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The Bad Boy of Science: Particle Physics meets Science Communications
Episode 32 • 5th December 2024 • People doing Physics • Cavendish Laboratory
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This month, our guest is Dr Sam Gregson, better known as YouTube’s Bad Boy of Science. Formerly a Cavendish particle physicist working on the LHCb experiment at CERN, Sam found that he enjoyed finding ways to engage non-specialist audiences with fundamental physics more than submitting himself to peer-review and moved into science communication.

The founder of LHComedy, CERN’s first ever comedy show, he now runs science education shows that have played in venues as diverse as the Royal Institution and The Green Man Festival. His Hunting the Higgs talk was recently performed for hundreds of school students here at the Cavendish, and has been seen by tens of thousands around the world.

Alongside this, he blogs, podcasts, and regularly posts videos to YouTube covering current scientific stories and in-depth breakdowns of complex particle physics. Today, we’ll talk about what drove him to look for the most fundamental building blocks of the universe, why he now subjects himself to audiences of teenagers, and how he feels particle physics research can make a better case for itself… Stay with us!

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Episode credits

  • Hosts: Vanessa Bismuth and Jacob Butler
  • Recording and Editing: Chris Brock


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Transcripts

Host:

Welcome to People Doing Physics, the podcast that explores the personal side of physics of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

Host:

Hello, I'm Jacob Butler from the Outreach office.

Jacob Butler:

Hi, I'm Vanessa Bitmas from the Cavendish Communications team.

Host:

This month Our guest is Dr.

Host:

Sam Gregson, better known as YouTube's Bad Boy of science.

Host:

Formerly a Cavendish particle physicist working on the LHCB experiment at cern, Sam found that he enjoyed finding ways to engage non specialist audiences with fundamental physics more than submitting himself to peer review and and moved into science communication.

Host:

The founder of LH Comedy, CERN's first ever comedy show, he now runs science education shows that are played in venues as diverse as the Royal Institution and the Green Man Festival.

Host:

His Hunting the Higgs talk was recently performed for hundreds of school students here at the Cavendish and has been seen by tens of thousands around the world.

Host:

Alongside this, he blogs, podcasts and regularly posts videos to YouTube covering current scientific stories and in depth breakdowns of complex particle physics.

Host:

Today, we'll talk about what drove him to look for the most fundamental building blocks of the universe, why he now subjects himself to audiences of teenagers, and how he feels particle physics research can better make a case for itself.

Host:

Stay with us.

Jacob Butler:

Thank you so much.

Sam Gregson:

I've got to pick up one thing just as he goes.

Sam Gregson:

So not submitting himself a peer review.

Sam Gregson:

I would argue that submitting myself to audiences of teenagers is far more savage than peer review.

Sam Gregson:

But we can, we can revisit that.

Sam Gregson:

We can revisit that later.

Jacob Butler:

Well, hi, Sam, lovely to have you.

Jacob Butler:

Lovely to have you with us today.

Jacob Butler:

Thank you for taking the time.

Jacob Butler:

We start every episode by asking our guests how it all started for them.

Jacob Butler:

So could you tell us what sparked your interest in science in general and in physics in particular?

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, it's a great pleasure to be here.

Sam Gregson:

First of all.

Sam Gregson:

Thank you very much.

Sam Gregson:

Yes.

Sam Gregson:

So I've thought about this quite a lot and I think I was actually always a physicist.

Sam Gregson:

So the first ever toys that I used to play with were, I don't know if anyone remembers, but the old Brio trains with the.

Sam Gregson:

With the magnets on the front and the back.

Sam Gregson:

And my favorite thing to do with them, my mom tells me, was to turn the magnets around the wrong way and rather than linking them up and pulling them like most children, was to try and push the magnets the wrong way and make one magnet push the other one around without touching it.

Sam Gregson:

And I apparently found this the most amazing, magical thing, trying to understand how I could do this, thinking I was some sort of magician.

Sam Gregson:

And I think I always loved trying things out, experimenting, trying to understand how the, how the universe worked from a very early age.

Sam Gregson:

I also like that toy, I don't know if anyone remembers with the.

Sam Gregson:

The different shapes where you had to put the right shape into the right shaped hole.

Sam Gregson:

And apparently, again, my mother tells me, I used to love spending hours trying to get the wrong shape into the wrong hole and then getting very frustrated that that wasn't something that you could do or sometimes it was something that you could do.

Sam Gregson:

So I think I always had this drive to want to understand how the universe worked, how the world around me worked.

Sam Gregson:

And then I just carried that fascination through all the way to, you know, to a degree in particle physics.

Sam Gregson:

I also, along the way had some really, really inspiring teachers.

Sam Gregson:

So one in particular stands out, which was Mr.

Sam Gregson:

Britton or Dr.

Sam Gregson:

Britton at Leeds Grammar School.

Sam Gregson:

That was my high school up here in Leeds.

Sam Gregson:

And he had a catchphrase.

Sam Gregson:

He used to have a board in the, in the physics department which says physics is fun.

Sam Gregson:

And I think he, he kind of had it quite ironically at that time.

Sam Gregson:

There wasn't a lot of film physics outreach at that time, kind of 20, 20, 25 years ago.

Sam Gregson:

But he always said physics was fun and he used to present it in a very fun way.

Sam Gregson:

Lots of jokes, lots of demonstrations.

Sam Gregson:

He was very, very supporting.

Sam Gregson:

And that really helped nurture my interest in physics as well.

Sam Gregson:

So I think interest from a very, very early age and some very nurturing, very inspiring, very fun teachers as well.

Jacob Butler:

Kept always a good reminder that.

Jacob Butler:

To.

Jacob Butler:

Yeah, to remember that it is fun and should be fun.

Jacob Butler:

It's complicated, but also fun.

Sam Gregson:

Exactly.

Host:

So it reminds me, one of my lecturers used to have a sign that said, all physics is a cylindrical teapot, which is probably less entertaining but more physically accurate as it's just exponentially decaying sine wave.

Host:

If you like those.

Sam Gregson:

We physicists like to make our.

Sam Gregson:

Like to make our assumptions.

Sam Gregson:

Right.

Sam Gregson:

There's always the meme about the spherical cow.

Sam Gregson:

You know, most things start off as a point particle.

Sam Gregson:

It doesn't matter if it's a person falling down.

Sam Gregson:

It doesn't matter if it's a cow running.

Sam Gregson:

It doesn't matter if it's a car.

Sam Gregson:

They're all particles and then they become balls.

Sam Gregson:

And then we work up from there and then they're a collection of balls.

Sam Gregson:

We enjoy our assumptions.

Host:

Indeed.

Host:

Now, you mentioned that you ended up studying physics or natural sciences at the best possible place, which is of course here at Cambridge.

Host:

That was.

Host:

Was this Always the plan.

Host:

Or was this something that you sort of stumbled into?

Sam Gregson:

So it's, it's interesting, actually, because I thought, having had that kind of wish to understand how the universal work around me worked and playing with those particular toys, I thought when I applied that I might be an engineer.

Sam Gregson:

And I actually applied for engineering first of all.

Sam Gregson:

And part of that was because of my interests, and part of that was because, as you will know, being at Cambridge, the physics is kind of hidden behind the natural sciences tripod.

Sam Gregson:

So you start in the first year doing.

Sam Gregson:

Well, I started doing chemistry, physics, maths, and then you focus down in the later years.

Sam Gregson:

So the physics, I was like, kind of.

Sam Gregson:

There is no physics degree to kind of start with.

Sam Gregson:

So I ended up applying for engineering, got in for engineering at Selwyn College, which is just down the road from the Cavendish Department in Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

And then people kind of explained to me afterwards, well, you're not more interested in doing a little bit more physics.

Sam Gregson:

You might have liked the natural sciences tripos a bit more, give you more chance to start broader and then focus down to the physics in later years.

Sam Gregson:

And when I kind of had chats with more people, I realized that that actually was the way I wanted to go.

Sam Gregson:

So, called up Cambridge again.

Sam Gregson:

Can I switch, please?

Sam Gregson:

I would much rather do the physical side of the Natsuki tripos.

Sam Gregson:

And they said, well, hang on a minute, you didn't have any tests on chemistry when you, when you did your interviews.

Sam Gregson:

So down I came back to Cambridge, sat in with Professor Keeler doing some chemistry.

Sam Gregson:

I think it was on hydrogen bonding or something like that.

Sam Gregson:

I can't remember now, back in the dim, distant past.

Sam Gregson:

And eventually, after an hour, he relented and said, okay, you understand some chemistry, you can come for the natural sciences triple.

Sam Gregson:

So I.

Sam Gregson:

I like to tell people that I got in twice.

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, but I probably.

Jacob Butler:

Quite an achievement.

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, but I probably just messed up the original one.

Sam Gregson:

So however you want to take it in the positive or the negative, that's up to you.

Host:

And did your interest in particle physics start during this undergraduate, or is that something that came later?

Sam Gregson:

It's an interesting point, actually, because I always thought when I was getting into physics that I would do astronomy.

Sam Gregson:

So everyone looks up at the stars, they see the amazing things in the universe.

Sam Gregson:

It's very easy to be attracted to that side of things.

Sam Gregson:

Obviously, growing up, you see, you see space launches and things like this.

Sam Gregson:

Very, very exciting.

Sam Gregson:

I thought I would end up in astrophysics or cosmology or something like this, but when I got into Third year, we started doing particle physics.

Sam Gregson:

And what attracted me to particle physics was the fundamental nature of it.

Sam Gregson:

You're taking the tiniest building blocks of the universe, you're finding out how they interact with one another, and then theoretically, you should be able to work forward from there and understand everything.

Sam Gregson:

And that kind of really scratched an itch from me, going from that really fundamental level and working forwards.

Sam Gregson:

And it just so happened in that kind of third, fourth year when I was going through.

Sam Gregson:

s we're talking about kind of:

Sam Gregson:

And it seemed just a really perfect kind of alignment of the stars.

Sam Gregson:

If you want going back to the astrophysics that.

Sam Gregson:

I was really interested in particle physics, and it seemed if I wanted to go on to do a PhD, that getting involved in particle physics with the turn on of the LHC would be a really interesting thing to do.

Sam Gregson:

So, yeah, I ended up switching off astronomy and moving towards the other end of the spectrum, from really, really long distances to the shortest distances.

Jacob Butler:

In particle physics, that's a far stretch from engineering as well.

Jacob Butler:

Quite, quite a journey.

Sam Gregson:

Well, there's a lot of engineering at the lhc.

Sam Gregson:

I guess they have to build things.

Sam Gregson:

But I think what I realized as well when I was going through is I'm not very handsy.

Sam Gregson:

I'm not very good at, like, touching things and making things.

Sam Gregson:

If somebody said to me, like, go build a shelf or something, it would, you know, it would be rusty nails and things sticking out, and it will fall down after two minutes.

Sam Gregson:

You know, that's a little bit of a stereotype of what the engineer does.

Sam Gregson:

But, you know, I felt like I was more interested in the theoretical side, more interested in the.

Sam Gregson:

In the kind of thinking and the concepts, rather than getting my hands dirty in applications.

Sam Gregson:

So, yeah, it was a switch, but it was still trying to understand the universe at the most fundamental level, I guess.

Host:

And luckily, there's a cohort of very qualified lab technicians to help with the handsy stuff.

Host:

One of whom we interviewed last month.

Sam Gregson:

Say, yeah, yeah, there's the most amazing engineers, obviously, at the lhc.

Sam Gregson:

The first time I went down to see the.

Sam Gregson:

The underground of the lhc, to see the experiment I'd been working on for two and a half years, getting the data from on my computer, but I had never, ever seen existing in real life.

Sam Gregson:

And we're starting to wonder if it did exist in real life.

Sam Gregson:

The first time.

Jacob Butler:

So the magic data, data tree, they're.

Sam Gregson:

Just like, yeah, here you go.

Sam Gregson:

This is coming from somewhere that you've never seen, but yeah, it's all good, don't worry about it.

Sam Gregson:

The, as soon as we went downstairs, I was amazed that the thing ever runs.

Sam Gregson:

You're just greeted with this amazing wall of cables, thousands and thousands of cables, you know, junction boxes, pieces of kit.

Sam Gregson:

Just how it ever runs I'm still not sure because, you know, these things must be glitching and switching on and off and running into errors and having to be reset all the time.

Sam Gregson:

Is the most amazing machine you know, is that the, one of the world's biggest and most powerful machines.

Sam Gregson:

And just the fact that it runs is an absolute testament to the engineers who work on that project.

Sam Gregson:

And now, of course, we're talking about building one that's, you know, four times as long.

Sam Gregson:

So I wish them, I wish them good luck with that if that comes to fruition.

Jacob Butler:

So you graduated eventually in Cambridge and in your natural sciences degree, but you didn't go straight into a Ph.D.

Jacob Butler:

did you?

Jacob Butler:

You, you took some time off and went away and did something else before coming back.

Jacob Butler:

Do you want to go through?

Sam Gregson:

Sure.

Jacob Butler:

Like tell us a little bit more about that time.

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, that's right.

Sam Gregson:

So I did four years in Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

So I did the, the three years of undergrad and then the, the master's course, the part, what they call part two or part three.

Sam Gregson:

So I did up to part three in the three years and then, and then part three, the, the kind of master's course in physics.

Sam Gregson:

So four years of the natural sciences tripos with basically down to physics at the end.

Sam Gregson:

What people might not know about Cambridge is that it's a relatively small place and the part that the university dominates is an even smaller fraction of that, although it's a, it's a huge fraction of the, of the city.

Sam Gregson:

But once you've been there for four years, I kind of felt like I seen a lot of Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

I was doing the same kind of things, going to the same terrible nightclubs, going to the same events and I felt like I, I needed a little bit of a break.

Sam Gregson:

Cambridge is also very fast place, fast paced place.

Sam Gregson:

So the, the terms tend to be shorter than other universities.

Sam Gregson:

So eight weeks, lots and lots rammed in, lots of events, lots and lots of learning, lots and lots of, you know, sessions and lectures and I felt like I needed a little bit of break, I needed a little bit of a change of scenery.

Sam Gregson:

I also needed to pay off a little bit of my student loan, which I'd accrued over the four years.

Sam Gregson:

So I ended up leaving and I worked for a low carbon engineering consultancy called Element Energy in Cambridge initially, and then down in London, which got me out of Cambridge, helped me to kind of stand on my own two feet in the big city, if you will, and get a little bit of work experience.

Sam Gregson:

And just to change from Cambridge and like I say, pay off a little bit of that, that student loan, I very much enjoyed doing that.

Sam Gregson:

That was kind of.

Sam Gregson:

They were quite early into the market of these low carbon engineering consultancies, so advising government about the policies to take to reduce carbon, advising businesses how they could get up to code on new low carbon standards, these kind of things.

Sam Gregson:

So I felt like I was doing something different, but also doing something very worthwhile.

Sam Gregson:

Obviously climate change is a huge issue, so I enjoyed doing that for a couple of years, but eventually I always wanted to come back.

Jacob Butler:

Yeah.

Jacob Butler:

So that was my follow up question.

Jacob Butler:

What drew you back to Cambridge and what drew you back to the PhD after, you know, working in the industry?

Sam Gregson:

So you probably want me to say something like, having to get up early in London is hard work.

Sam Gregson:

So I wanted to come back to ph.

Sam Gregson:

That wasn't the main driver.

Sam Gregson:

So I always, I always wanted to come back.

Sam Gregson:

And like I said, the LHC was switching on around that time, so there was huge coverage of the LHC, a great chance to get involved in a PhD where you would actually see the first data from the lhc.

Sam Gregson:

So that kind of drew me back.

Sam Gregson:

I always wanted to come back, but I did need that, that kind of change of senior, I think after four years in Cambridge, a little bit of a reset.

Sam Gregson:

So I always intended to come back, but I think it just was the perfect time to come back was when the LHC was turning on the.

Sam Gregson:

One of the things that happened when I came back for PhD was a lot of the people who were working in the particle physics department had been doing their PhD on simulated data from the LHC.

Sam Gregson:

So they were simulating the data that will come out of the LHC when it switched on and people were doing analysis, setting up analysis code on the simulated data, but then feeling a little bit shortchanged because they weren't actually seeing the proton collisions, the real proton collisions from the lhc.

Sam Gregson:

So I felt a little bit sorry for them because as soon as I came back, I was kind of the first run that got to see the actual data from the lhc.

Sam Gregson:

So a combination of wanting to come back and the fantastic timing of The LHC turning on was really what drew me back to Cambridge at that time.

Host:

And how did this compare to your time as an undergraduate?

Host:

Obviously, did you undergraduate at Cambridge, then you came back to the same buildings to do this doctorate program?

Sam Gregson:

Very, very, very different.

Sam Gregson:

So the undergraduate time at Cambridge is very, very regimented.

Sam Gregson:

So, for example, when we're doing physics, every week, we'll get a question sheet.

Sam Gregson:

You take the question sheet on Tuesday, you hand it on Friday, you have a supervision the next Monday, then you get the next question sheet on Tuesday.

Sam Gregson:

We have a supervision on, you know, do it for Friday, has a supervision on Monday again.

Sam Gregson:

And this process repeats.

Sam Gregson:

So you knew exactly where you needed to be, you knew exactly what you had to do.

Sam Gregson:

And if you didn't do it, you got somebody, you know, sending you an email saying, where is this work?

Sam Gregson:

What's, what's going on?

Sam Gregson:

And keeping an eye on you.

Sam Gregson:

When I came back for PhD, that safety net kind of all gone.

Sam Gregson:

It was now, make up your own work, make some novel work, guide your own work, guide your own time.

Sam Gregson:

And I found that quite jarring at first, even though I'd been doing it quite a lot down in London, there was always a kind of boss overseeing what you were doing, setting you work.

Sam Gregson:

Whereas here, particularly in the first year, because there are other people who are more important than you coming towards the end of their PhDs, you're kind of left to your own devices.

Sam Gregson:

So I spent an awful lot of time kind of trying to get up to speed with the, with the LHC code, the LHCB code, learning Python, learning C so that I could understand that code and kind of asking questions about that code and about particle physics that I thought, thought were interesting.

Sam Gregson:

Going to lectures in the maths department to catch up on things that I hadn't actually done in undergrad which were related to particle physics.

Sam Gregson:

So, like quantum field theory, engaged field theory.

Sam Gregson:

But you really had to arrange your own time and be more organized.

Sam Gregson:

And initially that was a little bit jarring, but I think it's a very, very important thing for people to go through because this is what you will have to do when you become a researcher for yourself, if you go on to become a researcher.

Sam Gregson:

So it was almost a training process for becoming a researcher.

Sam Gregson:

Very jarring at first, but, you know, I swam in the end.

Host:

And did you find that your time in the real world helped with that at all, or was it just a case that it gave you time to forget some important integrals and some matrix calculus that you desperately needed?

Sam Gregson:

So that was very much one case when you come back and you realize that the people who came straight from 4th year remember all of these, all this Feynman calculus that you're like, I do know, I did know that at some point it does come back quite quickly.

Sam Gregson:

So, yes, there's a little bit of a hard transition coming back, having to revise some things that you once knew.

Sam Gregson:

But I think going away did help a lot because, you know, when I was living away in London, you obviously have to organize your time.

Sam Gregson:

This is things as simple as getting into work on time, you know, doing all your washing, making time for this on the weekend, also having some time for socializing, going out, these kind of things.

Sam Gregson:

So I think that really helped me to organize my time and just be a more mature, well rounded individual who could look after themselves and plan their work.

Sam Gregson:

So, yeah, I think, I think being in the real world really did help that transition.

Sam Gregson:

And I think if I'd gone straight from undergrad, it would have been much more jarring and I think I would have still been a little bit burned out from Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

So I think it was very helpful to take that break, get some fresh perspective and as I say, come back at a good time to see the first LHC data.

Jacob Butler:

Did you ever consider, I mean, it's a side question, but did you ever consider applying for a PhD elsewhere or was it always Cambridge?

Sam Gregson:

I did consider applying elsewhere, but I really liked the people who were, who were working on these projects at Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

So the supervisor that I came back to, Val Gibson, she was my third year, sorry, second year particle physics lecturer and I very much enjoyed her lectures.

Sam Gregson:

So a chance to work with Val was very, very, was very, very exciting.

Sam Gregson:

So when I saw who I could work with, Val was also interested in outreach.

Sam Gregson:

So she was very interested in things like getting more women into science as well.

Sam Gregson:

So given her interest in outreach and just her amazing particle physics lectures that I'd been in, it seemed like a fantastic chance to come back to Cambridge and work with her.

Sam Gregson:

Obviously Cambridge has its own draw as well.

Sam Gregson:

Just the name of Cambridge is fantastic.

Sam Gregson:

I think it would be kind of remiss of me to kind of sell that short.

Sam Gregson:

So the chance to come back to Cambridge, which is a fantastic institution and a function, and a fantastic chance to work with Val, I think, was what drew me back to Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

I did consider elsewhere, but I didn't find that combination that I was looking for elsewhere.

Jacob Butler:

So we touched on this a little bit already.

Jacob Butler:

But your PhD took you to the LHCB experiment at CERN.

Jacob Butler:

Can you tell us a little bit about what you did there briefly?

Jacob Butler:

Not going into too many details?

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, we won't go into any complicated integrals and these kind of things.

Sam Gregson:

So the LHCB considers the matter antimatter asymmetry and CP violation.

Sam Gregson:

So every particle in the universe, every fundamental particle, has an antiparticle.

Sam Gregson:

So for every electron, there's an anti electron, for every quark, there's an anti quark.

Sam Gregson:

But what you might notice is that there's not much of this antimatter around.

Sam Gregson:

So every electron we run across is negative.

Sam Gregson:

So where are all these anti electrons?

Sam Gregson:

Where are all these positive positrons, these antiparticles of the electronic?

Sam Gregson:

That is a huge puzzle which has confused people in physics for many, many years.

Sam Gregson:

And the idea is that our best models of the universe say that equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created in the Big Bang.

Sam Gregson:

But during the very, very early stages of the universe, there were some processes that treated matter and antimatter differently and that created a slight excess of matter over antimatter in the very early universe.

Sam Gregson:

These then collide.

Sam Gregson:

The matter and antimatter annihilate one another to create light.

Sam Gregson:

And we have this very tiny amount of matter left over.

Sam Gregson:

So that's the state of the universe we see today, A very tiny little bit of matter left over, which makes the stars, the planets, makes us, and a universe awash with light.

Sam Gregson:

So LHCB was interested in trying to work out, are there any differences between a particle and its antimatter counterpart that could explain how this discrepancy was created in the very early universe?

Sam Gregson:

And I looked at a particular decay channel of a particle called a D meson, trying to look for differences between its decay rate as a particle and its antiparticle partner.

Sam Gregson:

And we didn't find any differences, unfortunately.

Sam Gregson:

So we couldn't help explain this matter antimatter asymmetry.

Sam Gregson:

However, we did manage to take the worlds, at the time, world's most accurate measurement of no CP violation in this channel.

Sam Gregson:

So that was very exciting.

Sam Gregson:

We helped to kind of enhance the knowledge in this field, I guess, very, very slightly, but not exciting in the terms of winning a Nobel Prize or answering these big questions.

Sam Gregson:

But, but yeah, so CP violation.

Sam Gregson:

And we didn't find any, unfortunately.

Jacob Butler:

Yeah, you said something like, you found the most accurate measurement of zero with your results, which normally this a bad thing, wouldn't it?

Jacob Butler:

But is it.

Jacob Butler:

How is it different in physics research in your field?

Sam Gregson:

So I guess, I guess here, and usually A lot of these, these null results wouldn't be, wouldn't be published, Right?

Sam Gregson:

So this is, this is also a big problem we can, we can maybe talk about, but in this case, you've essentially narrowed off a decay.

Sam Gregson:

This decay doesn't seem particularly interesting.

Sam Gregson:

It's not going to produce this, these huge differences between particles and antiparticles.

Sam Gregson:

So you're still making a contribution to the, to the knowledge of the field.

Sam Gregson:

And at the time, like I say, that was the most accurate measurement of, of zero.

Sam Gregson:

Now, unfortunately, it's not because other experiments have kind of gone further.

Sam Gregson:

People at the LHC B experiment have gone further when they've got more data, more information, and they've taken my result and expanded upon it.

Sam Gregson:

So it was very useful to, to find out more about that decay and know that CP violation is not hiding in that decay.

Sam Gregson:

We don't think and push the knowledge forward, but yeah, not very exciting in terms of answering big questions.

Sam Gregson:

It is useful to find zero when you're doing your PhD because nobody kind of jumps on you.

Sam Gregson:

If you'd found this kind of amazing thing that breaks physics, I think the whole lhcb collaboration would have descended on me and been like, right, check this, check this, check this, check this, check this.

Sam Gregson:

And I might have been there for another kind of three years after the end of PhD trying to get this analysis out.

Sam Gregson:

But given that we found nothing, given that prefilled before, hadn't found anything, it was a kind of, what should we say, inoffensive result that not many people kind of jumped on.

Host:

But it used to be zero.

Jacob Butler:

Did you have a little sigh of relief when you saw that?

Sam Gregson:

I should be saying no, right?

Sam Gregson:

I should be saying, I really want to find this amazing new thing.

Sam Gregson:

To some extent, it might be nice that I think that maybe the perfect setup would be to not find anything in the PhD and then immediately find it as soon as you go into the postdoc and you've got the kind of job secured.

Sam Gregson:

But, yeah, maybe a minor sigh of relief.

Sam Gregson:

There's actually a thing in particle physics, so to make sure we're not biased when we're setting up our analysis code, we do a thing called blinding, which means that we set up the analysis code, and in my case, I added a randomly generated number to the final result of the CP violation.

Sam Gregson:

So instead of saying zero throughout the analysis, it said some random number every time I kind of opened the file just so that I couldn't lead the code to make a number that was far away from zero.

Sam Gregson:

And When I removed this blinding at the end, once we'd set up all the analysis code, the answer came out to something crazy, some huge CP violation, like 10%, which was unexpected.

Sam Gregson:

And what I realized is that I just put minus this number into my.

Host:

Code at the end.

Sam Gregson:

And actually the random number had been generating a negative number, so I'd gone minus, minus and added on some extra number.

Sam Gregson:

So I doubled this offset and made an absolutely crazy number.

Sam Gregson:

And it looked like there was huge CP violation in this channel until I realized that I had to delete the modulus of this number from the final answer.

Sam Gregson:

And then it went very, very quickly back to zero.

Sam Gregson:

So, yeah, sad times.

Host:

Do you have a brief moment of wondering if the Nobel Prize Committee would be calling soon?

Sam Gregson:

Look at this.

Sam Gregson:

Actually, we have found something.

Sam Gregson:

And then very quickly realized that, unfortunately, I'd discovered my own sloppiness rather than.

Host:

Something I think a lot more people can relate to getting a Nobel Prize.

Host:

Now, after this, you moved from science research to science communication.

Host:

So how about, how did this shift come about?

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, so during my PhD, I started doing a hell of a lot of outreach, and I found that I really enjoyed it.

Sam Gregson:

So the first way I got involved with this was essentially particle physics outreach days that we had from the lab.

Sam Gregson:

And I don't think.

Sam Gregson:

I don't think anyone will mind me saying that usually these were run on a kind of very ad hoc basis.

Sam Gregson:

Somebody would come running around the lab the night before and say, oh, my God, please.

Sam Gregson:

Does somebody have something to present to a bunch of school kids tomorrow?

Sam Gregson:

And usually it was, let's roll out the spark chamber, we'll show them.

Sam Gregson:

And they're interested in that for about 30 seconds, and then they get bored and you see the eyes kind of glaze over.

Sam Gregson:

So doing a little bit of that, explaining particle physics to bunches of school kids who were in.

Sam Gregson:

And also another thing that came around the lab was a vehicle called Bright Club.

Sam Gregson:

Now, Bright Club is a vehicle where scientists explain their research using standup comedy, which sounds terrifying to most people.

Sam Gregson:

Sounds crazy as well, the idea of science comedy.

Sam Gregson:

But they used to run sessions in Cambridge.

Sam Gregson:

And I got involved with Bright Club.

Sam Gregson:

I really enjoyed explaining particle physics using standup comedy.

Sam Gregson:

And as soon as I started doing this, I realized that I seem to be quite good at this.

Sam Gregson:

I seem to enjoy doing this.

Sam Gregson:

And I thought, well, why couldn't we run one of these kind of Bright Club type events at CERN and use the kind of pull of CERN and do this?

Sam Gregson:

So I set up this vehicle called LH Comedy, Large Hadron Collider Comedy.

Sam Gregson:

And we essentially did a bright club at CERN where a lot of CERN researchers got on stage and they explained their research to local people from CERN who, who spoke English.

Sam Gregson:

And the night went really, really well.

Sam Gregson:

People really enjoyed it.

Sam Gregson:

It was a great way to engage people who potentially have had a bad experience with science or who think it might be a bit boring to kind of meet them halfway with a few jokes, a few exciting stories and to get more people excited in science.

Sam Gregson:

And, and I think once I started doing a lot of outreach, I realized that at cern, obviously everyone is, is really, really good at physics.

Sam Gregson:

But I realized I was probably middle to lower of the pack at cern, which, you know, probably put, you know, is a good place to be in terms of physics.

Sam Gregson:

But I realized that, that I really enjoyed doing the outreach and I was quite good at it, whereas other people hated doing it or weren't very good at it.

Sam Gregson:

So I moved into doing more and more outreach a lot of the time, and that's kind of how I got into it.

Sam Gregson:

And I've just continued doing that ever after and enjoy doing it more and more.

Host:

Lovely.

Host:

And so.

Host:

So what sort of things do you get up to now?

Sam Gregson:

So, so now, as you can probably see in the background, I have a YouTube channel called Bad Boy of Science where I explain particle physics, try and break it down for, for laypeople, make it more accessible.

Sam Gregson:

I also have a show called Hunting the Higgs where I essentially take school age audiences and mixed audiences of adults and children through all the steps of the scientific method to discover a particle for themselves.

Sam Gregson:

So instead of sitting and listen to me prattle on about particle physics for an hour, I actually lead them through all of those steps.

Sam Gregson:

They do a bunch of app based games, physical activities, mental based activities, to actually discover a particle for themselves by going through all those steps of the scientific method and performing well enough to be able to discover a particle for themselves.

Sam Gregson:

So doing shows at science festivals and in schools, YouTube, blogging, writing, talking to other people.

Sam Gregson:

And I also tutor still physics and physics and maths, which helps keep my eye in, as Jacob said, because if you, if you drop the ball for, for a month on your Feynman calculus, it very, very quickly rusts over.

Host:

So there is that muscle memory, though it comes back fairly quickly once you start flexing it again.

Host:

But it's something you do need to practice.

Host:

And now, is there sort of something in particular that you hope your audiences take from your events?

Host:

Is it Like a sort of common aim you have for them, or is it, is it just sort of entertainment you're looking for?

Sam Gregson:

So the entertainment is important, but what I found when I was looking around and creating Hunting the Higgs was that there's a lot of brilliant science shows and science outreach vehicles that teach people about science and they, then they do it really, really well.

Sam Gregson:

But what I found is there's not a lot of vehicles that get people to actually do science for themselves and learn the scientific method.

Sam Gregson:

So what I wanted to do is make them do it for themselves, show them that they could do it for themselves and show people that they had a place in science if they wanted it.

Sam Gregson:

So I wanted to show everyone that they have a place in science, that they can get involved if they want to.

Sam Gregson:

And I also do enjoy the entertainment aspect because I think there's an awful lot of people out there who have had a bad experience with science.

Sam Gregson:

Maybe they found it boring at school, maybe they had a really bad teacher, maybe they got bad marks in their exams and now they just think it's too hard.

Sam Gregson:

It's not for me.

Sam Gregson:

And I feel like if you can offer a little bit of entertainment, an interactive game, a few jokes, some science based songs which are involved in the show, you can help to draw back that audience who have potentially a little bit scared of physics, think it's too difficult, think there's too much maths involved, you can get more of those people involved.

Sam Gregson:

I think a lot of science outreach vehicles can end up preaching to the choir.

Sam Gregson:

So there's a lot of people who will just come to anything.

Sam Gregson:

They're really interested in science already.

Sam Gregson:

They will already come.

Sam Gregson:

And I try and focus on that kind of audience that's just off to the side who, who might be willing to come if you can meet them with, with, with something that, that kind of gets halfway.

Sam Gregson:

So a little bit of entertainment, a few jokes.

Sam Gregson:

So I try to make it entertaining.

Sam Gregson:

I try and make sure they go away having learned something.

Sam Gregson:

So learned about the scientific method and learned that they can apply that themselves and in their everyday life.

Sam Gregson:

And when I'm presenting things, I always try and relate it back to their everyday experience.

Sam Gregson:

So if I'm talking about particle physics, I'll talk about MRI machines.

Sam Gregson:

If I'm talking about cern, I'll talk about the creation of the World Wide Web, something that people use every day.

Sam Gregson:

So something that we used at CERN to analyze data, to communicate between scientists is now something that you use every single day to research things, to answer Questions to talk to your friends.

Sam Gregson:

I try to make it applicable to their everyday lives as well.

Sam Gregson:

So making things applicable to people's everyday lives, meeting them halfway with some entertainment and allowing them to essentially power up by learning a new skilled scientific method and how they can apply it.

Sam Gregson:

I think these are things that I try to get across in my, in my outreach, which is maybe slightly different to the way some people do.

Host:

Thanks.

Host:

I think it's very important to show that science is a very broad church, both in terms of the subjects you can study and exactly what you're doing.

Host:

You know, we've talked today about the engineers make the stuff, the theoreticians who have the big ideas and do the calculus.

Host:

Yeah, there's huge amounts there.

Host:

It's very important to show that.

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, it's important that people, people realize this because, you know, some people are, you know, very hands on.

Sam Gregson:

They are very good at understanding how things work and some people don't like that.

Sam Gregson:

They just want to think about the more abstract maths.

Sam Gregson:

There is a place in physics for all these kind of kinds of interests.

Sam Gregson:

So, you know, never think that you're not the kind of person who can go into physics.

Sam Gregson:

As you as, as Jacob very nicely puts it, it is a very broad church and everyone can have a place in it if they want it.

Jacob Butler:

So, so what do you see the role of science communicators to be such as yourselves to be and it.

Jacob Butler:

Is it something that you feel every scientist should be involved in?

Sam Gregson:

So I've thought about this a lot and I, I don't think everyone should be involved in it if they, if they don't want to be.

Sam Gregson:

Because obviously some people don't want to do it.

Sam Gregson:

They don't enjoy doing it.

Sam Gregson:

Some people are not good at it.

Sam Gregson:

You know, we have the stereotype of the, the kind of mad crazy physicist or someone who just looks at their shoes all the time.

Sam Gregson:

Some people are like that and they, they don't like being in front of crowds and they don't want to be a science community communicator.

Sam Gregson:

Excuse me, that's perfectly fine.

Sam Gregson:

But I would like, as a science communicator, I see my role as trying to get people more excited about science.

Sam Gregson:

Right.

Sam Gregson:

And I would like more people to do this, particularly we talked last week when I was in at the Cavendish.

Sam Gregson:

I'd like to see more scientists from the Cavendish who are interested in doing it, doing, doing science communication because sometimes people who are working at the Cavendish are the best people or sometimes the only people in the world.

Sam Gregson:

Who understand the thing that they're working on.

Sam Gregson:

So you will never be in a better place to do science communication than working at the Cavendish.

Sam Gregson:

And I see my role as kind of trying to excite more people to do science communication and be interested in science.

Sam Gregson:

I think that's the, of the science communicator now, more wider than that.

Sam Gregson:

If you're talking to general audiences, people who are not going to come into physics, I think a lot of scientific projects, take the LHC for example, are funded with taxpayer money.

Sam Gregson:

So I think there's, there's also a right for the audience to understand where their money is going.

Sam Gregson:

Right.

Sam Gregson:

And we have to be able to explain and justify where money is going.

Sam Gregson:

So I think that's very, very important.

Sam Gregson:

And it helps to have the public on side.

Sam Gregson:

If you're going to ask for 22 billion, for example, just pulling that number out of thin air.

Sam Gregson:

No, I'm not.

Sam Gregson:

For a new particle collider, for example, it helps if you have some goodwill with, with the public and they understand what you're looking for, why you're doing it, and they understand the, the spin off benefits that they get out of that.

Sam Gregson:

The World Wide web, smaller MRI machines, you know, more amazing magnets, whatever it might be.

Sam Gregson:

It helps to have them on side and to show them the benefits that they can have.

Sam Gregson:

So I think telling people what they're getting out of science and getting people excited about science, that's the key, that's the key goal.

Host:

And you touched upon this.

Host:

But you think there are any problems facing particle physics in particular that better communication could address?

Sam Gregson:

Yeah, I mean, I mean, that's a very loaded question you've come with.

Sam Gregson:

So, yeah, I think that the answer is, is of course, yes.

Sam Gregson:

So obviously at the moment the, the big discussion in particle physics, there's a lot of people who say kind of particle physics is dying.

Sam Gregson:

You know, particle physics is coming to an end and that, that is not true at all.

Sam Gregson:

But this is, this is something we hear very often.

Sam Gregson:

So the lhc, the Large Hadron Collider, did not find as many new things as we hoped it might.

Sam Gregson:

So we found the Higgs boson, but we didn't find things like supersymmetric particles.

Sam Gregson:

We didn't find extra dimensions, we didn't find micro black holes, which a lot of people said they might do.

Sam Gregson:

So some people feel a little bit shortchanged with what we found at the Large Hadron Collider, which is totally understandable.

Sam Gregson:

So when you come back and say, I would now like $22 billion to go build a new machine.

Sam Gregson:

People say, well, are you going to find loads of new things this time or not?

Sam Gregson:

Do you know exactly what you're.

Sam Gregson:

What you're looking for?

Sam Gregson:

And I think maybe when we.

Sam Gregson:

When we built the Large Hadron Collider, science communicators fell into a little bit of a.

Sam Gregson:

Of a trap.

Sam Gregson:

They.

Sam Gregson:

They explained these amazing things that they wanted to find, these specific theories that the particles related to them that they wanted to find, like supersymmetry, for example, or micro black holes.

Sam Gregson:

And they didn't explain just how amazing the Higgs boson that they actually found is and how, if we found it, we would have to spend the next several decades building new machines to study it in detail.

Sam Gregson:

We fell into that trap.

Sam Gregson:

We didn't make that clear.

Sam Gregson:

So now we're kind of.

Sam Gregson:

And I don't blame people at the time for that because, you know, they were very excited about their particular research.

Sam Gregson:

But where we're now in a situation where we're kind of almost cleaning up that science communication mess and trying to convince people that despite having found all those things we thought we might find, that we still have good justification to go further.

Sam Gregson:

That's the kind of problem in particle physics at the moment.

Host:

So is there a sort of an elevator pitch message you think the particle physicist should be sharing?

Host:

Is it too complex for that?

Sam Gregson:

No, no, no.

Sam Gregson:

I think there is.

Sam Gregson:

Obviously, it's very, very complicated.

Sam Gregson:

I'm making a big, long video about it right now.

Sam Gregson:

Come out next week.

Sam Gregson:

I'll just plug that up.

Sam Gregson:

But I think the elevator pitch is that we need to study the Higgs boson in detail.

Sam Gregson:

This is an incredibly unique particle.

Sam Gregson:

This is the first spinless scalar particle that we've ever found.

Sam Gregson:

It's the only one that exists in the Standard Model.

Sam Gregson:

It's incredibly central to the Standard Model.

Sam Gregson:

There's something like 19 free parameters that we put in by hand into the Standard Model of particle physics.

Sam Gregson:

And the Higgs boson is linked to the vast majority of these.

Sam Gregson:

So all of these open questions in particle physics, why do we have three generations of particles?

Sam Gregson:

Where does flavor come from?

Sam Gregson:

All of these problems are linked to the Higgs boson.

Sam Gregson:

So understanding the Higgs boson is an incredibly, incredibly important thing to do.

Sam Gregson:

And we need to build larger colliders to produce more of these particles and study them with greater statistics.

Sam Gregson:

Now, this is very similar to what we did in the past.

Sam Gregson:

So we discovered the W and Z boson, which control the weak interaction, for example, in the late 70s maybe 80s.

Sam Gregson:

And then we very quickly switched from proton collisions or proton antiproton collisions to building the Large Electron Positron Collider, which is an electron positron collider, to study those W and Z bosons in exquisite detail.

Sam Gregson:

So now we've essentially done the same thing.

Sam Gregson:

We've discovered this new particle, the Higgs boson, and it's now on us to build larger machines to study it in detail.

Sam Gregson:

We have to repeat that cycle.

Sam Gregson:

We can't just find something and then say, yeah, well, it probably behaves like we think it does, like we actually have to study it in detail.

Sam Gregson:

And I think the elevator pitch is that if you've discovered this amazing, unique new particle, this new probe of the universe, and it's linked to so many open questions in particle physics.

Sam Gregson:

If you now decide not to study it because it cost $22 billion, James Webb cost 10, by the way.

Sam Gregson:

If you're not going to study it, then what the hell is particle physics for?

Sam Gregson:

We might as well just pack up and go home.

Sam Gregson:

So, yeah, I, I don't understand the reticence to do this.

Sam Gregson:

The $22 billion sounds big until you realize these projects run for kind of 40, 50 years, and then suddenly it's such a big number and it's spread over many, many nations as well.

Sam Gregson:

So you can make the number sound scary, or you can spread it out and make the number sound really quite manageable.

Sam Gregson:

But I think in particle physics, we haven't made that case clearly to the public about the importance of the Higgs.

Sam Gregson:

And mostly that's because it's quite difficult.

Sam Gregson:

There's a lot of things that you have to understand and learn in particle physics before you can understand that case.

Sam Gregson:

But I think we need to do a better job of it.

Sam Gregson:

And I'm going to try over the next few weeks to make some videos explaining that case.

Sam Gregson:

Because the message that particle physics is dying and the particle physics are just money grabbing weirdos who want to sit in their, you know, sit in their jobs and build larger colliders is a very simplistic message.

Sam Gregson:

And it's very easy for people to digest.

Sam Gregson:

It's much more difficult for them to get a enough feel of particle physics to understand why we're actually doing these things.

Sam Gregson:

And it's much harder to push back.

Sam Gregson:

I find a lot of the people who kind of rag on particle physics, it's a very similar message we see in other areas, this kind of contrarian message that, you know, the experts are biased, they're trying to protect their funding streams.

Sam Gregson:

We see it, we see this in climate, we see it for vaccines, we've seen it for everything else.

Sam Gregson:

And I think this has kind of bled over in a lesser form, in a less impactful for society form, but nevertheless in the same form into particle physics, where you can put this easy message across that experts are not humble, you know, they're lazy, they're, they're biased, they're just protecting their money.

Sam Gregson:

And I think we need to push back against that idea by, by getting out that, that, that more positive message and explaining exactly what we're doing and why.

Sam Gregson:

And that's what I'm going to try and do.

Jacob Butler:

So that's your mission for the near.

Sam Gregson:

Future, for the foreseeable future?

Sam Gregson:

That's right, yeah.

Jacob Butler:

Yeah.

Jacob Butler:

Excellent.

Jacob Butler:

Well, thank you very much.

Jacob Butler:

I think that's all we have time for at this stage, but thank you so much for your time today.

Jacob Butler:

It was fantastic to talk to you, as always.

Jacob Butler:

If you'd like to learn more about what we discussed in this episode and more generally about our work at the Cavendish, please have a look at the show Notes or go to our website, www.phy.cam.ac.uk.

Jacob Butler:

if you have any questions you would like to ask our physicists, head to our social media and tag us with the hashtag peopledoingphysics.

Jacob Butler:

And we'll also put the links to the Bad Boy of Science YouTube channel, of course, on the show Notes, please do go and have a look.

Sam Gregson:

That's very, very kind of you.

Sam Gregson:

Thank you very much.

Jacob Butler:

This episode was recorded and edited by Chris Brock.

Jacob Butler:

Thank you for listening to people doing physics.

Jacob Butler:

They'll be back next month.

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