The Large Hadron Collider is working better than expected. And it has collected oodles of data. But have they found the Higgs, yet? We asked Scientific American’s Davide Castelvecchi, who flew to Geneva to find out.
Tag Archives: Anna Armstrong
Have we found the Higgs, yet?
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, ATLAS, Big Science, CERN, CMS, Davide Castelvecchi, Ed Gerstner, Higgs boson, Higgs field, Large Hadron Collider, leptons, LHC, mass, particle physics, physics, quarks, Resonance FM, science
How to build a brain
In a recent lecture at Imperial College London, Stuart Parkin — research fellow at IBM’s Almaden Research centre, and the guy who perfected the spin-valves that make modern computer hard disks work — discussed some of the challenges faced in trying to build artificial an brain. He quoted some amazing things about the differences in […]
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, Big Science, central nervous system, Chrissie Giles, Ed Gerstner, neuroscience, Oliver Sacks, proprioception, Resonance FM, Richard Wingate, science
Understanding the Cosmos, Part 1
2011 Nobel Prize in Physics Special In 1917, Albert Einstein added a constant — a sort of ‘fudge factor’ — to his Theory of General Relativity to counteract the force of gravity and keep his Universe static — that is, not expanding, not contracting. A few years later, Edwin Hubble proved the Universe wasn’t, in […]
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Tagged Adam G. Riess, Anna Armstrong, Big Science, Brian P. Schmidt, Chrissie Giles, cosmological constant, cosmology, dark energy, Ed Gerstner, Einstein, Hubble, Nobel Prize, Ofer Lahav, physics, Resonance FM, Saul Perlmutter, science, supernova
History of an Ancient Sponge
Geological evidence suggests that around 650 million years ago, the Earth was covered in ice. It was believed only single-celled organisms could have survived ‘Snowball Earth’. Until Princeton professor, Adam Maloof, found a fossilized sponge predating this by millions of years. The find inspired Lola Perrin and Alexis Kirke to compose an evening of film, […]
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Tagged Adam Maloof, Alexis Kirke, Anna Armstrong, Big Science, Chrissie Giles, Ed Gerstner, fossils, geology, ice age, Lola Perrin, origin of life, palaeontology, Resonance FM, science, Snowball Earth, sponges
Higgs update
Particle Physics, or more accurately High Energy Particle Physics, is arguably the most elegant, the most poetic, the most beautiful branches of the physical sciences. In 1969, Robert Wilson – the man responsible for the construction of Fermilab, the National Accelerator Facility in Illinois, was called to justify the multimillion-dollar machine to the Congressional Joint […]
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, ATLAS, Big Science, CERN, CMS, Ed Gerstner, Fermilab, Higgs boson, Higgs field, Jonathan Butterworth, Large Hadron Collider, leptons, LHC, mass, particle physics, physics, quarks, Resonance FM, science, UCL
Green car tech
In recent shows we’ve been talked a bit about alternative energy technologies. Most times when people discuss the future of energy, they talk about how to generate it. Of course, that’s an important subject. But most alternative generation technologies aren’t likely to be ready for the big time for decades. What are we going to […]
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, batteries, Big Science, Chrissie Giles, Ed Gerstner, electric cars, electricity, formula one, fuel cells, global warming, hybrids, hydrogen, physics, Ralph Clague, Resonance FM, science
Alternative nuclear tech
Last episode we talked about the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Towards the end of this discussion, we touched on the wisdom of continuing to pursue nuclear power in the light of the events at Fukushima. The usual suspects came up. Solar power, wind power, etcetera. The main concern levelled […]
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Tagged accelerator-driven, Anna Armstrong, Big Science, Carlo Rubbia, coal, Ed Gerstner, electricity, energy amplifiers, Fukushima, gas, global warming, Hywel Owen, neutrons, nuclear power, particle accelerators, physics, plutonium, protons, Resonance FM, science, subcritical, thorium, University of Manchester, uranium
Fukushima update
On the 11th of March this year, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale occurred off the coast of Tohoku, Japan. It was the largest recorded earthquake to hit Japan and in the top 5 anywhere in the world since 1900. It, and the tsunami that followed, killed more than 15,000 people. And it […]
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, Big Science, China syndrome, Chrissie Giles, earthquake, Ed Gerstner, Fukushima, Geoff Brumfiel, Japan, meltdown, nuclear power, physics, Resonance FM, science, tsunami, uranium
Of Mice and Flies
How do you make a fly with the same genes you use to make a mouse? It’s complicated. But that’s what Big Science is all about.
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, Big Science, DNA, drosophila, Ed Gerstner, evolution, fruit flies, genes, genetics, life, mice, proteins, Resonance FM, science, Tanguy Chouard
Truth, Gödel and Science Fundamentalism
Science is all about truth, right? So anything that is true can be determined by science, right? Probably not. In this week’s episode, we discuss Gödel’s incompleteness theorems with mathematician Edmund Harriss, and explore what it means for science, truth and the Infinite Monkey Cage.
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Tagged Anna Armstrong, Big Science, Ed Gerstner, Edmund Harriss, Gödel, mathematics, non-periodic tilings, Penrose tiles, Resonance FM, science, Tanguy Chouard, truth, Turing
