Science Journalism Failure #4,964 - The "God" Particle

Recently the scientific community has been all flustered with rumors that particle physicists are getting very close to discovering "The God particle". It seems journalists always need to coin some terribly misleading, patronizing, yet snazzy-sounding name to their headlines for fear that their story really isn't, well, "news" (they are right, most of the time).

Lets put a stop to this journalistic absurdity right now: there is no "god" particle. The particle they are referring to is the Higgs Boson, a subatomic, elemental particle predicted by the standard theory of particle physics that has yet to be discovered. There is nothing "godlike" about the particle. Its simply the last boson left to be discovered to complete the initial standard model as show below:

The neat thing about the Higgs Boson is it is supposed to give mass to the other particles. But there is no magic, god-like quality to this particle anymore than there is to the 4 fundamental forces of nature (gravity, strong nuclear, weak nuclear and EM).

Even IF this particle is found, particle physicists now believe the standard model is already outdated and additional particles would therefore need to exist in order to explain higher energy reactions (as described above). On top of this, the standard model still fails to explain gravity and relativistic physics (physics on a very very large, fast scale). Finding the Higgs Boson would be a great discovery for science, but it would be no greater than many other discoveries before it (Electrity-Magnetism link, Relativity, Gravity...etc). The engineering benefits to man-kind that would follow from finding this boson are murky, if non-existent at best in our lifetimes.

So at this point, should you care? Not really. It would basically be confirming a scientific model we have already been using for 50 years.

The Birth of US Space flight, 60 years ago...

A picture illustrating when and where it all began at Cape Canaveral. This is one of von Braun's v-2 designs the US "borrowed" from Germany post WWII.

Years later we will go to the moon and launch space shuttles all from this location...

(and no, NASA won't let anyone quite that close to the launch site anymore...)

The Best Science TV is not on Cable...

About 15 years ago, one had quite a few quality options for finding decent science entertainment on TV, mostly on cable. Three channels in particular became very successful over time: The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and the History Channel.

While the History Channel used to take a good amount of criticism as the "Hitler Channel" due to its over reliance on WWII topics, today's version of this channel, as well as the other two, are shadows of their former selves.

The Learning Channel is probably the biggest culprit for following MTV's lead of having content that has virtually nothing to do with its name and mission statement. While TLC used to have many quality astronomy shows, it now sports endless reality shows about "little people" and tattoo parlors. TLC, at this time, has virtually nothing to do with science or learning. Discovery and History have also falling to new lows with shows about crab fishing, driving trucks in Alaska and endless pseudo-scientific nonsense about aliens and Nostradamus.

But I'm here to say quality science programming DOES exist. Here's a list of online science programming that, in most cases, far exceeds what you will ever find on History, TLC and Discovery in terms of content, quality and entertainment. The production quality of these shows is easily on PAR with the likes of "Planet Earth" and "The Universe", with excellent HD video. I highly recommend viewing in HD as a podcast with your HDTV.

...and the best part! They are all free without the need for a cable subscription!

(My apologies to MythBusters, the only quality science show remaining on cable TV)

1. The Hubble Cast HD

The Hubble Telescope has been the scientific achievement of the human race up to this point. While the Apollo Project was Man Kind's top engineering achievement, we have learned most of what we know about the Universe through the eye's of Hubble.

2. Earth-Touch's Wildlife Highlights HD

Earth-Touch puts most nature shows on cable to absolute shame. Stunning HD photography, free from any contrived story lines or political biases (mostly). This show, along with its sister marine show should be at the top of every nature lover's list.

3. Earth-Touch's Marine Channel HD

Same as above, focusing on marine life.

4. TED talks in HD

TED talks are fascinating public lectures about the current state of technology, nature, science and our world. While the lectures themselves have agendas and political bias, the library of lectures through TED does not.

5. ESOCast HD

HubbleCast's younger brother, focusing on cutting edge-land based sensors in Andes mountains in Chile.

6. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory HD

Cutting edge, high quality updates from the world of NASA. A must for NASA enthusiasts...

Enjoy!

The Greatest Dispute in Science, Part 1: A Perfect Circle

Today, I am going to start writing a series on what has become the largest battle in science history. This battle started brewing shortly after Einstein published his work on General Relativity and exists to this day. It is a battle that means everything for the human race, how we view ourselves in the Universe and in the end, who we actually are. You can see this battle occur everywhere, both within the world of science and between you and your friends and family. It exists at all levels of the human conscience:

Order vs. Chaos

I do not pretend for to know the answer, nor will I claim one. What I will do is discuss the fascinating battles and theories that have taken place over the years. The battles won and lost on both sides. While most of us make our arguments with books, religions, history and anecdotes; we'll be focusing on how science has waged these battles, the only place where solid evidence and the scientific method serve as referee to constrain the participants’ arguments.

We are going to start with something simple:

Humanity's search for perfection in the form of a circle.

If you ask the average person on the street what they know of π, you might get an answer of 3.14 from someone who either studied math or has a good memory. If you are really lucky, you might hear 3.1415 from an engineer or scientist. Many however, have lost sight of what π actually means: the illusiveness of perfection.

First of all, π is a number, pure and simple. It is not a formula and it means nothing more than the number it represents (3.1415…etc). Its simply much easier to refer to this inconveniently long number as an old Greek letter (anybody with a very long name can sympathize with early mathematicians).

Obviously, there has to be something special about this number, since its one of the oldest numbers in human history. Ancient Egypt and Babylon knew it was a little bigger than 3, but they couldn’t figure out the exact decimal representation. Over 2000 years ago Archimedes of Cyrus was able to figure out the best approximation of π which lasted until the 1800’s, when William Shank calculated it to 527 decimal places (in a time long before computers and calculators no less).

Why all this devotion to a seemingly random number?

Perfection.

You see, in order for a circle to truly be a circle, its MUST have the exact number of π describing the ratio between the circle’s diameter and circumference. My favorite graphical illustration of π is below:

You see, we can easily measure a circle's diameter. With the advent of flexible or clothe rulers (like the ones tailors use), we are also able to accurately measure the diameter of the same circle. However, unlike other basic shapes (squares, rectangles, triangles), these measurements do not easily provide us the area of the circle. For this calculation, we need π.

Area of a circle = π multiplied by the circle’s radius, squared.

Without knowing π, we can never know the true area of a circle. So it was important for mathematicians to discover this number so people could know things like land area for early circular shapes (coliseums…etc). Unfortunately, finding this number precisely, has taking the smartest human brains thousands and thousands of years to determine.

The end of this story is not a very satisfying one for many people: the exact number of π does not exist. In fact, the true amount of decimal places extends to infinite. Which in turn means humans can never make a perfect circle. We can never know the exact amount of area within a circle. Therefore, early mathematicians learned that in the case of geometry, the ultimate and most advanced mathematical tool of the day, perfection does not, cannot, and will never exist.

This ultimately makes sense in one crucial way: a perfect circle is not provided to us, anywhere, in the known Universe. No planet is perfectly circular. No orbit is perfectly circular. Nature, it turns out, might be a chaotic and haphazard place, the idea's of perfection and order were disappearing; A frightening idea indeed to most people in the ancient world.

The Smartest Man in Human History

That’s right I said it, but don’t take my word for it. Listen to Astronomer/Physicist and fellow science ambassador Dr. Neil Tyson discuss Sir Isaac Newton in this TIME special:

Much like Einstein’s famous E=mc², the reigning champion in the realm of famous equations prior to Einstein was Newton’s F=ma. An even more elegant and simple equation since there is no square involved.

Last time we provided an example of how to “read” and equation in English. Lets try this again with our second most famous equation in science history:

Translation: “The force (F) on any object must be equal to (=) the mass of the object (m) multiplied by the acceleration (a) of the object”

This may seem painfully obvious to you, but at the time, this was some mind-blowing stuff. Acceleration can be an abstract idea to some, so let's clear this up right now. Acceleration is a rate. It describes the change in velocity of an object.

Newton’s concept comes down to a firm base in position of where something exists in space. A simple concept that we all are quite used to. “My car is parked in the garage” is an example of a position of an object. You could also say, “my house is on 101 Newton Avenue”, but there’s a big difference between a car and a house: a car moves!

Since you car actually moves from time to time, its position must change. The rate of positional change of your car is known as velocity (or speed). If we take this idea one step further, we can determine the rate at which an object changes its speed over time. This rate is known as acceleration. A car cannot move without accelerating first, and it cannot stop without decelerating.

Back in Newton’s time, the distinction between speed and acceleration wasn’t very clear to most people and many actually considered them the same thing. Newton however, realized something amazing: of these 3 (position, velocity and acceleration) the human body can only “feel” acceleration. You feel the same whether you are sitting in your house or at work. If you were riding in a car on a perfectly smooth road with your eyes closed, you would not sense that you are moving at all! The only way to know you are moving would be using your eyes. However, when you accelerate or decelerate, you can “feel” it. Your body is forced into your seat when you are accelerating. A force therefore is something you can physically feel.

Newton correctly, and for the first time in history, realized that the force you feel on your body must be directly related to your body’s acceleration. Conversely, in order for an object to change is velocity (speed up or slow down), it MUST experience a force. Sometimes the force you experience is a bad thing…in a car accident, the force that hurts you is due 100% to how fast you decelerate to a stop.

But Newton also realized that mass plays a large role in this relationship because the heavier an object is…the more force it takes to speed it up and slow it down. So as you can hopefully see, there is something oddly fantastic about this because it describes something visceral and basic in your experience as a human being: the sense of physical feeling. Anytime you feel motion as a human being, you must be accelerating in some fashion.

Believe it or not from this formula, spawned forth all modern forms of travel, machinery, weapons, our understanding of the solar system, and even how we measure the passage of time! If it wasn’t for Newton, it might have been another 1000 years before this law of nature was realized, and we’d still all be travelling by horse, never going more than a few miles away from our homes…

...An interesting Newton Fact: The smartest man to ever live wasn't smart enough to avoid the 18th century's largest economic bubble when he lost over a million dollars (in today's money) when the South Sea Company's stock crashed in 1722.

He later remarked: "I can measure the motions of celestial bodies, but I cannot measure human folly."

Keep this in mind any time you here economists who believe they actually know how the economy works. If Newton couldn't figure it out, its doubtful anyone else can.

So just why is this Einstein guy famous?

Everybody knows this guy. It doesn’t matter if you are a scientist, engineer, musician, athlete or an office worker. Albert Einstein is amazing simply for the single achievement of becoming the “rock star” of scientists. The only other scientist to ever come close to his level of world wide fame might be Sir Isaac Newton (whom we will introduce next post).

So why all the fame? Do you know just what it was that made this guy so great? Sure he’s smart, but there are tons of smart scientists out there that are virtually unknown (in fact most of them are pretty obscure).

Here’s one reason:

E=mc²

One of the most simple and elegant science equations ever written. Only 3 letters (variables) and one is usually always constant (c). But why? What does this equation mean? Just why is it so important?

First off, since this blog is written for those with no science and math background, lets make sure we understand just how simple and easy a math equation is to understand. I know, most math equations look like greek to most people, but they are actually very easy to comprehend by anyone, way more easy than learning another language (the author is currently learning French).

So, lets start off by translating this equation into English. After all, every math equation is just another form of a “sentence” expressed in the language of algebra.

What this equation says in English is simple: All the energy (E) in an object has to be equal to the amount of mass (m) in the object multiplied by speed of light (c) squared.

(Notice how math reduced all that text down to three letters with no loss of meaning. This is one reason why math is considered the "universal language")

A “square” is a simple concept you learned way back in grade school. It’s a number multiplied by itself. So the square of 8 is simply 8 times 8, which equals 64. Here’s the deal, the bigger the number you are squaring, the bigger the total square is going to be. In this case, “C” is the speed of light, which is an amazingly big number: 671 million miles per hour to be exact. Think about that for a minute, how fast does your car go? This can only mean that when we square this number by multiplying it by itself, we are going to be left with one insanely huge number: 450,241 TRILLION. That’s a hell of a number. One that the human mind, even Einstein's, cannot truly comprehend.

So the basic idea here is that “c²” is big…really, really, really big. Now what happens when you multiply this huge amount with any other number (in this case, an object's mass)? Even if the number is very very small you will still be left with a huge number in the end.

So what this equation is saying is that there is a hell of a lot of energy stored in even the smallest amount of matter. So much energy in fact, that if you could release it, you’d end up with this:

That’s right, nuclear fission is the process of splitting apart a very small amount of matter (just a couple of atoms). Most of that matter is released in the form of “radiation”, which for our purposes is the same thing as energy. Light, heat, gamma rays, x-rays…etc are all forms of radiation or energy. We see the light and feel the heat from the explosion; we don’t see the huge amount of energy that is released as harmful radiation. But its in there.

This is what Einstein is partly famous for (we’ll get into some other cool things later).

But the basic understanding here, that everyone can easily understand, is that Einstein discovered a basic law of nature. A law that states that every little bit of matter that exists in the universe is actually an extremely dense form of tightly packed energy. A similar (but not entirely accurate) way to think of this is: matter is like energy that has been “frozen” down to a really small space.

Now, the next time you see a picture of Einstein, watch a video of a nuclear explosion or see the most famous equation in the history of science, you'll know exactly how they are all related and exactly what they mean. In fact, you now have the same understanding as a scientist...just with out a lot of the math that was used to prove it!

A sort of introduction.

Ask yourself a question: do you understand what the above two equations "mean"? I suspect for most, the truthful answer is no, which is a really good illustration of how we tend to fail at conveying science.

Recently, I read a story on digg and reddit that asked the following question: are you wealthier today than John D. Rockefeller (whom was worth close to 80 billion dollars in the late 1800's)?The truth is that, in almost every meaningful and measurable way...you are. The reason is not money, but time and the above two equations. You were lucky enough to born a little over 100 years later after engineers had some time to tinker with these equations...the benefits of which Rockefeller, despite all his wealth, could never enjoy.

Lately, "climate gate" has been a leading headline in the news. The following discussions that occurred made it clear that scientists have a problem. They have a very big problem: no one else can figure out what the hell they are doing, why they are doing it and why it matters.

Scientists are great at a lot of things. They are smart as hell. But one weakness just about every honest scientist confesses to in secret is that they are bad communicators. One needs only to sit in any University Freshman Physics or Calculus course to see this illustrated first hand.

That's why this blog exists. Being able to do the whole "math" thing makes life a bit easier I find. Bear in mind I don't consider myself to be "good" at math, and I certainly don't like it. Yet I have always found it somewhat easy to do and very useful. I tend to live in the layman's world, only temporarily hopping over to the ivory tower to check out whats going on. In this blog, my goal is to help you understand a little bit more about what these weird guys in lab coats are up to all day. When it matters, when it doesn't, and to delicately mock the journalism profession for endlessing screwing up their job in this respect.