Physics

At 10:00 AM this morning, my smartphone alerted me that in two months I will have to deliver a thorough review on the physics of boson pairs - a 50 page thing which does not yet even exist in the world of ideas. So I have better start planning carefully my time in the next 60 days, to find at least two clean weeks where I may cram in the required concentration. That will be the hard part! Because of that, rather than an article about things that I know about boson pairs, this is a post about things I do not know well enough now, but on which my knowledge will see a rapid expansion in the near…

Clamps are miniature equivalents to the gravitational shock fronts caused by colliding black holes that currently reach the press because very sensitive measuring equipment such as LIGO can detect these fronts when they pass the sensor. During travel, these fronts keep their shape, but the height diminishes as 1/r as a function of the distance r to the trigger location. The result is temporary, and the front integrates into the Green’s function of the vibrating field. Thus, the spherical shock front deforms its carrier. Having mass is synonym to having the capability to deform its carrier.…

The top quark is the heaviest known matter corpuscle we consider elementary. Elementary is an overloaded word in English, so I need to explain what it means in the context of subatomic particles. If we grab a dictionary we get several possibilities, like e.g.- elementary: pertaining to or dealing with elements, rudiments, or first principles - elementary: of the nature of an ultimate constituent; uncompounded- elementary: not decomposable into elements or other primary constituents- elementary: simple In the case of the top quark, we could well say it's simple, but we would be lying to…

Abstract Physical reality must be simple. This reasoning is the general idea behind Occam’s razor. However, it is also a general physical principle. Foundation The foundation of physical reality has a very simple structure. This structure also has the property that it, similarly to the evolution of a seed, automatically extends into higher levels of the structure of physical reality that are more complicated and offer more functionality. Sets are very simple structures, but they do not automatically extend to a more complicated higher level structure. Relational structures are sets that…

Abstract Two and a half centuries ago, scientist discovered solutions of the wave equation that represent dark quanta. These quanta configure all other objects that exist in the universe. Dark quanta Two and a half centuries ago, scientist discovered solutions of the wave equation that are not waves but shock fronts. The discoverers did not notice that these objects are quantized, but they discovered that the shock fronts only existed in odd numbers of participating dimensions. It is time to rediscover these objects and for that reason I have given them names. This makes it easier to discuss…

Another chapter in the saga of the search for the elusive, but dominant, decay mode of the Higgs boson has been reported by the CMS collaboration last month. This is one of those specific sub-fields of research where a hard competition arises on the answer to a relatively minor scientific question. That the Higgs boson couples to b-quarks is indirectly already well demonstrated by a number of other measurements - its coupling to (third generation) quarks being demonstrated by its production rate, for example. Yet, being the first ones to "observe" the H->bb decay is a coveted goal.In this…

Arthur Eddington and others tried numerous times to test Einstein's general theory of relativity by photographing the stars which appear in the sky next to the eclipsed sun.  Einstein's theory predicted a particular change in their apparent position.  To the ability of anyone to measure this effect, all observations have been in accord with Einstein's theory.  My own work on and interest in theories of everything, both my own, and others, has as a fundamental assumption that Einsteins theory is exactly correct.  It probably is, however, no one gets a pass.  No matter…

If I am alive, I probably owe it to my current very good physical shape. That does not mean I narrowly escaped a certain death; rather, it means that if I had been slower there are good chances I would have got hit by lightning, under arduous conditions, at 4300 meters of altitude. After this dramatic introduction I can start from the beginning the tale of what was meant to be a half-day excursion with no particular ambitions. I am spending a week in Quito, Ecuador, where I have been lecturing graduate students in astro-particle physics on the physics of the LHC and the results of the…

This is the fifth and final part of Chapter 3 of the book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab". (the beginning of the chapter was omitted since it described a different story). The chapter recounts the pioneering measurement of the Z mass by the CDF detector, and the competition with SLAC during the summer of 1989.  The title of the post is the same as the one of chapter 3, and it refers to the way some SLAC physicists called their Fermilab colleagues, whose hadron collider was to their eyes obviously inferior to the electron-positron linear…

Abstract In the eighteenth century, scientists discovered the ingredients of basic quantum field theory. In those times quantum physics played no role. In the twentieth century, these ingredients were forgotten and stayed ignored. This blog post introduces two categories of super-tiny dark objects that represent the most basic field quanta. Warps represent a tiny bit of energy. Clamps represent a tiny bit of mass. Observers cannot perceive these objects as individual items. The objects are the tiny dark objects that science is still missing. The LHC and its successors will never be able to…