CERN May Have Found The Higgs Boson

Hilbert writes: "Scientists working at the LEP collider at CERN believe they have found evidence of the existance of the Higgs boson, one of the more elusive particles under investigation. BBC's got the story." Ironically, this important discovery (or possible discovery) comes weeks before the collider used to make it is scheduled to be shut down. Can you say "the dilemma of prior investment"?

Comments

Re:The particle myth

[erotus]

Well... was it not Einstein that said "Imagination is more important than knowledge"

I'm not saying these guys are dreaming this stuff up. I'm saying that theory is important to scientific discovery. Many theorized the atom to exist long before anyone could prove it. I get sick and tired of people slamming the scientific community because they don't have the intellect to comprehend what is going on.

Hell... I can't comprehend it but, I don't pretend to know otherwise. These people have knowledge you could not even begin to grasp.. Wake up... Don't critisize that which you don't understand. Respect science and people of knowledge because in the future, my grandchildrens granchildren will be reading about them in science books, whereas you and I, won't even get an honorable mention.

Re:The particle myth

[dbarclay10]

So you don't feel this sort of research has any value, eh? :) I feel sorry for you. Really, I do. You obviously don't have much imagination.

Think of the fruits that this sort of research has already given us: transistors, electricity, etc., etc.. You think anyone 200 years ago could have even remotely imagined what life would be like today? Doubt it. So why do you think this Higgs particle is any different? It could very well lead to an entirely new stage of human evolution.

Don't judge so quickly. Unless you can see the future, I don't think you should have such a negative opinion. But hey, who knows? Research like this might one day let you see into the future, for all we know. Have fun :)

Dave

Re:The particle myth

[jafac]

God DOES exist, and no matter what, you will NEVER prove me wrong. That, is a scientific and rational certainty. You will NEVER observe every part of the universe, at every time for all of existance, therefore, you can never prove that something does NOT exist. Someday, you might be proven wrong in your statement that god does not exist. It all depends on if someone sees God and gets a good photograph.

Bible? Who cares, we all know Pi is not 3, so that argument has been dead for some time now.

Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!

Attraction by particle mediators.

[zCyl]

> For instance it's easy to imagine repulsion forces as a result of exchanging some particles, but it's impossible to explain attraction that way.

Actually... If you take the uncertainty principle into account, you can explain attraction this way. Let's say we have a Higgs particle of a precisely known momentum, p, and this Higgs particle is going to mediate the exchange between particle A and particle B. The Higgs particle leaves particle A in a direction directly away from particle B, with momentum p. But because the momentum is exactly p, the position becomes uncertain (meaning the particle actually exists in multiple locations for a moment). Then since one of the locations where the Higgs particle can exist is at particle B, it is able to essentially strike particle B from the other side.

Re:Attraction by particle mediators.

[Admiral Burrito]

More precisely, if you put a particle in a state of definite position, then you will only get a spread-out probability distribution for momenta it might have, and vice versa.

Which is, of course, exactly why it is impossible to nail jello to a wall.

Re:One Page explanations

[Fesh]

So from what I understand from reading a couple of those, the search for the Higgs Boson is similar to the search for proof of the "luminous ether" that occured in the late 19th century?

For those unfamilar with the concept, the reasoning went something like this: if light is a wave (this is before the particle/wave duality became accepted), then it must be transmitted by something we cannot see, since you can't have waves in a vacuum. Thus, there had to be some sort of "luminous ether" which tranmits light waves. This has been disproven of course, but the Higgs Boson seems to be a similar apporoach to explaining the mass of particles.

'Course... Just as disproving the "luminous ether" theory by experimentation brought us to our current understanding of quantum mechanics, I suppose there's no reason not to try to verify the Higgs' existence.

--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy

Re:Making Sense

[Prior Restraint]

...so 0D/0=0...

Sorry, not quite. Dividing zero by itself cannot be solved. Unlike 1/0, we don't even get a limit. Perhaps D approaches infinity, and/or maybe you used L'Hôpital's Rule (I'm too lazy to check the notes for myself), but a plain 0/0 is indeterminate.

Higgs Boson and Mach's Principle

[Mr. Mikey]

Question: how is the Higgs Boson and Mach's Principle related? It would seen that these two approaches are giving two different understandings of what causes inertia.

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[crumley]

The project was based in Texas because it is flat, there are no earthquakes, etc...

Well, I too wish they wouldn't have killed SSC, but I think that your kidding yourself if you think that Texas was chosen for purely techical reasons. I think its pretty well established that a large part of the reason that Texas was chosen is that the Speaker of the House was from Texas (Jim Wright?). And then later when the cuts needed to be made the Wright was gone due to some scandal or another. (Forgive me if the facts aren't exactly right - that the way I recall it anyway).

Anyway the SSC was definitely a great case study in the problems of politics and Big Science.

--

Actual Hard Information

[lamontg]

The presentation of the Higgs working group is Here. If I understand correctly they're claiming to see three sigma results at the aleph detector, which is certainly good enough to announce a possible discovery, particularly when confirmed by similar results from the other 3 detectors at LEP. The people who are claiming that this is only a political annoucement to try to extend the life of LEP don't know what they're talking about.

Novel based on this was out long ago

[DragonMagic]

The novel Flash Forward already depicted the Higgs Boson at the CERN discovery, published in 1998. Robert's famous for doing months of research for a novel, but still this is definitely weird.

Here's the Cover Blurb copy:

Robert J. Sawyer's award-winning science fiction has garnered both popular and critical acclaim. The New York Times called Factoring Humanity "filled to bursting with ideas, characters, and incidents," while The Gainesville Sun said, "Sawyer is a brilliant stylist who depicts daily life events with a shattered worldview."

Sawyer now brings us Flashforward, the story of a world-shattering discovery at the CERN research facility in Switzerland. The research team of Lloyd Simcoe and Theo Procopides is using the particle accelerator at CERN in pursuit of the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical subatomic particle. But their experiment goes incredibly awry, and, for a few moments, the consciousness of the entire human race is thrown ahead by about twenty years.

While humanity must deal immediately with the destructive aftermath of the experiment -- thousands were injured and killed as every single person's body was left unconscious in the here-and-now -- the greater implications take longer to surface. People who had no vision of the future seek to learn how they will died, while others seek out future lovers.

Lloyd must deal with the guilt of accidentally causing the death of his fiancée's child, while Theo gets caught up in the search for his own murderer. As the implications truly hit home, the pressure to repeat the experiment builds. Everyone wants a glimpse of the future, a chance to flashforward to see their successes . . . or learn how to avoid their failures.

It's a very good book, and published a couple years before this incident. Well worth a read. His entire site, since it's in frames, is at http://www.sfwriter.com/.

Dragon Magic

Re:Question

[jbridge21]

Okay.

Say you have this car you want to find out about, like what's under the hood and all, but the entire thing is encased in a big piece of metal...

... So, you get two cars, and you smash them together at REALLY high energies (for a single car to have). At some point, you will crack the casing, and get a glimpse of the car inside, and see all of the parts subsequently flying out. Then, you have to get the trajectories of all of these little particles, project them backwards, and write an engine manual. Not exactly easy :-)

Now, for the Higgs boson, it's kind of like trying to open the trunk and look at the spare tire intact... when the cars are colliding head-on. It will take more energy for the trunk to spontaneously open, and the spare tire to come out intact... well, bad analogy, but you get the picture, sorta!

Have a nice day.

-----

Re:The particle myth

[Ixohoxi]

If you want to believe in God and the Bible, please don't try to discredit science. In effect, you are discrediting religion. Take a look:

No, you'd only have theories proven by experiments that were possible. Not theories so divorced from reality that it isn't possible to test them.
. . .
Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.

If you really believe that, then stop wasting your time and effort on religion. "Blind faith" is the mantra of religion - belief without proof. So take your argument against science and practice what you preach. The Shroud of Turin's authenticity has already been disproven. I get sick and tired of hearing about "miracles" all the time. Can anyone prove a miracle?

The rebuttal "God made it that way" is one of my favorites. Isn't that how something is typically explained by religious types when they don't know the answer? Leave the mysteries of the universe to those with the intelligence to search for the REAL answers.

There are two ways I would believe in God - if He proved his existence to me personally or if I go to Hell.

Mass and weight ARE different things.

[fifirebel]

Yes, they are different things. Weight is the force exerted on an object put on a gravitational field. Mass is an object's intrisic property.

I think you were confusing the weight/mass issue with an other troubling coincidence which is: Why inertial mass and gravitational mass are the same thing?

• Gravitational mass is the gravitation force "charge".
  Like electrostatic attraction (or repulsion) between to electrically charged object is proportional to their electric charge, gravitational attraction between two massive objects is proportional to their gravitational charge, aka mass.
• Inertial mass is something else. The energy expense needed to accelerate an object is proportional to its inertial mass.

As far as I know, both inertial and gravitational mass have been experimentally verified to be the same, and general relativity is mostly based on that equivalence (one cannot distinguish between a small region of space subject to gravitational force from an other small regsion subject to constant acceleration) but we do not know why these two properties of particles are the same.

Re:Making Sense

[SpryGuy]

I've heard it argued that there can be no dead stop due to there being no exact framework for the universe, but I disagree, if the big bang was a point, matter must be traveling in opposite directions at exactly opposite velocities on either side of this single point, every velocity in one direction is matched exactly by a velocity on the other side of this single point. This thought being how I believe the big bang occurred.

Sorry, no. Think of it this way. You have a small baloon. There are poka-dots all over this baloon. Someone is slowly blowing it up. Every point on this baloon is getting farther and farther away from every other point. There is no real 'single point' at which some polka dots are moving one way, and some are moving equally the other way. The entire sphere is expanding. This is the 2-d analog of a 3-d big bang. In essence, every point is the 'center' of the big-bang, because at every point, it appears that all remote objects are rushing away from you in every direction.

So there is indeed no absolute velocity. Velocity and motion are realtive terms, and only apply between two (or more) arbitrary bodies. I am not moving relative to my desk right now, but I am moving very quickly relative to the planet Mars...or Mars is moving very quickly relative to me.

- Spryguy

Re:Making Sense

[crumley]

That's mostly because the imperial system uses the same unit for mass and weight, a good argument for it's obsolescense.

Well, there are many good reasons to get rid of the imperial system, but this isn't one of them (I hated it when we had to use them in some engineering classes - the conversions are such a mess).

Anyway, the pound can be used for both mass and force in the imperial system, but its really 2 different units. The pound mass (lbm) and pound force (lbf) are two separate units. A pound mass weighs one pound force on Earth. But, there is another, better unit of mass in the imperial system - the slug. One slug is the mass that is accelerated 1 ft/s^2 by one pound or force.

--

Re:job preservation exercise

[King Babar]

Not really.

You see, although the CERN facility is scheduled for closure, the REASON is that it is being REPLACED by a bigger and better facility.

Yes, really.

The CERN facility is being replaced, but the full replacement will take years. Many of the people whose careers or career advancement depend on results from an "obsolete" facility like the LEP will be adversely affected when the instrument is taken down. Yes, some of them will be among the best and brightest on the new project, the LHC, but others...won't.

Now, further progress demands the building of the LHC, while limited resources require the shutdown of the LEP, and people will get caught in the middle. This is exactly how Big Science works, and why people have long felt uneasy about the entire process. Scientists are, thankfully, only human. Their careers are of finite duration, and their specialized knowledge can become obsolete in the wake of further progress.

And, it goes without saying, this is just as true in genomics, neuroscience, geoscience, computer science, or any other rapidly advancing field.

Question

[Duxup]

I'm no physics guru so here comes a possibly dumb question. Why is it that when it comes to recent physics discoveries or research that they often seem to involve some sort of accelerator, or collider? Why is it necessary to have things go really fast or crash things into each other to find things out?

Personally I wonder if it might just be a jealous attempt to compete with the increasing popularity of NASCAR racing.

Re:Question

[BlackHat]

Well look at it this way...
If you can not move your Viewpoint at the same speed(rel) as the object in question, slam it into some thing and watch the hubcaps^h^h^h^h^h^h^hparticles fly off. IANAHEP nor an ICEF but learned this one by smashing gear as a child "ohh look must be tubes in there as broken glass pours out now.

Re:Question

[chrislnx]

It's a while since I did any physics so I could be wrong, but IIRC, it goes something like this:

Interesting particle like the Higgs have a lot of mass(=energy). If you want to see one, the best to do it is to get a lot of energy in a very small volume.

A good way to do this is to get a particle and it's corresponding anti-particle (electron/positron in the LEP, proton and anti-proton in the up-coming LHC) and put them together. They anhiliate each other and the resultant energy burst (equal to the mass of the two particles squared, of course )can create new particles.

All well and good, but if you want more energy, then instead of just putting the particles together, get them to crash into each other really fast .The energy in the collision is then the combination of the mass energy plus the kinetic energy of their movement - which at relativistic speeds is pretty big.

So, instead of just putting the e+'s and e-'s in the same room, the LEP accelerates them up to about 90% of the speed of light, then collides them. Result=plenty of energy for creating whizzy new particles.

And yes, there does seem to be an element of "Hey everyone check out my massive collider" going on. They're on to a looser if they think that particle physics is ever going to replace Formula 1 on a sunday afternoon, though.

Re:Question

[Smitty825]

Actually, the mass of an electron being 0.5 MeV. An electron of 200 GeV is going at something like 99.999999999% of the speed of light

Since I am just a computer programmer, please excuse my ignorace, but since an electron's mass is 0.5 MeV standing still (if they ever stand still), doesn't the mass of the electron increase as it approaches the speed of light? (I know the numbers are probably wrong) but say that as it approaches 99.999% the speed of light, according to relativity, wouldn't the mass of the particle go up to say 2.0Mev, therefore slowing the particle down to like 90% the speed of light?

Re:Question

[chrislnx]

Doh !
when I said
mass of the two particles times squared
I meant
...mass of the two particles times the speed of light squared

hrmph.

Re:Question

[sconeu]

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A SIMPLIFICATION. NO FLAMES PLEASE

No, because the speed of light is currently an absolute limit (no speeding tickets!), when you pour energy into a relativistic particle, most of that energy goes into increasing the particle's mass rather than its velocity.

So it doesn't slow down (Newton's first law applies anyway) even though its mass increases.

Re:Question

[BlaisePascal]

I believe an electron's mass standing still is 0.511 MeV (and yes, they do stand still).

As for relativity... What happens is that a particle has a total energy equal to the sum of it's rest energy and its kinetic energy (nitpickers: I'm simplifying, leaving out potential energies and internal energies...I don't believe electrons -have- internal energies anyway). The actual formula used these days is E^2 = m^2c^4 + p^2v^2, where m is the rest mass and p is the momentum. Roughly speaking, those two terms correspond to the rest and kinetic energies, roughly. The momentum p = Mv, where M is the relativistic mass of the particle, which goes up with speed. So that last term is M^2v^4.

So as the total energy of a particle increases, the contribution from its rest mass remains constant, and the increase goes into increasing (Mv^2)^2. For any given amount of energy, there is only once consistant set of values for M and v, and both go up as energy goes up. M goes up because v goes up, so they are intimately tied.

So as E goes up, so does v, and M. It doesn't make the particle slow down, just harder to make go faster.

Re:Question

[fiziko]

...proton and anti-proton in the up-coming LHC...

The LHC is a proton-proton collider. This will be acheived by having two rings that cross each other in four places. Everything else you've said is correct. (If you're interested, I'm working on my M.Sc. in Particle Physics, and I'm currently at CERN to do it. I'm working on a piece of ATLAS, which is a detector that will be used on the LHC. If anyone has further questions, feel free to use my e-mail address...

Re:Question

[MrNixon]

Not really. The electron will get accellerated to 99.999% the speed of light, it just takes a lot of energy to get it there. Sort of on an exponential scale - the faster it goes, the more energy it takes to accelerate it even a small amount - that's why the lights dim in the areas around CERN whenever they're conducting experiments (so I hear).

Re:Question

[ErfC]

Actually, accellerators/colliders are really just in particle physics -- oceanography, solid state, and other branches of physics don't usually use accellerators (well, sometimes they're useful in solid state).

Why accellerators in particle physics? That's pretty much the entire field. We can't exactly cut open a proton with a scalpel, or look at it under a microscope, so we do the next best thing -- break it open. See what happens when we hit particle A against particle B really, really hard.

"Accellerators" and "colliders" are really the same thing, in practise. The only reason to accellerate these particles is to smash them into other particles.

And of course, my favourite reason for using gigantic accellerators is that we get to use the biggest toys in the entire scientific industry, possibly the world. (Granted, some radio telescopes are pretty big, but they're just not as cool.)

Oh, and IAAPP. :)

-Erf C.

Re:The particle myth

[Metrol]

same scientific level as evolution - a piece of pseudo-science that cannot be proven by experiment.

Do I smell a theology troll in our midst? Hmmm, for a moment I'll play along as though this isn't.

By your logic, if I may be so bold as to call it that, you would only have experiments performed on those theories which have already been proven. Just exactly how does one go about proving a theory without performing experiments? If something has already been proven, what is the point of experimenting with it any further?

Ahhh, but then I get down to this...

For those of us who have no need to find out the Truth, this kind of waste is deplorable.

Oh the subtlety in the giveaway on this. Only one who is of the theological mind set ever bothers to capitalize the "T" in truth. Ya see folks, the Bible didn't cover nuclear physics, therefore none of this stuff really exists. Furthermore, since the Bible already tells us everything we ever needed to know about how the Earth came about this experimenting is completely useless.

Re:Boson Particles?

[davidmb]

Happy Trollmas!

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[erotus]

Well at least it will be replaced. I live in Texas and I remember when congress decided to can the supercollider project here because they wanted to cut spending back in 1992-93. I felt as if the US had entered the dark ages. The project was based in Texas because it is flat, there are no earthquakes, etc... They dug a 12 mile loop under the earth and spent millions of dollars to get it built.

The project was not far from completion when congress discontinued funding. The law states that the land would have to be put back in it's original condition, meaning the removal of miles of steel and filling in the holes and returning the environment back to normal. It cost more to remove the damned thing than it would have to finish it and keep it running for a year. Talk about cutting spending and increasing the stupidity.

They could have left that project and let others take it over, but you know congress! Anyhow, I'm glad the Swiss care about science. We Americans care about fame, fortune, football, or what some Hollywood star is doing in the privacy of their own home. Things of consequence don't matter here... only money, power, and politcs... Benjamin Franklin would keal over in his grave if he could see America today.

If pro is the opposite of con then what is the opposite of progress?

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[Baki]

Cern is not Swiss. It is 50% in Geneva, 50% in France. It is funded by many European countries. Their scientists (and also US scientists, I believe US also pays some part of Cerns budget) have access to the facilities.

Re:Boson Particles?

[SpryGuy]

There IS no human soul. There is just the mind. Read Godel, Escher, and Bach for details.

:-)

- Spryguy

The aether

[PhunkySchtuff]

From reading over a few of these articles, it appears that the physicists of today are now just verifying the existance of the aether that was thought to permeate free space.
The Higgs field is a [hypothetical] field that extends throughout the vacuum and by particles moving through it they are given mass and inertia.
It has been posted further down the page, however here it is again:
Have a look at http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/higgs.html for some down-to-earth explainations of the Higgs field and the particle it uses.

-- kai

Re:The particle myth

[Fesh]

Only one who is of the theological mind set ever bothers to capitalize the "T" in truth.

Au contraire, mon ami. I use the capital "t" to distinguish between "Truth" and "truth", and it doesn't necessarily have to do with theology. As I see it, "Truth" is the structure of the universe, the underlying set of laws that make everything tick. Some of it we know, some of it we're working on, some of it is unknowable. Now I understand that this definition superficially agrees with the poster you replied to, but since the existence of god falls into the "unknowable" category, argument about it is futile. With that out of the way, "truth" is simply accurately witnessing to your perception of "Truth", and doing so is everyone's responsibility as to not tell the "truth" is to deny the structure of reality.

Anyway, just thought I'd point that out.

--Fesh
"Citizens have rights. Consumers only have wallets." - gilroy

Re:One Page explanations

[Azog]

Those essays were very interesting.

If, as one of them states, the Higgs field is a little like the electromagnetic field, two questions immediately arise. First, is the Higgs field the same everywhere in the Universe? And second, perhaps we can learn to manipulate it?

If the Higgs field "causes mass", maybe its different in other areas of the universe. Maybe this could explain the "dark matter" problem - perhaps there is no missing matter, but the Higgs field is stronger in other places so everything just has more mass "out there".

If we could make a device that modifies the Higgs field, would that have the effect of changing the apparent mass of objects within the field?

Would it perhaps be possible to make a "Higgs Ray" that projects an extra-strong or extra-weak Higgs field, thereby changing the mass of objects in the beam?

Fun to speculate. Could some of you particle physicists hanging out here say if this is possible? Thanks!

Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:The particle myth

[SpryGuy]

I too use 'truth' and 'Truth'. I find the capitalization very important.

I use 'truth' when I'm just talking about truth, as in this sentence. I use 'Truth' when it is part of a proper noun ("Truth or Consequences", an old TV game show title) or when the word appears at the beginning of a sentence.

:-)

- Spryguy

They didn't fill in all of the tunnels...

[slothbait]

I remember an article in the Dallas Morning News from the time period. It stated that some of the tunnels were sold off to mushroom farmers. Apparently the conditions in the tunnels were just right for fungi.

It would have been a marvelous scientific instrument. Most sad that it got canned. Atleast we got some mushrooms out of the deal, though.

--Lenny

would this complete standard model?

[Ardric]

i havent read scientific american in a while, so forgive me if i am ignorant about the current state of particle physics. but if they confirm that they have found the higgs boson, would this complete the standard model?

Not shutdown, replaced

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know (I am a student in CS at the ETH in Zurich and my Physics prof works at the Cern) the LEP is shutdown because it is being replaced by a new collider, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in the next few years. Browseing through my notes I found a little chart.

Beams Energy Luminosity
LEPe+ e- 200 GeV10^32cm^-2 s^-1
LHCp p 14 TeV10^34
Pb Pb1312 TeV10^27


So in the end, the new Large Hadron Collider can accelerate those little bugger's up to much higher energies, thus probably alloweing other new particles to be observed (or confirmed) Oh and by the way, the Cern's at www.cern.ch See ya

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[wass]

LHC will fit into some of the pre-existing tunnels, but it also has injectors to rev the particles to great velocities before spitting them into LHC itself.

as for microgravity research, there is alot of interesting stuff going on. Offhand, I know of studies to look at liquid interfaces, which in the absence of strong gravitational fields, can fold back in on itself many times, leading to new studies of condensed matter physics. And I'm also aware of studies that were previously done on the vomit-comet, which has limitations of only 30 seconds or so weighlessness, to study electrical arcing in absence of gravity. So there's two projects right there.

Not to mention all the biophysics and astrobiology studies (don't confuse that with exobiology) in a weightless environment which are essential to provide insight about human presence in microgravity environment for extended periods of time. Ie, manned mars mission, among others.

So don't get your obvious bias in the way of research, there's more than just particle physics. And see my other post below about information about LHC competing with SSC.

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[Camelot]

Cern is not Swiss. It is 50% in Geneva, 50% in France. It is funded by many European countries

Technically, CERN consists of about two dozen member countries; others may also participate. CERN just happens to reside on Swiss-French soil so it is governed by their laws. (As far as the number of Swiss people working at CERN is concerned, CERN is definitely not Swiss).

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[amsel]

but your biased definition of "actual science" is childish and unwarranted

A fine good morning to you, as well. I think if you'll carefully reread my post, you'll see that I was fairly even-handed about both boondoggles. On the other hand, though we both know that it's "total bogus" that the SSC would have contributed to actual science, if not necessarily "useful" science, i.e. technology. However, I would love to see a reference to the scientific value ot the "various experiments in the microgravity environment" that didn't come from NASA's PR department, as a response to the link I provided to demonstrate that experiments have, so far, not been valuable as "actual science." As I'm sure you're aware, science isn't about pissing, as you have done, but about substantiating your claims.

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[wass]

Hi.

Look at one of my replies above. Of course NASA's PR machine advocates the microgravity environment, but so did SSC's PR machine advocate it's own high-energy studies.

The part of your post I had problems with was "and congress chose the boondoggle that will contribute approximately nil to actual science". That's a completely subjective statement. The 'science' that both projects would undertake are completely different. As we both seem to agree, one will advance basic physics knowledge, and another will advance various engineering/technology knowledge.

One aspect of study in microgravity will be astrobiology. Including effects of weightlessness on the human body, which will ultimately be necessary for any future space travel (ie, manned mars mission). Also, strange behaviors of materials without strong grav fields can be studied. Micrograv projects I know are underway are liquid interfaces and lectric arcing. Here's a list of micrograv experiments, but hopefully you don't distrust all of NASA-related reports as PR exaggerations. I'd wager that there are plenty more proposals, too.

YOu may think such studies will contribute nil to science, but many others disagree. I've also heard talks that new semiconductor fab methods may be done in micrograv. So maybe research on the space station can ultimately get you a better front-end detector.

and I do apologize for unsubstantiated claims made in one of the posts above. I posted some hearsay that some HEP physicists told me about LHC being able to do nearly all SSC could have. These physicists were working on the SSC, too. Two other posts responded to mine said SSC would have been higher energy than LHC could deliver. None are substantiated either way, maybe you could also confirm this?

gotta go to math methods class now, we'll talk later.

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[amsel]

It found it just a wee bit funny to link to the ESA as an example of an unbiased alternative to NASA there... :)

As far as other unsubstatiated posts, well, this is slashdot after all. Had your post been more politely written, and not focused on casting my opinion as based on "childish rivalry" instead of the well-researched, informed standpoint that I, of course, hold it to be, I wouldn't have expected you to substantiate your opinion.

It boils down to this: Big Science means Big Money - taxpayers' money, at that. You appear to believe that manned space research gives approximately equal science-bang for tax-buck as an SSC or LHC project. You are welcome to your opinion; many other scientists have other opinions. Don't assume that, because they disagree with you, they're playing some silly Army-Navy rivalry game, especially when they may have already presented evidence to back up their opinion.

And, just FYI, I have had no stake in high energy physics since '94. It's all software these days, y'know... ;)

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[wass]

One other thing to consider is alternatives to both ISS and SSC. Currently, the only in-orbit space station is Mir (are there others? Skylab fell decades ago, I think that's it), which is limiting in it's capabilities, relatively unsafe, and technologically old-fashioned (based on 70's tech, but that's not necessarily all bad). However, it is a global alternative to provide microgravity research should ISS get cancelled.

On the other hand, there are many global alternatives to SSC, most notably LHC at CERN. Granted, their energies MAY not be equivalent (I'm still not certain), and they probably are searching for different effects, but there's still plenty of research venues for particle physicists to pursue after the SSC was cancelled. Also included amongst alternatives are SLAC, FermiLab, and many smaller accellerators.

So on the bright side, particle physicists can do their research at these other places, and microgravity scientists can do theirs (eventually) in ISS. And in case you're actually wondering, I didn't support Congress's move to cancel SSC, and I was pretty bummed about it when it happened.

But strictly in terms of SSC vs ISS, I can't say if they're nearly equal in bang/buck, because it's really apples to oranges. However, I don't think either of them will contribute "nil" to actual science.

Yeah, I wasn't so polite in the original reply, but the way I read your post, it sounded as if you were taking out your anger/frustration due to SSC's cancellation onto ISS. So since you've level-headed-ly explained your position since, I apologize for mentioning the "childish rivalry" and "pissing contest".

and also FYI, I am now back in grad physics school, after a hiatus of 3 years. Not planning to do HEP, though I did work for them at U.Penn for 2 years back in the day.

peace out.

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[amsel]

Well, comparing apples and oranges is a legitimate thing to do, when you're talking about billion dollar fruit...though I still (in, BTW, concurrence with the official position of the American Physical Society, which it sounds like you're on your way to joining at some point), maintain that the ISS is more lemon than anything else. Any unmanned microgravity experiment is going to be [unsubstantiated] orders of magnitude cheaper; do they really need constant personal attention?

In any case, thank you for the apology. For my part, I will try to do better in mathematically defining what I mean by "approximately nil" (perhaps in terms of peer reviewed publications per dollar? Should be fun, with such large denominators...).

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[wass]

Unfortunately, it came down to a choice between the SSC and the space station (both arguably over-budget, behind schedule boondoggles) - and congress chose the boondoggle that will contribute approximately nil to actual science.

Oh come on, stop with the childish rivalry. Both projects offer advancement for various areas of science, in two opposite ends. A laboratory to onfirm theoretical particle physics ideas, in the case of the SSC, and a laboratory to perform various experiments in the microgravity environment, for the space station. One may be more theoretical whilst one may be more empirical, but your biased definition of "actual science" is childish and unwarranted. At the other end of the spectrum, I've heard many people claim that the SSC wouldn't contribute to "useful science" but we both know that's total bogus, too.

And this is coming from someone that has also worked on the SSC (worked with electronic event discriminator detectors for the straw-tracker arrays). The ATLAS detector at CERN will also have a straw-tracker, so similar ASICS will be used there.

Yes, it's unfortunate that Congress cut the SSC project. From what I understand, the new LHC at CERN should be able to do just about everything SSC could have, and more. So if you're really interested in the "actual science" instead of a pissing contest, your efforts could be directed in a more constructive direction.

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[jafac]

They're probably worried that if they shut down LEP, then Fermi will step in and steal their thunder.

A very expensive pissing match, if you ask me.

Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[jafac]

SCSC in Texas was pure Bush-inspired pork. Make no mistake.

Spending MORE money to un-do it was pure Clinton "payback". The republicans were howling about all these "big science" projects that were costing so much, and wanted them all hacked. The democrats' revenge was to decide, if they had to kill something, they might as well kill Bush's pork project.

Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[vinlud]

They dug a 12 mile loop under the earth and spent millions of dollars to get it built. You better make some billions of that :( VinLud

Re:Not shutdown, replaced

[omnifrog]

CERN would like to be known for discovering the Higgs particle. Shutting down the LEP, replacing it, and getting the new accelerator up to speed (including calibration) could take a long time... time enough for competitors to catch up or surpass researchers at CERN.

Re:The particle myth

[Jon Erikson]

Do I smell a theology troll in our midst? Hmmm, for a moment I'll play along as though this isn't.

Ah yes, because anyone expressing doubts about /. doctrine is obviously a troll aren't they? But at least you condescend to reply.

By your logic, if I may be so bold as to call it that, you would only have experiments performed on those theories which have already been proven.

No, you'd only have theories proven by experiments that were possible. Not theories so divorced from reality that it isn't possible to test them.

If something has already been proven, what is the point of experimenting with it any further?

Errm, none. Anything more is just busywork, a waste of resources.

Only one who is of the theological mind set ever bothers to capitalize the "T" in truth.

Indeed, because there is truth, as in conversational truth, and Truth, as in the Truth of our Lord. Different things entirely.

Ya see folks, the Bible didn't cover nuclear physics, therefore none of this stuff really exists. Furthermore, since the Bible already tells us everything we ever needed to know about how the Earth came about this experimenting is completely useless.

Of course the Bible didn't cover those things, it was written thousands of years ago! What kind of fool do you take me for? But what it does cover are the important things - the Creation and the Lord's teachings. Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.

---
Jon E. Erikson

Who names all these particles?

[KNicolson]

"Higgs boson"? Sounds like a character from Captain Pugwash to me.

There's been Charm, Up, Down, Strange, and others I forget. In 10 years time will we discover that Higgs boson is made up of Shoe, Ni!, Migrane, and That Stuff Behind The Fridge?

Re:Who names all these particles?

[Captain Pugwash]

Did somebody say me name?

Re:Who names all these particles?

[Seaman Staines]

Ay, captain.

Re:Who names all these particles?

[RogerTheCabinBoy]

What's all this about?

Re:Who names all these particles?

[funkman]

Just wait till the next generation, our next particles will be named:

Pikachu, Mewtwo, Hitmonchan

Happy, Sleepy, Grumpy, Doc, Dopey, Sneezy

Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie

Re:Who names all these particles?

[psiwave]

heh. Its named after some scottish guy named Higgs (the guy who first theorized it) and an indian guy (i think) named Bose (of Bose-Einstein Condensate fame).

Personally, I'm in favor of the Ni! particle. The comic value is almost too good to pass up.

Re:Who names all these particles?

[stubob]

so if we find out we are wrong, it can be "the particle that until recently was known as Ni!"

-----

Re:Who names all these particles?

[zantispam]

"Personally, I'm in favor of the Ni! particle. The comic value is almost too good to pass up."

Don't forget about Ni!'s antiparticle...

...wait for it...

It!

I don't understand one bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, I read all the links, but I still can't understand a thing. Can anyone explain it to me as if I were a 6 year old?

Re:I don't understand one bit.

[re-geeked]

You've kind of hit upon the whole reason for making these theories in the first place. In the time when quark theory was developed, and even somewhat today, the "model" for elementary particles was often criticized as "zoology" -- a mindless listing of all the wondrous variety of particles with no explanation of why there are so many, or why they behave as they do.

The Higgs theory is one among many that starts by guessing at an explanation for what is seen, then develops a rigorous model for the explanation, which leads to a prediction of what will be seen if we keep looking.

The prediction isn't so much a recipe for finding the particle as it is a police sketch of the suspect. And the experiments to find the particle are only "designed" to find it in the same way that a microscope is "designed" to find bacteria -- if the bacteria doesn't exist, the most powerful microscope in the world won't make it seem to.

After all, the experiment is quite crude in concept: bash particles into each other at high enough speed that lots of energetic things fly out, then watch for the suspect by recording all the trails these energetic things take, which will tell you their mass, charge, spin, and what they decay into. If one of them fit's the suspect's description, you've confirmed the theory.

The problem comes with the negative result -- if you don't find the particle, or don't see your favorite strain of bacteria, that doesn't mean they're not out there. But if you keep on increasing energy (magnification), and you run enough experiments, you can at least determine how rare the beast is.

I hope this answers the question and gives some credence to the idea that there's not a circular logic going on.

Disclaimer: there may be some property of matter that we haven't seen yet that gives better insight into how things occur, and the experiments are NOT designed to see that -- of course, without a negative or confusing result, we have no reason to believe such a property exists.

Other disclaimer: just because there is a critter that fits the description of the Higgs, doesn't mean there isn't another theory that also explains its existence -- it does mean that that theory probably is equivalent to Higgs' theory in some situations, just as Newton's theory of gravitation makes the same predictions as Einstein's theory of relativity within a certain range of observations.

Re:I don't understand one bit.

[sconeu]

A question that often comes to my mind when I read about the discovery of new constituents of mass and matter - like that worrying proliferation of "elementary" particles that Gell-Mann and others (according to the above, which I'm taking entirely at face value) found ways to reduce and simplify - is whether there is a straightforward, or even a complex-but-rigorous, difference between discovering such elements and creating them.

The book Constructing Quarks, by Andrew Pickering discusses this very issue. It's a sociological look at the process of HEP. Very dense read, but worthwhile, if you can get throug it.

Re:I don't understand one bit.

[fiziko]

I can try. :)

About 30 years ago, particle physicists were trying to explain the way the world worked. Murray Gell-Mann and others developed a basic mathematical structure that could explain why people kept seeing all sorts of new particles every time they went looking. First, there was the electron and the proton. Then, Chadwick found the neutron (in 1932, I think), and the numbers kept growing. Soon, there were hundreds of so-called "elementary" particles and their antiparticles, and that was just more than anybody wanted to deal with.

Gell-Mann, Feynman, and several others soon realized that these could all be brozen down into about a dozen "elementary" particles, if you assumed that some of the ones we were seeing weren't actually elementary, but were actually composed of a small set of other particles, which Gell-Mann named quarks. They found a set of rules that could be applied to the way quarks combined (for the inclined: it's group theory, specifically the SU(3) group) that predicted which particles should exist, and which particles they could decay into.

The theory lacked one thing: an explanation for why things have mass. They could prove the theory worked in many cases, but in certain processes, the predictions for the probability of certain reactions happening were infinite. (Anything outside the range from 0 to 1 is impossible.) This made them very nervous, and was a rather large problem.

Higgs made a suggestion that worked. If there was another particle, which came to be known as the Higgs particle, then there would be other terms in the equation, which exactly matched the existing terms, apart from a negative sign. These extra terms correspond to the mass of a particle, which is why it's said that the Higgs boson is responsible for giving things mass. With this inclusion to the theory, the predictions began to match what was seen in the lab. The only thing that was missing was the Higgs Boson.

There have been various theoretical limits placed on the mass of the Higgs. It's massive enough to be hard to find, but just barely within the reach of some of the current accelerators, such as Fermilab and the LEP. The results reported at CERN may or may not be part of the random background events. Currently, the LEP is supposed ot shut down in late October/early November to make way for the LHC, the new, high-energy collider that should be able to find the Higgs boson, assuming the theories are correct. (Most of the LEP physicists have jobs on the LHC, so those of you writing this off as a reaction to unemployment just don't have all the relevant information.)

Anyway, all the experiments are saying is that the events they've seen may or may not be the evidence needed to support the only theory we have that predicts mass. They need to take another month of data to know for sure.

Re:I don't understand one bit.

[WolfWithoutAClause]

>I mean, I read all the links, but I still can't understand a thing. Can anyone explain it to me as if I were a 6 year old?

Sure.

You'll understand when you're older. Now go and play with your toys!

Re:I don't understand one bit.

[Danny Ra]

A question that often comes to my mind when I read about the discovery of new constituents of mass and matter - like that worrying proliferation of "elementary" particles that Gell-Mann and others (according to the above, which I'm taking entirely at face value) found ways to reduce and simplify - is whether there is a straightforward, or even a complex-but-rigorous, difference between discovering such elements and creating them.

To what extent is a theory that predicts that a Higgs Boson will appear under certain experimental conditions (like the CERN apparatus, plus lots and lots of energy) distinguishable from a recipe for creating Higgs Bosons? To what extent is a theory that states that Higgs Bosons must always be there, irrespective of whether one can see them or not, distinguishable from a recipe that states that every time one follows the recipe one will get a Higgs Boson?

Part of me hopes it's a stupid question; the other part of me wonders just how stupid, and will even welcome an answer that tells me what a complete dolt I am, provided it also tells me why.

Re:I don't understand one bit.

[fiziko]

You are not a complete dolt. You're not even a partial dolt, as far as I can tell.

The main reason people have faith in the current theories is that they can predict experimental results that haven't been seen yet, that later pan out. That's why it's still around. There have been several dozen alternatives (at least), but they were all defeated by experiment. Well, most of them. There are extensions to the current theory, which do not contradict the Standard Model, but which can't be tested with current accelerators. (There are theories that can't be tested by accelerators that fit on earth, but most experimentalists pay little attention to those.)

With the Higgs boson, there is a chance the boson itself can be produced and directly observed. (This is not the same situation as quarks; they are identified by their decay products, ie what they make when they fall apart.) Physicists go by more than what is formed in these decays, though. Continuing the recipe analogy, it's like identifying a loaf of bread by its ingredients. If we see all the right ingredients (particles), in all the right proportions (with the right energy/momentum), we think we know which loaf that will make. If we can get the ingredients together (in an accelerator) at just the right temperature (energy), we can hope to make the loaf itself.

Unfortunately, many loaves aren't stable, and revert back to their ingredients quickly. Quarks are never seen as a loaf, but the Higgs can be. This is common with bosons. Others, like the W and Z bosons, were predicted before they were seen by the interactions of other particles. Their masses were predicted by looking at reactions which did not actually involve any Z or W bosons! Eventully, we found the right "oven temperature" to make the loaf show up, and stay around long enough to be seen as a loaf.

A boson by any other name

[w00ly_mammoth]

How do they name particles? The boson is named after Bose (the physicist, not the audio system). So how is a Higgs particle different from a normal boson, and how are particle names decided?

A physicist told me that Bose deserved the Nobel, but didn't win due to politics. (In any case, it's probaly cooler to have a subatomic particle named after yourself rather than win the Nobel.)

On another note, from the article:

"Such a Higgs signature may have been seen in several unusual events observed recently at Lep. "

Yeah, such as a cut in funding. :)

w/m

Re:A boson by any other name

[krlynch]

Minor correction: the graviton is a spin 2 excitation. Incidentally, this is why it is so hard to come up with a consistent quantum theory of gravity. You might know that all of our particle physics is based on renormalizable quantum gauge field theories, and, as you said, they contain spin 0, 1/2, and 1 fundamental fields. These, it turns out, are the only types of fields that can be consistently renormalized in four space-time dimensions. Thus, when you try to turn a classical theory (like E&M, with its spin 1 photon), into a quantum field theory, you can do it consistently, and make all the icky infinities disappear. Since you can't do that to spin 2 fields, you can't make the infinities go away, and naive quantization of Einstein's gravity doesn't give a consistent quantum theory....but I've digressed :-)

Re:A boson by any other name

[krlynch]

how are particle names decided?

Generally, they are either named in honor of someone who did fundamental work on the theory behind the particle (like fermions (Fermi), and the Higgs (Peter Higgs)) by general, informal consensus (people just started calling the Higgs the Higgs) or they are named by their discoverers (like the J/psi), or by committee (most of the heavier elements are named by IUPAC).

Re:A boson by any other name

[aderusha]

as a semi-informed lay person i'll give my best here.

first off, if this holds out, this is a _very_big_find_

bosons are "force carriers". all particles have a quantized property called "spin". bosons are particles with an integral spin. that is, they all have a spin of 1, 2, 3, or whatever. one boson that you are probably familiar with is the photon, the carrier of the electromagnetic force. there's also gluons that carry the strong force which among other things holds a nucleus together. there's W+, W-, and Z^0 which carry the weak force that causes particle decay. there's also speculation about the "graviton", which would allegedly carry the gravitational force. all the bosons mentioned above have a spin of 1. (as an aside, fermions are particles with half integral spin like 1/2 or 3/2, and they compromise the rest of the particles like electrons and quarks.)

the higgs is interesting as it has a spin of 0. there's a question in physics as to why some particles have this strange property we call mass, and why the mass of some particles is so much different than others. peter higgs postulated the existance of a boson that would interact with massive objects in such a way that they would appear to have mass in various degrees. hence, the higgs boson.

Re:Run, then analyse

[mcelrath]

They do run their full analysis, and even compute new mass limits for the higgs on-line. It's not a quick cut-based skim or anything. ;)

Serious Questions: What is the Higgs Potential?

[thex23]

I was once told by a respectable physicist that the Big Bang may have been caused by a "fluctuation in the Higgs potential". I took this to mean that "before" the universe/big bang (i know, i know) there was some "change" that allowed the universe to expand out of some other non-space-time medium.

How does the Higgs boson relate to this field-potential? Do Higgs bosons/fields in our universe change their characteristic qualities over time?

Is this related to the recent discovery that there seems to be an EXPANSIONARY force in the universe (meaning that my favourite theory of Big-bang, Big-crunch is no longer viable)?

And yeah, how does Superstrings/branes theories fit these "particles" into their paradigm?

If anybody knows, I'd be surprised. Just asking.

Re: SSC too bad ... but Texas choice was political

[poiu]

I wish the SSC was built too.

In Bativia Illinois, there is this little collider called Fermi. The Speaker of the House at the time was from Texas. It would have been a lot cheaper to build the SSC in Illinois where it could be hooked up to the existing loop at Fermi. I believe the plan was to use Fermi as an injector. But, politics beat out technology and unfortunately in the end the Texas project was scrapped too.

---

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're talking about in the analogy between a ballon and the big bang, when I visualize what you're talking about is being at the center of an expanding balloon with dots all over it's surface, where the dots would appear to be expanding away from each other at a steady rate and universaly away from me at the center. but the dots in any direction would have a set of dots on the other side of me traveling in an equal and opposite direction.

If the image you're trying to convey is one of being on the surface of the balloon watching the dots around me grow in distance from one another.. say if you had a fuzzy ballon, more like an elastic mist, with the polka dots spread throuout it. if you were at the center of part of that mist, not all parts of it would be traveling at the same rate in the same direction, but spreading apart uniformly away from each other spot in the mist as it streached further apart.

Either way I think it's time I do more research. It works in my head, so (more likely) my understanding of physics is flawed or I'm just not very good at expressing myself. Thanks

LEP talks

[bholzm1]

The news coverage seems to be based on the talks that the four LEP experiments gave earlier this week at CERN. If you're interested in the physics behind the press reports, here's a link to the summary talk. You can also hunt around the CERN Experiments web site; click on Aleph, Delphi, L3, and Opal.

I read through the summary presentation -- I think the evidence for a Higgs is not very compelling. The signal (albeit a ~ 4 sigma signal) comes solely from the 4-jet channel in the Aleph experiment. I'd be much more interested in seeing the result in a refereed journal, however. At any rate, you can read the talk and judge for yourself.

Disclaimer: while I am a physics grad student (well, for another month, anyway), Higgs searches are not my realm of expertise.

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

Ahhh, I see. Using my mathematics it would make more sense then for singularities would have a infentesimal, though nonzero volume, making it 0D/10^-53=? or whatnot.. either way if the object happened to be at dead stop by my calculations it should have 0 gravitational squeeze on it, and to have mass is to prove you're in motion.

Re:My Opinion.

[dabacon]

Something within me just revolts at the site of this getting press at such a preliminary stage. From your post, I'm guessing that the CERN had to present their "possible Higgs" data in order to get the extra time needed to explore this lead further.

But if the data is as sketchy as you say, why in the world did the press pick this up?

This reminds me of a few years back when I heard on the radio that "room-temperature" superconductors had been discovered. I was so excited I almost drove off the road, only to find out later that it was just a bad case of the press picking up an early result which later proved incorrect. Doh!

dabacon

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

Let me try another tact. if you have two cars on the highway moving at forty miles an hour, if they could only see each other and they were moving at the same rate they would appear to be stopped, and indeed would be in relation to one another, however if they moved closer to one another the wind whipping at high speed between them would cause them to tug closer to each other, possibly thinking it was a force eminated by the cars themselves rather than being a byproduct of their forty mile an hour travel in relation to the wind that pushes past them. IE, this sea of higgs particles. the question would be is what framework this Higgs is in and what is 'stationary' in relation to it.

It's ALEPH again

[ponyisi]

I've been taking a look at the pdf of the presentation (http://lephiggs.web.cern.ch/LEPHIGGS/talks/tully_ talk.pdf, but it's a bit technical) and I'm far from convinced.

LEP has four detectors (named ALEPH, L3, DELPHI, and OPAL). Each does its analyses independently, and their results are merged into a LEP-wide figure. The significance of the repored result is almost entirely due to ALEPH: they report 3.8 sigma, while the other three combined have 2 (a sigma is a measure of how unlikely it is that your result is a statistical fluke; you need 5 or so to claim discovery). Earlier this year, ALEPH reported 3.8 sigma evidence for supersymmetry which disappeared under further analysis. ALEPH has a history of having fake results that are much more significant than those from any other LEP detector. (They even claimed to have discovered the Higgs a while ago...)

Then again, I do work at Fermilab so I am a bit biased. :-) Though I really do wish that the news would stop reporting these things as "Scientists believe they've found the Higgs"; it's sort of on the level of "Americans like anchovies."

Re:It's ALEPH again

[ponyisi]

Exactly the point.

Re:Significance (take this with a grain of salt)

[osu-neko]

Conspiracy theorists in the audience might say that this is an attempt to run LEP just a little bit longer before ripping it out for the LHC.

Only really really stupid conspiracy theorists. Think about it, either (A) the physicists genuinely believe they've seen Higgs bosons, or (B) the physicists don't think they've seen Higgs bosons and this is just an excuse to keep the LEP running.

Now, what the scientists want to be is the people who discovered the Higgs boson If the scientists did not believe they're seeing Higgs bosons (i.e. assuming B is true), what would be their desire? They would want to rip out the LEP and replace it with the LHC as fast as possible, since the LHC is supposed to be able to see Higgs bosons whereas the LEP (according to their beliefs under this scenario) can't! Thus, their actions, attempting to DELAY the ripping out of the LEP rather than trying to speed along pretty much proves (B) is false. (A) is the only plausible explanation for their attempts to delay ripping out the LEP.

Which doesn't mean they've actually discovered Higgs boson, it simply means they're sincere in their beliefs and this is not a conspiracy.

(...or it's a far, far more convoluted conspiracy. :)

--

Leibniz

[Millard Fillmore]

One of the most intersting things about the Higgs theory is that it is somewhat analogous to G.W. Leibniz's philosophy of monads. Leibniz was, as I'm sure many of you know, a rigorously scientific thinker, as well as a philosopher, and he spent a lot of time thinking about questions similar to those before modern quantum physicists, such as the present question of what provides particles with mass. Leibniz would almost certainly like the Higgs idea, because in his mind, nothing intereacts directly with anything else - interaction is always between a monad (a single thing) and an underlying essence, which then transmits the information to another monad. The Higgs field does something like this for mass.

Significance (take this with a grain of salt)

[mcelrath]

This "announcement" is from an internal status report. (slides in pdf format, and a better article) There are 3 events they claim as "signal" for the higgs boson. 3! The statistical significance of this "find" is 2.6 sigma. In physics, one requires 5 sigma to announce a discovery. THIS IS NOT A DISCOVERY. Conspiracy theorists in the audience might say that this is an attempt to run LEP just a little bit longer before ripping it out for the LHC.

The fact of the matter that it is very easy to get statistical fluctuations of this magnatude in high-energy physics. (insert obligatory comment about the accuracy of political "polls" here) And in the higgs search at CERN they have frequently seen extra events just at the end of their range. (The mass of 114.9 GeV is barely within the range of the accelerator to see at its current energy)

If the higgs exists, it will be found by the LHC. It's enticing to think it's barely beyond LEP's reach, and if the LHC finds it there, the LEP people will bemoan not being able to extend LEP's run just a little bit longer...

Disclaimer: IAP (I Am a Physicist), and have worked on the higgs analysis at CERN (but do not currently). How come more physics people don't post to slashdot? I know you guys read it. ;)

--Bob

Re:The particle myth

[Metrol]

You're looking for water in the desert. Allow me to quote briefly here...

if it can't be proved by experiment, it isn't science at all.

This is a statement that can only be made by someone without the first foggiest knowledge of what science is, much less how it relates to theology. Even the simple minded have a rudimentary understanding that science is not truth, but rather the search for it. Despite what Jon might otherwise lead you to believe...

Science has a lot to offer mankind

...his follow up post confirming my suspicions really brings the point home of what he is.

What kind of fool do you take me for? - just begging for a follow up snide remark not provided.

But what it does cover are the important things - the Creation and the Lord's teachings. Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.

Here is the first real clue to the true nature of this person, although it leaves us with one of two possibilities. He is either someone blindly parroting someone else's rant, attempting to present this as his own, or he is simply trying to egg folks on to reply to him. I suspect that our troll here is probably a healthy dose of both, not quite understanding what the heck this article is talking about, but using enough summarizing from it to try and denounce science as a humanist endeavor.

In short, I wouldn't hold your breath for an in depth response to your post. The moderators nailed this one perfectly (Score:-1, Troll).

Re:Run, then analyse

[mcelrath]

Actually, the people in the Wisconsin group at CERN working on this have developed a rather cool system using a bit of perl and the web and a few batch jobs. It's called BEHOLD! and it presents the researchers with candidate higgs events from data that was collected the previous day. So they know daily how many higgs events they have, and what the lower limit on the higgs mass is. Pretty cool! I'd personally be surprised to see a higgs discovery after LEP is shut down. There's a heck of a lot of work going into the higgs analysis there.

--Bob

Gates Bogon

[shippo]

This is all well and good, but when are they going to confirm existance of the Gates Bogon, a particle absolved by suits, journalists, and other lower life-forms.

The main result of Gates Bogon absorption is a loss of contact with reality.

Re:Gates Bogon

[gibson_81]

Judging by Jon Erikson, it seems to affect some Christians as well ...

Re:job preservation exercise

[ColdGrits]

Not really.

You see, although the CERN facility is scheduled for closure, the REASON is that it is being REPLACED by a bigger and better facility.

Re:The particle myth

[osu-neko]

Of course the Bible didn't cover those things, it was written thousands of years ago! What kind of fool do you take me for? But what it does cover are the important things - the Creation and the Lord's teachings. Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.

I believe the oil level in my car is sufficient, but I don't consider it a waste of effort to check it the dipstick anyways.

It should be noted that religions claim to report the truth, and science is a means of testing propositions for their truthfulness. Now, there are many religions, and they are contradictory, so only one (if any) is likely to pass this test.

Thus, whatever religion is the True Religion has a great deal to gain from scientific exploration. However, false religions have a great deal to lose.

Thus, we have an effective litmus test for the validity of any religion. A true religion will promote science at every available oportunity. Only a false religion would develop an adversarial relationship with science. Only worshipers of a false religion will consider science a waste of time and effort...

--

Re:The particle myth

[osu-neko]

Only one who is of the theological mind set ever bothers to capitalize the "T" in truth.

Actually, I've frequently seen this used as a short-hand way to distingush necessary truths from contingent truths. (It's necessarily true that pi rounded to 3 significant digits is 3.14 -- it just couldn't be any other way. It's contingently true that I have no brother -- I don't, but I could have had things been different. Of course, if you're a determinist, there are no contingent truths, but then if you're a determinist you're probably not into 20th century physics and are therefore not reading this article...)

--

Re:Making Sense

[Actinophrys]

So while talking about discovering Higgs particle we actually mean discovering Higgs boson field.

Remember, though, that in the mathematics of quantum mechanics particles and fields are the same thing. Photons are quanta of the electromagnetic field, electrons are quanta of the electron field. And Higgs particles are simply quanta of the Higgs field.

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

that's a good point, I think I was likening the Higgs bosun to the 'ether' Einstin kicked around, something for us to be traveling through that would create this wake. guess I'll just go back to calling it space/time :)

Re:The particle myth

[Metrol]

Au contraire, mon ami. I use the capital "t" to distinguish between "Truth" and "truth", and it doesn't necessarily have to do with theology.

Perhaps you do, but it's certainly not a commonly used form of the capitalization. In addition, this was but one factor in spotting the troll out from under his bridge. The context of this clue was also quite important.

Then there was the resultant data from my experimental post which confirmed my now proven theory.

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

does this mean there was no big bang? when I went through school I was taught that the universe was given x/y/z dimension from a singularity via a big bang, and you don't get much more point based than a singularity. singularities are THE points.

if it didn't happen I'd really like to know :/

Re:One Page explanations

[Azog]

Hey, thanks for the informative and friendly answer. I hope someone moderates you up.


Torrey Hoffman (Azog)

Re:Nothing ironic

[krlynch]

After this the collider goes to the trash can.

I believe that it is not actually going into the trashcan, but large parts of it will be mothballed for possible future use at the current facility as part of an electron-proton "upgrade" when the LHC program is done....at least, that's what Chris Llewellyn-Smith (sp? former director general of CERN) told us when he was here a few years ago.

Re:My diet ends now!

[Duxup]

Yeah, funny was my intent.
I've been modded pretty harshly when trying to be funny lately. I'm not sure if people are just more defensive because of trolls maybe.

Re:Making Sense

[krlynch]

For instance it's easy to imagine repulsion forces as a result of exchanging some particles, but it's impossible to explain attraction that way.

FWIW, there is an analogy (a pretty hokey analogy) for explaining attraction as an exchange. You think of repulsion as the exchange of "balls" while you can think of attraction as the exchange of "boomerangs" - you throw the boomerang AWAY from the one you want to be attracted to, it loops around, and they catch it. YOU are "pushed" toward the one you are attracted to when you throw the boomerang, and the CATCHER is pushed toward YOU.

Like I said, its a hokey analogy, but it helped some of my students at one point.

Re:The particle myth

[Kite]

I mean, what is it with all of the different particles that these people seem to want to invent at every opportunity? Higgs bosons,technicolor particles, partons, selectrons, squarks, winos, zinos and dinos, they're all on the same scientific level as evolution - a piece of pseudo-science that cannot be proven by experiment. And as far as I knew, if it can't be proved by experiment, it isn't science at all.

A lot of these particles were actually "invented" to make theoretical physics agree with experiments. A good example is the neutrino: its existence was first postulated in the 1930s to account for the conservation of energy in beta-decay (without neutrinoes, a little energy was missing), and since then a lot of experiments have been done that confirm their presence. In the case of Higgs bosons, squarks and the like, these particles were postulated to keep theory in accordance with other experimental data (like particles having mass, and the existance of gravity). But having a theory that works doesn't automatically mean it's true, and that's why people like to observe these particles in an experiment. A confirmation of the theory would be nice, while proof that the theory is wrong would make people come up with a new theory that does agree with experiments.

Re:The particle myth

[JimPooley]

Jon "God-Botherer" Erikson wrote: But what it does cover are the important things - the Creation and the Lord's teachings. Science can only verfiy these indisputable facts, and all of these pie in the sky theories will fail to show any different, and are thus a waste of time and effort.

Bollocks!

What Science can do is show God's Alleged "Truths" up for the fiction they are. Consign the Bible in to the "Historical Fiction" section of the bookshelves where it belongs.
Science has already shown so much to be complete hogwash. The more we learn about the universe the better.

One Page explanations

[nihilogos]

in 1993 the British Minister for Science challenged particle physicists to explain in one page or less what the Higgs Boson was and why they were so eager to find it.

http://hepwww.ph.qmw.ac.uk/epp/higgs.html

Re:One Page explanations

[krlynch]

There is a difference here from the luminous ether theory: Maxwell's equations (which describe classical electromagnetism, and contain wave equations as their solution) does not predict or require the existence of the ether. Presuming the existence of the ether was an additional assumption that was added based on personal preferences of the scientists involved, but NOT in any way required by the fundamental statement of the theory of electromagnetism.

However, the Higgs boson is required IF our current theory is correct. And, the current theory is believed to be correct BECAUSE every measurement that is made conforms to this theory; there are literally millions of experimental observations that have been made, and we need only 20 or so parameters to describe all of them ... hence, we can make millions of predictions. Thus, if the Higgs does NOT exist, we will have the exceedingly hard job of explaining how the current theory can be so wrong and yet so accurate.

So, the Higgs boson is FUNDAMENTALLY PREDICTED AND REQUIRED to exist by the theory, whereas the ether was neither predicted nor required.

That does not mean it DOES exist, just that we really do expect it to (much like we expected to see the top quark and the Z/W bosons long before they were actually observed).

Re:One Page explanations

[krlynch]

Warning! Handwaving to occur! Intended for non-theorists! Complaints on details not expected!

First, is the Higgs field the same everywhere in the Universe?

No, just like E&M

And second, perhaps we can learn to manipulate it?

Probably not. We can manipulate EM fields because the sources of such fields are electrically charged particles, and they are easy to grab and move around, since EM forces are relatively large. You can think of masses as being the sources of the Higgs field. But, the coupling of the Higgs field is extremely weak, making it hard to have an impact on the field by wiggling masses around.

If the Higgs field "causes mass", maybe its different in other areas of the universe. Maybe this could explain the "dark matter" problem - perhaps there is no missing matter, but the Higgs field is stronger in other places so everything just has more mass "out there".

This is a reasonable extrapolation of what's been written here, but as usual, popularizations leave out some important technical details. The particle masses are generated by their coupling to the Higgs field, and the magnitude of those masses is set by the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field, which is how strong the field is when there are no excitations (no real Higgs particles) lying around. We know the value of this VEV fairly well (246 GeV in the most popular normalization). Assuming the vacuum has the same structure everywhere in the universe (and there are observational limits on this that are very strict), then particle masses would be the same everywhere as well, even if the instantaneous value of the Higgs field is different

If we could make a device that modifies the Higgs field, would that have the effect of changing the apparent mass of objects within the field?

No, but we could do so if we could build a device to modify the structure of the vacuum...which we don't know how to do! But, if the rumblings out of CERN are right (and I doubt they are more than a desperate grab on a primacy claim for the Nobel that the discovery will garner), we have ALREADY BUILT a machine to change the Higgs field (athough not in the same sense that we've built machines (radio transmitters) to change the E&M field), namely LEP, since "changing the Higgs field" is the same thing as generating real Higgs particles.

Re:One Page explanations

[jafac]

If one could manipulate the Higgs field, one could do all kinds of stuff.

All kinds.

Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!

Dangle yer rod in the water

[pwhysall]

and wait for the fishies to bite...
--

Re:Dangle yer rod in the water

[Happy Monkey]

and wait for the fishies to bite...

Ouch!
___

Re:Hmmmm... Observer bias?

[SpyceQube]

Fuedal Technocracy, it's the only way to go...

Re:Boson Particles?

[psiwave]

>these researchers are nothing more than tools of Satan himself, sent here to destroy the Lord.

Wow, and my physics prof. seems like such a nice guy, too.

I'm sorry...

[tswinzig]

I enjoyed your post, but I just can't let this one go.

Benjamin Franklin would keal over in his grave if he could see America today.

I believe, were he alive today, that a grave would be the best place in which to keel over.

If pro is the opposite of con then what is the opposite of progress?

Regress?

-thomas


"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Never mind ...

[Stavr0]

Why are physicists trying to study Higgs' bosom?
---

The book 'Flashforward'...

[Bahumat]

For those of you interested, there is a fun sci-fi book written recently entitled 'Flashforward' that centers around the CERN experiments and finding the Higgs bosom. The plot is complete fluff, but a lot of fun and well-researched. Want to get to know the works of CERN better? Give this book a gander.

Re:Making Sense

[SpryGuy]

No, it doesn't mean that at all.

In the 'big bang', the universe didn't explode along three spacial dimensions... the three spacial dimensions THEMSELVES expanded outward. It wasn't a 'universe' expanding into already created 3-d space that was 'empty' until the big bang... prior to the 'big bang', 3-d space simply didn't exist.

So if you were within that rapidly expanding universe, moments after the expansion began, *everywhere* within the universe would have been perceived as being the 'center', because of the aforementioned fact that every point was racing 'away' from every other point.

Again, you sorta need to think in higher dimensions (which is why the baloon example works... it's a 2-d analog which allows our brains to more readily grasp the concepts). To a person on the baloon surface ('within space'), the universe seems infinite yet bounded (you can travel as long as you want in any direction, x or y, and never come to an 'end' ... yet the whole universe exists in a finite 3-d space). There is no point *on the surface of the baloon* which you can point to as the origin of the big bang, and the absolute 'reference' for exansion. Ditto, here in our 3-d universe, there is no single point you can identify as 'the source' of the expansion.

Clearer?

- Spryguy

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

Alright, I think I understand.. Let me continue on with the ballon analogy. in the begining one point of the balloon had all spacetime affecting material in one spot, spinning around a central point and twisting the ballon up into a very tight, compact little point, the rest of spacetime so streached and thin it could contain no matter, so just like water seeks the lowest ground all matter was forced into the area of greatest collected spacetime.

For reasons unknown, this rotation stopped, and the balloon, or spacetime, unwound in a snap that suddenly diffused spacetime everywhere for matter to exist, so it diffused outward away all of a sudden.. kind of like ink on a rubber band. if you squished rubber together and wrote on it, then streached it out, there is no central point it's expanding from, it was never in one point to begin with, but all points were very close together and are now moving away from each other, pulling matter along with it..

I like :)

I see what you are saying about no absolute velocity, only relative velocity, and I think I now understand how that would work in a situation like that, if this singularity, with an infintesimaly small but nonzero volume was rotating at a speed of 1, any point on the outside would be traveling at a speed of 2 relative to the exact point on the other side along the line of the axis of rotation, 2*(lots of density)/little bit of volume=lots of gravity, or spacetime warp, or twisted rubber, holding it all together. space would snap back if the density was nulified by no velocity around the axis in relation to the point on the other side. maybe spin makes gravity. and there's always going to be a seed of spin availible, when's the last time you saw a nonspinning atom? (ok, you might have, I'm conjecturing)

I have more to think about now :)

Re:My diet ends now!

[Aos]

Oh c'mon!! It's funny, not off topic!

Re:LHC

[DeadCatLinux]

I thought one of that main reasons for building the LHC was to find the Higgs boson.

Re:My Opinion.

[krlynch]

I'm with you...it seems more likely to me to be a last gamble that they can get a few more weeks of running before decommissioning. The article sounds much like the CERN announcement of the "discovery" of Quark-Gluon Plasma a week of so before the start of RHIC's first run.

Then again, maybe they really do have something.

The Future!

[F'Nok]

If they do find this...

Could this lead the way to Anti-Gravity, and Gravity in Space Ships??

By working out how matter *is there* maybe we could then then work out how to reverse gravity (as it's directly related to matter)

This could be a very major thing if it's useful!
And that's only what I can dream up, think of the other millions that will ponder on this!

I'd like a no-fuel plane thanks, but can you make it fast, I have a trip booked to Alpha-Centauri!

A bit to the future, but this is what Science is all about... Dreaming, and then making your dreams come true!!

- There is no work, there is no work...
- Damn, it worked for Neo!
-

Re:The particle myth

[radja]

>And sure, it's glamorous to write about things like the "Big Bang" whereas people like I who live good lives following the Lord's teachings are seen as being less worthy of respect.

make it people who live their lives following your god's teachings without ever questioning those teachings, who I see as 'less worthy of respect', and I'll give you the point. It's not for religion, but for not thinking

//rdj

Huh?

[HiQ]

Colliding bosoms? I'm all shy and confused now!

How to make a sig
without having an idea

Something really important...

[tak amalak]

what we need to find is a way to create gravitons. They would be way more useful than "so-ons:. ;)
--

Re:Something really important...

[TeknoHog]

What would you use them for?

Higgs bosons are responsible for particles having mass. The inertia of an accelerating particle (supposedly) stems from its interaction with the Higgs field. Imagine if we could control that interaction.

Oh well.. I'm getting tired of work so I'll just render myself massless and get home immediately.

--

Re:The particle myth

[Troodon]

The presence of quite a few of the elements of the perodic table were postulated (theorised, whatever) long before the actual element in question was isolated.

Re:Making Sense

[marat]

This is nice view for popular paper article but it would lead you in trouble if you're really trying to understand something or work in the area. For instance it's easy to imagine repulsion forces as a result of exchanging some particles, but it's impossible to explain attraction that way.

Actually there are no particles during interaction. Particle is an abstraction. Sea of particles is an abstraction. Even single field is an abstraction, but it is proper math object and we should have some starting point anyway. So while talking about discovering Higgs particle we actually mean discovering Higgs boson field. This field interacts with other fields so, that this fields behave like having mass. This is because of some math and there's nothing more about it.

And don't compare mass and weight here: while we believe in General Theory of Relativity, object weight and object resistance to accelerate (mass) is the same thing.
---
Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources

Re:The particle myth

[radja]

hmm.. the greeks and romans had some pretty decent sized theaters.. with amazing acoustic properties..as for the limelights: they are open-air, and nothing wrong with daylight.

//rdj

job preservation exercise

[streetlawyer]

Ironically, this important discovery (or possible discovery) comes weeks before the collider used to make it is scheduled to be shut down

Can you say "last gasp Hail Mary gamble for redemption?" Never believe fantastic "initial" results from a project about to be cancelled which need "just a bit" more government money in order to "confirm" them.

Hmmmm... Observer bias?

[faldore]

OK so the particle accellerator's about to shut down, a bunch of scientists frantically searching for another grant, and they come up with some "abnormal" readings in their latest particle smashing party. Something about this reeks of observer bias. I think the results of the experiment are a little too close to the personal lives of these people to be believable. I would hope that any people reviewing this would take this into consideration before believing any claims made. In my experience data can be interpreted in many ways, and the belief we choose is often that result which would profit us the most.

Re:Hmmmm... Observer bias?

[Anonymous Coward]

no no no - its not being shut down - its being replaced by something better.

Re:Hmmmm... Observer bias?

[Nicolas MONNET]

Liberalism is socialism. Conservatism is slavery. And if you are representative, libertarianism is stupidity.

More references

[wuzzle_wuzzle]

A short explanation of how the Higgs gives the fundamental fermions mass can be found here,
which is a part of the Fermilab tutorial.

For a thorough popular discussion, see Leon Lederman's book, The God Particle.

Re:My Opinion.

[whizzard]

You would not be reading this website today without CERN. The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Burness Lee from CERN and was given its initial boost by Particle Physicists as means to aid their international collaborations.

Are you sure? I thought it was Al Gore. Oh, well...

mdr

T.B.L. and CERN

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Dunno, for some reason the significance of the story for me (I don't follow high energy physics that much since I stopped playing basketball with a high energy physics professor) is CERN and the WWW and their intertwined history.

Isn't the story that Tim Berners Lee invented HTTP .9 to disseminate physics papers? Now I'm writing a post about a physics paper on the WWW, on a web site, who's business model is entirely web advertising (and the occasional Slashdot mug sale).

For some reason just came as a "You've come a long way baby" story for me.

Re:Degradation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a lot more interesting than 'RMS doesn't like KDE' or 'Cmdr Taco flames CueCat'. More of this please. Funny how this sort of thing appears on a Thursday, coincidently New Scientist's publication day.

I don't think so Tim :-)

[Lion-O]

Ironically, this important discovery (or possible discovery) comes weeks before the collider used to make it is scheduled to be shut down. Can you say "the dilemma of prior investment"?

I don't think it will have to come to that, the dilemma I mean. After reading the story I get the impression that both devices work on a allmost identical scale yet this one, suddenly, discovers something that may proof to be the upcoming Higgs allthough it can't seem to provide any hard evidence to back up this theory. I allways get an eerie feeling when reading such stories. Sure, its a very random factor we are dealing with, no doubts there. But I do have the impression that their timing on providing us with the "if ... maybe ... money ... close down" news wasn't coincedence in any way. Neither would I be surprised if the upcoming Higgs isn't going to be discovered in this machine between now and December.

Bottom line; it is people we are dealing with and normally people like to keep their jobs. Being a scientist doesn't change this fact. I'm a little disappointed that the article didn't give us any more "inside" information on that subject; what are these scientists going to do when the device shuts down? Any other projects they can work on? Are they going to the States to help these guys out? Or do they get the 'sack' in a "everyone for himself" situation? Once you know the answer to these questions you have a little more insight on the question 'is this for real'. In this case this article is mere decoration IMHO; no real news value.

Gee, I didn't know it was lost.

[human bean]

I can't believe anybody hasn't said this by now. Maybe they found it under the couch cushions?

I wonder what they are going to use the old accelerator structure for?

Re:Making Sense

[spikesahead]

About six months ago I was feeling particularly good and my mind felt tuned to physics, so I downloaded some informational text about frame dragging and singularities from britannica.com and thought about them while I wasted my life at my boring job. I thought about how an object increases in mass as it starts to move faster, and this led me to the idea that mass was tied directly to velocity. Our sun is moving right now, circling around the center of our galaxy like a bath toy around a drain, and our galaxy is almost certanly moving outwards from the central point at which the big bang occurred, and all these add up to quite a bit of velocity, hence, in my mind, gravity. The idea that motion through Higgs bosuns meshes quite nicely with this idea of mine, that a wake through this sea of bosuns would produce this lovely force that ties stuff together.

It makes me wonder, what would be the mass of an object at dead stop? I've heard it argued that there can be no dead stop due to there being no exact framework for the universe, but I disagree, if the big bang was a point, matter must be traveling in opposite directions at exactly opposite velocities on either side of this single point, every velocity in one direction is matched exactly by a velocity on the other side of this single point. This thought being how I believe the big bang occurred.

It has to do with a formula I came up with while I was having a particularly good day, one I haven't had since, Angular velocity (J) multiplied by density (D) divided by volume V equals the gravitational wake (G) of any particular object, or JD/V=G. In a singularity, V is going to be 0, this is lots of matter in no space, spinning quickly for the same reason a figure skater moves faster when they pull up into a tight axle. Being literate computer folks I think you know what a divide by zero gets you, JD/0=? it leads me to suspect that even a singularity has measurable volume, because active spin in no space would make infinite gravity and suck the universe in to get cozy.

First, the big bang was a singularity to begin with, a mighty big one, likely spinning as it sucked in whatever mass was growing it, and it's spin was every velocity that was put into it spinning in almost zero volume, but a curious thing happenened, the velocities added to it started to cancle it's spin, slowing it down until J was 0, so 0D/0=0, no gravity to hold D inside of V, so physics snapped back in that very instant and all the velocity ever added to it springs back traveling in equal and opposite directions like god's own firecracker.

This therory appears to be consistant with Frame Dragging and the whole general relitivity business.

if you'd like to take a look at my raw notes, go here, although I warn that they're a little messy and in some parts totally wrong :)

Re:Making Sense

[LordLamer44th]

I do physics at undergrad level but a couple of years back a friend and I worked out *VERY* loosely what would happen if there was a permiating energy field (think misty) and mass was a condenation of dragging in this.
As i said we didn;t and dont know much but you could get some simple phsycis derived from this "crazy idea"

Re:The particle myth

[faldore]

hm, already been invented. Have you ever watched star trek? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a flying car instead of creeping about on our planet's surface like ants? Have you ever wondered about the future of humanity with the certain, though distant, decay of our sun? The fact is, we have to find our way to another planet or we will die here. Do we have the resources to solve these problems? Not yet, and that's why scientific research is important. Antigravity would be a great achievement, and this is a big step in understanding gravity so that it can be circumvented. It all depends on our ability to understand energy, gravity, and the universe. We should be applauding these people not criticizing them.

Re:The particle myth

[AbbyNormal]

Yup. One thing that I've never been to understand is why do some people (aside from Trolls) love to think that Science is the work of the devil? I believe in God and Science. I just think God is not so limited as to be captured in one little itty bitty book. Science, IMHO, is merely the process of discovering the little rules that God has put into place. Scientists just have to becareful to use their discoveries to benefit society so that such discoveries can continue. (Ie. Accidently releasing a potent virus into a residental area would probably be within the "bad" ideas).

HOW HEAVY IS IT?

[marat]

This story misses the main point: how heavy is it. Anybody got info/links?
---
Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources

Re:HOW HEAVY IS IT?

[reminor]

there are 6 chances out of 1000 that the Higgs Boson weighs 114.9 Gev.c^-2 according to this article

Run, then analyse

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, this important discovery (or possible discovery) comes weeks before the collider used to make it is scheduled to be shut down.

This is common. In fact, many discoveries are made after an experiment has ceased running. The reason of course is that creating the data and analyzing it are two separate, but very intensive, tasks. We don't have enough people to do both at once. While the thing is running you do particle ID and so on so that you know the thing is doing what it's supposed to. In general, the cycle is design, implement, and analyse, while about 2.5 of these steps running in parallel.

It is amusing that LEP has found Higgs, since that was a large part of LHC's job. But of course there is still a great deal of measurement to be done! Furthermore there is plenty of b and t physics for LHC to look at.

Particle Physicists

[nihilogos]

Q. How do particle physicists figure out how PCs work?

A. They smash two of them together at very high speeds and study the bits that fly out.

(some of you have probably heard this ... )

My Opinion.

[msevior]

Having seen only the histograms from a talk given to the cern program advisory committee, I think they're a little bold. The claim for a signal rests on proving that they know precisely each background in each detector (there are four seperate dectors) and that they know how to add these backgrounds together.

I would not be a bit surprised to see the "signal" disappear after more data. That said it is intriguing enough to keep running for the extra time they ask for.

By the way the guys running the experiments do not have to fear for their jobs. There is plenty to do to get the LHC up and running

Since no one else has done it yet, I'll put in an advertisement for CERN:

You would not be reading this website today without CERN. The World Wide Web was invented by Tim Burness Lee from CERN and was given its initial boost by Particle Physicists as means to aid their international collaborations.

Just thought you could do with reminding :-)

Martin Sevior

Re:The particle myth

[Bazzargh]

Not everything that *could* make life worthwhile has been invented however. Lets go look at Star Trek for a moment. Those matter transporters would be pretty handy in reducing the amount of time taken for doctors to get to emergencies, or for food (from replicators of course) to be sent to areas with famines.

The argument that we already have everything that makes life worthwhile has been made at every point in history. (30 years ago we'd have said, we can put a man on the moon but we can't get a bum off the street...)

Worse, in recent times this same argument is taken to its logical conclusion: the neo-Luddite 'return to a pastoral existence'. A pastoral existence in a world where rabies, smallpox, and TB are rife, could be argued to be no worse than the ills of the world now. But today our life expectancy is verging on 80; in pre-industrial societies life expectancy was closer to 50.

While we're on the subject...the arts are actually highly dependant on technology. Changes in painting techniques were largely driven by the availability of appropriate pigments, discovered over time. Film is pure technology. Large scale theatre can't be done with limelights, or sound systems.

Further, science can even BE art.
http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/jpeg/M16Full.jp g . 'nuff said.

Uninformed, yet clueless thought...

[csmacd]

Hasn't there been a debate in astronomy about the weight of the universe? As I recall, apparently all the "stuff" in the heavens that we can see doesn't add up to what the mass of the universe should be.

Now, enter these H-B particles....since they can't be seen, could there be huge "lumps" of these things out there that would make up the balance of the universe's mass?

Re:The particle myth

[radja]

god does not exist, and I dare you to prove me wrong, mr Erikson. The bible is a fictional book with heavy moral content, no more, no less. I happen to agree with quite some of the ideas behind it (let's face it.. religious or not "thou shall not kill" is not a bad idea), but not all.

//rdj

Higgs Boson!!?

[fish500]

Higgs Boson?!! That guy owes me money! If they ever find him ...

bad joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Q: What do the Higgs-Boson and the Pope have in common?

A: they both give mass.

sorry, couldn't resist. :)

Nothing ironic

[Camelot]

Prior investment ? The fact is that the LEP accelerator is being used for more that it was intended for. The maximum energy for the collisions was planned to be around 100 GeV, and the collider was supposed to be dismantled _last year_ (or maybe even before that). But, alas, they wanted to squeeze every useful bit out of LEP - hit the metal, use it to the max - the energies have been around 200 GeV this summer. After this the collider goes to the trash can.

The reason for all this is, of course, the desperate search for the Higgs particle. Now they *might* have evidence for it - thats great. Whether or not they have found it, the LEP has proved to be worth of the investment.

The reason for the dismantling of LEP is that they want to start installing the parts for the forthcoming LHC accelerator (that will collide protons and anti-protons) - which is due to start operation in 2005, so its not like they are retiring LEP for no reason at all.

Making Sense

[Self Bias Resistor]

The idea that mass is the drag of particles through a sea of Higgs boson actually makes some sense if you think about it.

In a way, it's a similar idea to an object having weight because of the Earth's gravity acting on the mass of the object. It's the kind of idea that makes you change your perspective on physics. This idea of mass being the drag acting on particles moving through Higgs bosons is one that never occured to me before. Is mass then only a perceptual value or is it really a matter of (pardon the pun) how much stuff?

Also, I think people tend to confuse mass and weight because they think weight is how much stuff is in the object but it's actually mass. I mean, you feel the weight of something you hold in your hand because of gravity and the only reason the object remains stationary in your hand is because the muscles that force your hand and the object upwards is the same as the gravitational force downwards.

Although it does give one the impression that we are all underwater in a sea of Higgs bosons. Is it possible for one to drown?

Self Bias Resistor
"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition."

Re:Making Sense

[jafac]

The Higgs field; the Ether of the 20th century.

Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!

Re:Making Sense

[mrust]

I completely agree with you about the danger of science popularizations, but it's not impossible to imagine particle exchange giving rise to attraction. Imagine two ice-skaters standing back-to-back on a frozen lake. One throws a boomerang away from her in such a way that it circles around and is caught by the other skater. As they exchange boomerangs, they will feel an attractive force. Of course, this isn't meaningful or rigorous at all and it requires other factors (the air) to get that weird behavior from the boomerang-particles.

Re:The particle myth

[RebornData]

I do respect your willingness to make statements that so blatently question the status quo in a forum that is clearly hostile towards your worldview. Based on some of your other postings, it's pretty clear that you're posting an honest opinion and not a troll.

However, as a Christian with a firm belief in modern science as well, I have to question that worldview. You seem a lot more rational and logical than many of the other people I've found who share some of the same beliefs, so I'm hoping you'll indulge me in answering questions in two major areas:

First:
All of the people that I've met personally who question the basic credibility of the modern science establishment (not necessarily the scientific method) based on Christian theology are biblical literalists, and base their viewpoint on the absolute inerrancy of the biblical scripture. Do you hold this view? Although I believe the bible was inspired by God, it's clear to me that the Word has been filtered through an incredibly imperfect human lens, and that it is impossible to take much of the bible literally, given the many layers of human interpretation that have resulted in the current text. My wife is a seminary student and has studied greek, and the amount of interpretation necessary to make the leap from greek to english is amazing to me- there are many, many places where grammatical ambiguity can create two linguistically valid translations of a sentence with radically different meanings in english. Translators must constantly make these judgement calls. If you believe that the bible is the literal word of God, how do you rationalize these problems as well as obvious direct, internal contradictions in the bible? If you don't, what is your theological basis for questioning the validity of modern science?

Second:
I have interpreted your posts as saying that modern partical physics is a myth, and that the experiments claiming to verify it are a sham. Yet you also give credit to other areas of science where "real, useful" work is being done. Your statements attack physics on many levels. I'd like to put aside issues of practical usefulness and the difficulty of sustaining a conspiracy at the level necessary to pull all of this off, and focus just on your issues with experimental verification.

At what level do you stop believing that experimental partical physics is valid? I would assume you don't question Newton's laws, as they are directly observable by human senses. Do you believe in atoms? Much of the "useful" modern science we do today wouldn't be possible without the understanding we have of atoms. But it's impossible to observe atoms without some form of mediating equipment, simple as it may be. What about electrons? Protons? Photons? Things like the dual nature of light (particle / wave) can be experimentally verified with relatively simple equipment- I've seen it personally. Much of our understanding of relatively sophisticated physics has been demonstrated unambiguously as correct by "experimental verification" in ways that are impossible to write of as "shams", such as fission and fusion bombs.

But as the level of detail increases, the level of mediation and sophistication in the equipment needed grows. Where do you draw the line? Does that line happen to fall exactly in the place where physics begins to contradict your theological beliefs?

I believe in a God that is bigger than all of this, that exists far beyond our comprehension of physics and is not even remotely threatened by it. There is something miraculous in the detail of the universe. Who started the big bang? Why did it happen? How did it happen that the physical rules of this universe result in conditions favorable to the development of intelligent life? To me the answer is obvious.

What does this imply for string theory?

[PieceMaker]

Assuming the Higgs boson is eventually proven to exist, what does that mean for string theory? It was my understanding that, according to string theory, mass of particles was a function of the vibration of the strings. Can someone expain this?
---

My diet ends now!

[Duxup]

If I understand the theory properly, my diet might already be over!

"No, I don't way that much, there are just way too many Higgs bosons in the bathroom where I keep my scale and that's increasing my mass!"