Gigantic Searches in Particle Physics - a podcast by Ben Jaffe and Katie Malone

This week, we’re dusting off the ol’ particle physics PhD to bring you an episode about ambitious new model-agnostic searches for new particles happening at CERN. Traditionally, new particles have been discovered by “targeted searches,” where scientists have a hypothesis about the particle they’re looking for and where it might be found. However, with the huge amounts of data coming out of CERN, a new type of broader search algorithm is starting to be deployed. It’s a strategy that casts a very wide net, looking in many different places at the same time, which also introduces all kinds of interesting questions—even a one-in-a-thousand occurrence happens when you’re looking in many thousands of places.

Further episodes of Linear Digressions

Further podcasts by Ben Jaffe and Katie Malone

Website of Ben Jaffe and Katie Malone