‘As luck would have it, a rival project was already at the planning stage. This was at the international research centre, CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland.
‘The CERN project was greatly cheaper than the cancelled SSC would have been. It employed a tunnel already in use for an earlier experiment. The new project was the Large Hadron Collider, the LHC.’
I imagined a great tube, with a vanishing perspective into circular darkness.
‘In the late twentieth century, the earlier experiment on the CERN site had yielded a great deal of information about leptons. But the energy used to produce leptons was not nearly enough to produce a Higgs. A lepton, by the way, is a member of the lightest family of subatomic particles, such as an electron or a muon. However, the clever group who constructed the LEP, as the tunnel was called, foresaw that it would be possible comparatively cheaply to modify their experiment, so that protons replaced the positrons and electrons of the original experiment.
‘Protons, neutrons, and their anti-particles, belong to the family of more massive particles known as hadrons. Hence the terminology, the Large Hadron Collider.’
Kathi stopped. Then she spoke rather abstractedly. ‘Imagine the drama of it! The world seemed to be on the brink of a great discovery. Would they be able to trace the Higgs through the LHC? The equipment was finally up and running in about 2005. A year later, it began to reach the kind of energy levels at which it seemed possible that they might actually detect the Higgs particle. This was at the lower end of the scale of theoretical possibilities for the Higgs mass. So the fact that they found no clear candidate they could identify with the Higgs did not unduly worry the physicists.’
We stood in that unnatural place, staring at our boots.
‘Do you think the day will come when we can understand everything?’ I asked.
Kathi grunted. Without giving an answer, she continued with her account.
‘There had never been any guarantee that the LHC could build to the energies required to find the elusive particle -unlike the potential of the scrapped SSC.’
‘So more money was wasted…’
‘Can you not understand that science – like civilisation, of which science is the backbone – is pieced slowly together from ambitions, mistakes, perceptions – from our faltering intelligences? Patient enquiry, that’s it. One day, one day far ahead in time, we may understand everything. Even the workings of our own minds!’
I remembered something I had been taught as a child. ‘But Karl Popper said that the mind could not understand itself.’
‘With mirrors we may easily do what was once impossible, and see the back of our own heads. One step forward may be formed from a number of tiny increments. For example, the hunt for this elusive smudge has been facilitated by the seemingly trivial innovation of self-illuminating paper – ampaper – and 3D-paper. Their impact on scientific development has been incalculable.’
‘So they did find the Higgs particle at some point?’ I asked.
‘By 2009, the entire energy range of conceivable relevance to the Higgs particle had been surveyed. No unambiguously identifiable Higgs was found. But what the physicists did find was at least as interesting.’
We had continued our walk. As we reached the crest of a small incline, Kathi said, ‘More of this later. We are nearly there!’
Over the crest, the desolation was broken by tokens of human activity. A group of suited men stood by three parked buggies. Their attention was directed towards a vast silvery tube, above which was suspended something which immediately reminded me of an immense saucepan lid. This lid evidently afforded protection against any slight aerial bombardment – any falling meteorite – for the tube below.
The men hailed us, and as we drew nearer to them I could see that this protective lid was of meshed reinforced plastic. Below it lay a large inflated bag from which cables trailed. In the background were sheds from which the sound of a generator came.
The importance of this installation was emphasised by a metal version of the UN flag, which was now raised on an extemporised flagpole.