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Mystery
“creation” particle evades scientists Beer,
science and good spirits Prof Yash
Pal This Universe Trends |
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Mystery “creation” particle evades scientists The
mysterious “creation” particle believed to have turned flying debris into stars and planets at the dawn of the universe has evaded capture in a year of hot pursuit, physicists said on Monday. Rolf Heuer, director-general of the CERN research centre near Geneva, said he was now looking to 2012 to turn up traces of the particle, the Higgs Boson, and signs of other concepts that were once the preserve of science fiction. Confirming that intensive scrutiny of the results of more than 70 million particle collisions in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had not yet identified the Higgs, Heuer said: “I hope the big discoveries will come next year.” He was speaking at an international conference of physicists in the French city of Grenoble, at which presentations of the results of research in the LHC, deep under the border between Switzerland and France, were a key highlight. Other CERN scientists at the gathering, parts of which were being streamed live over the Internet, reported that they had spotted strange “fluctuations” in the data gathered from the mega-velocity collisions staged in the oval-shaped LHC. But they cautioned that these could simply be misreadings or passing phenomena that will be explained later. They said it was important to avoid “discovering” the Higgs before it was found, as one researcher had done earlier this year. The Higgs is named after British physicist Peter Higgs who said three decades back that it was the agent that turned the matter spewed out by the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago into the mass that became the material of the known cosmos. Some scientists worry that it may not exist at all, or not in the form suggested by Higgs and two Belgian researchers who came up with the idea at the same time in the late 1970s. “One way or another, it or something like it has to be there, otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” Heuer told reporters in 2008, just before LHC’s first, aborted, $10 billion start-up. It resumed operations successfully in March 2010. Discovery of the Higgs would complete the essential elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics that emerged from the work of Albert Einstein and his successors early in the 20th century, and cleared the way for “New Physics”. This domain would include super-symmetry, the underpinning of string theory and the idea of parallel universes, dark matter or the hidden stuff of the cosmos, and the dark energy that is believed to be driving galaxies apart. The vast volumes of information gathered so far from the LHC particle collisions, each effectively recreating the Big Bang and what came just after, “provide sound bases for the discoveries to come,” Heuer told CERN staff at the weekend. “Our field of physics, which focuses on rare phenomena, requires (a huge volume of) statistics,” he said. So definitive answers on the Higgs or signals pointing to what were once the wilder shores of speculation could still be a while away.
—Reuters
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Beer, science and good spirits If
you were at a pub or café in Rehovot the night of July 21, you may have gotten a free science lesson along with your refreshments. That evening marked the second annual Beer, Science and Good Spirits event sponsored by the host city of the Weizmann Institute of Science, an international center of scientific research and graduate study. In 30 different venues, Weizmann scientists and students held forth on the subjects they know best, such as nanophysics, dark matter, nearly perpetual energy, supercomputers, the origins of life, evolution, the brain, miniaturization and embryonic development. Weizmann president Prof. Daniel Zajfman spoke with pub-goers on the birth of stars and the possibility of life outside Earth. Guest speaker Prof. Ronnie Friedman, dean of the Rehovot-based Hebrew University Faculty of Agriculture, Food and lectured about genetic engineering in agriculture. “I will be speaking on nanoscience and will try to share some aspects having to do with the interaction of light and matter and the wonders one encounters there,” Weizmann Vice President Israel Bar-Joseph reported the day before the event. Bar-Joseph, a physicist and dean of education at the institute, says the concept for Beer, Science and Good Spirits took shape last year when Weizmann administrators were asked to plan something for the city's 120th anniversary celebrations. “It was a resounding success, and it was decided to make it an annual tradition,” he says. Encouraged by the response, Weizmann sent 40 lecturers to Tel Aviv this spring to bring Science on Tap to patrons of 40 bars. The buzz brought out the crowds; Bar-Joseph reports that a lecture on quantum computing in a Dizengoff Street pub was so popular that hordes of patrons had to watch it on a big screen outside for lack of seating space. “We got enormous feedback that tells us that people are eager to learn, and the pub environment makes it easier. The same lecture in a classroom would not attract even 10 percent of that number of attendees,” says Bar-Joseph. “The mission of sharing the joy and interest and knowledge of science with the general public is an important one, because science is taking an increasing role in our lives,” he stresses. “Many issues, such as stem cells, the environment and genetically modified food, are being discussed often without a clue as to the underlying facts. Literate citizens can take part in public discourse and make educated decisions if they know the facts.” Speakers are chosen for their talent for conveying sometimes esoteric information to a lay audience, and may pick their own topics, he says. “They're not being paid and don't get anything apart from satisfaction out of it, but there is no problem recruiting lecturers,” says Bar-Joseph. Judging by the response to these events, he feels Weizmann can help dispel the misconception that science is too difficult for the masses to grasp. “The lectures are just the tip of the iceberg,” he says. “We try to bring science to the public in hundreds of other ways.” The institute has a constantly updated web page called Weizmann Wonder Wander. For those who can come to the Rehovot campus, there's the hands-on Clore Garden of Science and the Solar Complex. Courtesy: Embassy of Israel
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This Universe I have
heard that mass of a body increases with increase in velocity. How is that possible? Surely the mass of a body is practically due to its own material. I think you should realise that the rest mass of the body does nucleate change with velocity. High velocity increases the dynamical mass, which is not an intrinsic property of the particle. Energy and momentum are dynamic variables and change in a defined manner, the rest of the mass does not. Readers wanting to ask Prof Yash Pal a question can e-mail him at palyash.pal@gmail.com
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Trends NASA probe poised for launch to Jupiter
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A NASA satellite was hoisted aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Wednesday in preparation for launch next week on an unprecedented mission to the heart of Jupiter. The robotic probe called Juno is scheduled to spend one year cycling inside Jupiter’s deadly radiation belts, far closer than any previous orbiting spacecraft, to learn how much water the giant planet holds mand what triggers its vast magnetic fields.
It’s dim up North, so people need bigger brains
LONDON: People from northern parts of the world have evolved bigger brains and larger eyes to help them to cope with long, dark winters and dim skies, scientists said on Wednesday. Researchers from Oxford University studied the eye sockets and brain capacity of 55 human skulls from 12 different populations across the world and found that the further human populations live from the equator, the bigger their brains.
South Korean scientists create glowing dog
SEOUL: South Korean scientists said on Wednesday they have created a glowing dog using a cloning technique that could help find cures for human diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Yonhap news agency reported. A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle, named Tegon and born in 2009, has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic, the report said.
— Reuters |
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Robert
Evans
