The team behind the popular science magazine Symmetry is having a workshop at SLAC this week with the purpose of designing a good graphical presentation of the Higgs mechanism and Supersymmetry. People have tried this for years and it’s a tall order. Believe me, I know. But if anyone can pull it off, the Symmetry folks can!
I’ve been enlisted as a technical expert – one not only has to design a good graphic, it also has to bring home a technical point – and be technically correct. I consider this a fun challenge and am asking for you – our CV readers – for help! When designing a graphic to entice the interest of the scientifically interested public (not to mention policy makers), what better than to actually ask that audience what they like? So here we are….
To define a place for us all to get started, I asked David Harris, editor-in-chief of Symmetry, to give the top 4 graphics, each, for Higgs and Supersymmetry that are on the market today. And here they are (note these are a collage of the 4 different graphics):
For Higgs,
and for Supersymmetry,
They can be found at the links higgshere, higgshere, higgshere, higgshere, susyhere, susyhere, susyhere, and susyhere.
Let’s all take a few minutes to look critically at these pictures. Gosh – they are actually pretty bad, aren’t they! To be honest, I was shocked (although I have a slight fondness for the SUSY shadow dancing). The Higgs graphics hit me the hardest – I don’t even get the point in some of them, at least not by just looking at the picture without reading the accompanying commentary. I think we, the collective CV readership, can do much better than this! Don’t you!?!? So this is your challenge: please, spout forth your opinions – what do you like about these graphics? what turns you off? what confuses you? what better ideas do you have?
After the workshop, I’ll post the drafts of the new and improved graphics for further comments… And, don’t be shy now, this is your chance to speak up!
August 15th, 2006 at 3:00 am
Supersymmetry: Show every normal particle next to a copy of itself, except the copy has a beard. (Surely there are some Trekkies in the crowd here…)
Higgs: Show a before-and-after scene. A skinny, scrawny particle walks into McDonald’s and orders a Higgs value meal. After he eats the Higgs meal, he balloons into an obese, massive particle.
August 15th, 2006 at 7:57 am
The Supersymmetry images aren’t very good at all, and with good reason–although you can illustrate that SUSY results in a counterpart for every known particle, that’s not what’s *interesting* about SUSY.
The two upper Higgs illustrations are pretty good, I think. They illustrate not the technicalities of the Higgs (like the shape of the potential), but rather the most physically intuitive picture of *how* the Higgs Field creates mass. The idea is that if the Higgs interacts with something more, it will somehow “hinder” or “slow down” that particle more and so give it a greater mass; I first saw this idea in a talk by Hitoshi Murayama, and it’s the best way I know of to explain the Higgs in a meaningful way to people who don’t know the Higgs.
August 15th, 2006 at 7:58 am
My last sentence was suppose to say: “…to people who don’t know Quantum Field Theory.”
August 15th, 2006 at 8:52 am
As an artist-designer who has some vague idea what the graphics are about…..
In the first group – I like the look of the one with the spheres floating around in space. The one with the crowd of people doesn’t appeal to me – it’s too cluttered looking. (It is better with the explanation series, though) The other two look too much like a textbook. The one with the bowl and the blue spheres looks like something that would explain things in a visual way more so than the people or the boxes with symbols (which explains nothing to me). I don’t like the color of the bowl (also – if it were more translucent looking – I might like it better.
In the second group – the people dancing one is interesting and I like that they are silhouettes. (And I like the “explain it in 60 seconds” thing – it makes sense for there to be dancers without partners). I like the spheres also, though – and it looks like it could be more informative. I hate the “cute” one with the spheres with heads and legs. The apple one seems to be describing something different from the others.
One thing is that I like consistency and I like the idea that the simple spheres are closer to what it being explained – and the graphics can look pretty elegant. More could be done with colors to add more visual interest.
There is something nice about bringing the concept into the realm of people – and if there was a desire to have something in addition to the spheres – I would go with silhouettes of dancing people – could also be ballet or modern dancers. They could be different colors as well – even if they are silhouettes.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:05 am
Several years back, Larry Gonick did a Science Classics cartoon for Discover Magazine about the Higgs. He drew force-carrying bosons as vaguely snakelike things, twisted into the shapes of Ws or γs. In one panel, a lightweight boson was wrapped like a boa constrictor around a big H, chomping it down — “choff choff!”.
Perhaps a sort of Rene Magritte illustration might work well for SUSY: fermion people looking in a mirror and seeing something which doesn’t quite look like them.
Troublemaker’s ideas both tickle my funny ganglion, but then again, I’m a dyed-in-the-velour Trekkie.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Overall, this image of supersymmetry fails to capture the connection between dance partners. More specifically, the dance partners appear to be too asynchronous in rhythm as well as too detached from each other to be performing an elegant dance of supersymmetry.
August 15th, 2006 at 9:34 am
This is just a little bit different than you asked about, but you might check out Jan Andersen’s art — he work centers around representations like this–these aren’t cartoons, but visual representations of particles.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~janhande/pexu/pexu_slusser.htm
August 15th, 2006 at 9:44 am
I’m not a graphics person, but I’m a science writer who frequently must find good visual graphics to illustrate points, so perhaps I can weigh in with some helpful comments. None of the examples truly capture the concepts very well, at least not without a bit of accompanying text. Which is fine if that text is short and sweet and employs a useful analogy. To that end:
1. I have to disagree with Meret about the spheres floating in space — it tells me nothing, visually, about what’s being discussed. For me, the crowd of people image works best, but I agree that the visual, as it now stands, is overly cluttered and needs the accompanying text to make sense. Perhaps a less crowded version of that one might work?
2. As for supersymmetry, I too tend to favor the “shadow dancers.” It’s an excellent, easy to grasp analogy (bearing in mind that no analogy is 100% perfect). The problem, again, is the visual doesn’t quite get even that simple concept across. As Cynthia points out, it “fails to capture the connection between dance partners.” They could be engaged in some sort of modern dance tableau, rather than waltzing with invisible partners. Perhaps something along those lines, that shows us at least the bare outlines of the invisible supersymmetric partners? Although this can be misleading; aren’t the supersymmetric partners much, MUCH denser/heavier in terms of mass than the subatomic particles we know and love?
It’s quite the challenge to visually communicate that which cannot be seen.
I struggled with one of illustrators for weeks trying to come up with a good way to visualize imaginary time. We were only half successful….
August 15th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Troublemaker, you’re brilliant! An image of particles gaining mass at McDonald’s is destined to become a classic.
August 15th, 2006 at 10:32 am
The confusing thing about the first two Higgs field pictures is that they impart the idea of ‘friction’ — and then it would seem that mass should cause a particle to slow to zero absolute velocity. However, I personally like the crowd pictures with their written explanations.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
The thing that struck me about these pictures is that most of them don’t really mean anything! The text that they go with would be just as clear without them. My favorite pictures are the first two Higgs pictures — the one with the big red particle in the middle, and the one with the room full of blue physicists. Here’s why:
+ The picture with the red particle is very clean and clearly labeled; I could tell what it was talking about just by looking at it. If this picture had a clear, concise caption (which, unfortunately, it doesn’t!), I think someone who had never heard of the Higgs field would be able to look at it and get a good idea of what’s going on.
+ The picture with the blue physicists is much less clear… or maybe it just looks that way, because all the JPEG compression makes it impossible to see!!! If it weren’t blurred beyond recognition, however, this picture would be very good at getting across the concept of a field: it’s easy to see how the crowd fills all of space, and interacts with objects passing through it. I may also be biased towards this picture because I love the crowd analogy.
Here are some of my biggest peeves about the other pictures:
- It took me a good ten minutes to understand the “shadow dancers” picture. At first, I thought the people in the foreground were supposed to be dancing with the people in the background. Finally, after reading the caption several times, I realized that everyone in the picture was dancing with an invisible partner. Maybe I’m just thick, but I think this picture would be a lot clearer if the invisible people — which are, after all, the focus of the picture! — were actually shown. There are plenty of ways to do this: in cartoons, dotted lines are traditional, but in this sort of illustration, translucency would probably work better.
- The SUSY picture with the red and green particles and the blue sheet seems to show a physical connection between the particles and their superpartners. Is this something that is actually supposed to exist?
- As an educated lay reader, here is my reaction to the picture with the table of particles and forces:
Hope this helps a little!
August 15th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Requiring the images to convey the relevant concept in a way that is technically accurate and also appealing (and I assume meaningful) to the scientifically interested public without relying on a caption is asking too much.
Regarding the supersymmetry images, Blake Stacey wrote:
That is actually what the final supersymmetry image depicts. It has an apple in front of a mirror and the reflection is an orange. The idea being that fermions and bosons are as different as proverbial apples and oranges, yet supersymmetry (the mirror) relates them.
So why does this image have two mirrors at right angles and a total of four objects (one real, and three images)? Because it actually depicts a specific kind of supersymmetry that arises in nuclear physics. The symmetry relates the spectra of of four nuclei that differ by one in their number of protons or neutrons. If you like, there are two superymmetries at work; one changes the number of protons by 1, the other changes the number of neutrons by 1. Hence two mirrors.
It was used with the article Uncovering Supersymmetry by Jan Jolie, which appeared in Scientific American in July 2002.
Two of the elements related in this way are platinum and gold, which is why the orange in the mirror on the left is silvery, and the apple at the rear is golden.
Disclaimer: yes, I designed this image. All credit for its execution goes to Bryan Christie Design.
For completeness, here’s the caption that went with the image:
August 15th, 2006 at 1:30 pm
All, thanks much for your comments so far! Keep ‘em coming…
I just about spit out my mouthful of coffee (in laughter) at the thought of the Higgs eating at McDonalds!
August 15th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Higgs (vacuum expectation) Value Meal at McDonals?
August 15th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
In the supersymmetry graphics, I like the apples-and-oranges reflection the best, but as an illustration — by itself, it doesn’t explain much. The first graphic is a little more mundane and explanatory.
For the Higgs graphics, I honestly don’t care for any of them very much. The crowd graphic is cute, but it only works with the full sequence, and even then, doesn’t really explain more than the text alone. Unfortunately, I understand the Higgs phenomenon less well than supersymmetry, so I don’t have any better suggestions yet.
August 15th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Mass generation: Carl Brannen’s calculation of the neutrino and charged lepton masses fits into an M-theory based on a ribbon graph description of complex moduli (which can be extended to the quaternionic and octonionic case) which uses special idempotents as mass generators. This is an operadic (categorical) picture in which the HIGGS BOSON DOES NOT EXIST.
August 15th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
For supersymmetry, consider an animated graphic conveying the connection with Poincaré symmetry. One of the earliest (quasi-physical) explanations I encountered emphasized that supersymmetry transformations would have to combine transmutations of bosons into fermions (and vice versa) with spacetime transformations, ie, operations of a Poincaré algebra. I pictured a mixed “gas” of bosons and fermions, with transformations signaled by little jumps (translations) of the particles from one spacetime point to another.
As I recall, the same explanation also emphasized that making supersymmetry into a local symmetry would necessarily entail spacetime curvature, making a connection (in the context of the time) with supergravity.
This would entail grappling with the distinction between an internal symmetry and a spacetime symmetry:
August 15th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
I’m not an artist, so I can only offer a suggestion for the Higgs. First, have a person running through a field of tall columns. He can run full speed (which would be the speed of light for a particle) because the tall columns cover very little of the ground. Next show him trying to run with all of the columns toppled over. The toppled columns represent the breaking on the symmetry, so they should all be toppled in the same direction. He can no longer run at full speed but instead travels slowly (like a massive particle).
One thing I don’t like about this picture is the fallen columns picking out a physical direction. It seems as if the runners should be able to go full speed in the direction that the columns fell, but is slowed in the perpendicular direction. A solution is to have the fallen columns thick enough to cover the ground, so the runner can’t go full speed in any direction.
I originally though of trees rather than column, but it seemed that a drawing with trees would get too complicated. Another possibility is people standing at a party and then falling over to break the symmetry.
Gavin
August 15th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
Well, my problem with the Higgs graphics and accompanying text is that they’re both WRONG. The Higgs mechanism has nothing to due with “clustering” of the field when a particle comes by.
I would talk (and draw) about symmetry breaking, which is much easier to illustrate and a much more fundamental notion. I would then ask the reader/viewer to take it on faith that massless particles can have more symmetry than massive ones, and that’s why breaking symmetry can give particles mass.
August 16th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Mark,
It’s not clear to me that most folks have a good grasp of what a “symmetry” actually is. What you do think?
August 16th, 2006 at 1:29 am
You just deleted the new form of M-theory.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:01 am
Chris #17 has a good point about using animated graphics.
You can easily show a latice representing a quantum field. You just show a lattice where springs connect neighrest neigbors. You can let the who le thing oscillate.
You can show an excited state propagating throught the lattice which represents a moving particle.
You can show interacting quantum fields by showing a lattice consisting of two sublattices.
You can try to depict the Higgs effect by showing a lattice with two sublatices where one of the sublatices only couples to the other sublattice.
August 16th, 2006 at 10:05 am
I use this for an example of symmetry. It can be found here.
Also this one is quite nice too? It was used here so I think “the point” is clear?
August 16th, 2006 at 11:37 am
I can’t draw to save my life. But for the Higgs:
The Higgs person could be holding on to a tree branch or some other anchor (symbolizing its nonzero vev) while the fermion and weak gauge boson people could be tied to the Higgs and each other, anchored by the Higgs (the ties symbolizing the interactions, and the anchoring symbolizing mass).
August 16th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Mark is definitely right, the Higgs graphics seem to have confused spontaneous symmetry breaking with renormalization; they’re not right. One of the problems is that we’re looking for the Higgs particle, but the thing that gets a vev and breaks the symmetry is the Higgs field. Maybe it could be represented as an actual field? Like, of wheat or something. Show some people running quickly through a prairie without any wheat, and then some others moving more slowly through the thick grass.
For SUSY, I like the mirror the best — the top left one is also on the right track, but the lines connecting the particles are a no-no. (It’s important to convey that each type of particle has a superpartner, not each actual particle!) I like the idea of a mirror world where things are similar but different. How about combining the mirror idea with the dancers? An image of some men and women representing particles — boys can be bosons, females can be fermions — but each wearing distinct outfits. (There would be an electron uniform, a photon uniform, etc.) Then a mirror that shows a set of people wearing the same kinds of uniforms, but all the women have turned into men and vice-versa. You could do two of them: one for unbroken SUSY where the sizes and shapes were basically the same, and one for broken SUSY where the mirror people were bloated and huge.
August 16th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
JoAnne, I think Plato’s butterfly gif is a good illustration of symmetry. Also, simple things like rotating a cube vs a sphere can illustrate the difference between continuous and discrete symmetry.
As a more general point, I think the physics community would do much better in trying to explain something simple in enough detail so that a reasonably intelligent person could understand it (like very basic aspects of rotation symmetry), and then say, well, we have generalizations of these ideas that are too hard for you to understand right now (that’s why it takes YEARS of study to become a physicist!), but here’s a very rough and incomplete outline.
My problem with these graphics and the text is that they try to convey quite abstract concepts in a very small amount of space & time, and it’s just not possible.
But then, perhaps the opinions of someone who can’t spell “do” should not be taken too seriously …
August 16th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Here is one for SUSY… http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3739/3174/1600/SuSY.jpg
August 16th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
In many ways particle physics is like living in a hall of mirrors. There are many ways of seeing the same thing, and it is not easy to tell which are close to reality and which are just mathematical accidents, reflections.
Carl
August 17th, 2006 at 7:00 am
Hi JoAnne,
To produce an accurate graphic you need to translate the force strengths as a function of collision energy into force strengths as a function of distance from the particle core.
I think this is crucial to visually appreciate what is going on with the mass-generating Higgs field and also what the polarization of the virtual charges in the vacuum physically looks like (how far it extends for each species of virtual particle, etc) around a real (long-lived) particle. The usual talk of force strengths as a function of collision energy is misleading because it is not clearly explained to people that this means forces becomes stronger at closer range.
Ie, the electromagnetic force does not obey Coulomb’s law: at very close-in distances it rises faster than the inverse-square of distance because apparent charge rises. At 92 GeV electric charge is 7% stronger as measured in lepton scattering experiments.
Clearly the charge polarization is strongly linked to the Higgs mechanism because BOTH the electric charge and the particle mass are renormalized quantities: the bare charge and mass are larger than the observed values at a long distance. Because Yang-Mills exchange theories are behind the standard model which is well verified empirically, you therefore get a picture whereby exchange radiation is being shielded by the vacuum to create the charge variation. There is no reason why the exchange radiation energy should not be conserved like other forms of energy, so the absorption of this energy in the shielding region of vacuum charge polarization is used somehow. In that region you get short range nuclear forces, including massive weak gauge bosons, so it is perfectly feasible that the attenuation of the core electric charge gauge bosons near a particle creates strong forces. This allows numerical predictions, because you can calculate precisely how much electrmagnetic field energy is being lost due to shielding, and this will be how much nuclear force energy will be increased. Data are already available on this, allowing checks to be made.
At low energies, the experimentally determined strong nuclear force strength is alpha = 1 (which is about 137 times the Coulomb law), but it falls to alpha = 0.35 at a collision energy of 2 GeV, 0.2 at 7 GeV, and 0.1 at 200 GeV or so. The electric force strength increases from alpha = 1/137 at low energies to 1/128 at 92 GeV. So as one force falls, another rises, suggesting that the energy carried by all gauge bosons is conserved at any given distance from a particle (or collision energy, since higher energies imply closer distances).
A switch in general thinking towards graphical illustrations of polarization and force effects as a function of distance would help to make the dynamics clearer for the mass causing Higgs mechanism. Clearly there is a close association between the massive W and Z gauge bosons and the mass carrying “Higgs” boson. Just as old CGS units created problems for physicists in some areas, so the convention of thinking of forces as a function of energy rather than distance makes it needlessly abstract. A pictorial way of thinking may help progress, but will require much work because it is hard to work out the exact distance of close approach in high energy collisions because of the complexity of inelastic scatter reactions.
August 17th, 2006 at 8:14 am
Okay here are two more.
Meet “Higgins” like Alice, has a namesake?
And of course, in line with the hat?
You can have the image of the “stringscape” morph into the picture of the hills and valleys?
Dawn Levy:
August 18th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Natural BUTTERFLY SYMMETRY
http://thumbsnap.com/v/dKIP8EgV.jpg
by
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennerally/
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August 18th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
LAMINAR FLOW
http://thumbsnap.com/v/MzwlDoeC.jpg
by
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cyberchaos/sets/72057594097143321/
**
August 18th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
And for sub-atomic symmetry take a look at:
http://quasar9.blogspot.com/2006/08/treasure-within.html
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August 19th, 2006 at 6:31 pm
Joanne,
Another problem might be is that you are asking us. You are considered weird enough by the public for being scientists. Amateurs like myself and others here are considered even weirder because we aren’t getting paid.
FWIW, I did like the explanation of the text that accompanied the several pics of a room of physicists for the Higgs field. The pic by itself wasn’t much.
The one chart should have showed the W and Z bosons being influenced by the Higgs while the photons and gluons plowed right through unimpeded.
Even with all that it is best to remember that only about 7% of any audience really does catch on to what any speaker or periodical states, even if they are interested.
August 20th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
a special case of susy
http://www.reuniting.info/images/mirror.jpg
August 20th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
For some reason my link only works if you copy and paste into the address bar, It works ok then.
August 20th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Bee – lol!
Just as well bosons & fermions don’t think ‘like’ humans
It’d make for a peculiar looking universe.
But hold on are those bosons and fermions which translate the information received thru the optic eye by the human brain. It’s only a trick of the light.
And Bee if Lubos sees that cartoon, you know he’s gonna say “see I told you women’s brains were definitely different”
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