The Atom Smashers

The idea that all matter is composed of elementary particles dates back to Greek philosophers in the 6th century BC. The abstract philosophy of atomism grew in Medieval Europe and India, but no evidence existed until the 19th century. Particle science really blossomed in the scientific zeal of the post-World War Two era.

In 1967, construction began on the Tevatron, then the world’s largest smasher, at Fermilab, deep beneath the Illinois prairie. The gigantic machine’s goal is to find a single particle, the Higgs boson. Known as “the holy grail of physics,” the Higgs boson is thought to hold the key to why the universe has mass. Its discovery almost guarantees a Nobel Prize.

But now the Large Hadron Collider has been taken offline, and not likely to be back up until May or June of 2009, and government cuts in science funding have Fermilab teetering on the brink of irrelevance. Clayton Brown and Monica Ross Long are co-directors of The Atom Smashers, a documentary appearing in PBS’s Independent Lens series. It airs on NH Public Television on December 21 and January 31st (click here for local listings). The filmmakers follow some of the chief scientists for years in their glimmers of success and hope and disappointment searching for this so-called "God particle." Monica Ross Long joins Word of Mouth with more.