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Higgs Boson Detected?

Posted by michael on from the now-you-see-it dept.

Travis McGee writes "A scientist says one of the most sought after particles in physics - the Higgs boson - may have been found, but the evidence is still relatively weak. The Higgs boson explains why all other particles have mass and is fundamental to a complete understanding of matter. The report was published in Nature magazine and the BBC has an article." The last time the elusive particle was in the news was 2001.

6 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. The boson kludge by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 2, Interesting
    So, the standard model defines 16 particles. But if there are only those 16, then none of them have mass, so there must be another one, that magically provides mass for the others. Weird. You can't make this stuff up, folks... err... oh, wait.

    Reminds me of the "dark energy" idea: "Well, we can only find 1/3 of the matter that we know should exist, so the rest is.. well, it's just the dark energy that we can't detect!"

    --
    "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
    --- Jerry Garcia
    1. Re:The boson kludge by mph · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Reminds me of the "dark energy" idea: "Well, we can only find 1/3 of the matter that we know should exist, so the rest is.. well, it's just the dark energy that we can't detect!"
      This statement is wrong in several ways.

      First of all, "dark energy" has nothing to do with the missing mass problem. You meant to say "dark matter." Dark energy is another term for the cosmological constant, a parameter tied to the observed acceleration of the universe. There are completely independent measurements that require this parameter, including supernova acceleration studies and incredibly precise cosmic microwave background measurements.

      Regarding dark matter, you seriously trivialize the situation. It's not a case of astronomers being unable to find the matter, like it's a lost set of keys. We see that galaxies and clusters of galaxies experience more gravitation attraction than they should, based on the visible mass. Hence "dark matter." But it's not just that we can't see it; big bang nucleosynthesis tells us that only a small fraction of the matter in the universe is baryonic. Baryons are the normal particles that "stuff" is made of, like you, me, stars, dust, and gas. That means that the missing mass is not simply something we're not seeing (because it doesn't glow, for example), but is something utterly different.

      We're not missing mass because we're not good at finding stars, or dust, or whatever. We're missing it because it's something completely, fundamentally different from all of that stuff.

    2. Re:The boson kludge by Curunir_wolf · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Ok, I'm confused (which you already pointed out!). "Dark Energy" (or the cosmological constant) is thought to explain the accelleration of the expansion of the univers, as you pointed out, since measurements of the microwave background radition indicate that there is no curvature to space. Since space is flat, that is, light travels in a straight line, there must be this mysterious force ("Dark Matter") driving the expansion.

      Why is this completely unrelated to dark matter, though? What are the observations of "more gravitational attraction" that you refer to?

      I thought the dark matter was required because the total mass of the universe (total amount of baryonic matter) was too small by about 2/3?

      --
      "Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
      --- Jerry Garcia
    3. Re:The boson kludge by njchick · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Regarding dark matter, you seriously trivialize the situation. It's not a case of astronomers being unable to find the matter, like it's a lost set of keys. We see that galaxies and clusters of galaxies experience more gravitation attraction than they should, based on the visible mass. Hence "dark matter."
      You are contradicting yourself. It is a case of astronomers being unable to find the matter.
      But it's not just that we can't see it; big bang nucleosynthesis tells us that only a small fraction of the matter in the universe is baryonic.
      We know too little about "big bang nucleosynthesis" to make any conclusions, especially those predicting undiscovered forms of matter. We don't even know why we have more matter than antimatter.
    4. Re:The boson kludge by mph · · Score: 2, Interesting
      You are contradicting yourself. It is a case of astronomers being unable to find the matter.
      No, I'm not contradicting myself. I was indicating that it's not simply being able to find something "normal," like a lost set of keys. The stuff we can't find is fundamentally different from normal "stuff."
      We know too little about "big bang nucleosynthesis" to make any conclusions
      Not true. The theoretical predictions of BBN, from particle physics, are in good agreement with observations of deuterium abundance, and the CMB power spectrum. You might not say it's rock-solid, but BBN appears to be generally sound.
  2. Speaking of dark energy by Maimun · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Speaking of dark energy, I wonder whether [suppose it exists indeed] dark energy does not break the law of conservation of energy. Once I attended a public talk by someont from Fermi Lab [sorry, cannot recall the name] who said that dark energy is a constant quantity [a very small number in standard units] per volume of space. So, given that the Universe is expanding and is being pushed more and more this way by the dark energy, the quantity of dark energy goes up and up, right? So, if it has indeed the meaning of energy, there is more and more energy in the Universe, contrary to the law of conservation...

    Sadly, after the mention public talk only very few questions were allowed and I missed the opportunity to ask the expert in person.