What is the Higgs Boson?

Scientists behind Sixty Symbols (Ed Copeland, Roger Bowley and Tony Padilla from the University of Nottingham) are doing their best to answer what actually is the Higgs Boson.

Named after Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh University physicist, the Higgs boson is crucial to understanding the origin of mass. The Higgs boson is a hypothetical elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. It belongs to a class of particles known as bosons, characterized by an integer value of their spin quantum number.

The Higgs field is a quantum field with a non-zero value that fills all of space, and explains why fundamental particles such as quarks and electrons have mass. The Higgs boson is an excitation of the Higgs field above its ground state.

Experiments to determine whether the Higgs boson exists are currently being performed using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.

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BBC Horizon - The Truth about vitamins.

In Great Britain every year peple spend £300 million on vitamin supplements, but do they actually do them any good? 
Some believe they offer the promise of preventing or even curing some of the world's biggest killers, such as heart disease and cancer. Others claim that taking large doses of some vitamins may in certain cases be harmful. So what are the facts?


Vitamin C, the most popular of them all
Nearly 40 years ago, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century and double Nobel Prize winner, Linus Pauling, revolutionised the way people thought about vitamins. He claimed that by taking huge doses of vitamin C you could prevent or even cure the common cold.


He predicted that if everybody followed his advice, the common cold could even be eradicated. Many scientists dismissed his theory as quackery, but the public loved it and it helped launch a huge industry. But the latest evidence shows the great man was mistaken. Vitamin C can help you once have got a cold, but for most people it does nothing to prevent you from catching one in the first place.


Even if large doses of vitamin C do not prevent the common cold, some claim that it can still offer a more profound benefit. It is one of a group of vitamins called anti-oxidants that some believe can prevent illnesses such as cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease.


Too much of a good thing?
In 2004, scientists in the United States claimed that people could be missing any of the potential benefits of taking one of the world's most popular anti-oxidant vitamin supplements, vitamin E, because their bodies might not be absorbing it. But our own investigation suggested that the American scientists' conclusion could be mistaken.


While most safety experts believe that vitamins C and E can be taken safely even in quite large doses, there is worrying evidence that one form of another common vitamin, vitamin A, could be linked to osteoporosis, a debilitating bone disease.


If the theory is right it means that a person's diet, or some supplements that they take every day to improve their health, could actually be slowly and silently weakening their bones. 

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History channel - The Universe - Multiverse Parallel Universes .

A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. 
A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute physical reality. 
While the terms "parallel universe" and "alternative reality" are generally synonymous and can be used interchangeably in most cases, there is sometimes an additional connotation implied with the term "alternative reality" that implies that the reality is a variant of our own. 
The term "parallel universe" is more general, without any connotations implying a relationship, or lack of relationship, with our own universe. A universe where the very laws of nature are different – for example, one in which there are no relativistic limitations and the speed of light can be exceeded – would in general count as a parallel universe but not an alternative reality. 
The correct quantum mechanical definition of parallel universes is "universes that are separated from each other by a single quantum event."

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Quantum Physics & Harry Potter

An evening of science and magic presented by the Institute for Quantum Computing, "Quantum Physics and Harry Potter" explores real-life science that mirrors the fantastical phenomena of Harry Potter's realm.

IQC postdoctoral fellow Krister Shalm teams up with magician Dan Trommater to demonstrate quantum concepts such as teleportation and entanglement, and their analogies in J.K. Rowling's fantasy world.

A free, educational event, Quantum Physics and Harry Potter was held at the Princess Twin Cinemas in Waterloo, Ontario, on July 14 and 15, 2011.


Rather for kids, but nice and easy presented. 

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The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know

About the speaker: 
 Dr. Ron Garret was an AI and robotics researcher at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab for fifteen years before taking a year off to work at Google in June of 2000. 
He was the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords, and the original author of the Google Translation Console. 
Since leaving Google he has started a new career as an entrepreneur, angel investor and filmmaker.
He has co-founded three startups, invested in a dozen others, and made a feature-length documentary about homelessness. 


Richard Feynman once famously quipped that no one understands quantum mechanics, and popular accounts continue to promulgate the view that QM is an intractable mystery (probably because that helps to sell books). QM is certainly unintuitive, but the idea that no one understands it is far from the truth. In fact, QM is no more difficult to understand than relativity. The problem is that the vast majority of popular accounts of QM are simply flat-out wrong. They are based on the so-called Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which has been thoroughly discredited for decades. It turns out that if Copenhagen were true then it would be possible to communicate faster than light, and hence send signals backwards in time. This talk describes an alternative interpretation based on quantum information theory (QIT) which is consistent with current scientific knowledge. It turns out that there is a simple intuition that makes almost all quantum mysteries simply evaporate, and replaces them with an easily understood (albeit strange) insight: measurement and entanglement are the same physical phenomenon, and you don't really exist.


Google Tech Talk
January 6, 2011

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The Incredible Human Journey - The Americas

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary and accompanying book, written and presented by Alice Roberts. 
It was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK. It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo. 
 Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured. 
In the final episode, Roberts describes theories about how humans traversed from Asia to the Americas, asking how they achieved it during the Ice Age, when the route to North America was blocked by ice walls. She describes the traditional theory that the first Americans were the Clovis culture, who arrived through an ice-free corridor towards the end of the Ice Age 13,000 years ago. However, she then visits archaeological sites in Texas, Brazil, the Californian Channel Islands and Monte Verde in southern Chile, which show 14,000-year-old human remains, proving that humans must have arrived earlier by a different route. She shows the skull of the Luzia Woman, found in Brazil, which displays Australasian features rather than theEast Asian features of modern Native Americans; an archaeologist explains that these first Americans may have been Asians who migrated before Asians developed their distinctive facial features. Roberts shows that the earliest Americans may have migrated down the relatively ice-free western coastlines of North and South America. She concludes by noting that, when Europeans arrived in 1492, they did not recognise Native Americans as fully human, but that modern genetics and archaeology proves that we all ultimately descend from Africans.

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The Incredible Human Journey - Australia

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary and accompanying book, written and presented by Alice Roberts.
 It was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK.
It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo.
 Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured.
 In the fourth episode, Roberts discusses the evidence of the Mungo Lake remains, which suggest, unexpectedly, that humans reached Australia long before they reached Europe, even though Australia is further away from Africa. Roberts attempts to trace the journey. She visits a site in India that appears to indicate that humans were present there 70,000 years ago, before the Toba supervolcano deposited ash on the site. She then points to the Negrito people of Southeast Asia, who look different from other Asian peoples, and who may be descendants of the peoples who first left Africa.
She describes the discovery of the tiny Homo floresiensis on Flores and suggests that they may have been exterminated by modern humans. She describes the crossing of the Torres Strait by experimenting with a bamboo raft. She concludes by visiting a tribe in Northern Australia whose mythology describes their mother goddess arriving from across the sea.

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The Incredible Human Journey - Europe

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary and accompanying book, written and presented by Alice Roberts.
 It was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK.
 It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo.
 Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured.
In the third episode, Roberts describes the various waves of anatomically modern humans that settled the continent of Europe. She crosses the Bosphorus and travels up the Danube River, following their likely route. She then describes the already resident population of Neanderthals, and visits Gibraltar, the last known site occupied by Neanderthals. She suggests that the principal difference between them and Homo sapiens was the latter's ability to create art, and visits the cave paintings at Lascaux. She discusses the theories about why Europeans have white skin and describes the birth of agriculture and the societal changes that took place as a result, visiting the spectacular Neolithic temple at Göbekli Tepe, in southeastern Turkey.

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The Incredible Human Journey - Asia

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary and accompanying book, written and presented by Alice Roberts. 
It was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK. It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo. 
 Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured. 

In the second episode, Roberts travels to Siberia and visits an isolated community of indigenous people who still practice reindeer hunting. With reference to them, she asks how ancient Africans could have adapted to the hostile climate of northern Asia, and why Asian people look so different from Africans.

Roberts then explores an alternative to the Out of Africa theory, the multiregional hypothesis that has gained support in some scientific communities in China. According to this theory, the Chinese are descended from a human species called Homo erectus rather than from the Homo sapiens from which the rest of humanity evolved. Roberts visits the Zhoukoudian caves, in which Peking Man, the supposed Homo erectus ancestor of the Chinese, was discovered. Roberts notes that some Chinese anthropologists and palaeontologists have shown modern Chinese physical characteristics in the fossil skulls, such as broad cheek bones, cranial skull shape and shovel-shaped incisors that are absent in almost all other humans. She also notes that the stone tools found in China seem more primitive than those elsewhere, and infers that they were made exclusively by Homo erectus. However, she argues that the skull evidence is only subtle. She interviews an American palaeontologist, who presents his hypothesis that the ancient Chinese humans used bamboo instead of stone, explaining the absence of sophisticated stone tools, despite the absence of archaeological evidence to support this hypothesis. Finally, Roberts interviews Chinese geneticist Jin Li, who ran a study of more than 10,000 individuals scattered throughout China from 160 ethnic groups. The study initially hypothesised that the modern Chinese population evolved from Homo erectus in China but concluded that the Chinese people did in fact evolve and migrate from Africa like the rest of world's population.

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The Incredible Human Journey - Out of Africa

The Incredible Human Journey is a five-episode science documentary and accompanying book, written and presented by Alice Roberts.
It was first broadcast on BBC television in May and June 2009 in the UK. 
It explains the evidence for the theory of early human migrations out of Africa and subsequently around the world, supporting the Out of Africa Theory. This theory claims that all modern humans are descended from anatomically modern African Homo sapiens rather than from the more archaic European and Middle Eastern Homo neanderthalensis or the indigenous Chinese Homo pekinensis, and that the modern African Homo sapiens did not interbreed with the other species of genus Homo. 
Each episode concerns a different continent, and the series features scenes filmed on location in each of the continents featured. 
In the first episode, Roberts introduces the idea that genetic analysis suggests that all modern humans are descended from Africans. She visits the site of the Omo remains in Ethiopia, which are the earliest known anatomically modern humans. She visits the San people of Namibia to demonstrate the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In South Africa, she visits Pinnacle Point, to see the cave in which very early humans lived. She then explains that genetics suggests that all non-Africans may descend from a single, small group of Africans who left the continent tens of thousands of years ago. She explores various theories as to the route they took. She describes the Jebel Qafzeh remains in Israel as a likely dead end from a crossing of Suez, and sees a route across the Red Sea and around the Arabiancoast as the more probable route for modern human ancestors, especially given the lower sea levels of the past.

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PBS Nova - Fractals: Hunting the Hidden Dimension.

Mysteriously beautiful fractals are shaking up the world of mathematics and deepening our understanding of nature.

A fractal is "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity.

Fractals: they're famously found in nature and artists have created some incredible renderings as well.
Fractals are purely a wonder -- too irregular for Euclidean geometry; iterative and recursive and seemingly infinite. They turn up in food and germs, plants and animals, mountains and water and sky.

You may not know it, but fractals, like the air you breathe, are all around you. Their irregular, repeating shapes are found in cloud formations and tree limbs, in stalks of broccoli and craggy mountain ranges, even in the rhythm of the human heart. In this film, NOVA takes viewers on a fascinating quest with a group of maverick mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry.

For centuries, fractal-like irregular shapes were considered beyond the boundaries of mathematical understanding. Now, mathematicians have finally begun mapping this uncharted territory. Their remarkable findings are deepening our understanding of nature and stimulating a new wave of scientific, medical, and artistic innovation stretching from the ecology of the rain forest to fashion design. The documentary highlights a host of filmmakers, fashion designers, physicians, and researchers who are using fractal geometry to innovate and inspire.

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PBS Nova - Monster of the Milky Way

Astronomers are closing in on the proof they've sought for years that one of the most destructive objects in the universe—a supermassive black hole—lurks at the center of our own galaxy. 
Could it flare up and consume our entire galactic neighborhood? 


Join NOVA on a mind-bending investigation into one of the most bizarre corners of cosmological science: black hole research. From event horizon to singularity, the elusive secrets of supermassive black holes are revealed through stunning computer-generated imagery, including an extraordinary simulation of what it might look like to fall into the belly of such an all-devouring beast.

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BBC Horizon - Playing God

Adam Rutherford meets a new creature created by American scientists - the spider-goat.
It is part goat, part spider, and its milk can be used to create artificial spider's web.
It is part of a new field of research, synthetic biology, with a radical aim: to break down nature into spare parts so that we can rebuild it however we please.
 This technology is already being used to make bio-diesel to power cars.
 Other researchers are looking at how we might, one day, control human emotions by sending 'biological machines' into our brains

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BBC Horizon - The Secret You

With the help of a hammer-wielding scientist, Jennifer Aniston and a general anaesthetic, Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science's greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are? 
While the thoughts that make us feel as though we know ourselves are easy to experience, they are notoriously difficult to explain. 
So, in order to find out where they come from, Marcus subjects himself to a series of probing experiments.

He learns at what age our self-awareness emerges and whether other species share this trait. 
Next, he has his mind scrambled by a cutting-edge experiment in anaesthesia. Having survived that ordeal, Marcus is given an out-of-body experience in a bid to locate his true self. 
And in Hollywood, he learns how celebrities are helping scientists understand the microscopic activities of our brain. Finally, he takes part in a mind-reading experiment that both helps explain and radically alters his understanding of who he is.

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