BEAM ME UP Professor Higgs?

I managed to ignore this week's news about Higgs bosun for a while. Physics is a closed book to me, didn't do physics at school, or chemistry; I was one of those "other side of brain" students who found French, Latin, English literature and grammar easy-peasy, but could never get the hang of applied mathematics and science. Aquarian curiosity about Higgs bosun eventually overcame me though. I went looking for a "Noddy Meets Higgs Bosun" version of the theory. If I can (kind of) understand astrological theory on decans, duads, degrees, etc. maybe I'll find a way to understand some tiny part of Higgs bosun.
(Image credit: ATLASCERN)

This video helped :



In a nutshell: Higgs boson particle, elusive until recently, is what gives matter mass, it explains why we're here - or rather - how we come to be here.

A lot of time, money and expertise has been spent on this experiment. There must be reasons for it all, other than to complete a theory and add chapters to text books. What possibilities could this discovery open up? Any practical use at all?

Here's where I became really interested!

From
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48087875/ns/technology_and_science-science/

A century after Albert Einstein came up with his theories of relativity, a constellation of Global Positioning System satellites is orbiting Earth, making practical use of his ground-breaking understanding of time. If the discovery of the Higgs boson particle pans out, will even more mind-bending technologies result? Theoretically, it's possible, says Arizona State University physicist Lawrence Krauss; but practically, it's unlikely.

"If you could manipulate the Higgs field locally, you'd have a great 'Star Trek' device. You could make objects disappear. It'd be a great weapon, a great magic trick — if you could put things back together again," Krauss told Discovery News.

But how would you tweak the field, which is believed to be responsible for giving matter its substance?

"It's possible if you were able to heat up some region to something like a billion, billion, billion degrees, then in that region, the Higgs field would probably go away. Of course, by the time you heated things up to a billion, billion, billion degrees, everything would be gone anyway," Krauss said.

Consider the Star Trek transporter, a staple of science fiction for converting matter into energy, beaming it at the speed of light to a new locale, then reassembling the bits into their previous form.

Theoretically, manipulating a Higgs field would be one way to turn a person into energy and make them "disappear." The hard part would be putting them back together again.

"The only reason why the particles around us, and that make us up, are bound is because of the Higgs field," Krauss said. "They have mass. If the Higgs field were to go away, then the particles would all of a sudden move at the speed of light. "If I could manipulate a Higgs field, that would be a first step in making a transporter, but the only way I know of to manipulate the Higgs field is to heat the whole thing up to such an incredible temperature that it's not surprising you'd disappear anyway," he said.

Time travel is another theoretical prospect.
"If you were able to manipulate a Higgs field over a large region so that it had energy, it would be gravitationally repulsive. It would cause that region of the universe to accelerate and move things apart faster than light, which is pretty neat," Krauss said."The existence of Higgs makes it clear that you can get something from nothing. A Higgs field can produce space and time itself," Krauss said. "But it's hard to imagine a Higgs technology."

Half a century ago it would have been hard to imagine most things we now take for granted. I discount nothing, it could all be possible - one day.

Coincidentally we watched a VCR tape of the Star Trek Motion Picture the other evening. I was never a Star Trek fan, but husband found the tape in a junk store and told me I should try it...."You'll like it", he promised. I did too. Saw the "beam me up" thingie and enjoyed the overall plot involving Voyager 6 and the quest of alien entities to discover who made them. Echoes of Prometheus?

Sci-fi is fast becoming sci-fact before our eyes - well, almost. And this is what's truly exciting!

Prof. Peter Higgs (29 May 1929, Newcastle-on-Tyne, UK) : Sun in Gemini, Moon in Aquarius (whatever time he was born), Sun/Moon in harmonious trine in two Air signs known for mental acuity - and both in helpful sextile to Aquarius's ruler Uranus (the avant garde) at 12 Aries. I love it when a plan comes together, as George Peppard used to say, often, in The A Team).

Interestingly transiting Uranus is curently at 8 Aries, almost back to its position in the Professor's natal chart.

A Weekend Cyber Ramble ~ Cables & Earplugs & Eloi - Oh my! (No astro).

Come with me on a cyber ramble.

There is available at Amazon a set of speaker cables (makes a change from Wikileaks cables about which trillions of words are being written as I type) for the knock-down price of $6,800 “eligible for free shipping with Amazon Prime.” Ye gods! For that price I'd expect the cables to be delivered within hours by helicopter, landed on the front yard, brought to the front door by Sam Elliott.

Simple souls, like me, will be thinking, what could cause cables to cost so much?

“Dielectric Bias System (DBS) (US patent 7,126,055): Greatly improved performance is made possible by a constant 72 volt charge on all K2’s insulation. Similar to how the earth’s magnetic field makes all compasses point north, the AQ DBS system creates an electrostatic field which causes the molecules of the insulation to all point in the same direction. This minimizes the multiple nonlinear time-delays. Sound appears from a surprisingly black background with unexpected detail and dynamic contrast.”

Clear?
What is to be found in a review of said cables is the gem in this though. It was posted by "Patrick" and is too good to be buried in the Caverns of Amazon. It warrants inclusion in a book of science fiction mini-stories!

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

PLEASE! You must listen! We cannot maintain the link for long... I will type as fast as I can.

DO NOT USE THE CABLES!

We were fools, fools to develop such a thing! Sound was never meant to be this clear, this pure, this... accurate. For a few short days, we marveled. Then the... whispers... began.

Were they Aramaic? Hyperborean? Some even more ancient tongue, first spoken by elder races under the red light of dying suns far from here? We do not know, but somehow, slowly... we began to UNDERSTAND.

No, no, please! I don't want to remember! YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME REMEMBER! I saw brave men claw their own eyes out... oh, god, the screaming... the mobs of feral children feasting on corpses, the shadows MOVING, the fires burning in the air! The CHANTING!

WHY CAN'T I FORGET THE WORDS???

We live underground. We speak with our hands. We wear the earplugs all our lives.

Do not use the cables!.

Wonderful! Thanks "Patrick" wherever you are.
If we ramble on a little further, there's more.

On the forum, (Making Light),where I had somehow run into Patrick's tale, a comment followed it:

"Somewhere in our brave new century, somebody actually pays nearly $1,000 a foot for speaker cable. And somewhere else, people toil anonymously to write things like that review. One can see the rough emerging outlines of Eloi and Morlocks—but not which is which."

This led me to refresh my memory of H.G.Wells' great novel The Time Machine.
Wikipedia

By the year 802,701 CE, humanity has evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi are the child-like, frail group, living a banal life of ease on the surface of the earth, while the Morlocks live underground, tending machinery and providing food, clothing and infrastructure for the Eloi. Each class evolved and degenerated from humans. The novel suggests that the separation of species may have been the result of a widening split between different social classes, a theme that reflects Wells' sociopolitical opinions.

The main difference from their earlier ruler-worker state is that, while the Morlocks continue to support the world's infrastructure and serve the Eloi, the Eloi have undergone significant physical and mental deterioration. Having solved all problems that required strength, intelligence, or virtue, they have slowly become dissolute and naive. They are described as being smaller than modern humans, having shoulder-length curly hair, chins that ran to a point, large eyes, small ears, and small mouths with bright red thin lips. They are of sub-human intelligence, though apparently intelligent enough to speak, and they have a primitive language.

While one initially has the impression that the Eloi people live a life of play and toil-less abundance, it is revealed that the Morlocks are attending to the Eloi's needs for the same reason a farmer tends cattle; the Morlocks use the Eloi for food.

And I thought ........ Mr. Wells over-estimated that date at 802,701 CE. We seem to be heading rapidly in the direction of the outer reaches of what he described, even now as we come to the end of 2010. It's fun to decide who will, eventually, be the eater and who the eaten.