Wonderful character development!

One of my all time favorites.

Dreadfully Boring

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

This is not an educational film designed for physicists. Those who say the film is light on science should look to its title: "Particle Fever". What does "fever" refer to? Unbridled emotions--from joy to fear--that accompanied scientists' anticipation of an historic event: the operation of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in Meyrin, Switzerland.The film explains how the theoretical basis for the CERN experiments dates back decades. Entire scientific careers have focused on theories that might be perfected or destroyed with data from the LHC.Before I started watching this documentary, I decided that I was looking for clarity regarding the physics behind this endeavor. And I was hoping that the film would be engaging. The film is a success on both points. As a layperson, I could never hope to understand the mathematics of theoretic physics or the mechanics of experimental physics, but this film provides the basics for understanding the issues at play and their magnitude. Using a few "actors" to speak to the camera, especially those with overt enthusiasm and those who have invested their lifetimes in this arena of scientific thought, helped me feel their "fever" and understand the stakes.For the most part, this film is presented chronologically, beginning in 2007 as the LHC becomes operational. History and theory are interspersed throughout the film.The most anticipated results of the LHC data pertained to the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle critical to modern particle theory. Much of the drama, at least for those unfamiliar with the data CERN has provided over the years, concerns this particle.This film also shows the relationship of the scientific community with media, which sometimes has the power to excite popular opinion for better or worse. Information presented about a CERN-like project in Texas illustrates that politics play its part, often controlling the purse strings.On the downside, I found some of the universe theory to be anthropocentric and even anthropomorphic. Also, when Nima A. says it is "incredible" that the laws of nature are understandable via math, I understand what he means, but I wonder if there are other "maths" unavailable to us that could explain those laws of nature that are imperceivable by man. We can know but a small part of the multiverse. This is something astronomers have already accepted.

This documentary contained interesting information, but as a film it rather fails. It doesn't really make enough use of the strong visuals of this massive machine, and there's a bit too much of the video blog type content with some protagonists being terrifyingly large with their features taking up the full height of the screen. Poor resolution was evident at some points, as were out of focus subjects - this was distracting at a time when one should be thinking about what these people were actually saying. There was also a bit of artificial not-quite-drama inserted when something broke and they had to fix it... there was a delay of a couple of months to a 20 year long project with no hard deadline, so it was a bit of a shoulder shrugging moment for me. Some of the sound editing was a bit weird for no apparent reason too. Contrary to other reviewers, I actually thought the human element - technical ratio was good (given the target general audience) and I found myself quite satisfied with the resolution (which was of course quite outside the power of the film makers), although the implications of it were not teased out that much.A bit of a missed opportunity. Watch it to learn interesting stuff, not for a cinematic treat.

The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, has been in the works for over 20 years, from concept to construction to operation. This is one of those projects that cannot be described in monetary terms, i.e. "cost/benefit." No, it is one of those fundamental experimental projects that will hopefully uncover new insights into sub-atomic particle Physics and allow us to better explain how our universe works.The LHC has many goals, but an early primary goal was to experimentally verify the Peter Higgs theory that there must exist a heavy particle called a "boson", usually referred to as the Higgs boson, which is the linchpin for all other particles. The only way to possibly observe it is to bombard the small particles at very high energies and using giant, sophisticated specialty detectors look at the resulting new particles and their energies. When I first learned this film is more than 90 minutes long I wondered why. But I found out as I watched it, instead of being a dry scientific and engineering account of the LHC, much of the film featured several of the Physicists either working directly to build it or working secondarily to analyze data and interpret results. Overall I found it to be a good balance, to learn more about the people and what kinds of thoughts and apprehensions they had as zero hour approached.As the film documents, all went fine and the LHC began working as designed ... until a rather catastrophic failure resulted in a leak and the destruction of some of the critical parts of the LHC. It had to be shut down for several months and repaired, all before it was able to generate any useful data.Then, in 2011 and 2012, after it started up and ran fine, the critical experiments were performed, and the results were presented to a small live audience and the worldwide audience by teleconference and TV. Two competing theories had established that the boson will have a mass of either 115 GEV or 140 GEV. When the massive amount of data was analyzed and verified to 5 sigma, meaning the chance of an incorrect result was less than about 1 in 3 million, the Higgs boson was discovered, at a mass of about 125 to 126. Almost right in the middle of the two predicted either/or values.So that opens up a potentially totally new and exciting set of theories about how the universe was formed and how it behaves. Hopefully after the LHC is set up to run at full design power, new data will shed additional light on the issue. I can't wait!It was a joyous sight to see Peter Higgs himself at the news conference announcing the results. One can only imagine how he must have felt, after so many years and so much effort seeing his ground-breaking theoretical work verified.

If there's one thing I learned at particle fever, it's probably the fact that Phyiscs is not what I learned in high school. The Physics I studied (and failed miserably) was the calculator of light rays and gravity forces. The real Physics, the one some people choose as their livelihood is, quite literally, a universe away. Some might say multi-verse away. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. The focus of the movie- the Hydron collider in Switzerland is a project according to all projections, should never have materialized. Its costs sky-rocketed to five billion pounds, it took almost twenty years to build and a few more years to overcome glitches (and when you build a seven mile long tunnel to run beams in the speed off light, glitches are inevitable) and it's functional and commercial uses are, as of today, non-existent. It's hard to persuade people to allocate money and time just to get a replay of the big bang. Alas, it's not the Hedron's goal.I'm still jumping ahead.Physics is the most pretentious of scientific fields. Its purpose is to compose the great manual of the universe. A tough assignment considering no one knows how it works, how long it will work or if it was intentionally premeditated to work. CERN, The ultimate place of worship for all physicists, takes the wild theories of the universe and with high powered, heavily documented and shockingly susceptible device, puts them to the test. The one test that CERN failed to anticipate is the test of the real world. When one operate a gigantic, costly collider, you need press coverage, in order to do that, CERN must provide insights. Keeping the experiments clandestine, isolate CERN from the media, making them public, lead to rushed tests that more often than not, fail and alienate the press even more. Apparently, the world outside the Hedron collider is as vicious as the Collider itself.Of course, the Hedron collider overcame all its initial difficulties and supplied the world with shocking insights that leave many questions unanswered. One that, in my opinion, looms over all the rest, is whether or not this manual of the universe was authored or generated by circumstances. In other words, is there a big guy upstairs or is this universe one big exercise in probability. This movie makes you think. beyond the colorful and diverse types of physicists, it projects an image of the universe and forces us to redefine perspective. Now, that's quite an accomplishment for a modest documentary. Don't expect the movie to be easy. It's not for the Physics majors but it's also not digested to be user-friendly. Manuals never are. 8 out of 10 in my FilmOmeter