Word: cosmic
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...moon's ice might have come from comet impacts, which would date it back to the earliest days of our solar system; that ice would hold a record of the cosmic chemistry of those formative times. But the ice could have also been formed by particles streaming from the sun, which gradually combined with lunar minerals to form water, then ice. Or it might have come from Earth, perhaps in the gigantic collision that created the moon in the first place. Whatever its origins, says Delory, the prospect of studying it is really exciting...
Many physicists say that Nielsen and Ninomiya's theory, while intellectually interesting, cannot be accurate because the event that the LHC is trying to recreate already happens in nature. Particle collisions of an energy equivalent to those planned in the LHC occur when high-energy cosmic rays collide with the earth's atmosphere. What's more, some scientists believe that the Tevatron accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (or Fermilab) near Chicago has already created Higgs bosons without incident; the Fermilab scientists are now refining data from their collisions to prove the Higgs' existence. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries...
Nielsen counters that nature might allow a small number of Higgs to be produced by the Tevatron, but would prevent the production of the large number of particles the LHC is anticipated to produce. He also acknowledges that Higgs particles are probably produced in cosmic collisions, but says it's impossible to know whether nature has stopped a great deal of these collisions from happening. "It's possible that God avoids Higgs [particles] only when there are very many of them, but if there are a few, maybe He let's them go," he says...
...size and intricacy of the $9 billion experiment. And he says if he ever needs further proof that the Higgs boson is not abhorrent to nature, he need only spend time with his friend and mentor. "If nature truly did not want us to discover the Higgs, a cosmic ray would have zapped the embryo that became Peter, preventing its development into a physicist," he says...
...Holy Mountain, he combined the two by describing his travels around the Middle East in the footsteps of the 6th century monk John Moschos. Here, he brings a powerful restraint and clarity to precisely the two subjects - India and faith - that cause most observers to fly off into cosmic vagueness or spleen. The result is a deeply respectful and sympathetic portrait of those modest souls seldom mentioned in the headlines. "How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?" G.K. Chesterton wrote at the beginning of his book Orthodoxy. In Nine...