Thank You Peter H

There are several reasons to be grateful to Peter Higgs. First, he wrote these very cool and extremely important papers in 1964. Second, he is a really nice and modest chap, and we could do with more of those in Physics. Now there is a third reason – he seems to have unlocked the University purse strings. The University of Edinbrr has announced that it will create the “Higgs Centre of Theoretical Physics”. There was a news conference today with Peter in Old College. There will be two academic positions in short order, eventually a Higgs Chair, and money for visiting scholars and so on. As I am not so much in the university committee loop these days, I am not sure how much is new money and how much is a re-labelling, but probably the real importance is that it gives a focus for fundraising. In fact you can donate a fiver now if you like. There is already 20 quid from random punters ! Marvelous.

The positive vibes from the whole Higgs Mania has been marvelous to watch. The media have by and large taken it very seriously – there has been very little of the “and now here’s a science story you won’t understand ! larf larf” kinda stuff. Basically the angle has been “history in the making”. Of course TV and papers are much happier with human angles. Its hard to form a narrative around symmetry breaking and so forth. So, even though it never suited Peter’s modesty, hanging the story around him made great sense. It wasn’t just a PR angle; clearly the whole particle physics community felt the historical resonance, and other breeds of physicist like myself found it cheering it watch.

Now it gets interesting because its so boring. Check out this interesting blog post by Stephen Wolfram. Finding the Higgs Boson is the crowning triumph of the Standard Model – but it highlights the fact that there have been no surprises for thirty five years. (Or rather, the surprises have all been in observational astrophysics…)  The theory doesn’t really explain stuff, just summarises it. And it has no idea what to do with gravity, the cosmological constant, or dark matter. We have the data. What we need is some serious THINKING here.

What a perfect time to set up a Centre for Theoretical Physics.

Wakeham out ! Read all abart it !

Check out the RCUK Review of Physics web site. The Wakeham report is out, as is RCUK’s response. My RAS spies tell me they will have a response out in the morning. So far I have only had time to read the Executive Summary … but the main points seem to be :

• UK Physics is jolly healthy
• Physics research is healthy, but has fallen behind other areas in funding
• Physics education is declining because of funds and interest
• Physics research has a significant economic impact
• High Performance computing is very important
• Universities should be more involved in facility management
• A small body of independent wise people should help DIUS with the CSR allocation.
• Astronomy and particle physics should stay inside STFC …
• … but their funding should be clearly separated from other facilities

Rats. I seem to agree with all of that. Where’s the fun in that ?