Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The Nobel Prize In Physics Has Gravitas

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider" link

Now one of you geniuses please explain the Higgs Boson to us.

Chemistry is announced tomorrow. I'll get back to you. Carl Djerassi is someone I've long thought should get it but he probably never will.

Added: Lem links an animated lesson:



Lem Learning Gravitas

40 comments:

chickelit said...

I'm looking at you, Pastafarian.

bagoh20 said...

Higgs Boson was a pig farmer who long ago discovered that if you swing a pig by the tail just right it will become weightless, or as the pig farmers would say "massless". I know, they were very strange people. I think this is, of course, a curious phenomenon, but I don't understand why it gets so much attention today.

Anyway, that explains Higgs Boson. at least the famous part of him.

YoungHegelian said...

When all the hoopla was on the air about the attempt by CERN to experimentally find a Higgs boson, I read the press reports in vain for an explanation that made any sense. It was too much to ask for them to explain clearly that the Higgs boson that the physicists searched for was a "shredding" of the Higgs field into its constituent bosons.

The best explanation I got was from an ex-physicist buddy via FB who analogized the Higgs field imparting mass to a particle as like changing the angle of a piece of paper in front of a fan. Face-on, the paper drags. Edge-on, the paper has almost no drag at all.

I know, I know, visual analogies (or analogies, period) are dangerous things in physics of the subatomic world. The equations, for those learned enough to understand them, paint the best "picture". For the life of me, I still don't understand why it is that a proton qua proton somehow always interacts with the Higgs field and thus has mass, but all those electrons, well, they someone miss the Higgs field altogether.

Truly beyond my ken it is.

rhhardin said...

I did similar experiments with Lionel trains.

chickelit said...

rhhardin said...
I did similar experiments with Lionel trains

I figured you were a third rail type.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

My limited understanding comes from pop culture. Postthis again.
sorry for the laugh track.

bagoh20 said...

" I still don't understand why it is that a proton qua proton somehow always interacts with the Higgs field and thus has mass, but all those electrons, well, they someone miss the Higgs field altogether."

Because farmer Boson was a pig farmer, it never did work with sheep. Sheep run in herds. Two different animals, and no sheep in the world can do a convincing imitation of a pig. That's the first thing you need to accept to get to the unified theory of farming.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

The Higgs Boson is a glitch.

bagoh20 said...

"The Higgs Boson is a glitch"

I guess this means Obama wins another Nobel - Physics this time. He's gonna run the table.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

lol.

Synova said...

Heh... the Higgs Boson has Gravitas...

Saw what you did there.

ricpic said...

I'm still waiting for an explanation. And in simple english, no jargon, no abbreviations, just one clear sentence leading to another clear sentence till the damned thing is 'splained proper, 'kay?!

chickelit said...

I'm still waiting for an explanation. And in simple english, no jargon, no abbreviations, just one clear sentence leading to another clear sentence till the damned thing is 'splained proper, 'kay?!

add that to what Niels Bohr said:

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

The pressure is on.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

What is Higgs Boson?

You may have seen this before.

Icepick said...

Pollo, you make not like what they tell you. Physicists are all batshit crazy.

Icepick said...

I did similar experiments with Lionel trains.

Okay, Gomez.

Methadras said...

I try to explain it to my friends like this. The Higgs field is basically everywhere and permeates everything. When other particles pass through this field a Higgs Boson basically pops off and attaches itself to that particle and gives that passing particle it's mass. The math on how it does that is quite complex.

Revenant said...

The Physics and Chemistry Nobel prizes have held up very well over the years. There are few (if any) that are embarrassing in retrospect.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

For the life of me, I still don't understand why it is that a proton qua proton somehow always interacts with the Higgs field and thus has mass, but all those electrons, well, they someone miss the Higgs field altogether.

Maybe they are in a waiting room.

chickelit said...

The Physics and Chemistry Nobel prizes have held up very well over the years. There are few (if any) that are embarrassing in retrospect.

Even the controversial ones, e.g., Shockley, Bardeen, Brattain, stand up if you consider what was done at Bell Labs in those crucial months.

ricpic said...

Thanks, Meth. That was an understandable explanation to primitive me. I mean clearly we're talking high level physics but at my primitive level what you said gives me the gist...or an inkling of the gist.

bagoh20 said...

"The math on how it does that is quite complex."

That's what Dad tried to say about sex too, but I wasn't buying it. Just the good part please.

Now lets hear about Higg's bosom.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Now lets hear about Higg's bosom.

You have to peel some layers to get to it.

chickelit said...

Now lets hear about Higg's bosom.

Gravitatas?

chickelit said...

Lem, I added your video link.

Methadras: he mentions that explanation.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Yes, I saw that. thanks.

chickelit said...

[waiting to see if synova sees what I did there]

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Gravitatas:

Gravity defying Winnie Higgs Bosoms?

ricpic said...

Does this (the "mass" explanation) mean Marilyn Monroe had more Higgs Boson than Twiggy?

ricpic said...

Bosom not boson. How dare I?!

rhhardin said...

It looks like flickr is offering Obamacare.

Anyway it's down.

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

Higg's bosom

Its the wave of the future.

chickelit said...

April said:

Gravity defying Winnie Higgs Bosoms?

Yes, those would be anti-gravi-ta-tas

The video mentions that there is no anti-gravity force (don't tell Star Trek writers) -- and no one knows why. Interesting. Who can explain Winnie?

bagoh20 said...

That video is very informative. They got quite creative in making up all those metaphors just to avoid saying "tits".

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Quark is a code word for something...

The little stuff is like the big stuff... the big stuff is like the little stuff.

A billion collisions. Stars. universe. quark.

Chip Ahoy said...

It is where dimensions intersect. It is why they disappear and change by being observed. Carl Sagan had a bit where he describes a creature existing in two-dimensionland. A dot moving along a plane, encountering a wall, then a floor, then another wall, moving in any direction but always along a flat surface so always a floor to it even when crawling a wall, never up or down and then a human hand suddenly appears out of the third dimension and does something, to the creature in 2 dimensionland existence the hand would appear out of nowhere and as a line, an obstruction, maybe one that can be crawled, then disappear again.

Our existence is within the three-dimensional physical universe, questions about the substance of our substance explore dimensions outside our existence.

I know a guy who started a company he named Quark, he likes to talk about science fiction. Tim Gill. That is a good opening line, I use it, "Read any good science fiction lately?" It's an endearing neardy question. And let him answer. He'll consider you interesting. Also vegetarianism. Something along the lines of, "I noticed myself craving more raw vegetables lately and not caring so much for heavier things."

bagoh20 said...

If you face northwest while chewing, nothing is heavier than a white truffle.

That's why physics is so important to know for all of us.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

This Tim Gill, I presume.

chickelit said...

Chip, the first paragraph of your last comment should be read aloud in a Rod Serling voice.

Methadras said...

El Pollo Raylan said...

Methadras: he mentions that explanation.


Oh, I didn't watch the video.