Your Sixty-Second Higgs

Summary: Rob is in Cicadaland as Chris toils away back in Oxford. There’s Higgsteria in the news upon the confirmation of the discovery of the Higg’s Boson at Cern. We also discuss odd multiple star systems, leap seconds and the case of a disappearing debris disc. [MP3 Link] Episode #40. If you have anything you’d like us to look at, or any questions you’d like us to answer - use the links at the top of the web page at http://recycledelec.com. Follow us on Twitter @recycledelec @orbitingfrog and @chrislintott. Links: A disappearing disk: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v487/n7405/full/nature11210.html and http://www.gemini.edu/node/11836 (Note silly headline) Impossible binary stars: http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/219-news-2012/2143-ukirt-discovers-impossible-binary-stars 65 UMa - a sextuple star system: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1207.0651v1.pdf Sloan Low-mass Wide Pairs of Kinematically Equivalent Systems: http://astro.phy.vanderbilt.edu/~dhitals/slowpokes/ Higgs: Comic Cerns: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/microsoft-corporation-rename-the-font-comic-sans-to-comic-cerns-in-the-windows-8-os Higgs: Is it disappointing? http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/why-the-higgs-boson-discovery-is-disappointing-according-to-the-smartest-man-in-the-world/259468/ Higgs: Who deserves the credit? http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/frank-close-new-boson-particle-higgs-find/ Higgs: A smoking duck : http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4056 Of Particular Significance : http://profmattstrassler.com/ Credits: Audio content Copyright 2012 Chris Lintott and Robert Simpson. Special thanks to the Oxford University Press Office for recording space. Podcast Image courtesy of Flickr user bazik (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bazik/395792175/).