The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World by Sean Carroll Read Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sean Carroll
life. If there were one particle that deserved such a lofty title, there’s no question it would be the Higgs.
THREE
ATOMS AND PARTICLES
In which we tear apart matter to reveal its ultimate constituents, the quarks and the leptons.
I n the early 1800s, German physician Samuel Hahnemann founded the practice of homeopathy. Dismayed by the ineffectiveness of the medicine of his time, Hahnemann developed a new approach based on the principle of “like cures like”—a disease can be treated by precisely the same substance that causes it in the first place, as long as that substance is properly manipulated. The way to manipulate it is known as “potentization,” which consists of diluting the substance repeatedly in water, shaking vigorously each time. A typical method of dilution might mix one part of substance and ninety-nine parts water. You prepare a homeopathic remedy by diluting, shaking, diluting again, shaking again, as many as two hundred times.
More recently, Crispian Jago, a professional software consultant and recreational skeptic, wanted to demonstrate that he doesn’t believe homeopathy is a valid approach to medicine. So he decided to apply the method of serial dilution to an easily obtained substance: his own urine. Which he then proceeded to drink. Because he was a bit impatient, he only diluted the urine thirty times. Except that he didn’t call it “urine,” he called it “piss,” and then proclaimed that he was developing a cure for being pissed, which translates either as angry (for those in the U.S.) or inebriated (for those in the U.K.). The results, naturally enough, were presented to the world in the form of a boisterous YouTube video.
Jago had good reason for being undisturbed by the prospect of drinking urine that had been diluted in a 1:99 concentration thirty times over: By the time he got to the final glass, there was none of the original stuff left. Not just “a minuscule amount” but really none at all, if his dilutions were sufficiently careful.
That’s because everything in our everyday world—urine, diamonds, french fries, really everything—is made of atoms, usually combined into molecules. Those molecules are the smallest unit of a substance that can still be thought of as that substance. Separately, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom are just atoms; combined, they become water.
Because the world is made of atoms and molecules, you can’t dilute things forever and have them maintain their identity. A teaspoonful of urine might contain approximately 10 24 molecules. If we dilute once by mixing one part urine with ninety-nine parts water, we’re left with 10 22 urine molecules. Dilute twice and we have 10 20 molecules. By the time we’ve diluted twelve times, on average there’s only one molecule of the original substance remaining. After that, it’s all window dressing—we’re just mixing water into more water. With about forty dilutions we could dilute away every molecule in the known universe.
So when Jago finished the procedure and took his final triumphant swig, the water he was drinking was as pure as any that would ordinarily come out of the tap. Advocates of homeopathy know this, of course. They believe that the water molecules retain a “memory” of whatever herb or chemical was used in the original dilution, and indeed that the final solution is more potent than the substance was to start. This violates everything we know about physics and chemistry, and clinical trials rate homeopathic remedies no better than placebos at combating disease. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
We are not, as the saying goes, entitled to our own facts. And the fact that matter is made of atoms and molecules is a striking one. Really there are two critical facts: first, that we can take matter and break it up into little chunks that represent the smallest possible unit of that kind of thing; and second, that it only takes a few fundamental building blocks
THREE
ATOMS AND PARTICLES
In which we tear apart matter to reveal its ultimate constituents, the quarks and the leptons.
I n the early 1800s, German physician Samuel Hahnemann founded the practice of homeopathy. Dismayed by the ineffectiveness of the medicine of his time, Hahnemann developed a new approach based on the principle of “like cures like”—a disease can be treated by precisely the same substance that causes it in the first place, as long as that substance is properly manipulated. The way to manipulate it is known as “potentization,” which consists of diluting the substance repeatedly in water, shaking vigorously each time. A typical method of dilution might mix one part of substance and ninety-nine parts water. You prepare a homeopathic remedy by diluting, shaking, diluting again, shaking again, as many as two hundred times.
More recently, Crispian Jago, a professional software consultant and recreational skeptic, wanted to demonstrate that he doesn’t believe homeopathy is a valid approach to medicine. So he decided to apply the method of serial dilution to an easily obtained substance: his own urine. Which he then proceeded to drink. Because he was a bit impatient, he only diluted the urine thirty times. Except that he didn’t call it “urine,” he called it “piss,” and then proclaimed that he was developing a cure for being pissed, which translates either as angry (for those in the U.S.) or inebriated (for those in the U.K.). The results, naturally enough, were presented to the world in the form of a boisterous YouTube video.
Jago had good reason for being undisturbed by the prospect of drinking urine that had been diluted in a 1:99 concentration thirty times over: By the time he got to the final glass, there was none of the original stuff left. Not just “a minuscule amount” but really none at all, if his dilutions were sufficiently careful.
That’s because everything in our everyday world—urine, diamonds, french fries, really everything—is made of atoms, usually combined into molecules. Those molecules are the smallest unit of a substance that can still be thought of as that substance. Separately, two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom are just atoms; combined, they become water.
Because the world is made of atoms and molecules, you can’t dilute things forever and have them maintain their identity. A teaspoonful of urine might contain approximately 10 24 molecules. If we dilute once by mixing one part urine with ninety-nine parts water, we’re left with 10 22 urine molecules. Dilute twice and we have 10 20 molecules. By the time we’ve diluted twelve times, on average there’s only one molecule of the original substance remaining. After that, it’s all window dressing—we’re just mixing water into more water. With about forty dilutions we could dilute away every molecule in the known universe.
So when Jago finished the procedure and took his final triumphant swig, the water he was drinking was as pure as any that would ordinarily come out of the tap. Advocates of homeopathy know this, of course. They believe that the water molecules retain a “memory” of whatever herb or chemical was used in the original dilution, and indeed that the final solution is more potent than the substance was to start. This violates everything we know about physics and chemistry, and clinical trials rate homeopathic remedies no better than placebos at combating disease. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
We are not, as the saying goes, entitled to our own facts. And the fact that matter is made of atoms and molecules is a striking one. Really there are two critical facts: first, that we can take matter and break it up into little chunks that represent the smallest possible unit of that kind of thing; and second, that it only takes a few fundamental building blocks
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