Physics
In its first years the development of quantum physics occurred violently. As a consequence some cracks sneaked into the fundaments of this branch of physics. A careful investigation brings these cracks to the foreground. The endeavor to repair these cracks delivers remarkable results.
In the early days of quantum physics much attention was given to equations of motion that were corrections of classical equations of motion. The Schrödinger approach was one and the Heisenberg approach was another. Schrödinger used a picture in which the state of a particle changes with time. Heisenberg uses a…
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Mixing Science and Religion is always a hot topic. Recently, there was for example a debate between Sam Harris and Robert Winston in the Guardian, about, you guessed it, science versus faith! Harris is all for science:
We have Christians believing in the holy ghost, the resurrection of Jesus and his possible return -- these are claims about biology and physics which, from a scientific point of view in the 21st century, should be unsustainable.
Let me present the “next level” on the question of whether science argues against religion: Yes, modern science disproves traditional deities, However…
That's because you never learn anything new.
[By the way: if you were coming here to learn the solution of my riddle about the mysterious plot I posted here yesterday, be patient - I will publish an answer tomorrow on that issue.]
As a clear example of the title of this article, take the issue about the upper limits on parameter space points of Supersymmetric theories that the ATLAS and CMS collaboration has produced for the last round of winter conferences. In a series of posts last month I covered the experimental results, and I repeatedly pointed out (albeit rather quietly, without making…
After the disturbance created by the Higgs rumour in ATLAS, I think we can go back to normal business - in this case, keeping my word on discussing things that were left hanging.
Your response to my small riddle was quite good, forcing me to provide a timely and exhaustive explanation of what is in the plot I posted a few days ago.
So, the plot (shown again on the right below, but with axis labels this time) shows a rather funny functional form. There are no unit labels on the x and y axes - I removed them because they would have given away the answer immediately. The function is funny…
A picture is worth a thousand words. This is true both for photographs and for graphs, but sometimes the words are spoken to the wrong ears. I would like to offer you a very simple, visual test today: show you a picture and let you guess what it represents. Depending on the response, this might end in oblivion or be tried again with another subject.
So the question is: what does the picture below represent ?
A few hints:
- I did the graph myself, and it took me 10' of programming and a tenth of a second of CPU on my laptop.- It does not strictly have to do with physics, although it is very…
The title is a playful variation on a line from a Bogart movie, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. That was an adaptation from a novel of the same title:
"All right," Curtin shouted back. "If you are the [LHC] police, where are your [Higgs]? Let's see them.""[Higgs], to god-damned hell with [Higgs]! We have no [Higgs]. In fact, we don't need [Higgs]. I don't have to show you any stinking [Higgs], you god-damned cabrón and ching' tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you."
This blog will explain why we need to see the Higgs at the LHC. My studies offer…
A casual look at the Arxiv hep-ph listings this morning was enough to confirm that the feeding frenzy of theoreticians around the latest bait thrown in the waters by CDF is not showing any sign of slowing down.
The paper in question is 1104.2893, and it discusses "Weak-triplet, color-octet scalars and the CDF dijet excess". In their model, the authors (B. Dobrescu and G. Krnjaic) argue in favour of an extension of the standard model which includes rthree new coloured particles, two charged and one neutral state.
The way by which these could explain the CDF bump is however a bit complicated…
The Xenon 100 collaboration has finally released the results of their data analysis, and the results are saying that there is no Dark Matter in sight so far. Since we live in an age where time is precious, I think many of you are only interested in the bottomline. I can give it to you straight away, in the form of the plot which summarizes the results.
Xenon 100 finds three events compatible with a dark matter signal, with a background expected from more mundane sources amounting to 1.8+-0.6 events. The limit they extract on the cross section versus mass of the hypothetical particle are…
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The greatest hurdle before committing suicide is the fear of dying and death as well as the fear of hurting people we care about. In order to assist suicide, Suicidal Philosophy alleviates these fears rather than stoking them like traditional Philosophy of Suicide does. Suicidal Philosophy is much more science than philosophy, as the following outtake of a long article aimed at helping people in distress exemplifies. It explains why it is that if you jump out of a 20 story building, your life already ends peacefully more than six meters before impact with the ground:
The fear of dying…
This morning this programme (45 minutes) was on BBC Radio 4.
In Our Time: the Neutrino
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0106tjc0
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the neutrino.
with:
Frank Close, Professor of Physics at Exeter College at the
University of Oxford
Susan Cartwright, Senior Lecturer in Particle Physics and
Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield
David Wark, Professor of Particle Physics at Imperial
College, London, and the Rutherford…