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Gravity's Engines
We’ve long understood black holes to be the points at which the universe as we know it comes to an end. Often billions of times more massive than the Sun, they...
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Many physicists are great at figuring out how the world works, but less adept at describing those workings to a nontechnical audience. Brian Greene, a theoretical physicist at Columbia University, is an exception to that stereotype. Greene is known for his popular books, which have exposed the complex ideas of string theory and quantum physics to a wide audience. With a new four-part NOVA miniseries, The Fabric of the Cosmos, which begins airing November 2 at 9:00 P.M. on PBS, Greene ought to be able to reach even more curious folk. A DVD of the series goes on sale November 22.
In the clip below from the episode "What Is Space?" Greene takes on one of the hottest topics in physics: the Higgs boson. Physicists have long thought that the Higgs particle should exist but have yet to find it. With the aid of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, the elusive Higgs boson may finally come out of hiding. In the clip, Higgs, now an emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, tells of his nerve-racking 1964 presentation at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., when his ideas still ran counter to conventional wisdom. Also featured in the video are physicists Joseph Lykken of Fermilab, Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley, and Leonard Susskind of Stanford University.
Watch Sneak Peek: What Is Space? on PBS. See more from NOVA.
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23 Comments
Add CommentAlmost sounds like the old concept of the "ether" - a property of space that permitted the propagation of light!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm so glad Greene is doing this. He's so great at explaining complex concepts, and this will just bring that to a broader audience, as Carl Sagan did years ago. Thank you, Brian!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeter Higgs is eponymous, not the particle. Common mistake nowadays.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBrian Greene is good, but I wish his explanations didn't always involve the awkward analogies. I don't think showing stock footage of celebrities and comparing the properties of particles to movie star fame goes very far to help anyone visualize these complex concepts in a useful way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe kinetic energy that propagates particles (as waves) seems to alternatively manifest as the potential energy of mass when particles are localized.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suggest that mass, unlike other particle forces, is not mediated by the exchange of particles but is rather an external energy field that is dissipated upon collision in particle collider experiments much like the momentum imparted to test particles by magnetic fields.
This external energy could have been allocated to each particle emitted by the conditions of spacetime into which it was emitted: particles emitted into the dense conditions of the early universe could not propagate - their emission energy was manifested as the abundant mass of quarks. In this scenario, as universal density diminished particles were free to 'perpetually' propagate as zero rest mass photons.
This mechanism, determined by the density of spacetime at the moment of initial particle emission, describes the function attributed to the imaginary Higgs Field required by the Higgs mechanism. Mass is not assigned as particles continuously pass through space, but for most matter was determined when the quark-gluon soup condensed from the unified energy of the initial universe.
If this scenario is correct, of course, no detection of any Higgs boson would be possible...
Wait! On 8/23/2011, SciAm featured an article about Stephen Hawking's "bet"which predicted the LHC would not find the Higgs boson. It went on to report on the latest findings which said that the Higgs boson had not been found (yet) at a given energy level. So my question is, Why does this NOVA program seem to avoid this fact: that there IS doubt about the existence of the Higgs boson?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, this is just a 5 minute clip (teaser) from NOVA's "What is Space?" series, so I guess they may answer that question somewhere in the rest of the program. Hope so - it would be disappointing to see NOVA lapse like that.
I just keep getting the message that the clip is not available for technical reasons. Is this one of those that won't play in Germany because of copyright?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing the Google Chrome browser I commonly experience failures downloading the video file and or playing it using the Shockwave video plugin, which crashes. By using the browser page refresh button to reload the page I can eventually get it to work. Your results may be similarly erratic - you might try page refresh...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn response to Brian Green’s upcoming series THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat man falsely perceives to be space and time, actually rather are Infinity and Eternity respectively. Einstein’s theory of relativity does not work on the negative side of zero; he therefore used the big bang as the beginnings of space and time. Obviously he did not consider that Infinity and Eternity already were realities and our universe couldn't possibly have erupted out of nothing, but was borne out of pre-existing energy which had gone through infinite transformations in former lives, perpetually driven on by the engine of cause and effect. Thus its birth, an event of relatively little significance inside this infinite environment, could not have marked the beginnings of anything other than its own. Thus time and space as envisioned by man only play a role in this, our universe and can only be applied in the presents of matter and energy, outside of which they do not exist. Infinity and Eternity on the other hand, being two different entities, are not one and the same as suggested by Einstein, but each standalone, one for Distance and the other for Duration, both being indivisible and impossible to scale. Thus, that which man believes to be space and time, cannot curve or bend around anything, speed up, or slow down, whatever the reason. This infinite medium, inside which infinite numbers of universes are born, than expand, but never collapse, collide in infinite rhythms and the newly recycled energy of the resulting big bangs pulses endlessly through this medium, and might I suggest, it, possibly being the elusive dark matter energy, who’s source no one seems to be able to explain. I am talking here not of a Multiverse, but an Infinidium, as inside it, one universe, or even multiple ones couldn’t possibly exist without there being infinite numbers of them, all interacting with one another in zones where their boundaries will intersect and black holes, coming from various directions converge, each time forming one giant anomaly which will explode, producing the next big bangs and all this takes place in an environment where time and space as envisioned by man do not exist.
To me, dbtinc and jtdwyer are on the right track. There is no such thing as a Higgs Boson, because Gravitation is a non-Quantum force, and mass is simply the kinetic energy of vibrating compactified dimensions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is better explained by exploring the following links. The first two are from a Scientific American contest from earlier this year:
Essay: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/essay-download/943/__details/Levin_CommonPlinth_FQXi.pdf
Discussion: http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/943
Also, some updates are discussed in the comments on the aforementioned article (see comment 6, above, by BuckSkinMan):
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/08/23/a-higgs-setback-did-stephen-hawking-just-win-the-most-outrageous-bet-in-physics-history/?WT_mc_id=SA_WR_20110825#comment-3370 et seq.
My apologies for not having the material better organized.
I truly feel sorry for Dr. Higgs for it is virtually certain (and so far it appears the LHC has failed) that the Higg's boson will not be found (because it does not exist). I agree with the other respondents that the Greene PBS program was remiss in ignoring the strong possibility that the Higg's may not be found. Of course, it is good news for those of us who have alternative theories for the origin of mass. Looks like we are in need of a paradigm shift.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no Higg's particle! Inertial mass of a body (proton, electron, neutron, etc.)is simply the energy level of the particle relative to absolute space. Its "space energy level". A body always has at least two energy components - a kenetic energy level relative to other bodies (momentum) and an energy level relative to absolute space itself (mass). http://novan.com/energies.htm
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe deeper we get into particle physics, quantum physics and cosmology, the more I feel knowledge is based on long chains of assumptions, some of which are likely wrong. Therefore, "pure" science should all be privately funded, until it shows clear possibilities of benefit to Gaia, or humanity. At the same time, I'd give a significant part of my income to help fund some parts of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWithin the program a statement is made that anything that moves has mass, even energy via E=MCC. Photons move and have energy therefore mass. They move at the speed of light. We have mass moving at the speed of light and therefore being drawn into a curved path when passing through a the gravity field of a star. What's wrong with this picture?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWait, is it me??? or has the metric system been abandoned? I really think anything that is presented as science must be metric.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@skiburger: There is nothing wrong with the idea that gravity interacts with light, it's just that Newtonian gravity predicts the wrong value. As I recall, whereas GR nailed it, the classical prediction is off by about a factor of 2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom the little that I understand about what physicists think, the assertion you attribute to someone in the program would have to be considered within its intended context. There seem to be many disparate contexts depending on the nature of a discussion and its relevant contexts (i.e. classical physics, general relativity, quantum physics, etc.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhotons are generally considered to have zero rest mass or intrinsic mass. Photons in motion gain momentum and energy, but their rest mass remains zero. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence
"General relativity generalises special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of... spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation are present."
As I understand, GR describes the effects of gravitation in the context of abstract dimensional coordinates of spacetime, thus the curvature imparted to light passing near spacetime containing a massive object can be considered to continue propagating in a straight path as it is curved by the local contraction imparted to spacetime by the mass-energy of the large body.
Also, I consider this to be an unphysical description of gravitational effects, but it has proven to be highly effective...
Meanwhile, as I understand a particle with a non-zero rest mass could not attain the speed of light, although recent interpretations of experimental results indicate that non-zero rest mass neutrinos have exceeded the speed of light. However, I expect this preliminary result will soon be overturned...
At any rate, scientists are also to some extent human: they sometimes say things that are not strictly correct and sometimes even disagree with each other...
Addendum: the quotation describing GR gravitation comprising the third paragraph can be found in the introduction of:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity
Sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen of the community of science, but the so-called Higgs Boson Particle is an ABSOLUTE NONENTITY in nature. Yet billions of taxpayer dollars (and euros) are going to be spent to realize this unpleasant fact. In the interim, of course, the research enterprise will keep itself busy with razzle-razzle interpretations of data coupled with a profusion of more new theories and the inevitable call and clamor for more research funds. And these are not vain words at all. First, we have to explore and set right our fundamentals. If the bedrock of science, which is physics, is fundamentally flawed, then no amount of tinkering with ad hoc or patchwork theories is going to strengthen that base to support any more theories, let alone existing ones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo make interpretative sense of any empirical data in physics, one has to first recognize the ‘COMMUNION OF ATOMS and the incumbent atoms as BREATHING ENTITIES. The Higgs field is supposed to give mass to matter. In this context,please see the ultimate concept of mass and energy, in: http://www.sittampalam.net/MassEnergy.htm and http://www.sittampalam.net/TheSpin.htm
The breathing-in and breathing-out of mass-energy by nucleons and electrons, the basic constituents of all matter, form the basis of quantum mechanics, with no more need for recourse to virtual particles flitting in and out of void, etc.
Finally, for those fundamentalists among you, I shall leave you with a US 25,000 challenge (No joke; no spam; word of honor.) :
DOES THE MOVING BODY CONTRACT TRANSVERSE TO MOTION?
Standard textbooks in basic physics today reflect an unsubstantiated view of mainstream physicists, which concept was also uncritically accepted by Einstein in his relativity theories, that a moving body contracts ONLY in the direction of its motion and that NO contraction takes place along any direction perpendicular to that line of motion of the body. For an elaboration on this question, please see the following two web pages.
(1)www.sittampalam.net/LateralThoughts.pdf
(2)www.sittampalam.net/NobelResponse.pdf
(2)
Please do take this question very seriously, as the true and substantiated answer here would have ramifications across the ENTIRE realm of physics today, reinforcing physics as the bedrock of science!
Posted by: Eugene Sittampalam | April 19, 2011 08:26 PM
Please See this original Nature Blog comment in:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/04/future_of_the_phd_live_qa.html?WT.ec_id=NEWS-201104193
Thank you all for your time here.
Cheers!
in answer to your question-"does the moving body contract transverse to (the direction of) motion? i would say yes- the three dimensional space fabric is contracted (and time is dilated of course). In fact, it is likely that a macroscopic object traveling (other than a massless particle like the photon) close to the speed of light (of course a spacecraft would be destroyed considerably short of reaching the speed of light) would collapse into a black hole- because it requires increasingly more energy (which means increasingly more mass) to increase velocity as you approach velocity of c. this is just one of the many obstacles to manned space travel outside our solar system. in fact, i would say that space colonization outside of our solar system is a pipe dream and probably impossible. furthermore, it is unlikely that any sizable colony can be built on any of the planets in our solar system.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you kindly, Christinaak, for your response. If I may continue here: Mass and energy have been shown by the great Einstein to be fundamentally the same (equivalent). Therefore, these two originally separate classical mechanical concepts of mass and energy may now be replaced with a simple, singular and yet a strictly classical mechanical concept: mass-energy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThus, atoms and molecules (physical entities with mass) and photons and neutrinos (physical entities with energy) become fundamentally identical.
Hence, We may envision our universe as a unique and singular continuum (or a 3-D fabric, as you put it) in an ever-vibrant ether of mass-energy, where atoms and molecules (matter) form the condensed state of the mass-energy ether, vibrant at sub-c speeds; and photons and neutrinos (energy) the evaporated state, vibrant at the statistical, terminal speed c.
For more on this world-view that would unfold the road map to the holy grail of science (the unification of physics), please access:
http://www.sittampalam.net/Relativity.htm
http://www.sittampalam.net/Synopsis.htm
and
http://toe.tv
Thank you all again, and Cheers!
There's still a lot of work to do but it appears that Higgs may get the Nobel prize after all instead of the arm chair physicists who claimed that the absolutely knew that he was wrong as their idea was the correct one. Time will tell but I'm betting on Higgs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom a blue collar academy graduate "The universe is a disturbed field of pure energy seeking equilibrium" ---- The Higgs field?
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