Jonathan Richard Ellis, or John Ellis, as he’s better known, is the Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King’s College, London. His research interests specialize in the Higgs boson and its possible connections with matter-antimatter symmetry, the generation of matter in the Universe, supersymmetry, dark matter, and quantum gravity.[break]
Ellis has been at CERN since the 1970s, working in different capacities, including advisor on CERN’s non-member states relations. Around 20 years ago, he was in Nepal a couple of times for physics schools for the South Asian region.
He talks to The Week about his visits, the importance of fundamental research for developing countries and what may be next in the world of physics. Excerpts:
On CERN’s announcement about the findings of the ATLAS and CMS experiments, is this the Higgs boson?
At this stage of discovery, we can’t really say. It certainly looks different from anything we’ve found before. It’s a different type of animal. But there are strong indications that it has the characteristics of the Higgs. Whether it has it all is yet to be found out. The Higgs has no spin and there is some indication that this particle does not. But nothing is definite. Lots of things need to be pinned, and even after months, we still may not know exactly if it’s the Higgs of the Standard Model.
For everyday living, only two kinds of quarks are needed. So why invest so much time, energy and funds in studying other fundamental elements?
Why does any scientist want to learn more about the universe? To get a better understanding of how it works. Yes, it’s true that so far, these other quarks may not be very important on a day-to-day basis, but maybe they play a deeper role. There are six different quarks, and their presence may play a deeper role in the origin of matter in the Universe.
Do you remember much of your trips to Nepal and what they were like?
I was in Kathmandu and Pokhara, twice, a week each time. I really liked Kathmandu. Something has to be done about the pollution, but the distinctive architecture of the three cities – Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhaktapur – was fascinating to me. We went to Pokhara in a minibus, stopping at the roadside and drinking tea. Pokhara had beautiful scenery. But I had a bad stomach and didn’t get to enjoy much. I did buy a carpet at the Tibetan refugee area in Kathmandu from a 17-year-old girl. She was small but very sharp, and she knew all about the business. The carpet is still in my living room.
Why a school in physics in Nepal?
Well, the participants were from Bangladesh, China, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. Nepal was accessible to everybody and it was easier for them to get visas to go there.
What do you think of the announcement of the Higgs boson-like particle?
It’s pretty exciting. I characterize all physics events by the Richter scale. This was definitely a nine. The last time there was a nine was in 1974, when the Charm quark was discovered by Burton Richter and Samuel Ting, in the form of the J/Ψ particle.
As someone who worked for over a decade in CERN’s relations with non-member countries, especially developing ones, why do you think such nations need fundamental research?
Fundamental science is important for everybody, especially developing countries. Developing countries are trying to recover from neo-imperialism. They have poor economies. To build your economy, you need innovation. Development is based on innovation. And for innovation, you need technology, which is based on engineering, engineering is based on applied science, and applied science is based on fundamental science. You cannot have applied science without fundamental science.
What about Nepal, specifically, where not much has been done in the way of fundamental research?
Nepal is an extremely specific case, sandwiched between two giants, both advanced in technology and innovation. India is close to being an associate member of CERN. I’m not criticizing India or China; any country would do the same in their place. But with two competing giants on both sides, they’ll rip you off. They’ll sell you crap goods at excessive rates. Research in science would help alleviate this problem or mitigate it in some way. Find a niche and establish yourself there. It may not be in the top 10, but if your neighbors are aware of it, Nepal can have some say in some matters, and it will have a real impact. That’s a fact.
But starting fundamental physics research in any country, let alone a developing one, can be frustrating. The lack of infrastructure and cooperation can be daunting. There will be management of funds and bureaucracy to deal with. How can one get through all this?
It can be frustrating. An aspect of CERN is its engagement with developing countries. We can help set up infrastructure, identify best projects, show how research can be organized and funds managed. You need to keep your doors open. Scientists will come back and research groups of professors as well as schools for students. CERN is an example. We set up the infrastructure and opened it up first to European countries, now other countries. People from all over the world participate. The important thing is we need brainpower. That’s the quickest way to find solutions.
Over the years, as a physicist, have you noticed changes in terms of diversity of the people involved in the field?
Many things have changed in science over the years, especially the gender ratio and geographical demographics. There are more female scientists and technicians in the field now than a decade or two ago. When I was chairing CERN’s Equal Opportunity advisory panel, it was one of the things we observed: Are we recruiting and maintaining gender balance in all professions? The stereotype is female secretaries and male technicians.
We want male secretaries and female technicians as well. Not just that but also as physicists and researchers. If you look around at CERN now, there are a lot more female undergraduate students. Geographically, young physicists are much more varied. At King’s College, we just recruited students, post-doctoral candidates, and most of them were from Asia. Pakistan has quite a community here. We’ve been encouraging people from Colombia, and approximately, there are 30 now working at CERN. What I would like to see is a lot more scientists coming from Africa. In the last few years, we’ve obtained external support for African scientists and are making some progress. The question is, once we get them trained outside the country, what happens next.
There are rumors that you started the term “Penguin diagram” based on a bet. Is it true?
Yes. That was in 1977. I was playing darts with Melissa Franklin, a student, who is now a professor at Harvard. The bet was that if I lost, I had to insert the word “Penguin” in my next paper. Melissa quit, she didn’t complete the game. And Serge Rudaz replaced her. He beat me. The terms of the bet wasn’t very specific but I felt I had to carry it out. I didn’t know how. I went to visit some friends and, well, I never smoke anything legal. The Feynman diagram had been around for a while and Russian physicists had been writing about it. They just hadn’t called it anything yet. Back in my apartment, I was writing a paper on the b-quark and I realized the diagram looked like a penguin. Serge, my collaborator agreed to keep it, and there it is.
Your work also includes the study of Dark Matter. Can you tell us what it is and if it can be created here at the LHC [Large Hadron Collider]?
Astronomers tell us that stars inside galaxies and galaxies inside clusters are moving quickly. By rights, they should fly off at the rate they are moving. But something is holding them toward the middle. Something invisible, that we call the Dark Matter. Is it made up of particles? Is it something else? There are many explanations, but most people suspect it is made up of particles. Can we make these at the LHC? We may be able to create them in collisions but Dark Matter cannot be seen directly, there is no electric charge, it does not shine. We’ll need events with missing energy. It may have properties similar to the neutrinos and this will make it difficult to differentiate Dark Matter from them.
Now, with the Higgs found, what other research topics would you be looking into?
I wrote my first Higgs paper in 1975; and Dark Matter in 1983. It took over 36 years to find the Higgs. Who knows how long for Dark Matter? There have been plenty of other things in physics in between. I expected Higgs would show up before I retired from CERN. But it didn’t, so I stayed on, working for King’s College London. It was only a matter of time once the LHC started, and it’s remarkable how quickly the accelerator has produced results. We weren’t anticipating the announcements so early. And it’s also remarkable that two research groups independently arrived at five sigma.
With all the media hype, has science become glamorous? What may this lead to?
The Higgs boson discovery has certainly attracted a lot of attention. The Higgsteria has people interested in what’s happening in science. My wife’s doctor was asking her questions about CERN, and taxi drivers are talking about it. On one flight, the cabin attendant recognized me and asked me for an autograph. What this may do is encourage more interest in research. When CERN was starting, a British politician came and gave a speech and said how this would get young people interested in science again like the moon flights did over 40 years ago. I thought it was just a political speech but it has turned out to be true. In Britain, already, enrollment in physics is going up, and with hope, it’ll grow elsewhere too.
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