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Sep 18, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Matt Strassler
Growing up in the US during the oil embargo of the early 1970s, I was bombarded by public service announcements encouraging people to conserve energy. But at a very young age, I also read that “energy is always conserved”, according to physics. This baffled me. If nature automatically conserves energy, why would human efforts to do so be needed? I soon realised that physicists don’t exactly speak English.
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Sep 12, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Robin Andrews |Steven Strogatz |Matt Strassler
Introduction On September 16, 2023, the world began to rumble. A gargantuan rock-ice avalanche tumbled into the deep waters of a fjord in eastern Greenland, unleashing a megatsunami whose initial waves reached a height of 200 meters. The waves scoured the walls of the fjord before flowing into the open sea. Even for this avalanche-prone corner of Greenland, the collapse and subsequent megatsunami were shocking for their speed and ferocity. But what followed was considerably stranger.
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Sep 9, 2024 | 
culturacientifica.com | César Tomé |Matt Strassler
En este artículo adaptado de su nuevo libro, «Ondas en un mar imposible» *, el físico Matt Strassler explica que el origen de la masa en el universo tiene mucho que ver con la música. Un ensayo de Matt Strassler. Historia original reimpresa con permiso de Quanta Magazine, una publicación editorialmente independiente respaldada por la Fundación Simons.
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Sep 4, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Matt Strassler |Janna Levin |Ben Brubaker
Introduction At 11:30 one night in May 2024, a graduate student, Chuankun Zhang, saw a signal that physicists have sought for 50 years. As a peak rose from the static on his monitor at the research institute JILA in Boulder, Colorado, Zhang dropped a screenshot in a group chat with his three lab mates. One by one they hopped out of bed and trickled in.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
flipboard.com | Matt Strassler
How the Higgs Field (Actually) Gives Mass to Elementary ParticlesIn this article adapted from his new book, "Waves in an Impossible Sea," physicist Matt Strassler explains that the origin of mass in the universe …
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
quantamagazine.org | Matt Strassler |Zack Savitsky |Charlie Wood |Jonathan O'Callaghan
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012 confirmed what we particle physicists had long suspected: that there is a field permeating the cosmos that generates the masses of elementary particles. Unfortunately, physicists have found it challenging to explain to everyone else how this so-called Higgs field accomplishes its mighty task. A common approach has been to tell a tall tale.
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Mar 8, 2024 | 
newscientist.com | Matt Strassler
The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time newsletter. Each month, we hand over the keyboard to a physicist or mathematician to tell you about fascinating ideas from their corner of the universe. You can sign up for Lost in Space-Time for free here. Though our world is bewildering in its diversity, all known natural phenomena can be classified into just a few categories. Four of these – gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear – are…
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Mar 5, 2024 | 
powells.com | Matt Strassler
A theoretical physicist takes us on an awe-inspiring journey from relativity to the Higgs field, showing how the universe creates everything from what seems like nothing at allIn Waves in an Impossible Sea, physicist Matt Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces.
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Feb 20, 2024 | 
profmattstrassler.com | Matt Strassler
Nothing goes faster than the speed of light, also known as the cosmic speed limit c. Right? Well, umm… the devil is in the details. Here are some of those details:If you hold two flashlights and point them in opposite directions, the speed at which the two beams rush apart, from your perspective, is indeed twice the cosmic speed limit. In an expanding universe, the distance between you and a retreating flash of light can increase faster than the cosmic speed limit.
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Jan 22, 2024 | 
profmattstrassler.com | Matt Strassler
(This is the third post in a series, though it can be read independently; here are post #1 and post #2.)Measuring the distance to the Sun is challenging, for reasons explained in my last post. Long ago, the Greek thinker Aristarchus proposed a geometric method, which involves estimating the Moon’s sunlit fraction on a certain date. Unfortunately, because the Sun is so far away, his approach isn’t powerful enough; Aristarchus himself underestimated the distance.
