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| bird shit comet © the cinemascapist |
I probably couldn't tell you how the inner components of a toaster work. I definitely am clueless and in awe of tech like microchips and cell phones as well. These are just a few of the many, many reasons that I will never become a physicists or cosmologist. This is also why I am still reading (actually reading again) an article in the NY Times regarding the discovery of the Higgs Boson (God Particle) that was published this past March. Even though these things intrigue to no end, my mind struggles to grasp what exactly they are talking about.
One simple stat I thought I'd share from this article, as I am still trying to decipher the gist of the Higgs Boson discovery and will post at a later date if I can, is the process of finding the God particle. The Hadron Collider is giant circle that extends for 17 miles underneath the Swiss and French countrysides and at full power, protons race around the entire loop 11,245 times per second!
What fascinates me most about this stat is not the fact that CERN scientists can manipulate protons and get them up to that incredible speed, it's the fact that they can measure the exact speed...
11,245 times per second
Not approximately 11,000 times per second or "a whole buncha times" as I would probably guess. But exactly 11,245 times. They are measuring the speed of something going around a 17 mile loop 11,245 per second. Per Second. Every one second they are measuring 11,245 laps by a proton.
If I can't wrap my head around that, how the hell am I supposed to understand the Higgs Boson?
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