Higgs' Boson? - We Have A Discovery

[umslopogaas]

That will teach me to try and type when I've had a bottle of wine. Didnt mean to post a taster, but ignore, there's a lot more to come.

[Gordon]

#137 Gordon, I've been writing some reminiscences and have about five A4 pages on Eritrea. I cant figure out how to copy them over from MS Word to this forum (I'm not very computer literate and this new machine has up to date versions of my familiar software, I cant make anything work - what the h**l have they done with the Copy/Edit functions?), but I could send them to you by email and then probably you could -or maybe you know someone who could?

By all means Umsie. FF has my email.

However :

Which version of Windows have you? It's new machine so I assume it must be 7?
If so the machine probably has Office 2010 on it? As Word opens it will give a date in a panel.

If these both true try this:

Once Word 2010 is opened load your file and then look in the top right corner there are 3 buttons: "Find", "Replace", "Select" with "Editing" beneath them.

Select/Click the "Select" button and then the "Seelct all" from the list that then appears. You will see all your text highlighted.

Now go over to the opposite side of the top of the screen - top left - and see under "File" a pair of scissors. Under that is a couple of icons of two pages [under that is a brush]. Click on the two pages icon. The whole of your highlighted text is now in the clipboard ready to be pasted anywhere.

Now go to the forum - assuming it's open ready and you are logged in - and do what you normally do to send a new post or an answer to one. Then click your cursor [left mouse] into the new post text box where you want to put the new text. Then right click the mouse and select the paste option in the list. That should put all the text from the clipboard into your reply.

Send as usual.

[Vile Consort]

And I think it was Dirac who was once in conversation with a fellow physicist who got so exasperated at the complexity of Dirac's equations that he burst out, "Paul, there are possibly three people in the world who understand what you're talking about!" Once again there was a very long silence. "Paul, are you OK?" "Yes thank you, I was just wondering who the third person might be."

No, that was Arthur Eddington.

And nobody called Dirac "Paul"*.

* Except perhaps his wife. However, as he used to introduce her as "Wigner's sister," even that must be in doubt.

[Vile Consort]

Nor me. Wikipedia entries keeping my head above water. Multiverse appears an interpretation of QM, rather than a new theory, so I am hopeful I can slide back to the traditional representations of QM if the going gets too tough.

The example is given of the double slit experiment where, if you don't look to see which slit the electron goes through, there will be electron diffraction. If you do look, you change the system, and the wave function description of the system collapses. According to Multiverse as I currently understand it, by "taking a look", a new universe has been created, alongside an existing universe where a "look" has not been taken???

No, the two universes will be one in which the electron went through one slit and one in which it went through the other. If you take a look at the slits, you cause the wave function to collapse at that point. It then develops according to Schroedinger's equation from a starting point of there being an electron at one slit or t'other, so the slits take no further part in it. Hmmm .. not quite true, the electron could then go back and forth through the slits any number of times, but the amplitudes for that would be too small to make a measurable contribution to the outcome.

I am not sure how the multiverse interpretation works when you don't look at the slits: when you finally measure the position of the electron, you can get any real number as the answer*. Does this mean that the universe splits into an uncountable number of multiverses?

* Assuming, that is, that you accept that real numbers exist. Those whose appreciation of mathematics stops in the third century BC will have a different take. No doubt one or their number will give us a laugh by explaining the pre-Pythagorean interpretation of quantum mechanics. Although, to be honest, I would be more interested if they would tell me what the value of -1 is.

[Pabmusic]

No, that was Arthur Eddington.

And he made his famous quip about the general theory of relativity, not QM.

[Gordon]

.....Multiverse appears an interpretation of QM, rather than a new theory.....

I believe so. Remember it is only a model of the world we exist in. What is going on physically may be something we shall never really know and understand. However we have learned how to describe the world well enough to manipulate it and predict its behaviour. We continue to improve that description but have now got into terra that is still rather incognita.

The many worlds idea is one way of allowing a quantum entity to have its full expression while only exposing part of itself in any one world, which is what appears to be the case in our one. At least as far as our current understanding goes. As a consequence that exposure is linked to those in all other worlds in order to assure that the entity retains its integrity. That means that somehow the entity "manages" those exposures so that they act in concert, so those worlds are not behaving totally independently, according to Deutsch's matrices.

Computing of any kind is about information processing. Experiments are designed to process and produce information. In any experiment on a given quantum system there is a sufficient number of worlds to hold all the information that describes that system in full. If we have no experiment [a computation] there are no other worlds - yet - but they will be conjured into existence as soon as we start one to provide a means of providing and holding that information. At least that's what I think is going on. I suppose like much else in QM we have to go with what works.

So, are those worlds are as real as ours is, particularly, are they actually physically real? That's the part I wonder about and perhaps adds confusion. One assumes that they have to be if they express as well as ours does this entity's nature but here we have our physical reality and don't need another [do we? I'm not convinced there is another physical me somewhere, perhaps just information about me with all my possibilities?] and only need information about the other worlds to guide that reality. It is that information that is available to the quantum computing system [the experiment] - Deutsch's qubits - that is shared among the worlds? That is, are they adjuncts to ours and are just mathematical necessities to make the new sums work and to hold information [not real matter] that is denied to this world for reasons we don't yet grasp? Another therapy session with Dr Deutsch is called for I think. That first Qubit lecture has much to teach.

If one yearns for simple beauty in this world, as Einstein did, then perhaps QM isn't quite there yet and all this complication and contortion will all seem silly when we finally get it!! Then again.....it might get worse!! Tune again next time for another exciting, enthralling episode in the Hitchhiker's Guide to Quantum Mechanics. Remember - don't panic!

[umslopogaas]

152 Gordon, many thanks for that, will give it a go as soon as I've finished a very late breakfast coffee.

[Quarky]

Thanks Vile Consort and Gordon for those interesting comments.

Looks as though I have some serious brain-boiling to do, to get up to speed with David Deutsch. Hope I have time to use my Proms Pass!

At least we can say that Deutsch et al have brought QM back into current fashionable ways of looking at the world, and using fashionable mathematical techniques.

Reminds me somewhat of a video media product, that I am peripherally involved in, where a story is constructed by the user, from user-selected possibilities:

http://www.cinetmedia.com/

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

my heroine

[umslopogaas]

#137 Gordon, here goes. This is too long to post in one piece, so I've split it into two. This is part one.


In 1988 my boss called me in to his office and gave me a London telephone number. I rang it and got through to an anonymous aid office somewhere in the endless smoke (in these days, smokeless) traffic, and arranged an interview with a very friendly chap in a comfy jumper. He’d been to a rather obscure bit of the obscure part of a country where no-one ever goes anyway, and met some arresting people. They needed help. His agency had money, would I be interested? Er yes, cough up the necessary and I’ll go to the moon. In fact, I was to go to Khartoum (pronounced with a ferocious gob at the end of the first syllable in order to spit out the second, ‘khar T ... HOICK!! ...dong ... toum’) and spend a month behind guerrilla lines in Eritrea, giving crop protection advice to the Eritrean People’s Liberation Force.

The Eritreans at the time were fighting a guerrilla war of independence against the Ethiopians, and had done the classic Maoist manoeuvre of retreating into the mountains while they gathered their forces (I’m not an expert in political positioning, by the way, but the situation was explained to me by a savvy consultant in economics or whatever, those professions that pay real dosh, who I met in the EPLF guest house: see below). You couldn’t access Eritrea via Ethiopia, so you had to go to Sudan, then down the Red Sea and across the desert. I remember the journey...

... I landed in Khart hoik! TOUM, OK that’s enough of that joke and the temperature was somewhere in the upper forties, Khartoum is not a good place to be at any time, but especially not in August. They put me in a hotel, not very grand, but in Khartoum, grand wasn’t an issue, but functioning water was. There was water to drink and wash in, but alas, Sudan’s a muslim country, no beer.

Actually I’m confusing this trip with another I made in the same year to Uganda, my most vivid memories of awful African hotels are from Uganda, I really can’t remember where I slept in Khartoum. But to continue:

the next day I flew to Port Sudan. The airport at four am was something else. There were about three thousand people,

… (all male, women do not exist in muslim countries, Allah has prescribed, and Mohammed has dispensed and his medicine has poisoned half the Earth, I could rant on about repressive religions , but not now) …

all dressed in identical, immaculate white dish-dashes [those neck to ankle white robes Arab muslims wear] …

… the air was like a furnace and the signs were all in Arabic. Did my managers really know what situations they are providing for their staff? Or more to the point, did they care? I don’t know, I suppose that if my boss had been in my shoes he would have been able to cope (with the situation, not the shoe size), he was an old Africa hand. I was wondering what I should do next, dumped in this sea of superheated humanity, when I spotted someone south Asian in western dress who seemed to know what he was doing. I asked if he knew which was the queue for Port Sudan. Mercifully he spoke English and put me in the right one.

I flew to Port Sudan and it was even hotter. I was met by some very serious looking men and driven to the EPLF’s guest house, which was a mile out of town in a little enclave, very discreet, I think the Eritrean exiles weren’t very welcome in Sudan. I was made welcome, shown the toilet and bathroom (more adequate than I expected), led to my bed and left to my own devices. I spent several days supine, it was too hot to do anything except get up frequently for water. Fortunately the large Alibaba earthenware jar in the bathroom always had water in it and I don’t know if it was safely drinkable, but in those temperatures, I would have drunk out of the toilet if that was all the water around, so I didn’t look too closely at the colour and anyway, everyone in the house drank it and they all seemed to get up next morning. Fortunately I had brought several large books, so I read a lot.

Eventually the EPLF organised a land cruiser, up at four am and off we went. It was so hot you had to keep the windows closed, the air that blew in if you opened them would have taken off your eyebrows. And we got to the river Khor Baraka, which we were due to ford to drive into Eritrea, and it was flooded and we couldn’t cross

(I have a photo, it was a seriously raging torrent. There was a suggestion we should ford it on camel back, but fortunately this came to nothing, I suppose they couldn’t find enough camels. Phew. I wasn’t so much worried for myself, but I had a lot of rather expensive books to give to the hosts and I didn’t want them to get wet)

well, that’s not entirely true, I was even more worried for myself, I cant swim.

[Yes I know, how on earth did you SCUBA dive if you can’t swim? Well, it’s not very sensible, but in fact with fins, face mask and breathing kit, you don’t actually have to be able to swim, just fit the regulator to the tank, hoist it on your back, put the face mask on the back of your head, march into the shallows to the edge of the reef, drop the mask over your face and ensure the seal is OK, put the regulator between your teeth, kick your fins and along you go]

There was an empty ten tonne gravel truck in the campsite, so as honoured guest I got the best bed: I slept in the tray on one of the wheel arches. I remember vividly, to this day, clambering into the back of that lorry, feet on the wheel arch, rucksack heaved over the side. HUP, over we go, looks promising, well, not a lot of bedding, but I guess I can make do, glad I brought this towel and the slightly emptied rucksack made a sort of pillow. Thanks a lot, I’ll just sleep a little ... I seem to recall that in fact, I didn’t sleep very much at all.

The driver slept on the ground and hoped the scorpions were friendly. Next day we drove back to Port Sudan, where we were stuck for a week while the EPLF figured out an alternative.

Oh ye Gods, that was boring! Fortunately, the temperature was so high I was mostly stupefied by the heat, if it had been any more normal I would have gone bonkers. As it was, after about three days lying on the bed wishing I was anywhere but here, I decided I MUST have an ice-cream and I was going to walk into Port Sudan and buy one, come what may. Hey, I have an Aussie hat, I’ll put it on and stride out. I did, and got about a quarter of a mile down the road, thinking ‘Yeah, fine, it’s a bit hot, but I’m OK, oh it really is a bit hot, IDIOT you haven’t brought any water, no of course I haven’t, I’m on my way to an ice cream shop, er, this road is rather long and dusty and I can just see Port Sudan in the distance but … if I don’t turn around now and head for shade I’m going to suffer ... fry ... die ... and there wasn’t any shade.

Just made it back to base. I never got that ice cream.


[It worked! Part 2 will be along in a minute]

[umslopogaas]

Here's part 2.


Eventually, when I was several hundred pages into something, it might actually have been a re-read of ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ and Stalingrad was about to fall to the Russian armies and return from Nazi domination to it’s rightful, Russian, owners (and that is a shocking tale to read anywhere, though at least I read about it somewhere warm, the Battle of Stalingrad was fought in the depths of the Russian winter – and you could argue about how true a Russian was Stalin. Go on. The Russian armies wiped out the entire German sixth army. The figures are scarcely believable: according to Shirer, 194,000 German soldiers were killed and 91,000 taken prisoner, of whom 86,000 died in Russian camps: my conscience rumbles uneasily at those figures, that’s more than a quarter of a million men. … ), there were murmurings in the organisation, EPLF people came and told me it was time to prepare. That wasn’t difficult, since I only had one rucksack, yup, I’m your man, just give the word. It came, of course, at four in the morning.


To get back to Eritrea. We boarded a dhow and motored down the Red Sea, past the mouth of the Khor Baraka, landed on the south side, then piled into another land cruiser and drove across the desert to the mountains of Eritrea. I still remember that boat journey and I have a photo or two somewhere to record it (this may not sound like much of an achievement in this age of digital photography, but I owned very high quality but heavy 35 mm camera equipment and it cost a lot of effort to haul it around on these field trips, especially when the temperature was in the forties, and you had to carry loads of spare film, too. Many was the time I wished I’d left it all at home, my right shoulder would have been less bent, but equally, I was keen to have a record and my employer was always wanting photos). There was no shade whatsoever in that boat, and the sun in the Red Sea in August is rather warm. I worried about my arms, which were exposed, and got burned. In fact, I was cooked. And not very appetisingly, those of the fair skinned races should not go to places like the Red Sea, the sun is seriously unpleasant. I spent the next two weeks peeling gently ... even my Eritrean minders were not unaffected, in fact they were a bit uncomfortable, but I think I was more unhappy than they were, it’s not hard to see the point of melanin once you’ve been under sun like that ...

... the Eritrean mountains are rather dramatic country. It’s dead flat across the desert and then you suddenly arrive at a massive range, straight up out of the sand, just like that. No foothills, just a wall of rock. It’s like something out of a Rider Haggard novel.

Brief diversion into a quotation that might have issued from Umslopogaas, though in fact I just made it up:

“Oh, Macumazaan, Umslopogaas will serve, my bones are old but my axe is keen, Inkoosi-kaas will swing and there will be blood, in the service of the great queen, I tell thee, there will be blood!”

(Wonderful stuff, Umslopogaas is a great literary creation. A mighty Zulu warrior and virtuoso with the battle axe. I’ve stolen him from Rider Haggard’s ‘Alan Quartermain’, but I think I’ve caught the essence of the writing. This is the sequel to ‘King Solomon’s Mines’. I’ve read these novels many times, I have my grandfather’s copies and they give me a brief view into an unknown world. Which is treacherous territory. I enjoy Rider Haggard’s stories, but they are descriptions of late Victorian British domination of the world, and a world view that is completely rational for its time, but simultaneously jarring to modern ears. What to do, reject a fine story because it is unacceptable in modern terms, or accept an old monstrosity because though it seems racist now, you know it didn’t look so a hundred years ago when it was written)

Don’t know, but we must progress. We powered on through the dust and arrived at a narrow cleft in the mountains. It was very forbidding, but then, silent and serious men holding Kalashnikovs appeared from behind the rocks. Well, I thought, they are either going to look after me or shoot me, there didn’t look as if there was any middle way. But in fact, they looked after me very well and I felt secure, the kind of security that a few thousand automatic rifles can give you when you know they are on your side. We were recognised, and entered Eritrea.

I had a job to do here, once I’d arrived. I had to teach crop protection to the Eritreans. This was very far down the list of priorities in the hierarchy of government, especially when you are a guerilla movement; I could see I had a course to follow, but what the hell was I supposed to do? I’d never taught anyone anything before, and this didn’t seem the best place to start.

I also had to sleep in some sort of cellar, which wasn’t very comfortable, and there were Ethiopian fighter jets whizzing around overhead, so it wasn’t advisable to go outside, however much you needed a leak.

This assignment was very hard work, the EPLF were among the most intense people I’ve ever met. During the day you couldn’t do much, because of the Ethiopian air force, so we sat under a thorn tree and the EPLF listened to the pilots on their short wave radios.

I know him said Mehari at one point, we went to school together.

But it was one way communication, the EPLF didn’t talk back because they didn’t want to give away their position. Then in the evening when the planes had gone home, the EPLF wanted to know all about crop protection. I wanted to have some dinner and find a nice rock to sleep on, but no, out with the text books and huddle round the tilly lamp. It was a difficult assignment, because there was hardly any cultivation, so a distinct shortage of teaching materials. Plenty of prickly pear, but that was about it, and prickly pear doesn’t seem to suffer from much, except prickles.

Life was rather rugged, it was all rocks. You sat on rocks, slept on rocks, ate off rocks, wandered off to find a discreet one to go behind for a sh*t. Having a wash was something else. There was a water source, but it was most of a mile away. So, grab a bucket and set off on a long walk. Find water, fill bucket, stagger back. Water is heavy if you have to carry it that far, but this was arid territory.

Now, plan activity. You need dirty laundry, change of underwear, a second bucket (a challenge in the wilds of revolutionary Eritrea, finding one bucket was hard enough but two caused much consternation, I mean, what else will these ridiculous foreigners want, and anyway, what would he do with a Kalashikov if I gave him one? Well, guv, if you had I’d have been willing to learn, but you didn’t, and my employers didn’t do weapons training, so we’ll have to let it pass), towel and some soap.

Set off to chosen rock, pour some water into second bucket, plunge laundry, scrub briskly, wring, discard water, add a drop more of the clean, rinse, wring, spread on rocks to dry. No-one around, good, strip off and hang clothes in convenient thorn tree. Splash some water over head, soap hair, let some dribble into the intimate bits. Take remaining water and rinse hair, making sure some more goes over the aforementioned. Dry (didn’t take long, this is an arid place), on with clean knickers, redress, wander back to camp with empty buckets and clean clothes. You can make a bucket of water go a long way if you’ve carried it all by yourself.

But I survived and have the photos to prove it. I wonder what became of Andom Keflemariam and Mehari Tesfrijohannes.

I remember eventually returning to Khartoum and the home of the agency minder and being given a rather good dinner and even a bottle of Ethiopian wine. I can’t say it was the world’s greatest vintage, but any port in a storm, it went down a treat.

The EPLF didn’t drink alcohol. There was one event that they told me was very special, I forget, some ceremony or other. Probably an anniversary of the Uprising of the Daughters of the Revolutionary Fervour of the Martyrs of the Rebellion Against the Repression of the Running Pigs of Bacon Slicing, Long Live Our Chairman, May Mao of the Eternal Light Shine for Ever in our Lives and Uplift the Substance of Our Essential Being!!! ... or something like that. I used to have a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book, it’s got a lot to answer for. But as usual, when I went looking, I couldn’t find it.

Not, I hasten to add, that I ever read it

WHAT?

And it doesn’t seem to be on the shelf any more. Heigh ho, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi, “So Passeth the Glory of the World”, and yes, indeed it does, but we must move on whether the glory does, or doesn’t.

A special drink was served, which had no effect on me whatsoever, but it warmed up the fighters considerably, after a couple of cupfuls they all started chanting and firing their Kalashikovs in the air. Fortunately I was not asked to make a speech, though it is not impossible that such a request might have arisen. Others were more voluble … and of course, they spoke the language. I wasn’t there to talk politics, mercifully.

I don’t know if I really achieved anything useful, but apparently the EPLF liked me and actually requested a return visit, but mercifully I was too busy elsewhere.

[Gordon]

Glad to see you bludgeoned that pip-squeak computer into submission Omsie!!

Fascinating tale. A sort of James Herriot of Eritrea. Great adventure, but rather unselfish of you to curb your self indulge and not return!!

[umslopogaas]

Actually I would have gone back, if the agency paid and if I had nothing else to do, the boss would have made me because I had to bring in income from somewhere to pay for my salary. Mercifully (sort of) the FAO wanted me to go and look at the cocoa crop in Uganda instead and they pay well, so I went to Uganda. That was a trip that had its moments too, but some other time: I have a description of it, but am in danger of getting a reputation for verbal diarrhoea

[Quarky]

my heroine

The Grand Synthesis?

[Pabmusic]

This does quite a good job of explaining the issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...-boson/259977/

The video interview with Lawrence Krauss is very good.