Goddamn Particle

31 Comments / Higgs, Science

Hey, did you hear that Planck released its results today? The universe remains preposterous, if still pretty awesome. And it might be lopsided, which is intriguing.

Planck says that dark matter makes up 26% of the universe, while the best-fit WMAP number from a few years ago was 23%. This led me to joke on Twitter that we needed a model in which the dark matter density was rapidly increasing. Just a joke, people!

I hope to say something more substantive soon, but in the meantime there’s plenty of good stuff around the web; at the risk of leaving many people out, see Ethan Siegel, or Jester, or simply refuse to see the universe through anyone’s filter but your own and read the original papers. (An even thirty of them, helpfully indexed by the ultramodern system of Roman numerals.)

Meanwhile, our old friend the Higgs boson has not gone away. Here’s the second of the videos I did for Sixty Symbols while visiting the UK (after the first one I did on quantum mechanics).

Talking about the Higgs Boson - Sixty Symbols

The comments on the YouTube page are nicer than average. Maybe it’s the British temperament.

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31 Comments

31 thoughts on “Goddamn Particle”

  1. Kieran Garland

    I thought the two videos for Sixty Symbols were superb. You’re really good at this ‘explaining’ lark. Also, I’ve to come to think of Brady Heron as a remarkably able interviewer. More video/Tv appearances, please, Sean. You really help with the learningz.

  6. Jay

    “Planck says that dark matter makes up 26% of the universe, while the best-fit WMAP number from a few years ago was 23%. This led me to joke on Twitter that we needed a model in which the dark matter density was rapidly increasing.”

    Let’s hope Rupert Sheldrake isn’t following you on Twitter.

  8. Marshall Eubanks

    “Planck says that dark matter makes up 26% of the universe, while the best-fit WMAP number from a few years ago was 23%. This led me to joke on Twitter that we needed a model in which the dark matter density was rapidly increasing.”

    Better watch out – in that model the universe would be completely dark matter in about 2 centuries, assuming that it stays at closure density. After that, the cosmological constant would have to change sign, which I guess would please some string theorists.

  10. David Yerle

    Am I the only one who gets disappointed after each single big announcement in physics? Where are the cosmic strings and all the super-exciting stuff we were hoping to see? I don’t think I can bear another “yes, well, the data fits our current models” anymore. I need some novelty. Something unexpected.
    Come on, universe. You can do better.

  11. Brett

    Something unexpected was that the universe doesn’t appear to be evenly distributed and it’s not an instrumental error. There is a large cold spot and the “axis of evil”. So both inflation theorists and fractal cosmologists on the fringe are pretty happy.

  12. David

    I am a scientist but not a physicist but find this stuff really interesting. Can I ask what may be a silly question. General Relativity is premised on the universe being homogeneous and isotropic on very large scales. Do these results which show non homogeneity isotropy impact on GR?

  14. David

    Oliver thanks for this. If I could ask one more question which I am sure other people will address. Does the data help in any way to answer the horizon problem and provide answers to the alternative models of inflation?

  16. David Lau

    Great video. Sean, I tweeted you on last week about the errors on pp294 in your new book, the appendix on particle zoo for fermions. It is just a minor print error, and it’s not all that critical. I finally finished reading the book. Took me a while as I have been busy.

  17. Ned Wright

    Actually the dark matter density has changed rather little. But the Hubble
    constant is down, so the critical density is down by the square of H0.
    So the cold dark matter density went from 2.17 +/- 0.04 yoctograms per cubic meter in the WMAP9 analysis to 2.23 +/- 0.032 yoctograms per cubic meter in the Planck analysis, which is only a small change (<3%) and in the noise.

    The dark energy density changed more, from 3607 +/- 144 eV/cc in WMAP9 to 3352 +/- 125 eV/cc in Planck, which is 7% change, but still in the noise.

  18. martenvandijk

    “Lopsided”: seems quod erat expectandum to me as time is slower/faster where mass is more/less abundant and therefore histories of events did unfold slower/faster into directions where mass was more /less abundant.

  19. Tony Rz

    A perfectly mysterious Universe!! Just what all the Theorists would desire. As time goes on it will become more so.

  21. BobC

    Hi Sean,

    I was reviewing the latest Higgs boson/mechanism details, got into a Wikipedia link-a-thon, and finally (and quite logically, for once) wound up here: Unanswered Questions in Physics

    Is the list complete, in your view? Which of the above are most closely related to your own research? If you were to rank them by personal interest/fascination, how would they be ordered?

  23. Anton Szautner

    Just saw the NASA news conference announcing the AMS results…

    Not a single graphic of the spectrum was offered to SHOW anything described.

    Zilch.

    I don’t care about whether or not AMS was a good idea, how many people worked so hard over such a long time on it, and so on. All of that is properly splendid and impressive. Nobody doubts how hard it was to get that thing up and where it now observes.

    Its there already and collecting data, and Dr. Ting has announced that about a tenth of the data has indicated a signal worthy for publication.

    Good! Magnificent! Outstanding!

    So where are the visuals that back up what Professor Ting and the rest of the panel say – any data to show (pictures of the experiment attached to the ISS isn’t enough).

    Not there – besides verbal description offered by Ting with hand motions.

    And that within the context of one response by him that science cannot be conducted upon preconceptions.

    That was an example of how not to perform a press conference – the worst since the claim for arsenic metabolism – evidently they didn’t learn from that.

    This press conference seemed to go downhill rapidly after the opening remarks; the fellow on the right side of the panel smirking the whole time as if he held some sordid secret (though he offered a short statement that ‘contributed’ to the agancy line…’um, okay?… okay?…okay?’)

    Man that was hard to watch.

    There’s something very wrong there, and bureaucracy – as well has personal responsibility and honesty – no doubt has a hand in it.

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