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