MEETING NOTICE:
The regular meeting of the BARNARD ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY will be held Thursday January 13th at 7:30 PM at Jones Observatory on Brainerd Rd.
PROGRAM:
To Be Announced
Officers
President……………………………………… …..Tom Adkins
Vice-President………………………………….Chuck Mcknight
Secretary………………………………………….Gary Caldwell
Treasurer……………………………………………..David Witt
STAR Editor……………………………………….Steve Ramey
Webmaster…………………………………………….Rod Ruch
November Minutes
I was planning to publish the minutes for the November meeting in this issue, but to be honest, I forgot what week it was. I normally get the newsletter together on the weekend before the meeting and print and mail it on Monday of the week of the meeting. Late Monday evening this week, I finally remembered what week it was and made a mad dash to my computer to see if I had all of the materials I needed to hastily throw an issue together.
I discovered that I didn’t have a copy of the minutes from Gary yet. I fired off an email to him but he didn’t get it until Tuesday night and didn’t have them ready yet. So I decided that if I didn’t publish tonight there would no change of anybody receiving their copy before the meeting. Sorry for the confusion but Christmas (and New Year’s) has been a real rush for me. Anyway, we will double up on the minutes in the next issue.
REMINDER
Your annual BAS dues of are now due on June 1, in accordance with the adopted amendment to the by-laws. They are as follows: REGULAR $15.00, REGULAR ASSOCIATE $7.00, JUNIOR $8.00, JUNIOR ASSOCIATE $5.00. Your Sky & Telescope or Astronomy subscription will continue to be handled as in the past. When you receive your subscription reminder card, submit it to:
David Witt
4503 Cove Lane
Chattanooga, TN 37415-2306
Along with the group subscription rate of $32.95 for Sky and Telescope, or $29.00 for Astronomy.
DEADLINE
All articles and other materials for publication in the next STAR are due no later than Wednesday, January 5th. The following media are acceptable: hard copy, disk (IBM), video tape (VHS), prints, or e-mail to bas@chattanooga.net or stramey@catt.com and attach a file or mail to:
Steve Ramey
109 Sioux Trail
Ringgold GA 30736
PHOTOGRAPHS ARE ALSO ACCEPTABLE.
When Symmetry Breaks Down
Balancing a spinning top on the tip of your finger is difficult enough, but trying to produce mathematics to predict when its spinning will slow enough to let it fall and in which direction, is, one would think, next to impossible.
Now let's move this thought to the symmetry of the universe just before the instant of the "Big Bang". If one would prove the math needed for a Grand Unification Model of our universe then we must first understand and demonstrate this symmetry breaking in all electro-magnetic phenomena.
The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will go on line in 2007, will allow experimenters to examine the Higgs Particle which is, in the "Standard Model" the entity which Leon Leiderman called "The God Particle". It is the particle which we have so much trouble with when we try to conceptualize the spinning top on our finger reduced to the world of atomic particles and the electro weak force which we seem to think breaks the symmetry of the super dense matter in a Big Bang situation. It is the trigger that fires the big powder charge so to speak.
So what now, if in our little experiment our top has a very lot of energy so we would have to wait billions of years and be at the exact right place to see it fall, not to mention that it may not be the right one of googols of tops? So what must we do to see our top fall or to observe symmetry breaking down? Good Question!
Edward Whitten has a great essay concept about this experiment. It involves, it seems to applying enough energy to a Bose Condensate, an ordered state in which many particles share the same quantum wave front. We must zap it with enough energy to reproduce the conditions of the big bang in this small version of "superfluity" and see what falls out of symmetry after W and Z bosons we already know are there. Stay tuned!
Good Seeing!