Six years after its discovery, the Higgs boson has at last been observed decaying to fundamental particles known as bottom quarks. The finding, presented today at CERN by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is consistent with the hypothesis that the all-pervading quantum field behind the Higgs boson also gives mass to the bottom quark.
The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that about 60% of the time a Higgs boson will decay to a pair of bottom quarks, the second-heaviest of the six flavours of quarks. Testing this prediction is crucial because the result would either lend support to the Standard Model – which is built upon the idea that the Higgs field endows quarks and other fundamental particles with mass – or rock its foundations and point to new physics.
This is just exciting news for the Linux community. From Valve: “Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.”
Here are some ways to transfer energy out of a system.
Work
This method1 is by applying a force to the system and this results to a change in displacement in the point of application of the force. This is expressed by this simple equation:
$W = F \Delta x$
Heat
Heat2 is the mechanism of energy transfer that is based on temperature difference of a system compared to its environment.
Mechanical waves
This method is described by traveling of a disturbance through a medium. For example is when the energy leaves from a speaker and the energy propagates through the air and this vibrations were detected by your ears which you perceive as sound.
Electrical transmission
This method which is very familiar in this century is when energy leaves the system in the form of electric currents.
Electromagnetic radiation
Electromagnetic waves such as light, x-rays, microwaves is transferring energy. A good example is the energy from the sun traveling to earth as light.
The word heat is misused in the society with respect to its physics definition. Heat is not a form of energy, it is a method of transferring energy. ↩︎
Some of the young experimentalists today are a bit too conservative. In other words, they are afraid to do something that is not in the mainstream. They fear doing something risky and not getting a result. I don’t blame them. It’s the way the culture is. My advice to them is to figure out what the most important experiments are and then be persistent. Good experiments always take time.[…]
Young students don’t always have the freedom to be very innovative, unless they can do it in a very short amount of time and be successful. They don’t always get to be patient and just explore. They need to be recognized by their collaborators. They need people to write them letters of recommendation.[…]
Communicate. Don’t close yourselves off. Try to come up with good ideas on your own but also in groups. Try to innovate. Nothing will be easy. But it is all worth it to discover something new.