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.
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!
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