Evidence Higgs Particle Found

LHC finds what looks like a Higgs particle
 

How Many Physicists view Philosophy

This essay by Jim Holt in the New Yorker summarizes how i feel about how many in the physics community views philosophy as a waste of time.

h/t 3quarksdaily.

Reality as a Holographic Projection

The Holographic Principle states that the everyday reality that we experience (including you and me) is a projection from somewhere else, i.e. the boundary of the universe. The 'projector' (similar to "R2D2's projector in the picture above) is a two dimensional surface where everything exists. The projections (like Princess Leia's hologram above) is in three-dimensions. In a sense, we are really two-dimensional pixels living on that distant surface who are projected in three-dimensions.

Strange as this may seem, physicists may have found an opportunity to confirm this via a device that was built for another purpose. They take advantage of the fact that something with three dimensions (an object with length, width and height like a box) can hold more stuff than something that has only two dimensions (an object with just length and width like a sheet of paper). A two-dimensional pixel when projected in three-dimensions will appear more blurred than the original and if such blurring is detected, then this would support the view that we are holograms.

[Personal speculation: It would take a longer explanation but it occurs to me that if we are holographic projections from a two-dimensional surface, by analogy, one possible way from the Universe to end is to evaporate, or collapse into an infinitely dense point, i.e. a space-time singularity sort of like the fate described in the Big Crunch but in a different way...]

Matter and Energy: Ordinary and Dark

I just finished reading Lisa Randall's book Warped Passages, which i highly recommend especially now that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where many of the theories she discusses in the book will be tested, is about to start operating.

While Randall's main focus is on theories involving extra-dimensions, she explains a lot of related topics along the way, and for me, one of the most striking details she reveals has to do with the varieties and relative proportions of matter and energy in the Universe. Randall explains...

"Dark Matter is the nonluminous matter that pervades the universe and has been discovered through its gravitational influence. Even though about one-quarter (25%) of the energy in the universe* is stored in dark matter, we still don't know what it is...

...The universe contains dark energy** (energy not carried by any matter), that constitutes seventy percent (70%) of the total energy of the universe...No theory [is able to] explain dark energy."

By contrast, ordinary matter from which we are made of makes up the remaining five percent (5%).

Update April-20-2008: Via 3Quarksdaily, an experiment that claims to detect Dark Matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs).

Also, here's the web page for NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) that i mentioned in the comments section. It has further interesting information including this Timeline of the Universe.

Click on image to enlarge
In the above diagram, the acceleration of the Universe's expansion due to Dark Energy is noticeable.

Update April-25-2008: Over at Cosmic Variance, blogger-physicist Sean Carroll explains that the famous equation e=mc² does not apply in the case of Dark Energy.

"Interestingly, the dark energy that makes up 70% of the energy of the universe doesn’t really have “mass” at all, since it’s not made up of objects (such as particles) that can have a rest frame — it’s a smooth field filling space."

*Matter and energy is intergchangeable via e=mc².
**This mysterious Dark Energy is also known as Vacuum Energy and was first proposed by Einstein as the Cosmological Constant and more recently theorized as a new substance called Quintessence. Its presence is inferred by the observation that the expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating.