Public Broadcasting for Northwest Indiana & Chicagoland since 1987
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Crisis in Physics: Why the Higgs Boson Should Not Exist!

Season 10 Episode 33 | 16m 36s

Quantum physics predicts the universe should’ve collapsed right after the Big Bang, because all particles were immeasurably heavier. Yet it obviously didn’t. Observations confirm this puzzle, and experiments at the Large Hadron Collider still haven’t explained why. At its core is the lightness of the Higgs boson, part of the “hierarchy problem,” which many call physics’ biggest unsolved mystery.

Aired: 01/29/25
Tardigrades can survive almost anything—even most of Mars. But one Martian chemical stops even them.
The Higgs boson may open a portal to hidden particles that could explain dark matter.
The universe expands faster. “Dark energy” may not be constant after all.
There’s a new generation of experiments that may unlock the gravity particle.
The universe thrums with quantum fields, except something may be missing: the sterile neutrino.
Gravitons, the particle of quantum gravity, may be impossible to detect.
2025 was the international year of quantum science, but today we examine its origins.
We’ve found lots of “habitable” worlds but we don’t know what factors are needed for life.
What is the graviton, and does it even exist?
Antimatter drives sound like science fiction, but they may not be as far as you think.