For every particle there exists there is a corresponding antiparticle, exactly matching the particle but with opposite charge. For example, for the electron there should be an "antielectron", or "positron", identical in every way but with a positive electric charge. This insight opened the possibility of entire galaxies and universes made of antimatter.
A bubble chamber contains a liquid under pressure, which reveals the tracks of electrically charged particles as trails of tiny bubbles when the pressure is reduced. Neutrinos have no charge, and so leave no tracks, but the aim with Gargamelle was to "see neutrinos" by making visible any charged particles set in motion by the interaction of neutrinos in the liquid.
The European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) is a multinational research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.
A cloud chamber, also known as a Wilson cloud chamber, is a particle detector used for visualizing the passage of ionizing radiation.
A cloud chamber consists of a sealed environment containing a supersaturated vapor of water or alcohol. An energetic charged particle (for example, an alpha or beta particle) interacts with the gaseous mixture by knocking electrons off gas molecules via electrostatic forces during collisions, resulting in a trail of ionized gas particles. The resulting ions act as condensation centers around which a mist-like trail of small droplets form if the gas mixture is at the point of condensation, these droplets are visible as a "cloud" track that persist for several seconds while the droplets fall through the vapor.
Cosmic rays are high energy subatomic particles that come from space. They can be hydrogen or helium nuclei or even heavier particles. They come from the sun and also from galactic space. It is possible some come from stars or from violent events such as a supernova when a large star collapses and explodes. Some cosmic rays have so much energy they are travelling at very near to the speed of light.
Feynman diagrams are pictorial representations of the mathematical expressions describing the behavior of subatomic particles. The scheme is named after its inventor, American physicist Richard Feynman, and was first introduced in 1948.
The Higgs boson is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics, produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory.
A subatomic particle of a type including the baryons and mesons, which can take part in the strong interaction. Most of the mass of ordinary matter comes from two hadrons, the proton and the neutron.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It consists of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.
Meditation is an antique practice belonging to different religious traditions and beliefs. The aim is achieve a mental clearness and calm emotional state focusing on particular object or thoughts. A mantra is a particular sound or short phrase that is chanted or recited during meditation.
Muons are made when cosmic rays crash into the atmosphere. Muons should decay long before they reach the ground, but because they are moving so fast their clocks slow down and the distance to the earth surface is shortened due to the effects of special relativity.
A neutrino is a small-mass elementary particle that interacts only via gravity and subatomic force. It electrically neutral with a very short range of interaction, and the weak force typically pass undetected. In the vicinity of the Earth, the majority of neutrinos are from nuclear reactions in the Sun. Neutrinos evidences have been studied at CERN beyond the Standard model of particle physics.
Particle physics (also known as high energy physics) is a branch of physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute matter and radiation. Although the word particle can refer to various types of very small objects (e.g. protons, gas particles, or even household dust), particle physics usually investigates the irreducibly smallest detectable particles and the fundamental interactions necessary to explain their behaviour. By our current understanding, these elementary particles are excitations of the quantum fields that also govern their interactions.
“Quantum mechanics” is the description of the behavior of matter and light in all its details and, in particular, of the happenings on an atomic scale. Things on a very small scale behave like nothing that you have any direct experience about. They do not behave like waves, they do not behave like particles, they do not behave like clouds, or billiard balls, or weights on springs, or like anything that you have ever seen.” Richard Feynmann
A random number generator (RNG) is a mathematical construct, either computational or as a hardware device, that is designed to generate a random set of numbers that should not display any distinguishable patterns in their appearance or generation, hence the word random.
Einstein described a revolutionary new idea of space and time that overturned the old view due to Isaac Newton. In classical physics, space is just a passive stage and time is a universal clock that ticks the same for everyone everywhere. In Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity the only constant is the speed of light, which strangely, is constant for all observers no matter how they move relative to each other.
To make the speed of light constant for different moving observers, space and time themselves must squash and stretch to adapt. This squashing and stretching can be shared out between space and time in a linked way so they can both be thought of as a new single thing called Space-Time.
In the general theory of relativity, Einstein uses the space-time he invented in special relativity to explain how the force of gravity acts. Newton, is said to have seen a falling apple and wondered why it fell. Newton described gravity with mathematics to calculate exactly how the planets move around the sun.
However, Newton never worked out a reason of why the invisible force of gravity acted between the sun and the planets that are so far apart. Einstein said the reason was that any object warps space time like a bowling ball placed on a bed warps the bed spread. Another ball would follow this warped surface and orbit the bowling ball. Like all analogies this warped bed spread is not quite right. Both space and time are warped, so in a sense, apples fall to earth because their future is somewhere else.
Monte Carlo methods are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. Their essential idea is using randomness to solve problems that might be deterministic in principle.
The holographic principle is the idea that the universe is similar to a hologram, which is a projection into three dimensional space from information held in a two dimensional sheet. Although the universe is three dimensional, it is possible all the information describing its contents are encoded on its two dimensional boundary.
This idea originated from the study of Black Holes, which are the corpses of huge stars which have exploded and collapsed completely. Black Holes have such strong gravity that nothing can escape from them, not even light. A problem with black holes is that they appeared to break one of the most fundamental laws in the universe which is that information is neither created nor destroyed only transformed. But when objects fall into a black hole they seem to be lost to the universe. This problem was called the information paradox. The physicists Steven Hawking and Leonard Suskin had a famous disagreement about the information paradox and its solution, which became known as the Black Hole Wars. The solution to the information paradox is that, although the objects that fall into the black hole are lost forever, the information describing them is left behind on the surface of the black hole where, in principle, it is still available.
It was then realised that what may be true for black holes may also be true for the universe as a whole. In this sense we may be living in a universe which is a hologram.