Friday afternoon and the common room of the Institute for Theoretical Physics (IFT) is deserted. But that day in the morning (like every Friday at 11.00) and Monday afternoon, go 30 or 40 researchers, of the 70 that are in the center, to chat over a coffee or a drink in hand. It’s a habit typical of British and American universities for scientists to leave the usual closure of their offices and their articles and share opinions, news, jobs … “We talk about science, an interesting result of a recent conference, but also on scientific policy of the crisis …” says Alberto Casas, this researcher CSIC institute at the Autonomous University of Madrid. There is coffee maker, a microwave, a fridge, a long table with chairs, a sitting area and a blackboard on which are written even a residual mathematical formulas meeting this morning.
“What do you do for each theoretical physics? Out of curiosity, the curiosity that children have, but we maintain a lifetime, “says Casas. “If you ask the why of things, you end up in physics: for example, this sofa is red because the atoms have absorbed all levels and less red radiation … But when you start digging more and more … Why are electrons? Why atoms are as they are? Why are electrical forces? At the end you get to particle physics. “
top, for more interest, last summer’s revolution broke Higgs boson: “I work in theoretical physics for more than 30 years and, no doubt, has been the most important discovery,” adds the scientist. Willing to not only enjoy the finding specialists, Homes, along with colleague Teresa Rodrigo, has written a popular book (the third one dedicated to the public), precisely on the Higgs boson (Editorial CSIC), its role in physics, how it has sought and found how. Your explanation makes it easy to understand: “The Higgs boson is a necessary consequence of a mechanism that was proposed 50 years ago to understand why particles have mass. The idea is that there is a field, like the electromagnetic field, which fills all … would like a clear liquid. If not exist, the particles would move freely, but, being in the liquid, are braked by friction and make as having mass. If you shake the liquid are produced waves and those waves are Higgs bosons, and the LH C is the agitator “.
But theoretical physicists, as well as small, also address the immense universe. Are wise integral? “No, far from it,” he replies Casas. “But it is true that work on very large scales and very small scales. When you get to the why of things, is that the phenomena are separated into watertight compartments, with galaxies and their own explanation and atoms and particles with it. The laws that explain common. Another reason is that the early universe was very compressed and therefore very hot, and to understand what was happening there you understand how elementary particles to enormous energies populated it. ” Holiday deals now investigate the properties of the Higgs boson and will spend a week in Geneva working with colleagues at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), with collaborating scientists always IFT.
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