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CERN Announces Collider Startup Delay
perturbed1 writes "The 142nd session of the CERN Council saw Organizational Director General Robert Aymar announcing a delay in the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The installation will start up in May 2008, taking 'the first steps towards studying physics at a new high-energy frontier.' Such a delay was foreseen due to the quadrupole accident, which we've previously discussed. This gives extra time for Fermilab physicists to try to understand the latest interesting hints of the Higgs boson, as well as give much needed extra-time for the detectors at CERN to get ready for data taking. Given that it will be fall before the LHC detectors take any useful data from collisions at 14TeV, could Fermilab collect enough data for a 5-sigma discovery by then?"
Let's not forget that the Tevatron (Fermilab's big accelerator) is scheduled to be shut down in 2009.
I'd love for the scientists at Fermilab to make this sort of breakthrough before the LHC goes live, as it'd be a huge morale booster for American physicists. Such a high-profile discovery would also attract the attention necessary to help solve the NSF's funding woes.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
am actually hoping AGAINST either Fermilab or Cern managing to isolate a Higgs particle.
No, I don't wish any harm to the scientists or their reputations. However, I think it would be fun if Gravity didn't fit so nicely in the Standard Model like everyone is hoping it will.
Having something else, such as a massive Baryon, appear at the energies where the Higgs boson is 'supposed' to be means that scientists all over the world in many disciplines are going to have to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate their theories.
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Judging by the fourteen glowing reviews posted since the beginning of this month I'm sure that the launch of the innovative iPhone technology will surely solve all of CERN's problems.
Or at least let them watch YouTube while waiting for repairs.
Three Squirrels
Naturally. You know either where the LHC is located, or when it will start, but not both.
Well, time does slow down when you're moving close to the speed of light ...
A-Bomb
I'd also hope for the non-existence of the Higgs boson. however, all odds are against us.
Really? You have some evidence that the theorists are right? If so please share it with us. Just because nobody has thought of a better model it is by no means proof that one does not exist. The Higgs model really is a beautiful one and I think that we will find it...but in 1904 how many physicists would have bet on the universe having a maximum speed limit as the solution to the non-invariance of Maxwell's equations under Galilean transforms? All it takes is one smart guy to come up with a better model and we'd abandon the Higgs model and say that the new one is the way to go.
Given that it will be fall before the LHC detectors take any useful data from collisions at 14TeV, could Fermilab collect enough data for a 5-sigma discovery by then?
It is unlikely that we will have enough data for a 5-sigma Standard Model Higgs discovery before the LHC turns on. If I remember the plot for the expected Higgs significance correctly the best we can hope for is "3-sigma evidence" unless the Higgs really is right above the current limits (where ALEPH once suggested it was).
However this assumes a Standard Model Higgs. If something called Supersymmetry (SUSY) exists then there are 5 Higgs bosons (two with a charge) and in some areas of SUSY parameter space we can see some of these a lot more easily than the Standard Model Higgs This would also be a LOT more exciting than a Standard Model Higgs!
Sorry I should have included this in the original comment. Here is a link to the original expected Tevatron sensitivity and the updated one. The y axis is the volume of data collected by both experiments i.e. sum of DØ and CDF datasets and the x axis is the mass of the Standard Model Higgs. This is currently limited to be above 114 GeV/c2. The three lines are 5-sigma discovery, 3-sigma evidence and 95% confidence limit if we don't see any Higgs event in that amount of data.
The dip round 160 GeV/c2 mass is because a heavy enough Higgs can decay differently than a lighter one and the different decay is a lot easier to detect above all the other "background" events happening in the detector. We should get 10-20 fb-1 between both experiments by 2009 so, as you can see, unless we do something clever (which had not been thought of at the time the plots were made) or the Higgs is really light we won't get 5-sigma, but 3-sigma is a real possibility.
Physicists get hadrons!
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
Actually a magnetic field is a bad example for a Higgs field precisely because it has both a magnitude and direction. The Higgs field has only a magnitude. A better example would be the temperature map you see in a weather forecast. Everywhere has a temperature value: it has no direction. This is what makes it different from the "aether" (aether had a preferred direction which is why the Michelson-Morley experiment disproved it).
The other weird thing about the Higgs field is that it has its lowest energy density at a non-zero value of the field i.e. it requires energy to lower the Higgs field! Electric and magnetic fields have their lowest energy density when the field strength is zero i.e. it takes energy to make them non-zero.
You're about to observe a quantum state. Cancel and allow?
Allow me to clarify: fields do not physically exist. However they are our own mathematical constructions. They may explain nothing of the nature of the force and interactions, but they are actually quite useful to determine magnitudes, directions, etc. Ironically, in another post I mentioned to somebody that "fields are not aether," when Maxwell actually came up with his theory of electromagnetism based off of aether-tubes as the field lines. He later decided to drop the aether-tubes interpretation and to accept purely the mathematics. Harsh of him? Anyway, gravity is not a field, but so far the results of its interactions can be predicted via field theory.
* Warning: gravity is only a theory,
* Open questions in quantum gravity,
* Resources,
* Open questions in physics,
* What's wrong with loop quantum gravity?
(*) 'Might be' is rather strong in this scenario. Virtual photons have not been observed, though acting as if they exist has proven tremendous success in quantum electrodynamics. Yet, we do not know how to make gravitons work as the mediator of gravity in our calculations, so 'might be' is not too far from any truth.