Science!

While we in America celebrate the signing of some yellowed document, physicists around the globe are engaging in a less nationalistic, but equally historic celebration: the elusive Higgs Boson, the “missing piece” in our current understanding of the subatomic world, has been confirmed to five standard deviations of significance. This discovery was made using the most expensive scientific apparatus in human history: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

Despite the overwhelming statistical likelihood of the LHC’s discovery, ever-skeptical scientists still wonder whether the observed particle displays all of the characteristics of the Higgs as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. If it does, this discovery will definitively confirm over fifty years of theoretical development; if it doesn’t, it will alert physicists to the existence of particles beyond those described by the Standard Model, paving the way for a new era in fundamental physics (and more expensive experiments).

If you’re not into grilling in Central Park, it’s something to celebrate alone, in front of your computer.

Just about every week, Bwog collects stories about some of the ground-breaking research being done here at Columbia or by Columbians around the world. For this edition of BunsenBwog, Zach Kagan collects all of the best holiday-themed research our scientific community has to offer. 

The Ebola virus

Bwog has been watching a bunch of scary movies in preperation for Halloween. Did you know that the virus in 28 Days Later was a mutated version of Ebola, which is already pretty much the most horrific virus ever? Oh, and the first filovirus, the family that Ebola belongs to, was just discovered by doctors from the Mailman School in Europe. It’s not turning people in rage zombies just yet, instead infecting Spanish bats… oh no, we can see where this is going.

When robots inevitably rise up and enslave the human race, we can at least take some solace in the fact that they will be pretty easy to mislead. After all, robots are notoriously bad at lying, so how hard could it… Oh, great. Comp Sci professor Julia Hirschberg has taught computers how to detect whether you are lying or not with 70% accuracy (while humans only guess correctly 58% of the time). If they can detect lies, how long until they can tell lies? Who’s side are you on Prof. Hirschberg?

More science!