Higgs boson find may spell doom for universe

A subatomic particle discovered last year that may be the long-sought Higgs boson might doom our universe to an unfortunate end, researchers say.

The mass of the particle, which was uncovered at the world's largest particle accelerator — the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva — is a key ingredient in a calculation that portends the future of space and time.

"This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there'll be a catastrophe," Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., said Monday, Feb. 18, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
"It may be the universe we live in is inherently unstable, and at some point billions of years from now it's all going to get wiped out," added Lykken, a collaborator on one of the LHC's experiments.

The Higgs boson particle is a manifestation of an energy field pervading the universe called the Higgs field, which is thought to explain why particles have mass. After searching for decades for proof that this field and particle existed, physicists at the LHC announced in July 2012 that they'd discovered a new particle whose properties strongly suggest it is the Higgs boson.

To confirm the particle's identity for sure, more data are needed. But many scientists say they're betting it's the Higgs.

"This discovery to me was personally astounding," said I. Joseph Kroll, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who also works at the LHC. "To me, the Higgs was sort of, it might be there, it might not. The fact that it's there is really a tremendous accomplishment.



And finding the Higgs, if it's truly been found, not only confirms the theory about how particles get mass, but it allows scientists to make new calculations that weren't possible before the particle's properties were known.

For example, the mass of the new particle is about 126 billion electron volts, or about 126 times the mass of the proton. If that particle really is the Higgs, its mass turns out to be just about what's needed to make the universe fundamentally unstable, in a way that would cause it to end catastrophically in the far future.
That's because the Higgs field is thought to be everywhere, so it affects the vacuum of empty space-time in the universe.

"The mass of the Higgs is related to how stable the vacuum is," explained Christopher Hill, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. "It's right along the critical line. That could either be a cosmic coincidence, or it could be that there's some physics that's causing that. That's something new, which we didn't know before."

Google Animated Doodle Celebrates Copernicus' Birthday

Google may be at the center of the search universe, but today's Google Doodle celebrates a man who taught the world, "You're not at the center of the universe."

Born Feb. 19, 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was a mathematician and astronomer, best known for his heliocentric model which placed the Sun, and not the earth, at the center of our cosmos.
Copernicus' book "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) is considered to be one of the most important works in the history of science, sparking the Copernican revolution and changing our view of the universe.

Today's Google Doodle is an animated view of the Copernican model of the universe, with the Sun at its center and other planets orbiting around it.

How do you like today's Doodle? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image courtesy of Google

NASA: Alarming Water Loss in Middle East

An amount of freshwater almost the size of the Dead Sea has been lost in parts of the Middle East due to poor management, increased demands for groundwater and the effects of a 2007 drought, according to a NASA study.

The study, to be published Friday in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, examined data over seven years from 2003 from a pair of gravity-measuring satellites which is part of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment or GRACE. Researchers found freshwater reserves in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins had lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of its total stored freshwater, the second fastest loss of groundwater storage loss after India.

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About 60 percent of the loss resulted from pumping underground reservoirs for ground water, including 1,000 wells in Iraq, and another fifth was due to impacts of the drought including declining snow packs and soil drying up. Loss of surface water from lakes and reservoirs accounted for about another fifth of the decline, the study found.

"This rate of water loss is among the largest liquid freshwater losses on the continents," the authors wrote in the study, noting the declines were most obvious after a drought.

The study is the latest evidence of a worsening water crisis in the Middle East, where demands from growing populations, war and the worsening effects of climate change are raising the prospect that some countries could face sever water shortages in the decades to come. Some like impoverished Yemen blame their water woes on the semi-arid conditions and the grinding poverty while the oil-rich Gulf faces water shortages mostly due to the economic boom that has created glistening cities out of the desert.

Russian meteor likely unconnected to asteroid flyby

A Russian meteor blast that has reportedly injured more than 500 people appears unconnected to the flyby Friday of an asteroid passing close to Earth, according to astronomers.

The 13-story-size asteroid, 2012 DA14, passes within 17,100 miles of Earth around 2:24 p.m. ET on Friday before heading off into space. The Russian meteor, likely about the size of a sports utility vehicle and weighing perhaps 11 tons, struck Russia's Chelyabinsk region, about 900 miles east of Moscow late Thursday, according to news reports.

"The Earth travels about a million miles in a day and these are two events separated by almost 24 hours, so it is unlikely they are connected," says asteroid expert Richard Binzel of MIT. Meteors the size of the Russian one hit Earth every few years, Binzel says, but land near inhabited places much less often. "We just have the incredible coincidence of this happening just before the asteroid flies by," Binzel says.

Further, the Russian meteor landed in the Northern hemisphere while Asteroid 2012 DA14 is approaching from the direction of the South Pole, arguing against a connection. The damage in Chelyabinsk, reportedly broken windows, was caused by the air pressure wave created when the meteor zoomed into the Earth's atmosphere at perhaps 33,000 mph.

"It's nice of Nature to give us the full spectrum of possibilities," Binzel says. Astronomers will want to recover whatever pieces of the Russian meteor remain for study in the lab. The space rocks are thought to be leftovers from the era of the Earth's formation.

Spin the Ferris Wheels of Love With Today’s Google Doodle

Today’s Google Doodle.

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I love it when the Google Doodles do really fun mash-ups, and on today, the day of love, they’ve come up with a doozy. Not only is today Valentine’s Day, but it’s also the birthday of George Ferris, inventor of the Ferris Wheel; certainly a place where a fair share of romance has been exercised.
The doodle is actually a fun little game of spin-the-wheel. There are two Ferris Wheels, and when you press the heart-shaped button, both spin until two of the riders are matched up. The riders are all anthropomorphized (and cute) animals, and based on each pairing we are presented with an cartoon as to how their date might go. Since there are 8 riders on each wheel, there should be 64 possible outcomes, so it’s possible to spend some time on this doodle. I haven’t watch them all yet, but I’m still pulling for the
Octopus to find true love.
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Not the best result, from today’s Google Doodle.

If you click through the magnifying glass symbol on the doodle, you’ll be taken to comprehensive biographical info on George Ferris, and learn all about this multi-talented civil engineer who invented the most romantic ride at every theme park in the world. Happy Valentine’s Day, and Happy Birthday to George Ferris!
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Earth to narrowly escape collision with asteroid 150 feet wide Friday

 

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Via Reuters: The passage of asteroid 2012 DA14 through the Earth-moon system, is depicted in this handout image from NASA. On February 15, 2013, an asteroid, 150 feet (45 meters) in diameter will pass close, but safely, by Earth. The flyby creates a unique opportunity for researchers to observe and learn more about asteroids. (NASA) 

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Early Friday afternoon (2:24 p.m. EST), planet Earth will be buzzed by an asteroid some 150 feet wide, identified as 2012 DA14, as it intersects Earth’s orbit just 17,500 miles above our heads.

According to NASA, this is the closest documented encounter of an asteroid this large (excluding ones which actually smashed into the Earth). While this might not seem at first even a close miss, on the cosmic scale of the solar system, it certainly qualifies as a very close call. 

Only last December a somewhat smaller asteroid, XE54, passed within about 140,000 miles of Earth, and was about as close to crashing into Earth as an asteroid can without actually doing so.

(Note: For perspective, a relatively simple calculation shows that DA14’s closest approach corresponds proportionately to two commercial aircraft approaching to within about 150 feet of one another. That is far below FAA requirements for the minimum safe horizontal separation between airliners - 3 to 10 miles. There is little doubt that coming as close as 150 feet, which is less than the wingspan of even most mid-sized commercial passenger planes, is as close one can imagine without having a disastrous mid-air collision.) 

The path of asteroid 2012 DA14's approach to earth is shown in this handout graphic from NASA obtained by Reuters February 8, 2013. The 50-metre in diameter asteroid will pass inside the Earth's geosynchronous orbit, reaching its closest point February 15, 2013. Scientists say there is no danger of it hitting the earth. (NASA - REUTERS) 

 

Several recent asteroids have come closer than DA14 but were much smaller (tens of feet in size). And, when it comes to the consequences of an Earth-asteroid collision, size really matters.

The smallest asteroids (better described as large rocks) to threaten Earth most likely would burn up in the atmosphere creating eye-opening fireballs racing across the sky, possibly with some fragments (referred to as meteorites) reaching the ground. (Note, by comparison, the “shooting stars” seen annually in association with meteor showers are typically pebble sized).

 

Meteor Crater (NASA) An asteroid the size of DA14 is capable of blasting a crater - with the equivalent of hundreds of Hiroshima atomic bombs – like the one mile wide hole known as Meteor Crater blasted into the ground 50 thousand years ago in Arizona. 

Just 105 years ago (June, 1908) a 300 foot asteroid (or comet comprised of mostly water ice rather than hard rock) exploded over the Tunguska River in Siberia\ with more power than anything before or since (including thermo-nuclear hydrogen bombs) in recorded history. Thousands of square miles of territory were devastated, but the only victims were trees and wild life.

An equivalent strike today near a metropolitan area would obviously cause tremendous damage and take a terrible toll on life and societal infrastructure. However, it’s much more likely that the asteroid would either produce a big splash (and possible tidal waves) somewhere over the vastness of earth’s oceans, or create a humongous bang (and possible earthquakes) over some relatively large and sparsely populated land mass. In either case, though, the event would not wipe out humanity. 

Scientists believe that any space rock larger than about 1 kilometer (.62 mile) across could cause a global catastrophe. The asteroid which led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs 75 million years ago was about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) wide. 

“Extinction event” asteroid collisions appear highly improbable (but possible) on time scales less than millions of years. But objects larger than about 100 feet like DA14 are believed to strike Earth every few hundred years. At this time there are no known asteroids of this size on a collision course with Earth for at least 100 years.

What’s of interest and concern, however, is that scientists believe there are literally tens to hundreds of thousands of objects, mostly with dimensions in the hundreds of feet, whizzing around in space that have not yet been discovered. Consider the fact that XE54 was first observed only the day before its closest approach. Even though it has been crossing Earth’s orbit about once per year for millennia, DA14 was discovered less than one year ago.

Dinosaur footprints lifted from NASA's backyard

The dinosaur footprints were encased in a field jacket, which is much like a cast that a doctor would place on a broken arm or leg. This field jacket consisted of many layers of burlap soaked in plaster, with metal pipes added to act like splints / NASA/GSFC/Rebecca Roth

 A chunk of stone bearing dinosaur footprints has been carefully lifted from the grounds of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., scientists report.

The dino tracks, thought to have been left by three separate beasts more than 100 million years ago, were discovered by amateur paleontologist Ray Stanford in August 2012.

The feature that first caught Stanford's eye was a dinner-plate-sized footprint of a nodosaur, a tanklike dinosaur studded with bony protuberances that roamed the area about 110 million years ago during the Cretaceous period (the period from 145 million to 65 million years ago that was the end of the Mesozoic Era). This particular lumbering leaf-eater must have been moving quickly across the prehistoric mud, as its heel did not sink deeply into the ground.

A closer look at the site revealed two more prints. Stephen Godfrey, a paleontology curator at the Calvert Marine Museum, who was contracted to preserve the find, said he suspects one was left by an ornithopod, possibly from the iguanodontid family, which were large vegetarian dinosaurs with birdlike, three-toed feet that walked on its hind legs. Another smaller footprint found superimposed over the nodosaur track is thought to be from a baby nodosaur, perhaps trying to catch up to its parent, according to a statement from NASA.

The stretch of ground containing the prints measured about 7 feet long and 3 feet across at its widest point. After making a silicon-rubber cast of the dino tracks, the team covered the find in plaster-soaked burlap, much like an orthopedic cast, to reinforce the slab and protect it from damage during the big move. Altogether, the stone slab, the protective jacket and surrounding soil weighed about 3,000 pounds, and it was successfully pulled out of the ground last month.

 For now, the prints are being stored at Goddard until further scientific study is possible. The wonder of the discovery has not been lost on space scientists at Goddard, who often find themselves studying starlight as old as the dinosaurs.

"One of the amazing aspects of this find is that some of the starlight now seen in the night sky by astronomers was created in far-distant galaxies when these dinosaurs were walking on mud flats in Cretaceous Maryland where Goddard is now located," Jim Garvin, Goddard's chief scientist, said in a statement. "That starlight (from within the Virgo Supercluster) is only now reaching Earth after having traveled through deep space for 100 million years."