Hydrangea petal with September morning sparkle
There haven’t been many of these classic September mornings this month, when everything is so bright and sparkly. This hydrangea had a spider web behind, catching the water droplets and creating the lens-dazzle.
This week – the physics world is it / isn’t it drama over the possibility that neutrinos may have been clocked at faster than the speed of light, something thought impossible and which, if proven, will require the rewriting of modern physics.
The best comment I have seen on this so far –
The barman said: “Sorry, we don’t serve neutrinos.” A neutrino enters a bar.
<<physics joke>>
For more comment, see my favourite geeky online comic: xkcd
In the last few years I have been struck in my reading around the story of modern physics how scientists predict certain sub-atomic particles based on their theories, and subsequently those particles start showing up in the detectors. In other words, what you are looking for – turns up! Bear in mind that in these high-energy experiments most sub-atomic particles are created and only exist for the tiniest fractions of a fraction of a second before turning back into pure energy. The picture that emerges is one in which matter (particles) is created out of an underlying ‘frothing sea’ of energy, that appears to be responsive to our conciousness.
Physicists ‘out on the edge’ are beginning to build theories of ‘everything’ which include conciousness – to me this feels like the important work going on right now.
So – lets dream up some more sparkly sun-filled mornings…