The Higgs Story-Part 4: Particles and waves

To better understand the Higgs field and how it works its magic, we need to make a detour into the history of physics and look at the similarities and differences between particles and waves. In ordinary life (what we call the ‘classical’ world) a particle is a localized object that is usually of small size, has a fairly well defined boundary, and a mass. A grain of rice and a speck of dust are particles. A wave, on the other hand, is the name we give to the pattern of vibrations traveling through some medium (think of the waves in water or sound waves traveling through air) that is extended, has no sharp edges, and does not have mass. [Read more…]

Paul Dirac on religion

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984) is one of the founders of quantum physics, whose name we will encounter later in the series of posts on the Higgs. Due to his family’s low financial status, he initially studied engineering but fortunately for the world of physics, he could not get a job as an engineer and managed to scrape up the money to pursue graduate study in physics at Cambridge. He rapidly established himself in the emerging field of quantum mechanics, winning a Nobel Prize at the age of 31. [Read more…]

The Higgs Story-Part 3: The basic elements of the Standard Model

All the stuff of everyday matter is composed of atoms that are made up of protons and neutrons and electrons. The three quarks in the protons and neutrons consist of just the up and down varieties and make up only about 1% of their masses, if we use the current quark mass values (see part 2 in this series). There are also gluons that hold the quarks within the proton and neutron so that they never become isolated free particles the way that (say) electrons do . [Read more…]

The Higgs Story-Part 2: What ordinary matter is made of

Everyday matter is made up of protons, neutrons, electrons, and something called electron neutrinos. These particles interact with each other via one or more of four forces: gravity, electromagnetic (which is the unified force of electricity and magnetism), strong nuclear, and weak nuclear. Almost all of everyday life could be explained pretty well with just this short list of four particles and four forces. [Read more…]

Why the spring equinox is not really

Today is the spring equinox, which is one of two times in the year when the Sun is exactly above the Equator and day and night are of equal length all over the Earth. (The word equinox is Latin for equal night.) But if you look at the times of sunrise and sunset today, you will see that we actually have 12 hours and nine minutes of daylight. You have to go back to March 16 or 17 to get closest to exactly 12 hours. [Read more…]

The Higgs Story-Part 1: The three faces of Higgs

Around the time of reports last year about the discovery of the Higgs particle at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), reader Anthony in a private email to me asked a good question. The Higgs particle is repeatedly referred to as the means by which all other particles get their mass. If not for the Higgs, elementary particles like the electron, muon, and the like would be massless and like all massless particles would be zipping around at the speed of light. At present, there is no explanation for why these particles have mass at all let alone the actual values that they do have. According to current theory, it is the Higgs phenomenon that gives all the other particles their mass. So how does that happen? [Read more…]

Much ado about ‘nothing’

Some of you may have heard about the acrimonious exchange that occurred last year between David Albert and Lawrence Krauss. I did not write about it at that time but now there is an even more unfortunate sequel to that story. What follows is a brief summary of what happened earlier so that you can understand the recent development that I address at the end. [Read more…]

Funny dice and the transitive property

The transitive property says that if A beats B and B beats C, then one would expect A to beat C. This seems quite obviously true and we use it in some form all the time. It is true for the real numbers where we think of ‘beats’ as ‘is greater than’ but is this transitive property true for all meanings of ‘beats’? Via Cory Doctorow, I came across this video of something called ‘Grime Dice’ that not only violate the transitive property (which is surprising in itself) but do so in very interesting ways. [Read more…]

How to deal with the ‘Craig Con’: Part 2

In yesterday’s Part 1 of this three-part series, I wrote about how in debating sophisticated religious people, atheists have the disadvantage in that science impacts religion in many ways and that atheists, even if they are scientists, cannot know about all developments everywhere and so can be blindsided by arguments based on science that they have little knowledge about. I have labeled this the ‘Craig Con’, in contrast to the older and cruder ‘Gish Gallop’, because some theologians are now more sophisticated than the ones who came before and use information from cutting-edge science to give the same old and tired arguments for god a patina of freshness and credibility. William Lane Craig is the smoothest practitioner of this debating tactic, though by no means the only one. [Read more…]

The manned voyage to Mars

I was both intrigued and disturbed by the recent report of a plan called Inspiration Mars to send a human couple on a flyby of Mars in the year 2018, approaching the planet within 100 miles. The venture will be an entirely private one backed by a group known as the Inspiration Mars Foundation whose chair is Dennis Tito, who in 2001 became the first private person to go into space. They will of course draw on the vast expertise of NASA. Interestingly the only permission one needs to get is from the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates all spacecraft launches and returns. [Read more…]