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Cosmic Radiations – East West Effect -Discovery of Positron- Cosmic Ray Showers
Cosmic Rays or Cosmic Radiation
Soon after 1900 it was shown by scientists that the air in an ionisation chamber, which was completely protected against penetration of α , β and γ rays, by surrounding it with thick lead walls, was still conductive; and it was thought that the inns causing this conductivity were produced by some rays coming from an unknown source. (more…)
Particle Physics: Part I – What is Particle Physics?
Image via Wikipedia
Gaurav Happy Tiwari
Presents:
What is Particle Physics?
Particle physics is the study of Particles, from what everything is made of. In this section of Physics we study the fundamental particles that make up all of matter, and their mutual interaction.
Everything around us is made up of these particles, you may say, made up of fundamental building blocks of nature. So, what are these building blocks?
In the early ninteenth century, it was believed that atoms were fundamental; they were thought to be the smallest part of nature and were not made up of anything smaller.
After a sharp progress in Physics, experiments discovered that atoms were not fundamental at all, but were made up of two components:
• Positively charged nucleus
• Negatively charged electrons, surrounding the nucleus.
Then the nucleus was probed to see if it was fundamental, but it too was discovered to be made up of something smaller; positive protons and neutral neutrons bound together with the cloud of electrons still surrounding it.
Now that these protons and neutrons were found, it was time to see if they were fundamental. It was discovered that they were made up of smaller particles called “quarks”, which today are believed to be truly fundamental, along with electrons. Furthermore, electrons belong to a family of fundamental particles, which are called “leptons“. Quarks and leptons, along with the forces that allow them to interact, are arranged in a nice neat theory named The Standard Model
I shall be back soon with second part with much more illustrations & with more resources.
Related Articles
- Bad News For Particle Physics (in the United States) (lockergnome.com)
- The Horror of the Higgs (scienceblogs.com)
Dark Matter
A typical galaxy contains much more matter than what we can actually see. In fact, the visible portion of a galaxy represents only about 5 to 10% of total mass of the galaxy. Many studies lead us to define the conclusion that the Universe abounds in matter that we cannot see. This unseen matter is called Dark Matter because either it does not emit light or its light emission is too dim for us to detect.
Normal matter, such as STARS, PLANETS, DUST and MOLECULES , is often called Baryonic Matter because its mass is primarily due to the combined mass of the protons and neutrons, which are combinedly called Baryons, it contains. The mass of electrons is neglected because the mass of an electron is so small relative to the mass of a proton or neutron. Some of the normal matter such as burned out stars and dim interstellar gas, is part of the dark matter in a galaxy.
However, according to various calculations, this dark normal matter is only a small part of the total dark matter. The rest is called Non Baryonic Dark Matter because it does not contain proton and neutrons. What it contains? We know only one member of this type of dark matter…..the neutrinos.
