{"id":134735,"date":"2022-01-26T20:26:03","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T04:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/how-the-physics-of-resonance-shapes-reality"},"modified":"2022-01-26T20:26:03","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T04:26:03","slug":"how-the-physics-of-resonance-shapes-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/how-the-physics-of-resonance-shapes-reality","title":{"rendered":"How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-the-physics-of-resonance-shapes-reality2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Almost anytime physicists announce that they\u2019ve discovered a new particle, whether it\u2019s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/impossible-particle-discovery-adds-key-piece-to-the-strong-force-puzzle-20210927\/\">double-charm tetraquark<\/a>, what they\u2019ve actually spotted is a small bump rising from an otherwise smooth curve on a plot. Such a bump is the unmistakable signature of \u201cresonance,\u201d one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in nature.<\/p>\n<p>Resonance underlies aspects of the world as diverse as music, nuclear fusion in dying stars, and even the very existence of subatomic particles. Here\u2019s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales.<\/p>\n<p>In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that\u2019s close to one of its \u201cnatural\u201d frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies \u201cis one of the bedrock properties of both math and the universe,\u201d said <a href=\"https:\/\/hetg.physics.harvard.edu\/people\/matthew-strassler\">Matt Strassler<\/a>, a particle physicist affiliated with Harvard University who is writing a book about the Higgs boson. A playground swing is one familiar example: \u201cKnock something like that around, and it will always pick out its resonant frequency automatically,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Almost anytime physicists announce that they\u2019ve discovered a new particle, whether it\u2019s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged double-charm tetraquark, what they\u2019ve actually spotted is a small bump rising from an otherwise smooth curve on a plot. Such a bump is the unmistakable signature of \u201cresonance,\u201d one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in nature. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2229,42,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematics","category-media-arts","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}