Apr 18, 2023 02:43 PM
(This post was last modified: Apr 18, 2023 02:44 PM by C C.)
Mega rocket Starship could enable new types of astrophysics
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01306-4
EXCERPT: Scientists say that as well as ferrying astronauts into deep space, Starship could enable new types of astrophysics and planetary science — because it can launch heavier science payloads, such as telescopes and interplanetary spacecraft, than other space vehicles can.
“We have this new capability coming online that is larger than anything that has existed,” says Laura Forczyk, founder and executive director of the space consulting firm Astralytical in Atlanta, Georgia. “It could really transform the way we think about bringing payloads and observatories and satellites into space.” (MORE - missing details)
Was the Higgs field responsible for cosmic inflation?
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/higgs-...inflation/
EXCERPT (Stephon Alexander): . . . A further mystery [...] predicted that a mysterious particle, now dubbed the Higgs boson, and its corresponding field of energy that pervades the Universe, could interact with massless matter and give it its weight.
This particle was later detected at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012, and a Nobel Prize awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert a year later.
But despite these successes, there is a problem with the Higgs - it shares a similar instability with inflation, this time in the very quantum fluctuations of the Higgs that give us our mass.
In recent years, physicists Mikhail Shaphnikov postulated that perhaps the microscopic Higgs boson could be behind the omniscient, primordial inflation. But how does one reconcile this picture of micro and macro?
The key is to realise that the Higgs is fundamentally a field and particle which, like a fluid, can permeate all of space. It’s the wave-like vibrations of the Higgs fields organising themselves into microscopic, localised quantum fluctuations that are identified as the Higgs particle.
So, could the Higgs field have permeated the early Universe and given rise to the phenomenon of cosmic inflation? If this idea of Higgs-Inflation is correct it would represent a breathtaking cosmic-microscopic unification.
However, there is a serious elephant in the room that continues to plague both ideas. They rely on quantum fluctuations to create cosmic structure and endow mass, respectively. The problem is that these very quantum effects end up rendering the theories problematic by generating infinities in quantities that we measure to be finite... (MORE - missing details)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01306-4
EXCERPT: Scientists say that as well as ferrying astronauts into deep space, Starship could enable new types of astrophysics and planetary science — because it can launch heavier science payloads, such as telescopes and interplanetary spacecraft, than other space vehicles can.
“We have this new capability coming online that is larger than anything that has existed,” says Laura Forczyk, founder and executive director of the space consulting firm Astralytical in Atlanta, Georgia. “It could really transform the way we think about bringing payloads and observatories and satellites into space.” (MORE - missing details)
Was the Higgs field responsible for cosmic inflation?
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/higgs-...inflation/
EXCERPT (Stephon Alexander): . . . A further mystery [...] predicted that a mysterious particle, now dubbed the Higgs boson, and its corresponding field of energy that pervades the Universe, could interact with massless matter and give it its weight.
This particle was later detected at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012, and a Nobel Prize awarded to Peter Higgs and François Englert a year later.
But despite these successes, there is a problem with the Higgs - it shares a similar instability with inflation, this time in the very quantum fluctuations of the Higgs that give us our mass.
In recent years, physicists Mikhail Shaphnikov postulated that perhaps the microscopic Higgs boson could be behind the omniscient, primordial inflation. But how does one reconcile this picture of micro and macro?
The key is to realise that the Higgs is fundamentally a field and particle which, like a fluid, can permeate all of space. It’s the wave-like vibrations of the Higgs fields organising themselves into microscopic, localised quantum fluctuations that are identified as the Higgs particle.
So, could the Higgs field have permeated the early Universe and given rise to the phenomenon of cosmic inflation? If this idea of Higgs-Inflation is correct it would represent a breathtaking cosmic-microscopic unification.
However, there is a serious elephant in the room that continues to plague both ideas. They rely on quantum fluctuations to create cosmic structure and endow mass, respectively. The problem is that these very quantum effects end up rendering the theories problematic by generating infinities in quantities that we measure to be finite... (MORE - missing details)