significant is it, for maybe those who aren’t into physics, how can you explain
how significant this is?
J BUTTERWORTH: It’s a difficult question because you are making judgements about other
people’s fields but one thing that comes to mind maybe is the guy who solved Fermat’s
last theorem. It’s something that has been on the mathematicians to do list for a long
time. It wasn’t always the most fundamentally interesting problem in mathematics, it’s
just something that really needed to be done and also in doing it, whole bunches of new
mathematics were developed in order to solve this theorem. I’m not a mathematician but
reading about that is fantastic and it does remind me of the Higgs in the fact that it’s
something that you know you just need the answer to for so long before you can move
on and in finding the answer you develop whole new ways of doing things which are really
useful in many different places too. So mathematicians may disagree but I pick that as, at least
there are some analogies there that work for me.