Multiverse Theory Could Be Wrong

The universe might not recognize the size difference between this...

The field of particle physics is at a standstill.  The problem, in a nutshell, is this: the particles we all know are very light, but physicists predict that there are unknown particles associated with gravity that are much heavier.  About a billion billion times heavier.  This isn't right, especially in this field.  The Higgs Boson, the particle that is surmised to give all other particles mass, should be heavier because of these Planck mass particles, and should also drag the weight of standard particles up as well.  But this isn't the case. 

To get around this problem, scientists came up with supersymmetry, the idea being that every particle has a slightly heavier twin, and when a Higgs boson meets a pair, the masses cancel out, and the Higgs stays light.  Supersymmetry isn't working either, unfortunately.  Scientists have yet to find a partner particle, and it's been decades since they were first theorized.  Because supersymmetry seems to be a dead end, scientists have all but given up on it, which has given credence to the multiverse theory.  Why?  Because the observed properties of the Higgs are so improbable that the universe we observe must not be the only one.  There must be other universes with Higgs bosons with different properties, properties that don't give atoms the ability to form.  Not the multiverse idea most people have, but a bleak, empty multiverse that seems to elude understanding.  This isn't what scientists want to hear.

...and this.

There are new theories in the works, but they are still in the early stages.  Most of them focus around scale symmetry, which, if anything, is even weirder than everything I've just talked about.  The idea is that the universe fundamentally lacks scale, and that the universe doesn't know the concept of mass or length.  This article was a challenge to read, and this part is where it really gets tough to understand.  I guess all the average person needs to know is that it could fix the Higgs problem, and it gets rid of the multiverse theory.  We'll have to see where that takes us, but really, there doesn't seem to be any other direction for physicists to take.

Sometimes, The News is Hilarious

While on my way to work Monday morning, the radio was just full of talk about a highway in Centreville, Virginia and how the lanes were all over the place or flat out disappeared.  The highway guy could hardly contain his amusement, and I was curious about what exactly was going on.  There weren't any details.  Well, here's the details.  I'm sure the people stuck in the resulting traffic jams were not amused, but I sure was.

A Very Interesting Article

I was coming back from work one day last week when I saw a truck covered in anti-Obama and Tea Party banners.  Now, this would be no big deal at home, but this was in Montgomery County, which like most urban areas is very liberal.  It made me laugh, and it also reminded me of a very interesting article I had read a few years back about the differences between Red America and Blue America.  It's a very interesting read, but especially for me, since it focuses on the differences between Franklin County and Montgomery County.  I live in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, which is in Franklin County, and I work in Rockville, Maryland, which is in Montgomery County.  So yes, I find what it has to say quite relevant.  It's a pretty long article, so I won't go into any detail, but I will say that even though the two counties are only about 50 or 60 miles apart, there is a world of difference between the two.

Tuberculosis, Seals, and the Americas

When the Europeans came to the Americas, they came with technology more advanced than the American Indians already here, but guns did not win the continent for Europe.  It was disease, strains of bacteria that were commonplace in Europe but unseen in the Americas.  The native population had no resistance, no antibodies, and as a result, diseases like tuberculosis wiped out 95% of the American population in less than 100 years.  That left the door wide open for European opportunism.

It was always assumed that the American Indians had no antibodies for these diseases, but a recent examination of three Peruvian skeletons dating back a thousand years calls that into question.  They found several signs on the bodies that undeniably point the cause of death to tuberculosis, a disease that wasn't supposed to be in the Americas at that time.  How'd it get there?  The answer, apparently, is seals.  Yeah, they thought it was stupid too, but they ran the data, and it fits.  Seals can carry tuberculosis, tuberculosis can and does easily jump from animals to humans, and most importantly, the type of tuberculosis seals carry match the type found in the Peruvian skeletons.  Turns out there's a lot of different types of the disease, and while the American Indians may have had antibodies for their version, the European version was much nastier.  Not a particularly groundbreaking piece of science, but I thought it was interesting.

Caledonia Golf Course Review

Pictured: an arboreal experience. 1st hole.

You may or may not remember that I started doing a tour of this course on my golf blog.  But since I stopped updating that, that one hole has been sort of sitting out there in limbo.  I'm not going to do a full tour of the place here, but I will share some of my thoughts on the course.  As I said there, it's an unusual golf course.  To quote myself, "Caledonia Golf Course is part of Caledonia State Park, and as such, it can be pretty minimal.  No nicely maintained fairways here.  It's only about 5,300 yards, but it is very hilly and there are some long walks.  It can be a hike, and I'm not sure it's worth it.  This course has some very weird holes, holes that I really don't like.  But it is pretty cheap."

I can't say that I can highly recommend the place.  Nothing about it fits my eye.  I hate trees, and in what must be the surprise of the century, the golf course in the middle of a state park located in the Appalachians of southern Pennsylvania... has a lot of trees.  So I tend to spend a lot of time getting the full arboreal experience, but not a fulfilling golf experience.

The long par 3 6th

The front nine isn't too bad.  The first hole's a bit wacky, the hole doglegs in a weird way and the lack of driving range discourages any sort of bold driver play, but it's not too hard.  I just get double bogey anyway.  The next few holes are fairly inoffensive, and the fifth hole, a 250 yard par 4, can be driven with just a 3 wood, or if you've got some length, a long iron.  The sixth hole, a 215 yard par 3, is not hittable.  It isn't, it can't be done.  It plays 50 feet uphill to a green that somehow manages to be elevated even above the hill it plays on.  Golf balls stop before the green if you try to run it up, and they skip right over if you land in on.  It cannot be done.  The next 3 holes are hilly, but again, nothing too extreme.

You've finished the front nine, and while it was hilly, it's only a par 32, so the walk (in this scenario, you're walking because that's how golf is meant to be played) wasn't too bad.  You take the short walk to the tenth tee, and you are confronted with what can only be described as a small mountain.  Yes, you have to play up that.  To make matters even worse, if you miss the fairway to the right at all, your golf ball will fall all the way down the hill.  I've been over there plenty, and the long iron up a 100 foot slope is not an easy shot.  The hole's only 450 yards or so, but it plays about 100 yards longer.

The 10th hole, draped over a mountainside.

The 15th green: evil incarnate

So, you've ascended to the summit, and now, on the very next hole... you go right back down.  The entire way back down.  The 11th isn't a bad hole, it's fun watching your ball fly forever, but did it really have to come like that?  Go all the way up just to go all the way back down?  The 13th hole kicks off a three hole stretch that I can only describe as being absolutely evil.  The 13th is only a 100 yards, but it plays up the hill to a tiny green that is nearly impossible to hold.  It was even worse back in my junior golf days, when they had it playing 65 yards, and even more uphill.  It was literally impossible to the green then, now it's just very difficult.  The 14th is a short par 5 that doglegs sharply to the right.  There's out of bounds left, and the hole turns at about 250 yards, so you can't really use a driver.  Fair enough, but you have to get the ball about 250 to have even a reasonable look at a layup, which means you're trying to hit almost onto the road.  If you go right, the trees are thick and basically impenetrable, so it'll take at least one pitch shot just to get back to the fairway.  I've seen multiple double digits on that hole.  But the final hole in this stretch is the most evil.  It's just a 170 yard par 3, but the green is sloped so much that any putt from above the hole is going to run all the way down to the front.  Unless you make it, which is possible, I guess, but not likely.  So it's a one putt or three putt situation.  Four putts or worse are a fact of life.

The view from the last hole.

The final hole concludes the round in fitting fashion.  There's a lot of trees, some of which in odd locations, the drive is blind if you go more than 150 yards, and golf balls disappear for no good reason.  I guess the second shot is okay.  I can't really say I recommend the place, there's far less frustrating places to play a round for cheap.  It's obvious the place was built to be as non-intrusive as possible, so if you like to be surrounded by nature while you play, it's not bad.  It might be worth the play just because it is a bit of an adventure, a really unrefined golf experience.  I doubt you'd find any country club types here.  So, Caledonia Golf Course, I really, really don't like it, but that doesn't mean everyone has too.

Rare Type of Black Hole Found

Typically, black holes come in two varieties.  There are the stellar black holes, formed when big stars go supernova, and supermassive black holes which dwell at the center of galaxies and are theorized to have a key role in galaxy formation.  Stellar black holes are anywhere from 10-100 solar masses, while supermassive black holes are upwards of a million solar masses.  Finding a black hole whose mass is somewhere in between those two ranges is incredibly rare, so rare that scientists dispute whether or not such things even exist, let alone agree on their characteristics.

Astronomers at the University of Maryland have found one of these rare, intermediate mass black holes.  The black hole in question lies in M82, a galaxy 12 million light years away.  M82 also happens to be the closest "starburst" galaxy, meaning it has an accelerated rate of star birth.  While observing this galaxy in the past, scientists noted an unusually bright source of X-rays, imaginatively named M82 X-1.  It was suspected that this object was an intermediate-mass black hole, but accurate estimates of its mass could not be obtained.

To get a more accurate mass estimate, the scientists measured individual x-ray particles from M82 X-1, finding a distinct pattern of light pulses which formed a 3:2 ratio.  This ratio could be used to measure the mass of the black hole, which is pretty amazing, when you think about it.  They found the black hole's mass to be 428 solar masses, give or take a 100.  Doesn't sound very accurate, but it does make this black hole definitively heavier than any stellar mass black hole.  Stars don't get that massive.  So, now the challenge is figuring out how a black hole of 400 solar masses forms.

My Favorite Video Game

I haven't played an especially large amount of video games, but the ones I do play are almost always among the best.  There's one though, that stands far above all the others.  I've played games where the fates of entire worlds are placed in my hands, but my favorite game features absolutely none of those incredibly high stakes.  Sure, there's a story, and an exciting conclusion, but nowhere near the level of some of my other favorites.  At the end of the day, it's basically just a puzzle game.

Portal 2 is my favorite video game.  There's no violence, no killing, there's a gun, but it fires portals (shocking), and it solves puzzles.  I just recently starting playing the game again because I have a computer that can actually handle the graphics.  It's been a few years, so my recollection of the puzzles is hazy at best.  It's almost like I'm playing the game for the first time again.  I get to laugh at the absolutely hilarious dialogue once more, no small feat for a video game to pull off.  Humor's a difficult thing to pull off, but Portal does it almost perfectly.  The gameplay is smooth and the game looks good too.  I've never been one for hyper-realism in my video games, it's why I'm so partial to Team Fortress 2, and why I've been going pretty hard at Borderlands 2 the past couple months (I'm sure I'll have something to say about that game, just not now).  There's no cartoony aspects to Portal, but the scale of everything in the game is just so vast, it can't possibly be real.

I don't think many people would deny that Portal 2 is a great game, but I don't imagine many would call it their favorite.  What does it for me?  Simple.  When I first played the game, I played with a couple friends watching, and that experience made everything so much better.  The game is great, but the interactive aspect of that first playthrough made a great game so much better.  I've heard the same thing from other people who've played the game, playing it with other people around made it better.  The game might not look all that interesting on the surface, but trust me, it's probably the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Propulsion From Nothing Probably Nothing

You may have heard recently about how researchers have found a way to move an object without exerting any actual force on it.  The experiment was simple.  Place a radio transmitter inside a specially designed container, play the radio, and the container moves, breaking some very important laws of nature.  Why is this such a big deal?  You might think it's because photons have no mass, but that's not it.  If that was the case, solar sails wouldn't work, but they do.  The problem is that the radio waves are not reacting against anything.  The transmitter is inside the container, and the waves are pushing against all sides.  There is no reaction.  Newton's third law is not being satisfied.  The container is moving forward, but nothing is moving backwards.

This all sounds like fantastic news.  But science, especially science at the cutting edge, can be thrown by the simplest things.  A couple years back, people were going crazy about neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light.  It was even discussed in one of my English classes back in college, and not the science fiction one either.  People were talking about how it changed everything, but I was never convinced.  I knew there was no way that research was correct, I knew that they had made some error in calculation, or their observation was off slightly, I knew that the physics just weren't there.  And guess what?  They weren't.  I don't remember what it was exactly that they did wrong, but a few months later the scientists retracted their claim, and everything was right with the world.

Obviously, I'm not a physicist, I'm not even a scientist.  But I will say this with certainty.  There is no way the experiment is correct.  Something went wrong somewhere.  Just like last time, I wish they would be true.  I wished neutrinos moved faster than light, I wish radio waves propelled in all directions inside a fancy can could move the can, but it just won't happen.  A claim like this requires some impressive evidence to back it up, and so far, it just isn't there.  It may take months, maybe even years, but there will be another explanation.  Just watch.

Not Going Away and Random Thoughts

Well, posting every day hasn't happened so far.  Still, I'm settling into the work routine, so hopefully I can find some time to post more often.  Definitely don't want this blog to disappear, so I will definitely still be updating it.  Now, the title promised some random thoughts...

Maybe it's because I just started working at a medical newspaper, but why isn't the Ebola thing a bigger deal?  How many times have we gotten all worked up about some sort of silly flu epidemic that turns out to be nothing, but this has been going under the radar?  Sure, it's getting some attention now that Americans have it, but I just don't know.  Swine flu was a joke, bird flu was a joke.  Ebola is no joke.

People driving in urban areas have the worst planning ability.  They pass people in the wrong lane, try to get back over when they run out of space, and they probably all wonder why there's so much traffic.  Hmmm...

I've been having trouble with hooks out on the golf course, so this past weekend at the driving range, my younger brother (who is very good at golf) and I tried to fix it.  Everything we tried made the ball go further left.  It was aggravating.

Work has forced me to rediscover something that I have not known in a very long time: sunrise.  I would say it's nice, but I'm still getting up before 6 AM, and nothing about that is nice.