Upgrading the LHC

March 12, 2013

On 11th February the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, was shut down for a complete overhaul. The huge machine will be out of action for almost two years. The restart is scheduled for December 2014. Engineers are working around the clock to meet this deadline. When the […]

Read the full article →

A Few Fractals

January 30, 2013

Following my previous post I have had a number of requests for images of fractals, so here goes. Fractals are characterised by their property of self-similarity, they are both similar to themselves in different regions and similar to themselves on different length scales, so that an enlargement of a fractal looks the same as the […]

Read the full article →

Symbolic Sculpture

January 17, 2013

Some years ago I worked with the sculptor John Robinson to create a series of virtual realizations of his abstract geometrical sculptures. The result was a collection of stunning ray-traced animations called Symbolic Sculpture. I have included a few of these animations here. The first shows a polyhedron called Pulse.     The polyhedron is […]

Read the full article →

Super Symmetry!

January 1, 2013

All particles can be divided into two distinct types known as bosons and fermions, as described in some of my earlier articles. For more information see: Bosons, Lasers and Superfluids and Fermions, Atoms and Neutron Stars. However, the ultimate aim of physicists is to reveal the unifying principles that bind the universe together – the simple […]

Read the full article →

Most of the Universe is Missing!

December 16, 2012

It is a rather embarrassing fact that most of the universe seems to be missing! There are two ways to determine the amount of material in the universe. One way is to measure its gravitational pull, the other way is to measure the amount of light that is being emitted by luminous objects. All objects […]

Read the full article →

Bosons, Lasers and Superfluids

November 30, 2012

Following the response to my article What on Earth is a Boson? I promised to say a bit more about bosons, so here we are. All particles fall into two distinct categories. They are either fermions or bosons. These two classes of particles behave in very different ways. Bosons love to cluster in the same state as […]

Read the full article →

Higgs Boson – update from CERN

November 16, 2012

Earlier this year on 4th July researchers working at the Large Hadron Collider made their epoch-making announcement that they had discovered a particle that looks very much like the long-awaited Higgs boson. It was clear that something new had turned up in the detectors of the LHC, but no-one could be absolutely certain that it […]

Read the full article →

Fermions, Atoms and Neutron Stars

November 11, 2012

My article What on Earth is a Boson? has proved to be so popular that I have agreed to write a bit more about fermions and bosons. This article is about fermions, there will be a companion article about bosons very soon. The Mighty Atom In 1913 Niels Bohr made one of the greatest breakthroughs […]

Read the full article →

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

November 1, 2012

When Peter Higgs thought up the ideas behind the particle that we now know as the Higgs boson his aim was to find a way to bring together two of the fundamental forces of nature, known as the electromagnetic and weak forces. Following the success of his ideas,  we now know that these two forces […]

Read the full article →

Steam Powered Computing

October 31, 2012

Charles Babbage was born on 26 December 1791. He would become one of the leading mathematicians and inventors of his day. From 1828 to 1839 he was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University – a position held by Isaac Newton in the 17th century and more recently Stephen Hawking. Industrial Mathematics Babbage is famous […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →