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Why does e=mc2?
BIOGRAPHY
At the same time as playing keyboard with D'Ream, Brian obtained a first class degree and a PhD. He is now Professor of Particle Physics at Manchester University and one of the leaders on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. Not content with that, he has also become a hugely popular TV presenter and author.
Brian's television credits include the blockbusters Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe, with a further series going into production. He has also fronted Space Hoppers, Stargazing, The Big Bang and numerous specials for Horizon. His book Why Does E=mc2? quickly became a bestseller.
Brian's talks inspire audiences around the globe, from TED in America to the World Economic Forum in Davos and China. With staggering images, his presentations show that science breaks down barriers and can both shock and excite. He also describes the breathtaking work at CERN, where scientists are recreating conditions a billionth of a second after Big Bang "in the hope of revealing the underlying simplicity of the universe."
Brian Cox is an International Fellow of the Explorers Club and winner of the prestigious British Association Lord Kelvin Award for his work promoting science. When he isn't filming in far away places Brian writes for both tabloids and broadsheets, and co-presents Radio 4's Infinite Monkey Cage with his friend, the comedian Robin Ince.
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IT'S THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS THAT MAKE PARTICLE PHYSICS SEXY
I would like to give a brief introduction to particle physics and what we hope to achieve with the Large Hadron Collider at The European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva.
Particle physics is the exploration of the world at its smallest. What we have found in the 100 years or so since Rutherford discovered the nucleus is that everything can be made of just four particles, or three in a sense: two quarks, called an up quark and a down quark, and an electron. So the protons and neutrons in your body are made of up and down quarks, with electrons around them - that's atomic structure.
This is an incredible simplification: we have also found another two copies of those particles which is rather strange. So there are in fact 12 fundamental particles of nature as we know at the moment. The copies appear identical. So the electron has got a partner called a "muon" and the electron has also got the "tau". They are heavier but otherwise identical. And we have no idea why those copies exist.
So why is nature built that way? Why does that pattern of 12 particles, eight of which appear to be useless, allow you to build everything in the universe? We have no idea. That's one of the big questions.
Particle physics tries to describe the forces of nature - that's the way that those particles talk to each other. There are four fundamental forces. There is gravity and the other three forces that work in the sub-atomic world: electromagnetism - fridge magnets and electricity; there is weak force which allows the sun to shine and is responsible for radioactive beta- decay; and there is the stronger nuclear force that sticks the nucleus together called "gluons".
Particle physics is the study or the search for the ultimate building blocks of the universe and, in a sense, I feel the wheels are starting to come off our picture of reality. This is why the Large Hadron Collider is being built.
There are huge and fascinating questions it will help to answer. We now know that 95 per cent of the universe is made of the something other than those 12 particles. And we have very little idea what the other 95 per cent is, which is kind of embarrassing.