The God Particle
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The God Particle
Vibrant Films
Download film (right-click)Animation , Artistic/Creative , Award Nominees , Award Winners , Explanation , Physics , Secondary
A film about CERN and looking for Higgs Boson particles.
Director's Notes:
A description of the work being done at CERN and the Large Hadron Collider, using clay animation.
Large Hadron Collider stills courtesy of CERN.
SciCast Notes:
Winner: Best Film — Secondary, 2009
Winner: Technical & Artistic Achievement, 2009
This is a technical masterpiece, extremely classy on many levels. The character modeling and animation is what grabs your attention, but the compositing (greenscreen work) is where it’s really clever. The voice performances are extremely good, too.
Quite rightly a big winner at the SciCast Awards 2009.
Criticisms? The ‘could make little black holes’ idea is one of those bits of hype that gets talked about, but has no real basis in physics — at least, not in the way that people tend to assume. It’s caused lots of problems for CERN, and if I’m being a bit po-faced about it, I think it’s a shame the film takes the possibility as its premise. For me, it rather distracts from what is, in practice, as clear an explanation of Higgs bosons as you’ll find anywhere.
Happily, SciCast’s judges clearly didn’t share my ‘taking it too seriously views,’ and I’m delighted the film received the recognition it deserves.
— Jonathan.