Weird...

Credit: Shutterstock

Topics: God Particle, Higgs Boson, Large Hadron Collider, Standard Model, Theoretical Physics

c. 1400, "having power to control fate, from weird (n.), from Old English wyrd "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates," literally "that which comes," from Proto-Germanic *wurthiz (source also of Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"), from PIE *wert- "to turn, to wind," (source also of German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"), from root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend." For sense development from "turning" to "becoming," compare phrase turn into "become."

Etymology online: Weird

We all know and love the Higgs boson — which to physicists' chagrin has been mistakenly tagged in the media as the "God particle" — a subatomic particle first spotted in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) back in 2012. That particle is a piece of a field that permeates all of space-time; it interacts with many particles, like electrons and quarks, providing those particles with mass, which is pretty cool.

But the Higgs that we spotted was surprisingly lightweight. According to our best estimates, it should have been a lot heavier. This opens up an interesting question: Sure, we spotted a Higgs boson, but was that the only Higgs boson? Are there more floating around out there doing their own things?

But the Higgs that we spotted was surprisingly lightweight. According to our best estimates, it should have been a lot heavier. This opens up an interesting question: Sure, we spotted a Higgs boson, but was that the only Higgs boson? Are there more floating around out there doing their own things?

Physicists Search for Monstrous Higgs Particle. It Could Seal the Fate of the Universe.
Paul Sutter, Astrophysicist, Live Science

Why It Matters...

Distinguished University Professor, Regents Professor & Director

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, Higgs Boson, Quarks, STEM, Theoretical Physics, Quantum Mechanics

Why this post matters: Part of the reason for this post and all the others this month is to change perceptions, first in ourselves to think of life and things beyond programmed stereotypes, and for those outside the culture if receptive. I cannot change blatant racism or willful ignorance. I can present information such that it makes it less certain persons "just didn't know" to it's their choice to be uninformed, myopic and bigoted.

You may not work in the semiconductor industry. You may not get a PhD in theoretical physics. A STEM education has one other added benefit beyond just careers: citizenship. You will develop critical thinking and reasoning skills that will allow you to discern fact from "alternative facts" (i.e. lies, obfuscations, malarkey). You be able to pose cogent questions to our nation's representatives: With coal on the decline, why not forge ahead with solar, wind and geothermal jobs? (You can even understand the caveats.) The previous administration tried to pass a jobs training bill for infrastructure: did you oppose it, and why? With 13,950 peer-reviewed papers on Climate Change, only 24 reject it outright: what is your take on the subject? You can and should demand how and where your tax dollars are spent, and ultimately for whose "common good." Showing up at Town Hall meetings for a 1st Amendment "redress of grievances" is your right, but the best argument is always an informed one.

"At the end of the day, observation is what rules our paradigms. And this is a lesson that Einstein claims that Galileo drummed into us, and therefore it makes Galileo the father not only of physics, but of all of science, that observation rules the day. Pure thought alone cannot be the arbiter by which we come to understand nature."

Dr. Sylvester James Gates Jr., quote from the video below.

Bio: Sylvester James Gates Jr. is a Distinguished University Professor, University System of Maryland Regents Professor and John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland. Also an affiliate mathematics professor, Gates is known for his pioneering work in supersymmetry and supergravity, areas closely related to string theory. Gates earned two Bachelor of Science degrees in physics and mathematics and his Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1984, Gates co-authored Superspace, or One thousand and one lessons in supersymmetry, the first comprehensive book on supersymmetry, and joined the faculty at Maryland as an associate professor. Four years later, he became the first African American to hold an endowed chair in physics at a major U.S. research university.

The author of more than 200 research papers and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Gates has been featured in dozens of video documentaries, including five in 2015. For his contribution to science and research, he received the National Medal of Science from President Obama in 2013. Gates serves on the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, the National Commission on Forensic Science, and the Maryland State Board of Education. He is a strong advocate for science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

University of Maryland Department of Physics: Dr. Sylvester J. Gates Jr.

Higgs Kin...

Feynman Diagrams Depicting Possible Formations of the Higgs Boson. Image Credit: scienceblogs.com, astrobites

Topics: CERN, Higgs Boson, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics

Nature

The two experiments that discovered the Higgs boson in 2012 have sensed an intriguing if very preliminary whiff of a possible new elementary particle. Both collaborations announced their observations on 15 December, as they released their first significant results since completing a major upgrade earlier this year.

The results largely matched a rumour that has circulated on social media and blogs for several days: that both the CMS and ATLAS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland, have seen in the debris of proton-proton collisions an unexpected excess of pairs of photons carrying around 750 giga electronvolts (GeV) of energy combined. This could be a tell-tale sign of a new particle — also a boson, but not necessarily similar to the Higgs — decaying into two photons of equal mass. It would be about four times more massive than the next heaviest particle discovered so far, the top quark, and six times more massive than the Higgs. [1]

New York Times Science

Does the Higgs boson have a cousin?

Two teams of physicists working independently at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, reported on Tuesday that they had seen traces of what could be a new fundamental particle of nature.

One possibility, out of a gaggle of wild and not-so-wild ideas springing to life as the day went on, is that the particle — assuming it is real — is a heavier version of the Higgs boson, a particle that explains why other particles have mass. Another is that it is a graviton, the supposed quantum carrier of gravity, whose discovery could imply the existence of extra dimensions of space-time. [2]

1. LHC sees hint of boson heavier than Higgs, Davide Castelvecchi
2. Physicists in Europe Find Tantalizing Hints of a Mysterious New Particle, Dennis Overbye

AI and LHC...

A section of the LHC.
alpinethread/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Higgs Boson, High Energy Physics, LHC, Particle Physics

Driven by an eagerness to make discoveries and the knowledge that they will be hit with unmanageable volumes of data in ten years’ time, physicists who work on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland, are enlisting the help of AI experts.

On November 9-13, leading lights from both communities attended a workshop—the first of its kind—at which they discussed how advanced AI techniques could speed discoveries at the LHC. Particle physicists have “realized that they cannot do it alone”, says Cécile Germain, a computer scientist at the University of Paris South in Orsay, who spoke at the workshop at CERN, the particle-physics lab that hosts the LHC.

Computer scientists are responding in droves. Last year, Germain helped to organize a competition to write programs that could ‘discover’ traces of the Higgs boson in a set of simulated data; it attracted submissions from more than 1,700 teams.

Scientific American: Artificial Intelligence Called In to Tackle LHC Data Deluge
Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine

ATLAS, CMS and Higgs...

Image Source: Symmetry Magazine (link below)

Topics: CERN, Higgs Boson, High Energy Physics, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics

It bugs me when someone says "that's how it works 'in theory'" or "it's just a theory, not 'fact'."

"A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation." Wikipedia is about as succinct as you can get. I underlined the keys, and a more adroit point is the Pythagorean Theorem: for right triangles - 45-45-90 and 30-60-90 - it works every time. That's how something works in theory: it is substantiated in experiment, repeated, verified results within a reasonable margin of error; legitimate journal publication after passing an editorial board and ruthless peer review. Conspiracy/Provocateur and other such "theories" are neither: they are merely loudmouthed opinions.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments on the Large Hadron Collider were designed to be partners in discovery.

In 2012, both experiments reported evidence of a Higgs-like boson, the fundamental particle that gives mass to the other fundamental particles.

ATLAS reported the mass of this new boson to be in the mass region of 126 billion electronvolts, and CMS found it to be in the region of 125. In May 2015, the two experiments combined their measurements, refining the Higgs mass closer to 125.09 GeV.

This particular analysis focused on the interaction of the Higgs boson with other particles, known as coupling strength. The combined measurements are more precise than each experiment could accomplish alone, and results establish that the Higgs mechanism grants mass to both the matter and force-carrying particles as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Symmetry Magazine: Combined results find Higgs still standard, Katie Elyce Jones

Higgs and Mattresses...

Skip Sterling for Quanta Magazine

Topics: Higgs Boson, Higgs Field, Large Hadron Collider, LHC, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics

Three physicists who have been collaborating in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past year have devised a new solution to a mystery that has beleaguered their field for more than 30 years. This profound puzzle, which has driven experiments at increasingly powerful particle colliders and given rise to the controversial multiverse hypothesis, amounts to something a bright fourth-grader might ask: How can a magnet lift a paperclip against the gravitational pull of the entire planet?

Despite its sway over the motion of stars and galaxies, the force of gravity is hundreds of millions of trillions of trillions of times weaker than magnetism and the other microscopic forces of nature. This disparity shows up in physics equations as a similarly absurd difference between the mass of the Higgs boson, a particle discovered in 2012 that controls the masses and forces associated with the other known particles, and the expected mass range of as-yet-undiscovered gravitational states of matter.

In the absence of evidence from Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) supporting any of the theories previously proposed to explain this preposterous mass hierarchy — including the seductively elegant “supersymmetry” — many physicists have come to doubt the very logic of nature’s laws. Increasingly, they worry that our universe might just be a random, rather bizarre permutation among uncountable other possible universes — an effective dead end in the quest for a coherent theory of nature.

Their solution traces the hierarchy between gravity and the other fundamental forces back to the explosive birth of the cosmos, when, their model suggests, two variables that were evolving in tandem suddenly deadlocked. At that instant, a hypothetical particle called the “axion” locked the Higgs boson into its present-day mass, far below the scale of gravity. The axion has appeared in theoretical equations since 1977 and is deemed likely to exist. Yet no one, until now, noticed that axions could be what the trio calls “relaxions,” solving the hierarchy problem by “relaxing” the value of the Higgs mass.

Inspired by a 1984 attempt by Larry Abbott to address a different naturalness problem in physics, they sought to recast the Higgs mass as an evolving parameter, one that could dynamically “relax” to its tiny value during the birth of the cosmos rather than starting out as a fixed, seemingly improbable constant. “Though it took six months of dead ends and really stupid models and very baroque, complicated things, we ended up landing on this very simple picture,” Kaplan said.

In their model, the Higgs mass depends on the numerical value of a hypothetical field that permeates space and time: an axion field. To picture it, “we think of the totality of space as being this 3-D mattress,” Dimopoulos said. The value at each point in the field corresponds to how compressed the mattress springs are there. It has long been recognized that the existence of this mattress — and its vibrations in the form of axions — could solve two deep mysteries: First, the axion field would explain why most interactions between protons and neutrons run both forward and backward, solving what’s known as the “strong CP” problem. And axions could make up dark matter. Solving the hierarchy problem would be a third impressive achievement.

Quanta Magazine: A New Theory to Explain the Higgs Mass, Natalie Wolchover

Age of Einstein...

Image Source: Biography.com

Topics: Einstein, Special Relativity, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, Spacetime

It was Einstein that entered the term "warp" into our lexicon before the notion was popularized on the original Star Trek. That warp was gravity from the mass of objects like planets, suns; wormholes and black holes. It has lived on in the discovery of the intermediate vector boson ("W" and Z⁰particle), theorized by Dr's Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, meaning his was the "shoulder of [a] giant" these men stood on when they made their discovery. The foundation of the Higgs Boson were courses in special and general relativity as well as quantum mechanics, the root of all things micro and nano electronic. In a way, he's achieved immortality.

The link below is a PDF that goes through a primer of the physics at the high school level, which is appropriate. The more we understand about the physics that is all around us, the less we are frightened by, or put off by it. As we increase our intellectual acumen in STEM fields, is it too much to request such a self-study of those who wish to be our leaders, and possibly possess the nuclear codes?

This brief book is for the inquisitive reader who wishes to gain an understanding of the immortal work of Einstein, the greatest scientist since Newton. The concepts that form the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity are discussed at a level suitable for Seniors in High School. Special Relativity deals with measurements of space, time and motion in inertial frames of reference (see chapter 4). An introduction to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, a theory of space, time, and motion in the presence of gravity, is given at a popular level. A more formal account of Special Relativity, that requires a higher level of understanding of Mathematics, is given in an Appendix.

Historians in the future will, no doubt, choose a phrase that best characterizes the 20th-century. Several possible phrases, such as “the Atomic Age”, “the Space Age” and “the Information Age”, come to mind. I believe that a strong case will be made for the phrase “the Age of Einstein”; no other person in the 20th-century advanced our understanding of the physical universe in such a dramatic way. He introduced many original concepts, each one of a profound nature. His discovery of the universal equivalence of energy and mass has had, and continues to have, far-reaching consequences not only in Science and Technology but also in fields as diverse as World Politics, Economics, and Philosophy.

Free Physics Book: The Age of Einstein
Frank W. K. Firk
Professor Emeritus of Physics
Yale University

Tomorrow: The Unraveling

Mysteries of Matter...

Image and video source

For more high energy and particle physics information, see:

International Journal of High Energy Physics: CERN Courier

Higgs Consolation...

Ping! In this event, two W bosons collide and then decay into particles called muons (red) while the quarks that emitted the W’s produce sprays of other particles (yellow).

Ever wonder what particle physicists would have done had the Higgs boson not existed? Even before they fired up the atom smasher that 2 years ago blasted out the Higgs—the $5.5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics lab, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland—researchers said that if they didn't find that coveted quarry, it wouldn't be a total disaster. If there were no Higgs, they said, then a particular ordinary particle interaction should instead go haywire and hint at whatever nature was doing to get by without the Higgs. Now, physicists at the LHC have spotted the rare interaction in that "no-lose" theorem, which is known as WW scattering.

"I am thrilled," says Barbara Jäger, a theorist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who was not involved in the work. Of course, now that physicists know the Higgs exists, they don't expect WW scattering to go bonkers. But it could still play an important role in the hunt for new physics, as scientists look for deviations from the predictions of the field’s prevailing standard model. That approach would complement studies of the Higgs itself, Jäger says.

The Higgs boson is key to physicists' explanation of how all elementary particles—such as electrons and the quarks that make up protons and neutrons—get their masses. Theorists assume that otherwise massless particles interact with a quantum field a bit like an electric field that consists of Higgs bosons lurking "virtually" in the vacuum. Those interactions give each type of particle a certain amount of energy and, thanks to Einstein's famous equation E = mc², mass.

Science Mag:
Had there been no Higgs boson, this observation would have been the bomb, Adrian Cho

Particle Fever...

PARTICLE FEVER: a documentary film by Mark Levinson and David Kaplan

Source: Skeptic.com for synopsis

“Mind Blowing” — The New York Times

Particle Fever follows the inside story of six brilliant scientists seeking to unravel the mysteries of the universe, documenting the successes and setbacks in the planet’s most significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough.

Short Synopsis

Imagine being able to watch as Edison turned on the first light bulb, or as Franklin received his first jolt of electricity.

For the first time, a film gives audiences a front row seat to a significant and inspiring scientific breakthrough as it happens. Particle Fever follows six brilliant scientists during the launch of the Large Hadron Collider, marking the start-up of the biggest and most expensive experiment in the history of the planet, pushing the edge of human innovation.

As they seek to unravel the mysteries of the universe, 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries joined forces in pursuit of a single goal: to recreate conditions that existed just moments after the Big Bang and find the Higgs boson, potentially explaining the origin of all matter. But our heroes confront an even bigger challenge: have we reached our limit in understanding why we exist?

Directed by Mark Levinson, a physicist turned filmmaker, from the inspiration and initiative of producer David Kaplan and masterfully edited by Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Godfather trilogy), Particle Fever is a celebration of discovery, revealing the very human stories behind this epic machine.

Site: http://particlefever.com/

Supersymmetry...

The best hope for discovering evidence of supersymmetry will come from the Large Hadron Collider, which is currently shut down so that it can be upgraded.
Credit: Thinkstock

The first run of the LHC, which ended in early 2013, produced enough data to allow researchers to identify the long-sought Higgs boson. During the shutdown, scientists and engineers will make improvements to the machine, which will let it reach the highest energies that it was designed for.

Caveat to the link below: crisis in this case for a science publication I'd take to mean "conundrum," which is a good way to sell print copy. When I think of a crisis, I recall the "Black Hole War" between Leo Susskind and Stephen Hawking (a very good read, I might add). However, if you're a string theorist, SUSY or lack thereof can get you a little agitated  I plan to purchase at the local supermarket to have an off-line physical copy.

Scientific American: Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics

The Matter of Matter...

A faux historical account of Earth "pre-warp"

Warp drive, as enthusiastically a Trekkie I am, was a plot device created by Gene Roddenberry to get his astronauts from "here-to-there" in a reasonable amount of time to tell a story in an hour or less. NASA on the other hand, needs something other than chemical rockets that once the fuels expended to get the rocket into orbit - Newton's Laws dominate. Which is why currently a manned trip to Mars would take ~ 7 months to 300 days, and have astronauts with muscles of mush and bone mass of jello. VASIMR may get us there one day, thanks to the diligent research of people like Franklin Ramón Chang Díaz, PhD.

Abstract

The Alcubierre warp drive allows a spaceship to travel at an arbitrarily large global velocity by deforming the spacetime in a bubble around the spaceship. Little is known about the interactions between massive particles and the Alcubierre warp drive, or the effects of an accelerating or decelerating warp bubble. We examine geodesics representative of the paths of null and massive particles with a range of initial velocities from -c to c interacting with an Alcubierre warp bubble travelling at a range of globally subluminal and superluminal velocities on both constant and variable velocity paths. The key results for null particles match what would be expected of massive test particles as they approach +/- c. The increase in energy for massive and null particles is calculated in terms of v_s, the global ship velocity, and v_p, the initial velocity of the particle with respect to the rest frame of the origin/destination of the ship. Particles with positive v_p obtain extremely high energy and velocity and become "time locked" for the duration of their time in the bubble, experiencing very little proper time between entering and eventually leaving the bubble. When interacting with an accelerating bubble, any particles within the bubble at the time receive a velocity boost that increases or decreases the magnitude of their velocity if the particle is moving towards the front or rear of the bubble respectively. If the bubble is decelerating, the opposite effect is observed. Thus Eulerian matter is unaffected by bubble accelerations/decelerations. The magnitude of the velocity boosts scales with the magnitude of the bubble acceleration/deceleration.

As you read through the paper, please note the possibility of incinerating the star system/planet/people we'd be trying to hurry up and visit ("we come in peace" \\//_?).

I think - as even Star Trek alludes to - our first interstellar space faring will likely be at sub light speed in sleeper ships. Better to crawl first before running: 1/3 c to begin.

Someone will just have to invent inertial dampers since the Higgs Boson has been discovered so we don't kill ourselves or anyone else out there (another convenient plot device to avoid describing space faring humans as "street pizza" due to rapid acceleration).

In light of crawling, colonizing the moon, mining the asteroid belt and establishing a permanent base on Mars would be a good 1st start. Sagan mentioned terraforming the Red Planet or Venus in his book "The Cosmic Connection," which would be a practical solution on a global economy based on consumption. On the Kardashev scale, we are primitive.

Eventually, our toy/sandbox will be empty on the sandlot we're accustomed to playing in. Staying earthbound as a species will soon be the equivalent of not accepting potty training at the age and maturity one ought to be. Kind of gross, too.

Physics arXiv: The Alcubierre Warp Drive: On the Matter of Matter

Brendan McMonigal,∗ Geraint F. Lewis,† and Philip O’Byrne‡
Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics
A28, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Related:
Amazon: The Physics of Star Trek, Beyond Star Trek; Lawrence Krauss

Future of Higgs Boson...

Figure 2. The Mexican-hat potential energy density considered by Jeffrey Goldstone in his seminal 1961 paper. 2 The energy density is a function of the real (Re) and imaginary (Im) values of a spinless field ϕ. In the context of the electroweak theory developed later in the decade, the yellow ball at the top of the hat would represent the symmetric solution for the potential, in which the photon, W bosons, and Z boson are all massless. The blue ball in the trough represents the solution after symmetry breaking. In that solution the W and Z bosons are massive and the photon remains massless. The steepness of the trough is related to the mass of the Higgs boson.
Citation: Phys. Today 66, 12, 28 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2212

Symmetries and other regularities of the physical world make science a useful endeavor, yet the world around us is characterized by complex mixtures of regularities with individual differences, as exemplified by the words on this page. The dialectic of simple laws accounting for a complex world was only sharpened with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics and the understanding of the subatomic laws of physics. A mathematical encapsulation of the standard model of particle physics can be written on a cocktail napkin, an economy made possible because the basic phenomena are tightly controlled by powerful symmetry principles, most especially Lorentz and gauge invariance.

How does our complex world come forth from symmetrical underpinnings? The answer is in the title of Philip Anderson’s seminal article “More is different.” 1 Many-body systems exhibit emergent phenomena that are not in any meaningful sense encoded in the laws that govern their constituents. One reason those emergent behaviors arise is that many-body systems result from symmetries being broken. Consider, for example, a glucose molecule: It will have a particular orientation even though the equations governing its atoms are rotationally symmetric. That kind of symmetry breaking is called spontaneous, to indicate that the physical system does not exhibit the symmetry present in the underlying dynamics.

It may seem that the above discussion has no relevance to particle physics in general or to the Higgs boson in particular. But in quantum field theory, the ground state, or vacuum, behaves like a many-body system. And just as a particular glucose orientation breaks an underlying rotation symmetry, a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the Higgs boson field, as we will describe, breaks symmetries that would otherwise forbid masses for elementary particles. Now that the Higgs boson (or something much like it) has been found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC; see Physics Today, September 2012, page 12), particle experimentalists are searching for more kinds of Higgs bosons and working to find out if the Higgs boson interacts with the dark matter that holds the universe together. Cosmologists are trying to understand the symmetry-breaking Higgs phase transition, which took place early in the history of the universe, and whether that event explains the excess of matter over antimatter. The measured mass of the Higgs boson implies that the symmetry-breaking vacuum is metastable. If no new physics intervenes, an unlucky quantum fluctuation will eventually spark a cosmic catastrophe.

Physics Today: The future of the Higgs Boson

Accelerator Science...

Particle accelerators are used by just about every branch of science and technology these days: from chemists studying molecules using X-ray free-electron lasers to doctors treating eye cancer using beams of protons. And, of course, there are the particle physicists, who recently used the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to find the Higgs boson.

All of these applications, and many more, are the focus of the UK's Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology, which is located at Daresbury Laboratory in the Cheshire countryside, half way between Liverpool and Manchester.

In this video, Cockcroft Institute co-founder and its first director, John Dainton, explains why researchers in the north of England banded together to create the facility, which first opened its doors in 2006.

Physics World: Accelerating science and technology at the Cockcroft Institute

Physics' Top 10...

Source: AAAS (see #9)

1. Neutrino Mass
2. Shor's Algorithm
3. Accelerating universe
4. Extrasolar planets
5. Higgs Boson
6. Quantum Error Correction
7. Topological Insulators (TI)
8. AdS/CFT
9. Bose-Einstein Condensate
10. Quantum Teleportation

Neutrino Mass - surprisingly, neutrinos have a nonzero mass, which provides a window into particle physics beyond the standard model. THE STANDARD MODEL has been getting a lot of attention recently. This is well deserved in my opinion, considering that the vast majority of its predictions have come true, most of which were made by the end of the 1960s. Last year’s discovery of the Higgs Boson is the feather in its cap.

Shor's Algorithm - a quantum computer can factor N=1433301577 into 37811*37907 exponentially faster than a classical computer. This result from Peter Shor in 1994 is near and dear to our quantum hearts. It opened the floodgates showing that there are tasks a quantum computer could perform exponentially faster than a classical computer.

Accelerating universe - the universe is expanding, and the rate of this expansion is increasing. This result has been the source of an incredible number of misconceptions. First, how do we know this is happening? In the 1920s astronomers discovered that some of the really faint ‘stars’ that we see in the night sky are actually distant galaxies. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that these galaxies are actually moving away from us, and away from each other. The question becomes: how did this happen?

Extrasolar planets - over the past two decades, we have detected ~1000 planets outside of our own solar system. As a prerequisite for finding extrasolar life–unless they find us first–we need to discover candidate homes.

Higgs Boson - The Higgs “field” permeates all of space; excitations in this field are interpreted as particles (Higgs bosons); these particles give other particles mass.

Quantum Error Correction - we want to protect quantum information from noise. We also face this challenge with classical computers. It also turns out that our enemy is formidable: we are battling decoherence. One way to think about decoherence is that every quantum system interacts with its environment, creating entanglement between the two – since we can’t control the environment (it both large and unknown), we lost control of our quantum system.

Topological Insulators (TI) - we’ve known for a long time that solids, liquids, gases and plasmas aren’t the only phases of matter; but only recently, we’ve unexpectedly discovered a huge new class of phases. Before topological phases, we classified phases based upon their local symmetries. In the early 1980s, experimentalists discovered quantum hall systems, which were the first materials whose ground states couldn’t be differentiated by only using a local description. The ‘phases of matter can’ had a few dents in it, but the lid was blown sky-high when topological Insulators were discovered in 2006. These materials have bizarre properties; they provide the foundation for a multitude of cousin systems; they are shedding light on questions from fundamental physics; and they will probably be widely utilized in the electronics of the 21st century.

AdS/CFT - AdS/CFT, which sometimes gets called the holographic principle, is basically a mathematical toolkit which says that in certain situations, there is an exact correspondence between gravity problems in n+1-dimensions and strongly correlated electron systems in n-dimensions.

Bose-Einstein Condensate - One of the original BEC experiments involved cooling thousands of Rubidium atoms to extremely low temperatures (a few nanokelvin above absolute zero), at which point their behavior is described by quantum mechanics. The Rubidium atoms behave as predicted, where the thousands of atoms coalesce into a very small area.

Quantum Teleportation - Why is this amazing? Well, teleportation would certainly be amazing, but that’s a bit of a misnomer, and a point I tried to clarify in my posts. Quantum teleportation IS NOT an all-purpose teleportation protocol. But it is incredibly awesome, and will undoubtedly have major technological significance someday. Basically, it’s easy to send photons all over the universe (we are very good at building and operating lasers), but it’s very hard to send more exotic forms of matter, especially when the matter is supposed to stay in a specific quantum state. Quantum teleportation allows us to first spread entangled matter throughout space. Then, at a later time, we can exploit this resource to move delicate quantum states to the location of our entangled matter.

Quantum Frontiers:
The 10 biggest breakthroughs in physics over the past 25 years according to us

Higgs MOOC...

ABOUT THE COURSE

The discovery of a new fundamental particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN is the latest step in a long quest seeking to answer one of physics’ most enduring questions: why do particles have mass? The experiments’ much anticipated success confirms predictions made decades earlier by Peter Higgs and others, and offers a glimpse into a universe of physics beyond the Standard Model.

As Professor Peter Higgs continues his inspiring role at Edinburgh University’s School of Physics & Astronomy, the experiments at the LHC continue.

This MOOC introduces the theoretic tools needed to appreciate the discovery, and presents the elementary particles at the tiniest scales ever explored. Beginning with basic concepts in classical mechanics, the story unfolds through relativity and quantum mechanics, describing forces, matter and the unification of theories with an understanding driven by the tools of mathematics.

Narrating the journey through experimental results which led to the discovery in 2012, the course invites you to learn from a team of world-class physicists at Edinburgh University. Learners participate in discussion of the consequences of the Higgs boson, to physics and cosmology, and towards a stronger understanding and new description of the universe.

REQUIREMENTS

The course requires a basic level of mathematical skills, at the level of a final-year school pupil. A basic knowledge of physics is helpful, but not required.

University of Edinburgh: The Discovery of the Higgs Boson (click "Join this course")

Beyond Cosmic Molasses...

Amazon author page: Brian Greene

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013...

Announced yesterday...

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013
Physics Today: Francois Englert and Peter Higgs share 2013 Physics Nobel, Charles Day

And we have Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named.

Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes...I can't describe the feeling. The Nobel is more than a noble endeavor: it is the culmination of a lifetime of adhering to and triumph of the Scientific Method, testing and retesting hypotheses; weathering the withering criticism (and in many cases, wagers) against your theories being incorrect, and finding out in the lab that they are correct, unique and novel. I am astonishingly happy for these men, their work and the work they're sure to inspire; physicists working in labs and researchers yet born. It is emotional, not unlike witnessing a birth of a new chapter in our understanding of the universe.

Start noticing at 0:51

Higgsogenesis...

The Higgs boson may have played a key role in the early Universe, including the creation of mysterious dark matter.
CERN

A key riddle in cosmology may be answered by the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson — now a leading contender for the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics on 8 October.

Two physicists suggest that the Higgs had a key role in the early Universe, producing the observed difference between the number of matter and antimatter particles and determining the density of the mysterious dark matter that makes up five-sixths of the matter in the Universe.

In a paper accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters [1], Sean Tulin of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and Géraldine Servant of the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Study in Barcelona, Spain, say that there may have been an asymmetry in the early Universe between the Higgs boson and its antimatter counterpart, the anti-Higgs.

Nature: 'Higgsogenesis' proposed to explain dark matter

The Antithesis...

Standard Model (mathematical formulation): Wikipedia

...this contradicts my post here, but the nature of science is to do research and publish findings. The fact we have null and alternative hypothesis eventually leads to one or the other winning out; a synthesis (Hegelian dialectic), or "back to the drawing board." Keeps the physicists out of after hours bars...

A team of physicists from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the French CNRS have predicted deviations in the probability of one of the B meson decays that have been detected experimentally in the LHC accelerator at CERN. Confirmation of these results would be the first direct evidence of the existence of the 'new physics', a more fundamental theory than the current Standard Model.

The Standard Model, which has given the most complete explanation up to now of the universe, has gaps, and is unable to explain phenomena like dark matter or gravitational interaction between particles. Physicists are therefore seeking a more fundamental theory that they call "New Physics", but up to now there has been no direct proof of its existence, only indirect observation of dark matter, as deduced, among other things, from the movement of the galaxies.

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona:
First experimental signs of a "New Physics" beyond the Standard Model
NSBP Briefs: Letter to the Editor