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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"?
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
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
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.
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?
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
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?
The main result of Gates Bogon absorption is a loss of contact with reality.
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
:wq
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.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
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.
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Every secretary using MSWord wastes enough resources
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
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.
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."
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When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.