EuroparlTV talks to Professor Peter Higgs about the so-called 'God particle', the origin of the universe and the discoveries yet to come.

Interview: Unravelling the mysteries of the universe

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/16146444/n003-0216-enxxx.srt

Professor Peter Higgs, you've referred  to the particle named after you

as simply  'the particle that was named after me'.

There must have been a lot of rivalry  at the time

with the development of the idea  of the Higgs field.

Do you sometimes feel a bit embarrassed  that it's named after you?

There were three different sets of people  unaware of what the others were doing

I was unaware of  what was going on in Brussels,

they didn't know  what I was doing in Edinburgh,

and there were three more at Imperial  College working on similar things.

It appears that the whole CERN  experiment was in a sense created -

which has the effect of giving mass  to everything, doesn't it?

The CERN machine has  a big programme of research

It's just that the particle was high up  on their list of priorities

as something to be found  early in the programme,

But there's much more  to the LHC programme than that.

Are you convinced  they really have found it?

The particle they found is lighter  than it was predicted to be, isn't it?

Lighter?  -Yes, it's only 125 gigaelectron volts.

Well, it depends what you mean  by lighter than predicted.

If you take the basis of the prediction  to be the indirect evidence

through the so-called radiative corrections  to other processes

which are already being measured  at LEP and other places,

then the evidence produced  the usual Gaussian distribution

which was peaked  at something lower than 125 GeV.

In fact the lower half of the distribution had  already been searched for and excluded.

So it was a little bit worrying  for the theorists

that this particle had not yet been found.

They would expect from that distribution

that it would turn up  just beyond the range of LEP,

You're quite happy with it?  -I'm happy with that.

who have specific theories  about how it comes about,

Some people argue that  it's an awful lot of money to spend

on something which doesn't really  help humanity as a whole.

You would argue that the spending on  the Large Hadron Collider is worthwhile.

What does it teach us?  What do we learn from it?

more about the structure of matter  at the most fundamental level,

but it also is more and more providing a link  with the way we understand the universe

and the way that  the universe came about.

So that's maybe still very pure science.

particularly the experimental programme,  the building of these machines,

provides challenges  in terms of developing the technology

So it's not a thing  which is completely isolated

and the province of  just a small group of fanatics.

This science, as you've hinted,  is really done on a global scale.

It happens all over the world at once.  How important is Europe's contribution

and how important is it  that Europe continues to contribute

to scientific research and development  in this way?

and in particular CERN  is an outstanding example

but that's there  at the core of CERN, the member states,

but of course it involves  worldwide collaborations now.

I think, is an important thing  as an example to others.

Professor Peter Higgs, thank you.  -You're welcome.