I have read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time: From Black Holes to the Big Bang, and I understand a lot of it: punctuation marks, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, page numbers, table of contents, etc. Many of the nouns and verbs bewilder me, as well as the overall concept, but that is no deterrent to my interest in quantum physics. I don't understand mathematics, so I can't really grasp quantum stuff, but I read "around" the hard-core material via publications intended for laypersons and am endlessly fascinated.
Physicist Murray Gell-Mann said, "If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it." Fearlessly forward, then, to a few of my favorite topics and physicists, with the help of kittehs and any scientific Kossacks we can enlist. Special thanks to rb137, who helped with the LHC aspects of this diary. Any errors are mine, not hers. For further information, see the diaries by Kossack science.
Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level. Enrico Fermi
Teh Large Hadron Collider and teh Higgs Boson
The LHC has a higher energy than all other physics experiments ever constructed. By accelerating protons and heavier charged particles to speeds close to that of the speed of light, it recreates for a short time the energy conditions that existed shortly after the Big Bang. Making these highly controlled mini-Big Bangs allows physicists to have a peek at what our universe is made of, creating particles that the universe hasn't seen since its birth 13.75 billion years ago.
I could try to further explain it to you, but you'll get moar and bettah information and have moar fun if you watch this video or read the lyrics for the accompanying rap song.
Large Hadron Rap
Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…
Click here for all the lyrics.
One of the things scientists expect to see for the first time is the Higgs boson, the particle that is theorized to give stuff mass. "Without the Higgs particle, the universe cannot exist, but if the Higgs particle isn't discovered by the LHC, it means our understanding of how the universe works is wrong. The non-discovery of the Higgs would be as profound as its discovery, potentially revolutionizing physics." (Discovery News, Mar 10, 2010)
Numerous reliable sources are reporting that the physicists at CERN will announce on 12/13/11, 9am EST, with fairly strong certainty, that they have observed the Higgs boson “God” particle. This is a BFD! In addition to the Higgs boson, physicists are looking for the matter/antimatter symmetry of the universe, supersymmetry, or any new particles beyond those in the standard model, along with a number of other hot issues.
Needless to say, the LHC is under the supervision of Ceiling Cat and contains kittehz that sometimes pop out and scare the poop out of the scientists.
Space-time Continuum: Black Holes and Wormholes
Wiki says "...spacetime (or space-time, space time, space-time continuum) is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum. Spacetime is usually interpreted with space as being three-dimensional and time playing the role of a fourth dimension that is of a different sort from the spatial dimensions."
A wormhole is a hypothetical connection between widely separated regions of space-time. Time travel or space travel, anyone?
A black hole is a region of space-time from which nothing, not even light, can escape.
Other Physics Bits and Bobs
Schrödinger's Kitteh
Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment with a kitteh in a sealed box. The kitteh's life or death depended on the state of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory implies that to the observer outside the box, the cat must be both alive and dead until the box is opened. This thought experiment illustrates the counter-intuitiveness of quantum mechanics and the mathematics necessary to describe quantum states.
Chaos Theory
Murray Gell-Mann: "Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition." This is often referred to as the butterfly effect, derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane's formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.
Many physicists are convinced that all things, from the microcoscopic to the macroscopic, are interconnected. Paul Dirac: "Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star."
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle
In 1927, Werner Heisenberg published a paper stating that increasing the accuracy of measurement of one observable quantity increases the uncertainty with which another paired quantity may be known. For example, we cannot, with the means we now have, determine both the speed and the position of a particle, because our measuring gear changes one quality or the other. Being an uncertain, waffling sort of person, I love the name of this principle, but
Einstein was disturbed by the uncertainty and unpredictability that quantum theory suggested. He said "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice with the universe." Stephen Hawking countered years later, as the quantum theory became curioser and curioser, by saying that "God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen."
Niels Bohr
"No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical."
"How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress."
Thanks to to ICHC and ICHLHC (ICanHasLargeHadronCollider), from which most of these pictures are taken.
Coded by BirderWitch
Word clouds by ccmask