"We, also, as usual, looked at an exercise in Brian Kiteley's 3am Epiphany: '#84, Fact and Fancy,' which asks the writer to alternate factual, 'objective' sentences with personal, 'subjective' sentences and pay attention to the
tensions created between sentences."
"And we started writing essays on various topics. Since we all attempted, we were all successful."
Red Baron tried hard to write about his topic, "On the Poetry of the Higgs Boson," but wasn't so successful with all my insufficiencies regarding my active vocabulary in poetry. After all, the English thesaurus comprising Germanic- and Romance-rooted words is enormous.
Here is a slightly improved version of what I was able to write by hand* on April 13 in the limited time given:
*Red Baron likes finger exercises, the only opportunity to keep my handwriting abilities active. The writing of letters of condolence is always so depressing.
When the long-awaited Higgs boson was finally discovered, the high-energy community was relieved but still unsatisfied. The standard model, now being confirmed, does not explain the world. There must be physics beyond the Higgs.
I, on the other hand, as an old man and a physicist, feel satisfied. I see the beauty of the by-now classical system with the Higgs boson falling just into
the right place.
Leave me alone, you unsatisfied young guys, although you are right in pointing out the deficiencies of the standard model of high-energy physics. Only to mention: Why can't we still predict or better calculate the masses of all known particles? What about the missing dark masses and energies that must be somewhere, guaranteeing the stability of the world in which we live?
All experimental physicists are frustrated looking for a "new physics" without success, while theoreticians create one complex string model after another.
We don't need those even bigger and more expensive machines. They become too complex, like string theories. Aren't all established laws of physics simple and full of mathematical beauty?
We need a new genius capable of writing treaties like Kepler's Astronomie nova, Newton's Principia, Maxwell's electromagnetic equations*, Einstein's relativity theories, Pauli's exclusion principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Gell-Mann's quark model.
*lagniappe at the end
So far, I don't see anybody in sight. Has the human brain finally reached its level of incompetence? Too bad.
The scientific world was excited when James Clerk Maxwell published his "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" in 1873. So was Ludwig Boltzmann, another giant of physics who had just joined the University of Vienna as a professor of mathematics.
Like many others, he tried hard to understand the four "simple" and beautiful equations describing all electromagnetic phenomena.
Boltzmann had difficulties and fell into one of his frequent depressions. His colleagues urged him to take some holidays.
The evening before the departure, his best friend opened Boltzmann's luggage. On top of all the clothing lay Maxwell's "A Treatise."
Later in his life, Boltzmann lectured theoretical physics. When he taught his students electrodynamics, he always referred to a line in Goethe's Faust, "War es ein Gott, der diese Zeichen schuf … ?" (Was it a god who created these characters?).
Ludwig Boltzmann is famous for his interpretation of heat as a statistical phenomenon. Max Planck honored him by introducing the Boltzmann constant.
In 1906, while on vacation, another depression made him commit suicide.
"And we started writing essays on various topics. Since we all attempted, we were all successful."
Red Baron tried hard to write about his topic, "On the Poetry of the Higgs Boson," but wasn't so successful with all my insufficiencies regarding my active vocabulary in poetry. After all, the English thesaurus comprising Germanic- and Romance-rooted words is enormous.
Here is a slightly improved version of what I was able to write by hand* on April 13 in the limited time given:
*Red Baron likes finger exercises, the only opportunity to keep my handwriting abilities active. The writing of letters of condolence is always so depressing.
When the long-awaited Higgs boson was finally discovered, the high-energy community was relieved but still unsatisfied. The standard model, now being confirmed, does not explain the world. There must be physics beyond the Higgs.
|
| The rose of physics only to be compared to Luther's rose (©Stefan Mesoli/CERN) |
Leave me alone, you unsatisfied young guys, although you are right in pointing out the deficiencies of the standard model of high-energy physics. Only to mention: Why can't we still predict or better calculate the masses of all known particles? What about the missing dark masses and energies that must be somewhere, guaranteeing the stability of the world in which we live?
All experimental physicists are frustrated looking for a "new physics" without success, while theoreticians create one complex string model after another.
We don't need those even bigger and more expensive machines. They become too complex, like string theories. Aren't all established laws of physics simple and full of mathematical beauty?
We need a new genius capable of writing treaties like Kepler's Astronomie nova, Newton's Principia, Maxwell's electromagnetic equations*, Einstein's relativity theories, Pauli's exclusion principle, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, and Gell-Mann's quark model.
*lagniappe at the end
So far, I don't see anybody in sight. Has the human brain finally reached its level of incompetence? Too bad.
Lagniappe
The scientific world was excited when James Clerk Maxwell published his "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" in 1873. So was Ludwig Boltzmann, another giant of physics who had just joined the University of Vienna as a professor of mathematics.
Like many others, he tried hard to understand the four "simple" and beautiful equations describing all electromagnetic phenomena.
Boltzmann had difficulties and fell into one of his frequent depressions. His colleagues urged him to take some holidays.
The evening before the departure, his best friend opened Boltzmann's luggage. On top of all the clothing lay Maxwell's "A Treatise."
Later in his life, Boltzmann lectured theoretical physics. When he taught his students electrodynamics, he always referred to a line in Goethe's Faust, "War es ein Gott, der diese Zeichen schuf … ?" (Was it a god who created these characters?).
Ludwig Boltzmann is famous for his interpretation of heat as a statistical phenomenon. Max Planck honored him by introducing the Boltzmann constant.
In 1906, while on vacation, another depression made him commit suicide.
*
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