Nick Cook – A Ramble Through an Oxford Author's Imagination and Inspiration

Nick Cook – A Ramble Through an Oxford Author's Imagination and Inspiration

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Showing posts with label Higgs Boson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Higgs Boson. Show all posts
Musical Notes and the Universe of String Theory
04:05

Musical Notes and the Universe of String Theory
“You are the music while the music lasts.” 
– T.S.Eliot
When you pluck a guitar string a sound wave is produced that vibrates the air molecules producing a musical note that you hear. Imagine that the universe around you is the product of a similar vibration. That’s what string theory is all about.

Picture the smallest known building block in the universe, smaller than an atom, smaller than electron, smaller than a quark, and peer inside any of these and you’ll see a dancing filament of energy called a string. Just how small are we talking here? Well, if you scaled up a hydrogen atom to the size of the universe, the string inside it would only be the width of a human hair.

Why the need for string theory at at all? After all don’t we have Einstein and his theory of gravity that accurately deals with very large objects such as planets and stars. We have quantum mechanics which explains what happens with the very small. However, the problem for physicists is that these theories can conflict with each other. There are also shortfalls in these theories that tell us that we don’t fully understand how the cosmos works. For example Einstein’s gravity theory simply can’t cope with what happens inside the extremes of a black hole. Therefore the search has been on for a theory that ties everything together has been on – sometimes referred to as the grand unification theory. Step centre stage and meet the candidate that attempts to unify the very large, the very small, gravity, and even time itself – string theory.

All particles around us go through four basic interactions: gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear interactions, and weak nuclear ones. Einstein covered gravity, and quantum mechanics dealt with the rest, but string theory attempts to tie everything together. 

String theory suggests that when a string vibrates, unlike a guitar string producing musical notes, particles are actually created. Also, by changing the frequency of the string, any sort of particle can be made. It’s an elegant theory, but for the maths behind it to work, it requires more dimensions than the four we can currently observe. In addition, at the heart of string theory, is the idea that gravity is a particle that we have so far failed to detect, the graviton. This particle is also predicted by quantum theory, as was the Higgs Boson, whose existence now looks confirmed by the Large Haldron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. The graviton is another juicy boson and there is a chance that the LHC may be able to confirm its existence as well.

If string theory is proven to be correct, it may answer questions that have baffled science for some time such as black holes, the existence of extra dimensions, dark matter and dark energy; and even the origin and fate of our universe itself. And it may be that the LHC provides the stepping stone towards confirming string theory’s credentials.

 Related Articles

 Higgs Boson – The Treacle of the Universe 
http://therealnickcook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/higgs-boson-treacle-of-universe.html

 Splitting Reality – The Many Worlds Theory 
http://therealnickcook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/splitting-reality-many-worlds-theory.html

 Part of Our Universe is Missing – A Big Part 
http://therealnickcook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/part-of-universe-is-missing.html

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Higgs Boson – The Treacle of the Universe
05:17

Higgs Boson – The Treacle of the Universe

“The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.”
– Eric Fromm
One second after the big bang a particle was created and has been playing a game of hide and seek ever since. The reason we know it should exist is that there’s a piece missing from our jigsaw for the Standard Model of physics – the Higgs boson particle. Now a lot of people are very fond of our Standard Model and a jigsaw just doesn’t look complete if there’s a big glaring hole in it. So ever since the idea was first suggested, the search has been on for the elusive God Particle. 
The theory, which has been around for fifty years, states that moments after the big bang the Higgs boson field and its associated particle were created, but until now we’ve found no direct evidence. That’s all changed in 2011 when news from the Large Hadrian Collider (LHC), where we can recreate those early conditions of our universe, hinted at its detection.
Without Higgs boson in the Standard Model there would be no life... symmetry would rule, a desire for order you see reflected in the perfect structures of snowflakes. But without something to give particles mass and slow them down, the Higgs boson field, our celestial treacle if you will, things would be very, very different. All particles would have flown apart at the speed of light from the big bang and without the clumping of interstellar gasses and the consequent formation of stars, then there would be no planets and certainly no life. This is the paradox at the heart of modern physics and is why so many scientists have been spent so much time and energy looking for it.

This year could be the most exciting moment in physics since Einstein revealed his theory of relativity. Certainly I’m sure for many of those involved in theoretical physics, they’ll remember exactly when they were if they hear the news confirming the existence of the Higgs boson particle later this year. 

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