50th Anniversary Signature Event
Subatomic Smash: The Quest for the Higgs Boson
April 9, 2013 | David Lam Auditorium, MacLaurin building
Since the discovery of the electron more than one hundred years ago, the exploration of the subatomic world has had a profound impact on human knowledge. Physicists have recently found a new subatomic particle that is widely believed to be the hypothesized Higgs boson.
Dr. Michel Lefebvre took the audience on a journey inside the atom, into the realm of the fundamental building blocks of matter and the interactions between them. Dr. Lefebvre delved into experimental particle physics at the energy frontier with the Large Hadron Collider and the ATLAS detector, marvels of modern technology operating as the largest and most powerful microscope ever built.
UVic physicists are founding members of the ATLAS Collaboration, which built the equipment and collected the data used in the search for the Higgs boson. The recent discovery and further exploration of this particle will greatly expand our understanding of the Universe.
The event was also simultaneously webcast to an auditorium in an adjacent building.