The fact that we’ve never seen any evidence of its presence is a big deal. The Standard Model is a shining jewel of modern physics, a mathematical model describing the most basic facets of the world using a symmetry group. The predictions of this model have been confirmed so many times and in so many different ways that it’s almost become more exciting to think of what it would mean if the theory were broken by some strange event than to rejoice at yet another correct prediction.

So this is why the missing Higgs boson fascinates so many. But why is it missing at all? The answer comes from the Standard model itself and its mathematical foundations. Like the sides of a many-faceted jewel, a symmetry group has many parts, all reflecting some basic property of an underlying structure. Every single observation so far indicates a jewel of a certain shape, and we’ve seen every face except for one. There seems to be no other possible structure that would fit the observations and create a complete crystal to speak, so we’re left inevitably with the conclusion that one face remains in the dark.

Broken Silence

But now something very interesting has happened. Evidence of the Higgs boson may have been found! Not at the new and fancy Large Hadron Collider, but the good old Tevatron, home of Fermilab. Apparently a rather prominent physicist passed some rumours going around the physics world to a blogger.

On a completely different issue, I’ve heard that there’s a rumor going around Aspen that the Tevatron will be announcing discovery of gluon + b → b + Higgs, which would then require large tan(beta), which would fit the MSSM. I guess we’ll find out in a couple of weeks.

This is big news – the observations indicate a “light” Higgs boson, which is why the older Tevatron was able to find it when everyone thought the higher power Large Hadron Collider would be required. What does a light Higgs boson mean? Something very inspiring – that particle physics isn’t quite done figuring out the world quite yet.

…a light Higgs boson pretty much proves that there has to be new physics beyond the Standard Model well below the Planck scale. The new particles should be bosons and the only natural reasons why the Higgs, or the new bosons, should stay light is supersymmetry.

The best fits based on this assumption imply that the squarks and slepton masses – and more generally, other superpartner masses – should be close to 500 GeV or so and they should be observable by the LHC, possibly by the end of 2011.

But what does Fermilab, the apparent source of this grand discovery have to say about it?

I find it interesting that there is not an explicit denial, but a statement that these rumblings in the physics community are “just rumours”. Rumours can’t be published in scientific journals – so I suppose we’ll have to wait and see just what this all means.

Live in STEREO

One of the largest solar flares in recent history was captured last week by STEREO, a pair of satellites staggered along Earth’s orbit to obtain a constant clear view. The flare was about half the width of the sun, or 800,000 km at its largest. Here’s another view from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Brother Sharp

A homeless man with piercing looks and an oddly consistent sense of fashion was dubbed “The Ultimate Gorgeous #1 Passerby Handsome Guy” by Chinese bloggers, or “Brother Sharp” when photos taken of him by a passerby appeared online. This led to a “人肉搜索 (Rénròu Sōusuǒ)”, or “human flesh search” as hundreds of people combed the streets to find him and his story. Unfortunately, it seems that Brother Sharp has some big issues and won’t be designing couture anytime soon. A local blogger spoke:

“Long ago in 2008 I encountered him. Most people who see him will avoid him, treating him as a beggar and the link, but actually this is not accurate. 乞丐 [qǐgài "beggar"] in our country’s ancient words first appeared as a monosyllabic word. The meaning of 乞 [qǐ] in the golden texts was “to beg”. But he does not beg, nor does he know how to beg, because he has psychological problems (in Ningbo they call it “great fog sickness”). They do not have an identity, they do not have family, they’ve even forgotten who they are. They are a group of people abandoned by society, and their final outcome is to die without anyone inquiring about them. They wander in the space between humans and animals. Help them a bit and they become humans, ignore them and they are animals.

He once said this to me: “Find a girl to love me.”

Bloops and Bleeps

The VENTS group has a collection of six unknown noises captured by undersea microphone arrays, including the infamous “Bloop” signal.

The “Bloop” signal was detected repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array, which uses U.S. Navy equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines. The signal was traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W, a remote point in the south Pacific Ocean west of the southern tip of South America.

The noise rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km. The system ruled out any known man-made origin such as a submarine or bomb, or familiar geological sounds such as volcanoes or earthquakes. While the audio profile of the bloop does resemble that of a living creature, the system identified it as unknown because it was far too loud for that to have been the case: it was several times louder than the loudest known biological sound. If it was biological, it would have to be produced by an animal far larger than any currently known to science.

One of my most popular posts continues to be Wain’s Kaleidoscope Cats, illustrating the strange transition of Louis Wain. A popular artist in England in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he drew thousands of pictures of cats engaged in everyday activities which were widely published. He was eventually committed to a mental hospital after displaying schizophrenic symptoms. From Wikipedia:

“He had always been considered quite charming but odd, and often had difficulty in distinguishing between fact and fantasy. His behavior and personality changed, and he began to suffer from delusions with the onset of schizophrenia. Whereas he had been a mild-mannered and trusting man, he became hostile and suspicious, particularly towards his sisters. He claimed that the flickering of the cinema screen had robbed the electricity from their brains.

When his sisters could no longer cope with his erratic and occasionally violent behavior, he was finally committed in 1924 to a pauper ward of Springfield Mental Hospital in Tooting. A year later, he was discovered there and his circumstances were widely publicized, leading to appeals from such figures as H. G. Wells and the personal intervention of the Prime Minister. Wain was eventually transferred to Napsbury Hospital north of London. This hospital was relatively pleasant, with a garden and colony of cats, and he spent his final 15 years there in peace. While he became increasingly deluded, his erratic mood swings subsided, and he continued drawing for pleasure.

Some speculate that the onset of Wain’s schizophrenia was precipitated by toxoplasmosis, a parasitic infection that can be contracted from cats.”

Large rotated block lettering: “Oh!!! I have no feelings for others, it is all inside.”
Smaller block lettering: “I am a bit gone on myself and have to make it up with my feelings.”
Corner mirrored cursive script: “Who I met someone I have just met. I am his card now, but I want to part with it.”

This video shows 5000 fish swimming while the weightings of the three behavioural rules vary using sinusoidal functions. I love the “borders” created as large fish schools collide, and fish attempt to escape along the plane of intersection.

Triumph of the Golden Rule was also linked to as recommended reading for MIT course 6.033 Computer Systems Engineering – one of the best compliments I’ve received. Thanks Evan!

While the process of creation may not be quite as elegant as the cellular automata of the Conidae snail, it certainly is not lacking in effort. If you have any information on where this photo is from please leave a comment!

Thousands of people reported seeing it, and amateur pictures and video of the event quickly spread across the internet. What could this be? A prank using some powerful projector? Some military experiment? An intergalactic portal?

One plausible explanation was that it was a rocket, damaged during or early after launch. But where did the rocket come from? One report indicated that it was a RSM-56 Bulava submarine launched ballistic missle, which is currently undergoing testing and development. The notoriously unpredictable missle design experienced an issue when the third stage fired, and it began to spray fuel and spiral out of control.

So it this reasonable? Well, a video has appeared on YouTube with a particle simulation of the fuel dispersal due to a spinning third stage – judge for yourself!

Personally I think the explanation of dual jets off a spinning rocket stage fits the facts and is the simplest explanation. Additionally, a NAVTEX rocket launch warning was issued for an area in the White Sea.

ZCZC FA79
031230 UTC DEC 09
COASTAL WARNING ARKHANGELSK 94
SOUTHERN PART WHITE SEA
1.ROCKET LAUNCHING 2300 07 DEC TO 0600 08 DEC
09 DC 0200 TO 0900 10 DEC 0100 TO 0900
NAVIGATION PROHIBITED IN AREA
65-12.6N 036-37.0E 65-37.2N 036-26.0E
66-12.3N 037-19.0E 66-04.0N 037-47.0E
66-03.0N 038-38.0E 66-06.5N 038-55.0E
65-11.0N 037-28.0E 65-12.1N 036-49.5E
THEN COASTAL LINE 65-12.2N 036-47.6E
2. CANCEL THIS MESSAGE 101000 DEC=
NNNN

Tromsø is marked by a green house and the White Sea is marked as the blue anchor on the following map.

This location for the submarine makes sense for a northbound launch (launching it south into continental Europe would be a bit politically insensitive), and would correlate with a breakup later in flight visible from northern Norway. If, however, this is a prelude to the gates of hell opening up, feel free at that time to email me and gloat.

Since each quaternion can be described using four numbers, I unfolded these four dimensional quaternion Julia sets into three dimensional space, and animated the final coefficient.

But once I did that I noticed some radial symmetry along the y-z plane – it looks like something that’s been made on a lathe. This means that we can “index” all these shapes in a more sensible manner by collapsing things along this axis of symmetry. While previously we could index all of our shapes with four coefficients a, b, c, and d.

We can now index them with four coefficients a, r, theta, and d after this transformation. But there’s a nice side effect now that our coordinate system reflects our symmetry – if we vary theta, the appearance of the Julia set doesn’t change, the object just appears to rotate about the a axis.

So really we can index all possible shapes using only three coefficients – a, r, and d. This is awesome – it means we can use this symmetry to collapse a dimension and completely illustrate a discrete approximation of this four dimensional set in three dimensional space. The following images (click for 1080p full resolution images) illustrate the full set of these possible shapes – a is the horizontal axis, r is the vertical axis, and values iterate by 0.25. The grey sphere in the first image is the origin, and the images start at a d value of 0 and iterate upward by 0.25. We find that there exists additional symmetry with our d parameter – namely that d = -d, so we only need to illustrate the absolute value to see all shapes.

d = 0.00

d = 0.25

d = 0.50

d = 0.75

d = 1.00

When d = 1.25 there are only a few bits of unconnected dust loops visible. This analysis only covers a single “slice” – namely the plane normal to (0,0,0,1). I’d be very interested to see if there are any other symmetries…

There is a four dimensional Julia set for every four dimensional quaternion. We can label each quaternion using four numbers.

I decided to “unfold” the first two values of the quaternion onto a plane and animate the last two values. The camera is centered at (0,0) and Julia sets are placed at intervals of 0.1 off to infinity for both axes.

You can start to see the larger structure present more clearly. Perhaps a three dimensional unfolding next?

Japan’s consumer goods lived up to their surreal billing during a recent stay at Narita Airport in Japan on my way to IAC 2009. A collaboration between Japanese designer Takada and Bandai’s Banpresto division, the Facebank combines limited practicality with pure awesomeness.

The eyes are optical sensors which start the chewing motion as soon as your hand goes near (and as soon as you turn out the lights in the room as I also found out). Standing about 10cm tall, it takes 4 AAA batteries and retails for about ¥2000.