| Strengthening La Nina could mean more hurricanes By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID 2010-09-09T17:21:36ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- The La Nina climate phenomenon is strengthening, increasing the likelihood an active hurricane season could get even busier.... hosted.ap.org |
Calif. utility stumbles on 1.4M years old fossils By GILLIAN FLACCUS 2010-09-21T13:38:01ZRIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) -- A utility company preparing to build a new substation in an arid canyon southeast of Los Angeles has stumbled on a trove of animal fossils dating back 1.4 million years that researchers say will fill in blanks in Southern California's history.... hosted.ap.org |
The mystery of mass: What makes one particle light and another heavy? The author of Massive introduces a short film that summarises quantum mechanics and the quest for the Higgs bosonThe origin of mass is one of the most intriguing mysteries of nature. Some particles, such as the W boson (which carries the weak force) have so much mass they barely move, while others, like the photon, are entirely massless and zip around at the speed of light. What is it that makes one particle light and another heavy?The mass of fundamental particles – those that carry forces and build nuclei and atoms – is often explained by the way they move through an invisible "Higgs field" that is thought to pervade the vacuum of space. To some particles, such as the top quark, the Higgs field is like molasses: they get bogged down and become very heavy. To others, like the photon, the field is empty space: they fly through unimpeded and gain no weight at all. In this exclusive video, our kid Brian Cox explains how giant particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva, are closing in on the elusive Higgs particle. When and if they do, the puzzle of mass will be solved.Particle physicsCernPhysicsIan Sampleguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Benoît B Mandelbrot: the man who made geometry an art The sphere of maths has borne few as provocative as the man whose 'fractals' demonstrated the universe's playful irregularityFew recent thinkers have woven such a beautiful braid of art and science as Benoît B Mandelbrot, who has died aged 85 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (The B apparently doesn't stand for anything. He just felt like adding it.) Mandelbrot was a provocative mathematician, a subversive geometer. He left a beautiful legacy in visual art, for Mandelbrot was the man who named and explained fractals – those complex, apparently chaotic yet geometrically ordered shapes that delight the eye and fascinate the mind. They are icons of modern understanding of the universe's complexity.The Mandelbrot set, one of the most famous fractal designs, is named after him. With its fizzing fringe of crystal-like microforms blossoming out of a conjunction of black circles, this fractal pattern looks crazy but is the outcome of geometrical calculations.Geometry, said Mandelbrot, is seen as "dry" because it can only explain regular shapes like the square, the cylinder and the cone. Such shapes have been analysed mathematically since the time of the ancient Greeks, which is why traditional geometry is known as Euclidean geometry. But in the 19th and 20th centuries, physicists and mathematicians started to think beyond Euclid and his regular universe. Mandelbrot was not the first, but with his startling fractals concept he created a visual manifesto for a non-Euclidean universe.Fractals – and I'd be delighted if mathematicians can give a better explanation below– are shapes that are irregular but repeat themselves at every scale: they contain themselves in themselves. Mandelbrot used the example of a cauliflower which, like a fern, is a fractal found in nature; if you look at the smallest sections of these vegetable forms, you see them mirroring the whole.Mandelbrot, who worked at IBM before becoming a professor at Yale, started thinking about irregular shapes by looking at maps of Great Britain. The squiggly shape of the UK mainland fascinated him and he wondered whether it was possible to make a mathematical model of its perimeter. Can you measure the British coastline? He discovered that you can at a distance, but that then the closer you look, the more you find. In a sense, guardian.co.uk |
Groups fight over fox-hunting law Pro and anti-hunting groups debate the law, after the UK's first double conviction under the controversial hunting act. bbc.co.uk |