Particle Fever

Particle Fever chronicles the first round of experiments following the launch of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, by following the scientists involved. Built by researchers at CERN over a ten-year period, it is the largest high-energy particle collider in the world. The film tracks scientists as they embark on a mission to uncover the secrets of matter and the universe during the most expensive experiment ever conducted in the history of science.

The documentary consists of two narrative threads. The first deals with the obstacles and delays faced by experimental physicists as they attempt to get the LHC running, including a helium leak in 2007 that damaged its electromagnets. The second explores the competing theories of theoretical physicists Nima Arkani-Hamed and Savas Dimopoulos as they attempt to predict the mass of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics that has been dubbed the ‘God particle’.

Arkani-Hamed argues in favour of the multiverse theory and believes the Higgs boson’s mass to be 140 GeV, while Dimopoulos subscribes to supersymmetry and predicts the mass to be 115 GeV. The documentary concludes in 2012, after CERN announces the successful identification of a Higgs-like particle, with its mass revealed to be 125 GeV.

The film received critical acclaim for making complex scientific experiments accessible to the general public and for humanising the physicists involved.