[dotnet00]

The story of how Higgs predicted his mechanism was part of what got me into physics as a kid. It fit 10 year old me's obsession with the 'soft-spoken genius' archetype perfectly and formed a pillar in my belief that 'genius' was made through hard work (and some amount of luck) rather than being born with it.

The announcement of the detection at the LHC is a core memory of mine, I still distinctly remember where I was, what I was doing and very excitedly trying to explain how cool it was to my parents at the time.

[moelf]

Same, same, and same, + currently working on one of the LHC detectors as a phd student -- but it can all be traced back to the lore of the golden age of particle physics and the discovery of Brout–Englert–Higgs boson in 2012.

[KingFelix]

That is awesome, we need some more amazing scientists in the public eye to inspire the young. I know there are a lot of amazing scientists, but somehow need to get them on tiktok or something? Can you share the story?

[moelf]

Specific to Particle physics and Peter Higgs, this book (https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/frank-close/elusive/978166...) by Frank Close is fantastic.

[dotnet00]

My parents had a hard time explaining my dad's job to me, so they just told me he was a scientist because he had a masters in physics (he was a diplomat). Like any little kid, my parents were my heroes, so of course this led me to becoming obsessed with scientists and reading up on science stuff, eg trying to read my sister's university textbooks.

I developed a hobby of reading up on and sharing factoids I found online, and found one about the 'god particle'. At first I thought it was cool because it seemed to basically talk about a particle that causes mass (of course, this was actually wrong, but that didn't really matter to a 10 year old), but reading about how it was predicted 40-50 years ago and the largest single machine humanity had built was being used to try to find it made it my favorite factoid and I'd excitedly start talking all about it the moment anyone showed even the slightest bit of interest.

In 2012 when the detection was announced, we were on a short 2-3 day vacation in Dubai and were having breakfast in the hotel. The TV was right next to us, and seeing the news I was trying (and failing) to explain to my parents how the Higgs boson had been predicted 50 years ago and it took that long for the technology to finally catch up to be able to verify it, and how this would represent one of the last remaining pieces of the standard model (although back then I didn't quite grasp that the standard model was not a full theory of everything). I was trying to explain to them the size of the LHC, how it was the biggest single machine we've built, how when they were turning it on for the first time, there were fears about it creating micro-black holes which might swallow the Earth.

I think that while we need scientists in the public eye, we don't need them as social media entertainers, a lot of well known science communicators on social media come off as attention-seeking charismatic fakes/frauds to me (eg NDT). Stuff like the interviews and documentaries Stephen Hawking had appeared in (or to a lesser extent, the ones Michio Kaku has appeared in) did much more for me in being inspired, even without having known what research they were known for.

I think we could also do with more books like Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' and encouraging kids to read them. Also, instead of over-simplifying everything and passing off scientists as geniuses in the traditional sense, we should be more open in showing that the people who made these discoveries or predictions were not inherently born with it, the vast majority of them were completely normal people who worked very hard to build skills in the thing they enjoyed.

Another discovery I feel was somewhat similar is that of discrete time crystals, casually predicted in 2012, turned out to actually be possible in 2018 and has a similar 'cool' factor.

[cge]

I think a difficulty with science communication is that it is very rare to have someone who is both a great scientist and great science communicator, and even with the ability, it is difficult for them to devote enough time and focus to be great at both. Feynman was, if flawed in some ways as a communicator. Hawking was, but I got the sense that at some point later in his life his focus on communication to the public limited his ability to continue doing research rigorously (after somewhat idolizing him as a child, as a graduate student I went to a research talk he gave to the theory side of our department, possibly in the context of TAPIR, that was both embarrassing and depressing, as it both felt like he really wanted to keep doing good research and very clearly couldn't manage to, and it seemed like everyone in the room knew it, including him). Einstein, despite having the ability to draw a public audience, arguably wasn't a great communicator.

On the other side, while yes, NDT is problematic, I think there is a value to people who are great science communicators without being great scientists. Sagan was arguably a great science communicator and not a great scientist per se. But his communication to the public was inspiring and educational, with enough rigor but not too much complexity, with a sense of wonder but not too far into speculation presented as science, with intuitive explanations but without too disastrously overburdened metaphors. There's the view that his talent for communication and broad intuitive understanding was such that even his contributions to research came primarily from his ability to be, in Kuiper's words about him, a "liaison between sciences". But even when just to the public, someone devoted to that sort of work, and good at it, is not less valuable than a scientist.

[moomin]

There are definitely science communicators who _are_ committed to getting it right. Dr Brian Cox and Bill Nye strike me as good examples. The late Patrick Moore was another.

NDT, embarrassingly, often is just plain wrong. He treats “science” as a side, not an investigation into the wonder of the natural world.

[protocolture]

In NDT's defense.

I feel like the problem is that he is (whether its because he feels he must or some other pressure) "on" 24/7 thanks to social media. Other science communicators would pop up for some cool, edited, scripted, interviews or a documentary and slip away. What you get would be their best side 100% of the time in reruns on discovery or whatever. NDT seems to think that literally everything is an unmissable opportunity to advance science literacy and will jump in on literally anything to try.

If it wasnt for people sharing his dumbest tweets, I would only know him from the one documentary series, which was actually really impressive (to me). We really don't need "Ah but actually did you know transformers is impossible" or whatever every 15 minutes.

What I am saying is NDT please log off sometimes and let me remember the good bits.

In oz we have Dr Karl who can get a bit like NDT sometimes too. It really feels like he will repeat whatever the government hands him (he has repeated the governments misinformation about vapes, despite most of it coming from lobby groups and not scientists). And he clowns on socials and interviews. But because of that they have him mainly targeted at school age audiences.

[sonofaragorn]

I get your sentiment, but I think it's important for science communication to adapt to the times. Decades ago (and even as little as one decade ago), most scientists (maybe Hawking being the exception) who would dare appear in these 1hr documentaries would be belittled by the "hardcore" scientists with the same words you used "Science should not be over-simplified like that", "they are not real scientists, they just want to be on TV", etc.

The truth is that young people are mostly on TikTok et al, so this type of content needs to get there.

[godelski]

> "Science should not be over-simplified like that",

It is a difficult balance to strike, but science should be

> as simple as possible, and no simpler

The hard truth is that any simpler means inaccurate, which means when educating the public there __are__ inaccuracies. So the balance to strike is accuracy vs understanding. Most people do not understand the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, wave-particle duality, or many similar things (like how one of my namesake's Incompleteness Theorem, Super Position, and the Halting Problem are linked) yet will confidently correct explanations given that do hold more accuracy (even "teaching" those where it is clear one side is vastly more qualified than the other).

But think about it this way, the people getting mad at the over-simplification are not a force preventing public explanation but rather a pressure to find a better and more accurate explanation. The problem is when we frame these things as adversarial in the sense of enemies fighting rather than adversarial in the sense of improving one's self/group's position/arguments/discourse. Both sides can benefit from a reframing of these interactions by not holding the positions as equivalent to one's intellect but rather recognize that statements are independent. We are better as a coalition than separated, even with disagreement (especially with). It is clear here that everyone is on the same side after all, as all parties involved are seeking the same goal: better public education. It then becomes the duty to read between the lines to extract what the actual complaint is, because this is often also difficult to express (without a lengthy process) given we do not know one another's priors. We should not confuse critiques for attacks or dismissals. Nor should we dismiss or attack when we should critique! Though it is acceptable when errors are egregious or when people intentionally mislead. Unfortunately there is a large amount of that, but let's also distinguish idiocracy from maliciousness, as the former can be fixed (if we formulate with the above framing).

[mercacona]

Won’t say that TikTok audience is a pound where you’ll find future scientists. I’ll invest on promoting alternative spaces both virtual and local best.

[dotnet00]

Yeah that's a fair point. As an early career scientist myself now and as someone not that interested in current social media trends, I certainly do risk being in the same spot as those 'hardcore' scientists.

[wolverine876]

> My parents had a hard time explaining my dad's job to me, so they just told me he was a scientist because he had a masters in physics (he was a diplomat).

I'm just curious about when you found out what he really did, and if you had known earlier if you would have been a diplomat today rather than a scientist.

[dotnet00]

I was able to understand it roughly around when I entered my teens, in part because he was transferred to another country, where the embassy was a lot smaller and the country more insular, so it was common to get kids involved in embassy stuff to get the otherwise lacking sense of community.

It's hard to say if I would've been a diplomat if I had known earlier. I feel like being a diplomat is harder to innocently romanticize and turn into hobbies for a child in the way that 'scientist' can be.

[cdelsolar]

how is ndt a fake/fraud?

[dotnet00]

He gives me a similar feeling to say, SBF did prior to the FTX collapse. This isn't to say he's a scammer like SBF, but rather that he has a similar hard to describe 'dishonest' air around him, where I feel he's deliberately trying to make himself seem smarter than he is for the sake of the attention alone, which makes me distrustful of him. I'm not really sure how to describe the feeling besides "attention-seeking charismatic fakes/frauds", but as another example, Bill Nye also gives me the same feeling.

His X shenanigans don't help either, where he has a reputation of engagement farming by posting dumb somewhat condescending "but akschually" type comments on things people are enjoying. Eg, when the last American total solar eclipse happened in 2017, he posted something along the lines of "ignore people when they tell you eclipses are rare", it's technically correct that eclipses happen fairly often, but he obviously had to know that what makes them exciting is that they're rare for the location the viewers are at. It's become somewhat of a meme to call someone NDT when they're being a buzzkill.

[wpietri]

Some of the concerns are documented here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson

[_ys5m]

He switched PhD programs from Texas to Columbia and some people thought he took too long or something

[queuebert]

Normally PhD programs have a timeline of progress. If you don't make regular progress toward those very generous deadlines, you are kicked out.

Neil did not make sufficient progress at Texas. Then he did something weird, where he wasn't ready to defend yet got a postdoc at (iirc) Princeton. Princeton had to rescind the offer because you (ahem) need a doctorate to be post doctorate. Then he got into Columbia's program and finally finished.

He had a lot of hobbies and interests other than astronomy, and he is actually a very smart guy, but it took him a bit longer to get his shit together. I think he's found his calling and is quite good at he does.

[_ys5m]

I have some sympathy for that because I had a couple advisors quit my program on me and the program still tried to enforce time to degree deadlines on me without asking my then advisor (in a different department by then) and misstating factual information about credits expiring (which is determined at the school level not the department level). I had to get the deans involved.

[tunesmith]

Great story! Thanks.

[amelius]

Can you recommend any physics books that were of value to you as a kid and perhaps sparked your interest?

[dotnet00]

As a 5-10 year old, the books I remember liking the most were on the outer planets, with high quality full page photos of the planets and their moons. Closer to photobooks than books on the solar system targeted at children. One book was just images of the moons, mainly focusing on Saturn, I used to just look at the images and admire them even if initially I didn't quite understand the details. Most of my physics reading came from random sources on the early internet.

As a 12-13 year old, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and The Grand Design were by far my most memorable reads, although I already had my developing interest in physics by then.

[cm2187]

Did you succeed with your parents? It's hard to be excited about theoretical physics as a layman. It has been a long time since any of those theories had any practical application.

[dotnet00]

They still aren't all that interested in this stuff, and on their advice I ended up studying computer engineering instead of physics, but I've still found myself working at one of the other labs with big particle accelerators, as a researcher who can link the computing side with enough of the physics side to work with physicists.

They don't fully understand what I do and don't really care too much about the details, but when they saw pictures of where I worked, they did immediately bring up that I used to go on and on about something that seemed similar, so they at least did understand what I liked.

I guess the closest they get to being interested in theoretical physics is that my Dad, having run through his stash of novels during covid, eventually read my left-behind copy of A Brief History of Time, and occasionally quotes it when he's in the mood to wax philosophical. My Mom instead tries to keep up with my other interest of space exploration/astronomy.

[mptest]

Damn. Tell your parents you love them often. This comment made me deeply pine for parents that feigned even the tiniest bit of interest in what I'm interested in. Your folks seem wonderful.

[protocolture]

Yeah my mothers like this. She has given me exactly 1 compliment about my skills in my entire life.

I was in bed one morning, my cousin having slept over. I let him use the family PC when I went to bed the previous night.

I awoke to my mother screaming my name. Then she stopped. She said "No, x is too smart to let us find this." and then screamed for my cousin.

He had been cruising google image search for cartoon porn and had left it all in autocomplete. My mother accidentally let slip that she has an understanding that I would at least be devious enough to cover my tracks. Its something I guess.

[wolverine876]

> It has been a long time since any of those theories had any practical application.

That's a cliche, not why people are ignorant of science (if it's even true, which it's not), IMHO.

When you kiss your spouse or watch a sporting event or (go bird watching / play D&D / play your trumpet / <your hobby>), does it have a pratical application? Practical applications tend to be kind of boring, actually.

If you can't get excited about the fundamental laws of nature and a person's actual discovery of one - the reason for mass (such an incredible concept that it would be absurd to say if it wasn't true) - then the issue isn't partical physics.

For the broader public, I think these things just aren't explained well, and now there's the anti-science mis/disinformation.

[rmbyrro]

With a layperson in mind, curious about physics, do you recommend any resource (hopefully not too math-intensive) to learn how the higgs boson actually "gives mass" to stuff?

[dotnet00]

Since you said 'not too math-intensive', I figure you're fine with getting more details and background than usual just without having to parse equations, in which case PBS Space Time is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Q4UAiKacw

[MathMonkeyMan]

Sean Carroll's pandemic era youtube series "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe"[1] goes into scalar fields and some gauge theory, but I don't remember if he covers the Higgs mechanism. Might be in one of the Q&A videos.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3j...

[tekla]

https://www.amazon.com/Massive-Missing-Particle-Sparked-Grea...

[lupire]

What makes you think he wasn't born with it?

I can see in own kids that each one is built differently, with different inmate propensities despite similar environment.

[dotnet00]

Most childhood prodigies don't end up being all that different from the average person as an adult, and of course no one's born with the knowledge of some revolutionary discovery in their head.

While all of us have things we find easier to do than the average person, short of a literal mental disability, we can build up skills in things we are not good at through practice. I used to barely pass in math class and didn't even understand the concept of negative numbers until 8th grade. A year of practicing daily for 2 hours after school, and my fundamentals had gotten good enough that I unknowingly derived a calculus-based solution to some problems I was stuck at, 2 grade levels before when I'd actually start learning calculus and got to skip a year as a result.

Similarly, I've been teaching myself to draw despite having been pretty terrible at it and discovering how 'deliberate' most professional artists have to be with practice and building skills.

I think it's pretty common for people to write off their inability to do something as just a lack of innate ability, when it's really just that no one really sees the struggle anyone famous for their work/skill has gone through to get there.

[tgv]

But there definitely is a wide variation in peak capability. I have been playing keyboard instruments almost my whole life, and while I can play relatively complex pieces, I've never gotten at the level of professional musicians, let alone the greats. It's true they wouldn't have gotten where they are without practicing, but practicing is just not enough.

[dotnet00]

But has the goal you've been aggressively working towards been to reach those levels? or have you been playing just for the enjoyment of playing?

Not to suggest that the latter is wrong, just interested in your actual goal. In teaching myself to draw (anime art specifically), I'm aiming to reach a professional level, but am not interested in becoming a professional artist. The only factor I've felt would limit my ability to achieve this is time commitment (since research is pretty time consuming already). I'm not interested in committing as fully to it as someone who makes their living off art, so I don't expect to match them in all ways. So, for instance, while I expect to eventually be able to match in terms of overall result, I expect to not be anywhere near as fast as a professional can be.

[mbivert]

I'm confident that the technical skills can almost (e.g. disabilities) always be trained, given sufficient time.

Creativity/inspiration seems to be missing culturally. Consider for example Maths or Physics, where creativity is essential to internalize the material, but the teachings usually emphasize memorizing a few tricks to solve well-known problems and pass the year.

But even if it could be trained, there's 1) the luck factor 2) inborn quality variations. Some people just have it in their bones more than others, even if it manifests "just" as being more relentless in practicing.

That's to say, I mostly agree with you, but I'm curious as to how far we could reach with different teaching approaches.

[wholinator2]

Well you probably don't practice at much as they do.

[lupire]

Look, a lot of people throw their heart in soul into $FOO, and a lot of them give up or never succeed (if they can afford to keep failing) because they aren't getting the results, not just vice versa.

Slow and steady doesn't win the race against fast and steady.

[wpietri]

I think the point is that if one aspires to be a figure like Higgs, one can't just coast on "innate propensities". It requires fiendishly hard work.

That really resonates with me. When I was a kid I got complimented a lot for being smart, especially when I did something quickly and easily. This trained me pretty well in seeming smart, but really discouraged me from things that required hard work or persistence through failure. It took me years to get over that.

[lupire]

The question wasn't whether hard work was needed. The question was whether genius was needed. Hard work is table stake.

[wpietri]

No, what's at question is what "genius" means. He's asserting that "'genius' was made through hard work (and some amount of luck)". This is in sharp contrast to the common notion that genius is "innate propensity", where Smarty McSmartpants just goes around being brilliant because he's born that way. I favor his view and think that essentialism is mostly bunk.

[layer8]

Some have higher inmate propensities than others. ;)

[wumeow]

People with innate ability almost always take it for granted.

[lapetitejort]

Some of my professors during my physics BS worked with the LHC during the mad scramble to find the particle. I remember people saying tongue in cheek "The Higgs particle doesn't exist, but it's inside this energy range."