Weve Misplaced 96 of the Universe
[Music]
have you ever taken your 3d glasses off
at the cinema
the picture looks blurry and it can be
difficult to see exactly what is
happening
this is because 3d glasses trick our
brain into forming a 3d image
by controlling the color of the light
that each eye sees
using a different filter in each lens
you could say sometimes seeing things
from a different perspective
can make them look clearer and easier to
understand
this is exactly the approach that has
helped me with my research
looking to answer some of the most
fundamental questions we have about our
universe
to put this in a different context i
could see some people
finding my voice difficult to understand
due to my cerebral palsy
as an insurmountable barrier to giving a
ted talk
even if i saw that there are alternative
ways for people who have difficulties
with communication to speak to an
audience
i could be put off from using them
thinking that this dry computerized
voice has no life in it
and would put you all to sleep within
five minutes
alternatively i could see the dodgy
female
british synthesized voice as something
to be embraced
pepper this talk with jokes and gags
sometimes at the poor communication aids
expense
and hopefully make you laugh and keep
you engaged with what i want to tell you
about
luckily for you i have chosen the second
option
and what do i want to tell you about
i’m here to tell you that we have
completely misplaced 96
of the entire universe everything in
existence
that’s an awful lot of missing socks
i am a particle physicist analyzing data
from the large hadron collider
at sir in switzerland to answer the most
fundamental questions about our universe
at school i was the archetypal geeky kid
just wanting to get the other lessons
done to get into the science lab
my work now focuses on what i truly
believe is one of the greatest
achievements of scientific research in
the last century
a scientific model that describes the
properties and behavior of all the known
particles in the universe
and as particle physicists have no
imagination
we call it the standard model
for me having one model with so much
power
is as close as science gets to
describing nature at its most basic
level when i first heard about the
standard model
it really blew my mind and gave me the
passion to focus on my studies in
physics
but i also knew that i would have to
think about them a little differently to
my fellow students
for example i had to demonstrate in
examinations
that i had understood the practical
techniques that i had
been taught due to my disability
i don’t have enough control of my hands
to be able to pick up laboratory
equipment
and use it
so i had to effectively borrow someone
else’s hands
i practiced giving extremely detailed
instructions to my assistant
about how to use the equipment in order
to perform the experiment
seeing experiments from the perspective
of a series of instructions
that i had to give as clearly as
possible really helped me get into the
mindset i needed to understand
how i could perform well in my
practicals which i did
recognizing that i was able to look at
such issues in a different way
helped me to find the tenacity to
persevere with
mastering the practical side of my
scientific studies
rather than letting my physical
limitations stop me
now my research with the large hadron
collider
involves me writing a lot of code to
analyze the data used to study the
standard model
i dictate what i would like my
assistants to type
as typing it for myself would be too
slow and effortful
it does take a slightly different
mindset to speak your work rather than
write it
especially when all the education you
receive is aimed at people who can
quickly scribble things down
however i have found that telling myself
that i am doing basically the same
actions as everyone else
has helped me to understand how to
proceed in pursuing my
passion for physics
now you know how i do my research let’s
get back to my favorite model
and hopefully yours after this talk
because unfortunately we have a bit of a
major snag
the standard model only describes four
percent of the universe
to understand why you have to look at
how fast galaxies are spinning
newton’s laws tell us that they would
simply fly apart
if there wasn’t some other kind of
massive substance within them
to bring them together
this missing mass is called dark matter
and we observe that it accounts for 23
of the universe
so what about the rest
well the discovery that the expansion of
the universe is accelerating
rather than decelerating due to
gravitational attraction
points to the existence of a force
acting against gravity
we call this force dark energy and it
accounts for the remaining
73 of the universe
neither dark matter nor dark energy are
included in the standard model
so there is a staggering 96 of the
universe
that we know absolutely nothing about
therefore it turns out that my favorite
model
that i thought could describe every
particle in the universe
isn’t as all-encompassing as i initially
thought
so is there a way to look at the
particles that are already described by
the standard model
differently in order to discover these
absent particles
you might think that we would be racking
our brains
to design detectors that could produce
some kind of photograph of these elusive
particles
to prove that they are there
surely if you want to find something
that’s missing
that’s the general approach you have to
take right
wrong we actually just have to accept
the fact that these missing particles
are not going to interact with our
detectors whatever we do
but that’s not game over
in the same way that i didn’t give up on
being able to do laboratory experiments
myself
but instead used someone else’s hands we
use the particles that we can detect
to spy on the particles that we think
are there but
hiding
at the large hadron collider we
accelerate particles to speeds very
close to the speed of light
such that they smash into each other and
release enormous amounts of energy
we use protons that are found in the
atoms that comprise all the matter that
we see around us
including you and me
however it is when these protons collide
head on that the really interesting
physics happens
such colossal amounts of energy are
released that particles that are
fundamentally different from the protons
that we began with
are created
it’s a bit like if you smashed two
apples against each other expecting them
to turn into something completely
different
like a pile of cherries
using extremely sophisticated detectors
we are able to tell what kinds of
particles have been made
but only the types we already know about
so how are we going to find these other
mysterious particles
fortunately a fundamental law of nature
comes to our rescue and allows us to
study these particle collisions from a
different perspective
energy can neither be created nor
destroyed only transferred
if you add up the energy of the
particles before and after the collision
you would find that they are equal
we know the energy of the protons
entering the collision
and we make very sensitive measurements
of the energy of the particles that come
out
if those two energies are not identical
alarm bells start to ring
perhaps one of the principles that
underpin our understanding of nature
conservation of energy is incorrect
or as everyone is hoping the missing
energy could have been stolen by
particles that elude our detectors
and could help us answer some of the
most fundamental questions we have in
physics today
now i know what you are going to ask me
have you found the missing particles yet
sadly we haven’t
some people might see this as a reason
to lose hope
that we are ever going to fully
understand the basic building blocks of
the cosmos
however i believe that this is perhaps
the most exciting time to be conducting
fundamental physics
as we have so much left to discover
but aside from thinking about some of
the most exciting questions in science
i find that being open to seeing a
situation from a different perspective
is most meaningful when applied on a
personal scale
it encourages you to seek out the
positive in each person
and situation no matter how difficult
and use it to bring out not only our own
potential
but that of those around us
i feel this is something we could all
benefit from at the moment
it doesn’t always mean that you will
find what you’re looking for right away
or that it will be easy
but for me this mindset helped me get
where i am today
and it keeps me going
looking at the world around us today we
are surrounded by big questions
without obvious answers
perhaps by embracing a new way of
thinking
by being truly open to other people who
don’t share our perspective
we might just be able to discover new
solutions to the problems we are all
facing
thank you