Of Particular Significance

Category: Waves In An Impossible Sea

I’m delighted to tell you that Quanta Magazine has published an essay I have written on the *real* story of how the Higgs field gives mass to particles — avoiding those famous false analogies. There’s a musical connection, too. I hope you enjoy it! https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-higgs-field-actually-gives-mass-to-elementary-particles-20240903/

If you are curious to learn more about the main points of the essay, feel free to ask me questions about it in the comments below or at Quanta Magazine. (I also go into more detail about these subjects in my book.)

Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON September 3, 2024

Though I’ve been busy with a number of physics and writing tasks, I’ve been beefing up the “Reader Resources” section of this website, devoted to extending the experience of readers of my book. [BTW, the audiobook is due out at the end of September.]

The book has many endnotes (available separately here, in case [like me] you hate paging back and forth between the text and the endnotes, and would like to have the endnotes more easily available on a separate screen.) A number of these endnotes have asterisks, and for those endnotes I promised to provide more information here on this website. Well, that information is going up, step by step.

For example:

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Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON August 20, 2024

After a tiring spring that followed the publication of the book, I’ve taken a little break. But starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting on the blog again, focusing again on the important differences between the conventional notion of “particle” and the concept of “wavicle”. I prefer the latter to the former when referring to electrons, quarks and other elementary objects.

Today, though, some book-related news.

First, a book review of sorts — or at least, a brief but strong informal endorsement — appeared in the New York Times, courtesy of the linguist, author and columnist John McWhorter. Since McWhorter is not a scientist himself, I’m especially delighted that he liked the book and found it largely comprehensible! The review was in a paragraph-long addendum to a longer column about language; here’s an excerpt:

Another positive review recently appeared in Nautilus magazine, written by Ash Jogalekar, a scientist himself — but a chemist rather than a physicist. The full review is available here.

Lastly, the audiobook is in preparation, though I still don’t know the time frame yet.

Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON July 8, 2024

For those of you currently in western Massachusetts or eastern upstate New York, some news: I’ll be speaking about my book today, Monday, June 24th, 5:30 pm, in Lenox, MA. At this free event, held at the local institution known simply as “The Bookstore“, I’ll read from the text and discuss its central message. After that, I’ll answer questions from the audience and sign books.


In other news — for those of you waiting (im)patiently for the audiobook, I am glad to report that there is finally some forward movement on that front. I’m still not sure how long it will take for the audio version to become available, but progress should be steady and rapid from here.

Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON June 24, 2024

A couple of months ago, I was on Daniel Whiteson’s podcast, which is called “Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe“. During the two-part episode in which I appeared, entitled “Is the Universe Made of Waves?” (Part 1 and Part 2), I explained some of the key points made in my book, “Waves in an Impossible Sea.”

One thing I emphasized is that while photons [“particles” of light] moving across empty space are always traveling waves moving at the speed of light c, electrons are different. When in motion they too are traveling waves, but unlike photons, they can slow down, and even be stationary. When stationary, they are standing waves, of a somewhat unfamiliar sort (as described here and here). All of this is discussed in detail in the book’s chapters 16 and 17.

Whiteson has sent me a couple of questions that listeners raised with him, and since I imagine some of you might have similar questions, I decided to answer them publicly here.

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Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON May 21, 2024

For forty years, the Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC) has had a famous science radio show called “Quirks and Quarks“; it is currently hosted by science journalist Bob McDonald. I’m pleased to tell you that I was invited onto that show this past week. In my conversation with McDonald, I explained how the Higgs field actually works, avoiding the “molasses”/”snow”/”crowd” analogies that don’t stand up to scrutiny.

(This all happened while I was spending a few days in Ontario. I was meeting all sorts of wonderful people at the Perimeter Institute’s 2024 science communicators conference SciComm Collider 2, organized by Katie Mack. More on that at a later time.)

If you’d like to hear the Quirks and Quarks conversation, or one of the other detailed podcast conversations I’ve had about my book, you can find them here:

Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON May 17, 2024

Three events coming up!

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 15th, in the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, I’ll be speaking about my book — specifically, about why and how the relationship between ourselves and the universe is not what it seems. The event will be held at the Broadside Bookshop at 7pm. If you’re in the Pioneer Valley, please come by! And let your friends in the area know, too.

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Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON May 14, 2024

I’ll be spending the remainder of this week at the 2nd Scicomm Collider conference, hosted at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, and organized by astrophysicist and writer Katie Mack. I’m very much looking forward to it!

Next week I’ll be back in Massachusetts, in the town of Northampton, where I’ll be speaking about my book. The event is at 7pm on Wednesday, May 15th at the lovely Broadside Bookshop. If you’re in the Pioneer Valley, please join me! And if you have friends in the area, please let them know.

Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON May 8, 2024

Are you sitting or lying down? Perhaps you’re moving around at a walking pace? I probably am. And yet, unless you live in the northeastern US or in southern South America, you and I are moving relative to each other at hundreds of miles per hour.

In Chapter 2 of the book “‘Waves in an Impossible Sea”, I remarked on the this fact. (See below for the relevant passage.) At first glance it might seem puzzling. After all, the distance between your town and my town is constant; it never changes. And yet our relative motion is comparable to or faster than a jet aircraft. How can both of these things be true?

And then there’s another question: if we’re all moving so fast relative to one another, why don’t we feel the motion?

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Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON May 2, 2024

Quantum physics is certainly confusing.

  • On the one hand, electrons are wave-like and can be quite spread out; in fact, as I’ve emphasized in my book and in a recent blog post, a stationary electron is a spread-out standing wave. (I’ve even argued that these “elementary particles” should really be called “wavicles” [a term from the 1920s].)
  • On the other hand, scientists say that electrons have no size — or at least, if they have a size, it’s too small to be measured using current technology. They are often described as “point particles.”

How can both these things be true?

Well, to clarify this, let’s look at objects that do have an intrinsic size, such as protons and neutrons. How are their sizes actually determined? While this question is addressed in the book’s Chapter 17 (see Figure 40 and surrounding text, and footnote 2), I didn’t go into much detail there.

To supplement what’s in the book, I have written a webpage that outlines two classic methods that are used to measure the intrinsic size of a proton, or of any ultra-microscopic object.

When these same methods are used on electrons, one finds no evidence of any finite size, and so one concludes that their intrinsic size (if any) is too small to measure.

Picture of POSTED BY Matt Strassler

POSTED BY Matt Strassler

ON April 29, 2024

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