Finally Confirmed the Existence of Hypothetical Particle That Could Help Cool the Planet

We can fit everything we knew before today about Criegee biradicals inside the period at the end of this sentence, but from what we understand they are pretty amazing. At least, that’s the word from a team of researchers form the U. of Manchester, the U. of Bristol, and Sandia National Labs, who have just detected these invisible chemical intermediates for the first time. Apparently they can not only oxidize pollutants from combustion, cleaning up the atmosphere as they go, but they also contribute to cloud formation, helping to cool the planet.

.........................................................................................................................................................

More...

• ICE HOTEL: The Exotic Architecture
• Alphabets made out of Negative Spacing

..........................................................................................................................................................

Criegee biradicals were first hypothesized in the 1950s by German chemist Rudolf Criegee, but at that point in time it was impossible to detect them or measure them, so it was unknown whether or not they truly existed and, if so, how fast they reacted with other atoms. Finding and measuring them was made possible by a special device rigged up by Sandia researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs’ Advanced Light Source, which allowed them to discern the formation and eliminate other similar molecules that contain the same atoms but in a different structure.

What they found in doing so, we’re told, is quite promising. Criegee biradicals react more rapidly than researchers previously thought they could with aforementioned pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, leaving behind nitrate and sulfate that lead to aerosol formation and eventually cloud formation. Ultimately, Criegee biradicals could help cool the planet.

Moreover, understanding them should lend atmospheric researchers some insight on the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere as a whole as well as help lead to better understandings of climate and how pollution affects the air around us.

Environment Clean Generations

Closer for Higgs Boson, but Particle still Remains Elusive

Physicists from the Cern research lab in Geneva announced that they have made significant progress in the hunt for the Higgs boson, but the result does not provide definitive evidence for the long-sought particle.

The teams announced signals consistent with the appearance of the Higgs boson, and the results suggest a Higgs particle mass of about in the range of 115 to 130 gigaelectronvolts (GeV). However, the signals could also be explained if the Higgs field doesn't exist -- it could just be background fluctuation.

More data will be needed to establish the existence of the Higgs with confidence. The Atlas and CMS experiments will gather significantly more data in 2012 -- but until then, a definitive answer to the question "does the Higgs boson exist" is still out of reach.

"Given the outstanding performance of the LHC this year, we will not need to wait long for enough data and can look forward to resolving this puzzle in 2012," said Atlas experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti.

Two teams of physicists working with Cern's Large Hadron Collider in Geneva are expected to announce that they have found the best evidence yet for the hypothetical elementary particle: the Higgs boson.

The teams -- Atlas and CMS -- have been working independently to hunt for signs of the elusive particle. But what is the Higgs boson, and why do you need to recreate events a fraction of a second after the Big Bang to find it?

..........................................................................................................................................................

More...

• You Could Probably Live For 1000 Years
• Which Geek R U ?

...........................................................................................................................................................

It's named after Edinburgh University physicist Peter Higgs, who proposed that atoms receive their mass from an invisible field that's spread throughout the cosmos. Like wading through treacle, atoms pick up mass as they whizz through the Higgs field.

The Higgs is an answer to the physics conundrum of why the building blocks of matter have a mass at all. This stops them from zipping about the universe at the speed of light, and allows them to bind together to form planets, humans, kangaroos and asteroids.

Its existence is essential for the Standard Model, which is the universally-accepted scientific theory to explain the dynamics of subatomic particles. The Higgs boson has always been the one missing ingredient to this model, but if it doesn't exist then the Standard Model shatters into pieces.

To find evidence for its existence, physicists built the LHC: a $10 billion (£6bn) particle accelerator that's housed in a 18-mile tunnel, deep beneath near the French-Swiss border. This monstrous physics laboratory can recreate conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang.

The collider makes beams of protons move at close to the speed of light, before smashing them into each other. This spectacular head-on collision causes other types of particles to splinter off -- hopefully including the Higgs boson.

If it exists, the Higgs is so unstable that it would rapidly decay into more stable, and lighter subatomic particles. But that decay would leave behind a telltale fingerprint, showing up on the physicists' graphs as a very exciting bump.

CERN is to hold a seminar at 13:00 UTC on 13 December, "at which the ATLAS and CMS experiments will present the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson." The conference and a follow-up questions and answers session will be streamed over the web, here.

Environment Clean Generations

A Higgs Boson Announcement be Imminent from the LHC?

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider could be getting an early Christmas present: the Higgs boson. According to the latest rumours, scientists at the LHC are seeing a signal that could correspond to a Higgs particle with a mass of 125 GeV (a proton is slightly less than 1 GeV).

Public talks are scheduled to discuss the latest results from Atlas and CMS, two of the main LHC experiments, on 13 December. This follows one day after a closed-door Cern council meeting where officials will get a short preview of the findings, whatever they may be.

"Chances are high (but not strictly 100%) that the talks will either announce a (de facto or de iure) discovery or some far-reaching exclusion that will be really qualitative and unexpected," wrote theoretical physicist Lubos Motl on his blog.

 ..........................................................................................................................................................

More...

• The Flying Car
• Minaret of Jam – The Lost Architecture

...........................................................................................................................................................Motl also mentioned that an internal email sent to the Cern community suggests that results on the elusive Higgs -- which is required under the Standard Model of particle physics to provide mass to different particles -- will be inconclusive. This could mean that the finding is below the five-sigma threshold needed to definitively declare a discovery in physics.

But if the rumours are true, and the Higgs has been seen at 125 GeV, it could bolster the idea that there is physics beyond the Standard Model that describes the behaviour of subatomic particles. A 125 GeV Higgs is lighter than predicted under the simplest models and would likely require more complex theories, such as supersymmetry, which posits the existence of a heavier partner to all known particles.

Environment Clean Generations

Tuning a Laser to Pull Rather Than Push

There’s no escaping it: though the tractor beam is a staple of sci-fi space-faring scenarios, it’s also extremely counter-intuitive. How does one pull something in via an outward propagating beam? Now a few Chinese researchers think they’ve found the answer via a theoretical method that should generate a backward pulling force from a forward traveling stream of photons.

The Fudan University team won’t be capturing rebel tranports with their beam any time soon--it only works (theoretically) at the nano-level--but it does achieve an interesting turnabout of physical force. 

We know photons exert an outward momentum; this is what allows solar sails to harness sunlight to generate small amounts of thrust. But carefully tuned to meet two conditions, a system can be created to turn “push” into “pull.”

The conditions: For one, the momentum of the outward propagation must be very small. Second, several multipoles within the target particle must be excited at the same time, scattering the beam. 

If the angle of this beam scattering is just right, the total forward momentum can be negative--that is, it can have negative thrust which equates to reverse thrust, or pull--meaning the target is pulled back down the stream of photons toward the source.

Voila: Tractor beam.

It won’t reel in a crippled satellite or an enemy battle cruiser, but it could be used at the nanoscale to manipulate particles in interesting ways that could be especially useful in optical systems. That is, if it works in practice as well as it does in theory.

by "environment clean generations"

CERN, Cosmic Rays and Climate Change

Not content with just stirring the pot in particle physics, CERN has embarked on an experiment aimed at addressing whether or not comic rays from deep space might be seeding clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, influencing climate change. The early findings are far from deciding the issue of whether climate change is man made or otherwise, but they have borne some interesting results. It turns out that cosmic rays could be influencing temperatures on Earth. Perhaps even more groundbreaking, it turns out they also might not. Welcome to climate science.

The notion is this: Cosmic rays that we know are bombarding our planet from the far reaches of space are pelting the atmosphere with protons, and those protons can ionize some compounds that in turn condense into aerosols, basically droplets in the atmosphere. Clouds might in turn build around those droplets, and those clouds shield the Earth, reducing temperatures.

But our dosing of cosmic rays is dependent on the sun. When the sun is emitting lots of radiation during high points in the solar cycle, its magnetic field shields us from some of those cosmic rays. An active sun spells fewer rays spells fewer clouds, and hence warming temperatures on Earth.

So, are cosmic rays (or the lack thereof) to blame for our current spate of rising temperatures? Of course/not/maybe.

The experiment at CERN is fabricating the upper atmosphere in the lab by trapping ultra-pure air and things like water vapor, ozone, ammonia, and sulphur dioxide in a chamber. They are then bombarding that air with protons from the same generator that supplies the Large Hadron Collider. Preliminary results show that these faux cosmic rays indeed have an effect on the atmosphere: When high energy protons stream in, production of nanometer-sized particles in the atmosphere increases by more than ten times.

Case closed. But not really. Those particles that are forming are far too small to actually seed a cloud. So while CERN has proven that cosmic rays are definitely influencing the upper atmosphere, the connection between warming and cosmic rays is far from firmly established.

Naturally, different scientists are reaching different conclusions, but all seem to think this experiment is a worthwhile idea, even if it basically asks more questions than it answers. So, just to recap, the whole climate change argument has not been put to rest. 

 by "environment clean generations"