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Thursday, 5 September 2013

TIME 00:21

The Higgs

The Higgs boson or Higgs particle is an elementary particle initially theorised in 1964, and tentatively confirmed to exist on 14 March 2013. The discovery has been called "monumental" because it appears to confirm the existence of the Higgs field, which is pivotal to the Standard Model and other theories within particle physics. In this discipline, it explains why some fundamental particles have mass when the symmetries controlling their interactions should require them to be massless, and—linked to this—why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force. Its existence and knowledge of its exact properties are expected to impact scientific knowledge across a range of fields and should allow physicists to finally validate the last untested area of the Standard Model's approach to fundamental particles and forces, guide other theories and discoveries in particle physics, and—as with other fundamental discoveries of the past—potentially over time lead to developments in "new" physics, and new technologies.

This unanswered question in fundamental physics is of such importance that it led to a search of more than 40 years for the Higgs boson and finally the construction of one of the most expensive and complex experimental facilities to date, the Large Hadron Collider,^[16] able to create Higgs bosons and other particles for observation and study. On 4 July 2012, it was announced that a previously unknown particle with a mass between 125 and 127 GeV/c² had been detected; physicists suspected at the time that it was the Higgs boson By March 2013, the particle had been proven to behave, interact and decay in many of the ways predicted by the Standard Model, and was also tentatively confirmed to have + parity and zero spin, two fundamental attributes of a Higgs boson--making it also the first known scalar particle to be discovered in nature,--although a number of other properties were not fully proven, and some partial results do not yet precisely match those expected, and some data is still being awaited or analyzed. As of March 2013, it was still uncertain whether its properties (when eventually known) will exactly match the predictions of the Standard Model, or whether, as predicted by some theories, multiple Higgs bosons exist.

The Higgs boson is named after Peter Higgs, one of six physicists who, in 1964, proposed the mechanism that suggested the existence of such particle. Although Higgs's name has become ubiquitous in this theory, the resulting electroweak model (the final outcome) involved several researchers between about 1960 and 1972, who each independently developed different parts. In mainstream media the Higgs boson is often referred to as the "God particle," from a 1993 book on the topic; the nickname is strongly disliked by many physicists, including Higgs, who regard it as inappropriate sensationalism.

In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a boson with no spin, electric charge, or color charge. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately. It is a quantum excitation of one of the four components of the Higgs field, constituting a scalar field, with two neutral and two electrically charged components, and forms a complex doublet of the weak isospin SU(2) symmetry. The field has a "Mexican hat" shaped potential with nonzero strength everywhere (including otherwise empty space) which in its vacuum state breaks the weak isospin symmetry of the electroweak interaction. When this happens, three components of the Higgs field are "absorbed" by the SU(2) and U(1)gauge bosons (the "Higgs mechanism") to become the longitudinal components of the now-massive W and Z bosons of the weak force. The remaining electrically neutral component separately couples to other particles known as fermions (via Yukawa couplings), causing these toacquire mass as well. Some versions of the theory predict more than one kind of Higgs fields and bosons. Alternative "Higgsless" modelswould have been considered if the Higgs boson were not discovered.

Higgs field

Spontaneous symmetry breaking, a vacuum Higgs field, a Higgs boson are quantum phenomena. A vacuum Higgs field is responsible for spontaneous symmetry breaking the gauge symmetries of fundamental interactions and provides the Higgs mechanism of generating mass of elementary particles. However, no adequate mathematical model of this Higgs vacuum has been suggested in the framework of quantum gauge theory, though somebody treats it as sui generis a condensate by analogy with that of Cooper pairs incondensed matter physics.

At the same time, classical gauge theory admits comprehensive geometric formulation where gauge fields are represented byconnections on principal bundles. In this framework, spontaneous symmetry breaking is characterized as a reduction of the structure group $G$ of a principal bundle $P\to X$ to its closed subgroup $H$ . By the well-known theorem, such a reduction takes place if and only if there exists a global section $h$ of the quotient bundle $P/G\to X$ . This section is treated as a classical Higgs field.

A key point is that there exists a composite bundle $P\to P/G\to X$ where $P\to P/G$ is a principal bundle with the structure group $H$ . Then matter fields, possessing an exact symmetry group $H$ , in the presence of classical Higgs fields are described by sections of some composite bundle $E\to P/G\to X$ , where $E\to P/G$ is some associated bundle to $P\to P/G$ . Herewith, a Lagrangian of these matter fields is gauge invariant only if it factorizes through the vertical covariant differential of some connection on a principal bundle $P\to P/G$ , but not $P\to X$ .

An example of a classical Higgs field is a classical gravitational field identified with a pseudo-Riemannian metric on a world manifold $X$ . In the framework of gauge gravitation theory, it is described as a global section of the quotient bundle $FX/O(1,3)\to X$ where $FX$ is a principal bundle of the tangent frames to $X$ with the structure group $GL(4,\mathbb R)$ .

Wednesday, 4 September 2013

TIME 23:24

Einstein's Theory of Relativity

In 1915, Albert Einstein first proposed his theory of special relativity. Essentially, this theory proposes the universe we live in includes 4 dimensions, the first three being what we know as space, and the fourth being space time, which is a dimension where time and space are inextricably linked. According to Einstein, two people observing the same event in the same way could perceive the singular event occurring at two different times, depending upon their distance from the event in question. These types of differences arise from the time it takes for light to travel through space. Since light does travel at a finite and ever-constant speed, an observer from a more distant point will perceive an event as occurring later in time; however, the event is "actually" occurring at the same instant in time. Thus, "time" is dependent on space.

Gravitational Time Dilation

An important aspect of Einstein's theory of relativity to note is that he proposed matter causes space to curve. If we pretend that "space" is a two-dimensional sheet, a planet place on this "sheet" would cause it to curve (see diagram below). This curvature of space results in what we perceive as gravity. Smaller objects are attracted to larger ones because they "roll" through the curved space towards

the most massive objects, which cause the greatest degree of curvature. In relation to time, this curvature causes the gravitational time dilation effect. Under normal circumstances, this effect is impossible to observe. However, in the presence of the extremes of our universe (such as black holes, where a huge amount of matter is compressed into an extremely small volume), this effect becomes much more obvious. To a distant observer, an object falling into a black hole would appear to never reach it, due to time dilation causing time to "progress" extremely slower, at least relative to the distant observer (the object in question, however, would very rapidly be destroyed by the black hole).

A second aspect to the gravitational time dilation postulate is that the faster an object is moving, the slower time progresses for that object in relation to a stationary observer. While in everyday circumstances, this effect goes entirely unnoticed, it has proven to be true. An atomic clock placed on a jet airplane was shown to "tick" more slowly than an atomic clock at rest. However, even with the speeds achieved by a jet aircraft, the time dilation effect was minimal. A more solid example can be seen through an experiment performed on the International Space Station (ISS). After the first 6 months in space, the crew of the ISS aged .007 seconds less than the rest of us on earth (the relatively stationary observers). The station moves at approximately 18,000 miles per hour (see applet below to track the location and speed of the ISS), much faster than the range of normal human speeds. Even with such speeds, however, time dilation is minimal unless you approach speeds close to the speed of light (300,000 km/sec.).

Time as a Fourth Dimension

To understand time as a fourth dimension, it is necessary to recognize that any human attempt to "draw" or "represent" time beyond out immediate perception of it (baisc, linear progression), is inherently flawed, because out mental capacity is limited to three dimensions. However, time, like space, is a dimension in itself, and objects can transverse it in a similar way as they do through the third dimension. A popular way of viewing time is using a coordinate set of axes, except instead of using a plane with simple x and y axes, a z axes can be added. The graphic to the left represents a possible way of viewing time. As a person walks forward, he is traveling though the three dimensions of space, and a fourth as he progresses forward through time. Thus, for humans, time travel (or traveling through the fourth dimension) is entirely possible, however, only in one direction. Relativity has shown us that it is possible to change our perception of time based on distance, gravitational dilation, or speed, but the direction of time has remained constant and singular.

Consequences of Einstein's Scientific Revolution
The changes Einstein ushered in with his radical theories of relativity resulted in the now ubiquitous E = mc² equation, which essentially states that matter and energy are interchangeable (this discovery eventually led to the creation of the first nuclear fission bomb). However, Einstein's equations also predicted the presence of black holes and gravitational waves, and were initially excused as inconsequential aberrations, however there is now substantial evidence to support the existence of black holes. Just as importantly, Einstein ushered in an entirely new age of theoretical physics, helping to tremendously advance our perception of the universe and directly contributing to today's modern string theory, an attempt to unify the theories of relativity and since-discovered quantum mechanics into a unified explanation of the universe.

TIME 23:13

Science Times now

Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. In an older and closely related meaning, "science" also refers to a body of knowledge itself, of the type that can be rationally explained and reliably applied. A practitioner of science is known as a scientist.

Since classical antiquity, science as a type of knowledge has been closely linked to philosophy. In the early modern period the words "science" and "philosophy of nature" were sometimes used interchangeably. By the 17th century, natural philosophy (which is today called "natural science") was considered a separate branch of philosophy.

In modern usage, "science" most often refers to a way of pursuing knowledge, not only the knowledge itself. It is also often restricted to those branches of study that seek to explain the phenomena of the material universe. In the 17th and 18th centuries scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of laws of nature

"Albert Einstein the God of
Science"

such as Newton's laws of motion. And over the course of the 19th century, the word "science" became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself, as a disciplined way to study the natural world, including physics, chemistry,geology and biology. It is in the 19th century also that the term scientist was created by the naturalist-theologian William Whewell to distinguish those who sought knowledge on nature from those who sought other types of knowledge

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
― Albert Einstein, Albert Einstein

“Seven Deadly Sins

Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

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