I LOVE THIS STUFF! Now, if only one day I understand it too, that would be nice



I should become a science and math teacher. That would really freak everyone out!



"for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"

Yoichiro Nambu
Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, IL, USA

"for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics"

and the other half jointly to

Makoto Kobayashi, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan

and

Toshihide Maskawa, Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP), Kyoto University, and Kyoto Sangyo University, Japan

"for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature"

Passion for symmetry

The fact that our world does not behave perfectly symmetrically is due to deviations from symmetry at the microscopic level.

As early as 1960, Yoichiro Nambu formulated his mathematical description of spontaneous broken symmetry in elementary particle physics. Spontaneous broken symmetry conceals nature's order under an apparently jumbled surface. It has proved to be extremely useful, and Nambu's theories permeate the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The Model unifies the smallest building blocks of all matter and three of nature's four forces in one single theory.

The spontaneous broken symmetries that Nambu studied, differ from the broken symmetries described by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa. These spontaneous occurrences seem to have existed in nature since the very beginning of the universe and came as a complete surprise when they first appeared in particle experiments in 1964. It is only in recent years that scientists have come to fully confirm the explanations that Kobayashi and Maskawa made in 1972. It is for this work that they are now awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. They explained broken symmetry within the framework of the Standard Model, but required that the Model be extended to three families of quarks. These predicted, hypothetical new quarks have recently appeared in physics experiments. As late as 2001, the two particle detectors BaBar at Stanford, USA and Belle at Tsukuba, Japan, both detected broken symmetries independently of each other. The results were exactly as Kobayashi and Maskawa had predicted almost three decades earlier.

A hitherto unexplained broken symmetry of the same kind lies behind the very origin of the cosmos in the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago. If equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created, they ought to have annihilated each other. But this did not happen, there was a tiny deviation of one extra particle of matter for every 10 billion antimatter particles. It is this broken symmetry that seems to have caused our cosmos to survive. The question of how this exactly happened still remains unanswered. Perhaps the new particle accelerator LHC at CERN in Geneva will unravel some of the mysteries that continue to puzzle us.

More:
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics...2008/press.html
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics...s/2008/info.pdf

A little trivia for ya, Heart.

The "Quark" was a term invented by Dr. Murray Gell-Mann, American Nobel prize winning physicist, who was looking for a name for the three sub-atomic particles he had theorized. Being an avid reader, and a fan of James Joyce, he pirated the line from Finnegan's Wake spoken by the bartender - "Three Quarks For Master Mark."

Thank You Jeff. Do you play Jeopardy like I do? LOL.

I'm a big fan of the kind of trivia you posted. I'm always looking up the the etymology of a phrase or word. It's a lifelong passion.

This Nobel Prize however, is very interesting to me because of the research that it has launched, and the findings, or lack thereof, that have altered the way so many people view the universe.

I love to listen to scientists discuss string theory, chaos theory, and not be constrained by "the only things possible" if you know what I mean. I love the liberating science of today!

Used to watch Jeopardy, but I finally got disgusted by the smugness of Alex Trebek. He is so condescending as he READS FROM THE GODDAMN CARD the "correct response" that you should have known.

An otherwise good show, taped around the corner from me BTW.

Jeff,

Alex Trebek Rocks!

Just my humble opinion.

Theologically, we have the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost which forms the Aggregate
of the Trinity which extendes to the Father, Mother (or other) and Child (Family System) which extentds through out the Human Social System into what the social and behavioral scientist posit as Triad Theory of the Distribution of Social Power.

To get back on thread, perhaps it would be usefull to examine the triadic distribution of power among
John McCain, Sarah Palin and Cindy McCain?

Quarks!

Strings!

They will do as the mysterious "aggregate".

It just depends on what you call it.

How much of this research leads to the conclusion that these divisions are only our own limited perception?

Everything we have, we brought into our own personal construct system, which we built from a puppy...perception/conception...

And we divide things for the purposes of?

Thank YOU ARNE.

I do know how to spell physics, but my mouse was jumping and I had to defrag my computer to get it to stop.

I found this article while searching for information about the research on quarks.

How Physics Is Like `A Grin Without A Cat'

By Theodore L. Gaillard Jr.

"THREE quarks for Muster Mark!"

When he wrote that line in Finnegan's Wake, James Joyce had no idea of the role he would come to play in modern subatomic physics.

Considered as the basic components of protons and neutrons, quarks are seen as the smallest of elemental particles. In fact, there are six of them, and in March, headlines hailed the discovery of long-sought physical evidence for the highly elusive "top" quark (sixth in the set); some even labeled it the "Last Piece in the Puzzle." Physicist H. H. Williams (member of the Fermilab quark discovery team) asserted that "this completes the picture of the basic building blocks of matter that all nature is made of."

Well, don't count on it.

Back in 1969, Murray Gell-Mann was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his ground-breaking work on this subatomic particle family whose name he had whimsically plucked from that line in Joyce's novel. But instead of Muster Mark's three quarks, we are now told there are six: "up," "down," "charm," "strange," "bottom," and "top." British physicist Stephen Hawkings adds that each exists in three versions: red, green, and blue (even though, far smaller than any wavelength of light, they have no color). Traces of the first five quarks were confirmed over the last 25 years, but this year's discovery by the Fermi National Laboratory will clearly stand as one of this century's great scientific achievements.

Haven't we heard all this before - each time as a new "building

block?" Democritus in the fifth century B.C. and Dalton in the early 19th century with the first general atomic theories; J. J. Thomson in 1897, discovering the electron; Rutherford in 1911, finding the nucleus and, later the proton; Chadwick and Anderson in the early 1930s, unmasking the neutron and positron. And then a slew of other particles, including nutrinos, leptons, and quarks.

These particles bring problems, however: frequently they don't actually exist, discretely, in the real world; what we seek is what we get; and we "get" only statistical probability, not measurable certainty.

We're told, for example, that the "top" quark was spotted as a remnant trace from two head-on proton collisions at close to the speed of light - and that this quark probably hadn't existed as a separate entity since immediately after the Big Bang several billion years ago.

Over the last seven decades, Max Planck's and Erwin Schrodinger's quantum mechanics have suggested that the most infinitesimal "stuff" in the universe consists of discrete quanta of energy waves and particles - each a form of the other, each turning into the other. Furthermore, whether we see such quanta as particles or as waves depends on what instruments we use: If our apparatus measures waves, we will observe these quanta as waves, and vice versa with particles.

Additional constraints limit our knowledge: In basic human thought process, language sets the boundary, for we cannot progress beyond ideas for which we have words. With numbers, Kurt Godel's famous 1931 theorem showed how mathematics (absolutely vital to the study of advanced physics) cannot be used to define the most fundamental mathematical concepts because trying to do so involves a circular logic that cannot be used as a tool to get inside itself.

And in physics, Werner Heisenberg showed how attempts to measure very small particles will disturb them. His 1927 Uncertainty Principle stated that we can know either where something was, or its velocity - but not both. And since we must view collision remnants in a strip of film or on a phosphor screen, we're witnessing not a present reality, but secondary evidence of a past event. Indeed, nuclear physicists must feel like neurosurgeons trying to operate wearing thick wool mittens.

It's easy to see why Gell-Mann turned to literature to name the quark, for such infinitesimal secrets lure us beyond imagination. Scientists call into being the nonexistent in order to "measure" it; Shakespeare's Macbeth follows the promptings of three witches in a world where "nothing is / But what is not." Two protons shatter, leaving faint traces of a tiny remnant; Alice watches the Cheshire Cat slowly vanish from the bough of tree. "Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"

In the wonderland of subatomic physics, things get curiouser and curiouser. If history is any indicator, signs of still other "wavicles" will of course be found. But since we and our instruments both have limited perceptions and form part of the very system we are trying to measure, we will never be able to plumb the lowest layer. In trying to fathom the vengeful urgings of his father's ghost, Hamlet knew it, too:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Theodore Lee Gaillard Jr. fequently writes about science and technology. He lives in Philadelphia.