For anyone interested in getting Higgsy with me, I’ll be talking with theoretical particle physicist Matt Strassler in just a couple of hours — at 5 p.m. EST. As usual, it will be part of the Virtually Speaking Science strand of the Virtually Speaking empire — and you can listen live or as a podcast at Blog Talk Radio.* For those of you whose virtual lives please you more than your real ones, you can take part in the fun as members of the live (ish) audience in Second Life.
Matt, as some of you may recall, is someone whose blog I’ve pointed to before; he’s only been operating Of Particular Significance for a few months, but it has rapidly become one of the handful of first places to go for really smart, high-level but intelligile news and explanation from the bleeding edge of particle physics. Matt’s been working on the kinds of problems the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for many years now. After a slightly rocky start, that accelerator has been performing brilliantly, with the result that we are in the midst of a very perplexing time. We have tons of data, and tantalizing, elusive suggestions of results within that trove…
…among them, hints about what is called the Higgs particle, which is the name for the entitiy physicists believe that nature confers mass on much, though not all of what has mass in the universe.
Matt will tell you that the Higgs, often known by its wretched nickname, “the God particle,” is actually less important than something else, the Higgs field — which is a shorthand way of saying that what the elusive Higgs does is what counts — and we should not presume the search will take us to the point we think is most likely, until it does.
We’ll range over stuff like that, and some conversation about the role of instruments in driving what the instrument makers think, and even to some big questions about why people might care about such genuinely abstruse stuff — and how we might use that interest to do an end around of some more contentious debates in science as it enters the public sphere.
So come on down if you have a moment. This should be one of those conversations that makes my head hurt, but in a good way.
Image: Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field With Crows, 1890.
*We will be getting our podcast going in iTunes shortly, BTW, and I’ll let y’all know as we do.
freelancer
Van Gogh was a prophet! Crebain! From Dunland!
Tom, I enjoyed the last ep you advertised here where you interviewed one of the co-authors of Merchants of Doubt. I’ll be checking this one out too.
Schlemizel
One of my favorite painters – dang I wish he could have had better mental health treatment. Imagine the output of an extra 20-30 years.
Brian
I won’t be available at 5, as I will still be working in lab. Is there somewhere to get a podcast or down load it from?
kdaug
Can we make a soul detector?
Tom Levenson
@Brian: The same Blog Talk Radio link for the live show will take you to the podcast after about midnight tonight. Once we get our iTunes podcast going, this will show up there too.
Tom Levenson
@kdaug: Does this guy count?
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
@Schlemizel: If he’d had modern mental health treatment, you wouldn’t have any of his art to enjoy at all. They’d have medicated the creativity right out of him.
Bruce S
“I wish he could have had better mental health treatment.”
Fair enough and I guess so do I when I put my “good person” hat on. But as a Van Gogh lover, I’m not convinced you get that art separate from the person who actually existed.
Nancy
I’ll be listening, Tom.
And while you are tooting your own horn (justifiably so!), may I recommend two bloggingheads.tv segments that I particularly enjoyed. I titled these “Dark Matter, Dreadlocks, and Bob Dylan” when I emailed them to my son. Both have Bob Wright as the interviewer.
The first is with Lawrence Krauss, whose latest book is “A Universe from Nothing”. This one eased my mind as I had been stewing about the possibility of hitting a wall of dark matter during interstellar space travel. Turns out (maybe) there is only one particle of it per cubic meter throughout space.
The second one is with tech guru, Jaron Lanier, coiner of the phrase “virtual reality” and author of “You Are Not a Gadget”. I was enchanted by everything about him from his ideas to his dreadful dreads and infectious giggle. If everything on his wiki page is true, he is a renaissance man
who has led a very interesting life.
bloggingheads.tv/videos/8822
bloggingheads.tv/videos/8903?in=45:29&out=48:37
Brian
@Tom Levenson: Thanks Tom,
I could care less about itunes I am more comfortable having control over my music. As long as I can get it. I’ve been listening to the NPR stuff with Brian Greene. I deal in single to a few eV’s, and Angstroms. High energy particle physics just blows my mind.
MikeJ
Has the sound quality gotten any better?
Tom Levenson
@MikeJ: We’ll see. I’ve bought a new mic, so I have hopes. If this one doesn’t work I’ll set up a new recording environment with the expenditure of significantly more bucks. Hope I don’t have to go there, but will if I do.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
@Tom Levenson: What sort of mic are you using?
Tom Levenson
@Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity: I’ve moved all the way up to a Sennheiser USB headset, at hte suggestion of Jay Ackroyd, who is the host/EP of Virtually Speaking. This will be the first time I use it. If this doesn’t work, I’ll check out hte Rode USB condenser mic — which would be a significant step up.
DFH no.6
@Bruce S:
I suspect that is true, unfortunately for a number of artists with tragic mental health issues (Kurt Cobain springs immediately to mind; there are many others, not all of them necessarily suicidal).
I, too, love Van Gogh’s paintings. In fact, his work is my favorite of all the paintings I have ever seen, from the Sistine Chapel to Dali.
And I love to read all I can about physics, but it’s always been very humbling to realize the math is way, way beyond me.
I’m not buying string theory, but maybe that’s just cuz for me the math might as well be Egyptian hieroglyphs (or, more like the “reformed” Egyptian hieroglyphs on the golden plates that only Joseph Smith saw).
DFH no.6
@freelancer:
And who would have ever guessed that a science blog-post could have any LOTR nerdiness associated with it?
Not me.
Democratic Nihilist, Keeper Of Party Purity
@Tom Levenson: The Rode is quite good. Of course, Sennheisers usually are as well.
I think Blue makes a USB mic. Those I recommend highly.
Redshift
Enjoying it a lot, Tom, though I’m going to have to drop out and catch it on the podcast later. (Darn work!)
Mac from Oregon
I agree that the Higgs Boson nickname of God particle, is unfortunately named. Heaven help us if we find it, the fundies will wave physics as Evidence of GOD, is everywhere.
Praise Jeebus.
redshirt
The more I learn of physics, cosmology, quantum mechanics and the like, the more I’m convinced we’re just scratching the surface, and we still hold ideas true today that will not be true in the near future – just like for all of history. I think we lose that perspective when considering our own time.
I’m growing deeply skeptical of Dark Matter/Dark Energy. One side of me hopes they don’t find the Higgs, forcing everyone back to the drawing board.
elftx
Cool ! And now I know you have your own blog..where the heck have I been !!
Samara Morgan
i have a question.
How become a bright guy like you got spoofed by Kain on education?
i read both your books….did you have a ghost writer?
kdaug
@Tom Levenson: No.
Joey Giraud
While I love reading about particle physics research, popular writing about the topic has led to much lay-folk confusion.
Having heard so many conversations where self-educated experts pontificate preposterous nonsense, I almost wish there were some restrictions. Like, one needs at least an undergraduate degree in physics to have an opinion.
Not very egalitarian of me.
Joey Giraud
Question for Tom:
Re wave collapse. The Copenhagen interpretation involved an “observer,” commonly understood to mean a human being or other sentient being. The idea that the physical world depended on sentience never sat well with me.
My take is that a particle/wave in an indeterminate state will “collapse” or entangle with other particles it interacts with, sharing quantum knowledge. To cut to the chase, continual interaction between a large number of particles leads to a sort of consensus of quantum state, and ultimately an emergent reality. Or perhaps, isolation leads to indeterminacy.
Makes more sense to me anyway. ( only have that undergraduate in physics, hardly an expert. )
This not being an appropriate forum, just let me know if my perspective is weird, or if any mainstream interpretation is similar.
RossinDetroit
Darn it! I’ve been reading and enjoying Of Particular Significance since Tom recommended it here. It’s a great blog. I’ll have to look for that podcast.
And that’s my favorite Van Gogh. My sister painted me a miniature of it that sits in a 3″ X 4″ frame on my desk!