The Universe in a Helium Droplet

The universe in a Helium Droplet is a book written by theoretical physicist Grigory E. Volovik. In this book Dr. Volovik presents an alternative solution to the problem of the cosmological constant. His proposal makes the respectable assumption that the vacuum can be modelled as a cold quantum liquid in thermodynamic equilibrium. Explore this thought-provoking  and interesting proposal...

By Gregory E. Volovik

Low Temperature Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology

and 

Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow

FOREWORD

It is often said that the problem of the very small cosmological constant is the greatest mystery in cosmology and in particle physics, and that no one has any good ideas on how to solve it. The contents of this book make a lie of that statement. The material in this monograph builds upon a candidate solution to the problem, often dubbed ‘emergence’. It is a solution so simple and direct that it can be stated here in this foreword. Visualize the vacuum of particle physics as if it were a cold quantum liquid in equilibrium. Then its pressure must vanish, unless it is a droplet – in which case there will be surface corrections scaling as an inverse power of the droplet size. But vacuum dark pressure scales with the vacuum dark energy, and thus is measured by the cosmological constant, which indeed scales as the inverse square of the ‘size’ of the universe. The problem is ‘solved’.

FQXi Winners 2012

 Dr. Israel Perez wins an award in an international contest organized by the Foundational Questions Institute

The Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) in USA supports and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology. Since its inauguration the FQXi organizes an international essay contest on a topic questioning the foundations of physics. The topic for this year was: Which of our basic physical assumptions are wrong? Dr. Israel Perez was awarded a fourth prize for his essay entitled: THE PREFERRED SYSTEM OF REFERENCE RELOADED. Last November 30th 2012 the winners were announced. Take a look at his thought-provoking essay here.

Supersymmetry in risk of extinction?

The LHCb experiment at CERN recently announced results that put the theory of Supersymmetry into ever growing doubt. 
More information here:
http://www.fqxi.org/community/blogs

Physicists hoping for signs of radically new particles get no joy from Large Hadron Collider

More information here:
http://www.nature.com/news/truant-particles-turn-the-screw-on-supersymmetry-1.11855

Pentaquark vs Higgs Boson

 On the allegedly Higgs boson claimed to be discovered by ATLAS and CMS Collaborations on July 4th 2012

By Israel Pérez
Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan

THE CASE OF THE THETA^+(1540) PENTAQUARK

In 2003 the LEPS and CLAS collaborations reported the evidence of an exotic pentaquark known as Theta^+(1540) [1,2]. The event caused a lot of excitement among the community of high energy particle physicists. Surprisingly, the data analysis carried out by some other collaborations didn't corroborate the finding. This gave place to a great debate about the possible existence of this resonance. Thereafter hundreds of papers have been published on this topic. By 2005 there existed in the literature at least 33 data analyses from around 20 collaborations all over the world. From these 33 reports, 17 claimed the pentaquark observation whereas the rest show no evidence. The common factor among the positive results is the low statistics whilst, with relatively high statistics, the resonance turns out to be imperceptible. With the aim of settling down this issue, in 2006, the same CLAS collaboration repeated the experiment with a great number of data... This time however, the result was negative (see Fig. 1).

On the nature of time

On the nature of time

Where does the universe come from? What is the universe made up? And what are space and time?

Israel Pérez (1976-)

By Israel Pérez, 2010. Excerpt from: A physicist's view of the universe: a philosophical approach. http://arxiv.org/abs/1012.2423

If I am something, I must be made up of something that exists in itself, absolute and independent of my mind. Similarly, if the universe is something, it must be made up of something, of some substance. Such substance we can call it matter (M) [in contemporary physics, fields are regarded as something of different nature than matter, however, here we shall conceive a field as some kind of matter in certain state]. The study of matter constitutes our first great fundamental problem. One of the properties of matter is mass, and mass, as it is well known, is a source of gravitation and, at the same time, is some kind of energy. Though there remain to thoroughly understand what these things are and how they fundamentally interact. From here it follows that if space and time are physical entities, they must be made of M, otherwise their nature might be emergent, associative and/or relational as taste or smell. Furthermore, we should admit that, according to experience and common sense, such substance might be in perpetual change and motion, in inexorable mutation. If this is true, it might be then that time is one of its consequences.