Worth the Weight

Scott LaFee
Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800
Lifestyle

Here's a variation on an old physics joke:

Physics student: Hey, did you know protons have mass?

Other physics student: I didn't even know they were Catholic.
Updated: Wed Dec 10, 2008

Here's a variation on an old physics joke:

Physics student: Hey, did you know protons have mass?

Other physics student: I didn't even know they were Catholic.

In fact, particle physicists have known protons had mass since they were discovered 89 years ago, but until recently, scientists have never been able to calculate protons' mass from scratch.

Instead, they estimated proton mass in the context of other particles within an atom. That has apparently changed, with researchers announcing they have finally found a way to calculate a proton's singular mass.

For those who might have slept through physics in high school, a proton is one of the basic particles that make up an atom, along with neutrons and electrons. It's also a dynamic mess, consisting of even more fundamental particles called quarks (two "up" quarks and one "down") and gluons, the latter zipping among the quarks, binding everything together with a strong nuclear force.

Thanks to quantum mechanics, these quarks and gluons are "virtual," meaning they are matched with anti-quarks and anti-gluons so that everything is constantly flitting in and out of existence. This makes it very hard to measure anything quantitatively.

"Everything interacts with everything," said physicist Laurent Lellouch of the French National Center for Scientific Research in Marseille.

But using new mathematical models and more powerful supercomputers, physicists say they have finally calculated the proton's mass with a fair degree of confidence. The trick was to model time as passing in discrete ticks, as opposed to flowing smoothing, then confining quarks to points in time and gluons to links between the points in time.

"It's really a big deal," Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist John Negele told the journal Science.

We'll take his word for it.

VERBATIM

Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved — and will never achieve — any results of the slightest value.

— 19th-century British theologian Benjamin Jowett

BRAIN SWEAT

Each of the nine words below is misspelled: either missing a letter, having an extra letter or requiring a letter to be replaced. Gather together the nine relevant letters (those missing, extra or replacements) and rearrange them to spell the name of someone who really should know better.

The words: Violincello, pavillion, mocasin, diletante, ideosyncrasy, innoculate, gutteral, accomodate, concensus

PATENTLY ABSURD

Scream muffler

U.S. Patent No. 4,834,212

For Moira and Frank Figone of Belmont, Calif., 1989 may have been one of those years, the kind that makes you want to scream, but not so loud that you bother folks around you.

In any event, that's when they patented their scream muffler — a hollow container whose interior is coated with sound-absorbing foam. Thus equipped, users could vocally vent without making undue noise. The device came with at least one option: an audio-light meter for those who needed visual proof that a person screaming alone into a muffler actually makes a sound.

BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER

The words correctly spelled: Violoncello, pavilion (no second l), moccasin, dilettante, idiosyncrasy, inoculate (no second n), guttural, accommodate, consensus. The gathered letters: O-L-C-T-I-N-U-M-S. Rearranged, they spell COLUMNIST.

JUST ASKING

Why is it when you go from here to there, you're still here and not there?

'TRUE FACTS'

A giant gas planet dubbed TrES-4 — located 1,400 light-years away in the Hercules constellation — has the density of balsa wood.

ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE

In order to better prepare astronauts for working conditions beyond the home planet, NASA commissioned Steven Pearce, a chemist and managing director of Omega, a fragrance manufacturing company, to recreate the odor of outer space.

The result: An aroma that smells like fried steak, hot metal and welding a motorbike.

BLOGOSPHERE

Coyote Crossing

faultline.org

The eloquent observations (and opinions) of naturalist Chris Clarke on desert ecology, mostly of the Mojave, but elsewhere, too.