Where Has all the Anti-Matter Gone?..... Off to Mutual Annihilation - Every one.....

Yeah, I know.  A Folk singer I ain't.

But the core question is valid.  As I pointed out in a discussion last summer - If after the initial expansion, the Universe had equal amounts of matter and anti-matter - where is it all - anti- matter I mean.

Higgs Boson - Universe Killer

Yep, you read correctly,  under the right, or wrong in this case, conditions, the elusive Higgs boson particle could destroy the entire universe!

Under what circumstances you ask?  

If the particle becomes unstable (at energy levels of 100 billion giga-electronvolts or higher) it could trigger a vacuum bubble that would expand at the speed of light, eventually collapsing all space and time.

You wouldn't even know it was coming if the event happened on Earth, because it would propagate around the globe faster that the blink of a eye. 

This is all speculation from Stephen Hawking's in his upcoming book Starmus,

Read the complete Engadget article HERE

Higgs boson Dataset Used For Musical Notation

Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it sure is an interesting thing.... who knew the music of the spheres played to a samba beat huh?

Higgs boson Confirmed?

This is why I love my daughter...Oh she is going to kill me..but early Wednesday morning I receive a call from her. She informs me that something very exciting happened today.. Well a twenty something with two young boys still in diapers I expected what....the oldest has finally decided to use the potty exclusively? Now I am not putting the situation down, but a young family takes up all your time and most of your attention so when she hit me with the discover confirmation of the Higgs boson particle, well I had to pinch myself...Two great things...for all intents, the particle that started everything spinning on it's merry way and my daughter is a geek. Lol...see why she will most likely kill me?! lol.

But there we are. The particle search characterized as "one of the longest, most expensive searches in the history of science.. Has finally been confirmed Wednesday, by the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider.

This is heady stuff. It almost has to be particle physic's version of Apollo 11. This seemingly iniquitous Higgs boson is the particle predicted by the standard model to imbue elementary particles with mass. Think about that for a second....no Higgs no universe...

Of course there are those still hedging their bet with "the new particle may not be the particle that has been described by the Standard model and has been the focus of every Physicist for the last fifty years.

LHC physicist Dr. Rolf-Dieter Heuer called the discovery “a historic milestone.” but It may be an impostor as yet unknown to physics, perhaps the first of many particles yet to be discovered.

Well I am a glass half full kind of person. I think that the hemming and hawing that has taken place since December needs to be over with. I am not a physicist and don't pretend to fully understand the full implications of the discovery, but the addage of "if it quacks like a duck....certainly should be in play now.

Read the complete article in the NYT Science

Has CERN Finally Done It?

How many times over the past year or so have we heard this statement?

• Scientists at CERN might be on the verge confirming the existence of what they call the "Higgs boson"

Well it is making the rounds again according to an article in the Daily Galaxy blog.  

Peter Woit a Columbia University mathematician is saying that "Cern will soon have to decide.....".   What's to decide you ask?  Well according to Woit,:

•  Cern has got to either announce discovery of the Higgs, or will they wait for some overwhelmingly convincing standard to be met.

Woit goes on to say that:

• "....The bottom line though is now clear: there’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look."

We shall see, I guess...read the complete article here

CERN's LHC Finds the Higgs Boson?!

According to The Daily Galaxy blog -

• (there is a rumor that) the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson
• The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (that note can be read on the Daily Galaxy page)
  

Researchers reported in January that they have seen hints of what may be the hot, dense state of matter thought to have filled the universe in its first nanoseconds of existence. An in depth discussion on the Higgs Boson event would send most of us screaming after only a few seconds, but suffice it to say:

• The Higgs boson is the only Standard Model particle that has not been observed in particle physics experiments.
  

But as the Wiki article points out:

• If the Higgs boson exists, it is an integral and pervasive component of the material world

Of course the ultimate point here is, how close to the first event in the Universe, the big Bang can the LHC get. Well according to CERN spokesman James Gillies, who stated back in 2010:

• "We're within a billionth of a second of the Big Bang,"

The main stumbling block now is the fact that the LHC is still running on only partial power owing to damage that occurred during the first full power test when several banks of magnets were irreparably damaged due in part to sub par welding. The LHC can only achieve 14 TeV restricting the collider to .001% under the speed of light. It is hoped that LHC will be able to attain full power some time in 2012.

Does the M in M-Theory Stand for Mental?

When i was ever so much younger, one of the meanest things a sib could insult you with was calling you mental. And not in a good way, because you were either being called a person of diminished capacity or just plain strange. Which in a slightly less PC manner brings me around to an article in Dvice concerning the LHC and time travel across the fifth dimension with help from dimensions six through possibly eleven according to one specific "theory of everything" called M-theory. Hence my response oh that has to stand for "mental"! So how does the LHC tie into this? Well it seems that scientists are looking for a Higgs singlet. And no that's not some sort of wife-beater that some guy named Higgs would wear, but is in fact a little beastie that cannot be stopped by any force in the universe.... You see, researchers say that if the Large Hadron Collider ever finds a Higgs boson that it just might spit out a Higgs singlet which believe it or not can pop out of the fifth dimension whenever it feels like it, and can hypothetically appear at more or less any point along the space-time continuum.
Hummmm kinda sounds like a time machine don't it now?

Believe me, there is more in this article that will fry a few synapses. Check out the complete Dvice Article here