The Big Bang Machine

00:00:11 13.7 billion years after it all began

00:03:06 You must get asked this all the time. Is there a button? Who's going to press it?

00:05:20 The ancient Chinese, Indian mystics and Christian theologians

00:08:14 by peering further back in time than ever before.

00:11:18 The resulting explosion will be so intense that no-one's quite sure what will happen.

00:14:01 And ever since, we've peeled away the atomic layers.

00:16:40 Eventually get enough data to say we're beginning to see a class of particles...

00:19:49 When scientists talk about beauty in a physical theory, they mean that

00:22:55 The Higgs mechanism works by filling the universe with a field, the Higgs field

00:25:33 So the only way to prove the theory correct is to try and create the Higgs boson

00:28:46 Einstein's astonishing insight into the connection between matter

00:31:02 One of the wildest speculations is that the LHC will be capable

00:33:01 And the Z boson's scientific debut.

00:34:52 That is if the experiment works.

00:37:05 It really means that the God particle doesn't exist.

00:39:53 that the Standard Model explains so well

00:42:09 the process which fuels every star in the universe.

00:44:37 This was Einstein's greatest failure.

00:47:04 If we journey back through time, the universe shrinks

00:49:23 are actually vibrations of a single string

00:51:31 were sort of warm, fuzzy, extended things, right?

00:54:06 The original idea was that, OK if they're not points, maybe they extend out

00:56:11 For a long time now, we've been speculating about String Theory

13:00:00 to the magnets