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- Sabine Newsletter 6/15/2022
Sabine Newsletter 6/15/2022
To Build or Not to Build
The Discovery of an “Axial Higgs”
A few days ago, the discovery of an “axial Higgs” made headlines, referring to this paper recently published in Nature. This axial Higgs is a “quasi-particle,” that is, a collective excitations in a medium. Quasi-particles are emergent, not fundamental. The same confusion has previously happened for Majorana particles, magnetic monopoles, and negative masses. It’s like confusing sound waves with air molecules.
Festival Fun
At this year's HowTheLightGetsIn festival in Wales, I did a number of debates, among other things about the multiverse with Roger Penrose and Michio Kaku. A brief summary of this debate is here.
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To Build or Not to Build
A brief discussion surfaced on social media about whether it’s worth building a bigger particle collider after the LHC, with the “no” being defended by Tom Hartsfield, and the “yes” by Don Lincoln.I welcome that at least there is some attempt at a discussion, whatever minor, but I don’t think either of these gentlemen has made their case very well. I wrote about this issue many times (Ex: here).
This week’s video is about the question whether particles can really be in two places at once and what that means. It’s featuring Arvin Ash who also has a YouTube channel and who has been a pleasure to work with.
A contrarian scientist wrestles with the big questions that modern physics raises, and what physics says about the human condition. Here's the first review of my new book. Pre-order it here.
