Here’s What the Higgs Boson Sounds Like
The discovery of the Higgs boson was a singular event, but it was also the product of a long effort: the Atlas project, which used CERN’s Large Hadron Collider to analyze particle acceleration. The existence of the Higgs was confirmed — or, well, the existence of a particle that “looks for all the world” to be the Higgs was confirmed — when groups of researchers detected a “bump” corresponding to a particle weighing 126 GeV, making it consistent with Dr. Higgs’ mysterious particule.
The Higgs, in other words, was discovered due to a data anomaly. And now, that data set — and that anomaly — have been set to music. Or, more precisely, music has emerged from that data set and that anomaly.
That music being, precisely, an upbeat melody that resembles the habanera, a tango-like Cuban dance.
Science, people, that’s what it sounds like.
Reblogged 11 months ago from theatlantic
