PhD: The Higgs Boson Explained

[bystander]

PhD: The Higgs Boson Explained

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[neufer]

<<The English language has a number of words for indefinite and fictitious numbers — inexact terms of indefinite size, used for comic effect, for exaggeration, as placeholder names, or when precision is unnecessary or undesirable. One technical term for such words is "non-numerical vague quantifier".

Umpteen is a term for an unspecified but reasonably large number, used in a humorous fashion or to imply that it is not worth the effort to pin down the actual figure. The Oxford English Dictionary reports its use in 1918, and offers the alternative spelling umteen. It agrees that the derivation is from umpty, whose etymology is given as "A fanciful verbal repr. of the dash (—) in Morse code."

Words ending in the sound "-illion", most commonly zillion, jillion, gadzillion and gazillion, are often used as fictitious names for an unspecified, large number by analogy to names of large numbers such as million, billion and trillion. Their size is dependent upon the context, but can typically be considered large enough to be unfathomable. These terms are often used as hyperbole or for comic effect, or in loose, unconfined conversation to present an un-guessably large number. Since these are undefined, they have no mathematical validity and no accepted order, since none is necessarily larger or smaller than any of the others. The "-illion" concept is so well established that it is the basis of a joke, in which a speaker misunderstands the word Brazilian (being from the nation of Brazil) as an enormous number called "brazillion". Many similar words are used, such as bajillion, bazillion, dillion, fantillion, gadzillion, gagillion, gajillion, godzillion (a reference to the colossal Japanese fictional monster), gorillion, hojillion, kabillion, kajillion, katrillion, killion, robillion, skillion, squillion, ridicullion, and umptillion. These words can be transformed into ordinal numbers or fractions by the usual pattern of appending the suffix -th, e.g., "I asked her for the zillionth time."

Sagan's number is the number of stars in the observable universe. It is named in honor of Carl Sagan. This number is reasonably well defined, since we know what stars are and what the observable universe is, but its value is not known with any certainty (it is presently estimated to be approximately 70 sextillion.>>

[Ann]

I like "Sagan's number". Its numerical value is about 70 sextillion? For those of little knowledge, like me, I would appreciate an explanation of "sextillion".

Ann

[neufer]

I like "Sagan's number". Its numerical value is about 70 sextillion?
For those of little knowledge, like me, I would appreciate an explanation of "sextillion".

Sagan's number ~ 70 sextillion (U.S. & modern British) = 70 x 10²¹ ~ 265 billion galaxies (of 265 billion stars).

[neufer]

[b][color=#0000FF]Ancient Roman sextillion pazooza coin[/color][/b]

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I like "Sagan's number". Its numerical value is about 70 sextillion?
For those of little knowledge, like me, I would appreciate an explanation of "sextillion".

Sagan's number ~ 70 sextillion (stars)
70 x 10²¹ ~ 265 billion galaxies (of 265 billion stars).

A teaspoon of water contains ~ 165 sextillion water molecules.

[b][color=#FF0000][size=135]At top right is the large crater [u]Sextilia[/u],[/size] which has bright material revealed along its inner rim.[/color] [color=#0000FF]The dark crater in the center is Laelia. Near the lower left edge, just horizontal from Laelia, is the butterfly-shaped Helena crater. ( NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/ MPS/ DLR/ IDA. Edited by J. Major.)[/color][/b]

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The Bright and Dark Side of Vesta’s Craters
by Jason Major on May 8, 2012

<<Bright craters, dark craters… craters shaped like butterflies… they’re all represented here in a panorama made from images acquired by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, currently in orbit around the asteroid Vesta. I stitched two images together (using a third for gap fill-in) that were originally acquired by Dawn’s framing camera in October 2011 and released last week. Because the angle of sunlight is pretty close to straight-on, there’s not a whole lot of relief in the original images so I bumped that contrast up a bit as well, to help bring out Vesta’s terrain.

On Thursday, May 10, NASA will host a news conference at 11 a.m. PDT (2 p.m. EDT) to present a new analysis of the giant asteroid Vesta using data from the agency’s Dawn spacecraft. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website. For streaming video, downlink and scheduling information visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

The event will also be streamed live on Ustream with a moderated chat available at http://www.ustream.com/nasajpl2. Questions may also be asked via Twitter using the hashtag #asknasa.The event will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington, broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

[bystander]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Higgs Ripples in the Koi Pond
Discover Blogs | Cosmic Variance | Sean Carroll | 2012 May 10

On local TV last night, I somehow got reporter Dave Malkoff to take a stab at explaining quantum field theory: the world is made of fields, but we only notice the ripples within them, which we see as particles. Something about Angelina Jolie in there at the end as well.