Almost any time physicists announce that they’ve discovered a new particle, whether it’s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged double-charm tetraquark, what they’ve actually spotted is a small bump rising from an otherwise smooth curve on a plot. Such a bump is the unmistakable signature of “resonance,” one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in nature.
Resonance underlies aspects of the world as diverse as music, nuclear fusion in dying stars, and even the very existence of subatomic particles. Here’s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales.
In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies “is one of the bedrock properties of both math and the universe,” said Matt Strassler, a particle physicist affiliated with Harvard University who is writing a book about the Higgs boson. A playground swing is one familiar example: “Knock something like that around, and it will always pick out its resonant frequency automatically,” Strassler said. Or flick a wineglass and the rim will vibrate a few hundred times per second, producing a characteristic tone as the vibrations transfer to the surrounding air.
A system’s natural frequencies depend on its intrinsic properties: For a flute, for instance, they are the frequencies of sound waves that exactly fit inside its cylindrical geometry.
The Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler solved the equation describing a system continuously driven near its resonant frequency in 1739. He found that the system exhibited “various and wonderful motions,” as he put it in a letter to fellow mathematician Johann Bernoulli, and that, when the system is driven precisely at the resonant frequency, the amplitude of the motion “increases continually and finally grows out to infinity.”
Driving a system too hard at the right frequency can have dramatic effects: A trained singer, for instance, can shatter a glass with a sustained note at its resonant frequency. A bridge resonating with the footsteps of marching soldiers can collapse. But more often, energy loss, which Euler’s analysis neglected, prevents the motion of a physical system from growing unchecked. If the singer sings the note quietly, vibrations in the glass will grow at first, but larger vibrations cause more energy to radiate outward as sound waves than before, so eventually a balance will be achieved that results in vibrations with constant amplitude.
Now suppose the singer starts with a low note and continuously glides up in pitch. As the singer sweeps past the frequency at which the wineglass resonates, the sound momentarily grows much louder. This enhancement arises because the sound waves arrive at the glass in sync with vibrations that are already present, just as pushing on a swing at the right time can amplify its initial motion. A plot of the sound amplitude as a function of frequency would trace out a curve with a pronounced bump around the resonant frequency, one that’s strikingly similar to the bumps heralding particle discoveries. In both cases, the bump’s width reflects how lossy the system is, indicating, for instance, how long a glass rings after it is struck once, or how long a particle exists before it decays.
The Higgs Boson Bump
But why do particles behave like humming wineglasses? At the turn of the 20th century, resonance was understood to be a property of vibrating and oscillating systems. Particles, which travel in straight lines and scatter like billiard balls, seemed far removed from this branch of physics.
The development of quantum mechanics showed otherwise. Experiments indicated that light, which had been thought of as an electromagnetic wave, sometimes behaves like a particle: a “photon,” which possesses an amount of energy proportional to the frequency of the associated wave. Meanwhile, matter particles like electrons sometimes exhibit wavelike behavior with the same relation between frequency and energy.
In 1925, inspired by this correspondence, the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger derived an equation for the hydrogen atom whose solutions are waves oscillating at a set of natural frequencies, much like the solutions to equations governing the acoustics of wind instruments.
Each solution to Schrödinger’s equation represents a possible state of the atom’s orbiting electron. The electron can hop up to a higher-energy state by absorbing a photon whose frequency makes up the difference between the two states’ natural frequencies.
Such transitions are themselves a form of resonance: Just like a wine glass, an atom only absorbs energy from waves with specific frequencies, and it can also shed energy by emitting waves with those same frequencies. (When excited at precisely the right frequency, certain atoms will oscillate for more than 10 quadrillion cycles before releasing their energy as photons — extremely sharp atomic resonances that form the basis for the world’s most precise atomic clocks.)
Quantum theory revealed that the structure of atoms, no less than the structure of symphonies, is intimately tied to resonance. Electrons bound to atoms are a little like sound waves trapped inside flutes. As for the atomic nuclei, further advances in the 1930s showed that many kinds of atomic nuclei only exist in the universe today because of resonance. Resonant transitions are critical to the nuclear fusion reactions that transmute one type of atomic nucleus into another. The most celebrated of these nuclear resonances enables the fusion of three helium nuclei into one carbon nucleus. Without this, stars would not be capable of producing carbon or heavier elements, and life as we know it would not be possible.
But the roots of resonance in fundamental physics lie deeper. In the late 1920s physicists began to develop a powerful mathematical framework known as quantum field theory that remains the language of particle physics to this day. In quantum field theory, the universe’s truly elementary entities are fields that fill all space. Particles are localized, resonant excitations of these fields, vibrating like springs in an infinite mattress. The frequencies at which quantum fields prefer to vibrate stem from fundamental constants whose origins remain obscure; these frequencies in turn determine the masses of the corresponding particles. Blast the vacuum of empty space hard enough at the right frequency, and out will pop a bunch of particles.
In this sense, resonance is responsible for the very existence of particles. It has also increasingly become the workhorse of experimental particle physics. When measuring how often specific combinations of particles are produced in high-energy collisions, physicists see pronounced peaks in the detection rate as they vary the collision energy: new manifestations of the universal resonance curve. “As with the wineglass, you’re sweeping through a system that wants to resonate,” said Strassler. “You’ll make anything vibrate that can.”
In the 1950s and ’60s, physicists saw many more peaks than they had expected, and at first nobody knew quite what to make of them. Many of the bumps were very broad, suggesting the existence of particles that stuck around for barely more than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second. Unlike more familiar particles that can be detected directly, these newcomers could only be observed through the process of resonance.
Physicists later appreciated that these new ephemeral particles were fundamentally no different from protons and neutrons, save for their short lifetimes. Even so, short-lived particles are often simply referred to as “resonances” — a testament to a phenomenon that has played a surprisingly central role in expanding our understanding of the world.
Original article here.
In 1896, a man in Dummerston, Vermont, was driven from his beloved home over what should have been a minor family dispute. He generally got along well with his brother-in-law, who lived next door. One day in an argument, however, the brother-in-law—who was a bit of a hothead—threatened to punch him. In reaction, the man had his brother-in-law arrested, which the neighbors saw as a massive overreaction. At the trial, the man acted haughty and “arrogant” toward others, according to newspaper accounts. He became so unpopular for his attitude and actions that, shunned by the local residents, he felt compelled to leave the town he loved, never to return.
Many meditators, healers and people of goodwill are attracted to the idea of distant healing — that in meditation, contemplation and prayer we can help relieve suffering and pain at a distance.
We may be slowly returning to our offices (more or less), but the strains of the pandemic are hardly over. As we enter a transitional stage after almost two years of trauma and strain, more than ever we need ways to refresh our energies, calm our anxieties, and nurse our well-being. One potentially powerful intervention is rarely talked about in the workplace: The cultivation of experiences of awe. Like gratitude and curiosity, awe can leave us feeling inspired and energized. It’s another tool in your toolkit and it’s now attracting increased attention due to more rigorous research.
It’s probably been a long time since you lay on your back in the grass, looked up and wondered, Why is the sky blue? Or since you took the time to consider a question as difficult as, Where does the universe begin, and where does it end?
All over the world, people are awakening to the fact that we are more than bones and flesh. We sense that there is more to life than what we see. The word “consciousness” is losing its unreachable meaning, and we look for ways to go inside ourselves and find inner peace.
It was powerful beyond time to enter that great living pulsing stony timeless being of light. It was vast beyond my understanding, as it seemed to extend beyond the sky into the stars that night. As I stood in the entrance to the great pyramid giving thanks for being there I learned more in that 1 minute passing through the entrance of the great Pyramid then I had accumulated in my entire life. Everything was shown to me in an instant like a life review and then the slate was cleared empty, awaiting being filled again. I entered the Great Pyramid as pure as a Virgin stripped of everything she once knew herself to be. The empty chalice of me at that moment in timelessness was ready to fill with the gifts of the great pyramid, which were beyond my ability to fully consume.
Everything on earth is defined by a numerical configuration. All life can be reduced and explained by numbers. The currents of these numerical sequences bring into alignment a series of new considerations that will help earth to adjust and balance. Each numerical infusion is tailored to fit the needs of each human. As the brain adjusts to these new energies a lifting occurs allowing the individual to exit the human/animal ratio and be lifted into the human/light equation. Numbers and humans go hand in hand. From the beginning of time known we have been defined by a numerical equation whether age, birth date, weight, or the number of wives and camels we have. Numbers have always seemed to be our not so silent partners.
Gillian Macbeth Louthan is a Visionary, a Seer, born with the gift of knowing. She is a clairvoyant psychic with advanced channeling abilities since an early age. She has been a Metaphysical Teacher, Messenger and world known Trance-Channel, for over 40 years She works with the Councils of Light, Mary Magdalene, Merlin, White Buffalo Calf Woman, Mother Mary, the Pleiadians and many other energies of the Christ Light.
Last year, I met an extremely gifted medium in California: Allie Barkalow. If you don’t know what a medium is, it’s a person who communicates with spirits from the other side. I heard about Allie from my dear friend, Carolyn Miller, who is a psychic and known for her amazing tarot and aura photography readings. Carolyn told me that Allie is one of the best psychics she knows, and I figured if she’s anything like Carolyn I had to meet her.
Moldavite is a member of the tektite group, a glassy mixture of silicon dioxide, aluminum oxide and other metal oxides, with a hardness of 5.5 to 6. Its crystal system is amorphous. The color of most specimens is a deep forest green, though some pieces are pale green and others, especially those from Moravia, are greenish brown. A few rare gem grade pieces are almost an emerald green.
People who hold moldavite for the first time most often experience its energy as warmth or heat, usually felt first in one’s hand and then progressively throughout the body. In some cases, there is an opening of the heart chakra, characterized by strange (though not painful) sensations in the chest, an upwelling of emotion and a flushing of the face. This has happened often enough to have earned a name — the “moldavite flush.” Moldavite’s energies can also cause pulsations in the hand, tingling in the third eye and heart chakras, a feeling of light-headedness or dizziness, and occasionally the sense of being lifted out of one’s body. Most people feel that moldavite excites their energies and speeds their vibrations, especially for the first days or weeks, until they become acclimated to it.