So You Like Chemistry Puns...

Higgs Boson

On the 4th of July 2012, ATLAS and CMS experiments both reported a particle with a mass of around 126GeV at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The particle is consistent with the Higgs boson predicted by the standard model.

The Higgs boson creates a Higgs field which theoretically exists everywhere in the universe and interacts with subatomic fundamental particles like quarks and leptons to give them mass. How much mass a particle has depends on how much interaction is has with the field, all particles are equal before they enter the Higgs field, it is the Higgs field that gives the particles mass depending on their interactions with it.

In the Standard Model, the higgs field is a scalar tachyonic field ( “scalar” meaning that it doesn’t transform under Lorentz transformations and “tachyonic” referring to the field as a whole having imaginary, or complex, mass). While tachyons are purely theoretical particles that move faster than the speed of light, fields with imaginary mass have an important role in modern physics.

☄️A special relativity problem☄️

This problem appeared in one of my tutorial sheets and I thought it would be a nice one to share.

“A rather eccentric group of astronomy students wanted to celebrate the impact of the Shoemaker-Levy comet on Jupiter by holding a party of sufficiently long duration that their celebrations were simultaneous with the impact of the comet in all inertial frames.

For how long did they need to party?  How might the part end?  [The distance from the Earth to Jupiter is 8 x 10^11 m and you may neglect their relative motion].”

“A time sequence of four frames showing the impact of the first of the 20 odd fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter.”

Just basic knowledge of Lorentz transformations is required to solve this 🙂

This question is in fact from Dynamics and Relativity by Gavin Smith and J. R. Forshaw (page 134, problem 6.15). Picture source: NASA.

Photography by Juh-ku

Auburn 852 Boat-tail Speedster

We possess the real truth 🖖💪🤘

Spontaneous symmetry breaking

A good way to get an idea of what this is like is through water. Water has four different forms it could take depending on the conditions; frost, snow, ice and rime. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is sort of like this.

At the start of the big bang there was a single force which started off hot and as it expanded began to cool and in 1x10-46s (supposed to be scientific notation) gravity came into existence.

Now there is gravity and the force energy of the universe. This force energy then split into the strong nuclear force (SNF) at about 1x10-36s.

Then shorty after the massive inflation at 1x10-22s (where the universe expanded from about the size of a proton to that of a orange), the weak nuclear force and electromagnetic force (or electroweak force as we now know that they are the same) came into existence at the same time at 1x10-12s.

So from one force, in 1x10-12s all the different forces have fallen out.

In about 1x10-6 quark confinement would happen, from 3-20 minutes the nuclei would begin to form, there is still too much energy for the electrons to be bound to the nuclei. Atoms would not form for about 380,000 years.

Well this has been a brief and simple intro to spontaneous symmetry breaking, hope you guys liked it. 

🙃🙃🙃

I can relate to three out of four of them 🙃