Review of Particle Fever (2013) by Walter M — 24 Mar 2014

"Particle Fever" is a fascinating and very informative documentary about the search for the missing Higgs Particle at CERN in Switzerland, with the man of the hour, Peter Higgs, making an appearance. As one post-doctorate physics student puts it, waiting for the Large Hadron Collider to go online, is like a whole bunch of six year olds the night before Christmas. With a huge amount of data that only the internet can handle, the collider is more than just the world's largest model train set, as there are four experiments running at the same time that take a huge amount of international cooperation to make it happen. And it is telling that two of the subjects were once political refugees.

After all of that is said and done and all the particles collide with each other, what "Particle Fever" does best is make particle physics understandable to a layperson like yours truly and explains in plain language and fancy animation why all of this is so very important. That starts with the location of the Higgs Particle lying between two possible theories, Super Symmetry or a Multiverse which is not as cool as it sounds.(Probably.) Eventually we will see practical applications from these experiments which could turn out to benefit humanity immensely.(For example, radio waves were discovered before radio.) And am I the only one who is thinking time travel?