[ artwork by Janaina Mello-Landini – “Ciclotrama 89“, 2017 ]
(“the electromagnetic and weak interactions symmetry became broken a picosecond after the big bang” – say physicists)
…if you don’t “know” what Big Bang is, well theoretically it occurred approximately 13.8 billion years ago, it marks the beginning of the universe, scientists say so and I know what I’m saying, I understand the words but I even can’t imagine 13.8 billion years – if you can grasp that, if you can imagine a “picosecond” after the Big Bang, then probably you’re better than me, at least scientists are, all of them know what they mean with a “picosecond after the Big Booom” : )
“…the Higgs mechanism explains why the electromagnetic and weak interactions have such drastically different strengths – that is, how their symmetry became broken a picosecond after the big bang. The Higgs does not interact with photons, rendering them massless, whereas they do interact with the carriers of the weak interaction, giving them masses…”
[ says Salvatore Rappoccio – Department of Physics, University at Buffalo, NY – September 10, 2025, Physics 18, 155 ]
…and then there’s a photo attached explaining the eight toroid magnets of the ATLAS experiment bend charged particles in the inner detector and the muon spectrometer, enabling their electric charges and momenta to be measured…
(s. guraziu – ars poetica, sept 2025)