By the time Raj and Paige reached the airport, the rest of the delegation had already begun gathering near the check-in area.
Compared with the beginning of the trip, everyone appeared much more relaxed.
The official investigation was over, the lectures had ended, and the precious experimental data had already been safely distributed.
Now all that remained was the long journey home.
"Did you enjoy your free day?" one of the professors asked Raj.
"Very much."
"Finally went skiing?"
Raj's smile disappeared.
"No."
The professor looked at him strangely.
"You had an extra day in Switzerland and still didn't go skiing?"
"We went around Geneva."
The professor shook his head and walked away.
Paige tried not to laugh.
"You realize Howard is going to say exactly the same thing."
"I know."
"Probably with much less restraint."
"I know."
"Possibly for several months."
"Paige."
She finally laughed.
Raj shook his head helplessly.
Compared with the quiet and guarded girl who had first started working as his assistant, Paige had changed considerably during this trip.
At least around him, she was beginning to relax.
Raj didn't intend to rush anything.
Their relationship had already progressed much further than he'd expected when they'd left California.
That was enough.
After passing through security, they joined the other delegation members near the departure gate.
Paige sat beside Raj and took out one of the chocolates she'd bought earlier.
Raj immediately held out his hand.
Paige looked at it.
"What?"
"My chocolate."
"You have your own."
"You stole mine this afternoon."
"That was a tourism tax."
"I don't remember Switzerland having a chocolate tax."
"It's new."
Raj stared at her.
Paige calmly ate the chocolate.
"You're becoming a bad influence on me," Raj complained.
"I'm your assistant. Logically, you're the bad influence."
Raj considered that argument.
"That's disturbingly difficult to refute."
Their flight was called soon afterward.
Once they boarded, Paige took the window seat while Raj sat beside her.
As the plane began moving away from the terminal, Paige looked outside.
For seven days, they had spent almost every waking hour together.
They had attended lectures together, eaten together, studied together, and because of the hotel arrangement, even slept in the same room.
Under normal circumstances, Paige would have expected herself to feel exhausted after spending so much time around another person.
Instead, she felt strangely comfortable.
"Regretting leaving?" Raj asked.
"A little."
"Me too."
Paige glanced at him.
"I thought you missed California."
"I do. Missing one place doesn't mean you can't regret leaving another."
"That's surprisingly philosophical."
"I occasionally have profound thoughts."
"Occasionally?"
Raj sighed.
"I liked you better when you were quiet."
"No, you didn't."
Raj opened his mouth to respond.
Then stopped.
Paige smiled.
He couldn't argue with that.
Once the aircraft reached cruising altitude, Raj took out his laptop.
Paige immediately noticed.
"I knew you wouldn't last."
"What?"
"You said we were taking a day off."
"The day is over."
"It's been over for approximately forty minutes."
"Exactly. I've shown tremendous restraint."
Raj connected the hard drive containing the ALICE data.
Paige leaned toward him.
They had already studied enough documentation at CERN to understand the basic structure of the files, so it didn't take long for them to begin examining the information.
For nearly an hour, the two quietly worked through different datasets.
Raj occasionally stopped to make notes.
Paige watched the screen.
"Are you looking for something specific?"
"Several things."
"That's helpful."
Raj smiled.
"Right now I'm mostly trying to see whether the raw results match some calculations I made before we came here."
"And if they do?"
"Then I may have several papers to write."
Paige looked at the enormous quantity of information.
"Several?"
"If I'm right."
"You usually are."
Raj turned toward her.
"That sounded suspiciously like confidence in me."
"Don't get used to it."
"Too late."
Paige rolled her eyes.
They continued working.
Eventually, however, the exhaustion accumulated over the past week began catching up with her.
Raj noticed Paige yawning several times.
"Sleep."
"I'm fine."
"You've yawned four times in ten minutes."
"You counted?"
"I'm a scientist."
"That's not an explanation."
"It's my explanation for everything."
Paige tried to continue reading.
Several minutes later, her eyes closed.
Her head gradually tilted sideways until it came to rest against Raj's shoulder.
Raj froze for a moment.
He looked down.
Paige was already asleep.
He could have woken her.
Instead, Raj carefully adjusted his position so she could rest more comfortably before turning back toward the laptop.
Two hours later, Paige opened her eyes.
It took several seconds for her to realize where she was.
Then she realized what she had been using as a pillow.
She slowly lifted her head.
"You could have woken me."
"You needed the sleep."
"Was I there long?"
"Two hours and seventeen minutes."
Paige stared at him.
"You timed it?"
"There is literally a clock on the screen in front of me."
"Oh."
Raj rubbed his shoulder.
Paige noticed.
"Did I hurt your shoulder?"
"No."
"You're rubbing it."
"I'm old."
"You're twenty six."
"Exactly. Practically ancient."
Paige laughed softly.
More importantly, she didn't feel embarrassed.
A few days earlier, waking up against him would probably have caused her to immediately pull away.
Now she simply settled back into her seat.
Perhaps that was the biggest difference the trip had made.
Although he regretted not being able to ski the legendary Alps this trip, the intellectual and professional harvest far outweighed any regrets.
First, he had obtained the first-hand data from the ALICE experiment, and combined with the papers he'd studied before arriving, it was entirely possible for him to publish research papers before other scientists and reap the fruits of victory from this groundbreaking experiment.
These scientific research achievements would establish him as one of the most prominent emerging academic stars in the field of physics worldwide.
Second, he had met numerous top physics experts and scholars from around the world, and had also networked with high-level personnel from major scientific research institutions and prestigious professional journals.
These contacts would prove invaluable for his future career development. The publication of papers, award nominations, scientific research collaborations, and similar opportunities would all benefit tremendously from these connections.
Moreover, as an additional bonus, he had also won Paige's trust and deepened their professional rapport.
For their relationship to progress further, he had laid a solid foundation.
After returning to the United States, Raj made time to meet with Lalita to ease her lovesickness and maintain their relationship. He took her to dinner at her favorite restaurant and listened patiently to her stories about what had happened while he was away.
The rest of his time was devoted intensively to writing research papers, often working late into the night in his office.
He reviewed countless papers with titles like "The Higgs Bosons of LEP and LHC are 98 and 125 GeV Respectively," "The Decay of Z to Four Leptons Observed with the CMS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider," and "The Charged Higgs Boson in Single Top Production at the Large Hadron Collider."
Bosons are particles that follow Bose-Einstein statistics and whose spin quantum numbers are integers (0, 1, 2...), including composite particles such as mesons, deuterons, and helium-4 atoms, as well as elementary particles like Higgs bosons, photons, gluons, and Z bosons.
The concept was first hypothesized by Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose in 1924 when he sent a paper to Einstein describing a new statistical model for photons. Einstein recognized its importance, translated it into German, and submitted it for publication on Bose's behalf. This is why later generations named this class of particles "bosons" in his honor.
The Higgs boson is a specific type of boson—a zero-spin particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. It carries no electric charge or color charge, is extremely unstable, and decays almost immediately after being generated, typically within a tiny fraction of a second.
The Higgs boson is also colloquially known as the "God particle," a nickname coined by physicist Leon Lederman (though originally intended as "the goddamn particle" due to its elusiveness), because it is theorized to be the source of mass for elementary particles.
It is through its interaction with the Higgs field that the various elementary particles produced by the Big Bang acquire mass, enabling them to form atoms and molecules, which then constitute matter and ultimately give rise to life itself.
However, whether the Higgs boson truly exists had long remained one of physics' most challenging mysteries, eluding detection for decades despite extensive theoretical work.
Raj knew, however, that in 2012, it would be CERN that discovered the Higgs boson through particle collider experiments, achieving a major breakthrough in particle physics that would earn Peter Higgs and François Englert the Nobel Prize.
He was now preparing to boldly predict the existence of the Higgs boson and to specify its mass range and the precise experimental conditions necessary for its production.
In this way, once the research center actually observed the Higgs boson in future experiments, Raj would be credited with the prescient prediction—potentially winning recognition as a pioneering theorist in the discovery and establishing his reputation in the field permanently.
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