In 2012, physicists at the world’s largest particle accelerator at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, announced to great fanfare the discovery of a fundamental particle in physics called the Higgs boson, culminating a decades long search and putting to rest what was called “the central problem in particle physics.” What exactly is the Higgs boson and why was its discovery so important? In this course we will view and discuss a Teaching Company series of lectures of the same title by Cal Tech physics professor and author Sean Carroll, who describes for a lay audience what particle physics is all about and how the Higgs gives mass to everything in the universe,
making life possible. There will be two lectures per session with 20 minutes of discussion following each. Craig Stephan is a physicist who worked for 30+ years at Ford Research and Argonne National Laboratories. He has led several OLLI discussion groups, including ones on cosmology and climate change.
This Study Group is for those over 50, and will meet Mondays March 19-April 23.