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Has the Higgs Boson Particle Field Been Hiding in Plain Sight?
sciencehabit writes with a link to the ScienceNow site, noting an article saying the Higgs boson may already have been found in previous observations of the known universe. A theorist at Michigan state is arguing that scientists may have already found evidence for the elusive particle. The key appears to be that the particles that make up the Higgs field are of various 'strengths', and some of those particles may tug on others very weakly. "The lightest Higgs can be very light indeed, but it would not have been seen at [CERN's Large Electron-Positron (LEP)], because LEP experimenters were looking for an energetic collision that made a Z that then spit out a Higgs. That wouldn't happen very often if the lightest Higgs and the Z hardly interact. 'Just within the simplest supersymmetric model, there's still room for Higgs that is missed,' Yuan says. However, this lightweight Higgs is not exactly the Higgs everyone is looking for, says Marcela Carena, a theorist at Fermilab. 'The Higgs they are talking about is not the one responsible for giving mass to the W and Z,' she says. It can't be because it hardly interacts with those particles, Carena says. Indeed, in Yuan's model, the role of mass-giver falls to one of the heavier Higgses, which is still heavier than the LEP limit, she notes."
Turns out it was under the couch all this time.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_Boson
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
From the article, this struck me as odd:
"Physicists suspect that empty space is permeated by a Higgs field, which is a bit like an electric field. And just as an electric field consists of particles called photons, the Higgs field consists of particles called Higgs bosons. The Higgs field drags on particles to give them mass, akin to molasses tugging on a spoon."
Electric fields consist of photons? If that's not a typo of some kind, would someone care to explain?
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
...must be one of the ugliest plural forms I've recently encountered.
Black holes suck.
Am I really the only one worried that determining the precise weight of the Higgs Boson will result in the Earth being crushed into a tiny particle the size of a pea?
From Wiki...
It is the only Standard Model particle not yet observed, but would help explain how otherwise
massless elementary particles, still manage to construct mass in matter. In particular, the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons
I always wondered what they use to measure the mass of elementary particles (not atoms). Can anyone explain? Also, maybe photons and higgs boson do have mass, but our instruments just aren't sensitive enough (kinda what the summary is saying)?
Maybe we could put it to good use as a theme park ride instead. Imaging all those superconducting magnets accelerating your cart up to 99.99% of the speed of light - what a ride that would be.
With the relativistic effects, you might even be able to come out of the ride before you went in.
The fact that it operates in a vacuum might be a problem ... have to think about that.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I wonder if there are antiparticles to these that have antimass? And what would enveloping mass with antimass fields enable you to do? What would happen to E=mc^2 if m is negative?
Might make an interesting story, if someone's already written it please link..
"...the Higgs boson may already have been found in previous observations of the known universe." But what about in observations of the unknown universe, did they find anything there?
Shouldn't "A theorist at Michigan state" be "A theorist at Michigan State University"? Adds clarification, for me at least.
This is real news for real nerds. This story requires reading of Leon Lederman's the God Particle to get to the point where any amount of explanation in the summary would help. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I'd be really, really impressed if anyone could write a summary for that.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
It's kind of like when you look in your mirrors, but you're not expecting anyone else to be on the road, so you don't even see them.
which is totally what she said
Obviously, jeesh. Have you even looked at Higgs recently?
"This little Higgsy went to market."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What's this ... behind your ear ... ?
Oh, look! It's a Higgs boson!
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Since nobody's made this point yet, I'll put it out there.
The statement is literally correct. Say you have a field in 3-space. That field itself is a 3-vector at every point in that space. When you make a fourier transform of the field, you get the field as a function of a momentum-like 3 vector. That vector is quantized, and the excitations of it are what we refer to as "photons". Add in special relativity, and you have the basics of quantum field theory.
Try the first chapter of Lahiri and Pal's "A First Book of Quantum Field Theory". If you've had undergrad calculus, it shouldn't be that bad.
The latest (print) issue of Scientific American has a very clear article explaining what a Higgs particle is (or isn't) and why anyone might want to find one.
--
The theory predicts that there should be a SIG here.
You can go about your business.
Move along.
902,000 Google hits for: in soviet russia * you
Clearly the Higgs Boson was contained within an SEP field.
Which suggests that we are one step closer to actually creating an infinite improbability drive - the ramifications of which are... well I don't know, but they are at least big, possibly huge.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
... welcome our new Dreen Overlords Exterminators.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Maybe it's hiding behind a barn.
See Greene, Brian.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
The Higgs field drags on particles to give them mass, akin to molasses tugging on a spoon.
(That's from TFA.) What a mess. The Nature cannot be that complex. Not at that (elementary) level. How many different types of point-like particles do we need to explain things?
This seems to be a situation where the theoretical thinking has taken us nowhere. Or, we may need yet another Periodic Table, this time one for the elementary particles, that would show that they are not, indeed, elementary, or that different particles are nothing but different forms of the same truly basic physical substance.
At least, such is my expectation as a layman.
. . . these are not the Higgs' bosons you are look for.
Seen him. Kind of short, but gives a hell of lecture.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Will this help us penetrate the Bozone layer?
Do good ideas in HEP really take 16 months to get published/recognized? The paper linked from TFA is from September 2006.
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
A theorist at Michigan
My, what an awesome discovery! Those chaps at Michigan sure are smart. Someone give them some more funding.
State
I mean, what a bunch of nonsense. It isn't even the *right* Higgs boson!
I kid, I kid...
The enemies of Democracy are
We'd be crushed to about the size of a pea.
Schwarzchild Radius. Mass of Earth.
1.48×10^27 m/kg * 5.9742 × 10^24 kg = 0.00884 m = 8.84mm = about 90% of a centimeter. Yup. About pea sized.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Gotta get me one of those.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Nicholas Cage found it after breaking into Los Alamos and finding a codebook hidden in Richard Feynman's desk which contained a simple substitution cypher pointing to the particle accelerator at Cern, where he discovered a vast underground cavern containing piles of gold doubloons stolen from all the Spanish Galleons that supposedly "sunk" in the 1500s. Hidden inside one of the chests of gold was a stone tablet containing ancient cuneiforms which had been painstakingly DES encrypted by hand, and when decrypted, showed the final resting place of the last remaining Higgs boson, which was in the Smithsonian, hanging from the ceiling and protected by the Ancient Order of Obfuscating Physicists.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
what else?
There are really not that many kinds of elementary particles. We're talking quarks (6 kinds), leptons (electrons, mus, and taus, and their associated neutrinos); and various force-mediating particles like photons, gluons (a few kinds), and a few of these other particles such as the theorized Higgs. Compare these fundamental units of particle physics to the elements, which are the fundamental units of chemistry. There are 92 natural elements, and a couple dozen synthetic ones. How can nature be so complex?
The answer is that it's as complex as it is. If that doesn't conform to "your expectations as a layman"... then change your expectations.
I have no idea what you're talking about. I only read the summary and I completely understand that there are different sizes of these Higgs Boson thingies that can be heavy or light, but the light ones are the red-headed step children of the higgs boson family in that nobody really wants one, and that they may or may not interact with things in particle accelerators and/or each other, and that most of them are named with letters near the end of the alphabet.
I now feel fully qualified to provide insightful comments and am ready to receive your positive mod points!
There's a book, Flashforward, about how the search for the Higgs Boson quantum decoheres the entire planet, and people catch a glimpse of the future for themselves in the most probable location, like a decade in advance. Kind of a depressing story, but pretty damn interesting one all the same.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}