Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Confirmation of world order - naTemat

You all certainly heard that the Nobel Prize in Physics this year accounted for Professor Peter Higgsowi (and Francois Englertowi) for the discovery of an elementary particle called the Higgs boson. But not everyone can realize how important and how profound is this discovery. Therefore, on the occasion of awarding of the prize, let me go over his essay, which I wrote about over a year ago (published in the Gazette of Krakow 05.09.2012, Page 11).

Image from last year's

Drawing from last year’s “Republic” explained place in the Higgs boson, which is the “Standard Model”.

What’s the Higgs?

In early July of this year [written in 2012] it was reported that at CERN near Geneva discovered the Higgs boson. The news spread through the press world, and all TV and radio channels, not to mention the avalanche of reports and comments on the Internet. World Scientific literally shook to its foundations.

But wyleguj?cym holidaymakers on the beaches of the news was neutral. They are accustomed to the fact that the so-called cucumber season when delivering interrupts the press sensation parliamentary politicians flame war, usually something “discovered” that it was the holiday fill the pages of newspapers. Journalists have served us, and it’s a monster in Loch Ness, and it traces the Yeti in the Himalayas. So the news of the discovery of “the divine particles ‘were ignored by most people. Decorated in the tone sensational physicists were less important than the weather forecast for the next day, but just in this case, the message of the great discovery was real, and the forecasts are not always …

Now, however, we returned from vacation, the kids went to school, adults to work, politicians again took a war – so you can have a serious think about what has actually happened in the study during the holidays and why is it so exciting?

Well, managed to confirm experimentally one of the most audacious attempts to scientific understanding of the rights of Nature. Since the time of Galileo and Newton, physicists attempted to more precisely describe the world using mathematical equations. They found a mathematical law, which you can describe the motion of the various bodies and thus are able to build a car or predict a solar eclipse. They built a law describing electrical phenomena, so that we can build a light bulb, computer or phone. They discovered laws describing atoms and therefore today we have new material, which has not created Nature. Created by people plastic implants to replace damaged tissue in the body or the thermoactive clothes.

The more these rights were, the more able to reach in the technology, but even more was born longing for to create one right which could be to move all the right details. This desire is called grand unification , and is one of law, which had included almost all of the knowledge of the physical called the Standard Model. I say “almost” because the model did not manage to take gravity – but the rest did.

Standard Model, physicists have invented some time ago. It describes the laws that govern the world by introducing the concept of so-called elementary particles. There are two types of particles: fermions , which build the atomic nuclei and bosons , which carry influence. Of these consist of atoms, chemical compounds, our bodies and the entire cosmos. When you know and describe these particles and to understand the nature of the various interactions: electromagnetic, so-called weak (of radioactivity) and the strong, decisive for connecting particles in atomic nuclei, it will be possible to move out – on a purely mathematical reasoning – the properties of all these objects, which elementary particles are formed. For example, you can understand why some substances heal, or the processes occurring in the semiconductor when sending text messages from a cell.

Standard Model was beautiful. Value of beauty is very important in physical pursuits, because many researchers believe that only a beautiful mathematical formula correctly describes the world. But the model has had one drawback: conclusions resulting therefrom disagreed with experience. The reason was that the Standard Model require that certain bosons do not have mass, and empirical studies refute this. To save this beautiful theory, care has been taken to the (somewhat desperately) an additional component, which gave other particles mass. It was just the Higgs boson. This term, when it was introduced (in 1964) was purely hypothetical. No physical experience not confirmed its existence! But without a fundamental theory (the Standard Model) fell apart like a house of cards, so physicists believe that there is.

Since 1964, sought evidence of the existence of this hypothetical particle. Conducted thousands of precious experience gathered millions of observations – a Higgs boson was still elusive. And finally July 4 this year [ I remember - it was written in 2012] two independent research teams at CERN using different sets of detectors (CMS and ATLAS) registered the presence of elementary particle whose properties correspond to the features provided by the theory of Higgs boson.

fundamental physical theory has gained experimental confirmation!

But why speak of “divine particle “?

Well, postulating half a century ago, the existence of this by anyone not seen particles, which was required just to be able to consistently describe the whole world one theory – Higgs supposedly said: This particle must exist to ensure order, and God created the world he could not avoid chaos .
And now we know that this particle exists.

Is not it beautiful?


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Richard Tadeusiewicz. Biocybernetics of AGH. He is the scientific investigation of the borderland of biology and technology for the benefit of both. No, and for the benefit of each other

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