two suns?

Weeks after a story shot across the Web claiming that the imminent explosion of a nearby star would result in the appearance of a second sun in the sky — a story that was later debunked — two suns were caught on camera yesterday in China. The suns — one fuzzy and orange, the other a crisp yellow orb — appeared side-by-side, one slightly higher than the other.

Previous sightings of horizontally-aligned double images of the sun and moon are recorded in a book called "Light and Color in the Outdoors" (English edition: Springer 1993) by the famous Flemish astronomer Marcel Minnaert, which remains the most complete reference on double suns. "So many other instances have been reported that there is no longer any doubt about ... observations of sun and mock sun(s) being at exactly the same altitude," Minnaert wrote.


Just what is it? An optical illusion? A practical joke? Or has Betelgeuse, the bright star in the constellation Orion, gone supernova, dooming us all? (That rumor made its way around the Web in January and had a lot of astronomers hurrying to calm people.)


"Many photographs are sent to me each year that look like the China sighting," said Les Cowley, who runs a British website called Atmospheric Optics. "Some have more than two suns. They are almost invariably artifacts, the result of shooting through windows or using plane filters on the camera." 


"In brief," he said, "it is almost certainly a reflection owing to shooting through a window."

[7/27/12 - Roy mentioned this to me today and I looked it up]

scientists see The Footprint of God

GENEVA >> Scientists working at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday that they have gathered enough evidence to show that the long-sought "God particle" answering fundamental questions about the universe almost certainly does exist.

But after decades of work and billions of dollars spent, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, aren't quite ready to say they've "discovered" the particle.

Instead, experts familiar with the research at CERN's vast complex on the Swiss-French border say that the massive data they have obtained will essentially show the footprint of the key particle known as the Higgs boson — all but proving it exists..

For particle physicists, finding the Higgs boson is a key to confirming the standard model of physics that explains what gives mass to matter and, by extension, how the universe was formed. Each of the two teams known as ATLAS and CMS involve thousands of people working independently from one another, to ensure accuracy.

Rob Roser, who leads the search for the Higgs boson at the Fermilab in Chicago, said: "Particle physicists have a very high standard for what it takes to be a discovery," and he thinks it is a hair's breadth away.

Rosen compared the results that scientists are preparing to announce Wednesday to finding the fossilized imprint of a dinosaur: "You see the footprints and the shadow of the object, but you don't actually see it."

[10/6/14 - see also Particle Fever]