San Pancho Vida

Collision Course

I'm back in San Pancho, where I was greeted the first night by a fine thunderstorm, lightning lifting the sky and a tropical rain, which is very unlike a Pacific Northwest rain in every way except that it's made of water.

I still have lots to tell you about my five week adventure and road trip. But something happened this week that I found so fascinating I decided to tell you about it, instead.

So tell me, what do you know about the Large Hadron Collider?

Do you know, for example, that it is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator? Do you know that it lies partly in Switzerland and partly in France, and that it is circular, measuring nearly 17 miles in circumference?

And do you know what happened there a few days ago?

Scientists believe they discovered an elusive subatomic particle, only postulated previously, that explains how we (and armadillos and electrons and galaxies and hamburger buns) exist in the universe. Its name is the Higgs boson. You probably read or heard something about it in the past week. You may not have expected to read more about it here...but I love this stuff.

Here's Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln with a good (very short) illustrative video explaining what the Higgs boson might be. This was filmed before the recent discovery at LHC, by the way.

Watch this! It's fun!

Here's a picture I cribbed from National Geographic, an artist's conception of a Higgs boson produced in a collision of protons. It may not be accurate, who knows? But it's a cool picture:

And here's the article from National Geographic in which this photo appears. Do read it if you want to know more about the discovery and its announcement. It's one of the better articles I found this week and includes this excellent paragraph:

Although preliminary, the results show a so-called five-sigma significance, which means that there is only a one in a million chance that the Higgs-like signal the teams observed is a statistical fluke.

Actually, it's more like one in a bazillion, but how about that "five-sigma" part? I'm going to start using that in conversation right away.

A Somewhat non-Geeky Report from National Geographic

I found a lot that were way geekier. Check out physicsworld.com if you want some really good stuff, including excellent tidbits such as the fact that neutrinos come in three flavors (chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry? Neapolitan Neutrinos?) and the statement that scientists really have no idea what they've actually found, which made me feel better about my own lack of comprehension.

I think I'm excited about all this because it just goes to show. There's always more to come. A new particle, a new mystery, new ideas of the make-up of our universe. A new day, a new adventure, new possibilities. Personally, I think every discovery like the one announced this week will lead us to a realization that everything's connected in ways we can barely imagine.

Also I like that they made the announcement on the Fourth of July.

Now that's what I call fireworks.

From the website of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), builder and operator of the Large Hadron Collider.

Added Friday, July 6, 3:57pm CDT:

What's next? This is from the CERN press release regarding the discovery, with my addition of color:

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.

96%. Excellent!

 

Here We Go Again

Update--Saturday, May 26: Bud has melted like an ice cube in the sun. My flight looks to be on time. Thanks for your comments and emails of concern. San Pancho and Puerto Vallarta received around half an inch of rain over the past 24 hours, and no wind to speak of. See you next week!

✈    ✈    ✈

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and women so often go astray.

I must remember to send a thank you note to Robert Burns for being right yet again (and for letting me paraphrase him so poorly), as soon as I'm done rearranging my plans and preparing to cancel carefully wrought reservations.

I have all the reservations printed out and paper-clipped together and tucked into a nice new file folder. I have a flight scheduled (five of them, actually) and my itinerary aligned for the coming month. I have my suitcases nearly packed and everything in the house fairly well organized. Good friends who live here in San Pancho are ready to come and stay while I'm away, to have some extra space for their visiting family and as a change of place. All the ducks in a row, one might imagine.

Except for the hurricane.

Which pretty much came out of nowhere as far as I'm concerned.

The latest update from the National Hurricane Center shows this hurricane's center right atop the Puerto Vallarta airport on Saturday afternoon, just about the hour my flight is leaving. Or was leaving. Whatever.

I write this Thursday at 9:41 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Usually I'm finished with my blog post by now, but today I was packing and not packing, hovering over my computer to check the latest forecast, moving art and chairs inside, dithering around more than accomplishing much. The complete advisory update is due on the NHC site in eighteen minutes or so.

In the meantime, I think I'll show you some pictures to distract us. Lots has been going on around here. We had an eclipse. You probably did, too.

Here in this latitude and time zone, the sun was scheduled to slip beneath the horizon just as it approached full coverage. It did set as scheduled (some things happen as planned...) but the sky was hazy and a thick cloud band prevented us from seeing the last half hour or so of the eclipse. Robert Burns strikes again.

I also took another Dr. Seuss photo for you. (See last week's post if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

There are few things as ridiculous looking as a gecko, in my opinion. Remind me to tell you in a future post about the research being done in nano-technology to replicate their sticky feet for the rest of us.

And then yesterday, Dinah (or possibly one of her offspring) came to dine on the basil just off the main terrace.

See her in there? She's hiding. But not very seriously.

She doesn't eat much of it. Just a leaf or two, perhaps as a delicate starter salad or maybe a light dessert. Her main dinner is usually my bougainvillea blossoms and hibiscus buds. 

Being a conscientious blogger, I decided to find out what the heck she actually is this time. The locals call her kind garrobos, not iguanas, but it turns out she actually is an iguana: ctenosaura pectinata, I believe from my research, or the Mexican Spiny-tailed Iguana.

It's kind of fun having your own private dinosaur. She's around thirty inches long from nose to tip of tail and is as big around as my forearm. I'm going to tame her and teach her tricks eventually. She already knows how to climb up the walls.

Well, that was fun. But let's go check on the update from the NHC, shall we?

Oh, lovely. Bud the Hurricane (what kind of name is that for a hurricane? Bud?? ) is now a Category 3, with wind speeds of 115 mph. 

RAINFALL...BUD IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAIN ACCUMULATIONS OF 5
TO 8 INCHES ALONG THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST OF MEXICO IN THE STATES OF
MICHOACAN...COLIMA...JALISCO...AND SOUTHERN NAYARIT...WITH POSSIBLE
ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 12 INCHES.

I cribbed that right off the NHC report. Do they not understand I have a plane to catch? People to see, places to go, things to do?

I imagine I'll still be sitting right here on Saturday afternoon, or maybe inside. I'll let you know how it goes over the next few days with my own updates, if we have power. Don't worry, the NHC also said that Bud had likely reached its peak. We'll be just fine.

Hey, wait a minute. Bud??

I wonder if I could teach Dinah to eat it...

 ☁☁☁

Update 7 a.m. CST, Friday: Not a breath of wind this morning. A few interesting clouds in the sky. According to the NHC, Bud seems to be weakening, but now is forecast to bring in even more rain to some areas. Maybe I'll get out of here after all. Better go finish packing, huh?