Particle Fever

This is one of the two or three best documentaries I've ever seen. We were so lucky to see an advance screening at our movie preview club.

It's hard to believe that a documentary about particle physics and the Hadron collider could be dramatic, suspenseful, even thrilling. It's just as hard to make the subject matter - the creation and operation of a huge facility in Switzerland for the purpose of colliding sub-atomic particles at great speed to search for clues about the universe - both intelligible and accessible. Yet this film has brilliantly done both.

Accessibility is achieved partly through clear explanations from particle physicist (and co-producer) David Kaplan and other theoretical physicists, and several experimental physicists who work at the collider. Even more compelling are the clear, beautiful, and simple-to-understand graphics that accompany these explanations. Indeed, the great graphics begin right from the opening credits. All this is enhanced by the editing of multi-Oscar-winner Walter Murch.

The drama comes from the efforts of the experimentalists to prove the theorists' ideas true - especially the existence of the "Higgs boson," the crucial particle of modern physics. The drama is enhanced by presenting a pleasant cast of surprisingly normal, friendly (and, of course, super-smart) physicists who have strong rooting interests in the outcome the way some of us might root for a sports team - but with so much more at stake. There's even tension (albeit friendly) between the "multi-universe" and "dual symmetry" camps.

Watch this film and you'll understand these phrases and so much more. I learned more than I ever thought I could. And in the most pleasant, enthusiastic, accessible way possible.