Particle Fever: A look behind the scenes of the Higgs discovery

On 4 July 2012, the discovery of the Higgs particle at the Large Hadron Collider made headlines around the world. A few years earlier David Kaplan, a theoretical physicist at the Johns Hopkins University, had decided to record the historic events at the LHC. He teamed up with theoretical-physicist-turned-filmmaker Mark Levinson.

Their film, Particle Fever, follows six physicists (including Kaplan) from before the LHC turned on in 2008, through the jubilation of the first circulating beams, the setbacks when the LHC hit trouble, the first high-energy proton–proton collisions (see photo), to the spotting of the Higgs particle and physicists beginning to wrap their heads around the new discoveries. (See, for example, Physics Today, October 2009, page 25 , and August 2012, page 19 .)

Physics explanations are presented in the film, but the main emphases are the scientists and the scientific process. With the film, Kaplan and Levinson aim to give the wider world a glimpse into the lives of physicists and to show that science, like art, is an essential human activity.

In one scene an economist asks about the financial gains to be expected from discoveries at the LHC. Kaplan is quick on his feet: “It’s a simple answer: I have no idea. . . . It could be nothing, other than understanding—everything.”

Particle Fever opens on 5 March at the Film Forum in New York City and soon thereafter at other theaters across the country (see particlefever.com for schedule). See also the Q&A with the filmmakers at http://www.physicstoday.org in the Daily Edition’s Singularities department.