The Edge of Atom Land: News from the Energy Frontier with Jon Butterworth

The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 placed physics in a position unique in history. We have an internally consistent theory of fundamental physics – the Standard Model – which scored a huge success by predicting that discovery. Yet the Standard Model is not a “theory of everything”. It leaves many key questions unanswered, and seems so far to provide little clue as to where those answers might lie. I will describe the current landscape and discuss options for continuing the exploration beyond our current map of subatomic physics.

Jon Butterworth is an experimental particle physicist working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, and Professor of Physics at University College London. He grew up in Manchester, took his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Oxford, then moved to DESY, Hamburg to work for Pennsylvania State University on the ZEUS experiment at the HERA electron-proton collider. He joined UCL in 1995, and was Physics Chair of ZEUS in 2003-2004. He was a physics convenor of ATLAS during first data taking (2010-2012). He won the Chadwick Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics in 2013 for his pioneering experimental and phenomenological work in high-energy particle physics, especially in the understanding of hadronic jets. He was head of the department of Physics & Astronomy at UCL (2011-2018) and has written two books and many articles on particle physics for the general public.

This Heinz R. Pagels Memorial Lecture was originally recorded at the Aspen Center for Physics on Wednesday, August 21, 2024.

[brendawilliams]

It was nice to be informed that a divided particle can only divide so small. A limit. Honest conversation is delightful. Thankyou

[LynxUrbain]

A friend of mine who works at CERN (Atlas) and UCL lent me the book "Atom Land" a few years ago. Since then, I've continued the journey through infinitely large and infinitely small worlds, embarking on a series of other books about particles, quantum phenomena, black (or white) holes, CMB, gravitational waves, ...
Much to my delight !

[NyanaCore]

I really enjoyed the maps drawn by Chris Wornell — and they are cleverly drawn, as the neutrinos in lepton land are very close to the antimatter border (because they may be Majorana particles, and anti-particles to themselves!!). The maps are fun, but also very well thought out.

[johnc]

About half way through this bros book (atom land), what a monster human being, it's like the bro makes it so digestible that i started believing i know a tau from a cow. The book was $4 used, it's wild that this much information is this cheap, godspeed.