Word: quantum
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...much is a quantum? Less than a little and next to nothing. Ex.: "In high school I studied a quantum of physics." Or, as James Bond might say, "I'll have a vodka martini, shaken not stirred, and instead of a side of pretzels give me a quantum of solace...
...when a sexy babe named Natasha (Olga Kurylenko, who'll be James Bond's dangerous plaything in next month's Quantum of Solace) crosses paths with Max, she can read the romantic despair on his face. "What was her name?" she asks. Whose name? "The girl from the boring story you want to tell me." For a second we get a whiff of the movie Max Payne might have been: one that introduces standard contrivances only to upend them. Alas, this flash of wit is just another tease. Natasha is soon killed in an alley by unseen flying beasts...
...perfectly sufficient. It explains most things that we deal with. But then it was discovered that actually when you look at motion at really small levels - beyond the level of the atoms - Newton's laws no longer apply. A new physics was needed, hence, we eventually ended up with quantum physics. It caused a lot of controversy - even Einstein himself didn't believe...
...exactly the same time. But then there are certain extreme examples, like when the brain shuts down, that we see that this assumption may no longer seem to hold true. So a new science is needed in the same way that we had to have a new quantum physics. The CERN particle accelerator may take us back to our roots. It may take us back to the first moments after the Big Bang, the very beginning. With our study, for the first time, we have the technology and the means to be able to investigate this. To see what happens...
What physicists think they'll see is a long-sought particle called the Higgs boson. Quantum physicists have never really explained why protons, neutrons and all the things made out of them have mass, and they believe the elusive Higgs is what gives it to them. "If we didn't find the Higgs," says Lisa Randall, a Harvard theorist, "it would be shocking...