On July 4, 2012, I was watching a live video feed from Europe, excited for an announcement that was about to make physics history.
Until that day, I had written dozens of blogs and articles about the Higgs boson and the drama coming from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) construction and start-up. It was one of those rare and exciting times when world was excited for a — let’s face it — crazy complex physics theory, stirring a public frenzy for any news related to the “God Particle” and how it would transform our understanding of the universe.
Physicists were, naturally, more reserved, but the fact that the LHC was revving up and generating tiny “Big Bangs” with every particle collision inside its complex, building-sized detectors, even the most conservative physics researchers couldn’t help but express their anticipation for a new age of particle physics. The LHC was (and still is) the most complex machine built by humankind, after all.
All the while, we science writers were trying to keep up, finding analogies for what the LHC was really doing, explaining in plain terms what the hell physicists were looking for and why Professor Brian Cox was arguing with politicians on prime-time TV. Good times.
Personally, I was enthralled (and still am). I can’t believe that only five short years after the Higgs discovery announcement that particle physicists are carrying out cutting-edge science at the LHC and even referring to future high-energy accelerators as “Higgs boson factories.” The Higgs discovery was just the beginning, but in 2012 it felt like the end of a decades-long odyssey seeking out an elusive theoretical particle that mediates mass in our universe and the “last piece” of the Standard Model puzzle — indeed, its discovery resulted in the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics for François Englert and Peter W. Higgs who, in the 1960’s, developed the theoretical framework for the Higgs mechanism.
The Higgs boson discovery was huge and, along with the first detection of gravitational waves, it’s the biggest story I’ve covered.
But, I found myself asking after turning off the live feed from CERN in the summer of 2012, how would I commemorate the story of the Higgs boson? Would I just resign it to memory and move on with the next big thing in science? Or would I do something else?
Soon after, I started to bounce an idea off my wife, friends, family members, colleagues and associates. That period of my professional life with Discovery News was too big for me to forget. I wanted to make a permanent memorial to the physics, engineering, ingenuity and scientists behind that historic discovery.
I had to get a tattoo.
In the years since 2012, I became aware of many science communicators with awesome science-related tattoos, so I did a lot of research around what I wanted my tattoo to be, who would do it and when. By 2015 I promised myself it would happen (to a probability of “3-sigma,” at least) and I started investigating artists and, although I came across an ocean of stunning talent and fantastic concepts, it wasn’t until September of this year that I stumbled on work that truly resonated with me. By September I was at “5-sigma.”
I came across Daniel Meyer’s (LEITBILD) work on Instagram and I was hooked, so I made an appointment and sent him some concept images. He was particularly inspired by the circular cross section of the LHC’s CMS detector and the particle jets in a simulation of a Higgs event (pictured above), so he got to work on the design and, after a three month wait, I got to see the final design and loved it. By the end of Friday, my first tattoo was on my right arm after a fantastic day of conversations about science, art and life.
Take a look at what it looked like in the studio before it was wrapped:
It’s been a long journey since I first decided I wanted a tattoo and I’m overjoyed to have found Daniel’s work. Be sure to check out more of his art on his website and on Instagram. Once my arm has properly healed, I’ll post some more pics, the detail is incredible.
astroengine.com 