Mountain Views News          Saturday, February 28, 2015

THE WORLD AROUND US

B4

Mountain Views-News Saturday, February 28, 2015 


UCLA PHYSICISTS OFFER A SOLUTION TO THE PUZZLE 

OF THE ORIGIN OF MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE


UCLA Physicists Offer a Solution to the Puzzle of 
the Origin of Matter in the Universe

 Most of the laws of nature treat particles and 
antiparticles equally, but stars and planets are 
made of particles, or matter—not antiparticles, or 
antimatter. That asymmetry, which favors matter 
over antimatter by a very small degree, has puzzled 
scientists for many years.

 New research by UCLA physicists, published 
in the journal Physical Review Letters, offers a 
possible solution to the mystery of the origin of 
matter in the universe.

 Alexander Kusenko, a professor of physics and 
astronomy in the UCLA College, and colleagues 
propose that the matter-antimatter asymmetry 
could be related to the Higgs boson particle, which 
was the subject of prominent news coverage when 
it was discovered at Switzerland’s Large Hadron 
Collider in 2012.

 Specifically, the UCLA researchers write, the 
asymmetry may have been produced as a result of 
the motion of the Higgs field, which is associated 
with the Higgs boson, and which could have made 
the masses of particles and antiparticles in the 
universe temporarily unequal, allowing for a small 
excess of matter particles over antiparticles.

 If a particle and an antiparticle meet, they 
disappear by emitting two photons or a pair of 
some other particles. In the “primordial soup” that 
existed after the Big Bang, there were almost equal 
amounts of particles of antiparticles, except for 
a tiny asymmetry: one particle per 10 billion. As 
the universe cooled, the particles and antiparticles 
annihilated each other in equal numbers, and 
only a tiny number of particles remained; this 
tiny amount is all the stars, planets, and gas in 
today’s universe, said Kusenko, who is also a senior 
scientist with the Kavli Institute for the Physics and 
Mathematics of the Universe.

 The 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson 
particle was hailed as one of the great scientific 
accomplishments of recent decades. The Higgs 
boson was first postulated some 50 years ago as a 
crucial element of the modern theory of the forces of 
nature, and is, physicists say, what gives everything 
in the universe mass. Physicists at the LHC 
measured the particle’s mass and found its value 
to be peculiar; it is consistent with the possibility 
that the Higgs field in the first moments of the Big 
Bang was much larger than its “equilibrium value” 
observed today.

 The Higgs field “had to descend to the 
equilibrium, in a process of ‘Higgs relaxation,’” said 
Kusenko, the lead author of the UCLA research. 
Two of Kusenko’s graduate students, Louis Yang 
of UCLA and Lauren Pearce of the University of 
Minnesota, Minneapolis, were co-authors of the 
study.

 THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC) 
is the world’s largest and most powerful particle 
collider, and the largest single machine in the 
world. It was built by the European Organization 
for Nuclear Research (CERN) from 1998 to 2008.

 Its aim is to allow physicists to test the 
predictions of different theories of particle physics 
and high-energy physics like the Standard Model, 
and particularly prove or disprove the existence of 
the theorized Higgs boson and of the large family 
of new particles predicted by supersymmetric 
theories. The LHC contains seven detectors, each 
designed for certain kinds of research.

 The LHC was built in collaboration with more 
than 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 
100 countries, as well as hundreds of universities 
and laboratories. It lies in a tunnel 17 miles in 
circumference, as deep as 574 feet beneath the 
Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland.

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.

THE BACHELOR

by Christopher Nyerges

 

[Nyerges is the author of several books, including “Enter the Forest” and “How 
to Survive Anywhere.” He can be reached at Box 41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041, 
or www.ChristopherNyerges.com]


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

ANY DAY WITHOUT SNOW IS A 
GOOD DAY

I have been watching Chris 
the farmer on the Bachelor 
show on television, along 
with millions of other 
fixated, voyeuristic Americans. I watched some of 
the last season’s Bachelorette as well, as my various 
feelings and thoughts about this “reality” show 
have jumbled around. 

The show is obviously well-done, professionally 
produced, with exotic wonderful places they visit. 
Yet, on another very primal and basic level, the 
show epitomizes what’s wrong with our television 
culture. 

 I am bothered by the fact that the show makes 
a contest out of the most basic fundamental 
building block of society and social structures: the 
relationship between a loving couple. Yes, it is, at 
the end of the day, a contest to see which of the two 
dozen or so beautiful women will go home to the 
farm with Chris. They are all decked out, trying to 
out-do the other in their favors and attention to the 
handsome farm boy. It’s somewhat like two people 
getting all dress up for a date, except Chris can pick 
any apple from the tree. How realistic is that? It’s 
not, it’s TV! 

 In the beginning of the show, all the women 
are happy and having fun. Of course! But it is like 
playing the lotto – only one will “win.” So it’s sad 
and disheartening to see the beautiful women all 
lined up like boxes of cereal while Chris gets to 
decide what he wants for breakfast. It’s not real, 
and while everyone watches from their living 
rooms as women one by one are voted off, viewers 
don’t feel the very real emotional agony that the 
voted-off ones experience. It’s very real pain, and 
all unnecessary, all for the TV experience. 

 Relationships are very real, and the best meetings 
don’t occur in staged TV shows. The best meetings 
occur in everyday real life, where you will see the 
person as they normally are, going about their very 
real life. Meaningful relationships can begin at the 
flea market while examining ancient coins, or at 
Trader Joe’s while selecting apples, or at the park 
while studying plants and animals. Life is that way. 
People meet and love flourishes where you least 
expect it. 

 Real life does not always live up to all the beauty 
and hype of a TV show. Chris the farmer is far 
more likely to meet the right person and have a 
fulfilled life by visiting more of the families in his 
farm community, where he’d find someone already 
in-tune with the life he lives. 

 Each time I have watched the bachelor I get the 
sick feeling that I am watching some sort of horse 
auction where one of the horses gets selected for 
the race track, except these are women, not horses. 

At the root, I find the show demeaning, since it 
reduces the beauty and magic of relationships and 
love to a device of entertainment. I understand the 
popularity of the show, and yet, we are looking at 
very real individuals, who perhaps didn’t realize 
the full ramifications of the web into which they 
entangled themselves when the agreed to be part 
of the show. Viewers who watch the show might 
just be fooled into believing that real relationships 
can and should be developed by such an artificial 
method. But again, real life is very different. The 
TV producers are paying for all the rooms and 
vacations and decorated sets at all the beautiful 
far-flung locations. 

 We watch as Chris is struggling with who to 
pick, and trying to decide with whom he might be 
“falling in love” with, and therefore who he may 
want to spend his life with. And I struggle each 
time the show is on to turn off the TV, and get 
back to the very real work of living life, and finding 
meaning and fulfillment in the real world. 

 As long as we don’t forget that the tale of Chris 
the Farmer and his assorted potential wives is 
fantasy, then we might enjoy the tale. 

 The big losers may be the “contestants” of the 
show: the women who publicly flaunted themselves 
to the star, only to be rejected, and the farmerboy 
himself, who one day may realize that he already 
lived in paradise where his ideal mate could have 
been found in a more organic and private manner. 

An ongoing conversation, let’s call it a 
conversation, has been persisting between me and 
the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. To say it is 
one-sided is, well, let me say, well, it is one-sided. 
However, that is beside the point.

 All summer long, I was explaining why global 
warming was something we need to take care of, 
including the pros and the cons we are witnessing 
right now.

 It heated up a little when the snow started 
falling up north where most of my wife’s relatives 
live. The more they dig out of the snow the more 
the snow falls. Even Niagara Falls is frozen. They 
have not had this much snow in a long time.

 Now the controversy, oops, I mean, the 
conversation, was focused on the weather. I was 
trying to explain to her what this global warming 
was all about. I was doing a good job until the 
snow started falling and refused to quit falling.

 “The earth is getting warmer,” I said with an 
air of authority. I do not know where the air of 
authority comes from but it is not native to my 
family.

 “After all,” I said as I pushed my argument 
forward, “it’s been discussed on television and 
everybody knows if it’s on television it has to be 
true. There are laws.”

 As I said, I was making some progress in my 
argument back in the summer when things were 
quite warm. Then when the snow started coming 
I lost ground in this argument.

 “If,” my wife said quite sarcastically, “the world 
is getting warmer, where is all of this snow coming 
from?”

 Well, I must say, she had me there. Where IS all 
this snow coming from?

 All of her relatives and mine who live up north 
have been snowbound for the past week. It has 
been rather difficult for some of them, especially 
those who work for a living when they cannot get 
to work. It is difficult to keep the roads plowed 
open so the traffic can come and go.

 If the world is getting warmer, how come the 
snow is getting deeper?

 There was one very positive aspect of all this 
snow. It was snowing so much in Washington, DC 
that the government was shut down for two days. 
The politicians could not get to work. I know it is 
only two days, but as citizens we have to take what 
we can get. A politician not in his office means 
that money stays in our pocket. So, “Let it snow, 
let it snow, let it snow.”

 Then, rather unexpectedly, I saw on television 
one of the proponents of global warming, climate 
change now, was explaining all of this. According 
to him, all this snow is a result of global warming.

 I know you have to have a PhD in stupidity to 
understand that. I have often wondered how many 
years somebody has to go in order to get a PhD in 
stupidity. It seems that the more they go to college 
these days, the more stupidity rules the day.

 I must confess that my wife got me to thinking, 
which is a rarity with me. My father told me that 
the more you think the more trouble you get into. 
I am not sure if he was right or wrong, but I am 
not taking the chance. Thinking is off limits with 
me.

 However, she did get me to thinking. I began 
thinking this way; most of the people who believe 
in global warming also believe in evolution. Now, 
if evolution is true and these people believe in 
it, what is their objection? Evolution is simply 
evolution, according to them, that is. The world is 
just evolving from one point to another and there 
is nothing we can really do about it.

 I must confess, I do not understand evolution. 
I do not understand global warming. A lot of that 
stuff is just way beyond my pay grade, as they say. 
Furthermore, I am not going to spend too much of 
my time thinking about things that really have no 
answer to them. One time it’s global warming, the 
next time, it’s global freezing.

 Here is my take on it; in the summer time, it 
is global warming and in the wintertime, it is 
global freezing. You do not have to have a PhD in 
anything to get this picture.

 I am not sure who won this conversation, but it 
did get me to thinking about certain things. The 
major thing is that God is really the one that is in 
control.

 I find it interesting that those who complain the 
most about global warming are the ones who are 
contributing the most to global warming, i.e. jet 
airplanes, mansions, computers and the list goes 
on. If they were really concerned about global 
warming, they would adopt an Amish lifestyle. 

 I think David hit the nail right on the head 
when he wrote, “The earth is the Lord’s, and the 
fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell 
therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and 
established it upon the floods” (Psalm 24: 1-2).

 Most of the people who believe in global 
warming do not believe in God. Those of us who 
do believe in God, however, rest in the truth that 
this world belongs to Him and He is going to take 
right good care of it.

 

 Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family 
of God Fellowship, PO Box 831313, Ocala, FL 
34483. He lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver 
Springs Shores. Call him at 1-866-552-2543 or 
e-mail jamessnyder2@att.net or website www.
jamessnyderministries.com.