The Anthropomorphic Principle

The anthropic principle is one of the more pleasurable mind games embraced by new physics. Be it strong (conscious life is inevitable in this universe) or weak (a universe compatible with conscious life will be inevitably beheld by that conscious life), the "anthropy" implied is us: not just conscious life in general, but carbon-based human beings capable of questioning the parameters of our existence. I'm amused that Wikipedia cites Douglas Adams on this (though, haven't we all?): "English writer Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, used the metaphor of a living puddle examining its own shape, since, to those living creatures, the universe may appear to fit them perfectly (while in fact, they simply fit the universe perfectly)." The percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere supports our respiration system exactly; the amount of dark energy in the universe inflates space at just the right speed to enable life-supporting gravitational pull; the quantity of buffalo mozzarella Lombardi's tops its pizza with is precisely suited to our taste buds. And so on. It's Descartes repackaged (j'observe, donc je suis) and Heidegger redux ("Man only inhabits the keeping of what gives him food for thought--he does not create the keeping.") It's also theoretical evidence that there must be other universes, and therefore, other forms of life--but unique to their environments. Cue Brian Greene's elaboration on the multiverse theory, and Seth Lloyd's interpretation of quantum information theory, and you've got a universe filled with flipping bits quantum-mechanically powered to produce increasingly complex life forms.

Swing over to the subatomic, and you've got another element of existential observation: the Higgs particle. Advertised to endow electrons and W and Z bosons with mass, the Higgs is one of many entangled factors that allowed this universe to evolve in our favor. It's also an experimental holy grail, as it completes the Standard Model; even more intriguing would be data that hints at a physical framework beyond the SM. Tomorrow's forum at CERN may reveal that 2012 data from ATLAS and CMS shows discrepancies from what the SM predicts, bolstering some of my favorite theories, including some kind of supersymmetric standard model. 

The real fun, though, has already begun as pop culture takes an anthropomorphic turn: the Higgs particle was nominated by Time Magazine as its "Person of the Year" for 2012! Posthumanists unite. (Regrettably, Time's writer got his facts about the Higgs all kinds of wrong, a low moment for science journalism.) It's silly, but also a stunning indication of how far quantum physics has come in terms of layman awareness; four years ago, when I started writing this blog, my romance with the Higgs was an outlier. Now the Higgs memoir can be titled Collective Paraphilia: Why I Revealed Myself. Because isn't that the implication of such a nomination, that the Higgs played a role in its own discovery? I'm kidding, I think the decision rested more with the controversy of identifying one physicist as the hero, and not Peter Higgs and all of CERN, but still. I dig it, and it makes me wish so hard that Barbara Johnson were alive to write a book about it. A probabilistic object: the ultimate deconstruction.

The Heart of Matter

It’s back-to-school season, and as emerging minds get to work across the world, it's time to once again laud the physicists who make an effort to reach out to non-scientists: only by corresponding across the esoteric boundary, I think, can the reverberative effects of new information--even new facts--make an impact at a sociological level. Knowledge, after all, doesn't do much in a vacuum; any epistemological system needs feedback and impact and even collapse in order to thrive. Think about classical mechanics, and the ways in which different theoretical evolutions tested and pushed at its tenets: some survived, others were rejected, and still others were incorporated into quantum mechanics but understood as part of an altered paradigm. Entanglements and transfigurations work at a particular level, but also at a discursive one: and my favorite form of discourse, the kinds of texts listed in the library on this site, are often purposefully inclusive, and allow anyone curious enough to participate in the larger social-scientific conversation.

Because of the highly complex and abstract nature of new physics, though, an important sector of the world's population is often overlooked: kids. Can concepts like decoherence or string theory be explained using simple language? It would be tough, because the metaphorical and analogical tools so often relied on by scientists would have no referent to someone in grade school; and moreover, it would be boring. The books I love don't have photos, they don't have texture, and they're not LCD screens. Even though the Higgs boson is the most exciting thing happening in the world right now, it's a tough sell to a person with a 20-second attention span.

Luckily, the folks at Papadakis Publishing have provided us with a clever and charming solution: the gorgeously detailed pop-up book Voyage to the Heart of  Matter: The ATLAS Experiment at CERN by Anton Radevsky and Emma Sanders. From time travel to particle collisions to a history of the universe, the many details of the LHC come to life in colorful and interactive ways. Accompanied by accurate, actual photos of the collider and its parts, and featuring big and intricately constructed cardboard pop-up designs, it's the perfect kid-friendly introduction to our universe's mysteries. After all, future Einsteins are out there, they just need to be inspired; and what better way to catapult young imaginations to new heights than building a miniature version of ATLAS at home? 

And: once the spark is ignited, the World Science Festival, New York Hall of Science, and Brookhaven National Laboratory are all enchanting and engaging places to introduce someone small to the wonders of physics. 

Indoor Fireworks

CERN announced that its next "scientific seminar" (read: live-streamed press conference) will take place on July 4, where ATLAS and CMS will announce the preliminary results of their 2012 data analysis. The stakes are pretty high, since the December data left many people with the impression that the Standard Model Higgs would be confirmed at a mass of 125 GeV, or else point to physics beyond the Standard Model: as I've mentioned before, this--despite its lack of immediate discovery--is an especially tantalizing possibility for physicists who suspect that moving our current scientific framework outside of the SM would yield really exciting, even revolutionary (and certainly Nobel-worthy) new knowledge about the particular makeup of the universe.

Importantly, if CERN presents data that hints at a BSM Higgs, this does not imply that the Higgs does not exist. Dennis Overbye, a writer I really admire, sort of missed the mark here when he writes that "If the December signal fades, it probably means that the Higgs boson, at least as physicists have envisioned it for the past 40 years, does not exist, and that theorists have to go back to their drawing boards." The Higgs can certainly still exist as physicists envision it--but outside of the SM parameters. A different set of search strategies will be implemented, more powerful particle smashing will occur, and science's most famous scavenger hunt will continue. (If you want to read more about this, Matt Strassler, as always, breaks it down with accuracy and patience.)

In any case, excitement is high, and the folks convening next week in Melbourne for the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) probably have little else on their minds. It's all Higgs all the time these days, since the LHC is running even better than expected (thank you, experimentalists and engineers), and everyone wants to know whether the Standard Model will be upheld. Rumors have been swirling online for weeks that the 2012 data will support the 2011 numbers, and I'm inclined to believe them. In Sharon Traweek's excellent anthropological text Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High-Energy Physicists, she notes that information passed informally among peers (outside of publication, even in Letters) is often influential and accurate; compound that with the Internet (which physicists love to boast they invented) and apocryphal headlines like Overbye's ("New Data on Elusive Particle Shrouded in Secrecy") makes me think that CERN is about ready to pop the champagne. This absolutely does not mean that irrefutable proof of a 125 GeV Higgs is at hand: it will still take years to understand the particle and its implications. But it would guarantee funding for probably decades to come, and will bolster efforts to discover even more exotic particles at more elusive energies. The Higgs has become a sort of celebrity representative of the many exciting theories in HEP, and in some ways, allowing the fever of the Higgs "hunt" to subside may pave the way for scientists to focus on even more profound potential discoveries like supersymmetry and the makeup of dark matter.

Personally, I think celebrating the biggest international achievement in the history of science is a poetic way to spend our independence day, and maybe even a kick in the pants to our own government to fund high-energy physics on a competitive scale. Fermilab and Brookhaven are important but outdated; our research universities aren't attracting the talent they used to; and open-access publishing makes it less imperative that scientists be in a certain place doing a certain kind of physics. The US, instead of spending trillions of dollars pursuing pointless wars (at home and abroad), should invest in the kind of future that could sustain us, and inspire us, for generations: let's redefine the historical import behind those fireworks. The indoor kind is so much better.

The Lyrical Core of Man: Bits and Bells

From Sergio Bertolucci in yesterday's CERN press release: “Our Standard Model Higgs analysis with data collected so far leaves us in a very exciting position for 2012. With the data we collect this year, we will definitely be able to confirm or rule out a Standard Model Higgs.”

A bold statement ("definitely"!)--and indicative of how strong the December ATLAS/CMS results are. Clarifying whether the Higgs exists, and whether it's the Standard Model version, are two vastly different things, but it's still a huge endorsement for the LHC (and, hopefully, for string theory). 96% of the universe remains unexplained by the Standard Model, so results that don't point past it will be disappointing but still a coup for the collider. ATLAS won't even run at full speed until 2015, so there is a lot of good particle smashing ahead.

And speaking of the 96%, all kinds of tantalizing theories have emerged to explain it. Einstein's much-maligned "cosmological constant" theory has rebounded among some physicists, hinting at reconciliation between cosmology and quantum mechanics, and supersymmetry remains the holy grail of theorists. Plus: Craig Hogan, a physicist at the University of Chicago and director of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center, has proposed that space is actually composed of discrete bits of information, not a continuous field; in other words, that the universe is digital! This might sound radical, but it dovetails nicely with what recent theories have predicted about black holes and holograms (both of which rely on the existence of digital information in space to make any sense).

[An aside: NOVA is back on PBS, and it's pretty awesome (if you can stand a few terribly animated interludes). Brian Greene, science hero to the masses, is as engaging as ever and talks through some really tricky stuff.]

But back to digital space, and information theory, which Claude Shannon developed at Bell Labs in 1948. Information theory, in tandem with the transistor, another Bell invention, completely revolutionized electronics and communications and provided a conceptual space within which brilliant thinkers from all disciplines found purchase--most recently, quantum computing, the new frontier of super-fast data computation using QM phenomena like entanglement and superposition. (Check out The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner for more on the interdisciplinary wonderland that was Bell Labs. Full discolsure: my dad worked at Bell in the late '60s!)

Ontologically, conceptualizing human existence within information theory is intimidatingly abstract: how can we reconcile our perception of reality as 1s and 0s? Do photon packets carry digital information, and can we harness or control it? How does this trouble the disctinction between human and nonhuman? And my favorite question: can information theory explain our relationship to consciousness? I could think about this all day.

Death, too, is complicated when the corporeal is deemphasized. In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault writes that, once death is understood as one of many manifestations of life, “death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret.” If the brain is just a highly sensitive piece of receiving technology interpreting billions and billions of bits--themselves reverberations of subatomic loops--and converting them into emotion and intellect, the "invisible truth" reveals itself: what we think of as spiritual life is transient and unaffected by the death of bodies. The lyrical core of man is an eternity of vibrating strings.

And So It Begins: Narrowing In On 126 GeV

This morning's presentations by Fabiola Gianotti (ATLAS) and Guido Tonelli (CMS) confirmed what many science bloggers were predicting: if the SM Higgs exists, its mass should be in the 115-130 GeV range (probably right around 126 GeV), indicated by data produced by both experiments. CERN is being extremely cautious in their public optimism, and emphasizes that statistic fluctuations may be responsible for some of the bumps, but I hung out with the physics department at NYU this morning, and there was a lot of happy energy...I think today's news is inconclusive, but fully expect that further data analysis will result in a serious announcement sometime this summer.

The questions is: is this the SM Higgs, or something more exotic? As exciting as a discovery of the SM Higgs would be, it's more tantalizing to imagine data that excludes the SM Higgs, opening the door for some really new physics. (Detection of a non-SM Higgs is beyond the LHC's capacity at its current energy, but starting in 2014, it will run at its full design energy, greatly increasing the possibility of data that hints at new particles.) Either way--and perhaps most importantly--these results are substantial, and the LHC delivered even more data, and more quickly, than most people hoped for, which reinforces the worth of the $5.5b LHC price tag as well as a lot of physicsts' life work (and just wait for 7 TeV! The Standard Model only describes 4% of the universe's matter. There is still a lot to uncover).

The live webcast is here; the CERN press release and other info (plus pictures!) is here; Adrian Cho from Science sums up the results here; Lisa Grossman for NewScientist here; and, for fun, Tommaso Dorigo's post on why these results should be considered "firm evidence" of the SM Higgs.

The world's attention will be increasingly focused on CERN for the next year (one scientist wrote that today's press conference was the craziest he's ever witnessed--he likened it to the release of the iPhone). Within the larger spheres of global economic, political, and cultural tumult, it will be interesting to see how a scientific revolution will play a role in shaping the 21st century.

Sergio Bertolucci, Director of research at CERN, on the Higgs: "I think we may get indications that are not consistent with its non-existence."

That's right, physicists ("finding it hard to keep the smiles from their faces," according to the BBC) are using double-speak so they don't divulge what's probably going to be announced at CERN on Tuesday: significant evidence that the Higgs exists! Stay tuned.

Also, some news so awesome I can't keep the smile from my face: the first artist-in-residence (the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN laureate) was announced this week: the very lucky and talented Julius Von Bismarck, from Germany, earns the privilege of a two-month residency at CERN starting in March 2012, and the result of the collaboration will be showcased at the next Ars Electronica Festival in 2012. Art and science, unite!

And, some fun winter-break reading: check out Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos by Isaac Asimov, then revisit the Black Widowers. You're welcome.

The Neutrino Effect

Last week, science geeks everywhere awoke to potentially astonishing news: the OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment, which analyzes subatomic particles as they travel unimpeded through miles of underground tunnels, has recorded a neutrino traveling (slightly) faster than the speed of light! It seems impossible according to everything current physicists know about quantum mechanics; in fact, if this result can be corroborated (Fermilab and others are already attempting this), Einstein's special theory of relativity may be thrown into doubt. (Probably not, but more on that in a minute.) Scientists everywhere are understandably dubious, and some even responded by saying that such tentative data shouldn't have been released to the public to begin with, since it's very likely that the experiment was affected by yet-unidentified human error. Additionally, science tends to be unfriendly (if excitable) toward data that doesn't support their existing paradigm--which, for now, rests solidly with the Standard Model and special relativity. But this finding exhibited a six-sigma deviation, which is suggestive enough to raise a lot of eyebrows.

There are a couple of reasons this is so exciting, and why prominent physicists are saying that this could re-write our fundamental understanding of the universe and the way it works. The speed of light, and its relationship to energy and mass, is one of the most revered equations in the history of science--to question it would result in chaos in cosmology, QM, QED, and other fields. However: it's possible that this result can be interpreted in a slightly different way; instead of assuming that the neutrino is literally moving faster than the speed of light, it could be that it found a shortcut by slipping through a different dimension. This idea is as revolutionary as exceeding the speed of light, but with completely different stakes: suddenly, theories that predict multiple dimensions via theoretical math (string theory/M-theory) have empirical evidence! It may not be the Higgs, but it's enough to allow critical analysis of the Standard Model to emerge into more mainstream scientific circles.

If (and right now, it reamins a massive "if") this result can be corroborated, we may be in the midst of what Thomas Kuhn would call a paradigm shift. In his seminal text The Structure of Scientific Revolutions he argues that movement from one paradigm to another (in this case, possibly from the Standard Model to string theory) must be preceded by an evidential anomaly (the neutrino moving faster than the speed of light) which, if scientists are repeatedly unable to solve using current data problem sets, leads to a scientific crisis. A crisis in this case would result in physicists being forced to re-examine some of the aspects of science that they've long taken for granted--like our perception of only four dimensions, or the speed limit of light. A true paradigm shift would occur if the scientific community is able to change their world view (and attract enough scientists to that community) regarding how certain tenets can be re-interpreted in light of new data. The result is adoption of the new paradigm and scientific revolution.

My fingers are crossed that we'll get to experience this revolution in our lifetimes: if the neutrino effect proves accurate, and physics moves past the Standard Model--but importantly, retains Einstein's special theory of relativity--into a realm of competing multi-dimension theories, there could be some dramatic truths revealed about the universe and our role in it. Pursuit of a grand unifying theory may have gone out of fashion in the past quarter century, but it's still a romantic ontological goal. It could be that the string theory boom of the 1990s was the start of the paradigm shift, and with CERN and OPERA able to articulate experiments beyond the wildest imaginations of scientists fifty years ago, we're just now seeing data that has the kind of anomolous strength required to presage a true revolution.

Spotted: The Neutrino Chameleon

A bit of exciting news coming from Italy's OPERA experiment at the INFN's San Grasso Laboratory: for the first time ever, researchers have directly observed a muon-neutrino changing into a tau-neutrino! This is significant because, since the 1960s, physicists have predicted such an oscillation must be the cause of an apparent deficit in muon-neutrinos arriving to earth from the sun. Rolf Heuer says "This is an important step for neutrino physics...we're all looking forward to the new physics this result presages."

This discovery could also have significant impact on string theory research--or, at least, it bolsters the notion that the Standard Model is incomplete by effectively proving that neutrinos have mass (which is required in order to oscillate; the current Standard Model theory holds that neutrinos have no mass). Should scientists uncover the math behind this inconsistency by observing one or many of the "missing" neutrinos at CERN, many of the most profound questions about mass may be resolved, including the tantalizing mystery surrounding dark matter.

Speaking of that elusive stuff (which accounts for about 25% of the universe), this month CERN is releasing the brilliant ATLAS pop-up book in the United States, which colorfully examines what the universe is made of, where it came from, and how it works. It's a wonderful, intricately drawn introduction to the exciting things happening in theoretical physics right now, but also, it's just awesome!

And finally, today marks the start of the 2010 World Science Festival in New York. You'd be remiss not to check out the LIGO telescope at the Broad Street Ballroom, The Search for Life in the Universe at Galapagos Art Space, or The Moth storytellers at Webster Hall. And that's just a tiny sampling of the glut of science events hitting the city--it's a great time to be curious.

Hooray for Physics!

With beams (finally!) colliding at 7 TeV, this week marks the start of real physics at the LHC, and for particle physicists and scientific optimists all over the world, brings the possibility of imminent groundbreaking discovery. Dennis Overbye calls it a "remarkable comeback for CERN", John Conway writes that this "clearly marks the beginning, at long last, of the first major physics run of the new accelerator," and NewScientist reports that "record LHC collisions mark new era for physics."

CERN is giddy: Rolf Heuer, General Director, writes "A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication has started to pay dividends...the LHC has a real chance over the next two years of discovering supersymmetric particles, and possibly giving insights into the composition of about a quarter of the Universe." ATLAS spokeswoman, Fabiola Gianotti, said "With these record-shattering collision energies, the LHC experiments are propelled into a vast region to explore, and the hunt begins for dark matter, new forces, new dimensions and the Higgs boson." See here for the latest mind-blowing videos and images from the LHC. This era is an awesome one, in the most literal sense.

Get up to speed on all the implications of a successful LHC run: The Little Book of String Theory by Steven Gubser; The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider by Don Lincoln; Collider: The Search for the World's Smallest Particles by Paul Halpern; Einstein's Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe by Evalyn Gates.

The LHC Is Back

...so says CERN director Rolf Hueur. Steve Myers, Director for Accelerators, says that "The LHC is far better understood machine than it was a year ago. We've learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That's how progress is made." Take that, time-traveling Higgs.

A press conference to discuss what this means will be held on Monday at 2pm; live webcast here. Submit your questions to @CERN via Twitter.

Happy weekend!

LHC: Slow and Steady Wins the Race

From today's press release:

"CERN'S Large Hadron Collider will initially run at an energy of 3.5 TeV per beam when it starts up in November this year. This news comes after all tests on the machine’s high-current electrical connections were completed last week, indicating that no further repairs are necessary for safe running. “ We've selected 3.5 TeV to start,” said CERN's Director General, Rolf Heuer, “because it allows the LHC operators to gain experience of running the machine safely while opening up a new discovery region for the experiments."

After a year hiatus, during which up to 10,000 high-current superconducting electrical connections and their corresponding copper stabilizers were tested and malfunctioning units repaired, the LHC is ready to run--but at a speed too sluggish, at first, anyway, for the potential of substantial discovery. If all goes well, once the operations beam has gained experience running at 3.5 and 5 TeV per beam, near the end of the year lead ions will be introduced and massive amounts of data collected. Then the accelerator will be shut down again, and "work will begin on moving the machine towards 7 TeV per beam." Optimally, the real fun will begin in early 2011, when particle-smashing at 7 TeV reaches primordial proportions.

Heuer continues, “The LHC is a much better understood machine than it was a year ago. We can look forward with confidence and excitement to a good run through the winter and into next year.”

Patience is a virtue.

ps: Aesop lends itself to infinite cliche (see today's title) but his collection of fables, along with Hans Christian Anderson's gloriously wicked stories, were a mainstay of my very early reading-- and likely yours. Here, then, is a fable come to life. Astounding how cleverness reveals itself in smaller creatures--even the bird-brained ones!--when given a chance.

Progress Report: LHC

From CERN's press release:

At the 151st session of the CERN Council today, CERN Director General Rolf Heuer confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) remains on schedule for a restart this autumn, albeit about 2-3 weeks later than originally foreseen. Following the incident of 19 September 2008 that brought the LHC to a standstill, a great deal of work has been done to understand the causes of the incident and ensure that a similar incident cannot happen again.

“Many new tests have been developed,” said CERN’s Director for accelerators, Steve Myers. “That’s given us a wealth of information about the LHC splices, and confidence that we will be in good shape for running this year.”

As you read this, technicians are warming up Sector 4-5 to check for splice problems and making sure the new QPS (quench protection system) is working. QPS will "trigger evacuation of the stored magnetic energy quickly and safely should a part of the LHC’s superconducting system warm up slightly and cease to be superconducting," thus (hopefully) avoiding last year's eleventh-hour debacle.

The CERN Bulletin has more detail; Interactions talks splices; and Dennis Overbye sums up the success of the World Science Festival.

Science and Democracy

Dennis Overbye for the Science Times: "Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth."

Peter Steinberg and Ken Bloom at CERN react; Adam Frank, author of The Constant Fire, Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate talks to Melissa Lafsky at Discover (part I and part II). This is a debate that will go on, most likely, forever: regardless of how many amazing and fundamental truths are revealed in this eon of scientific exploration, I doubt that any TOE will encompass "God created the Earth and everything in it, including quantum physics." (Right off the bat, wouldn't that theory need to be revised to include the universe and everything in it? Or, rather, multiverse...)

I will admit that religion has its place, and has historically contributed both good and ill to developing societies. However, it's high time that religion admit to being less viable as The Great Explainer of Life--or at least separately viable--and allow science to move forward without today's myriad attempts to bamboozle. (I'm looking at you, intelligent design.)

To quote Einstein: "It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for what this delicate little plant needs more than anything, besides stimulation, is freedom."

The Importance of Being Funded

It's no secret that government dollars allocated to scientific research are few and far between (especially compared to the astounding bank bailouts of late), but the good people at CERN seem optimistic for 2009. On the cellular level, let's hope that the incoming administration follows the Brits' lead and offers belated encouragement toward stem cell trials--it's high time this vital, and robust, line of research is reinvigorated. Nothing less than cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, spine injuries, heart disease, arthritis, blindness, MS, cancer (I could go on) are at stake. Like many other "moral mandates" that President Bush has insisted on conflating with his own personal biases, the controversy surrounding embryonic stem cell research is largely overstated for dramatic effect, discounting the incredible contribution such research could yield for millions of suffering citizens. An example of the hypocrisy: in vitro fertilization clinics throw out excess viable embryos all the time (embryos that could simply be donated for use in stem cell research)--somehow, that wealth-fueled industry thrives without malcontent from the folks who decry using those very embryos in a lab. Apparently, the trash can is a nobler destruction.

The good news is that tomorrow, a new era dawns, and not just for science--for all of humanity. I'd say it's in the nick of time.

Update: Green Light for US Stem Cell Research!

2009: The Year of the LHC

CERN starts shooting protons again this year (and they're on twitter!), and after months of delays, the excitement is starting to build. Check out photos of the LHC first beam from September 1o, 2008. Each image shows the debris of particles, or the stuff that results in a collision of proton beams traveling at 99.9999991% the speed of light. All kinds of particles show up on these images (which are recorded at the rate of 600 million collisions per second), most of them already discovered and catalogued, but the elusive Higgs boson is still at large. Its discovery would be a huge coup for theoretical physicists and would provide a key piece of the Standard Model puzzle.

Exploring the Mystery of Matter: The ATLAS Experiment by Claudia Marcelloni, Kerry-Jane Lowery, and Kenway Smith is a history of the LHC as well as a fascinating account of the scientists that made the ATLAS experiment happen. (ATLAS, or A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS, is the largest and, some say, most ambitious of the LHC's six detectors.) Also coming out next month is The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider by Don Lincoln. Both will get you in the mood for proton smashing.

When Physicists Fight

Stephen Hawking is a famously stubborn agitator among his peers: for one thing, he's had a years-outstanding bet with Peter Higgs that Higgs' eponymous boson (also called The God Particle for its portended import: the Higgs boson theoretically gives everything its mass) will not be discovered. Recent excitement over at CERN has brought this wager back into the limelight, and it appears that Hawking, while acknowledging that the LHC's probability of proving the Higgs has increased by a probability of four, remains mischievous and declares that it would be "more interesting" not to find it, making the scientific community "think again." Higgs, for his part, is a good sport, but must be dying inside at the LHC's continued delays.

Another of Hawking's loud and controversial theories concerned black holes, an area of expertise that his name is practically synonymous with (and in fact, two definitions concerning black holes are named for him--Hawking radiation and Hawking temperature). Thirty years ago, Hawking claimed that nothing, not even information, can escape a black hole's singularity, and fellow physicist Leonard Susskind spent a good part of his career proving him wrong (and defending a fundamental law of physics in the process). The drama, in all its theoretical glory, is laid out in entertaining fashion in Susskind's new book The Black Hole War. In addition to the sex appeal of two scientists battling it out with mathematical equations, TBHW is a great primer on string theory and quantum field theory--and reinforces the notion that these guys are all helpless gamblers. In the epilogue, Susskind prints a contract drawn in 1980 between Hawking and another physicist, Don Page; on it, it confirms via thumbprint that Hawking conceded the black hole war in 2007. Maybe this explains his angst with the Higgs boson: regardless of international acclaim as one of science's greatest minds, the man just wants to win a bet.

Next Stop: Thoughtland

Two books inspired the creation of this blog: Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott and Tertium Organum by P.D. Ouspensky. Neither author is a physicist; both were published long before today's theories about strings and gluons predicted additional dimensions; yet both discuss the natural geometric conclusion that our perception of space and time should be broadened to include phenomena that we can't, as yet, conceptualize. Case in point: modern string theory predicts that our universe exists in ten spacetime dimensions (as opposed to our familiar four). It takes great imagination and flexibility of doctrine to imagine-- Abbott termed this scientific (or philosophical) suspension of disbelief a trip to "Thoughtland."

I'm no scientist (certainly no mathematician) but it seems to me that, more than a century after Abbott satirized the societal censorship of deep thought, we've come hardly closer to the deification of science. The most important and sought-after theory of physics--a model that would unite quantum mechanics and Einstein's general theory of relativity (also called the Theory of Everything (TOE))--is today on the precipice of discovery. (That is, if the Large Hadron Collider at CERN can overcome its myriad operation difficulties.) String Theory is finally getting its due, and its disciples dominate today's physics landscape. The fallout of discovering the Higgs boson, or the graviton, or superpartner particles, is nothing short of a deeper understanding of the makeup of the universe and ourselves.

This blog is intended to provide a library of titles for the self-educated modern philosopher-scientist. Every time creationism gains traction in a public school system or stem cell research loses its federal funding, immerse yourself in Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe or Lisa Randall's Warped Passages and be reassured: the revolution has already begun.