Particle Fever

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Particle Fever
Particle Fever.jpg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by Mark Levinson
Produced by
Starring
Narrated byDavid Kaplan
CinematographyClaudia Raschke-Robinson
Edited by Walter Murch
Music by Robert Miller
Production
company
Anthos Media
Distributed by
  • Abramorama
  • BOND360
Release dates
  • July 14, 2013 (2013-07-14)(Sheffield, UK)
  • March 5, 2014 (2014-03-05)(United States)
Running time
99 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.4 million [1]
Box office$869,838 [2]

Particle Fever is a 2013 American documentary film tracking the first round of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland. The film follows the experimental physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) who run the experiments, as well as the theoretical physicists who attempt to provide a conceptual framework for the LHC's results. The film begins in 2008 with the first firing of the LHC and concludes in 2012 with the successful identification of the Higgs boson. [3]

Contents

The Communication Awards of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine awarded a $20,000 prize for excellence in communicating science to the general public in Film/Radio/TV to David Kaplan and Mark Levinson for "Particle Fever" on October 14, 2015. The awards are given to individuals in four categories: books, film/radio/TV, magazine/newspaper and online, and are supported by the W. M. Keck Foundation. [4]

Synopsis

The film is composed of two narrative threads. One follows the large team of experimental physicists at CERN as they try to get the LHC running properly. After a promising initial test run, the LHC suffers a liquid helium leak in 2007 that damages its electromagnets. Fabiola Gianotti, Martin Aleksa, and Monica Dunford are all shown discussing how to handle the negative publicity surrounding the accident, and how to proceed. After repairs in 2009, the LHC begins to run experiments again at half power.

The other thread follows the competing theories of Nima Arkani-Hamed and his mentor Savas Dimopoulos. In the film, Arkani-Hamed advocates for the "multiverse" theory, which predicts the mass of the Higgs boson to be approximately 140 giga-electronvolts. Dimopoulos argues for the more-established supersymmetry theory, which predicts the mass of the Higgs boson to be approximately 115 GeV.

The narrative threads combine at the end of the film, when CERN announces the confirmed existence of a Higgs-like particle, with a mass of approximately 125 GeV. The discovery of the particle is met with a standing ovation, and Peter Higgs is shown wiping away tears. However, neither of the competing theories of the universe is definitively supported by the finding.

Later, Kaplan is shown admitting that none of his theoretical models are supported by this finding, and that the long-term implications of the discovery are unclear. [5] [6] [7]

Production

The film was shot over a period of seven years. It was directed by Mark Levinson, a former theoretical physicist with a doctorate from UC-Berkeley. Levinson produced the film along with David Kaplan, a professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University and producers Andrea Miller, Carla Solomon and Wendy Sax. [8] The team gathered nearly 500 hours of footage from both professional camera crews and amateur video self-recordings shot by the physicists themselves. [9] This footage was then edited by Walter Murch, who had previously won Academy Awards for his work on Apocalypse Now and The English Patient . [5] Kaplan worked closely with MK12 to create the animated sequences which are used throughout the film. [10]

The film premiered at Sheffield Doc/Fest on July 14, 2013. [11]

Release

David Kaplan, Mark Levinson, and Meredith Wadman discuss the film in New York City in January 2014. Kaplan, Levinson, Wadman in 2014.jpg
David Kaplan, Mark Levinson, and Meredith Wadman discuss the film in New York City in January 2014.

Particle Fever was shown at several festivals before opening in limited release in the United States on March 5, 2014. [8]

Critical response

The film received critical acclaim, with reviewers praising the film for making theoretical arguments seem comprehensible, for making scientific experiments seem thrilling, for making particle physicists seem human, and for promoting physics outreach. Several reviewers singled out Murch's editing for praise. [12] On his blog, theoretical physicist and string theory critic Peter Woit called the film "fantastically good", but cautioned that Arkani-Hamed's linking of the Higgs boson to multiverse theory was a tenuous proposition, as this theory did not currently make testable predictions. [6]

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 96% based on 48 reviews, with an average rating of 7.92 out of 10. The site's consensus states: "The concepts behind its heady subject matter may fly over the heads of most viewers, but Particle Fever presents it in such a way that even the least science-inclined viewers will find themselves enraptured." [13] On Metacritic, the film has an 87 out of 100 rating, based on 18 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". [12]

Awards

In 2016, it was one of the inaugural winners of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication. [14]

On July 27, 2024, at San Diego Comic-Con, composer Bear McCreary announced that he is working on a musical theater version of the documentary film, called Particle Fever: The Musical. He also announced that he's working with composer/lyricist Zoe Sarnak, playwrighter David Henry Hwang, and art director Leigh Silverman. [15]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Particle physics</span> Study of subatomic particles and forces

Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the scale of protons and neutrons, while the study of combination of protons and neutrons is called nuclear physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Large Hadron Collider</span> Particle accelerator at CERN, Switzerland

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundreds of universities and laboratories across more than 100 countries. It lies in a tunnel 27 kilometres (17 mi) in circumference and as deep as 175 metres (574 ft) beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ATLAS experiment</span> CERN LHC experiment

ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. It was also designed to search for evidence of theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nima Arkani-Hamed</span> American-Canadian physicist (born 1972)

Nima Arkani-Hamed is an American-Canadian theoretical physicist of Iranian descent, with interests in high-energy physics, quantum field theory, string theory, cosmology and collider physics. Arkani-Hamed is a member of the permanent faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He is also director of the Carl P. Feinberg Cross-Disciplinary Program in Innovation at the Institute and director of The Center for Future High Energy Physics (CFHEP) in Beijing, China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hierarchy problem</span> Unsolved problem in physics

In theoretical physics, the hierarchy problem is the problem concerning the large discrepancy between aspects of the weak force and gravity. There is no scientific consensus on why, for example, the weak force is 1024 times stronger than gravity.

Savas Dimopoulos is a particle physicist at Stanford University. He worked at CERN from 1994 to 1997. Dimopoulos is well known for his work on constructing theories beyond the Standard Model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Ellis (physicist, born 1946)</span> British physicist

Jonathan Richard "John" Ellis is a British-Swiss theoretical physicist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Brout</span> American physicist (1928–2011)

Robert Brout was a Belgian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions in elementary particle physics. He was a professor of physics at Université Libre de Bruxelles where he had created, together with François Englert, the Service de Physique Théorique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Lykken</span>

Joseph David Lykken is an American theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and, from July 1, 2014 to Sept 6, 2022, he was the Deputy Director of Fermilab. He is currently Director of Fermilab's Quantum Division.

In particle physics and string theory (M-theory), the ADD model, also known as the model with large extra dimensions (LED), is a model framework that attempts to solve the hierarchy problem. The model tries to explain this problem by postulating that our universe, with its four dimensions, exists on a membrane in a higher dimensional space. It is then suggested that the other forces of nature operate within this membrane and its four dimensions, while the hypothetical gravity-bearing particle, the graviton, can propagate across the extra dimensions. This would explain why gravity is very weak compared to the other fundamental forces. The size of the dimensions in ADD is around the order of the TeV scale, which results in it being experimentally probeable by current colliders, unlike many exotic extra dimensional hypotheses that have the relevant size around the Planck scale.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Higgs boson</span> Elementary particle involved with rest mass

The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge that couples to mass. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately upon generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabiola Gianotti</span> Italian physicist, director general of the European Council for Nuclear Research

Fabiola Gianotti is an Italian experimental particle physicist who is the current and first woman Director-General at CERN in Switzerland. Her first mandate began on 1 January 2016 and ran for a period of five years. At its 195th Session in 2019, the CERN Council selected Gianotti for a second term as Director-General. Her second five-year term began on 1 January 2021 and goes on until 2025. This is the first time in CERN's history that a Director-General has been appointed for a full second term.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gordon L. Kane</span>

Gordon Leon Kane is Victor Weisskopf Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan and director emeritus at the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics (LCTP), a leading center for the advancement of theoretical physics. He was director of the LCTP from 2005 to 2011 and Victor Weisskopf Collegiate Professor of Physics from 2002 - 2011. He received the Lilienfeld Prize from the American Physical Society in 2012, and the J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gian Francesco Giudice</span> Italian theoretical physicist

Gian Francesco Giudice is an Italian theoretical physicist working at CERN in particle physics and cosmology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Search for the Higgs boson</span> Effort to prove or disprove the existence of particle

The search for the Higgs boson was a 40-year effort by physicists to prove the existence or non-existence of the Higgs boson, first theorised in the 1960s. The Higgs boson was the last unobserved fundamental particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, and its discovery was described as being the "ultimate verification" of the Standard Model. In March 2013, the Higgs boson was officially confirmed to exist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guido Tonelli</span> Italian particle physicist

Guido Tonelli is an Italian particle physicist who was involved with the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. He is a professor of General Physics at the University of Pisa (Italy) and a CERN visiting scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tejinder Virdee</span> British physicist

Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee,, is a Kenyan-born British experimental particle physicist and Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is best known for originating the concept of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) with a few other colleagues and has been referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' of the project. CMS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1991 and now has over 3500 participants from 50 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Future Circular Collider</span> Proposed post-LHC particle accelerator at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) is a proposed particle accelerator with an energy significantly above that of previous circular colliders, such as the Super Proton Synchrotron, the Tevatron, and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The FCC project is considering three scenarios for collision types: FCC-hh, for hadron-hadron collisions, including proton-proton and heavy ion collisions, FCC-ee, for electron-positron collisions, and FCC-eh, for electron-hadron collisions.

Michel Della Negra is a French experimental particle physicist known for his role in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Greg Landsberg is an American particle physicist. He is the Thomas J. Watson Sr. Professor of Physics at Brown University.

References

  1. Dance, Scott (March 19, 2014). "Documentary follows 'Particle Fever' surrounding Higgs boson discovery". The Baltimore Sun . Trif Alatzas. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  2. "Particle Fever (2014)". Box Office Mojo . Internet Movie Database . Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  3. Perlman, David (March 9, 2014). "'Particle Fever' an intimate look at a weighty experiment". San Francisco Chronicle . Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  4. NAS-Webcast. "2015 Communication Awards Ceremony". Livestream.com. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  5. 1 2 Murch, Walter (June 6, 2013). "Catching 'Particle Fever': Walter Murch on Editing the Universe Down to Size" (Interview). Interviewed by Whitney Mallett. Motherboard - Vice . Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  6. 1 2 Woit, Peter (October 1, 2013). "Particle Fever". Not Even Wrong. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  7. Scott, A. O. (March 4, 2014). "'Particle Fever' Tells of Search for the Higgs Boson". The New York Times . Retrieved October 13, 2016.
  8. 1 2 "Particle Fever Press Notes" (PDF). ParticleFever.com. Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  9. Kaplan, David (February 19, 2014). "Physicist-turned-filmmaker captures seven years of "Particle Fever"". PBS NewsHour (Interview). Interviewed by Rebecca Jacobson. Retrieved October 13, 2016.
  10. Cone, Juston (March 16, 2014). "Particle Fever". Motionographer.com. Retrieved August 29, 2017.
  11. "Particle Fever". Sheffield Doc/Fest . Retrieved October 13, 2016.
  12. 1 2 "Particle Fever Reviews". Metacritic . CBS Interactive . Retrieved October 11, 2016.
  13. "Particle Fever (2014)". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved April 16, 2018.
  14. Davis, Nicola (June 16, 2016). "Winners of inaugural Stephen Hawking medal announced". The Guardian . Retrieved December 7, 2017.
  15. [Interview] Composer Bear McCreary at San Diego Comic-Con. Temple of Geek. August 3, 2024 via YouTube.