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How does a magnet work? Here's the best answer science has: it just does. This according to a recent write-up at DiscoverMagazine.com.
Legend has it that Albert Einstein's scientific curiosity was first inspired by gazing at a compass (which is driven by magnetes). He said this was the first time he realized there was "something behind things, something deeply hidden." He would go on to find many of the hidden stuff behind things. But magnetism was a puzzle he never solved.
According to the Discover piece, "nobody knows how a magnet can move a piece of metal without touching it." The author refers to this as "embarrassing" for modern physics. And how. Despite the gap in knowledge, marvels the article, "nobody seems to care."
Each year, an adult has a 1-in-1,743 chance of being killed in an accident. This according to a short piece at Discover. Chances are lower if you’re a kid. Nine-year-olds have 1-in-10,000 odds. I wonder if those same odds apply to kids with lead-packing toys from China? Well, if you’re an executive at a company that makes those toys, I bet your odds are definitely lower.
Scottish scientists at the University of St Andrew have discovered a way to reverse the “Casimir effect,” a force that governs matter at the atomic level. Sounds abstract, yes, but the Casimir effect, also known as the “dry glue” effect, allows geckos to walk across the ceiling. This according to a report today at the Telegraph. And you thought geckos used suction cups on their finger tips! (Um, I did.)
By reversing the Casimir effect with a “special lens,” scientists have achieved “incredible levitation effects.” Though they’re not saying what exactly they’re levitating or for how long. No, it’s not human beings. Researchers say levitating people is a “long way off.” But that doesn’t make this breakthrough any less significant.
The Casimir effect is referred to by one expert as “the ultimate cause of friction in the nano-world.” With the ability to manipulate this effect, scientists can keep nanoparticles from sticking together. This stickiness has caused headaches for scientists “trying to build electrical circuits and tiny mechanical devices on silicon chips, among other things.” Now, “micro or nano machines could run smoother and with less or no friction.”
An interesting side note: earlier work by the same team of scientists showed that, in theory, objects can be cloaked. Yes, in the Star Trek-sense of the word. The theory suggests light waves can be manipulated to “flow around an object - just as a river flows undisturbed around a smooth rock.”
Before we get to why the Higgs is so important, why it’s referred to as the “God Particle,” let me tell you about the “standard model.”
According to an old article at Wired, “physicists base their whole understanding of matter” on the standard model. It describes how three of the four know forces in the universe work: strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetic (the one force it doesn’t describe is gravity). The standard model links forces to particles:
- Strong nuclear is governed by gluons
- Weak nuclear is governed by W and Z bosons
- Electromagnetic is governed by phontons
We now know that particles like gluons and W bosons exist because researchers have “observed” them. But before they were observed, the standard model predicted they would exist. Other particles predicted by the standard model that have since been observed are Z bosons, top quarks and charm quarks.
Another particle predicted by the theory, which has not yet been observed, is the Higgs boson. And here’s why that’s important to the standard model. So far, we don’t know why all these particles -- gluons, charm quarks, etc. -- have any mass. We don’t know why they weigh anything. But it’s believed the Higgs boson holds (at least part of) the answer. Until we find this answer, many truly fundamental questions (like those relating to our very existence) remain unanswered.
"Without the Higgs, all fundamental particles would be massless, and the universe would be very different,” one researcher told Wired. “The elemental composition of the cosmos would be radically different, stars would shine differently, and we probably wouldn't exist."
To find the Higgs, it would take an explosion resembling the “blizzard of energies and particles” of the Big Bang, reported the Boston Globe earlier this year. To create and study such an explosion, the European Organization for Nuclear research has poured $8 billion (the GDP of Nepal) and summoned 7,000 researchers (half or all particle physicists in the world) to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). You may have heard this project referred to as CERN. And its aim is to “yield astonishing glimpses into black holes, hidden dimensions, and other mysteries of space-time” by “recreating the universe's first trillionth of a second,” reports the Globe.
To recreate the split-second mega blizzard that started it all, literally, CERN researchers will fire streams of protons into each other at 99.9 percent the speed of light (around 186,000 miles per second). When this collision occurs, 600 million protons will be crashing together per second and all manner of subatomic debris will be flying in every possible direction. Scientists hope that some of this debris will be Higgs bosons.
The LHC will be fired up later this year and hit full potential in early 2008.
I read today about something called the Copernican Principle at the NY Times. I won’t even try to explain it in a blog posting (I don’t even fully understand it myself), but when applied to the tenure of world leaders in 1993, it will achieve 95 percent accuracy assuming none stays in office past the age of 100.
The principle is based on how long something has lasted already. So if you look at how long Broadway plays typically run, the Copernican Principle can estimate the run of any other play within 95 percent certainty. According to the Times, the Copernican Principle has actually worked on plays as well as the lifespan of newspapers and dogs.
Now if this principle is applied to the longevity of humankind, we find we have between 5,100 and 7.8 million years left on this planet. But I’m not sure how well the Copernican Principle applies here. What other species on earth are like humans? I don’t mean to be arrogant, but am I wrong to imply that if any species on earth can beat the odds, its homo sapiens?
Another thing suggested by the Copernican Principle is that there’s a 50 percent chance that we only have 46 years of space exploration left. I found this troubling. To be honest, I never thought we’d stop exploring space. But it has happened before, that a civilization ends its age of exploration (China is the example given in the article).
If we do stop exploring space, and we are confined to the Earth, then maybe we are just another species.
