Posted on 08/21/2007 11:00:12 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The "standard model" of physics views particles as infinitesimal points, some of which carry basic forces. In spite of the fact that it fails to include gravity and becomes gibberish at high energies, the time-tested theory is the best tool scientists have for explaining physics. "You hear people complain about how good the standard model is," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago. "It's an incomplete model, and yet we can't find flaws in it." Turner explained that discovering a mass-inducing particle, called the Higgs boson, remains the next big test for the standard model. If discovered, the heavy particle would definitively show that properties like electromagnetism and radioactivity are really different facets of the same force... The inability so far for string theory to prove up to 11 tiny dimensions exist is a hang-up for many, but Jackson thinks some strings could have been stretched across the universe into "superstrings"--ones large enough to detect in space today... "It's hard to imagine that the universe has two different sets of rules for physics. When does it turn one off and the other one on?" Jackson reasoned. "We know there is quantum mechanics and we know there is gravity, so it seems there should be one overall theory. I'm betting my career that it's string theory."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
No Sign of the God ParticleFrom the masses and interactions of other particles that we know exist, physicists calculated that the Higgs is most likely to have a mass (or energy) of around 80 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). If particle accelerators smash particles together at that energy or higher, it should be possible to make one. This is what members of the Electroweak Working Group at CERN were doing for the 5 years until LEP (the Large Electron Positron Collider) closed down last year. Since then they've been sifting through the data they gathered--and found nothing. They rule out most possible masses for the Higgs, including the ones considered most likely. "It's more likely than not that there is no Higgs," says working group member John Swain of Northeastern University in Boston... [L]ast year researchers from another group at LEP claimed they had found the Higgs... [b]ut they later admitted to having botched their calculations in the heat of the moment... Frank Wilczek, a particle physics theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology... says he'll start to get uncomfortable if the Higgs doesn't show up by about 130 GeV. "Then I would have a good long think," he says... David Plane, head of LEP's OPAL experiment, is still certain that the Higgs will eventually be found. "It's just at a higher energy than we're sensitive to." ... "There is nothing remotely as plausible or compelling to replace it," says Wilczek. Supersymmetry, which predicts every particle is paired with a heavier partner, is a popular idea. But LEP's results are even worse news for this theory, as it predicts several Higgs particles. The lightest one would have turned up at even lower energies, and couldn't exist above 130 GeV.
Eugenie Samuel
December 5, 2001
I like M-Theory. But, who knows?
“Consciousness is the ground of allbeing.” — Dr. Amit Goswami.
“Consciousness is the ground of all being.” — Dr. Amit Goswami.
Is there a Theory of Everything? By all means, and Murphy voiced it best: “If something can go wrong, it will.”
42
Greene:“A unified theory would put us at the doorstep of a vast universe of things that we could finally explore with precision.”
Until we figure out how to treat time as somethng more than merely a background state dependent upon dimension space, we will not discover the variable expressions of dimension time to calculate using their effects.
So what if each aspect has its own set of laws? Together, they form the whole and transform nothing-ness into something-ness.
Sure, but A-theory, B-theory, and everything up through L-theory was tried and rejected. ;’)
String Theory, With No Holds Barred [Brian Greene and Lawrence Krauss debate]
ScienceNOW Daily News | March 29, 2007 | John Simpson
Posted on 03/31/2007 10:21:41 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1810012/posts
Dismantling Space and Time [Review of book by Brian Greene]
Tech Central Station | 09 March 2004 | Kenneth Silber
Posted on 07/15/2004 10:52:36 AM EDT by PatrickHenry
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1171922/posts
Science as Metaphor
Slate | July 6, 2004, at 6:16 AM PT | Amanda Schaffer
Posted on 07/10/2004 6:31:48 PM EDT by ckilmer
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1168961/posts
Build Your Own Universe
NPR | 11/27/06 | Robert Krulwich
Posted on 11/29/2006 7:19:47 PM EST by LibWhacker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1746101/posts
[and one posted by someone who doesn’t know which field is which]
That Famous Equation and You
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/opinion/30greene.html | September 30, 2005 | BRIAN GREENE
Posted on 10/01/2005 11:10:18 PM EDT by GummyIII
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1495076/posts
Sure, but it tends to disappear as soon as the pot wears off.
Thanks for the ping.
Here’s a cosmology theory that should be worthy of your String Theory AND Catastrophism ping lists...
SubQuantum Kinetics, wide ranging unifying cosmology theory by Dr. Paul LaViolette
THE STARBURST FOUNDATION ^ | January 2007 | Dr. Paul LaViolette
Posted on 08/22/2007 12:00:43 PM PDT by Kevmo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1884938/posts
Thanks Kevmo, I’ll check it out. I’m somewhat familiar with LaViolette’s galactic core burst catastrophe idea.
ping for later.
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