Particle Fever is a documentary that seems to have been created over the last 5 years or so around the creation of the Large Hadron Collider for CERN in Switzerland. If you have not heard of the LHC it is the single biggest science experiment mankind has ever undertaken costing $6 Billion Euro's, taking over 20 years from concept to go live and using one third of Switzerland's entire power consumption when its running.
When its switched on, its also the coldest known thing in the universe running at close to minus 200 kelvin. This is cooled by liquid helium running around its 27Km circumference in pipes surrounding tubes with protons flying through them at nearly the speed of light.
The purpose for this is both to recreate the conditions right after the big bang and to discover the smallest components of nature in an effort to figure out how our universe exists. Are we part of a Multiverse or does Supersymmetry win out?
Ok, so I know probably more than your average lay person about this experiment (I have even been lucky enough to go on a tour of the facility in Switzerland in 2007 before it was turned on) and so I was a little disappointed by this documentary. Lots of the things I wanted to see were not on display. I think, however, if you don't know everything I know then you would appreciate this documentary more. My friend who I attended this screening of at the Adelaide Film Festival didn't know as much as I did and came away with a greater understanding of this part of science, as did I, but also with a lot of questions.
The biggest criticism I have is that the documentary does not seem to have a clearly defined goal of what its trying to explain. This may simply be because it was created over such a long time by rather eccentric scientists and new interesting topics were discovered along the way. That in itself is the fun part of the documentary: getting an insight into being a genius and playing with the biggest toy in human history. It was definitely the part I enjoyed the most, but that was not why I wanted to see this film.
I wanted to learn more about how the LHC detects these Higgs Boson things, and I wanted to learn more about the inner workings of it all. You definitely get glimpses of this but no real explanations. When there are graphics to explain things they are great, but there are too few for such a science based doco. The other problem I had with the film were the allegories to religion and arts and how science is a factor of this. I'm not sure what the filmmakers were trying to do with fitting those three parts together, but to me a science experiment of this scale is a very different beast to the drawings in the Forgotten Cave or an attempt to view religion from a new angle. I was also totally lost by the part around marketing of the project and media attention causing problems. If that was cut for more info about how a Higgs Boson acts I would have been much happier.
All in all, you will definitely learn something from this documentary and you will get unparalleled access to one of the coolest things on the planet. What you wont get is an explanation of how the LHC operates, what a Higgs Boson actually is, or exactly what they are trying to discover with it.
SCORE: 7/10
IMDB Info for Particle Fever
When its switched on, its also the coldest known thing in the universe running at close to minus 200 kelvin. This is cooled by liquid helium running around its 27Km circumference in pipes surrounding tubes with protons flying through them at nearly the speed of light.
The purpose for this is both to recreate the conditions right after the big bang and to discover the smallest components of nature in an effort to figure out how our universe exists. Are we part of a Multiverse or does Supersymmetry win out?
Ok, so I know probably more than your average lay person about this experiment (I have even been lucky enough to go on a tour of the facility in Switzerland in 2007 before it was turned on) and so I was a little disappointed by this documentary. Lots of the things I wanted to see were not on display. I think, however, if you don't know everything I know then you would appreciate this documentary more. My friend who I attended this screening of at the Adelaide Film Festival didn't know as much as I did and came away with a greater understanding of this part of science, as did I, but also with a lot of questions.
The biggest criticism I have is that the documentary does not seem to have a clearly defined goal of what its trying to explain. This may simply be because it was created over such a long time by rather eccentric scientists and new interesting topics were discovered along the way. That in itself is the fun part of the documentary: getting an insight into being a genius and playing with the biggest toy in human history. It was definitely the part I enjoyed the most, but that was not why I wanted to see this film.
I wanted to learn more about how the LHC detects these Higgs Boson things, and I wanted to learn more about the inner workings of it all. You definitely get glimpses of this but no real explanations. When there are graphics to explain things they are great, but there are too few for such a science based doco. The other problem I had with the film were the allegories to religion and arts and how science is a factor of this. I'm not sure what the filmmakers were trying to do with fitting those three parts together, but to me a science experiment of this scale is a very different beast to the drawings in the Forgotten Cave or an attempt to view religion from a new angle. I was also totally lost by the part around marketing of the project and media attention causing problems. If that was cut for more info about how a Higgs Boson acts I would have been much happier.
All in all, you will definitely learn something from this documentary and you will get unparalleled access to one of the coolest things on the planet. What you wont get is an explanation of how the LHC operates, what a Higgs Boson actually is, or exactly what they are trying to discover with it.
SCORE: 7/10
IMDB Info for Particle Fever
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