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Gravity's Engines
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In its first six months of operation, the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva has yet to find the Higgs boson, solve the mystery of dark matter or discover hidden dimensions of spacetime. It has, however, uncovered a tantalizing puzzle, one that scientists will take up again when the collider restarts in February following a holiday break. Last summer physicists noticed that some of the particles created by their proton collisions appeared to be synchronizing their flight paths, like flocks of birds. The findings were so bizarre that “we’ve spent all the time since [then] convincing ourselves that what we were see ing was real,” says Guido Tonelli, a spokesperson for CMS, one of two general-purpose experiments at the LHC.
The effect is subtle. When proton collisions result in the release of more than 110 new particles, the scientists found, the emerging particles seem to fly in the same direction. The high-energy collisions of protons in the LHC may be uncovering “a new deep internal structure of the initial protons,” says Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, winner of a Nobel Prize for his explanation of the action of gluons. Or the particles may have more interconnections than scientists had realized. “At these higher energies [of the LHC], one is taking a snapshot of the proton with higher spatial and time resolution than ever before,” Wilczek says.
When seen with such high resolution, protons, according to a theory developed by Wilczek and his colleagues, consist of a dense medium of gluons—massless particles that act inside the protons and neutrons, controlling the behavior of quarks, the constituents of all protons and neutrons. “It is not implausible,” Wilczek says, “that the gluons in that medium interact and are correlated with one another, and these interactions are passed on to the new particles.”
If confirmed by other LHC physicists, the phenomenon would be a fascinating new finding about one of the most common particles in our universe and one scientists thought they understood well.
This article was originally published with the title Particles That Flock.
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41 Comments
Add CommentThis synchronization seems to indicate some sort of entanglement. There may be no limit up or down on the size or mass of particles that can be entangled.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not a physicist, BUT, I read a Wiki article about Sierpinski triangle. This is a model for self-organizing systems like, flocks of birds. Any single bird only gets its cues from its immediate neighbours and that is how the flock organizes itself. The clue was that they describe these particles as flocks but it should be no surprise, (no surprise at all) that these particles are self-organizing systems. If they weren't we wouldn't be here and nothing else would be here either. Nothing at all.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInstead of simply referring to the high resolution images indicating these effects, a video would have been worth a million words!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is very interesting, but unfortunately there's not nearly enough information here to make any assessment. I'm certainly no expert but, of course, I'll guess anyway.
Since the LHC is colliding beams of protons, they should principally disintegrate into quarks and gluons. As I understand, gluons are, in standard theory, the mediators of the strong nuclear force that binds protons and neutrons together.
The strong force is the strongest force known, but its effective range is exceedingly limited. However, its effectiveness may well diminish gradually (perhaps in accordance with (some quantum variation of) the law of inverse-squares). In that case, the protons' directional momentum at impact is likely also imparted to the component quarks and other residue, and the 'gradually' disintegrating strong nuclear force that had bound them together.
As I understand, the allocation of mass quantities to specific types of Fermion particles (matter) is based on averages of the observed distances they traverse prior to their decay. Using increasing velocities in collider experiments has produced three 'generations' of Fermions with increasing mass assignments. It seems to me that these more energetic particles may simply indicate an increasing amount of momentum imparted to the collision byproducts, producing increased distances traversed prior to decay. In this view, aren't the more massive generations of Fermions simply artifacts of the velocity imparted to test collisions?
At any rate, this 'interaction of gluons' affecting particle trajectories may simply the gradual diminishment of the strong force as distance increases, analogous to the diminishing effects of gravitation...
Entanglement and relativity are independent of direction of motion in free space. In fact the former one is independent of distance and the later one is dependent on magnitude of velocity. Time is nothing and in particular present time represents degree of synchronization of an observer with other things. These kind of observations only point out that we have to search at far down level to know the reality or settle for the concept of free will.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is the Higgs and the model that defines dark matter, dark energy and simplifies black holes. This theory very effectively replaces big bang and simplifies everything. The Higgs particle is not tiny, it's HUGE. waynemcmichael [dot] com [slash] iwt
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere is the most important message.
Beyond the heuristic Standard Model of particle physics that has been in place for decades, none of the new pseudo-physics offered by our heroic theorists [SUSY "sparticles", "Higgs boson", "extra dimensions", and most importantly any form of "particle dark matter"] have showed up. We're on a fool's errand that has been going on for at least a decade.
What does that tell you?
I'd say time for new ideas from a new segment of the scientific community, with emphasis on nonlinear dynamical systems, fractals, deterministic chaos and other real-world physics available since Poincare discovered that the Solar System was not exactly integrable and that perfectly "reversible" systems were a Platonic ideal.
Real-world systems are fully causal, deterministic, dissipative and irreversible. If the math says otherwise, it is because its starting assumptions are way over-idealized. Let's get back to reality.
RLO
www.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw
I second what rlodershaw said:) It's like and easter egg hunt in a cow pasture... You have to watch out for the BS:)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy can't the gluons glue the atom of radiactive elements? What glues the non-particle matrix of space-time?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do wonder whether the gluons represent the interaction between quarks (material energy) and a confining external field of potential energy (mass), reconfigured from the kinetic energy of initial wave emission.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI suspect that the matrix of spacetime coordinates represents the distribution of residual kinetic energy (and the dimensions of space and time that its disbursal produces) released during the origination of the universe.
I strongly empathize with your sentiments, but in my opinion it is the reliance on analytical models to functionally represent physical/mechanical systems that has produced the evidentiary disconnect between physics and reality. I don't think that any new reliance on some deeper level of analytic mathematical abstraction can provide a more direct correspondence with physical reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have followed the progress of the hadron collider for some time. I find it very interesting to hear about their new findings. I hope that one day they will collide Antimatter particles together. I'm wondering it that will open a true black hole? Maybe even time it's self. Thanks for all your hard work. keep it up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't see Higgs here,but what I do see is a deeper symmetry.Perhaps a new view of what space-time really is,and it's behavior as gravity.As well as it's relationship with mass.If it is one big thing as some suggest,reacting instantaneously across the entire universe.Maybe we can have an explanation of what entanglement is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReciently I finished a paper on a fractal solution for quantum physics from a fractal that I designed in a class in systems approach to design in the 70's that may be the answer to what they are talking about. To see it go to USPTO copyright and trademarks No. 3940100. What you will see there is what I think is a structure of a quantum bubble.I am about to have a press release on it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBack in the 70's I designed a triangular fractal that I just reciently found out may be an answerto quantum physics. It is a triangle with slots at each corner that join them and make a structure that I now believe is a form that forms a quantum bubble. Go to USPTO copyrght and trademarks to see it at 3940100. By assigning strong,weak,electromagnetic assuming opposits join you come up with that structure. I believe that it explains dark matter,entanglement and other qestions that are raised. I can e-mail you the paper on it if you like. Merrill Wes Haug.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have written a paper that sugests that what we call the big bang may have been a matter/antimatter encounter and that they distroyed each other down to the particle level and these particles are reforming to again make matter which is basicely? what Einstien said. Maybe we dpn't want to do that. I e-mailed Linde at Stanford about this and of course did not get a response. There may be a threshold at which a matter/antimatter encounter is unstopable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was referring to colliding 2 Antimatter particles together, not matter /antimatter particle collision.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have spoken to an MIT professor about a matter antimatter pulse reactor though. if you'd like to hear more on that we can chat.
10 comments, 10 ideas. I love the Easter egg hunt analogy. Good spirit of debate anyway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere have been some very good observations, but in my opinion my model makes more sense?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe particles follow a path of magnetic interaction, positive charged and negative charged particle attract each other in a form of electromagnetic entanglement. The entire group of particles are part of the interaction of inception event that provide the generative force that is the origin of it's beginnings. The high-energy collisions of protons in the LHC may be uncovering the internal structure of electromagnetism during collisions, the effect could be calculated determinative.
Remember the concept of ether flow in MICHELSONS experiment. In to days developments we may look at the theory of GRAVITOETHERTONS FLUID swirling and whirling as space or dark energy around as per DURGADAS DATTA --BALLOON INSIDE BALLOON THEORY OF MATTER AND ANTIMATTER UNIVERSE ON OPPOSITE ENTROPY PATH. Therefore SPACE we see is whirling around earth and any experiment producing particles in LHC will give a picture that bunch of particles flying in a predetermined direction. ALL THE EXPERIMENTS IN LHC SHOULD BE ANALYSED IN THE LIGHT OF THEORIES OF DURGADAS DATTA --NAMELY -MONOMAGNETIC COUPLING ETC ETC.--DURGADAS DATTA, E-MAIL: durgadas.ddatta@gmail.com
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDebu,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Theoretical framework of entropy is an expression of disorder or randomness within a model which describes the probability of constituents of thermodynamics in quantum mechanical state. Although it has relevance in the theoretical discussion it is not relevant to particles that flock or cause strange synchronization behavior at the Large Hadron Collider. The behavior of synchronization of particles comes from it's origins, electromagnetic entanglement of positive and negative charged particles. It will take little time for LHC scientists to unravel the synchronization process which will lead to the discovery of how the particles stay assembled before collision.
Hi Bob,I'm not that familiar with how colliders work but it would seem that matter/matter,anti matter/anti matter collisions would allow them to join rather than react to each other. My patent no. 3940100 fractal structure would show that every part of it is out of phase with every other part and they would be invisable to each other. That is what I think dark matter might be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnti-matter (positrons) which are attracted to matter like magnets in follow the electromagnetic wave in Flocks, how do we know this?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn December 14, 2009 Nasa's Fermi satellite was flying over Egypt, the spacecraft intercepted a particle beam from a terrestrial gamma-ray flash which occurred over it's horizon. Fermi's Gamma-ray burst monitor detected the signal of positrons annihilating on the spacecraft, twice, some of the particles reflected off a magnetic mirror point and returned. Studies of lighting storms using high-speed cameras reveal a whole world of activity in the upper atmosphere that no one expected, anti-matter particles created high above ordinary storm clouds by bolts of lightings. These Terrestrial Gamma-ray flashes send beams of anti-matter arcing through the Earth's atmosphere in thunderstorms as high as 100 kilometers and are sometimes referred to as Blue Jets. It is now believed that as many as 500 or more Gamma-ray flashes happen everyday with thunderstorms coughing Positrons (anti-electrons) up the Earth's magnetic field. The same effect is happening in the LHC, flocking is happening during gamma-ray flashes.
I have never seen or read anything related to scientific observation or definition that would indicate to me that scientist understand anything about reality.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing the LHC to find things, like extra dimensions or dark matter or higgs boson,are things that can be seen at all levels of reality and you do not need the LHC to see them. Understanding how everything fits together is alot simpler if you do not break everything apart to look at it and give names and explanations of each piece to understand it. A tree is a tree. A scientist looks at the tree down to the quantum level and declares I find no life.
In other words they miss the point of everything.
All matter occupies the same point. All energy shares the same interval.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt should be no surprise to discover particles share some mutually exclusive mechanism that mirrors conduct of particles in the same frame of reference.
I can't imagine the shock they will experience to discover that all the multiplicity of variations of matter and energy are really ALL THE SAME EVENT.
No rockets needed when all we need to is WALK to Mars and distant planets in other galaxies. Yes. Walk.
When you get to Mars, will you send me a postcard?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not a physicist, but I must say that I'm pleased to see articles like this. I like when unexplained results occur, as it gives scientists something concrete to follow up. To the layperson, science often seems to involve layering ever more unlikely theories on top of each other, with an ever increasing loss of accountability. (String theory is my pet hate!) Empirical evidence of the unexplained is a breath of fresh air!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Everlasting Theory leads to conclusion that the baryons have the atom-like structure. There is the massive core (727.44 MeV) composed of the tensor-spacetime constituents. There is spherical mass in centre of torus. It looks as a miniature of an active galaxy. Interactions of the cores of baryons are responsible for the strong and weak interactions and the correlations between particles in the LHC experiments (see chapter titled Liquid-like Plasma). The revolution in particle physics will be much greater because the wave equation applied in the Quantum Physics we can derive from the properties of the classical tensor spacetime applied in the General Relativity. These properties show that the quantum particles oscillate between two states i.e. the loop-wave state and structureless point state. This leads to the wave function and wave equation. The ground state of the tensor spacetime leads to the Euler number 2.718...too. The classical physics leads to the quantum physics i.e. classical physics is more fundamental.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf any great scientists are listening at Cern or anywhere else.I want to put forward some simple questions which every one will except to be most evident but no one among the great physicists and philosophers have been able to answer these. And any complete theory will have to answer these questions comprehensively.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Have I got consciousness?
2. Has inanimate matter like tables and chairs around me have consciousness?
3. What is consciousness?
4. What is time?
5. What is self?
If these questions can be answered practically we can have a complete theory of any kind else we will never have it.
The Everlasting Theory shows as follows.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe ground state of the Einstein spacetime is the gas composed of the non-rotating binary systems of neutrinos. To detect the non-rotating binary systems of neutrinos we must measure mass with accuracy about 10^-67 kg. Today such accuracy is unattainable. There are two types of interactions of the non-rotating binary systems of neutrinos: first leads to surfaces and next to the known particles whereas the second leads to lines and next to the flexible objects the fractal field consists of. Our consciousness, soul and self consist of the flexible objects. They are produced by circular variable currents and can interact magnetically (they are very weak interactions). The currents inside atoms and molecules produce the flexible objects too but their structure is too simple to produce more complicated flexible objects/solitons needed to ignite the consciousness. The consciousness and soul do not die but they can make progress only interacting with body.
There is the truly empty infinite volume. In it are granules of space. They are internally structureless. A static space or truly empty volume is timeless. We can define time only for dynamic space i.e. for volume where the granules of space are moving. A unit of time is the mean time between the direct collisions of the granules of space. All the known particles and the flexible objects consist of the granules of space.
Without being a religious bigot I have a belief that there is something like our consciousness that is free from even fractals/strings etc and it is this belief only we all have that makes us act. At a very deep down level everything can be considered to be made up of fractals/strings etc. only which combine in some predefined manner to form atoms and every thing we know. There are various levels of determinism e.g. the behavior of my friend may be quite deterministic but when I look with more accuracy at a bit lower level things may get confusing. Going further deep one may reach to atomic theory which is quite deterministic and so on. Anyway it is something unknown that gets us going and gives rise to concept of free will which may be an illusion or may be not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFurther I would like to put forward that there is some degree of determinism in indeterminism also such as Hesinberg's uncertainty principle. We can make a robot but could it be completely deterministic like anyone of us. Once commenting on this website only I had asked how come that a huge multidimensional universe can be mapped in our small head. Using mirrors and lenses a smaller virtual image can be created which of course will lack the information of original image. Our belief in consistency of laws of nature and similarity of results in identical conditions give consistency of our universe even with less information. In a complete digital binary universe we need to continuously readjust with our environment(considering time to be nothing like space as I have commented earlier above:It is but not a thing).Then if we consider observer(or self)as thing with some quantum numbers associated with it then only way we can know about our surroundings is with synchronization of some of the states with outer reality. Synchronization can be in integral multiples or integral factors giving an illusion of dynamics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNature is the one and only so we should be able to describe mathematically and physically the mind-body interactions within one coherent theory. In my opinion, to do it we must know the internal structure of the tensor spacetime applied in the General Theory of Relativity. The Everlasting Theory shows that the ground state of the tensor spacetime consists of two spacetimes i.e. the scalar spacetime associated with gravity and the spacetime composed of the non-rotating binary systems of neutrinos i.e. dipoles associated with electromagnetism. Masses create gradients in the spacetime associated with electromagnetism but inside our Universe, the spacetimes are still flat because the gradients only insignificantly change the densities of the spacetimes. The black holes in the Universe are unable to do it also because they consist of the neutron black holes. They cannot collapse due to the weak interactions responsible ALSO for the long-distance entanglement of particles. The mainstream theories wrongly describe the weak forces (there are not in existence the Higgs bosons). Most important part of a neutrino is torus i.e. a loop. The neutrinos/loops cause that we can unify the gravity and electromagnetism via the Kaluza Klein equations. Inside the spacetime composed of the dipoles, arise both the objects the known particles and thoughts consist of. The fractals the thoughts consist of contain the same fragments also i.e. fragments in the same state. In the quantum world, the same quantum states try to overlap so it leads to destruction described by the Exclusion Principle. In the mental world, the identical fragments in the different fractals/thoughts attract themselves and there is fight for domination between different groups. This leads to the free will. We can see that the fight looks as democracy i.e. the stronger group wins but there is also a probability element i.e. some probability that some identical fragments will start to group.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHello, I am offering a very suitable and workable explanation for this phenomena, and a ton of others as well- www.waynemcmichael.com/iwt
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPartons, gluons and quarks
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe Everlasting Theory shows that the all particles greater than neutrino consist of the bound binary systems of neutrinos the Einstein spacetime is composed of. In collisions of particles, we scatter the bound neutrinos on other bound neutrinos. The neutrinos are the almost point particles carrying the half-integral spin whereas spin of the binary systems of neutrinos is equal to 1. They look as the Feynman partons.
The Everlasting Theory leads to the atom-like structure of baryons. There is torus for which are characteristic two circles. Their radii are 2/3 and 1/3 of the external radius of the torus. There arise the binary systems of loops overlapping with the circles. Their mass is equal to the mass of neutral pion (135 MeV) and to two such masses (270 MeV). When the loops are opened then they are massless and their energy we can calculate from formula E=mc^2. There are 8 different opened loops. They look as the massless gluons.
The Everlasting Theory shows also that the electric charge is a loop on which the lines of electric forces converge. It looks as if there were the quarks carrying the fractional electric charges equal to 2e/3 and 1e/3. But within the QCD we cannot calculate the exact rest masses of the up and down quarks because to calculate the exact masses of all known particles we must start from the atom-like structure of baryons.
Within the Everlasting Theory, is very easy to calculate the masses of particles. For example, calculated mass of proton is 938.272 MeV.
Please have a look at:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/804
Interesting Ioannis Hadjidaki. A little hard to follow without coffee yet:) Are you proposing an argument for the existence of "Awareness"? Because I do believe that is a constituent of time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really do not know how "Awareness" can be perceptionalised and modeled; but a try will be made in next year's FQXi's contest by using a simple holographic real-virtual causality model. Keep tuned.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf all matter is in the same place then we are already there so why walk at all?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt what scale should we abandon language and labels? You break apart the pieces of nature and label them such as "tree". How is that different than "cell", "molecule" or "atom"? If you dislike knowledge why are you using a computer to post on the internet? Shouldn't you be out naked in the forest and grunting to communicate?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, my point in all of this is we don't need to look smaller to see the big picture, we need to look larger. Big Bang limits our big picture view. I am suggesting that the gravity wave is hundreds of billions, if not trillions of light years in wave length, and has properties of particle and wave, just as light does. Big Bang does not allow for a universe that big and certainly not infinite, which I believe it is. My view explains everything from the phenomena in this article, to the expanding accelerating universe to black holes, as well as dark matter and dark energy, and explains it all very nicely and naturally, without any voodoo or other theories to support it. It suggests the gravity is the ether, and that black holes are matter and energy returning to that state... recycling. It suggests that the universe is an infinitely large, isolated system, in regards to conservation of energy. There is nothing that I am aware of that it doesn't simplify. You can see it here www.waynemcmichael.com/iwt . Please email me if you have a problem with it. I am very open minded and want to work for the betterment on mankind:) And release science from BBT, everything springing from nothing, and black holes to nowhere:) It's really quiet simple, as it should be...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGravitoethertons are flowing towards center of earth .Therefore monomagnetic coupling force will have a drag effect which may reflect in such entanglement as free space we think is gravitoetherton soup . Read balloon inside balloon theory of matter and and antimatter universe on opposite entropy path producing gravitoethertons at common boundary by annihilation and injected into our universe as dark energy of monomagnetic coupling of five GOD PARTICLES --four for four fundamental forces and one for gravity.
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