Category Archives: Quantum Physics

By John Maruskin Almost the New Year. What will it bring? Librarians are not prognosticators, but they can offer resources that allow you to find your own direction, come to your own conclusions.

Heres a quartet of new books offering new perspectives on perennial questions from the origin of the Universe to the origins of words. They can be found in the New Nonfiction section at the front of the Library.

Fear of a Black Universe: An Outsiders Guide to the Future of Physics, by Stephon Alexander (call # 523.1 Alex). Stephon Alexander is a professor of physics at Brown University, the 2020 president of the National Society of Black Physicists, and an electronic jazz musician.In Fear of a Black Universe, he draws on ideas from relativity, quantum mechanics, and emergence to explore unconventional theories about the origins of the universe, life, and consciousness. He posits embracing perspectives of marginalized people will produce truly revolutionary insights in physics.

Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing and Prisons, edited by Colin Kaepernick (call # 364.6 Kaep). Over thirty essays from a diversity of voices presenting a vision of an abolitionist future in which communities can be safe, valued, and truly free.

A world, Kaepernick writes, grounded in love, justice, and accountability, a world grounded in safety and good health, a world grounded in meeting the needs of the people. He does not claim Abolition for the People will answer all social and political question. He hopes this book sparks questions that will open possibilities for a future in which everyone can thrive.

Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things that Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do-And Why We Need to

Love Them More, by Vicki Hird (call # 595.7 Hird). This book is about the benefits bugs provide for all life on Earth, including humans. Benefits like pollinating plants, feeding birds, defending crops and cleaning water systems.

Rebugging the Planet not only describes important ways insects keep life on Earth healthy, but also describes how individual home owners can contribute to sound local ecosystems by making their yardscapes more insect friendly.

The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities: A Yearbook of Forgotten Words, by Paul Anthony Jones (call #422.03 Jones). Offering a word a day along with astute etymologies and entertaining historical corollaries The Cabinet of Linguistic Curiosities provides joyful learning and great anecdotes for conversation.

For example, Muggle, the word for June 26, which entered contemporary parlance through Harry Potter books, meaning a person possessing no magical powers, has actually been in use since the 13th century as another name for fish tails, probably deriving from mugil, the Latin name for the grey mullet.

Theres a lot more where those books came from, The Clark County Public Library. Drop in.

Talk to a librarian. Enrich your perspectives in 2022.

Happy New Year.

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What's happening at the Library: Books for the Future and Words for Every Day of the Year - Winchester Sun - Winchester Sun

By Sarah Chen and Manfred Keil | Inland Empire Economic Partnership

We are approaching the end of 2021 with the threat of a European-like winter surge of the coronavirus and a renewed shut-down lingering, but lets focus on some positive experiences we have had this year.

Here are 21 good news items some of you experienced in 2021.

1. Despite the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the most severe post World War II recession, and the events surrounding Jan. 6, we still have a democracy to be proud of. The size and diversity of the voter turnout was remarkable. After an election that was certified by Congress in January, Joe Biden became the 46th president of the United States, and Californias Kamala Harris is the first Black female vice president.

2. Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna vaccines arrived in January. By now, 71.5% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. In terms of the four most populous states, California is at 80.9%, New York shows 81.4%, Florida 73.2%, and Texas 65.5%. In the Inland Empire, 62% are fully vaccinated in Riverside County with 60% in San Bernardino County. Eventually, booster shots arrived and appeared to be effective against the omicron variant. Finally, 5- to 11-year-olds are getting vaccinated, thereby protecting themselves and the community.

3. Given the ranking of vaccinated individuals by state, California, not surprisingly, has the 12th lowest cumulative mortality rate from the coronavirus. Also California, and especially Southern California, has warmer temperatures during the winter months which will help contain infection and mortality rates at a relatively lower level.

4. In January 2021, the unemployment rate for the Inland Empire stood at 8.6%. The most recent number (from November) puts us at 5.4%. We continue to have lower unemployment rates than the state (6.9%) and Los Angeles County (7.1%). We are only 10,900 employees short of the employment level from the start of the coronavirus downturn. Despite talk of the Great Resignation, our labor force is actually 22,800 bigger. GDP grew solidly for the year, bouncing back to pre-recession levels. Jerome Powell was given another term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. The Other Services sector opened and we finally could get that tattoo we were waiting for.

5. The Indian Wells tennis tournament was played after a one-year hiatus and after moving from April to October. International travel was given a boost with the November opening to foreigners: the snowbirds from Canada can think about migrating to Palm Springs again.

6. The 2020 Olympics took place and the U.S. came out on top with 39 gold medals. Some old sports, like wrestling, were dropped, thereby joining previously discontinued croquet and tug-of-war. Others, like skateboarding, surfing, 3 on 3 basketball, sport climbing, and karate, made their debut. Sakura Kokumai of the U.S. placed fifth in womens karate, which made the black belt wearing co-author of this piece happy, having admired Kokumai at youth competition.

7. Universities and colleges mostly returned to in-person instruction, although it was announced last week that the early part of winter session for some colleges and universities will be done virtually again. But it has led to fewer Zoom connections with party lighting and strange posters on the wall, or roommates emerging from the shower behind us on-screen. K-12 schools returned to in-person instructions. We learned to appreciate teachers more, and realized that women still bear the majority of the burden when it comes to taking care of children part of why the downturn was labeled a she-cession.

8. We spent a lot of time watching foreign language TV shows, being fascinated by the Korean drama series Squid Games and rooting for No. 067 until the semifinals. The Red Light Green Light episode reminded us of the U.S. economy, which moved forward after the shutdown, but not all competitors (firms, workers) were still there after we recovered. Arcane, League of Legends first TV series, topped Netflixs charts for weeks a win for gamers.

9. Disneyland finally reopened, although access remains limited and international visitors are mostly missing. This nearly levels the playing field with Floridas Disneyworld, which opened earlier. We were able to go to the Hollywood Bowl again.

10. Halloween happened. Kids knocked on doors again in large numbers; seasonal candy sales were up almost 30% compared to last year.

11. Large crowds are again allowed to watch sports events. 42,275 mostly disappointed San Francisco Giants fans cried while leaving after Game 5 in Oracle Park. The German word Schadenfreude ranked highly on Google Trend in Los Angeles, especially among Dodgers fans.

12. The U.S. signed on to the Paris Climate Accord, which will hopefully mitigate the worst case climate scenarios. One of the authors is a resident of Alaska, and she is more concerned about permafrost and the number of polar bears declining than growing wine in Fairbanks.

13. Indoor dining opened up. Residents of Chicago may snicker at statements like its too cold to eat outside with temperatures in the low 60s, but it does feel good leaving the gloves at home while driving to our favorite restaurants. One of us recently invited a colleague from Boston to come and visit Southern California for some warmth and sunshine, but then rescinded by saying I am sorry, I forgot you cant come since Logan airport is closed due to an ice storm.

14. The government finally acknowledged U.F.Os: we are not alone in the universe at least in the U.S. The sheer number of out of space visitors clearly favors visits to our country. There is no fear of China overtaking us in Unidentified Aerial Phenomena sightings in the near future. Scientific American labeled it Completely Ridiculous Alien Piffle (CRAP).

15. The stock market, both in terms of the Dow Jones and the S&P 500, hit several new record highs, even late in the year. Related, the state of California is running a huge budget surplus. We are investing in gorillas r/WallStreetBets members rallied to raise $350,000 in donations and adopted more than 3,500 endangered gorillas in just six days.

16. Juneteenth was recognized as an official holiday, marking a national celebration of emancipation.

17. Big versus Small: Otis, the 2014 champion, reclaimed his title as the publicly recognized best Fat Bear in the annual Alaska Katmai National Park Fat Bear competition. We found one of the smallest lizards known to mankind, the Nano-Chameleon, barely larger than a fingernail.

18. We created the worlds first time crystal: a crystal that has order and perfect stability while breaking time-translation symmetry. This gets us closer to engineering computers which will be able to harness the power of quantum physics and thereby can perform computations of complexity not experienced to date.

19. Ontario International Airport celebrates its fifth year of local control. Passenger volume is 127% above the October 2020 level, and less than 2% short of the October 2019 numbers. We could see the first direct flight from ONT to Europe next summer.

20. Amoxicillin, a common human antibiotic, has a 95% success rate in treating stony coral a hopeful showing for coral reef loss. This may result in supply chain problems in providing medicine following wisdom tooth extraction.

21. Over 100,000 monarch butterflies migrated to California this year, up from 30,000 counted in 2019 and 2,000 in 2020. Note that they were smart by following the venture capital invested in California rather than emigrating to Texas where some of the firm headquarters, like Tesla, moved. Or perhaps they heard about the Texas power grid failure and Sen. Ted Cruz leaving 30-degree Houston for 80-degree Cancun to escape the FREEZING family home to be a good dad?

Lets look forward to 22 good news items next year, perhaps starting with we slayed the baby inflation dragon after the Fed raised interest rates three times.

The Inland Empire Economic Partnerships mission is to help create a regional voice for business and quality of life in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Its membership includes organizations in the private and public sector.

Manfred Keil is chief economist, Inland Empire Economic Partnership and director of the Lowe Institute for Political Economy, Claremont McKenna College.

Sarah Chen is research analyst, Lowe Institute, Claremont McKenna College.

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21 things to be thankful for in 2021 - San Bernardino County Sun

A bit over a half into my course of particle physics for Masters students in Statistical Sciences I usually find myself describing the CMS detector in some detail, and that is what happened last week.The course

My course has a duration of 64 hours, and is structured in four parts. In the first part, which usually takes about 24 hours to complete, I go over the most relevant part of 20th Century physics. We start from the old quantum theory and then we look at special relativity, the fundaments of quantum mechanics, the theory of scattering, the study of hadrons and the symmetries that lead to the quark model, to finish with the Higgs mechanism and the Standard Model.

In the second part I discuss interaction of radiation with matter, particle detection, and a few important experiments of the past, including the discovery of W and Z bosons and the charm and bottom quarks. In the third part I switch to LHC physics, describing the experiments and the search for the Higgs boson, and in the fourth and final part I give a look at searches for new physics.

Of course, the above material would be enough to fill two or three semesters worth of studies for Physics students. So how can I go within about eleven weeks through all that stuff with students that know nothing about Physics, except maybe what they learned in high school? Well, the short answer is that I try to explain the fundamental concepts, without focusing too much on details.

I do explain complex things such as isospin symmetry, Clebsch-Gordan coefficients, Goldstone bosons, or renormalization, but I make sure my students do not need to worry about having to remember everything - I am happy if they only manage to get the essential parts. This is because the course is meant to provide basic concepts that allow the student to work on data analysis from a particle collider, without feeling completely in the dark. I am perfectly aware of the fact that they -with rare exceptions- cannot possibly absorb the large amount of material of my course and make sense of it; on the other hand, I have empirically verified that my goals are usually achieved.

The experiment of teaching particle physics to statisticians was fostered by the insistence of Bruno Scarpa, a colleague in the Statistics department with whom I have been collaborating since 2014. It has in fact been working quite well, as during the past few years I had a handful of students who contributed to LHC data analysis or similar activities. We are also publishing articles with their names on it, which is a good thing for them if they want to continue with research after their thesis.

Calorimetry 101

I was saying above - and that is the main topic of this post - that I have been describing the electromagnetic calorimeter of CMS last week, among other things. I thought I would leave some trace of that discussion here, as it is a topic of relevance for Higgs physics; besides, that particular detector is one of the most remarkable calorimeters ever built, so it is intrinsically interesting to explain how it was built and why, at least broadly speaking (the details of construction choices for such a complex instrument are even above my own head, but we'll aim lower here).

So, what is a calorimeter, first of all? A calorimeter is a block of matter that is tasked with absorbing energetic particles, letting them interact with its nuclei until they lose all their energy. Heat is generated ("calor" is the Latin word for heat), but heat is very hard to measure with high precision. To give you a scale, a 100 GeV proton that deposits all its kinetic energy in a 10kg block of iron will raise the temperature of the latter by just a few trillionths of degrees (the exact number is I think 4x10^-12, but I forgot if it is a 10kg block or 100kg... Ok it does not matter much).

Rather than heat, a calorimeter determines the energy of incident particles by counting how many secondary particles are generated in the "shower" that develops as the primary particle hits a nucleus, generating more particles that each take a share of the initial energy. Secondaries also interact with further nuclei, and the process continues with a multiplication that eventually dies out as each individual secondary particle has too little energy to create further siblings.

The general procedure to determine the energy of the originating primary particle is to detect the collective effect of all the secondaries; the number of the latter is proportional to the former. To this aim one often uses the process of scintillation: some materials yield a flash of ultraviolet light when traversed by energetic particles. More particles give more light, which can be effectively sized up by precise photomultiplier tubes.

Electromagnetic calorimeters

An electromagnetic calorimeter works exactly as I described a generic calorimeter above, but it is tasked with measuring with precision two kinds of particles (or maybe three, see below): the electron and the photon. As it moves in a material, the electron withstands strong acceleration in the vicinity of heavy nuclei, and it emits photons by the process called "bremsstrahlung". The photons thus created, if energetic enough, can also withstand an electromagnetic interaction in the vicinity of another nucleus, whereby they turn into an electron-positron pair. The latter will then repeat the procedure, so an electromagnetic shower develops.

Each photon radiation by an electron (or positron) takes place on average every time the particle has traveled by a length called "radiation length", X0, in the material. A photon will create a pair every 9/7 of a X0 instead. X0 can be a small distance (less than 6mm in lead, or a few cm in lighter materials), so we can construct compact calorimeters by using heavy elements. After a total depth of about 25 X0 -which is just 15cm of lead, e.g.- the showers produced by even the highest energy electrons and photons extinguish completely, so that there is a good proportionality between the total collected light and the incoming energy (otherwise, if some particles leaked out of the instrument carrying away energy, the proportionality would be lost).

Enter CMS

CMS stands for "compact muon solenoid" (it also stands for "continuous meeting system", but let's leave this bit for some more facetious text). In the mind of the physicists who designed it, it had to be compact because it had to do two very conflicting things:(1) measure electrons and photons with exceptional resolution and low backgrounds, and(2) measure charged tracks trajectories with very high resolution

If, as the original designers, you do not know the mass of the Higgs boson, you cannot go hunting for that particle if you do not get (1), as there is a mass range - when the Higgs boson is lighter than perhaps 110 GeV or so- when its decays to Z boson pairs are heavily suppressed. A signal may then best be sought for by detecting its rare decay into a pair of energetic photons. However, such a small signal is hidden in a very large background of events where two real photons are produced by background processes, or when they themselves are fake.

[Above, the Higgs decay to photon pairs is seen by CMS as a small bump on a large background. The narrowness of the bump depends on the high resolution on the energy measurement of photons: a twice wider peak would be much harder to put in evidence. In the top panel, the data (black points with uncertainty bars) are fit by a model (red curve) which includes an exponentially falling background and a small signal component. In the bottom panel, the signal component is shown after a subtraction of the estimated background.]

To distinguish the signal, one then must achieve the highest possible resolution on photon energy. And how do you get a high photon energy resolution? By using homogeneous calorimeters, i.e. ones where there is only active scintillator material, so that you see all the light from secondaries.

Before you measure electrons and photons in the calorimeter you must measure charged particles in a tracking system, and this has to be done within a very strong magnetic field, so that you get to curve the particle trajectories and you determine momentum from curvature - this is requirement (2). A strong magnetic field can be produced by a superconducting magnet; but if you place the magnet before the electromagnetic calorimeter, this will spoil the resolution of the calorimeter, because electrons and photons will start depositing energy in the magnet coils before they get to reach that device.

CMS designers decided to design the electromagnetic calorimeter with very dense lead tungstate, a scintillating material that could absorb showers within less than a foot of depth. This could fit inside the magnet, providing the necessary high resolution. As for the solenoid of CMS, it is the strongest one ever built for a collider detector: it is superconducting, and it produces a field of 3.8 Tesla roughly uniform over a volume of tens of cubic meters.

The above means to produce a large amount of lead tungstate to create your calorimeter. In fact, the instrument must form a 23-cm-thick cylinder around the interaction point, around the tracking volume. Its total volume is of 11 cubic meters, and the weight is of 92 tons! But the most impressive feature of this detector is its thin segmentation. The system is divided into 75,848 crystals, long parallelepipeds whose front face is only of 2.2x2.2 cm^2. This high granularity is another crucial requirement, which is aimed at reducing the background that energetic photons from Higgs decay receive... from energetic photons coming from neutral pion decay.

[Above, the vertex-pointing crystals of the CMS ECAL detector are shown in grey with light blue section.]

The neutral pion is the lightest quark-antiquark bound state that exists in nature. It is a member of a triplet of particles together with its positive and neutral counterparts. You get, e.g., a positive pion by binding together a up and an antidown quark, and a negative pion with a down - antiup quark. The neutral pion is a mixture of up-antiup and down-antidown. It decays by electromagnetic interaction when the two quarks annihilate. The process produces two photons.

Since the neutral pion weighs a mere 135 MeV (little more than a thousandth of the Higgs boson), the two photons it produces also carry away a thousandth of the energy, if the pion is at rest. Unfortunately, neutral pions are produced in very large amounts in proton-proton collisions, and they can be produced with arbitrarily large momentum. When that happens, the two photons will receive collectively all the pion energy, and travel away almost collinearly.

As the two photons from pizero decay hit the electromagnetic calorimeter, they may be hard to distinguish from a single well-isolated, energetic photon coming from the decay of a Higgs boson. Because of that, one needs to have as much transverse resolution as possible, such that the two independent showers produced by pizero-originated photons can be distinguished from the single shower produced by a honest-to-God Higgs decay photon.

[Above, a schematic drawing of a neutral pion producing two almost collinear photons, which hit the calorimeter at points sufficiently far from one another to give rise to independent energy deposits.]

Note that the calorimeter needs to be as far away from the interaction point as possible, in order to give the photons enough time to separate from one another - otherwise their two showers would be impossible to tell apart. This is a conflicting requirement with the one of compactness, which is called for by having a strong magnet.

Below you can see that CMS can indeed reconstruct the mass of neutral pions from the energy of independent showers produced by the two decay photons. That is what the high segmentation of the calorimeter can accomplish!

[Above, the black points indicate the rate of reconstructed photon pairs as a function of their combined mass; The red and the blue curve indicate the model of signal and background. The dashed vertical line shows that the peak sits at the nominal mass of the neutral pion, 0.135 GeV.]

So, in summary - the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter is a technological marvel, and an impressive instrument, which has been crucial in the discovery of the Higgs boson. It is however still one of the most important parts of CMS, which is now continuing the data collection in search for new physical phenomena.

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Tommaso Dorigo (see hispersonal web page here) is an experimental particle physicist who works for theINFNand the University of Padova, and collaborates with theCMS experimentat the CERN LHC. He also coordinates theMODE Collaboration, a group of physicists and computer scientists from fifteen institutions in Europe and the US who aim to enable end-to-end optimization of detector design with differentiable programming. Dorigo is an editor of the journalsReviews in PhysicsandPhysics Open. In 2016 Dorigo published the book "Anomaly! Collider Physics and the Quest for New Phenomena at Fermilab", an insider view of the sociology of big particle physics experiments. You canget a copy of the book on Amazon, or contact him to get a free pdf copy if you have limited financial means.

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Photons And Neutral Pions - Science 2.0

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a quantum vacuum decay of the ground state of the universe to its true minimum.

The universe underwent radical phase transitions in the past. These transitions eventually led to the division of the four fundamental forces of nature and the panoply of particles we know today. All of that occurred when the universe was less than a second old, and it has been stable ever since.

But it might not last forever.

Our universe: Big Bang to now in 10 easy steps

To understand the stability of the universe, first we need to talk about phase transitions. Phase transitions are when a substance undergoes a rapid, radical transformation. They happen all the time. You boil water, and it transforms from a liquid into a gas. You cool that same water, and it turns into a block of ice.

Perhaps the most exotic phase transitions are those that happen to quantum fields. Quantum fields are the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Every kind of particle say, a photon or an electron is really just a local manifestation of an underlying field. That field soaks all of space and time like bread dipped in olive oil. The way those fields interact and communicate with each other makes up the forces and physics of our existence.

That existence is based on four fundamental forces: gravity, the weak force, electromagnetism and the strong force. But it hasn't always been this way. In the earliest moments of the cosmos, those forces were united. As the universe expanded and cooled, the quantum fields underwent phase transitions, splitting apart one by one.

The last phase transition occurred when the electromagnetic force split from the weak force. That splitting gave rise to the photon and the W and Z bosons, the carriers of those two forces.

Since that event, which happened when the universe wasn't even a second old, everything's been stable no more splitting, no more phase transitions. The four forces of nature went on to shape and sculpt the evolution of the cosmos for billions of years.

As far as everything looks, it's all stable for now, anyway.

Related: Is there anything beyond the universe?

The stability of the universe is tricky to measure. Sure, it's been over 13 billion years since anything as interesting as a phase transition has occurred. Yes, 13 billion years is a really long time, but in the world of quantum fields, anything can happen.

Our best bet at probing the stability of the universe is through the mass of the Higgs boson. The Higgs is a very interesting field; its presence in the universe is what separated the electromagnetic force from the weak force and what maintains that split today. Without the Higgs boson, those forces would merge right back together.

In quantum physics, the more massive an entity is, the more unstable it is. Massive particles quickly decay into lighter ones, for example. So, if the Higgs is very massive, it might not be as stable as it seems, and it might decay into something else someday. But if the Higgs is light enough, it's likely to hang out forever, and there's nothing more to say about the future of the quantum fields of the universe.

Measurements of the Higgs have found that its mass puts the universe smack in between the "really, honestly stable" and "Oh no, it looks a little unstable" regimes. Physicists call this state "metastable" a situation that is stable for now but could quickly deteriorate if something were to go wrong.

The apparent metastability of the quantum fields of the universe is a little unsettling. Although it could mean that the universe could persist for billions, even trillions, of years without anything going wrong at all, it could also mean that the universe is already beginning to transform. All it would take is one little shake in the wrong direction, in some random patch of the universe, where the Higgs falls apart and the underlying quantum fields find a new, more stable configuration. That region of "new" universe would then propagate outward at nearly the speed of light through the "old" universe.

This kind of phase transition is called a false vacuum decay. It references the idea that the vacuum of our universe is a false one its not as stable as it might appear, and it will someday decay into something new.

By the time we received any information that the phase transition was upon us, it would already be happening.

What would be on the other side of that new universe? It's impossible to say. It might be totally mundane, with the new quantum fields looking exactly like the old quantum fields and nothing amiss. It could be just a slight adjustment, like a little tuning to the nature of dark energy or a slight adjustment to the masses of neutrinos. Or, it could be radically different, with a universe filled with brand-new forces, fields and particles which would make life (and chemistry and atomics) as we know it impossible.

Of course, we're not even 100% sure about the metastability criterion. We know that the Standard Model of particle physics is incomplete. A complete version could rewrite our understanding of quantum fields and where the "stable-unstable" line is drawn.

Learn more by listening to the "Ask A Spaceman" podcast, available on iTunes and askaspaceman.com. Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter.

Continued here:

Here's how the universe could end in a 'false vacuum decay' - Space.com

1.6 x 10-22 seconds: That, according to theory, is the lifetime of the Higgs boson, one of the most sought-after particles in the subatomic world. This time is so short that tens of trillions of Higgs bosons might live and die before the light from the device youre using to read this reaches your eyes.

Physicists are zeroing in on this lifetime in the real world. Poring over data from CERNs Large Hadron Collider (LHC), scientists have narrowed down the Higgs lifespan to something around that 1.6 x 10-22 figure. The scientists were able to do so thanks to data from the CMS, one of the LHCs detectors. Their work is a major advanceand its a sign that, nearly a decade after the Higgs bosons discovery, there is still quite a bit to learn about the particle.

This is a good achievement, a great milestone, but its just the first step, says Caterina Vernieri, a particle physicist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, who has worked with the CMS group in the past but was not involved with this current research.

The Higgs boson is the reason that many particles have mass, to make a long story involving complex concepts called quantum fields and symmetry breaking short. It was first theorised in the 1960sits namesake is Peter Higgs, a Nobel-winning British physicistbut it eluded scientists for decades.

Smashing particles together at higher and higher energy was the key to its discovery, made possible by the LHC, where particles circle through a 17-mile-long ring on the French-Swiss border. The LHC went online in 2008. In 2012, physicists working there found the fingerprints of something that could have been the Higgs boson; by the end of 2013, theyd determined that their results werent just random statistical noise.

The search for the Higgs boson was over. But just because scientists have discovered a particleor anything elsedoesnt mean that they understand all of its properties.

[Related: Inside the discovery that could change particle physics]

Theoretical physicists predicted many of the Higgs bosons properties in the decades before its discovery. If those theoretical predictions matched well with what scientists ultimately found, then it would be additional evidence that the Higgs boson fits into the theory behind modern particle physicsthe so-called Standard Model. It would help scientists learn more about how the universe ticks on the tiniest scales

But scientists are trying to study things that dont exactly reveal themselves to the world. Particles like the Higgs, on top of their puny size, might only show themselves for vanishingly short timespans before decaying into a charcuterie board of other particles.

The lifetime of the Higgs boson is extremely small, says Vernieri. So when its produced in our experiment, we dont really actually measure the Higgs boson or see a Higgs boson, but what we see is the debrisof the particles it decays into.

So the CMS scientists pored over data from LHC experiments undertaken between 2015 and 2018. By looking at the particles that the Higgs boson decayed into, they could backtrack and find a range of masses that the Higgs boson could have. Thanks to a quantum property called the uncertainty principle, that range is inversely proportional to the particles lifetimeallowing the physicists to calculate the latter from the former.

According to their calculations, the Higgs bosons lifetime lies somewhere between 1.2 x 10-22 seconds and 4.4 x 10-22 seconds. Thats the most precise estimate of the Higgs bosons lifetime yet, aligning well with the 1.6 x 10-22 number that theorists predicted.

And, yet, its not precise enough for some physics.

Theres a possibility, for instance, that theres a strange, currently unknown exotic particle that the Higgs boson decays into, which the Standard Model doesnt account for. That would influence the Higgs bosons lifetimebut so subtly that even this calculation couldnt detect it.

This would be a tiny, tiny change in the lifetime value, says Vernieri. So we need, really, to measure the lifetime with very good precision.

Fortunately, particle physicists think they can get better in that regard. The precision of the measurement is expected to improve in the coming years with data from the next LHC runs and new analysis ideas, says Pascal Vanlaer, a physicist at CMS and one of the physicists behind the project, in a statement.

The first of those next runs is, according to plan, not too far in the future. Since 2018, the LHC has been shut down for a lengthy period called, fittingly, Long Shutdown 2. During that time, the collider and CERNs surrounding facilities have undergone a raft of upgrades. Following a disruption to that timetable caused by COVID-19, the collider is currently set to turn on again in February 2022.

And there are many other things about the Higgs boson that we still dont know for sure from how its produced to how it reacts to other particles to how it interacts with itself. To determine those features, not even the LHC may be sensitive enough.

We produce a Higgs boson every billion collisions at LHC, says Vernieri, and often, trying to see Higgs bosons means having to look through a whole sea of other particles. Its a very challenging environment to study, very precisely, particle production.

The key will be a cleaner environment to study the Higgs boson with higher precision, Vernieri says. Perhaps, then, thats a job for one of the LHCs proposed successors.

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Physicists close in on the exceedingly short life of the Higgs boson - Popular Science

Photo credit:Annie Spratt viaUnsplash.

Editors note: We are delighted to host a series by Neil Thomas, Reader Emeritus at the University of Durham: The Return to the God Paradigm, of which this article is the third entry. Thomas is reviewing three books:Is Atheism Dead?, by Eric Metaxas;Return of the God Hypothesis, by Stephen Meyer; andGod of the Details, byCristian Bandea.Find the full series here. Professor Thomass recent book isTaking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design.

Antony Flews intellectual journey from atheism to theism seems to represent the tip of a larger iceberg. In this book, Eric Metaxas notes that, however counterintuitive this might seem in an historical context, it is now science that is pushing back the argument against God (p. 38) on a variety of fronts which are collectively coming together to challenge the atheist hegemony. Not only biology but also cosmology with its finding of planet Earth to be a kind of cosmically ring-fenced Goldilocks zone1and quantum physics have all played a part in peoples questioning of the all-sufficiency of the materialist position.

Our profound but previously unacknowledged ignorance of what Lucretius termed the nature of things has been revealed by the work of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and others whose researches have left deep fissures in the Newtonian/Enlightenment paradigm and broken the dike of older scientific certitudes. Science needs a closed continuum of causes and effects to make proper predictions. Such conditions can no longer be delivered in the aftermath of advances in quantum physics. Whether we like it or not, the disconcerting concepts of discontinuity and indeterminacy have come to oust the comfortable notions of predictability and scientific absolutes associated with the mechanistic Newtonian universe.

Werner Heisenberg, renowned for introducing the famous Uncertainty Principle to an astonished world in 1927, was the first to establish that the rhythms and regularities of the larger Newtonian universe simply did not apply to the subatomic world. In the world of the very small it was possible only to work out the statistical probability of outcomes. In that microscopic world it was, for instance, not possible to measure the position of an object and its momentum at one and the same time. Newtonian logic (this being of course the only form of logic which would have been familiar to Darwin) has a strictly limited scope and applicability in a realm where only approximate knowledge is achievable and where the new watchword of probabilism reigns supreme.

A number of prominent scientists have drawn attention to the new and suddenly more imperfect understanding of reality which has been forcibly enjoined on us. Nobel laureate Christian de Duve, for instance, memorably described how physicists have been driven into such weird territories by their explorations that they are now far ahead of the most imaginative science fiction writers in the kind of cosmological scenarios they can envisage.2After advances in quantum mechanics with its (only) probabilistic laws, Niels Bohr and others claimed that it was necessary to revisit causality and even reality itself. Fritjof Capra made the startling claim that modern science and Oriental mysticism offered parallel insights into mankinds relationship with the world,3and Leif Jensen has made a similar claim for the ancient Indian Vedic philosophy.4In a comparable vein, early 20th century British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington claimed that religion became possible for a reasonable person in the year 1927 the significance of that date being of course that it was the year of the widespread promulgation of the Uncertainty Principle which essentially announced that all bets are off with regard to mankinds erstwhile claims to be able to perfectly understand and master Nature.

Such scientific discoveries dealt an uncompromising thrust against the materialist metanarrative which had gone unchallenged in Darwins day and for more than four decades following his death. Againstthe Enlightenment myth of the all-knowing mind with its confident overstatements, postmodernity has brought with it an apprehension that little in life can be regarded as unquestionably given. The radically new understanding we are all enjoined to adjust to and assimilate was described with unequivocal trenchancy by quantum physicist Carlo Rovelli:

Science is a passionate search for always newer ways to conceive the world. Its strength lies not in the certainties it reaches but in radical awareness of the vastness of our ignorance. This awareness allows us to keep questioning our knowledge and thus to continue learning. Therefore the scientific quest for knowledge is not nourished by certainty, it is nourished by a lack of certainty.5

With the advent of this new scientific and cultural awareness has come a distrust of simplistic intellectual nostrums. We are less likely now to accept on trust the siren songs of those promising to deliver to us The Answer on a silver salver.In the quest to explain perennial mysteries,it has been observed, absolute materialism does not triumph because it cannot fully explain the nature of reality.6Lifes most fundamental questions cannot be answered by resorting to the methods of strict methodological naturalism. To pretend that theycanprovide such answersleads only to a cul-de-sac of misguided scientism.

Next, Toward a New Natural Theology.

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The Tip of a Larger Iceberg - Discovery Institute

07 December 2021 | Alan Burkitt-Gray

Fujitsu and a company working with the International Space Station have been named as among the first users of Quantum Origin, whats claimed to be the worlds first commercial product built using quantum computers.

Cambridge Quantum, which is now part of the US-UK group Quantinuum, says it can fit quantum-level security to existing networks, including software-defined wide area networks (SD-WANs) from Fujitsu, which has incorporated the technology into its products.

Duncan Jones, head of cyber security at Cambridge Quantum, said last night: We are kick-starting the quantum cyber security industry. He said the company will start to distribute [quantum] keys into cloud platforms.

Houtan Houshmand, principal architect at Fujitsu, said his company was planning to incorporate the technology into its SD-WAN products.

David Zuniga, business development manager at Axiom Space, said the technology has been tested on the International Space Station (ISS) and would lead to space tourism with researchers and scientists [who] could do their work in space with total security.

Cambridge Quantum founder and Quantinuum CEO Ilyas Khan said: This product could be used by anyone.

He said it should be used by organisations worrying about the threat from people sequestering data storing encrypted information for the time when quantum computers will also be available to decrypt it.

You cannot afford to be asleep at the wheel, said Khan. When should we be worried? Of course, now. He said existing classical systems could be protected by a quantum computer.

Jones said that the Quantum Origin typical end point might be a hardware security module that could be added to existing infrastructure. For large enterprises to add this might be a year or two, he said. Smaller businesses were slightly further out.

On prices, he said that a typical key using existing technology costs about US$1 a month. He implied that a Quantum Origin key would be cheaper but did not go into details.

Fujitsus Houshmand was also asked about pricing. I cant provide a cost, he said, saying that what Fujitsu has done so far is just a proof of concept.

Jones said that Quantinuum, which is a joint venture of Cambridge Quantum and Honeywell, is forming a number of partnerships, naming military supplier Thalys and public key infrastructure (PKI) specialist Keyfactor. This is how the technology will diffuse into the market.

He said: We want to make this product broadly available, but accepted that there were global security considerations. There are export control laws. We have to do a lot of due diligence.

Zuniga at Axiom Space, which is training its own crew for the ISS and is planning its own private space station, said that the US operating segment of the ISS, where Quantum Origin is to be used, has a firewall to keep our data secure from the Russian sector. If we cant secure our data, it hurts a really expensive asset thats floating in space.

Khan, asked about possible exports to China and Russia, said: We are answerable to the regulators. We are an American and a British company. Were not actually able to sell to adversaries.

Houshmand at Fujitsu agreed: We have to stay rigidly compliant.

Elaborating on the technology, Jones said: Quantum Origin is a cloud-based platform that uses a quantum computer from Quantinuum to product cryptographic keys.

He was asked whether companies had five years, as is often suggested, to install quantum-level protection for their data. Theyre wrong by about five years, he said.

Jones said Quantum Origin keys are the strongest that have ever been created or could ever be created, because they use quantum physics to produce truly random numbers.

Khan noted that the beta version of Quantum Origin has been tested on an IBM quantum network.

Quantinuum and Cambridge Quantum has a number of clients that have tested the technology, but they are operating under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), said Khan.

We have been working for a number of years now on a method to efficiently and effectively use the unique features of quantum computers in order to provide our customers with a defence against adversaries and criminals now and in the future once quantum computers are prevalent, he said.

He added: Quantum Origin gives us the ability to be safe from the most sophisticated and powerful threats today as well threats from quantum computers in the future.

Jones said: When we talk about protecting systems using quantum-powered technologies, were not just talking about protecting them from future threats. From large-scale takedowns of organisations, to nation state hackers and the worrying potential of hack now, decrypt later attacks, the threats are very real today, and very much here to stay. Responsible enterprises need to deploy every defence possible to ensure maximum protection at the encryption level today and tomorrow.

A quantum of disruptiion: Capacity's feature about quantum technology, its threat to data security and what it is also doing to protect security, is here

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Fujitsu SD WAN and ISS are first users of quantum seciurity - Capacity Media

Rounding out their discussion at Theology Unleashed, neuropsychologist Mark Solms and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor talk about physicists who point a way forward:

A partial transcript of this portion, along with some notes, follows.

Summary to date: In the first portion, Solms, author of The Hidden Spring (2021), began by asserting in his opening statement that the source of consciousness in the brain is in fact in the brain stem, not the cerebral cortex, as is almost universally assumed. Dr. Egnor then responded that his clinical experience supports the view that brain is not mind.

Then Solms pointed to the reality that discussing the fact that the brain is not the mind can be a career-limiting move in neuroscience even though clinical experience supports the view. Egnor and Solms agreed that the further a neuroscientist gets from actual patients, the easier it is to adopt the view that the mind is just what the brain does (naturalism). Solms, who trained as a psychoanalyst as well, then described how he understands consciousness the capacity to feel things, for example, the redness of red (qualia) Talk then turned to the miraculous nature of life and Spinozas God., with Solms saying that he believes in Spinozas God, as did Albert Einstein. Egnor then explained why Christians see God as a Person: The most remarkable thing about us is personhood. The host, Arjuna, weighed in, offering a Hare Krishna view. All agreed that materialism is not a way forward in understanding our universe. And now we must look at our options.

Mark Solms: How did things come about? I found Karl Friston I dont hesitate for a moment to call him a genius. Hes written a brilliant monograph recently called A free energy principle for a particular physics, in which he addresses this question he draws also on the work of Markov and the concept of Markov blankets and how the Markov blanket defines what is and what is not part of the system.

Note: A Markov blanket is a way of understanding autonomous, self-organizing systems like the human mind: autonomous systems are hierarchically composed of Markov blankets of Markov blankets-all the way down to individual cells, all the way up to you and me, and all the way out to include elements of the local environment.

Mark Solms: The Markov blanket is an abstract concept of how we can think of thingness without having to be so concrete and materialistic about it. And are you familiar with John Wheeler? [01:37:00]

Michael Egnor: Im familiar with him as a great physicist. I dont know a lot about his philosophical perspectives. Its funny that so many of the physicists in that era Wheeler was a little after Heisenberg and so on, but so many Schrodinger, Einstein, Bohr, all those guys they were pretty good philosophers. They had some very deep insights.

Note: John Archibald Wheeler (19112008) was an American physicist who popularized the term black hole to describe a singularity in our universe that sucks up light. Like many physicists of his generation, Wheeler combined physics and philosophy: Time is what prevents everything from happening at once, We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is a participatory universe, and The universe gives birth to consciousness, and consciousness gives meaning to the universe.

Michael Egnor: And when you look at some of the modern physicists for example, Hawking, I think, was a terrible philosopher he wrote good popular science, but his philosophy was really nothing.

Note: In 2010, Stephen Hawking (19422018) and Leonard Mlodinow wrote a book, The Grand Design, (2010) that decried philosophy as dead: Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. The purpose of this book is to give the answers that are suggested by recent discoveries and theoretical advances. They lead us to a new picture of the universe and our place in it that is very different from the traditional one, and different even from the picture we might have painted just a decade or two ago. He restated this view in 2011. The view was widely criticized as not making allowances for the role of philosophy in shaping how we might even frame the questions we are asking.

As one analyst put it in 2010, those who disparage philosophy are usually slaves of some defunct philosopher.

Michael Egnor: And Weinberg, who just passed away recently, wrote some very good books, but his philosophical insights werent all that deep, it seems. Its kind of a shame, and I think the philosophical depth, at least in physics, has really gone down. [01:38:30]

Note: Nobelist Steven Weinberg (1933 2021) was fond of creating aphorisms like The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. and The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.

Mark Solms: Well then youre in for a treat if youre not familiar with Wheelers philosophical He was a student of Bohrs But also, my friend, George Ellis, hes a physicist whos got a proper philosophical mind.

Michael Egnor: Which I think is a proper scientific mind! You really cant do good science without grappling with these questions because all science depends on these questions, and if you dont even know the questions, then your science is really built on a weak foundation [01:39:30]

The discussion to date

Heres the first portion of the debate/discussion, where neuropsychologist Mark Solms shares his perspective: Consciousness: Is it in the cerebral cortex or the brain stem? In a recent discussion/debate with neurosurgeon Michael Egnor, neuropsychologist Mark Solms offers an unconventional but evidence-based view, favouring the brain stem. The evidence shows, says Mark Solms, author of The Hidden Spring, that the brain stem, not the cerebral cortex is the source of consciousness.

And Michael Egnor responds:

1.2. Neurosurgeon and neuropsychologist agree: Brain is not mind Michael Egnor tells Mark Solms: Neuroscience didnt help him understand people; quite the reverse, he had to understand people, and minds, to make sense of neuroscience. Egnor saw patients who didnt have most of their frontal lobes who were completely conscious, in fact, rather pleasant, bright people.

1.3. Then Solms admits what all know but few say: Neuroscientist: Mind is not just brain? Thats career limiting! Neuropsychologist Mark Solms and neurosurgeon Michael Egnor agreed that clinical experience supports a non-materialist view but that the establishment doesnt. Mark Solms: science is an incredibly rigid sort of its like a mafia. You have to go along with the rules of the Don, otherwise youve had it.

In the second portion, they offer definitions of consciousness:

2.1 Materialist neuroscientists dont usually see real patients. Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and neuropsychologist Mark Solms find common ground: The mind can be merely what the brain does in an academic paper. But not in life. Egnor takes a stab at defining consciousness: Following Franz Brentano, he says, A conscious state is an intentional state. Next, it will be Solmss turn.

2.2 A neuropsychologist takes a crack at defining consciousness. Frustrated by reprimands for discussing Big Questions in neuroscience, Mark Solms decided to train as a psychoanalyst as well. As a neuropsychologist, he sees consciousness, in part, as the capacity to feel things, what philosophers call qualia the redness of red.

Now, about God

3.1 Einstein believed in Spinozas God. Who is that God? Neuropsychologist Mark Solms admits that life is miraculous and sees Spinozas God, embedded in nature, as the ultimate explanation. In a discussion with Solms, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor argues that it makes more sense to see God as a Person than as a personification of nature.

3.2 Egnor and Solms: What does it mean to say God is a Person? Mark Solms and Michael Egnor discuss and largely agree on what we can rationally know about God, using the tools of reason. Egnor argues that, if the most remarkable thing about us is our personhood (I am), it Makes sense to think of God as a Person (I AM).

And why materialism is a dying idea

4.1 Why neuroscientist Solms is no materialist: Information theory He points out that, to begin with, Einsteins famous equation E equals MC squared makes the point that matter is derivative. Its a state of energy. In Solmss view, the true implications of quantum mechanics and information theory in refuting materialism are only beginning to be understood.

You may also wish to read: Your mind vs. your brain: Ten things to know

Read more from the original source:

Discovering the Non-Materialist Dimension in Science - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

image:Latifa Elouadrhiri view more

Credit: DOE's Jefferson Lab

Latifa Elouadrhiri has spent her career pursuing a passion for experimental physics, investing nearly three decades in work at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. She has also devoted herself to passing on her love of science to other women and underrepresented groups, including conferences that encourage undergraduate women to pursue physics degrees and careers.

Such efforts and her numerous professional successes havent gone unnoticed. Elouadrhiri was just presented with the 2021 Jesse W. Beams Research Award, which recognizes especially significant or meritorious research in physics that has earned the critical acclaim of peers from around the world. The award was established by the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS) in 1973. Elouadrhiri is only the second woman to receive it.

This is just a great honor for me and for the science we do, Elouadrhiri said. Not just me this award is also a recognition of the team of scientists, including the technical staff and the students, that started at Christopher Newport University and continues at Jefferson Lab.

Elouadrhiri first arrived at the lab in 1994 in a joint position with CNU. She joined the experimental hall staff in 2001, and today is senior staff scientist in Hall B.

Elouadrhiri and other experimentalists use the labs powerful Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) to probe ever deeper into the proton that sits inside the atomic nucleus. CEBAF is a DOE user facility built to support research in nuclear physics.

In 2018, the CEBAF completed an upgrade that doubled its top design energy to 12 billion electron-volts, or 12 GeV, providing unequaled access to the mysterious elements of subatomic matter. The upgrade also enabled the experimental program in Hall B to be restructured with a novel detector called CLAS12. Elouadrhiri oversaw the full lifecycle of CLAS12 construction and commissioning.

That same year, Elouadrhiri and her team were lauded for achieving the first measurement of the pressure distribution inside the proton a finding that the quarks that make up the proton are subject to a crushing pressure 10 times that in the heart of a neutron star. Their results were published in the journal Nature and opened up an entirely new direction of exploration in nuclear and particle physics.

In announcing the Beams award, the SESAPS selection committee cited Elouadrhiris fundamental and lasting contributions to the development of experimental equipment in forefront nuclear science.

I followed my heart

Elouadrhiris journey to Jefferson Lab was an unlikely one. She was born in Morocco, the sixth of eight children, to a mother who could neither read nor write but who believed in the power of education.

She had never been to school, but she had a vision, said Elouadrhiri. She could see far into the future and created the right environment for us, making education particularly for women as central. She understood the importance of educating girls and finding our way, and supported us in anything we did.

Of the eight siblings, seven would go to college and such careers as diplomat, physician, college professor, computer engineer, artist and economist.

Elouadrhiri took her first physics class in high school and was just fascinated by the topic. It combines mathematics, science and also some philosophy how the world works.

At age 15, at a local flea market, she acquired her first physics book: a work by Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist and 1932 Nobel laureate responsible for the namesake Heisenbergs uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.

And I was hooked, Elouadrhiri said. Since then, she said, that book travels with her everywhere.

She earned her undergraduate degree and then a masters in theoretical physics at Mohammed V University of Rabat. She moved to France to continue her studies toward a Ph.D., conducting experiments at the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre and also the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. She was accepted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for her first postdoctoral position.

It was during an American Physical Society meeting that her work caught the attention of Nathan Isgur, then chief scientist at Jefferson Lab when it was still known simply as CEBAF. Isgur invited her to give a seminar on her research, then suggested she apply for the joint JLab/CNU position.

She was offered that position at the same time another offer for a permanent position came from the prestigious French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

I just followed my heart, Elouadrhiri said. My heart told me that I should stay here.

The Beams award, she said, is a big recognition for the science that we do. It really inspires me and motivates me to further develop experimental techniques toward understanding the way protons and neutrons, which are the building blocks of all atomic nuclei, are held together by the strong force. And with the CLAS12 science program we will be building a deeper understanding of these forces.

Personally, this award now helps in sharing my love of scientific learning with women throughout the world, and also continuing my work in broadening scientific participation across genders, ethnicities, religions, cultures and geographies. Im very excited.

Further ReadingHall B Staff Bios - Latifa ElouadrhiriMoroccan Physicist Latifa Elouadrhiri Makes Ground-Breaking Nuclear Physics DiscoveryW&M, Jefferson Lab host conference to support women undergrads in physicsQuarks Feel the Pressure in the Proton

By Tamara Dietrich

-end-

Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

DOEs Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United Statesand is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visithttps://energy.gov/science.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Originally posted here:

A career built on the strongest force in the universe - EurekAlert

If you ask the average person to name one scientist from any time or place in history, one of the most common names youre likely to hear is Albert Einstein. The iconic physicist was responsible for a remarkable number of scientific advances during the 20th century, and perhaps single-handedly overthrew the Newtonian physics that had dominated scientific thought for more than 200 years. His most famous equation, E = mc, is so prolific that even people who dont know what it means can recite it. He won the Nobel Prize for advances in quantum physics. And his most successful idea the General theory of Relativity as our theory of gravity remains undefeated in all tests more than 100 years after Einstein first put it forth.

But what if Einstein had never existed? Would others have come along and made precisely the same advances? Would those advances have come quickly, or would they have taken such a long time that some of them might not have occurred, even at present? Would it have taken a genius of equal magnitude to bring his great achievements to fruition? Or do we severely overestimate just how rare and unique Einstein was, elevating him to an undeserved position in our minds based on the fact that he was simply in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills? Its a fascinating question to explore. Lets dive in.

Einstein had whats known as his miracle year in 1905, where he published a series of papers that would have revolutionary effects on a wide variety of areas in physics. But just prior to that, there were a great number of advances that had occurred recently, throwing many long-held assumptions about the Universe into great doubt. For over 200 years, Isaac Newton had stood unchallenged in the realm of mechanics: both in the terrestrial and celestial realms. His law of Universal Gravitation applied just as well to objects in the Solar System as it did to balls rolling down a hill or cannonballs fired from a cannon.

In the eyes of a Newtonian physicist, the Universe was deterministic. If you could write down the positions, momenta, and masses of every object in the Universe, you could calculate how each of them would evolve to arbitrary precisions at any moment in time. Additionally, space and time were absolute entities, and the gravitational force traveled at infinite speeds, with instantaneous effects. Throughout the 1800s, the science of electromagnetism was developed as well, uncovering intricate relationships between electric charges, currents, electric and magnetic fields, and even light itself. In many ways, particularly given the successes of Newton, Maxwell, and others, it seemed that physics was almost solved.

Until, that is, it wasnt. There were puzzles that seemed to hint at something new in many different directions. The first discoveries of radioactivity had already taken place, and it was realized that mass was actually lost when certain atoms decayed. The momenta of the decaying particles didnt appear to match the momenta of the parent particles, indicating that either something wasnt conserved or that something unseen was present. Atoms were determined to not be fundamental, but to be made of positively charged atomic nuclei and discrete, negatively charged electrons.

But there were two challenges to Newton that seemed, somehow, more important than all of the others.

The first confusing observation was the orbit of Mercury. Whereas all of the other planets obeyed Newtons laws to the limits of our precision in measuring them, Mercury did not. Despite accounting for the precession of the equinoxes and the effects of the other planets, Mercurys orbits failed to match predictions by a minuscule but significant amount. The extra 43 arc-seconds-per-century of precession led many to hypothesize the existence of Vulcan, a planet inner to Mercury, but none was there to be discovered.

The second was, perhaps, even more puzzling: when objects moved close to the speed of light, they no longer obeyed Newtons equations of motion. If you were on a train at 100 miles-per-hour and threw a baseball at 100 miles-per-hour in the forward direction, the ball would move at 200 miles-per-hour. This is what youd expect, intuitively, to occur, and also what does occur when you perform the experiment for yourself.

But if youre on a moving train, and you shine a beam of light in the forwards direction, the backwards direction, or any other direction, it always moves at the speed of light, regardless of how the train is moving. In fact, its also true regardless of how quickly the observer watching the light is moving.

Moreover, if youre on a moving train and you throw a ball, but the train and ball are both traveling close to the speed of light, addition doesnt work the way were used to. If the train moves at 60% the speed of light and you throw the ball forward at 60% the speed of light, it doesnt move at 120% the speed of light, but only at ~88% the speed of light. Although we were able to describe whats happening, we couldnt explain it. And thats where Einstein came onto the scene.

It was with this backdrop that Einstein came onto the scene. Although its difficult to condense the entirety of his achievements into even a single article, perhaps his most momentous discoveries and advances are as follows.

The equation E = mc: when atoms decay, they lose mass. Where does that mass go, if its not conserved? Einstein had the answer: it gets converted into energy. Moreover, Einstein had the correct answer: it gets converted, specifically, into the amount of energy described by his famous equation, E = mc. It works the other way as well; weve since created masses in the form of matter-antimatter pairs from pure energy based on this equation. In every circumstance its ever been tested under, E = mc is a success.

Special Relativity: When objects move close to the speed of light, how do they behave? In a variety of counterintuitive ways, but all described by the theory of Special Relativity. There is a speed limit to the Universe: the speed of light in a vacuum, and all massless entities in a vacuum move precisely at that speed. If you have mass, you can never reach, but only approach that speed, and the laws of Special Relativity dictate how objects moving near the speed of light accelerate, add-or-subtract in velocity, and how time dilates and lengths contract for them.

The photoelectric effect: When you shine direct sunlight on a piece of conducting metal, it can kick the most loosely-held electrons off of it. If you increase the lights intensity, more electrons get kicked off, while if you decrease the lights intensity, fewer electrons get kicked off. But heres where it gets weird: Einstein discovered that it wasnt based on the lights total intensity, but on the intensity of light above a certain energy threshold. Ultraviolet light only would cause the ionization, not visible or infrared, regardless of the intensity. Einstein showed that lights energy was quantized into individual photons, and the number of ionizing photons determined how many electrons got kicked off; nothing else would do it.

General Relativity: This was the biggest, most hard-fought revolution of all: a new theory of gravity governing the Universe. Space and time were not absolute, but made a fabric that all objects, including all forms of matter and energy, traveled through. Spacetime would curve and evolve owing to the presence and distribution of matter and energy, and that curved spacetime told matter and energy how to move. When put to the test, Einsteins relativity succeeded where Newton failed, explaining Mercurys orbit and predicting how starlight would deflect during a solar eclipse. Since it was first proposed, General Relativity has never been experimentally or observationally contradicted.

In addition to this, there were many other advances that Einstein himself played a major role in initiating. He discovered Brownian motion; he co-discovered the statistical rules under which boson particles operated; he contributed substantially to the foundations of quantum mechanics through the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox; and he arguably invented the idea of wormholes through the Einstein-Rosen bridge. His scientific career of contributions was truly legendary.

And yet, there are many reasons to believe that despite the unparalleled career that Einstein had, the full suite of advances that were made by Einstein would have been made by others in very short order without him. Its impossible to know for certain, but for all that we laud the genius of Einstein, and hold him up as a singular example of how one incredible mind can change our conception of the Universe as he, in fact, actually did pretty much everything that occurred on account of Einstein would have occurred without him just as well.

Prior to Einstein, back in the 1880s, physicist J.J. Thomson, discoverer of the electron, began thinking that the electric and magnetic fields of a moving, charged particle must carry energy with them, and attempted to quantify the amount of that energy. It was complicated, but a simplified set of assumptions allowed Oliver Heaviside to make a calculation: he determined the amount of effective mass that a charged particle carried was proportional to the electric field energy (E) divided by the speed of light (c) squared. Heaviside had a proportionality constant in there of 4/3 that was different from the true value of 1 in his 1889 calculation, as would Fritz Hasenhrl in 1904 and 1905. Henri Poincar independently derived E = mc in 1900, but didnt understand the implications of his derivations.

Without Einstein, we were already perilously close to his most famous equation; it seems unrealistic to expect we wouldnt have gotten the rest of the way there in short order had he not come along.

Similarly, we were already extremely close to Special Relativity. The Michelson-Morley experiment had demonstrated that light always moved at a constant speed, and had disproven the most popular aether models. Hendrik Lorentz had already uncovered the transformation equations that determined how velocities added and how time dilated, and independently along with George FitzGerald, determined how lengths contracted in the direction-of-motion. In many ways, these were the building blocks that led Einstein to develop the theory of Special Relativity, but it was, in fact, Einstein who put it together. Again, its difficult to imagine that Lorentz, Poincar, and others working at the interface of electromagnetism and the speed of light wouldnt have taken similar leaps to arrive at this profound conclusion. Even without Einstein, we were already so close.

Max Plancks work with light set the stage for the discovery of the photoelectric effect; it surely would have occurred with or without Einstein.

Fermi and Dirac worked out the statistics for fermions (the other type of particle, besides bosons) while it was Satyendra Bose who worked them out for the particles that bear his name; Einstein was merely the recipient of Boses correspondence.

Quantum mechanics, arguably, would have developed just as well in the absence of Einstein.

But General Relativity is the big one. With Special Relativity already under his belt, Einstein set about to fold in gravity. While Einsteins equivalence principle the realization that gravitation caused an acceleration, and that all accelerations were indistinguishable to the observer is what led him there, with Einstein himself calling it his happiest thought that left him unable to sleep for three days, others were thinking along the same lines.

Of all the advances that Einstein made, this was the one that his peers were farthest behind when he put it forth. Still, although it might have taken many years or even decades, the fact that others were already so close to thinking precisely along the same lines as Einstein leads us to believe that even if Einstein had never existed, General Relativity would eventually have fallen into the realm of human knowledge.

We typically have a narrative in how science advances: that one individual, through a sheer stroke of genius, spots the key advance or way of thinking that everyone else had missed. And that without that one individual, humanity would never have gained that remarkable knowledge that was stored away, just waiting to come out, in the mind of that key, brilliant realization.

Only, when we examine the situation in greater detail, we find that a great many individuals were often nipping at the heels of that discovery just before it was made. In fact, when we go back through history, we find that many people had similar realizations to one another at about the same time. Alexei Starobinskii put many of the pieces of inflation together before Alan Guth did; Georges Lematre and Howard Robertson put together the expanding Universe before Hubble did; even Sin-Itiro Tomonaga worked out the calculations of quantum electrodynamics before Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman did.

Einstein was the first to cross the finish line on a number of independent and remarkable scientific fronts, but had he never come along, many others were close behind him. He may have possessed every bit of dazzling genius that we often attribute to him, but one thing is almost certain: genius is not as unique and rare as we often assume it to be. With a lot of hard work and a little luck, almost any properly trained scientist can make a revolutionary breakthrough simply by stumbling upon the right realization at the right time.

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What if Einstein never existed? - Big Think