Of Particular Significance

Author: Matt Strassler

Likelihood of Auroras Tonight (March 24-25)

[Note Added: 9:30pm Eastern] Unfortunately this storm has consisted of a very bright spike of high activity and a very quick turnoff. It might restart, but it might not. Data below shows recorded activity in three-hour intervals — and the red or very high orange is where you’d want things to be for mid-latitude auroras.

*The current solar storm has so far only had a high but brief spike, and might be over already.*

Quick note: a powerful double solar flare from two groups of sunspots occurred on Friday. This in turn produced a significant blast of subatomic particles and magnetic field, called a Coronal Mass Ejection [CME], which headed in the direction of Earth. This CME arrived at Earth earlier than expected — a few hours ago — which also means it was probably stronger than expected, too. For those currently in darkness and close enough to the poles, it is probably generating strong auroras, also known as the Northern and Southern Lights.

No one knows how long this storm will continue, but check your skies tonight if you are in Europe especially, and possibly North America as well. The higher your latitude and the earlier your nightfall compared to now, the better your chances.

The ACE satellite, located between the Earth and Sun at a distance from Earth approximately 1% of the Sun-Earth distance, recorded the arrival of the CME a few hours ago as a jump in a number of its readings.

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 24, 2024

What are Fields?

One of the most challenging aspects of writing a book or blog about the universe (as physicists currently understand it) is that both writer and reader must confront the concept of fields. The problem isn’t that fields are intrinsically that complicated. It’s that they are an unfamiliar abstraction — and novel abstractions of any sort are always difficult both for a writer to describe and for a reader to grasp.

What I’ll do today is give an explanation of fields that is complementary to the one that appears in the book’s chapters 13 and 14. The book’s approach is slow, methodical, and detailed, but today’s will be more of an overview, brief and relatively shallow, and presented in a different order. You will likely come away with many unanswered questions, but the book should help with that. And if the book and today’s post combined are still not enough, you can ask a question in the comments below, or on the book question page.

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 21, 2024

Yes, Standing Waves Can Exist Without Walls

After my post last week about familiar and unfamiliar standing waves — the former famous from musical instruments, the latter almost unknown except to physicists (see Chapter 17 of the book) — I got a number of questions. Quite a few took the form, “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Strassler! Obviously, if you have a standing wave in a box, and you remove the box, it will quickly disintegrate into traveling waves that move in opposite directions! There is no standing wave without a container.”

Well, I’m not joking. These waves are unfamiliar, sure, to the point that they violate what some readers may have learned elsewhere about standing waves. Today I’ll show you animations to prove it.

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 19, 2024

Resources for Readers of the Book

A quick note today about developments here at the website. The Reader Resources section of the site is slowly coming into being. These resources will supplement the book Waves in an Impossible Sea, providing answers to questions, opportunities to explore topics more deeply, access to endnotes (convenient for the upcoming audiobook and for readers who hate flipping back and forth between main text and endnotes), and access to figures (also convenient for the audiobook.)

First and foremost, though: readers’ questions!

If you’re confused about something in the book, ask about it here.
If you have a question that is related to the book but goes somewhat beyond its topics, consider asking about it here. (That will help me keep things better organized.)

I’ll be collecting questions and answering the most common in the reader resource materials. Those materials will be organized by book chapter. As an example, the post from last week on standing waves, which focuses on a central ingredient in the book, is already linked from the Chapter 17 section of the Reader Resources.

It’s going to take the better part of a year to fill out this new section of the website. I’ll be posting about it here on the blog as stuff comes available, so that you can check it out when it arrives.

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 18, 2024

Searching For SUEP at the LHC

Recently, the first completed search for what is nowadays known as SUEP — a Soft-Unclustered-Energy Pattern, in which large numbers of low-energy particles explode outward from one of the proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] — was made public by physicists working at the CMS experiment. As a theoretical idea, SUEP has its origin in 2006-2008, but it was this paper from 2016 that finally brought the possibility to widespread attention. (However, the name they gave it was unfortunate. To replace it, the acronym “SUEP” was invented.)

How can SUEP arise? If a proton-proton collision produces currently-unknown types of particles that

do not interact with ordinary matter directly (i.e. they are immune to the electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces),
but do interact with each other, via their own, ultra-powerful force,

they can cause that collision to turn to SUEP.

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 15, 2024

Why a Partial Solar Eclipse is Totally Awesome!

On April 8th, 2024, a small strip of North America will witness a total solar eclipse. Total solar eclipses are amazing, life-changing experiences; I hope you have a chance to experience one, as I did.

Everyone else from Central America to northern Canada will see a partial solar eclipse. What good is a partial solar eclipse?

Astonishingly, the best thing about a partial solar eclipse seems to have essentially disappeared from public knowledge. We’ve got three weeks to change that, and I hope you’ll help me — especially the science journalists and science teachers among you.

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 14, 2024

A Wave That Stands On Its Own

Already I’ve had a few people ask me for clarification of a key point in the book, having to do with a certain type of unusual “standing wave.” It’s so central to the story that I’ve decided to address it right away.

The point that there are two quite different types of standing waves; the familiar ones you may know from musical instruments or from physics class, and less familiar ones that play a key role in the book. You can jump right to my new webpage comparing these two types of standing waves, or you can read the post below, which provides more context.

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 12, 2024

CERN’s Giant New Particle Accelerator: Is It Worth It?

About a month ago, there was a lot of noise, discussion and controversy concerning CERN‘s proposal to build a giant new tunnel and put powerful new particle accelerators in it. This proposal is collectively called the Future Circular Collider (“FCC”). (The BBC reported on it here.)

Some scientists made arguments that FCC is a great idea, based on reasoning that I somewhat disagree with. Others said it would be a waste of money, based on reasoning that I again disagree with. But any decision on whether to actually fund the building of the FCC’s tunnel is still some years off, so I was reluctant to get involved in the debate, especially since my nuanced opinion seemed likely to be drowned out amid the polemics.

But I did eventually write something in response to a reporter’s questions, and looking back on it, I think it may be of interest to some readers. So here it is.

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 8, 2024

Quick Answers to Some Questions About the Book

I’m aiming to get the blog back to science as soon as possible, but I need to answer some questions that I’ve been receiving about the book and website.

Yes, there will be an audiobook. It’s coming. A few weeks. I’ll let you know.
Yes, there will be a page on this website where book-readers can ask questions about the subjects covered in the book. No later than next week. I doubt I’ll be able to answer all questions individually, but I’ll be collecting them and answering the most common… see below.

In fact, there will soon be a whole wing of this website devoted to the book, which will have

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 7, 2024

A Relatively Important Question from a Reader

Recently, a reader raised a couple of central questions about speed and relativity. Since the answers are crucial to an understanding of Einstein’s relativity in particular and of the cosmos in general, I thought I’d bring them to your attention, in case you’ve had similar questions.

The Questions

I understand that the vacuum speed of light [“c“] is constant throughout the Universe, and I’m familiar with the math that shows that the energy required to accelerate a particle becomes infinite as the speed approaches c. But what physical effect enforces this behavior? If a proton, for example, gets ejected in a supernova explosion, how does it “know” that it’s getting close to c and can’t go any faster?

And as a corollary to this question, what is the reference frame for measuring these relativistic velocities? For example, when a particle beam at CERN is said to be moving at 99.99% the speed of light, is that speed relative to the infrastructure at CERN? Or does it somehow account for the velocity components that arise from the rotation of the Earth, the orbital motion of the Earth around the Sun, the galactic motion of the Sun in the Milky Way, and so on?…

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POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON March 6, 2024

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