Of Particular Significance

Blog – Of Particular Significance

How the Higgs Field Does Its Thing

Last week I finished up a set of articles explaining what Fields and “Particles” are. These articles require a small amount of math and physics, the sort you’d get in an advanced pre-university or a beginning university course.

[Articles with no technical requirements will come soon; in the meantime, try my widely read article on Why the Higgs Particle Matters.]

The Particles and Fields articles are a prerequisite to the next set of articles, which will explain what the (simplest type of) Higgs field is and how it does what it does. The first article, just completed, outlines the basic idea. Future articles to appear over coming days and weeks will fill in many details.

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON September 24, 2012

Two Major Steps Forward

Apologies to those who’ve been asking questions: I’ve been away from the website for a few days (family matters) and have not been able to keep up with comments. I will try to catch up over the coming day or two.

But I do have two pieces of good news.

First, I gave a public lecture over the weekend, on-line, called “The Quest for the Higgs”, which I believe many of my readers will find at the right level. Because of some technical difficulties with the sound recording, I didn’t immediately recommend that you listen; but those problems are now fixed and the sound is pretty good. The audio is to be found here at BlogTalkRadio, through the Virtually Speaking Science series; on that website, there’s a link to the slides accompanying the talk, or you can just click here to get them. [Note the slides are under copyright; please ask permission before reproducing or using ideas you find therein.]

Second, the long-awaited final article in the series on Particles and Fields (with a little math) has arrived.

As a bonus, you can then find out what the key technical difference is between bosons and fermions (the consequences of this difference are described, without technicalities, here.)

Next month: a series of articles on How the Higgs Field Works.

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON September 13, 2012

What Fields Are (& a Public Talk Saturday)

To the five articles in my very-slightly-mathy series on Fields and Particles [sorry, the non-mathy series will be probably appear a couple of months from now] I have now added a 6th:

Meanwhile, I remind you that I’m giving a talk on-line, about The Quest for the Higgs Particle. No math required there. (Saturday, September 8th, 1 p.m. New York time/10 a.m. Pacific, through the MICA Popular Talks series, held online at the Large Auditorium on StellaNova, Second Life. You’ll need a Second Life viewer to watch it live. Should you miss it, both the audio and the slides will be posted later for you to look at.) And also, if you missed my colleague Sean Carroll being interviewed about his new book and the science behind the Higgs Discovery, an opportunity I recommended to you yesterday, all is not lost; you can hear it here.

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON September 7, 2012

Two Online Events on Higgs Discovery

My friend and colleague Sean Carroll, of the Cosmic Variance blog, who has a very good new book about the Higgs particle and its discovery, is being interviewed by Alan Boyle today as part of the Virtually Speaking Science series. Listen live 9 pm eastern | 6 pm pacific, or later, at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtually-speaking-science/2012/09/06/sean-carroll-alan-boyle . Sean is an excellent speaker and writer; highly recommended!

And I myself am giving a public lecture about the Quest for the Higgs Particle this Saturday, September 8th, 1 p.m. New York time/10 a.m. Pacific, through the MICA Popular Talks series, held online at the Large Auditorium on StellaNova, Second Life. You’ll need a Second Life viewer to watch it live. Should you miss it, both the audio and the slides will be posted later for you to look at. (I gave one of these talks, on the Large Hadron Collider, back in April, but the sound quality over the web was a bit problematic; hopefully it will be better this time.)

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON September 5, 2012

The Quantum Wave

If you’ve just gotten back from vacation, perhaps after days or weeks seeking the perfect wave, well, what a treat awaits! So much reading to do, about such interesting things. I’m writing a set of articles, intended for the reader who has once-upon-a-time seen beginning physics (what we in the U.S. would call “freshman physics”, or even a good “advanced placement physics” course pre-university) with the goal of explaining what fields and particles are. Five of the seven or eight articles are done; four appeared over the last two weeks, and now there’s a new one:

After this: an article on Fields, and then one on Particles, and maybe one more with some follow-up information. And then, with this set complete, I’ll move on to another series of articles, about how the Higgs field works…

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON September 4, 2012

After Springs, Waves

On Monday I started a series of articles to explain particles and fields, aimed at those who’ve had a little bit of physics in their past (perhaps a semester or two just before or just at the beginning level at a university), and containing a very little amount of math.

I first brought you the story of the ball on a spring, both the classical [i.e. pre-quantum] version from the 1700s and the quantum version from the early 1900s.

Now it’s time to turn to waves. This is the longest subject I’ll have to cover, I think, so I split even the pre-quantum story of waves up into two parts, one aimed at getting the right formula for describing a wave, and the other at getting the right equation of motion for which that formula is a solution. If you’ve had first-year physics you’ve seen most of this, but there’s a twist toward the very end that is probably novel — you’ll see a wave equation you’ll probably recognize, but also one that, quite possibly, you haven’t seen before.

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON August 30, 2012

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Blog – Of Particular Significance

How the Higgs Field Does Its Thing

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

Two Major Steps Forward

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

What Fields Are (& a Public Talk Saturday)

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

Two Online Events on Higgs Discovery

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

The Quantum Wave

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

After Springs, Waves

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

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