Tuesday, September 11, 2007

13 things that do not make sense


Was browsing through the August issue of Discover magazine this morning and read a fascinating article regarding the race to discover Higgs boson particles. Higgs boson particles (if they exist) would help explain the existence of mass, unifying gravity with the rest of the forces in the Grand Unification Theory (GUT) and clear up gaping holes in the Standard Model (which describes all fundamental particles in the universe). It got me to thinking how something so commonplace in Physics, like mass, is not fully understood nor proven. The discovery of Higgs boson particles could be as paradigm altering as Einstein's special relativity to Newtonian laws.

In light of humanity looking through the one-way mirror of science, read this New Scientist article on "13 Things that do Not Make Sense". From Dark Matter to Homeopathy the article explores so many of out modern scientific problems that can't help but make Scientists feel like they are wondering why planets "wander" in the sky in the Ptolemaic age (Answer: planets revolve around the sun not the earth).

1 comment:

  1. The placebo effect (heck- the power of suggestion in general) is a trip!

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