The ultimate dream machine | Philip Chang | TEDxUF

Philip Chang went from a kid taking blurry photos of the stars to a scientist smashing particles at near light speed, joining the CERN team that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012. In this talk he shows how collaboration is what reveals the hidden structure of, well, everything. Dr. Phillip Chang is a particle physicist on a quest to understand the basic substance that makes us—all of us, and everything that surrounds us—so that we may answer the oldest questions: Where do we come from? His fascination began as a child when I read a cartoon science book. It revealed to him that inside atoms were even smaller particles, hidden worlds that most people never see in their daily lives.

That secret motivated him to study Newton’s laws, then calculus. Determined, he pursued physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, joining the ATLAS collaboration at CERN. In 2012, he was part of the team that discovered the Higgs boson that allows all of us to exist. Since then, he has also joined the CMS Collaboration, trying to further our understanding of this important particle. He also mentors students and postdocs tackling the immense challenges of tracking particles in this future machine, and he sees in them the same spark of wonder he felt as a child. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx