Chapman University physicist Yakir Aharonov, left, and Francois Englert of the University of Brussels, in Laguna Beach on Wednesday. Photo courtesy Chapman University.
Some of the world’s most prominent physicists are gathering at Chapman University this week to discuss exotic findings, including the apparent discovery of the so-called “God” particle as well as bizarre measurements that challenge our notions of time.
They are also honoring the 80th birthday of Yakir Aharonov, a Chapman physicist who received the Medal of Science from President Obama in 2010.
The conference kicks off with a public talk by some of the physicists at Chapman’s Wallace All Faiths Chapel at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.
Aharonov is best known as co-discoverer of the Aharonov-Bohm effect, when a charged particle is influenced by a magnetic field with which it has never come into contact. It’s a strange property of the quantum world — that of tiny particles — known as “non-locality.”
But much of his work is also focused on what physicists call “weak measurements,” which, repeated many times, reveal a subtle influence of the future upon the past.
The measurements suggest, Aharonov says, that in the quantum realm, the present is a kind of collision between two sets of information — one flowing from the past, and one flowing from the future.
Aharonov spent one morning this week on the sun-drenched balcony of the “quantum house” in Laguna Beach rented by his colleague, Chapman associate physics professor Jeff Tollaksen, discussing the mind-bending implications of modern physics with another famous physicist, Francois Englert.
Englert, also attending the Chapman conference, was one of the physicists who first postulated the existence of the Higgs boson, popularly called the “God particle.” In one of the most significant physics announcements in decades, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, on the Swiss-French border, revealed last month that they had found a new particle that matches the properties of the long-sought Higgs.
They said more work must be done to make sure it is the Higgs and not a different, more exotic particle.
Many scientists are not fond of the term “God” particle, though it has made its way into common usage. And Englert even joked about calling it the “Higgs” boson, since his theoretical work suggesting such a particle preceded that of Peter Higgs.
“The only first thing we can say for sure is that it is not for scientific reasons,” Englert said when asked why the name “Higgs” ended up sticking to the particle.
It might have resulted from another scientist’s mix-up of publication dates for scientific papers on the particle, he said.
Nevertheless, Aharonov said he believed Englert was likely to receive a Nobel prize for his work.
“I’m sure he will get the prize,” Aharonov said. “I don’t know if it will be this year or next year.”
Englert laughed but did not venture his own prediction.
The particle, which Englert calls the scalar boson, is critical to the standard model of quantum physics. It is the last particle predicted by the theory that had not been discovered, and it would be an indication of the existence a field throughout the universe that endows other particles with mass.
Like many physicists, Englert said he hopes efforts to confirm the finding of the Higgs will yield evidence of new physics.
“Within our theory it is quite possible to find something — we hope to find something — beyond the standard model,” Englert said. “That would be the most interesting thing.”
Aharonov also spoke of his own “weak measurement” discoveries, the implications of which he is still working to understand.
Guided by such measurements, he said, “I was able to reformulate quantum mechanics, and say that, in fact, the particle in the present is described by two informations instead of one — one information coming from the past experiment, going towards the future, and then the other information, which I discovered in the future, in fact goes back in time and adds information to the present.”
The conference, called the “Aharonov 80th Birthday Conference,” lasts from Thursday through Saturday.
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