How confident can we be that light’s speed across the universe is really constant, as I assumed in a recent post? Well, aspects of that idea can be verified experimentally. For instance, the hypothesis that light at all frequencies travels at the same speed can be checked. Today I’ll show you one way that it’s done; it’s particularly straightforward and easy to interpret.
(more…)Category: Higgs
Quick note today: I’m pleased and honored to share with you that the world-renowned journal Science has published a review of my upcoming book!
The book, Waves in an Impossible Sea, appears in stores in just 10 days (and can be pre-ordered now.) It’s a non-technical account of how Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics come together to make the world of daily experience — and how the Higgs field makes it all possible.
POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON February 23, 2024
Nothing goes faster than the speed of light in empty space, also known as the cosmic speed limit c. Right? Well, umm… the devil is in the details.
Here are some of those details:
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON February 20, 2024
I have posted my fourth article discussing zero-point energy. (Here are the first, the second, and the third, which covered respectively the zero-point energy of a ball on a spring, a guitar string, and a bosonic field whose particles have zero mass, such as the electromagnetic field.) Today’s article looks at fields whose particles have non-zero mass, such as the Higgs field, and fermionic fields, such as the electron field and quark fields. It presents some simple formulas, and in its final section, shows how one can obtain them using math.
Along the way we’ll encounter the idea of “supersymmetry” and its failed role in the cosmological constant problem. This is a word which (for some good historical reasons) generates a lot of heat. But stay calm; I’m neither promoting it nor bashing it. Supersymmetry is an idea which proves useful as a conceptual tool, whether it is true in nature or not.
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON February 19, 2024
My two new webpages from earlier this week addressed the zero-point energy for the simple case of a ball on a spring and for the much richer case of a guitar string; the latter served as a warmup to today’s webpage, the third in this series, which explains the zero-point energy of a field of the universe. This subject will lead us head-first into the cosmological constant problem. As before, the article starts with a non-mathematical overview, and then obtains the results stated in the overview using pre-university math (except for one aside.) [As always, please comment if you spot typos or find some of the presentation especially confusing!]
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON February 16, 2024
In my last post, I introduced a new webpage concerning “zero-point energy”, the core concept that lies at the heart of the hierarchy puzzle. I have now posted the next webpage in the series, which extends the notion of zero-point energy to a slightly more complex system, an ordinary metal string of finite length. It’s a bit schematic, but it serves to teach us some crucial and surprising lessons about the zero-point energy associated with the internal vibrations of physical objects. [Please let me know in the comments if you spot any typos or if you find some of the presentation especially confusing!]
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POSTED BY Matt Strassler
ON February 14, 2024
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A decay of a Higgs boson, as reconstructed by the CMS experiment at the LHC
