Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. Breath Sweeps Mind. Want to find your mind. Real solutions from real experts. A new way to count. A reason for capitalists to care about Quantum Physics. A Ridiculous Essay on Rational Outreach (via The Tribal Scientist) A public immunity to freeloaders « The Tribal Scientist. Science-based Hippies? « She Thought. Schedule for LHC’s next few years revealed.
July 26, 2010 § The race is on, or continuing between the LHC and the Tevatron. Regular readers know of my passion for particle physics. I find the work they are doing at the accelerators endlessly fascinating. Will they find this Higgs? Personally I don’t think so. Can I back that up with a reasoned argument? Nope.
“Steve Myers, CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, presented the LHC schedule for the next 10 years today in the first plenary presentation at the International Conference on High Energy Physics. Via symmetry breaking » Blog Archive » Schedule for LHC’s next few years revealed. Like this: Like Loading... Tagged: LHC, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Science, Supersymmetry, Unification, Unified Field Theory. Critical Thinking 101: A Skeptics Toolkit. July 27, 2010 § Have you ever tried convincing someone that ghosts aren’t real, aliens are not abducting people or that psychics are con artists, only to end up in an argument?
It has happened to me. More often you are presented with a situation where a friend or family member states something you know to be complete baloney, but out of politeness or fear you say nothing. Well, thanks to The Cleveland Skeptics, now you can. They have put together a toolkit. When someone says something stupid just find the appropriate video or podcast and send it to them. It is also a good idea to go through all of the material yourself. “Critical Thinking 101These are videos, podcasts, articles and books that, I think, provide the basic knowledge for skepticism. Via The Cleveland Skeptics: Critical Thinking 101. Like this: Like Loading... Tagged: Atheism, Cool, ghosts, paranormal, psychics. LHC results: Not just the same old thing. The Importance of Unbelief | Stephen Fry. Are you a Skeptic or a Cynic. The next time you are about to call something a load of crap, ask yourself this question.
Are you being a skeptic or just a cynic? There is a difference. Yes, there is an overlap many times with a lot of people. Just because something doesn’t fit your preconceived notion of how the world works, doesn’t make it wrong. And, just because a person believes something different from you, does not mean that there is nothing you have in common. Let’s look at some definitions: skepticismFunction: noun Date: 1646 1 : an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object 2 a : the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain b : the method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism characteristic of skeptics 3 : doubt concerning basic religious principles (as immortality, providence, and revelation) synonyms see uncertainty“skepticism.” I was a cynic most of my life. Like this: Like Loading... Skeptic Exchange. Humungous bubbles blown from small black hole. July 9, 2010 § You know how much I love bubbles.
This is the coolest one I have seen in a while. The universe is such an amazing place. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. ;-) Read the Story behind this image on NewScientist.com Like this: Like Loading... Tagged: Cool, Science, Space. Kitten Wearing a Tiny Hat - Audition Outtakes. SP Content / What? Me, worry? Error Number: 1054 Unknown column 'reply_member.username' in 'field list' SELECT `reply`. `to_comment_id`, `reply_member`.
`username` AS to_username, `comment`.*, `member`. How We Fool Ourselves Over and Over. PJZen's The Big Picture. Almost every social networking site on the internet requires your to fill out a personal bio section. That “Tell us a little about yourself” box always makes me cringe. It took me weeks to put an “About me” page on this blog. Part of the reason is I find it hard to talk about myself. (I am getting over that.) The main reason though is people are judgmental bastards. In my real life I don’t socialize with people anymore. The labels I use on these sites usually end up not telling the whole story. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care if people think I am wrong or that my Ideas are nuts. For example, I am an atheist. I am also a Non-Dualist. Through much reading it seems that I am also something called a Pantheist.
One of my favorite misjudged and misused labels is skeptic. My point is this, I don’t care if you think I am a nut job because I probably am. Like this: Like Loading... Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico. On Saturday, June 19, 2010, oil spread northeast from the leaking Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil appears as a maze of silvery-gray ribbons in this photo-like image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
The location of the leaking well is marked with a white dot. North of the well, a spot of black may be smoke; reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say that oil and gas continue to be captured and burned as part of the emergency response efforts. The large image provided above is at MODIS’ maximum spatial resolution (level of detail).
ReferencesNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (2010, June 20). NASA image courtesy the MODIS Rapid Response Team. Instrument(s): Aqua - MODIS. John Hagelin, Ph.D on Consciousness 2 of 2. AT-AT DAY AFTERNOON. Bubbles! I am a little obsessed with bubbles. As you may have read on this blog, I had an awakening a couple of years back. It was brought on by many factors including physical and mental trauma. Not the least of which were a couple of mini-strokes that happened while I was “dead” or being revived. The point being that my brain seems to have rewired itself in some strange and wonderful ways. I knew that what I put together in my mind was important. Yes I am quite aware of how utterly nuts this all sounds. Now for the obsession with bubbles. Parallel Universes is a 2001 documentary produced by the BBC’s Horizon series.
Parallel Universes Like this: Like Loading... Tagged: Behavior, Brain, Brain Matters, Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Science. The magic of knowledge exchange. “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas”. (George Bernard Shaw). The CERN Global Network is a new, ideal place for past and present members of the CERN community to share ideas and create new links. On 29 April, CERN’s Knowledge and Technology Transfer (KTT) Group launched the CERN Global Network, a tool whose aim is to facilitate knowledge exchanges inside and outside CERN. "Among the greatest ambassadors of knowledge are people who have been trained and educated at CERN and also at other institutes: here is where the Global Network comes into play", says Rolf Heuer, CERN Director General. In the second half of the year, the Network will be opened to research institutes from all over the world, and to companies in the Member States.
Members are strongly encouraged to help to shape the Network. Science and Physics. Untitled. AtlasResults < Atlas < TWiki. AtlasResults < Atlas < TWiki. Giant natural particle accelerator discovered above thun. (PhysOrg.com) -- A lightning researcher at the University of Bath has discovered that during thunderstorms, giant natural particle accelerators can form 40 km above the surface of the Earth. Dr Martin Füllekrug from the University’s Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering presented his new work on Wednesday 14 April at the Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting (RAS NAM 2010) in Glasgow. His findings show that when particularly intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator above the thunderclouds. The cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and these electrons are accelerated upwards by the electric field of the lightning discharge.
The free electrons and the lightning electric field then make up a natural particle accelerator. Explore further: Remnants of Tropical Depression Peipah still raining on Philippines. The Physics behind the paper behind “Colliding Particles” « Life. This post also at The Guardian. This is a bit of a niche post but there was recently a review in Physics World of these videos I’m in about research at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While generally positive, the review pointed out that although the videos are partially based around a particular scientific paper about how one might find the Higgs boson (referred to in the films as the “Eurostar paper”), they don’t really explain the physics behind it, being focussed more on “how science works” than a specific result.
Fair comment. So here is my attempt to explain the physics behind this paper to an intelligent but non-specialist audience. I’ll concentrate on explaining the new ideas in the paper rather than giving a summary of why the Higgs is interesting or what the LHC is. I wrote something about that at the end of this article for the BBC, and might try again at some point. Now you see it, now you don’t Fast movers Something happens when you look at these fast-moving Higgs decays. Bosonic string theory. Bosonic string theory is the original version of string theory, developed in the late 1960s.
In the early 2000s, supersymmetry was discovered in the context of string theory, and a new version of string theory called superstring theory (supersymmetric string theory) became the real focus. Nevertheless, bosonic string theory remains a very useful "toy model" to understand many general features of perturbative string theory, and string theory textbooks usually start with the bosonic string. The first volume of Polchinski's String Theory and Zwiebach's A First Course in String Theory are good examples. Problems[edit] Although bosonic string theory has many attractive features, it falls short as a viable physical model in two significant areas and is forced to posit a 26 dimensional spacetime to remedy inconsistencies.
First, it predicts only the existence of bosons whereas many physical particles are fermions. Mathematics[edit] See also[edit] References[edit] External links[edit] ATLAS Control Room Blog » Sleepless Nights Lead to First Results. Do you hear that? The incessant typing? The coffee machines vending cup after cup?
If you go to Building 40, or Building 32, Building 188, or to any one of the many graduate student offices around the world, you will hear the tap of key boards, the whir of disk drives, and even the occasional heated civil discussions with “elevated” voices. What is all of the work for? Well, in High Energy Physics (HEP) there are “seasons” of conferences, and this year the first conferences to see the first LHC physics results of 2010 will be the summer conferences.
LHCb - Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment. 9 April 2014: Unambiguous observation of an exotic particle which cannot be classified within the traditional quark model The LHCb Collaboration has published yesterday results of precise measurements of properties of the Z(4430)- particle which allow to determine unambiguously its exotic nature.
In the traditional quark model, the strongly interacting particles (hadrons) are formed either from quark-antiquark pairs (mesons) or three quarks (baryons). Particle physicists were searching since 50 years for the particles, called exotic hadrons, which could not be classified within this scheme. Many candidates have been proposed but up to now there has not been unambiguous proof of their existence. The first evidence for the Z(4430) particle has been presented in 2008 by the Belle Collaboration as narrow peak in the ψ’π- mass distribution in the B → ψ’Kπ- decays. The minimal quark content of the Z(4430) state is ccdu. Click the images for higher resolution [ τ( Bc+) = 509 ± 8 ± 12 fs ]
M-theory. M-theory is a theory in physics that unifies all consistent versions of superstring theory. The existence of such a theory was first conjectured by Edward Witten at the string theory conference at the University of Southern California in the summer of 1995. Witten's announcement initiated a flurry of research activity known as the second superstring revolution. Background[edit] Quantum gravity and strings[edit] One of the deepest problems in modern physics is the problem of quantum gravity. Number of dimensions[edit] In everyday life, there are three familiar dimensions of space (up/down, left/right, and forward/backward), and there is one dimension of time (later/earlier). Despite the obvious relevance of four-dimensional spacetime for describing the physical world, there are several reasons why physicists often consider theories in other dimensions.
Dualities[edit] Main articles: S-duality and T-duality A diagram of string theory dualities. And winding number in the dual description. . Scientists present first “bre. The Large Hadron Collider. ATLAS Experiment. Quantum dynamics of matter waves reveal exotic multibody collisi. Quantum wonders: Spooky action at a distance - physics-math - 08. Anticipating the first steps. Aurora in May, over North America. Three-Inch Device Detects 3,000 Types of Viruses and Bacteria | NASA Spots Signs of Life... On Earth. LHCsound blog. Quantum wonders: The field that isn't there - physics-math - 08. 20100411-Aurora Borealis timelapse, over Lake Michigan . . . - M. Is the Pursuit of Happiness Making Us Miserable?
All Present-day Life Arose From A Single Origin. How does consciousness work. Eureka! Neural evidence for sudden insight. Law & Disorder. Human Consciousness Taboo. Are you conscious now. "There Was No Big Bang!" Say Several Leading Cosmologists (A Gal.
Feel Nikon | Universcale. A voyage through the multiverse and higher dimensional hyperspac. Brian Cox: Why we need the explorers. Evolution. Introduction to M-theory. "There Was No Big Bang!" Say Several Leading Cosmologists (A Gal. Saving Lives with Skepticism. Ecology. Jonah Lehrer: Inside My Mind. Our Queer Universe. Has Quantum Mechanics gone mainstream. Unified Field Theory. Is it time for scientists to come out of the closet? « PJZen's T. Don’t be afraid of the truth. “Good without God” Do you remember the “First Amendment” Essential Freethought Library. Are you letting your ideas have sex. Can Science Explain Everything. How can your blog brighten the world. Can you help save the world sitting on you ass. The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense.
What is Consciousness. Bubbles! Quotes.