Big news in the world of physics today! Scientists claim they have discovered a new subatomic particle that is most likely the God Particle, a.k.a. the Higgs boson (here’s my not-so-scientific explanation of what the Higgs boson is). Basically, the Higgs boson is believed to be the key to understanding the mysteries of the universe, including what the universe is made of and how it was formed.
Two independent groups of scientists who work with the Large Hadron Collider, a giant particle collider tucked more than 500 feet under the ground just outside Geneva, came to the same conclusion that the new subatomic particle is “consistent” with the Higgs boson.
My interpretation: there’s a new particle and it looks like the Higgs boson and acts like the Higgs boson, but they can’t say for sure it’s the Higgs boson because they are afraid it might not be the Higgs boson and it would terribly embarrassing to be wrong.
There’s a chance it’s an entirely new particle that has never been imagined before. Either way these are exciting times for all humankind!
I’m a bit disappointed to learn the way we thought the world worked isn’t changing (as in E really does equal MC 2 and Einstein had it right all along). Maybe the physicists over at CERN should have done a better job of keeping the lab rats from gnawing on sensitive technical equipment (just kidding)!
Yet just when I thought my imaginings of a new paradigm for the universe was going to be destroyed by such a mundane thing as a bum cable, a report on Friday restored a little of my previous excitement. It seems the faulty wiring could actually have made the original readings wrong in the opposite direction and the particles may have been traveling faster than the faster-than-the-speed-of-light readings.
Say what? So maybe Einstein was wrong and I might still have the pleasure of seeing a major scientific shift in my lifetime. Oh cruel physics…stop toying with my fragile emotions and get some definitive results already!
BIG NEWS today regarding the very fundamentals of physics and how the universe works. This latest mind-blowing development comes not from the Large Hadron Collider, but from OPERA (Osciallation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus…yeah, I know…huh?). It turns out Einstein might have been wrong…that’s right, Einstein might have been wrong.
Scientists at the CERN physics lab just announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos were observed to be traveling faster than the speed of sound. So that whole E=mc 2thing may need to be rethought because it is based on the the theory that it is impossible for any particle with mass to accelerate at or above the speed of sound. BAZINGA (as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory would say)!
But you may want to wait a little longer before you tell that iconic Einstein poster hanging above your bed, “You just got served!” Before scientists call the measurements true (even though the 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of sound the neutrinos traveled is above the 10 nanosecond margin of error), they want to verify with independent tests.
Tune into the CERN live webcast, which I thought was supposed to take place at 16:00:00 (Europe/Zurich) today, but I think that time has already passed and the webcast doesn’t seem to be up. I’ll keep checking back to the page for the latest.
I have good news (unfortunately not related to my attempts at being a published novelist…all in due time, my precious)! The Large Hadron Collider is back from hiatus and has created primordial matter. Seriously, this is very exciting news!
Just a little over a month ago, the LHC set a record when it started smashing tiny particles together at 10 million collisions per second. Well, it has now smashed its own smashing record and is now running at 100 million collisions per second (muuhaaahaaa…that’s evil scientist laugh…duh!).
This super smashing power is what has led to the creation of primordial matter, a super dense form of matter called a quark-gluon plasma. In fact, the only thing believed to be denser than this primordial matter is a black hole (and we sure don’t want the LHC to create that). Scientists also believe that this substance is what the universe was made of right after the big bang.
As for the elusive (and still theoretical) Higgs boson (a.k.a. the god Particle), which is thought to be the most fundamental of all particles and the clue to the mysteries of the universe, that hasn’t been discovered yet. If it does exist, it may be discovered as early as some time this summer. If it doesn’t exist, it will take until the end of 2012 to confirm that.
Hopefully, we will know all this before the world ends on December 21, 2012. That is unless it ends on October 21, 2011. Then I hope we find the Higgs boson before then. It would be such a shame for the world to end before we discover the secrets of the universe (and before I get a book deal!).
As some of you may know, I’ve been following the process of the Large Hadron Collider and scientists quest to find the so-called God Particle. This giant particle smasher is currently on hiatus, but is scheduled to be up and running very soon. One hazard of this project is that it has the potential to open up a black hole that swallows up Earth (clearly, this did not happen in its first run!).
I haven’t been able to get black holes our of my mind since then. I happened to see a billboard for a special exhibit called Black Holes: Space Warps & Time Twists at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Perfect for an in-depth exploration, right? Well, not exactly. The exhibit was fun, which makes sense because it was geared towards kids and teens, but it wasn’t super informative.
Making my Explorer’s card was fun. I picked the name “Mini Seeker” because I liked the Harry Potter reference and added a picture of a pizza onto the card. (I could’ve taken a picture of my face, but no one wants to see that!) The exhibits were interactive and interesting. Still, there wasn’t that ah-ha factor that really made me feel like the visit was worthwhile.
That was until I wandered into one of those video areas with those really uncomfortable wooden benches (seriously, the inventor of those should be swallowed up by a black hole). But this video informed me that not everything that gets close to a black hole gets sucked in. I know, you’re saying, “Wait a minute. I thought a black hole was like a vacuum and once stuff went in, it never came back out.”
That’s what I thought, and it is basically true. Once you’re in black hole, there’s no coming out (and no one knows what happens on the other end of the hole…alternate universe perhaps?). However, matter that is in the process of being sucked into a black hole doesn’t immediately fall in (especially because as you get closer to a black hole, time actually slows down…very heady stuff here).
Before the matter is sucked in past the event horizon, it circles around the hole in a disk, and the pieces of matter are all bumping into each other. Some of that matter and lots of gas (okay, no flatulence jokes please) shoot out as a jet that moves at close to the speed of sound. The video below actually does a really nice job of describing this phenomenon.
As more research is done about black holes, scientists are finding that black holes are probably important in the creation of galaxies and the case maybe that every galaxy contains one at its center. Forget the Seven Wonder of the World. That’s small beans compared to the awesome mystery and power of black holes.
