If it hasn’t become painfully apparent at this point, I absolutely love physics. I love all things science, most of all the stuff that I couldn’t imagine myself. Every little thing that happens, every thing we do, involves so much and yet we find it to be so simple to type something like this or call someone we love on our cellphone. It really just goes to show that practically anything is possible. I like to reference Murphy’s Law often in that anything that can happen, will happen and so all of the amazing possibilities that I’ve discussed and many more are a reality, if not now, then later. So, I felt for this last post, it would be appropriate that I outline what I’ve talked about thus far, give a bit of a summary, and the possibilities of what all this random physics could be.

1. Welcome to the world of particle physics!
   • There are 25 known particles
   • The most important of which are the Gauge Bosons, which are the force carriers
   • Completely understanding and harnessing these fundamental particles would mean that we could do anything from controlling gravity to manipulating some of even the most basic laws of physics.
2. Antimatter
   • Antimatter is like matter’s evil doppelganger
   • Bananas produced antimatter
   • The antimatter within bananas will not kill you
   • Though I’m sure there would be plenty of other uses, if we had a convenient abundance of antimatter it would be a great way to get rid of radioactive waste or just waste in general
3. Accelerators
   • Particles have an approximate size – their Compton wavelength
   • In order to understand particle physics, we smash atoms together at speeds near that of light
   • There are very few accelerators in the world
   • Finding the Up quark would mean that we have a complete list of all the particles and that they all really exist leaving room for more experimentation.
4. Gravitational Waves!? and Relativity!
   • Einstein’s special theory of relativity deals with objects in the same inertial frame reference
   • Einstein’s general theory of relativity deals with objects with constant acceleration which explains how time passes differently in different situations of acceleration
   • Gravity as we feel it, is the warping of the space-time fabric around extremely massive objects like the sun or the planets
   • Stars work by countering gravity due to their large mass with the force of the nuclear fusion reactions occurring inside
   • Gravitational waves were detected when two super-massive black holes collided and combined which sent ripples through the space-time fabric. These ripples were picked up using a system of mirrors and lasers. The path of the laser was changed ever so slightly, but was still detected
   • This may be the end of discovery in physics, but hopefully not
   • Further understanding gravitational waves and harnessing their energy or how they work could mean a lot for the advancement of science today
5. Practical Practices of Particle Physics
   • Particle physics research has contributed to everything from machines meant for medical diagnosis, to treating medical ailments with lasers, and monitoring waste from nuclear reactor cores
   • So this post doesn’t really contribute anything to the wonder as it’s more of the reality, but I definitely believe that’s a large part of the wonder anyway because it shows what is already possible.
6. The Teeny-Tiny Stuff of Science Fiction: Teleportation Edition
   • Quantum entanglement might just be the key to teleportation
   • It’s that or destroying and reconstructing the individual’s body every time
   • If we could figure out how to safely do this with multiple particles at once, then voila! We would have our way to teleportation.
7. The Teeny-Tiny Stuff of Science Fiction: Time Travel Edition
   • There’s a number of space-related options including black holes, worm holes, infinite cylinders, and cosmic strings which all rely on the same idea that a closed time-like loop would allow for time to pass more quickly inside while time went by slowly outside.
   • A time machine could work on the basis of exotic matter
   • Pretty much all of the ways we know of are hypothetical, and at the same time also equally as impossible and deadly if they were realized.
   • However! If we were to figure out a way to protect the individual from harm as this goes on, then we could time travel!
8. Theories of Everything: String Theory
   • One of the biggest problems in physics currently is that we do not have a way to explain gravity using quantum mechanics
   • String theory is a solution for that
   • String theory basically states that all of the fundamental particles are actually extremely tiny vibrating strings. Different oscillations mean different particles.
   • Having a theory that unifies all that we know regarding physics means that we can finally expand and exploit physics beyond our current understanding. Understanding all of it, means being able to use it however we please or at least coming up with the means to.

The possibilities are endless and I simply cannot wait to see how things change over the rest of my life. I hope that with my posts I’ve helped to inform and entertain, but also maybe instill a slight love for physics that was not there previously. Thank you for reading and I will always be open to new questions or comments so feel free to ask me anything, anytime!

I’ve talked earlier about both quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity which both come together to provide an almost all-encompassing explanation for everything in the physical universe, but there are in fact other theories out there that build off of these. These other theories are “theories of everything” because they mean to unify and provide a complete consistent description of our universe. One of the most pressing issues in physics today is formulating a quantum theory of gravity. The issue is that gravity, unlike the other fundamental forces, is solely explained by classical physics through Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The other fundamental forces, the strong, weak, and electromagnetic force, can all be explained within the bounds of quantum mechanics. For looking at all of the forces at once, it simply does not make sense to have to approach gravity differently than the others. This is where string theory among other somewhat new theories come into play.

String theory is pretty much exactly what you might expect it to be. Often times in physics, things don’t quite turn out like how you would expect them, but string theory I find to be rather straight forward. The whole concept is that all of the fundamental particles that I had talked about in my first post are actually just incredibly tiny strings.

So maybe that doesn’t seem to make everything fall into place, but it does give us options. Thinking again about the fundamental particles, we can assume that these are just little points in space. Sure they may take up some volume, but they are just points with no more structure to them than that. However, if we were to zoom into these points enough, we might find that they really are pieces of string. If you’ve ever partaken in the game of Cat’s cradle, you know that playing with string can get complicated. In the same sense, these strings can move and oscillate and just act in so many more ways than a simple dot can. Now, imagine that each fundamental particle correlates to the same kind of string, but just one that does a particular movement. The electron for instance might have a string that tends to zig zag and the up quark might have a sin wave. This creates a baseline for all of the fundamental particles, including the fundamental particle for gravity, the graviton. This string theory then takes the place of ordinary quantum field theory which involved point particles and allows all of the fundamental forces and the individual particles play nicely.

There are, of course, some issues with string theory. One of the larger issues with string theory is that because of the incredibly small size of the strings, they are currently near impossible to see with the technology we have. The proposed size of the string is called a Planck length which is about 10^(-35) m. The other issue with string theory is that sure the strings would serve to explain the fundamental particles, the bosons, but would it also explain regular matter, the fermions? The answer to this is supersymmetry which is just a complicated way of saying that for every boson, there’s a fermion. Proof of supersymmetry would be extremely convincing evidence to support string theory. As particle accelerators improve, they may soon be stumbling upon high-energy supersymmetry which would then finally give us a unified theory.

One of the most amazing notions that people have explored in terms of science and physics, is the idea of time travel. There is no dispute that going back in time, or forward to the future just for the experience alone would be amazing. With all the technological innovation and advancement that is currently occurring it would seem appropriate that we would already have some sort of idea how to do this, or even be on the verge of making it happen, but sadly that is not the case. The closest we’ve come is in science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. (List of time-travel movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Time_travel_films )

Back to The Future is by far one of my favorite movie series not only for the whole adventure aspect, but that the movie paints the picture of the world today as highly technologically advanced with flying cars and hover boards. (since I first saw the movie I’ve wanted a real hoverboard.) The creators of the movie believed back then that we could do all of this, and yet we haven’t. I think this is wholly important because it draws the line between what is science fiction and what’s not. Unfortunately, time-travel is one of those ideas that are looking more and more like fiction every day. There is a variety of theories surrounding time travel, but a large portion of them point toward time travel being practically impossible, for us that is. Yes, I know, it’s the same old story- this awesomely cool thing can only work with super small particles and humans can’t do it because we would die. Here are the methods by which time travel for a particle may be possible, and how we, unfortunately, would die from it:

1. Black holes
   1. Black holes, as I mentioned before, are points in space that are infinitesimally dense and thus drastically bend the space-time fabric.
   2. The method of traveling would involve flying around the rim of the black hole at the speed of light. As time would pass by more quickly for the traveler, upon returning to Earth the traveler would have aged considerably less than those still on Earth.
   3. Flying that fast and the forces that we would feel would no doubt kill us
2. Wormholes
   1. Worm holes are essentially points in the space-time fabric that have been folded on to themselves and will thus provide a gateway between different spots in the fabric.
   2. The wormholes would end up being very small and short-lived and so whatever would go through them would have to be extremely small as well
3. Infinite Cylinder
   1. This idea is based upon a similar concept as the black hole. If you have an infinitely long extremely dense rod, then you can swing around the rod to allow time to pass by more slowly for you.
   2. The problem is again that you would not be able to handle the forces being applied to you.
   3. Plus, you’d need to make this rod.
4. Cosmic Strings
   1. These are either loops or infinitely long tubes of energy leftover from the creation of the cosmos. If two of these were able to get next to each other and be parallel, it is suggested that they would pull the space between them so much so that it would form a small time-like loop like the other scenarios in which time would pass more quickly.
   2. The forces, again, they are too strong.
5. Time Machines
   1. It’s a relatively common idea that traveling through time would need to be facilitated by some sort of machine or device, though not anything like a Phone Booth or a DeLorean.
   2. Most employ the concept of using exotic matter which essentially works in the opposite manner than what matter is generally expected to, but there is so very less of this in the world that it would be rather impossible to gather enough to make a time machine with it.
   3. One concept that may work involves a hollow ball with a donut-shaped interior where strong gravitational waves are inflicted upon the center. The individual would ride along the interior on some sort of vehicle. This mimics the closed time-like loop of the above space options.
   4. The caveat with this last option is that the gravitational fields required would need to be immense and extremely accurate.

If all else fails, these are paradoxes that might destroy us if we did so much as try:

1. Grandfather paradox
   1. If you go back and accidentally do something to hinder your existence, then you would cease to exist or further permanently alter the timeline.
2. Butterfly effect
   1. Even the smallest of changes in the past could have catastrophic changes for the future.
3. Self-consistency
   1. The particles in the timeline prefer to be as they were in the past and so just being there poses an alteration and would thus be impossible.

All in all, it seems like it will a long while before we actually see any real time travel come about, but for now I guess we can make do with just trying to preserve ourselves so we last to see the future. Here is a great article from my favorite website, WaitButWhy.com: http://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html on Cryonics, a prospective way of more conventional time traveling.

Whenever one talks about physics, the coolest thing to discuss is all the fringe science. This is the stuff that science fiction novels are made of whether it be alien life, space travel, multiple dimensions, or Frankenstein’s monster. There are two particular recurring tropes in science fiction that I would like to discuss that actually have a decent amount to do with particle physics: teleportation & time travel. So, as far as I know and as far as I’ve been told, we haven’t officially sent anyone or teleported anyone to any time or anywhere. That being said, I’d also like to discuss whether or not these are possible. I will be splitting these topics into two posts because I feel like it’s a bit too much to wrap one’s head around both of these concepts at the same time. Since I sort of already began talking about one of these in my last post, I’ll just continue with that one in this post.

Teleportation

Here’s the kicker with teleportation: We haven’t been able to teleport a person but we’re pretty close albeit with a large caveat. It all has to do with a concept called quantum entanglement. I talked about this concept in my last post when I was explaining how quantum computing would work based upon quantum entangled particles. The gist is that two or more particles can share the same everything barring position such that their states cannot be defined irrespective of each other. They are the monkey-see, monkey-do of the quantum world. Whatever happens to one must happen to the other(s) and vice versa. Though this has grand implications for the transfer of data in a computer, it also has some great implications for teleportation. Quantum teleportation is the process by which quantum information, the exact state of a particle, can be transmitted instantly from one location to another. The current most-likely method for human teleportation relies on this method. However the catch is that the original particle is immediately destroyed through the scanning process. Picture this: There are two phone-booth kind of looking machines each in a different location. You step into one of these booths, select your destination and then almost instantly you’re zapped to there. The key word being “zapped”. Your entire being is reconstructed in another location. The issue is that doing this with anything larger than a photon is incredibly complicated as one of the requirements for the quantum teleportation is obeying the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.This just states that one cannot know both the momentum and position of a particle at any one time.

Piecing together the almost relatively infinite number of particles that make us up is ridiculously hard because of this. CalTech scientists were able to teleport a photon by using three photons where two photons were entangled, one photon of the two entangled was given information about the one not entangled photon which transferred it to that photon. I can’t even begin to explain the exact mechanics behind it, but that’s what happened pretty simply. To sum it up, there is hope, but it will be along time before we see anything practical. Also, while you’re already thinking about all of this wildly conceptual stuff, it may be a good time to consider what our existences are. One theory for how we might arrive at teleportation was that rather than using quantum methods, we would reassemble our atoms in one place after scanning and destroying our originals. Since we would effectively be killing ourselves and then remaking ourselves and continuing to live, it begs the question about whether our life actually ended at that moment. My personal favorite blog/website on the internet is called WaitButWhy.com and they cover this exactly: What Makes You You?  I would highly recommend reading this post in your spare time if you’re interested. The other material on the site is really wonderful too especially the Why Procrastinators Procrastinate and The Fermi Paradox articles. I look forward to talking about time travel next week! Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns in the comments below and I’ll be sure to address them!

I’ve spent a considerable amount of time talking about the details of physics and its particles, but I haven’t really gotten into the whole point of researching all of this. Personally, my interest is due to how much I love science and gaining knowledge about the world, but it’s totally understandable that everyone else who reads this post may not have the same interests or outlook as me. So, I thought it would be appropriate to take some time to discuss some of the benefits that have been reaped from particle physics research. In the rest of physics there are obvious implications, but just as with other work new applications are abundant.

The Well-Known-ish Ones:

• WWW – (World Wide Web) This one is a bit of a misnomer. The World Wide Web was not created due to a discovery in particle physics or anything like that. It was actually created as an effort to create an international platform for collaboration between physicists all around the world.
• MRIs – (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) These magic machines that seem to know more about our bodies than we do work through something called superconducting wire. Superconducting wire is used primarily in superconducting magnets. The term superconducting just means that the medium is able to carry a charge with zero electrical resistance. This is super useful in applications where there is a need to carry a high amount of charge. The superconducting magnets are electromagnets that produce much higher magnetic fields than traditional and natural magnets. An MRI uses these by aligning the atoms in your body by their spin with the poles of the magnet and varying the field in certain areas to capture the energy changes due to spin changes as an image.

The Not-So-Well-Knownish Ones:

• Diagnosing – MRIs were just mentioned as a way a concept of particle physics is applied as a medical diagnostic method, but there is menagerie of other methods that involve the manipulation of atoms, protons, electrons, and smaller particles to reveal important information about the body. Other devices include PET scans, X-Rays, and CT Scans.
• Treating – LASIK Eye surgery? Yup, particle physics. Practically anything that has to do with the application of high-intensity lasers. Beyond the eyes, we use the ejection of protons, electrons, and other particles to deal with other afflictions such as cancer.
• Computing – Okay, I have to admit that this is probably one of my most favorite applications of particle physics. I think computers are just AWESOME. Like seriously, how in the world did we get smart enough to figure out how to make what I’m typing this up on right this second? It’s astounding, but I digress. You’ve probably heard of supercomputers. Basically like anything else with the – prefix, they just do their job really well. They can process faster, more efficiently, and can just do more. NASA and other big names use these to handle calculations and simulations that our average laptop just can’t handle. (Which is still saying something because even basic flip cell phones can handle more than the computers that were used to get us to the moon.) Particle physics opens up the realm of possibilities for quantum computing. This all works on the principle of quantum entanglement. Pairs or groups of particles interact in such a way that one cannot identify the state (the rotation of spin for example) of one without describing the other or others. Applications of this include manipulating a quality of one which simultaneously affects the other(s). As computers are just complex applications of “off” and “on”, two states, and the same can be said for these particles, they are an ideal option for computing. This is especially so due to how the changes are instantaneous. Computing on the quantum level would be something akin to asking a question and knowing the answer the moment the question is even formed. Me, you, everybody, as it happens:
• Industry & Security – These are probably the least well-known applications of particle physics. In industry, superconducting cables are ideal for power transmission. Turbulence, one of the most challenging concepts to deal with in any field from oil extraction and pipelines to weather models, can be tackled using instruments such as detectors and amplifiers developed for use in particle physics. Their ability to detect minuscule changes in fluid is immensely helpful in the pursuit of understanding turbulence in various circumstances. Additionally, the techniques used to examine particles and work with them are equally as helpful in the fields of bio-medicine, drug development, and microbiology. They help to provide insight into how the structure of proteins lead to their function (another topic I’m quite fond of) and even with the development of drugs. On the security front, super-cops. Joking, I swear. We use methods meant for detecting the particles from radioactive substances as a means of monitoring the nation’s nuclear reactor cores.

As you can see, there is such a wide spectrum of ways that particle physics can be applied and help further various efforts. Despite being so small, they really do make a large difference.

Okay, so I decided to start this post early in light of the recent events or rather not so recent events. As you may have heard, we have just recently confirmed the existence of gravitational waves! YAY! or maybe not? In all honesty, this is actually a rather somber event for physics, but I will definitely get into that later.

First off, I think it would be appropriate to go into what exactly gravitational waves are and why it is that everyone is talking about it (or at least I’ve been raving for the past couple days). This may end up being a sort of long post, so bear with me!

Looking back to my first post, I talked about there being separate particles to represent the main forces in the universe. You may have noticed that I had discretely not mentioned what was going on with gravity. I was planning to devote an entire post to it and now I’ve got that opportunity!

General Relativity

Albert Einstein published the geometric theory of gravitation (GTR) a.k.a. general relativity in 1915. The crazy thing is that this was one hundred years ago and it has consistently been the accepted theory. So, here’s something important: Einstein first developed a special theory of relativity. It states that the laws of physics are the same for all observers in the same inertial frame of reference. An inertial frame of reference is a frame of reference where everything being looked at is moving at a constant or zero velocity. For instance, one frame could be a person looking at a bus moving at a constant speed. Another would be on the bus looking at the immobile person. However, if the bus or the person were to be slowing down, speeding up, or changing direction then they would not belong in the same inertial frame of reference. Einstein then developed the general theory of relativity which dealt with objects with constant acceleration. This allowed for an explanation for how time passed differently in different situations of acceleration. In fact, it is proven for instance that time passes by more quickly at 10 km above the Earth’s surface. Everything from how we look at planets in space or predict the travel of a rocket is dependent on these findings.

Gravity

The whole idea behind gravitational waves is the concept of a fabric of space-time that can bend and deformed. Picture it as this:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBRBSJzFmEs]


Essentially, the presence of an object with mass actually warps the space-time fabric around it. The more massive the object, the more the space-time fabric gets warped and the larger the pull on the surrounding objects. Following that logic, that would mean that everything and everyone including you reading this post is applying a gravitational force on the objects near you. It is obviously rather small at the scale of an individual’s mass. We can feel the gravity of the Earth because it is so many more times massive than we are:

I’m sure you’ve heard of black holes, yes? Well, they happen when an incredibly massive object collapses in on itself to a very small size. As seen in the video, an object such as this in the space time fabric creates  somewhat of a point in space that bends the space-time fabric practically into a funnel. Super-massive stars generally do this when they die. This is because the stars are constantly fighting a tug-of-war battle between gravity and the pressure created from the nuclear fusion reactions in the star. Usually they balance out but as a star runs out of fuel for the nuclear reaction, the mass remains generally the same while the pressure decreases meaning gravity wins out.

The way that the gravitational waves were discovered is that two super-massive black holes collided and combined. This collision caused a ripple in the space-time fabric that traveled and hit the Earth. Now, it would seem that something that huge would be extremely noticeable, but it happened and no one seemed to bat an eye, except they kind of did. Physicists had sensors set up for this very purpose! The system worked on the basis of mirrors and the path of light. Light will follow a relatively straight path unless bent by a change in the space-time fabric. A gravitational wave does this exactly. The sensors were set up to detect the slightest of variance in the path of the light. The variance was within a fraction of the width of an atom! However, it was definitely large enough to be conclusive evidence for the existence of gravitational waves. This was the final prediction based upon Einstein’s theory of general relativity that had yet to be experimentally proven!

The Somber Part

Now, here’s the somber part. One of the greatest, most fulfilling, and inspiring things about science is the discovery. Attaining some new information, a new understanding, a revelation of tiny facet of the world that was always there unbeknownst to us. So why isn’t finding gravitational waves the most amazing thing ever?

It’s not a discovery. It’s just an observation. [Insert internal screams of agony.]

We’ve had very few true discoveries in the past couple decades beyond finding out the universe’s expansion rate is increasing. Finding that one of the last few mysteries we still have has been closed suggests that perhaps we are coming to a point in human history where anything more to be learned is beyond our comprehension or grasp. In some ways it would have been better if we had not been able to validate the existence of gravitational waves. That would have created more questions and more room for exploration. Regardless, it is still a proud event in science and I believe that despite being sobering, it can and will provide further insight and allow us to make more discoveries. I don’t believe physicists are quite done yet with the world and I look forward to their next discovery!

We know a thing or two about particle physics now, don’t we? We have a basic understanding of the various particles and their significance, and we also know about the super important existence of anti-matter. What we have yet to understand is exactly how we do anything with particle physics. After all, these particles are incredibly small. Actually, they are so small that the boundary between the particles actually being particles and not waves is blurred. This is something commonly known as wave-particle duality.

This property makes things incredibly confusing in any normal mindset, so though particles exhibit both qualities, they are primarily labelled particles and thus referred to as such in typical conversation. So, rather than worry about trying to assign a particle with a specific size, physicists give them a limited volume in which they can reside in. This value, known as a Compton Wavelength, is a measure of the smallest volume of space a particular particle can squeeze into. The catch is that particles, unlike matter as we are accustomed to, can occupy the same space and so a Compton Wavelength of space anywhere does not necessitate there being any or just one particle in that allocation of space.

The big question arises: how do we even tell when we’ve found a particle at all? To put it simply, physicists turn to the age-old wisdom of smashing things together and trying to figure out how it all works from the pieces.

Yeah, I know. I felt that obvious sense of a lapse in judgement too. There’s got to be more to it than that, right?

Right. You have to smash things together at really insanely high speeds. I’m talking like 200 mph short of the speed of light ( which is 3.00 x 10^8 m/s or 6.706 x 10^8 mph).

These high-speed collisions are all about achieving high enough energy that the individual particles scatter when hit. Then, by observing the transfer of energy as quantities of momentum and the like which match up to theoretically calculated values for the particles, the existence of said particles can be determined. Not all of the elementary particles have been found and proven yet. For instance, the top quark is one which still evades physicists. However, we do have the technology to find it and thus it is only a matter of time.

The technology used to examine the interactions between particles and to identify the existence of certain particles is through the use of an accelerator and collider. As said before, the particles need to achieve extremely high speeds and so there is a need for a device to get them up to speed. The particle accelerator usually consists of a high energy magnet which literally pulls the particles to increase their speed. The collider part is basically a giant tube. It is often a ring, but can also be a straight tube. This is where the particles actually meet and scatter. What is accelerated at each other is not individual particles themselves, but clusters of protons, neutrons and electrons in the form of radioactive isotopes. The radioactive isotopes are used to due the fact they are already unstable. The isotopes undergo decay to offset either their too large or too small of a mass.

There aren’t many colliders or particle accelerators in the world so the few that do exist are the only centers in the world where experimentation research regarding particle physics is being conducted which is pretty awesome. It is easily a life-long dream for some to have the opportunity to work at one of these facilities such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. (my personal favorite)

Well, that’s it for particle accelerators! Please let me know if there is anything you’d like me to expand on or if you have any questions, comments, or requests!  Thanks for reading!

This is considered by many as the big Kahuna of the science fiction world. There have been multiple ideas of anti- this and that and the general consensus is that anti- anything means bad. Bad for me, bad for you, bad for everybody. This is because of a concept called matter-antimatter annihilation:

More aptly put:

What if I then told you that one of your favorite fruits is constantly emitting anti matter? That’s right, those bananas are beckoning your demise! And so are… you?! Yeah, you too. The antimatter produced from bananas is in the form of a positron emission. This occurs when an isotope has more neutrons than necessary. Bananas contain trace amounts of an isotope of Potassium, Potassium-40. We do too. Now, judging from the pictures above, one would assume that there is something missing. Why don’t we all blow up like example 2 above whenever we peel a banana? A relatively large amount of antimatter is needed to provide enough energy for something like an antimatter bomb shown in example 2. Antimatter is actually somewhat rare and any processes that produce it right now produce very minuscule amounts. It’s also super costly to produce.

So now on to the real info you’ve been waiting for, what is this stuff anyway? Anti- means not so is it just not matter? Well, no. Antimatter shares many of the properties of real matter, including that antimatter has equivalent mass. What’s different is more or less the identity which includes a difference of charge as well as spin. These properties of each other are complimentary and this causes the reaction as it is much like the sum of +1 and -1. Though the magnitudes of the two are the same, they are inherently different allowing them to cancel each other out.

I won’t get too much into it, but antimatter also has a significant role to play in the whole Big Bang theory. Generally speaking, as matter was spontaneously created during the big bang, as would have been antimatter. Following the general equation, there should have been equal parts of the antimatter and the matter. As each piece of antimatter would interact with a corresponding single piece of matter. There would not have been any matter left over after the reaction. This means that we would not exist nonetheless be thinking about antimatter.

In order to create antimatter, you need to be able to first have something that would release cosmic energy. Second, you badly need a lot of money because these min-prep units are small and very expensive. Third, you need some miraculous ways of containing the radioactive material so that the antimatter does not leave the container and more antimatter can accumulate. There are a couple of things can be used to store the antimatter:

• Penning Traps
  • These work akin to an accelerator with the spin due to electromagnetic fields causing the material to become a concentrated substance.
• Loffe traps
  • These focus on keeping the particle busy as well. By keeping the particle inside of an area with ever-increasing magnetic field in every direction, the antimatter is forced to come to a rest/ move around within the area.

Well, that’s all for antimatter folks! Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. If you have a request for an explanation. I will do my best to answer it!

Rather, since our world is governed by particle physics, welcome to our world! We’ve long been told that everything we see, everything we can touch is made up of little pieces. The smallest of these structural pieces would be atoms. There are a number of different kinds of atoms with different sizes and qualities, but there are even smaller pieces than that which make up those pieces. Particle physics is the study of these little pieces, their interactions, and the forces acting among them. Before getting into the really cool stuff and what theories of particle physics have in terms of real-life applications for the world, it is important that we have a pretty basic overview of these particles. These elementary subatomic particles can be broken into three groups:

1. Quarks – These are the six basic particles that come together to form most of all of the matter in the universe. Two of the larger known particles that are of common knowledge are the proton and neutron. Protons and neutrons along with electrons which we will talk about later are what are commonly discussed to make up everything. Protons and neutrons are made up of only two kinds of quark. A proton is made up of two up quarks and one down quark whereas a neutron is made up of two down quarks and one up quark. In order to make any particle, you need a total of three quarks. Protons and electrons are known to have a +1 and -1 charge respectively. Quarks also carry charges, but they have fractional charges of either +2/3 or -1/3. When looking at the proton and neutron this makes complete sense. The proton has two ups and one down. From below, we know that means there are two +2/3 charges and one -1/3 charge. Adding these charges gives a sum of +1, the charge of a proton. Likewise, with a neutron there are two downs and one up. This results in two -1/3 charges and one 2/3 charge. The sum gives a charge of zero which explains the neutron’s neutral charge. The following are quarks and their respective charges:
   1. Up: +2/3
   2. Down: -1/3
   3. Charm: +2/3
   4. Strange: -1/3
   5. Top: +2/3
   6. Bottom: -1/3
2. Leptons – The most familiar of these particles would of course be the electron, but the rest of these particles are extremely similar to the electron. They all have the same negative charge that the electron has, but they are all rarer and heavier except for the neutrino particles. Those are actually so light that their mass is practically indescribable and it is debated whether they actually have mass at all.
   1. Electron neutrino
   2. Muon neutrino
   3. Tau neutrino
   4. Electron
   5. Muon – Practically 200 times heavier than an electron
   6. Tau
3. Gauge Bosons (force carriers) – These are by far the coolest in my opinion. These are called the force carriers because they are responsible for the fundamental forces at work in our world. The fundamental forces in the world are Strong Force, Weak Force, Electromagnetic, and Gravity. Gravity is an attractive force responsible for us keeping our feet on the ground. Electromagnetic force is between charged particles and the like.  In all honesty, I do not really understand Strong and Weak force… So, in case you are wondering more about strong force and weak force, I’ve provided some links that go into a better and deeper explanation. For our purposes though, it is enough for now just to know they exist and are partially responsible for the way our universe works. As the xkcd comic above explains, strong nuclear force is responsible for holding protons and neutrons together. This is the strongest force, hence the name. The caveat is that the force is only effective over a very small distance. This is the same case with the weak force which is responsible for processes like beta decay and nuclear fusion which powers our sun. Without it, we would be in the dark.
   1. Photon – Speaking of being in the dark, photons are considered the particles of light. Don’t even let me get started with wave-particle duality in terms of light. Regardless of the position taken, the photon as a particle represents electromagnetic forces
   2. Gluon (8) – These are responsible for the strong force.
   3. W & Z Bosons (3) – These are responsible for the weak force.
4. Higgs Boson – This is the famed “God Particle”. It was hypothesized back in 1960, but was just physically discovered in 2012. The reason why it is so important is that it proves the existence of the Higgs field which provides explanations for particles having mass and why the fundamental strong and weak forces only work over short distances.

So, there you go! That is the very basics of the particles bit of particle physics. Other topics that we will talk about soon include anti matter, accelerators, detectors, and the science behind the big bang. As always, feel free to ask any and all questions you may have and feel free to let me know!