Our Fragile Global Economy…

“Greed is good,” insisted Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street. Most of us disagree. Recent events in the mortgage lending industry prove us right.

The “subprime loan crisis” has been making headlines since it began in August. It refers to the fact that a relatively high percentage of mortgages offered to people with significant probability of default have gone sour.

The moniker is a bit misleading, though. The crisis we are witnessing starts from risky loan deals but will extend to all varieties of credit and risk: consumer loans, credit cards, businesses, and so on. It is just about to heat up but the roots of this crisis were laid years ago.

It’s a credit crisis, but credit per se is not the problem. The problem lies in how credit was traded from one hand to another on an unprecedented scale. This was done through financial innovations called derivatives.

In recent memory – translated as in the last few weeks of media glare – we have noticed and witnessed a US and to some extent global financial meltdown of historic proportions. Most of media and the people quoted (as experts by media) are calling it the greatest threat to “world” economy since the Great Depression of 1930s.

Addison Wiggin and Bill Bonner wrote the classic, must-read, “The Empire of Debt”. The US Empire, the book surmised, had grown economically weak and unsustainable. It has burdened itself with too much debt. Its collapse is imminent. From the roots of this book has emerged one of the most talked about documentaries: “I. O. U.S.A.” (the “O” as in “owe”) which highlights the extraordinary debt levels of the US government. A debt that is estimated at USD 410,000 per full-time worker in America – about 9x the average annual per capita income in USA.

So here we are yet again in the midst of another "global economic crisis." From the hilltops of Davos, Switzerland, Morgan Stanley's permabear Stephen Roach has shouted warnings of potential economic "Armageddon." Superinvestor George Soros designated the current state of the global economy "the worst market crisis in 60 years." Bill Clinton labeled it "the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression" -- even as global stocks responded by slumping 7.7% in January -- the worst start to an investing year since Morgan Stanley began publishing data in the 1970s.

It seems that certain quarters had been warning of this for a long time. In it’s public pronouncement – “Global systemic crisis / September 2008 - Phase of collapse of US real economy” - LEAP/E2020 – had predicted – “the end of the third quarter of 2008 will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of the global systemic crisis. At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the crisis (see table below) will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart of the systems concerned, on the frontline of which the United States, epicentre of the current crisis. In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into a collapse of the real economy, final socio-economic stage of the serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles and of the pursuance of the US dollar fall. The collapse of US real economy means the virtual freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies in large numbers, companies and public services closing down massively,...”

It has a dire warning – “On the occasion of the second anniversary of the publication of our famous “Global systemic crisis Alert” which toured the world in February 2006 (4), LEAP/E2020 wishes to remind that we are now resolutely stepping into an era with no historical precedent. Our researchers insisted on that many times in the last two years: any comparison with the previous crises of our modern economy would be fallacious. It is neither a “remake” of the 1929 crisis nor a repetition of the 1970s oil crises or 1987 stock market crisis. It is truly a global systemic crisis, that is to say a crisis affecting the entire planet and questioning the very foundations of the international system upon which the world was organised in the last decades”

So wasn’t anybody paying attention?

Looks like it. Although some institutions/ people did see…

As far back as April, 2008 – IMF warned – “Credit Crisis Is Broadening”. The widening and deepening fallout from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis could have profound financial system and macroeconomic implications, according to the IMF's latest Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR).

"Financial markets remain under considerable stress because of a combination of three factors," said Jaime Caruana, head of the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department. "First, the balance sheets of financial institutions are weakening; second, the deleveraging process continues and also that asset prices continue to fall; and, finally, the macroeconomic environment is more challenging because of the weakening global growth," he added.

The most profound aspect of this meltdown is that the crisis has weakened the capital and funding of large systemically important financial institutions, raising systemic risks.

So how did it begin?

According to an article on Wikipedia - The subprime mortgage crisis is an ongoing economic problem which became more apparent during 2007 and 2008, and is characterized by contracted liquidity in the global credit markets and banking system. The downturn in the U.S. housing market, risky lending and borrowing practices, and excessive individual and corporate debt levels have caused multiple adverse effects on the world economy. The crisis has passed through various stages, exposing pervasive weaknesses in the global financial system and regulatory framework

The crisis began with the bursting of the United States housing bubble and high default rates on "subprime" and adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), beginning in approximately 2005-2006. For several years prior to that, an increase in loan incentives such as easy initial terms and a long-term trend of rising housing prices had encouraged borrowers to assume difficult mortgages in the belief they would be able to quickly refinance at more favorable terms. However, once housing prices started to drop moderately in 2006–2007 in many parts of the U.S., refinancing became more difficult. Defaults and foreclosure activity increased dramatically, as easy initial terms expired, home prices failed to go up as anticipated, and ARM interest rates reset higher. Foreclosures accelerated in the United States in late 2006 and triggered a global financial crisis through 2007 and 2008. During 2007, nearly 1.3 million U.S. housing properties were subject to foreclosure activity, up 79% from 2006.

Major banks and other financial institutions around the world have reported losses of approximately US$435 billion as of 17 July 2008. In addition, the ability of corporations to obtain funds through the issuance of commercial paper was affected. This aspect of the crisis is consistent with a credit crunch. The liquidity concerns drove central banks around the world to take action to provide funds to member banks to encourage lending to worthy borrowers and to restore faith in the commercial paper markets.

Who is to blame?

According to LEAP/E2020 - It is always a repeated astonishment for our team to see the degree of incapacity of these same experts and managers in understanding the specific nature of the phenomenon currently unfolding. According to them, this crisis would only be a usual crisis but bigger. As a matter of fact that's how the financial media reflect the dominant interpretations of the ongoing crisis. According to our team, this approach is not only intellectually lazy; it is also morally guilty, because it has for a main consequence to prevent their readers (whether they are simple citizens, private investors or public or private organization managers) from preparing for the upcoming shocks.

They continue their forecast of doom - For this reason, in opposition to all what can be read in the mainstream media always eager to conceal the truth and serve the interests of those who rule them, LEAP/E2020 wishes to remind that it is first and foremost in the United States that the systemic crisis is taking an unprecedented shape (the « Very Great US Depression » as our team decided to call it in January 2007) because it is around this country, and this country alone, that the world got progressively organized after the second World War. The various issues of the GEAB extensively described this situation. In short, it appears to be useful to make clear that neither Europe nor Asia have a negative saving rate, a full-scale housing crisis throwing millions of citizens out of their homes, a free-falling currency, abysmal public and trade deficits, an economic recession and, on top of all this, a number of costly wars to finance.

So is there a silver lining for Asia and Europe?

Time will tell… for now, we, as individuals, can do little except watch this unprecedented systemic crisis unfold and reshape the financial landscape of this planet. The tectonic shifts in balance of financial power due to collapse of pillars of US economy (such as Lehman) is definitely reshaping the world order – but not with war this time, but with economics… Asia’s rise was anyway foretold… :-)

Global Warming and its effects on Planetary Climate

There is a lot of buzz on the planet about global warming and its adverse effects on planet’s ecology, our society and civilization at large. But what is all this debate about?

Thanks to the media attention, many people are concerned about global warming, but they do not know what to do about it. The first thing is to understand the problem and its apparent root cause: increase in the amount of Carbon Dioxide in planet’s atmosphere or is it?

According to Victor Miguel Ponce – “The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere determines to a large extent the present world climate, with temperature being an important component. Through geologic time, carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere from natural sources such as volcanic eruptions and weathering of rocks, has been gradually used by vegetation, through the process of photosynthesis. In the past two-and-a-half billion years, carbon has been temporarily stored above the Earth's surface as standing biomass and litter. During this time, excess quantities of carbon were permanently stored below the surface as fossil deposits of coal, petroleum, and natural gas”.

However, it is an opinion which although backed with some facts, is not unanimous.

There is a somewhat informational site from Environmental Defense Fund which provides arguments against the common misunderstandings that people (in general) have about global warming. It can be accessed here à Global Warming Myths and Facts. There even a climate atlas available on this site.

Even the National Geographic has covered this topic of literally global concern. So it is happening? The answer is emphatic yes. There is more and more energy being pumped into global weather/ climate system causing ever more violent weather – hurricanes, stronger monsoons, etc. An upsurge in the amount of extreme weather events, such as wildfires, heat waves, and strong tropical storms, is also attributed in part to climate change by some experts. Tragedy on human life is increasing since humanity is more spread and numerous on the planet now than it ever was in the entire history of our species or the planet.

T J Nelson provides an insight into cold facts (contrary to mass hysteria) about global warming in this illuminating article. I strongly recommend a reading. In this article, Nelson attempts to provide a balanced and scientific view of facts related to global warming. His assertion is essentially this – current hysteria about global warming is largely a hype created by media and certain so called scientific papers.

According to him – “Although carbon dioxide is capable of raising the Earth's overall temperature, the IPCC's predictions of catastrophic temperature increases produced by carbon dioxide have been challenged by many scientists. In particular, the importance of water vapor is frequently overlooked by environmental activists and by the media. The above discussion shows that the large temperature increases predicted by many computer models are unphysical and inconsistent with results obtained by basic measurements. Skepticism is warranted when considering computer-generated projections of global warming that cannot even predict existing observations”.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/ tries to debunk the entire mythology around global warming. This article (or set of it) actually tries to delink the “greenhouse effect” and global warming and the entire concept of climate change. It is very reassuring to the skeptic in me that there are people out there who are actually questioning blind following and mass hysteria being created by certain circles.

So is there no cause for worry? Have humans caused this global warming? The opinion though not unanimous, is overwhelmingly in favor of human causality. To know in a more coherent manner, one has to understand a few facts first:

• There is general agreement amongst scientists of this planet that our planet was “The Earth” was formed about 4,540,000,000 years ago – that’s 4.54 billion years.
• At the time of beginning and for quite sometime after that, the Earth's atmosphere contained very little oxygen (less than 1% oxygen pressure).
• Popular belief among the scientific community has it that early plants started to develop more than 2 billion years ago, probably about 2,700,000,000.
• It is an established fact that through photosynthesis, plants uptake carbon dioxide into the biosphere as organic matter, and release oxygen as a byproduct.
• Through geological ages, oxygen accumulated gradually in the atmosphere, reaching a value of about 21% of atmospheric gases at the present time. So our planet and its current atmosphere were terra-formed slowly over millions of years and concerted action of biological agents. It is not a “natural” occurrence, rather it would be safe to put it in these terms – life shaped earth’s climate and atmosphere to suit itself and brought about the present distribution of gases which we breathe.
• It is also believed that through geological ages, surplus organic matter has been sequestered in the lithosphere as fossil organic materials (coal, petroleum, and natural gas).
• Early animals (the first organisms with external shells) started to develop around 600,000,000 years ago
• Animals operate in the opposite way than plants: they take up oxygen, burn organic matter (food), and release carbon dioxide as a byproduct
• Early humans (Australopithecus anamensis) began to develop about 4,100,000 years ago
• Cool climatic conditions have prevailed during the past 1,000,000 years. The species Homo sapiens evolved under these climatic conditions
• Homo sapiens, that’s us, dates back to no more than 400,000 years.
• Estimates for the variety Homo sapiens sapiens, to which all humans belong, range from 130,000 to 195,000 years old
• The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was as low as 190 ppm during the last Ice Age, about 21,000 years ago.
• The last Ice Age began to recede about 20,000 years ago
• The agricultural revolution, where humans converted forests and rangelands into farms, began to develop about 10,000 years ago.
• The agricultural revolution caused a reduction in standing biomass in the biosphere and reduced the uptake of carbon dioxide in midlatitudinal regions, indirectly contributing, however so slightly, to global warming.
• The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased gradually from a low of 190 ppm 21,000 year ago, to about 290 ppm in the year 1900, i.e., at an average rate of 0.00478 ppm per year
• The industrial revolution, where humans developed machines (artificial animals, since they consume fuels, which are mostly organic matter), began in England about 240 years ago (1767).
• In October 1999, the world's population reached 6,000,000,000, which is double that of the year 1959 (the doubling occurred in 40 years)
• The global fleet of motor vehicles is estimated at 830,000,000 (2006).
• The global fleet of motor vehicles has been recently growing at the rate of 16,000,000 per year.
• Motor vehicles (cars, trucks, buses, and scooters) account for 80% of all transport-related energy use
• The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which was at 290 ppm in the year 1900, rose to 316 ppm in 1959, or at an average 0.44 ppm per year
• Measurements of the concentration of carbon dioxide since 1959 (316 ppm) have revealed an increase to 378 ppm in 2004, or at an average 1.38 ppm per year
• The concentration of carbon dioxide has increased an average of about 1.8 ppm per year over the past two decades
• The year 1998 was the warmest of record. The year 2002 was the second warmest (to that date). The year 2003 was the third warmest (to that date). The year 2004 was the fourth warmest (to that date). The year 2005 equaled 1998 as the warmest of record. The year 2007 equaled 1998 as the second warmest of record.
• About 75% of the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is due to the burning of fossil fuels
• The remaining 25% is attributed to anthropogenic changes in land use, which have the effect of reducing the net uptake of carbon dioxide. Anthropogenic changes in land use occur when forests are converted to rangelands, rangelands to agriculture, and agriculture to urban areas.
• Other patterns of land degradation--deforestation, overgrazing, over-cultivation, desertification, and salinization--reduce the net uptake of carbon dioxide, indirectly contributing, however slightly, to global warming.
  

What's could Happen?

A follow-up report by the IPCC released in April 2007 warned that global warming could lead to large-scale food and water shortages and have catastrophic effects on wildlife.

• Sea level could rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 to 59 centimeters) by century's end, the IPCC's February 2007 report projects. Rises of just 4 inches (10 centimeters) could flood many South Seas islands and swamp large parts of Southeast Asia.
• Some hundred million people live within 3 feet (1 meter) of mean sea level, and much of the world's population is concentrated in vulnerable coastal cities. In the U.S., Louisiana and Florida are especially at risk.
• Glaciers around the world could melt, causing sea levels to rise while creating water shortages in regions dependent on runoff for fresh water.
• Strong hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and other natural disasters may become commonplace in many parts of the world. The growth of deserts may also cause food shortages in many places.
• More than a million species face extinction from disappearing habitat, changing ecosystems, and acidifying oceans.
• The ocean's circulation system, known as the ocean conveyor belt, could be permanently altered, causing a mini-ice age in Western Europe and other rapid changes.
• At some point in the future, warming could become uncontrollable by creating a so-called positive feedback effect. Rising temperatures could release additional greenhouse gases by unlocking methane in permafrost and undersea deposits, freeing carbon trapped in sea ice, and causing increased evaporation of water.
  

We need to remember, Dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago – primarily due to climate change. It wasn’t only the asteroid which struck the earth and wiped out 99% species on land and oceans. It wasn’t just the impact – but the climate change induced by that impact which killed the species.

Can we do anything to stem this rising tide?

Sure! Just follow the tips on this wonderful blog. The Grinning planet provides some clues – which I would have anyway recommended even if our planet wasn’t threatened with global warming and so called catastrophic climate change!

Other resources:

• global-warming myths and facts at Undo-It.org
• climate change science at RealClimate.org
  

Problem solving. Keep it simple and move on

This is really simple and interesting. Very often we get carried away in problem solving. The general idea should be to keep it simple and move on.

For example, when NASA began the launch of astronauts into space, they found out that the pens wouldn't work at zero gravity.

In order to solve this problem, they hired Andersen Consulting (Accenture - today).

It took them one decade and 12 million dollars. They developed a pen that worked at zero gravity, upside down, Under water, on practically any surface including crystal and in a temperature range from below freezing to over 300 degrees C.

The Russians used a pencil.

Moral of the story: Complex and elaborate solution are not always the best fit, reality can be simple and it should be our Endeavour to keep it simple!

"Yog" - not Yoga

What is Yoga?

The word yoga, in Hindi pronounced as Yog, is derived from Sanskrit word yuj which means to join or unite. Yoga is an ancient Indian science and art. The practice of yoga integrates the body, mind and soul. Yoga can be practiced by all irrespective of religion, colour, caste, creed, sex and race. A practitioner of Yoga is called a Yogi (unisex term) or Yogini (for female).

According to Wikipedia – Major branches of a yoga include Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Hatha Yoga. Raja Yoga, compiled in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and known simply as yoga in the context of Hindu philosophy, is part of the Samkhya tradition. Many other Hindu texts discuss aspects of yoga, including the Vedas, Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Shiva Samhita and various Tantras

What we know as yoga are the Asana-s or body postures. They are only a part of the yogic science. Yoga is the science of managing our mind. Managing our mind means that we can do the task of our choice, for the time we want, without mental or physical strain. Maintaining a happy disposition despite the world around us and the difficulties we face.

Asanas balance the energies of body and mind helping us to regain and maintain health and wellbeing. The body postures are very gentle and will not cause exhaustion or fatigue, but they will help to release the stiffness and exertion of hours of office work sitting in front of the computer etc. they will make the body flexible and strong. After the practice one should feel refreshed, energetic and peaceful.

Pranayama or breathing techniques have a profound effect on body and mind. Correct breathing nourishes every cell with oxygen. Breathing is directly linked to the mind, the pattern of breath changes with different states of mind, emotions and stress-levels. Using this we can calm the mind with breathing techniques. Only a relaxed mind can be attentive and creative.

Some good resources on Yoga can be found on the about.com site. A more westernized view of Yoga can be found at the Yoga Journal.

But the best resource that I found on Yoga is this site ABC of Yoga.com! Although it too has a somewhat westernized outlook on Yoga, the compilation of information in one place along with the real world benefits for humdrum mortals like us instead of the wisdom of ancients is what attracted me.

Speaking of ancients - the ancient seers laid down four ways by which the practitioner can attain Samadhi or spiritual salvation, the goal of yoga. These are:

Jnana Marg: The path of knowledge.

Karma Marg: The path of action.

Bhakti Marg: The path of selfless devotion.

Dhyan Marg: The path of introspection whereby pupil learns to cleanse the body, control the senses and restrains fluctuations of the mind. Dhyan Marg is clearly explained by Sage Patanjali.

History of Yoga

While the most ancient mystic practices are vaguely hinted at in the Vedas, the ascetic practices (tapas) are referenced in the Brāhmaṇas (900 BCE and 500 BCE), early commentaries on the Vedas. The Rig Veda, earliest of the Hindu scripture mentions the practice. Robert Schneider and Jeremy Fields write, "Yoga asanas were first prescribed by the ancient Vedic texts thousands of years ago and are said to directly enliven the body's inner intelligence." Certainly breath control and curbing the mind was practiced since the Vedic times. It is believed that yoga was fundamental to Vedic ritual, especially to chanting the sacred hymns.

In the Upanishads, an early reference to meditation is made in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, one of the earliest Upanishads (approx. 900 BCE). The main textual sources for the evolving concept of Yoga are the middle Upanishads, (ca. 400 BCE), the Mahabharata (5th c. BCE) including the Bhagavad Gita (ca. 200 BCE), and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (200 BCE-300 CE).

Several seals discovered at Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300–1700 BC) sites depict figures in a yoga- or meditation-like posture, "a form of ritual discipline, suggesting a precursor of yoga" that point to Harappan devotion to "ritual discipline and concentration", according to Archaeologist Gregory Possehl. According to prof. Egbert Richter Ushanas, concerning the IVC seals he has said, "All the seals are based on Vedas -- Rig Veda and Atharva Veda

Sage Patanjali

Sage Patanjali was the first person to present the ancient tradition of yoga in a systematic way. Thus he is considered the father of yoga. In his most important work- The Yog Sutras of Patanjali, he presented an eight fold path for attaining salvation. The path is called Ashtang Yog i.e. it is eight part yoga.

Ashtanga Yoga

The eight limbs of Ashtanga Yoga are-

1. Yam - Social Disciplines
a. Ahimsa - (Non Violence)
b. Satya - (Truth)
c. Asteya - (Non Stealing)
d. Brahmacharya - (Self control)
e. Aparigraha - (Non Hoarding)
2. Niyam - Personal Disciplines
a. Sauch - (Cleanliness)
b. Santosh - (Contentment)
c. Tapas - (Great Effort)
d. Svadhyay - (Introspection)
e. Ishwar Pranidhan - (Faith in God)
3. Asan - (Postures)
4. Pranayam - (Breath Control)
5. Pratyahar - (Withdrawal of Senses)
6. Dharana - (Concentration)
7. Dhyan - (Meditation)
8. Samadhi - (Union)

Large Hadron Collider turned on – the world didn’t end…

So… the LHC or the Large Hadron Collider was completed and turned ON last Wednesday and yet the world didn’t end… of course there is always the funny side to anything monumental. Check out this website which purports to have two live webcams at CERN LHC site…. http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

News that a group of Greek hackers had managed to “momentary” access to computer systems of CERN has been making rounds. As one insider put it – “it is hard enough to make these things work if no one is messing with it” – I totally sympathize the “poor” scientists – they take years to build a system which is hard enough to get up and running and there are people who want to bring it down – just for the kicks?

The whole idea goes way back. The first key experiment was conducted in 1909, under the direction of Ernest Rutherford. When Rutherford shot alpha particles at a wafer-thin sheet of gold foil, a small proportion of the particles bounced right back, a phenomenon that he described as “almost as incredible as if you fired a fifteen-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back to hit you.” Rutherford’s work led to the realization that most of an atom’s mass was concentrated in a tiny area, the nucleus. “All science is either physics or stamp-collecting,” he is supposed to have said.

Since Rutherford’s discovery, particle physics has provided one extraordinary—if increasingly implausible-sounding—revelation after another: first protons and neutrons, then antimatter, gluons, neutrinos, and quarks. In 1967, the existence of particles to mediate the weak force, which is responsible for radioactive decay, was theorized; in 1983, at CERN, these particles—the W and the Z—were observed and their properties measured. In 1977, the existence of what became known as the “top” quark was predicted; in 1995, at Fermilab, in Illinois, it, too, was found.

And yet, for all its triumphs, the field has been haunted by failure. The more physicists have learned about the way matter behaves at its most fundamental level, the more acutely they have become aware that something—a big something—is missing from their accounts. Among the many possibilities proposed for what’s often called “new physics” is that the universe actually consists of tiny strands (or strings) of energy; that it contains several dimensions beyond those that we perceive; that it is full of mysterious particles—“sparticles”—that have yet to be detected; that it is not a universe at all but a multiverse; and that it began not with a bang but with a splat.

LHC is considered the best hope for finding some answers. Sean has a take on what the LHC will find and some percentages of probability to back it up… take a look!

And just in case you are the home enthusiast – here is the site for DO-IT-AT-HOME and contribute your computer’s idle time (which must be really huge since you are reading this stuff :-)) – on a similar note as that of the hugely successful SETI@Home project…

The GOD Particle!

In my last entry, I talked about the LHC or Large Hadron collider. One of the mission parameters of building the LHC was to find clues to or discover outright the Higgs Boson – also popularly titled the God Particle.

According to Wikipedia article – “The Higgs boson or BEH Mechanism, popularized as the "God Particle", is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics; it is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed. Experimental observation would elucidate how otherwise massless elementary particles nevertheless manage to construct mass in matter. More specifically, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons. Elementary particle masses, and the differences between electromagnetism (caused by the photon) and the weak force (caused by the W and Z bosons), are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter; thus, if it exists, the Higgs boson is an integral and pervasive component of the material world. “

As of yet, no experiment has directly detected the existence of the Higgs boson, but this may change as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN produces results.

Did all the information given above make any sense to you? Okay, you are not alone in having a significant challenge in understanding what elementary particle physics to scientists is literally these days J. Alright, let’s go back to the basics here.

Get physicists and cosmologists talking about their work and they will tell you that there are elegant theories and messy ones. Almost all of them believe the universe conforms to an elegant one. A central goal of today's physics, in fact, is to show that at its very beginning, the universe was ordered and unified. But this unity didn't last for long. Just instants after the Big Bang, as the explosion cooled and its contents scattered, the cosmos' forces and matter differentiated. The universe fell from a state of perfect grace into its current complexity, in a cosmic parallel to Adam and Eve.

Many great minds — Democritus, Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, and Albert Einstein — took giant steps toward bringing the universe's lost unity out of hiding. In 1964, Peter Higgs, a shy scientist in Edinburgh, added his name to that list by coming up with an ingenious theory that gave scientists the tools to explain how two classes of particles, which now appear to be different, were once one and the same. His theory proposes the existence of a single particle responsible for imparting mass to all things — a speck so precious it has comes to be known as the "God particle." The scientific term for it is the Higgs boson, and to find it physicists are counting on the most powerful particle accelerator ever constructed: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, a 17-mile underground circuit that took 25 years to plan and $6 billion to build

Basically, all the known forces in the universe are manifestations of four fundamental forces, the strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational forces. But why four? Why not just one master force? Those who joined the quest for a single unified master force declared that the first step toward unification had been achieved with the discovery of the discovery of the W and Z particles, the intermediate vector bosons, in 1983. This brought experimental verification of particles whose prediction had already contributed to the Nobel Prize awarded to Weinberg, Salam, and Glashow in 1979. Combining the weak and electromagnetic forces into a unified "electroweak" force, these great advances in both theory and experiment provide encouragement for moving on to the next step, the "grand unification" necessary to include the strong interaction.

One rather comic and more understandable (at least to the masses) explanation of what Higgs Boson is all about are given here. In 1993, the UK Science Minister, William Waldegrave, challenged physicists to produce an answer that would fit on one page to the question 'What is the Higgs boson, and why do we want to find it?' The winning entries can be found here.

As usual in all things related to human discoveries, there is a rumor flying around that the so called God Particle may have already been found at the Tevatron, an accelerator located outside of Chicago. This isn't the first time a story like this has circulated. Until the LHC opens, the Tevatron remains the largest accelerator in the world. Among its most significant past discoveries is another standard-model particle, the top quark. And in 2009, it will shut its doors forever. Like the LHC, the Tevatron was built with the Higgs in mind, and as time runs out for America's biggest atom smasher, some nervy experimentalists have jumped the gun. The full text of this article can be found here.

For those who like to have a little more technical details on the whole matter (pun intendedJ) can access the articles at Hyperphysics. And like everything else, human capacity for trivializing the profound and thus making it less frightening to masses has been equally at work for Higgs Boson as well. You can find “music” inspired by the god particle at the so called edge of science at the official site of Higgs Boson!

The Higgs boson has appeared in several works of fiction in popular culture. These references rarely reflect the expected properties of the hypothetical elementary particle, or do so only vaguely and often imbue it with fantastic properties. The curious and long list of such fiction works can be accessed via this article!

There is more serious stuff at the scientific American on the questions related to Higgs Boson.

All the theories apart, to me the search for this ultimate particle is part of the overall quest of humankind to understand itself and its origins. We are, after all, made of star stuff. All that constitutes us was once manufactured in the nuclear furnaces of old and giant stars scattered throughout the cosmos. I find this quest irresistible.

Next, I’ll be talking about the wave-particle duality… watch out for this space :-)

Doomsday Machine –Large Hadron Collider (LHC): Is end of the world near?

As the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) nears completion and commissioning, there are wild talks and even protests about its potential impact on the world and the universe in general.

But what is LHC and what is the reason behind the human Endeavour to build a machine such as this or monstrosity as it is being called by some.

As put in science daily – “Particle colliders creating black holes that could devour the Earth. Sounds like a great Hollywood script. But, according to UC Santa Barbara Physics Professor Steve Giddings, it's pure fiction”.

So come, explore with me the conundrum behind arguably perhaps the greatest scientific effort by humankind and I really say human kind and not an individual since this work is being conducted by an international team – making it a truly human Endeavour rather than a work of a single intellectual giant like Einstein, Newton, etc… The LHC is the world's largest and the highest-energy particle accelerator. It is funded and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

What is Large Hadron Collider or LHC?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground and is being built in a circular tunnel 27 km in circumference. The tunnel is buried around 50 to 175 m. underground. It straddles the Swiss and French borders on the outskirts of Geneva. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionize our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

The idea of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) began in the early 1980s. The first approval of the project by the CERN Council occurred in December 1994 and the first civil engineering construction work began in April 1998.

You can take a photo tour of LHC by clicking here

There is another very good collection of LHC related photographs at the Big Picture.

A graphical display of all components of LHC can be found here.

Complete workings of LHC can be found at CERN Site.

Why is LHC needed?

If we are to believe the scientists – this is all related to unfinished business of Newton and perhaps Einstein as well. Newton told us what the effects of gravitation are and how to calculate the effects. But told nothing about the nature of gravity – what is it after all and what causes it?

Einstein went a step further and combined Space and time. And then went on to explain gravity as the after effect of large mass curving space-time. This is all fine, but it still doesn’t tell us what gives us mass at all?

And it is here that we ask the crucial question - What is the origin of mass? Why do tiny particles weigh the amount they do? Why do some particles have no mass at all? At present, there are no established answers to these questions. The most likely explanation may be found in the Higgs boson, a key undiscovered particle that is essential for the Standard Model to work. First hypothesized in 1964, it has yet to be observed. The ATLAS and CMS experiments will be actively searching for signs of this elusive particle.

Everything we see in the Universe, from an ant to a galaxy, is made up of ordinary particles. These are collectively referred to as matter, forming 4% of the Universe. Dark matter and dark energy are believed to make up the remaining proportion, but they are incredibly difficult to detect and study, other than through the gravitational forces they exert. Investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy is one of the biggest challenges today in the fields of particle physics and cosmology.

What does this machine do? Well, in LHC, two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyze the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC

When activated, it is theorized that the LHC - collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain, as I mentioned earlier, how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass. The verification of the existence of the Higgs boson would be a significant step in the search for a Grand Unified Theory, which seeks to unify three of the four known fundamental forces: electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force, leaving out only gravity.

The Higgs boson may also help to explain why gravitation is so weak compared to the other three forces. In addition to the Higgs boson, other theorized particles, models and states might be produced, and for some searches are planned, including super symmetric particles, compositeness (Technicolor), extra dimensions, strangelets, micro black holes and magnetic monopoles.

The ATLAS and CMS experiments will look for super symmetric particles to test a likely hypothesis for the make-up of dark matter.

It will also help us in explaining the bias found in nature of matter over anti-matter. More specifically, it will help us in answering as to why there is no anti-matter. We live in a world of matter – everything in the Universe, including ourselves, is made of matter. Antimatter is like a twin version of matter, but with opposite electric charge. At the birth of the Universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been produced in the Big Bang. But when matter and antimatter particles meet, they annihilate each other, transforming into energy. Somehow, a tiny fraction of matter must have survived to form the Universe we live in today, with hardly any antimatter left. Why does Nature appear to have this bias for matter over antimatter?

The LHCb experiment will be looking for differences between matter and antimatter to help answer this question. Previous experiments have already observed a tiny behavioral difference, but what has been seen so far is not nearly enough to account for the apparent matter–antimatter imbalance in the Universe.

I’ll be writing more about the Higgs Boson or the “GOD PARTICLE” in my next entry. But if you are interested in reading more about it – follow this link.

It will also help us in answering whether there are other hidden dimensions. We are able to sense the common 3-dimensions and now with the help of Einstein also – time. Einstein showed that the three dimensions of space are related to time. Subsequent theories propose that further hidden dimensions of space may exist; for example, string theory implies that there are additional spatial dimensions yet to be observed. These may become detectable at very high energies, so data from all the detectors will be carefully analyzed to look for signs of extra dimensions.

So what’s the problem?

Okay, it sounds pretty fancy stuff, but hardly the case for paranoia being displayed by some groups of scientists and merrily being covered by our usual sensationalist media :-)

The main problem with the whole project is - Nobody knows for sure what is going to happen (off course there are several theories that are being tested).

Of course there is wide agreement that one of the sub products could be small black holes (tiny, mini, and minuscule). after that, most scientists (by most here I mean almost everyone in the planet) believe that, if these black holes happen to exist, they would “disappear” due to a series of very complicated reasons or, if they stay, it would take them several billion years before they grow to “eat” the earth.

A quite small number of scientists (allegedly 1 or 2 or the groups surrounding them), believes that this black holes would grow and fast, so they would end eating the earth in 50 months and, although the probability is not easily quantified, does the gravity of the potential result deserves to put the experiment on hold until a proper discussion takes places within the scientific community?

The concerns of this group were understood and addressed by CERN and dismissed. CERN actually used the research of Professor Steve Giddings, of UC Santa Barbara. Giddings has co-authored a paper documenting his study of the safety of microscopic black holes that might possibly be produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is nearing completion in Europe. The paper, co-authored by Michelangelo Mangano of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), which is building the world's largest particle collider, investigates hypothesized behavior of tiny black holes that might be created by high-energy collisions in the CERN particle accelerator.

As quoted in Science daily - The Giddings/Mangano study concludes that such microscopic black holes would be harmless. In fact, he added, nature is continuously creating LHC-like collisions when much higher-energy cosmic rays collide with the Earth's atmosphere, with the Sun, and with other objects such as white dwarfs and neutron stars. If such collisions posed a danger, the consequences for Earth or these astronomical objects would have become evident already, Giddings said.

Two major lawsuits have been initiated and quashed as far as I can understand (remember, I am not a lawyer either). One in the European Court of Human Rights and other in the US Federal District Court in Honolulu. The first sought an emergency injunction based on the experiment violating the right to life of European citizens and pose a threat to the rule of law, and the second tried to force the U.S. government to withdraw its participation in the experiment. It is important to note that the European Court of Human Rights rejected the request for the injunction but will hear the case (after the experiment has started). The status of US case is unknown at this moment.

Personally, I do not think that LHC is a threat to universe and humanity. Personally, I think it is a great conceit on humanity’s part if we think collectively that building a 27 km long tunnel and smashing a few atoms can trigger a universal collapse back to the state which existed prior to Big Bang. Although I am not a qualified high energy physicist, I do recall a similar scare during the time of the Manhattan Project – or the A-Bomb project of USA during 1940’s. At that time also, nobody was sure of what would happen when an atomic bomb went off. There were wild theories – mostly in public media and imagination and the most fanciful one that I recall is related to whole of earth’s atmosphere being burned off due to chain reaction set off by the exploding bomb.

Of course it never happened that way – our presence here is a testimony to that.

I do, however, acknowledge this hullaballoo as a classic case of failure of science to communicate to the masses. The media is doing what it does usually – sensationalizing the issue beyond reason.

Let’s look forward to a new era in scientific break through and new understandings of our reality as well new technologies. Remember – there wouldn’t TV if not for quantum mechanics, No GPS if not for Einstein and Newton!