Large Hardon Collider

[Mizango]

He's always on Colbert. He's been there so many times (8ish?).

Yes, that's the number I was thinking too. It's more than any guest I do know that much.

[Woozie]

I just did a google search and they're saying it's only 6, but that's still more than anyone else.

[Howard Roark]

Miz, make sure you post in spam if that dude you phoned for your daughter's birthday ever posts in here

[Mizango]

Miz, make sure you post in spam if that dude you phoned for your daughter's birthday ever posts in here

You know it.

[Alleya]

Yes, Neil deGrasse Tyson is the best guest on Colbert report ever. Iirc he's also been on there more times than any guest as well. Whodathunkit, an Astrophysicist raping the mainstream and spreading the cosmological gospel!

He was also recently on Conan and has been on Jon Stewart's show as well as with Jay Leno, there's a reason we swoon over NGT. Alleya and I have been going on all morning on AIM about our favorite NGT moments, appearances, conferences, summits etc...

Tis glorious.

So this was interesting. I was watching a lecture thing he was giving where a student asked how he became such a figure in the media as the go-to astrophysics guy.

He said the first time the news people came to him was when the first earth-sized planet was discovered orbiting another star and they wanted him to talk about it. So he gave his best professorial answer, explaining how stars aren't stationary and everything in a solar system orbits its common center of gravity, causing the star to jiggle slightly as we look at it. When he watched the news cast that night, all they showed out of his whole detailed explanation was the hip movement he was making to demonstrate the jiggle, and the newscaster said "Astrophysicist says stars jiggle!"

So what he did was he sat down with his wife and looked at every single aspect of astronomy he might be asked about and came up with 1-3 sentence responses. Un-editable soundbites. So if he was asked about supernovas, he would say "The biggest explosions in the universe." or slightly longer, "If one of these went off near earth, it would blow away the ozone layer and everyone would get skin cancer." Once he started doing that, the media would beat down his door every time there was a story about space. It was really interesting to me how he became such a figure by simply giving the media what it wants, and moreover, giving the public what it wants. I mean, the average person who isn't a total nerd like us doesn't much care that orbits don't go "around the star" per sé, they just care that there's other earth-sized planets out there.

[Neosutra]

We should rename this thread to "Beyond the Standard Model", even though only 5 of us would understand what that means.

[Max™]

The Standard Model of Particle Physics is the best model we currently have regarding the constituents of matter, and the means by which they transmit interactions, usually known as forces.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ticles.svg.png

The values there, the different particles, all have been observed and confirmed to exist with the values predicted by the model.


If you notice, there's no particle for gravity, the Higgs Boson is what should fit in the SM and provide that interaction, it has yet to be found because you have to "wring" it out of particles with a very high amount of energy due to it's high rest mass.


I, and many others, are not satisfied with the SM in general, and the Higgs mechanism in particular, so we are trying to develop a theory which goes beyond it.

[Kryssan]

http://www.benbest.com/science/standard.jpg


Fixed.

[Celeste]

Oh man, the LHC scares me.

[Mizango]

Oh man, the LHC scares me.

Drink a gallon of anti-freeze.
????
Humanity profits?


Seriously don't come here shitting up threads like you have been doing since last week. You and I both know you have nothing to add to this magnificent thread, so why bother?

[oldoldman]

Oh man, the LHC scares me.

Kill yourself.

[zoobernut]

Forgive my behindthetimesness Max but what happened to the proton? Did that turn into a different type of particle? Is it made up of smaller particles? When I took my last physics class oh 7 or 8 years ago I had just started reading about the idea of the smaller particles. I would be very interested in any literature that you might know of that breaks down the current model particle by particle with an explanation for each one.

[Neosutra]

A proton is made of 2 up quarks and 1 down quark, surrounded by gluons.

[zoobernut]

Thank you Neo that diagram on the other page makes so much more sense to me now.

Edit: so how do the fractional spins work? Do they just have to add up to one whole spin? Similar to the charge? Like if the proton is made of 2 up quarks and one down quark each one has to have a 1/3 spin?

[bigrougabagel]

I like this thread better. I also like that one of the tags for it is "happened". What i find interesting is that the majority of subjects in physics are now poised to undergo a reformation due to some of the discoveries that have been/might be made in particle physics. While it is not something i ever intended on studying, it has become unavoidable and also very interesting in its possibilities. I look forward to figuring out what all the fun little particles are made of, and then what that stuff is made of.

Another thing I am curious about is planck time (i believe i am using the correct term). Planck time is the shortest divisible segment of time that we can observe. What are some ideas as to the mechanics of the jumps between these times? As far as we can see, time is smoothe like an ass, but on a smaller scale its like those damn noise strips on the highway that jolt you out of that sound sleep at 80 mph. What goes on at sections of time shorter than planck?

[Mizango]

At that level anything smaller than Planck time has no meaning as far as I know. I know there are theories out there that exist but nothing satisfactory that warrants a definition as of yet.

But like all Sciences and anything that is highly scrutinized and self correcting, that can change at any time in the future.

[zoobernut]

So Planck time as a unit is similar to Kelvin in theory? And there is an Absolute Zero so to speak for time?

[Neosutra]

I think we will see our perspective of time change dramatically in the next 100 years. (Or sooner if I am right ).

As for spin, yes zoober, typically it is the sum of these spins (in simplistic terms) that determine alot of the larger particle's behavior.

[Celeste]

Kill yourself.

I think we've all seen at least one sci-fi movie when something similar to this goes wrong, and we either have demons, an alien race bent on dominating the human species, or black holes fuck us up. With all the problems and delays the LHC has suffered, I have doubts about the safety of it.

[Neosutra]

Safety of it?

The worst that can happen is a generator explodes and kills a technician. Stop watching SciFi channel Q.Q.