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physicists admit that it will take more work and analysis before they will have the cold numbers that clinch the case that the new particle announced on July 4 last year is in fact the exact boson first predicted by Peter Higgs and others in 1964 to be the arbiter of mass and cosmic diversity

What happened in the first instant of the Big Bang? What happens at the middle of a black hole where matter and time blink in or out of existence? What is the dark matter whose gravitational influence, astronomers say, shapes the structures of galaxies, or the dark energy that is forcing the universe apart? Why is the universe full of matter but not antimatter? And what, finally, is the fate of the universe? These are all questions that the Standard Model, the vanilla-sounding set of equations that ruled physics for the last half century, does not answer

Some of them could be answered by the unproven theory called supersymmetry, which among other things is needed to explain why whatever mass the Higgs has is low enough to be discovered in the first place and not almost infinite. It predicts a whole new population of elementary particles — called superpartners to the particles physicists already know about — one of which could be the dark matter that pervades the universe. If such particles exist, they would affect the rate at which Higgs bosons decay into other particles, but the CERN teams have yet to record what they consider a convincing deviation from the Standard Model predictions for those decays. Supersymmetry is still at best a beautiful idea.

At 8 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday morning, scientists from CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, are scheduled to give a progress report on the search for the Higgs boson — infamously known as the “God particle” — whose discovery would vindicate the modern theory of how elementary particles get mass

no one thinks the Higgs is the final word about what underlies the Standard Model of particle physics, the theory that describes the most basic elements of matter and the forces through which they interact. Even if the Higgs boson is discovered, the question will still remain of why masses are what they are.

According to quantum field theory — the theory that combines quantum mechanics and special relativity — masses would be expected to be ten thousand trillion times bigger. Without some deeper ingredient, a fudge of that size would be required to make it all hang together. No particle physicist believes that.

The AMS sorts through these particles, measuring their momentum and charge.The device can discern whether a particle is a positron, which is a form of antimatter. It is the antiparticle of the electron, identical but with the opposite charge. Our universe has largely been swept clean of antimatter, because when matter and antimatter collide, they are mutually annihilated

new bits of antimatter can be created within our galaxy in certain kinds of events. One way is if two particles of dark matter collide.Dark matter emits and absorbs no light, and interacts with ordinary matter in a ghostly fashion, primarily through gravity. Dark matter affects the way galaxies move; they rotate in a manner that suggests that they are carrying some unseen load of matter.In the past two decades, other experiments and detectors have bolstered the notion that dark matter is far more abundant than ordinary matter. What it is, exactly, remains unclear. The AMS, however, has picked up signals from more than 400,000 positrons, and they came into the detector from all directions, with no variation over time. That is consistent with the idea that they are coming from collisions of particles of dark matter that saturate the galaxy.The other possible origin is that positrons are emitted by rapidly rotating, ultra-dense stars called pulsars, which are scattered throughout the galaxy. Ting said Wednesday that his results cannot rule out that possibility.

Coronavirus mask guidance is endangering US health workers, experts say

With crucial protective gear in short supply, federal authorities are saying health workers can wear lower-grade surgical masks while treating Covid-19 patients – but growing evidence suggests the practice is putting workers in jeopardy.

But scholars, not-for-profit leaders and former regulators in the specialized field of occupational safety say relying on surgical masks – which are considerably less protective than N95 respirators – is almost certainly fueling illness among frontline health workers, who probably make up about 11% of all known Covid-19 cases.

It’s not common to contract Covid-19 from a contaminated surface, scientists say. And fleeting encounters with people outdoors are unlikely to spread the coronavirus.

Instead, the major culprit is close-up, person-to-person interactions for extended periods. Crowded events, poorly ventilated areas and places where people are talking loudly—or singing, in one famous case—maximize the risk.

“We should not be thinking of a lockdown, but of ways to increase physical distance,” said Tom Frieden, chief executive of Resolve to Save Lives, a nonprofit public-health initiative. “This can include allowing outside activities, allowing walking or cycling to an office with people all physically distant, curbside pickup from stores, and other innovative methods that can facilitate resumption of economic activity without a rekindling of the outbreak.”

Airborne transmission — caused by small particles that can linger in the air for extended periods of time, unlike droplets from coughs, which settle quickly — is key to understanding why this disease spreads so rapidly in certain circumstances. It’s also key to figuring out how best to reopen our country.

The explosive transmission on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, as well as other coronavirus outbreaks, constituted telltale signs that airborne transmission was happening.

Since then, evidence has continuously pointed to airborne transmission of covid-19

Conventional computing is based on a bit that can be either a 1 or a 0, representing a single value in a computation. But quantum computing is based on qubits, which simultaneously represent both zero and one values. If they are placed in an “entangled” state — physically separated but acting as though they are connected — with many other qubits, they can represent a vast number of values simultaneously.

In the approach that Microsoft is pursuing, which is described as “topological quantum computing,” precisely controlling the motions of pairs of subatomic particles as they wind around one another would manipulate entangled quantum bits.

By weaving the particles around one another, topological quantum computers would generate imaginary threads whose knots and twists would create a powerful computing system. Most important, the mathematics of their motions would correct errors that have so far proved to be the most daunting challenge facing quantum computer designers.

Long, long ago, when the universe was only about 100,000 years old — a buzzing, expanding mass of particles and radiation — a strange new energy field switched on. That energy suffused space with a kind of cosmic antigravity, delivering a not-so-gentle boost to the expansion of the universe.Then, after another 100,000 years or so, the new field simply winked off, leaving no trace other than a speeded-up universe.

astronomers from Johns Hopkins University. In a bold and speculative leap into the past, the team has posited the existence of this field to explain an astronomical puzzle: the universe seems to be expanding faster than it should be.

The cosmos is expanding only about 9 percent more quickly than theory prescribes. But this slight-sounding discrepancy has intrigued astronomers, who think it might be revealing something new about the universe.

Tests on major brands of bottled water have found that nearly all of them contained tiny particles of plastic.

Research led by journalism organisation Orb Media discovered an average of 10 plastic particles per litre, each larger than the width of a human hair.

"It's not about pointing fingers at particular brands; it's really showing that this is everywhere, that plastic has become such a pervasive material in our society, and it’s pervading water - all of these products that we consume at a very basic level."

This access to higher-level PPE was based on the assumption thatICU wards are more dangerous because treatments such as continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), used to support patients’ breathing, generated large amounts of aerosols – which linger in the air and can be breathed into the lungs.

Staff working in other hospital areas, GP surgeries and care homes are issued with looser-fitting surgical masks, which afford little protection against these tiny particles, but block larger virus-carrying droplets.

The new research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, turns these assumptions on their head.

Capgras syndrome. First defined a century ago, Capgras typically describes a person’s belief that someone close to him or her — a spouse or a child — has been replaced with a duplicate impostor

n this case, the patient believed that the whole world — everything she could observe of it — was a duplicate, a fake.I know a little bit how that feels.So do you, probably.

It’s easy to see the appeal of the multiverse, even as metaphor: the notion that we’re surrounded by a multitude of parallel selves, one of which might be living in a better timeline than the one we’re stuck in. It’s probably no coincidence that the idea has become so popular during an era of pandemic, climate change and political turmoil, when so many of us have felt helpless and trapped.

Taken at face value, the result implies that eventually (in 10^100 years or so) an unlucky quantum fluctuation will produce a bubble of a different vacuum, which will then expand at the speed of light, destroying everything.”

The idea is that the Higgs field could someday twitch and drop to a lower energy state, like water freezing into ice, thereby obliterating the workings of reality as we know it. Naturally, we would have no warning. Just blink and it’s over.

. You might think that finding the Higgs boson, after 50 years and $10 billion or so, would bring clarity to physics and to the cosmos. But just the opposite is true: they may have found the Higgs boson, but they don’t understand it.

as horrible as this virus is, it is not the worst, most apocalyptic virus imaginable. Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, is not as contagious as measles, and although it is very dangerous, it is not as likely to kill an infected person as, say, Ebola.

But there is one critically important, calamitous feature of SARS-CoV-2: the novelty

this coronavirus is a bulldozer. It can flatten everyone in its path.

The coronavirus pandemic is shutting down industrial activity and temporarily slashing air pollution levels around the world, satellite imagery from the European Space Agency shows.

Readings from ESA’s Sentinel-5P satellite show that over the past six weeks, levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) over cities and industrial clusters in Asia and Europe were markedly lower than in the same period last year.

While not a greenhouse gas itself, the pollutant originates from the same activities and industrial sectors that are responsible for a large share of the world’s carbon emissions and that drive global heating.

The Trump administration on Monday declined to tighten controls on industrial soot emissions, disregarding an emerging scientific link between dirty air and Covid-19 death rates.

the Environmental Protection Agency completed a regulation that keeps in place the current rules on tiny, lung-damaging industrial particles, known as PM 2.5, instead of strengthening them, even though the agency’s own scientists have warned of the links between the pollutants and respiratory illness.

In April, researchers at Harvard released the first nationwide study linking long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and Covid-19 death rates

Along with amazing technological advances, the Industrial Revolution of the mid-19th century introduced new sources of air and water pollution.

Out of this movement came events like Earth Day, and legislative victories like the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972).

The resulting smog and soot had serious health impacts on the residents of growing urban centers.

The World Health Organization has now formally recognized that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is airborne and that it can be carried by tiny aerosols.

until earlier this month, the W.H.O. — like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or Public Health England — had warned mostly about the transmission of the new coronavirus through direct contact and droplets released at close range.

After several months of pressure from scientists, on July 9, the W.H.O. changed its position — going from denial to grudging partial acceptance: “Further studies are needed to determine whether it is possible to detect viable SARS-CoV-2 in air samples from settings where no procedures that generate aerosols are performed and what role aerosols might play in transmission.”

You don’t get sick on airplanes any more than anywhere else. Really, you don’t.

consider this fact: The ventilation system requirements for airplanes meet the levels recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for u

There are fairly simple things you can do, if you do need to travel, to reduce the odds of getting sick.

a volcanic eruption in the remote Aleutian Islands, 6,000 miles away from the Italian peninsula, contributed to the demise of the Roman Republic. That eruption — and others before it and since — played a role in changing the course of history.

At the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nev., it’s not unusual to find researchers in puffy parkas and wool hats handling chunks of ice in a minus 4 Fahrenheit “cold room.” Ice cores, typically drilled vertically from glaciers, hide bits of volcanic material that rained down from long-ago eruptions within their layers.

Joseph McConnell, a climate scientist at the institute, and his collaborators are in the business of looking for that debris. Using an instrument they designed and built, they melt the ice and pipe the water into an array of sensors. With hundreds of feet of tubing, the setup looks downright chaotic, but it’s exquisitely sensitive. The sensors pinpoint many substances, including about 30 different elements, and they do so by catching just tiny whiffs.“They have sensitivities of parts per quadrillion,” Dr. McConnell said.

The WHO spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars honing a globe-spanning system of defenses against a pandemic it knew would come. But the virus moved faster than the United Nations agency, exposing flaws in its design and operation that bogged down its response when the world needed to take action.

The WHO relied on an honor system to stop a viral cataclysm. Its member states had agreed to improve their ability to contain infectious disease epidemics and to report any outbreaks that might spread beyond their borders. International law requires them to do both.

Time and again, countries big and small have failed to do so. The WHO, which isn’t a regulatory agency, lacks the authority to force information from the very governments that finance its programs and elect its leaders