A Primer on the Large Hadron Collider and Particle Physics

The New York Times’ DENNIS OVERBYE has this interesting primer on particle physics.

For those whose physics knowledge was a bit rusty, the news about the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest physics machine, might have been puzzling. … Yes, the collider finally crashed subatomic particles into one another last week, but why, exactly, is that important? Here is a primer on the collider – with just enough information, hopefully, to impress guests at your next cocktail party …

Let’s be basic. What does a particle physicist do?

Particle physicists have one trick that they do over and over again, which is to smash things together and watch what comes tumbling out.

What does it mean to say that the collider will allow physicists to go back to the Big Bang? Is the collider a time machine?

Physicists suspect that the laws of physics evolved as the universe cooled from billions or trillions of degrees in the first moments of the Big Bang to superfrigid temperatures today (3 degrees Kelvin) — the way water changes from steam to liquid to ice as temperatures decline. As the Earth cooled, physicists suspect, everything became more complicated. Particles and forces once indistinguishable developed their own identities, the way Spanish, French and Italian diverged from the original Latin.

By crashing together subatomic particles — protons — physicists create little fireballs that revisit the conditions of these earlier times and see what might have gone on back then, sort of like the scientists in Jurassic Park reincarnating dinosaurs.

The collider, which is outside Geneva, is 17 miles around. Why is it so big?

Einstein taught us that energy and mass are equivalent. So, the more energy packed into a fireball, the more massive it becomes. The collider has to be big and powerful enough to pack tremendous amounts of energy into a proton.

Moreover, the faster the particles travel, the harder it is to bend their paths in a circle, so that they come back around and bang into each other. The collider is designed so that protons travel down the centers of powerful electromagnets that are the size of redwood trunks, which bend the particles’ paths into circles, creating a collision. Although the electromagnets are among the strongest ever built, they still can’t achieve a turning radius for the protons of less than 2.7 miles.

All in all, the bigger the accelerator, the bigger the crash, and the better chance of seeing what is on nature’s menu.

What are physicists hoping to see?

According to some theories, a whole list of items that haven’t been seen yet — with names like gluinos, photinos, squarks and winos — because we haven’t had enough energy to create a big enough collision.

Any one of these particles, if they exist, could constitute the clouds of dark matter, which, astronomers tell us, produce the gravity that holds galaxies and other cosmic structures together.

Another missing link of physics is a particle known as the Higgs boson, after Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh, which imbues other particles with mass by creating a cosmic molasses that sticks to them and bulks them up as they travel along, not unlike the way an entourage forms around a rock star when they walk into a club.

Have scientists ever seen dark matter?

It’s invisible, but astronomers have deduced from their measurements of galactic motions that the visible elements of the cosmos, like galaxies, are embedded in huge clouds of it.

Will physicists see these gluinos, photinos, squarks and winos?

There is no guarantee that any will be discovered, which is what makes science fun, as well as nerve-racking.

So how much energy do you need to create these fireballs?

At the Large Hadron Collider, that energy is now 3.5 trillion electron volts per proton — about as much energy as a flea requires to do a pushup. That may not sound like much, but for a tiny proton, it is a lot of energy. It is the equivalent of a 200-pound man bulking up by 700,000 pounds.

What’s an electron volt?

An electron volt is the amount of energy an electron would gain passing from the negative to the positive side of a one-volt battery. It is the basic unit of energy and of mass preferred by physicists.

When protons collide, is there a big bang?

There is no sound. It’s not like a bomb exploding.

In previous trials, there was an actual explosion.

All that current is dangerous. During the testing of the collider in September 2008, the electrical connection between a pair of the giant magnets vaporized. There are thousands of such connections in the collider, many of which are now believed to be defective. As a result the collider can only run at half-power for the next two years.

Could the collider make a black hole and destroy the Earth?

The collider is not going to do anything that high-energy cosmic rays have not done repeatedly on Earth and elsewhere in the universe. There is no evidence that such collisions have created black holes or that, if they have, the black holes have caused any damage. According to even the most speculative string theory variations on black holes, the Large Hadron Collider is not strong enough to produce a black hole.

Too bad, because many physicists would dearly like to see one.

via A Primer on the Large Hadron Collider and Particle Physics – NYTimes.com.

New Studies Eat Into Diet Math

How many calories must a dieter cut to lose a pound?

The answer most dietitians have long provided is 3,500. But recent studies indicate that calories can’t be converted into weight through a simple formula.

The result is that the 3,500-calorie rule of thumb gets things very wrong over the long term, and has led health analysts astray. Much bigger dietary changes are needed to gain or shed pounds than the formula suggests.

Consider the chocolate-chip-cookie fan who adds one 60-calorie cookie to his daily diet. By the old math, that cookie would add up to six pounds in a year, 60 pounds in a decade and hundreds of pounds in a lifetime.

But new research—based on studies of volunteers whose calorie consumption is observed in laboratory settings, rather than often-unreliable food diaries—suggests that the body’s self-regulatory mechanisms tamp down the effects of changes in diet or behavior. If the new nutritional science is applied, the cookie fiend probably will see his weight gain approach six pounds, and then level off, pediatrician David Ludwig and nutrition scientist Martijn Katan wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year.

Rewriting the math on weight change has major implications for efforts to fight obesity.

New York City officials estimated that a local law requiring chain restaurants to post calorie information about their menu items, which took effect in 2008, would reduce the number of obese city residents by at least 150,000 over five years. That law was a model for a national measure included in the recently passed health-care bill. But the estimate of obesity reduction was built on the old calorie math.

“There is a growing body of literature that shows [weight loss is] more complex” than a pound per 3,500 calories, says Lynn Silver, assistant commissioner of the New York City Health Department’s bureau of chronic disease prevention and control. Dr. Silver says the city has recognized the new science by couching its statements about obesity reduction with phrases such as “up to,” rather than “at least.”

Revising the formula also alters the math for one substantially overweight woman who had launched a well-publicized effort to become more obese.

Donna Simpson wants to drastically change her food environment. The Old Bridge, N.J., woman weighs 604 pounds, according to published reports last month, and hopes to reach 1,000 pounds to challenge world records. To hit her goal, she has said she will consume 12,000 calories every day. (Ms. Simpson declined to comment through a publicist.)

Under the 3,500-calorie-a-pound formula, that ample diet would allow Ms. Simpson to gain two pounds a day, says Beth Lanzisera, a dietitian in Cranford, N.J., meaning she would reach her total weight goal within seven months.

“It’s just a rough estimate,” says Ms. Lanzisera. “Everybody’s body is certainly very different.”

The 3,500-calorie-rule makes sense in short time frames with small diet changes, nutrition experts say. Fat has about 4,500 calories per pound, and protein has about 2,000. Thus a pound of body mass that is approximately 25% lean tissue, such as protein- and water-rich muscle, and 75% fatty tissue contains about 3,500 calories of energy.

But just as the body requires less fuel to power itself as weight declines, it requires more to create and sustain more weight. That self-correcting process would delay Ms. Simpson from breaking the 1,000-pound barrier until almost 11 months had elapsed, says Kevin Hall, a biophysicist with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health.

“What people used to say you would gain in a year is what you would gain after an infinite amount of time,” says Dr. Hall of weight gain from dietary changes. …

via New Studies Eat Into Diet Math – WSJ.com.

Today is do your taxes day

For those of us who spend several days sifting through boxes of receipts and random documents, collecting everything we need from the past year, today is do your taxes day. As far as software, I plan once again to use the $20 TaxACT software (or free if your needs are simple).

Will the $20 “Ultimate” version of TaxACT work if I had a Short Sale and have a Schedule C business, sole proprietorship? I think so. I may still have to go to a tax firm to be certain my short sale is handled correctly, but I’m doing this as a start.

As a side note, going through old papers revives a lot of old memories!

Snake Legs and the Creationist Response

It’s a commonly known fact (at last I hope it’s commonly known) that certain members of the boa/python family still have remnants of their hind legs. To the person whose entire well-being isn’t pinned on the notion that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago by a supreme deity who specifically created them, then gave the angels a high-five for his wonderful accomplishment, 5 minutes of reading will make it clear that snakes evolved from a legged reptile. Indeed, creationists have a ‘rebuttal’ for this.

Now, if you’re a creationist, you’re conditioned to believe that these things are “just arguments” and that the entire evolution-creation thing is just a game of Argumentative “tit for tat.” However, the facts are the facts, and whether or not you choose to accept them, “arguments” like these are well known facts in the world of biology and paleontology.

Let’s start off with what a well-researched ‘evolutionist’ (I feel silly even using the word) already knows, so that the creationist can get a sense of just how silly these creationist articles really are.

-Certain snakes of the boa/python family have remnants of hind legs.

-At least one ‘transitional’ has been found. A ‘snake’ with legs (more defined than in boas and pythons, but nothing like, say, a common lizard) and hips.

-Many animals, reptiles and all, use their legs during courtship. Even humans are known for using their limbs during courtship (or so I’ve heard…)

-Snakes have no neck vertebrae, they are purely thoratic and abdominal. For this reason, they have no remnants of forelimbs (in other words, they clearly lost their forelimbs before completely losing their hind limbs).

-At some point in their embryonic development, snakes have all 4 legs and only in certain pythons are they not all completely reabsorbed.

Now let’s look at this Dr Dino ‘rebuttal’ article;

http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=100

Note the number of silly arguments. …

via Snakes with Legs and the Creationist Response – Evolution Jihad’s MySpace Blog.

the complex systems we see around us are a result of billions of years, which if you think about it, is impossible to really comprehend given the fact that our lifetimes only amount to several decades. Watches on the other hand, are created in an obviously overwhelmingly shorter amount of time than this. To the evolutionist, the watchmaker argument is silly at best, but to the creationist, it makes perfect sense. So for creationists, I highly recommend The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins in hope of their eventual enligtenment.

Facebook claimants vow to continue legal action

The two Americans who were awarded millions of dollars after claiming they had come up with the idea for Facebook say their legal battle isn’t over.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss studied at Harvard University alongside Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, where they started a site called ConnectU.

In 2008 a protracted legal battle between the two sides ended with the payment of an undisclosed sum.

Facebook said that that it now considers “the matter concluded”.

The Winklevoss twins spoke to the BBC on the eve of the Boat Race, in which they will both row for Oxford.

Cameron Winklevoss refused to confirm the extent of the 2008 settlement – thought to be $65m – but said:  “I think it is safe to say the chapter is not closed on the matter.”

“It was really just a sense of shock,” said Tyler Winklevoss. “It turned into how can we right this wrong.”

The settlement of the battle between Facebook and ConnectU involved the award of Facebook shares to the Winklevoss twins.

The continuing dispute appears to centre on the value of those shares in a company which has not been publicly floated.

In a statement about the dispute Facebook told the BBC:

“The settlement has been enforced by the courts and attempts to delay that decision have been denied twice.

“We hope that discussion of spurious and false allegations and other matters that were concluded years ago are not distracting anyone from their preparations for the race. We consider the matter concluded.”

The brothers also revealed that after years of avoiding the social network they themselves have joined Facebook.

via BBC News – Facebook claimants vow to continue legal action.

Palladium is up Again! Buy a Palladium coin.

If you followed my advice a few days ago you should be happy right now. I said two days ago at $475.50 that palladium was on the way up. Today it is at $492.50/oz.

Coins are great. Even if the price goes down there is something satisfying and reassuring about holding a single coin worth that much… especially when it can magically gain $20 in value in two days.

This price is probably only good for a few days.  I will likely pull this offer down  soon.

OFFER REMOVED. YOU MISSED YOUR CHANCE. SORRY. Since I made this offer to sell for $580, the price has climbed to $790/oz. So, you could have made $110 if you had $580 to spend on one of these coins. Not a bad 10 month return on investment.

Correction: Did I say they are up to $492.50, well, they went up again since I wrote that. Now they are at $517 and rising… This is why I can only offer them at this price for a short time. If you want a lot of them at once, go with Monex. If they have them (they often don’t), you can expect long delays. They don’t ship quickly. I can sell you one (no more than 5 please) and ship quickly.

Palladium Canadian Maple Leaf – Recent years have given rise to a renewal in the investment demand for palladium. … In recent years palladium has been a very lucrative asset wielding investor’s respectable returns. Palladium, just a few years ago reached a high of $1,100 an ounce, nearly four times the price of gold at the time, but today is selling for a mere fraction of that amount.

…

The coin is struck in pure .9995 fine palladium at the Royal Canadian Mint …. Each coin is manufactured to meet the high quality standards of the Royal Canadian Mint, and the weight, purity and face value of each coin are all guaranteed by the Canadian government.

Spacewoman power: 4 women in orbit at same time

Space is about to have a female population explosion.

One woman already is circling Earth in a Russian capsule, bound for the International Space Station. Early Monday morning, NASA will attempt to launch three more women to the orbiting outpost — along with four men — aboard shuttle Discovery.

It will be the most women in space at the same time.

Men still will outnumber the women by more than 2-to-1 aboard the shuttle and station, but that won’t take away from the remarkable achievement, coming 27 years after America’s first female astronaut, Sally Ride, rocketed into space.

A former schoolteacher is among the four female astronauts about to make history, as well as a chemist who once worked as an electrician, and two aerospace engineers. Three are American; one is Japanese.

But it makes no difference to educator-astronaut Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger’s 3-year-old daughter Cambria.

“To her, flying is cool. Running around is being cool. Just learning and growing up as a kid is cool. There aren’t a lot of distinctions, and that’s how I want it to be,” said Metcalf-Lindenburger, 34, who used to teach high school science in Vancouver, Wash.

Indeed, the head of NASA’s space operations was unaware of the imminent women-in-space record until a reporter brought it up last week. Three women have flown together in space before, but only a few times.

“Maybe that’s a credit to the system, right? That I don’t think of it as male or female,” said space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier. “I just think of it as a talented group of people going to do their job in space.” …

via Spacewoman power: 4 women in orbit at same time – Yahoo! News.